Sputnik DIY
The BBC has published directions for building your own history-making satellite: In simple terms, the Sputnik satellite was a metal sphere almost 2ft (61cm) in […]
SONG: Sleeping Cathedrals
SONG: “Sleeping Cathedrals”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “World’s biggest whale g…
Read moreScience Art: Build Your Own Lie Detector, 1955
This is the opener for an article in the May 1955 issue of Popular Electronics. You can read the article here, …
Read moreScience Art: Collops bipunctatus, U, Back, SD, Pennington County, 2013
This image of a Collops bipunctatus, a beetle from the Melyridae family, was taken by Sam Droege from flowers …
Read moreScience Art: Histologist Microscope, 1900
An illustration of an elegant optical device from Science Gossip magazine (a publication which I discovered via…
Read moreScience Art: Rudimentary Simulator, 1963.
This is Figure 3 from “Man-Machine System Simulation for Flight Vehicles” by Steven Belsley, an article which w…
Read moreScience Art: Astrapia Splendidissima, 1895
This is the first illustration in the article “A New Bird of Paradise” by the Hon. Walter Rothschild, published…
Read moreScience Art: Opportunity on Meridiani Planum, 8 May 2005
The dusty hematite plains of Mars, as seen by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. This is, more or less, the place where Opportunity found evidence […]
The Ares V
Behold the mighty propaganda of a mighty space agency! NASA’s (computer generated) video of the very big (notional) Ares V rocket, launching a Very Large […]
Asteroid-Zapping Space Mirrors
We’re all worried about the sudden destruction of planet Earth and every living thing upon it by a sudden, cataclysmic collision with a hurtling mass […]
Maps of Cosmic Bliss.
You might remember reading, a few years ago, about some controversial claims made by Dr. Michael Persinger, who was researching how repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation […]
Time. And an OTHER time.
Feeling pressed for time? A New Scientist interview reported by the Telegraph posits that we have more time than you think: Time is no longer […]
Stick *salps* in your pipe and smoke it!
So James Lovelock, he of the Gaia Hypothesis, has come up with a novel way to beat global warming – using little jellyfish-like creatures called […]
Science Art: Astronaut Bruce McCandless on the Canadarm, February 1984
See more space walks (or, erm, space “surfs”) at NASA (of course), at a site belonging to someone named “Texas Jim” (showing Endeavour over Hurricane […]
Smart Helmet for Smarter Football
Rugby players will have one more reason to sneer at American football players, if ABC News is right about this new football helmet. It doesn’t […]
Stripper Experiment Finds Invisible Mating Signals
The idea that humans can somehow be unconsciously yanked around by pheromones – invisible, odorless, airborne chemicals – tends to make a lot of scientists […]
Sensitive Spice.
Like it hot? Sure you do. Nature reveals how hot peppers can make anaesthetics work more potently – and more selectively – by “opening the […]
Are hatcheries killing endangered fish?
Nature brings troubling news from the saving endangered species front. A study has shown that fish raised in captivity really don’t do well in the […]
Poverty: It’s for your own good.
Marketplace listeners may have heard yesterday evening’s story about the Cuban health non-crisis. Contrary to what you might expect from the western hemisphere’s last and […]
Glassteel. Or something like it.
I remember “glassteel” being one of those fabulous, fictional substances that showed up a lot in sci-fi novels when I was growing up – the […]
Science Art: STEREO’s SECCHI-Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope, 5 March 2007
This image from NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory shows our sun’s atmosphere in the temperature range of 1.5 million degrees Celsius. It’s part of a […]