Deadly plastic ocean.
Discovery brings up the grim possibility that we’re all doomed to die in an invisible toxic wave: Patterns in ocean currents create conglomerations of swirling […]
Science Art: Rudimentary Simulator, 1963.
This is Figure 3 from “Man-Machine System Simulation for Flight Vehicles” by Steven Belsley, an article which w…
Read moreScience Art: Astrapia Splendidissima, 1895
This is the first illustration in the article “A New Bird of Paradise” by the Hon. Walter Rothschild, published…
Read moreScience Art: Ever See This Before?, 1966.
This is an actual image of a cathode-ray tube, “the furthest advance yet made in man/ machine interface,” used …
Read moreScience Art: Sunrise - Philippine Sea, 2017
This is an image from the “Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth” gallery, maintained by the Earth Science …
Read moreScience Art: Égouts de Paris, by Jules Ferat.
There’s a subtitle here that Google Translate renders as “Sewer cleaning wagon. (System of Chief Engineer Mr. B…
Read moreScience Art: Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, by David K. Stone.
I found the image in the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s “Aerophilately Special Collection” on Flickr; this is a…
Read moreWalk, don’t crawl.
Scientific American resets my priorities (or at least my metaphors) with anthropological research. You think in order to walk, you gotta crawl first? Not really: […]
Song: Close Your Eyes
SONG: “Close Your Eyes” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: “Scary music is spookier with eyes shut “, New Scientist, 28 […]
Science Art: Pioneer F/G Jupiter Missions, 1970.
Click to embiggen. A gorgeous vintage diagram of NASA’s deep space probe’s trajectory. The NASA image archive page says: This image, drawn in 1970, is […]
By definition, a crush must hurt…
The Telegraph provides insight into the genuine pain of a broken heart: Psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles say the human body has […]
We found the seeds.
Reuters carries the story of the first seed of life to be discovered on a comet: The latest findings add credence to the notion that […]
DNA evidence, made to order.
New York Times brings up the unsettling possibility that future biochemically savvy crooks will be capable of fudging DNA evidence: The scientists fabricated blood and […]
Smell of death.
Science Daily is hard boiled. As hard boiled as death. And death, they say, has a smell all its own: Speaking at the 238th National […]
Exposing the Seat of Wisdom.
The Times somewhat recently took a close look at our brains, particularly the parts that UC San Diego neurologists say are responsible for what we […]
Science Art: Baender der Hand, Meyers Blitz-Lexikon, 1932
These are the volumes of the hand, Babelfish tells me… although “baender” also means “bands” (like the FM radio band), or ligaments. Image found in […]
Monkey music.
OK, not monkeys, but apes, New Scientist says, have been caught making musical instruments: The orang-utan’s music, if you can call it that, is actually […]
Walking in the trees.
New Scientist goes out on a limb with a new study that hints that humans may have learned to walk up in the branches before […]
Wooden bones.
DiscoveryNews leaves me rooted to the spot with a sprouting fascination in the latest medical implant – bones made from wood: The researchers chose wood […]
Fixing Prisons.
PhysOrg has some advice from the American Psychological Association on how to make prisons actually work – by punishing less and keeping convicts from coming […]
Listen with your eyes closed.
New Scientist tells us the less you see, the more impact spooky music has: Sure enough, volunteers rated the eerie-sounding music – laced with staccato […]