Spirit in the sand.
The Mars Rover Spirit could use a couple two-by-fours, the LA Times reports, because its wheels are spinning in place… a very faraway place: Over […]
Science Art: Beebe's Bathysphäre, 1934
This is an image of William Beebe’s bathysphere, as placed on Wikimedia Commons by ETH Bibliothek. It was creat…
Read moreScience Art: Power of RCA Electron Microscope, May 1955
These are diatoms, I think, seen by two different microscopes.
As the caption from Popular Electronics says…
Read moreScience Art: Red Pepper, 1910.
Red pepper (Cayenne pepper) will cure almost any case of la grippe within 24 hours, or so they say. At least no…
Read moreScience Art: Figs. 1315-1333 (Various rotary piston engines), 1890.
This is a page of figures from (deep breath) The engineer’s sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appli…
Read moreScience Art: Mirounga leonina 01, by H. Zell
This is a southern elephant seal, the largest marine mammal that isn’t a whale. They’re about twice as weighty …
Read moreScience Art: Mars & Beyond, directed by Ward Kimball, 1957
What might life on Mars be like? That’s the question Disney was asking TV viewers in 1957. This has to be seen to be believed…. […]
Music opens your heart. No, really.
CNN recently covered some fun physiological research from the University of Maryland that showed that music – music you like – really is good for […]
Imaginary poisons.
New Scientist examines the harmful health effects of the power of negative thinking: The placebo effect has an evil twin: the nocebo effect, in which […]
Food wrapper plastics are in our blood.
Something’s gotten in The Charleston Gazette’s blood – and ours, too. You want to know the future? One word. Plastics: Around the world, scientists are […]
RIP, Eilene Galloway.
You should know who she is. She made NASA.
THEM! (Global Warming Edition)
Just because we’ve swapped climate change for nuclear apocalypse in our end-of-the-world imaginings, that doesn’t mean we have to give up our terror of giant […]
Science Art: Artist’s View of Extrasolar Planet HR 8799b by NASA, ESA and G. Bacon (STScl)
Click to embiggen vastly You can read the full story on Hubblesite.org; the short version – Hubble found this planet in 1998, but nobody realized […]
File under: Songs, non-scientific. (Not quite remixing Pocket’s “Sampo”)
You may or may not have heard about Pocket’s 2009 Singles Project, which involves Pocket remixing original songs from a list of indie all-stars (including […]
Hobbit feet.
The New York Times has nothing better to do than look at hobbit feet: The new anatomical evidence, being reported Thursday in the journal Nature, […]
Breathe out.
The MIT Technology Review (and other sources) have reported on a new technique that Canadian doctors devised for preparing lungs for transplants – or repairing […]
Mmmm. Neurology. Oh, yeah.
Nature Neuroscience (via the BBC) lets researchers push all the right buttons after they’ve discovered brave new ways to make us feel good: A team, […]
Cosmic dacquiri.
The Guardian explains an awful lot about how things have gotten so out of hand for so very, very long by revealing proof that we’re […]
Science Art: Schlieren photograph of a T-38 at Mach 1.1, altitude 13,700 feet, by Leonard Weinstein.
Click to embiggen This is what a sonic boom looks like, through a Schlieren camera – one outfitted to see differences in air pressure. The […]