Electric Eel Power
PhysOrg reports on a slithery new power source – the eel generator: Electric eels channel the output of thousands of specialized cells called electrocytes to […]
Science 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 moreScience 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: Dykeri, fig 6, Nordisk familjebok
Click to embiggen In my deep-sea diving suit. Found in a very special category on Wikimedia Commons.
For That Atomic Guitar Sound.
New Scientist goes behind the music to tell the real story of Manchester rocker and physics prof Andrew Murray, who figured out a new way […]
Alternative fuels are popping up like mushrooms.
Montana State University researchers have found diesel fuel growing on trees in Patagonia. Well, OK, it’s the next best thing – a fungus that churns […]
No, Really.
Scientific American reports on the psychology of sarcasm and on new studies that suggest irony is hardwired into our brains: In one experiment, [Penny M. […]
Magnetic Portals Surround Us.
We are surrounded, NASA astronomers now say, by flux transfer events – fast-moving, invisible tunnels to the Sun: A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth […]
The Beatles Knew All The Chords… Plus One.
Musical mystery solved after 40 years! It took an obsessive mathematician to discover what the heck the Beatles were playing for the opening chord of […]
Science Art: Cloud, dust storm over central China, 6-3-2002
Click to embiggen. Image from "The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth" at the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center.
Robinson Crusoe Found.
Yes, the plucky, inventive island castaway Robinson Crusoe was a fictional character. But author Robert Louis Stevenson, writing in the mid-1800s, based him on the […]
Living magnets, shaped like weapons.
Researchers peering through microscopes at ancient mud have found the fossilized remains of a truly bizarre life form: “Imagine our surprise to discover not only […]
Baby, It’s Cold Outside.
The LA Times reports on a new psychological study in Science that proves something we all probably take for granted – that warmth is more […]
One Step Closer to the Spotless Mind.
Did I post this before? I have no way of knowing. New Scientist tells me (for what I hope is the first time) that researchers […]
Fart Stink Controls Blood Pressure.
Perhaps not heart-stoppingly foul, but, as LiveScience informs us, that distinctive smell is enough to give the circulatory system pause: The unpleasant aroma of the […]
Science Art: Polycera atra, Lateral View by F.M. MacFarland.
Click to embiggen slightly. Some call them sea slugs, but they’re so striking, so sensual, that nudibranch has to be the better term. From the […]
SONG: Now the Snow
SONG:Now the Snow. (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: “It’s snowing on Mars”, iTwire, 30 Sep 2008, as cited in the […]