The Robot Blimps of Mars
Wired has me eager for interplanetary conquest with their look at our armada of airships and robotic rovers: With the miniature lab tests complete, [Wolfgang […]
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 moreSURPRISE! Asteroid nearly blows up Indonesia.
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, the Telegraph reports that an asteroid just blew up over Indonesia with the force of three […]
DMSD stands for “Digital Mantis Shrimp Discs”
Discover has an interesting bit of unexpected biomimicry. The mantis shrimp (probably the scariest marine predator less than 3 feet long) has an unusual way […]
Not the kind that belongs to a club, but the kind with a club that belongs to him…
We all want a primitive man, says the Telegraph, reporting on new evidence that modern humans got it on with Neanderthals: [Said Professor Paabo, who […]
The green planet-killer.
Forget asteroids or nuclear war. Science Daily now has me worried that we’re all going to die from toxic pond scum: The microscopic plants usually […]
Science Art: Von Karman Vortices
Click to embiggen vastly Landsat 7 gave us this memorable look at clouds moving rapidly over the Aleutian Islands. These whorls happen, as any canoeist […]
SONG: Let’s Take the Boat Out
SONG: Let’s Take the Boat Out (To download, double right click and “Save Target As…”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: “A Rocket for the 21st Century”, from […]
Rock the Power, Gramps.
Designboom recently gave a green design award to the Murakami rocking chair. Great invention – it’s a rocking chair with a dynamo and a built-in […]
Spies in the house of science.
So first there was that little problem with Al Qaeda and the Large Hadron Collider. Now, the Belfast Telegraph reveals a similar link between Mossad […]
LSD is medicine – and so are magic mushrooms.
…and not only that, but painkilling medicine, too. Newsweek reveals that the psychedelic rocket fuels of 1960s culture are proving to be unique weapons against […]
Science Art: Food chain-2, Nordisk familjebok
Click to embiggen The circle of life, seen as a straight line. With a bird of prey at the top. There’s something totemic about it, […]
The spy in your pocket.
New Scientist challenges a team of professional electronic snoops, who prove that strangers can learn more than you think from your phone: I’ve just walked […]
Is this how acupuncture works?
A professor at Australia’s Curtin Institute of Technology, Dr Morry Silberstein, may have figured out what makes acupuncture work: His research, to be published in […]
Coconut fusion reactor.
New Scientist goes tropical, revealing what a fusion reactor has in common with a pina colada: The coconuts will be used to generate 10,000 cubic […]
“YOU PUT IN OTHER DETAILS.”
This is why we do what we do: Letter to a ^top scientist at Woomera. This is how the space race was won, you know. […]