Science Art: PIA13755: Textures of ‘Santa Maria’ Crater, Sol 2476 , Mars Rover Opportunity & NASA.
Click to embiggen The Mars Rover Opportunity considers the textures of the Santa Maria crater on its 2,746th day on Mars. There are no footprints […]
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 moreBlack Plants in Twilight Eternal.
Scientific American paints an eldritch picture of what lies at the edges of a distant star… a world of dim, twilit grotesqueries arranged in a […]
Smart Helmets
As if American football players don’t get enough flack from rugby-playing nations, Wired is reporting that their helmets are going electronic: Now, according to The […]
Cousin planet.
Astronomers have finally confirmed, NPR reports, the discovery of the very first Earth-like planet somewhere else in space: Astronomers have found hundreds of planets outside […]
Following leatherbacks.
The Guardian knows where the world’s largest sea turtles go: Matthew Witt, a researcher at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of […]
Scent of tears.
It’s a real turn-off, according to PhysOrg.com. They found that a chemical in women’s tears kills the mood for men – even if the crying […]
Science Art: Alligator and Snake by Maria Sibylla Merian
An illustration by Maria Sibylla Graff Merian, daughter of an engraver, step-daughter of a painter and careful observer of the natural world. She carefully documented […]
Hungry season.
Amid all the fish kills and rising gas prices, here’s a feel-good story for the season from the kindly folks at Scientific American. It seems […]
Combat wings
Beaks, sure. Talons? Terrifying. But how about Eurekalert.org’s report on prehistoric birds using their wings as clubs: “No animal has ever evolved anything quite like […]
Look inside.
This isn’t a discovery so much as a great resource (and wonderful source of visuals), but you should really look inside The Cell Image Library… […]
Subatomic sound.
NPR takes us on an audio tour of the Large Hadron Collider with a physicist who’s translating subatomic particles into sounds: “I have some musician […]
Art as science.
RISD president John Maeda, writing in Seed Magazine, makes the case for including art education in our quest for better science: Public commitments to STEM—science, […]
Science Art: Ion Engine Test Firing, NASA-JPL
Click to embiggen From the Wikimedia Commons description: This image of a xenon ion engine, photographed through a port of the vacuum chamber where it […]
Stop your engines (for just a second).
CleanTechnica announces some fuel-saving technology that’s making its way from hybrids to standard automobiles: Start-stop is a fuel saving approach mainly associated with hybrid vehicles, […]
Conservative amygdalas are concerned.
The Telegraph reports on new brain studies that find a difference between “liberal” brains and “conservative” brains, equating the old-ways-are-best mindset with larger anxiety-processing areas: […]