A City Older than Moses.
EurasiaNet reports on archaeologist Klaus Schmidt’s excavation of Gobekli Tepe, a 12,000-year-old city that could rewrite human history: “Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical […]
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: Doppler Effect
Diagram from Wikimedia Commons. It’s like op art.
A Lighter Shade of Wallpaper.
TechRadar.com brightens our day with the story of a Dutch designer who has created illuminated wallpaper. Delving deeper, Samson revealed that the wallpaper is constructed […]
The Handy Uses of a Home Computer, 1970
In 1970, Life wanted us to know that home computers can be useful: Those pioneer families who have one, like the Theodore Rodmans of Ardmore, […]
In the Spirit of Ham.
BBC reports on a Russia’s new generation of space monkeys being trained for Mars: “People and monkeys have approximately identical sensitivity to small and large […]
Cellphone Planet.
New York Times gives us a new (well, new-ish) perspective on cellular phones – as a revolutionary technology for eliminating global poverty.. or for making […]
The Boy-Crab Boogie.
New Scientist rocks like a crustacean with a new report on crab courtship dances: In the dense submarine thickets of seagrass that blue crabs (Callinectes […]
Science Art: A Gear Chain with a Mite Approaching
This is how small they’re making machines nowadays: Dwarfed by a spider mite. Lubricated by gases. Photo courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories, SUMMiTTM Technologies, www.mems.sandia.gov
The Creativity Disease.
New York Times profiles a bizarre ailment that has me wondering how one could contract it halfway. It’s a syndrome that causes uncontrolled creativity: In […]
Flat-faced Fish Fleet. Er, Family.
Scientific American introduces us to a whole new family of (rather cute) flat-faced fish: First photographed in January off Ambon Island, Indonesia, the critter has […]
As Matthew McConaughey said in Dazed and Confused….
New Scientist says old dudes like Charles Darwin really should be shacked up with younger women like Scarlett Johansen because of science. Humans, they say, […]
Grow Your Own Teeth.
Wired opens wide and spits out a story on a dental breakthrough. If you happen to have lost any of your teeth (ahem), you don’t […]
5th grader corrects Smithsonian Museum.
Yep, he might be an 11-year-old kid, but at least he was paying attention in class: Since it opened in 1981, millions of people have […]
Science Art: Red Giant V838 Monocerotis
Click to embiggen Photo by NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). You can read more about V838 Monocerotis exploding and swallowing nearby planets […]
Big Brains? So What.
Discover reviews a new book that proves Devo was right – big brains aren’t an evolutionary advantage. The book, called Big Brains, looks at the […]