Our galaxy is warped. Just a little.
Science reports that the Milky Way isn’t quite as flat, edge-on, as we thought. It’s got a slight but detectable S-curve, like a piece of […]
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: 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, …
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Science Art: Flight Trajectory by Walther Hermann Ryff, 1582.
An illustration from a book the title of which begins Bawkunst Oder Architectur aller fürnemsten/ Nothwendigsten/ angehœrigen Mathematischen vnd Mechanischen Kuensten/ eygentlicher Bericht/ vnd verstændtliche […]
Viable sperm sent on a postcard
New Scientist opens a new, fertile field of biological research with the discovery at Japan’s University of Yamanashi that it’s possible to freeze-dry viable sperm […]
The Gulf Stream *might* be collapsing already.
The Guardian, a British paper, opens itself to the possibility of a near-Arctic future England after looking at some cold, hard facts. The Gulf Stream, […]
Bees on java.
Scientific American marvels at caffeinated bumblebees, and the researchers who give busy bees caffeine and sugar to make them more focused and efficient: [University of […]
Science Art: Head of Falcon, Showing Beak, Nostril, Eye, and Ear…, 1889
From an impressive page of bird diagrams in the Rand, McNally & Co.’s Encyclopedia and Gazetteer. “Birds are in some ways the highest of vertebrate […]
“Willful” control of the brain’s feel-good chemical.
Science Daily shows how UC-Davis researchers are teaching mice how to consciously control the dopamine in their brains, turning on the reward centers of their […]
Why are these Patagonian lakes turning pink?
The only answer is “We don’t really know,” but as Reuters explains, that isn’t really good news however you look at it: The lakes, located […]
Science Art: Black and White Image From Ingenuity‘s Third Flight, April 2021.
This is a photo taken by the Mars helicopter Ingenuity‘s navigational camera. Although it doesn’t say so in the NASA image gallery where I found […]
SONG: Listening
SONG: “Listening”. ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Scientific American, 13 July 21, “The Neuroscience of Taking Turns in a Conversation,” as used in the post “The neurology […]
Tomato plants have a kind of nervous system.
New Scientist reports on research at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, where Gabriela Niemeyer Reissig and colleagues have found that tomatoes being eaten […]
A square meter of concrete can store the electricity of two AA batteries.
Scientific American looks at a weird new power source, using probably the most common building material in the modern world as a kind of rechargeable […]
Science Art: Car 5400, where are you?, 1965.
This is an advertisement in the back of the May/June 1965 issue of Information Display, the journal of the Society for Information Display. It’s a […]
The neurology of conversations, or how our brains know when it’s our turn to speak.
Scientific American turns to chatty songbirds to figure out how it is that our brains process cues telling us when to talk and when to […]
There’s a new branch of psychology dedicated to the study of B.S.
PsyPost, reporting on a study in Psychological Reports, introduces us to the OBPS, a way to scientifically quantify the amount of useless, stupid nonsense we’re […]