Keep looking up. But not THAT high.
I’m sure MSNBC isn’t *trying* to be a downer when they report that too much optimism is bad for cancer patients’ chances of recovery: The […]
Science Art: Body-centered cubic (bcc) unit cell of iron, 2009
If you were curious about the crystalline structure of iron mentioned in the last post, here it is — a molecul…
Read moreScience Art: MOON: For the Benefit of Humanity, 2023
It’s a poster made by NASA for lunar exploration, showing some landers, space stations, and sample-taking equip…
Read moreScience Art: Bubble chamber with colour enhanced tracks, 2026
This is a CERN image from January 6, 2026, showing something that happened in the 1960s, but enhanced for 21st-…
Read moreScience Art: Dissection of Asterias rubens, by Hans Hillewaert.
Starfish anatomy.
If you want to know the parts, according to Dutch Wikipedia, they are:
Read moreLegend
1 Arm
2…
Science Art: Jupiter's Family of Comets, 1898
This is a diagram from A New Astronomy For Beginners, a textbook that’s about a century and a quarter old, or a…
Read moreSONG: Your Catalogue
SONG: “Your Catalogue”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: NBC News, “New wild cat species is ide…
Read moreGerms against oil.
WaPo and Slate give us the scoop on the Deepwater Horizon aftermath. Why was the Exxon Valdez so much more of a mess? Because the […]
Quantum eyes.
Migrating robins have something better than magnets in their heads, Wired reports. They’ve got quantum sensors in their eyes: European robins may maintain quantum entanglement […]
Science Art: Azerbaijan stamp, 500m – Marine gastropod Corolla spectabilis, May 1995.
The whole collection of Azerbaijan collectors’ stamps is full of scientific illustration treasure – butterflies, dirigibles, mushrooms…. And “treasure” is not an exaggeration. 500 Azerbaijan […]
Mother and child, 100 million B.C.
BBC paints a sweet, fossilized portrait of pterosaur family life: A pterosaur has been found in China beautifully preserved with an egg. The egg indicates […]
Nabokov knew his butterflies.
Vladimir Nabokov. Modern literary genius. Darling of the New York Times. And now, certified brilliant entomological theorist: There were several plausible hypotheses for how the […]
Pink, but not pretty.
LiveScience joins forces with Peggy Orenstein to take on the “pink princess” culture and what it’s doing to our daughters: You spoke to scientists about […]
Cognitive Toolkit Improvement
Edge magazine has rounded up some pretty impressive brainy folks – from J. Craig Ventner to Brian Eno, P.Z. Myers and Martin Rees – and […]
SONG: Leatherback, Crossing.
SONG: “Leatherback, Crossing.”. (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “Secret voyages of leatherback turtles revealed using transmitters”, Guardian, 5 […]
Science Art: Aerostatic Cabriolet of Tomorrow, by Harry Grant Dart, c. 1905.
Click to embiggen Harry Grant Dart was an illustrator, newspaperman and creator of “The Explorigator” comic strip… and a man in the suffragette era who […]
What infection looks like.
New Scientist has microscopic video of what malaria looks like bursting into a blood cell: Jake Baum at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of […]
A gentler Eoraptor
Nature breaks the news to us that small, fierce prehistoric predator Eoraptor – the “dawn-predator” – might have been a plant-eater all along: Many palaeontologists […]
I’ll have to unpack my rocket ship.
Wired is bursting a few bubbles by reporting that Gliese 581g – the first habitable planet discovered around another star – may not exist at […]
Music makes us high.
ArsTechnica explores the way music intoxicates us – with dopamine: To learn more about the music/brain/stimulation process, the McGill researchers followed subjects through the ‘chills’ […]
Zap the ringing away.
One that hits close to my heart. University of Texas researchers have come up with a way to zap tinnitus: Researchers Dr. Michael Kilgard and […]