Sorry, our comet is missing.
Astronomers at the University of Hawaii recently had to make a strange correction to the Deep Impact mission. The ship, which thrilled scientists in 2005 […]
Science 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: What can make any tape recorder sound a little more like an Ampex?, 1963.
This is an ad for Ampex tape from the August 1963 edition of Electronics Australia, a magazine (which I found o…
Read moreScience Art: Cygnus region in emission lines, 2025
This is a photo of space with a bit of color amplification so we can tell what we’re looking at. Nebulas on the…
Read moreScience Art: Heart apical two-chamber view myocardial regions, by Patrick Lynch
This is an illustration of a particular perspective in a cardiac echocardiogram. An “apical view” is one of the…
Read moreSONG: Sleeping Cathedrals
SONG: “Sleeping Cathedrals”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “World’s biggest whale g…
Read moreScience Art: Ptolemaic System, from Andreas Cellarius’ Harmonia Macrocosmica
This chart shows the universe as understood in 1660 – a solar system with a giant Earth at its center.
Cell phone gourmand.
New Scientist unveils yet another thing Nokia is designing cell phones to do – read the menu for you: Snap a picture of, say, a […]
Burning coal creates nuclear waste.
Scientific American reports on a series of studies that mess with our sense of common sense. Nuclear power plants should be creating nuclear waste, and […]
Songs for Giant Isopods
[n.b.: Subsequent to writing this post, I wound up writing a song about isopods myself. I think it’s one of my better ones; check it […]
Burning Man’s Gift: Solar Cities.
The Burning Man festival is a bit of a hassle for folks in rural Nevada, who once a year get overrun by thousands of freaks, […]
Henry Gray, Human ovum examined fresh in the liquor folliculi.
A drawing of a human egg cell, from Gray’s Anatomy (the book, not the TV show). From its description quoted on Wikipedia: Human ovum examined […]
Bad Astronomer’s Top 10
The so-called Bad Astronomer picked the top 10 astronomy pictures of 2007. Go and see them. They’re beautiful.
SONG: Jaekelopterus!
SONG: “Jaekelopterus!” (To download: right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. Dui, shi wo. (Oui, c’est moi.) SOURCE: ““Giant Claw Points to Monster Sea Scorpion”, New […]
Science Art: The Helix Nebula
At the very center of this giant, staring eye is a white dwarf star. It’s located about 700 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. The […]
The Pale Blue Dot
Found via Barbelith. More on the film is available at palebluefilms.com. Good Yule, fellow dot-fractions. Stay warm during this longest night.
Raising Stonehenge: The Power of Pebbles & Sticks.
This is my favorite kind of science – a guy figuring out things in his back yard. Retired construction worker W.T. “Wally” Wallington thinks he’s […]
Power from space.
It’s nice to see this idea is still being kicked around – and taken more seriously now that oil prices are rising so dramatically. It […]
One word: Plastics.
PopSci reports on why one man thinks the petroleum industry wants him dead. Frank Pringle has figured out a way to turn plastics back into […]
Go well, Voyager.
Welcome to interstellar space. Nature reports that Voyager 2 has left the solar system. And, as NASA emphasizes, it did so while discovering our solar […]