… and Jupiter, while we’re at it.
An Australian amateur astronomer named Bird (or, IRL, Anthony Wesley) just spotted something slamming into Jupiter – a collision that’s been confirmed by the big […]
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 moreBomb the moon.
Yeah, we’re gonna do it. Stupid moon, all smug and silvery and sneaky, looking down at us all night long. Scientific American’s right. We don’t […]
Science Art: Prachtkäfer aus der Grube Messel (Splendor Beetle of the Messel Pit)
Click to embiggen vastly This is a fossilized insect, one of the Buprestidae (or Splendor Beetles or Jewel Beetles, from the collection of the Hessisches […]
Feeling vague?
Don’t let this happen to you.
Big fish! Hungry fish!
You may have heard of the giant prehistoric shark called megalodon. And maybe other megafauna, like Megalosaurus or even the mighty mechanical Megasaurus. But LiveScience […]
Send Your Name To Mars!
It’s free! You can get your name on a microchip placed aboard the next Mars Rover, just by filling in this form here! It may […]
If salamanders can do it…
Reuters recently brought up some research into how salamanders do that whole regenerating limbs thing: In salamanders, the blood vessels contract quickly and limit bleeding […]
Living large.
New Yorker valiantly tries to explain – scientifically – why it is that Americans (and the rest of the Western World) are getting so darned […]
Loonier than Luna.
The archives of Space.com have produced an old but strikingly weird story about a strikingly weird discovery – a second moon orbiting invisibly around Earth: […]
Science Art: Aphis Wolf, from Webster’s New International
This is the aphis wolf, or aphid lion, or, in other words, either the larva of the much less-threateningly named ladybug or lacewing. This particular […]
Listen to the lituus.
About two months ago, the BBC tells us, Scottish researchers used computer models to bring a lost medieval instrument back to life: Bach’s motet (a […]
Vatican funds stem-cell research.
The Australian Associated Press reports on a new move from the Catholic Church, which is offering a $100,000 research grant for work on adult stem […]
We’ll go a-waltzing….
Australian researchers have just discovered a trio of never-before-seen dinosaurs in the Winton Formation. Two of them died at the bottom of one of those […]
Cave man boogie.
The New York Times reports on a German discovery – or, really, a whole set of discoveries – of Stone Age tools, sculptures and the […]
Last of the BIG cats.
The BBC reports that the largest species of cat, the Amur tiger, has an effective population of less than 50 animals: They sampled nuclear DNA […]