The world’s most powerful magnet is heading to an experimental fusion reactor.
New Scientist reports on the latest equipment – a magnet stronger than any other – being sent from California to France for installation in ITER, […]
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: 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 moreAdvertising in your dreams
Science magazine covers the pushback from researchers who fear a new battleground for spam and advertisers inside our sleeping minds: This week, a group of […]
Betelgeuse burped.
New Scientist explains that reason Betelgeuse recently appeared to dim in the sky was that it was expelling gas: Miguel Montargès at Sorbonne University in […]
Science Art: Plate VI from Here, a number of broken gifts for the carpenters and lovers…., by Lorenz Stöer, 1567.
I’ve posted illustrations from this remarkable book of geometric studies before. This one looks, to this old gamer’s eyes, like 1D4+1D20+1. (For non-gamers: It’s the […]
Archaeologists danced for six hours straight – for science.
Archaeology reports on University of Helsinki researchers who held a dance marathon to find out the truth about prehistoric relics: auditory archaeologist Riitta Rainio and […]
A wooden satellite.
The European Space Agency is prepping payloads for a Finnish-built satellite made of wood with aluminum rails for launching and meatal “selfie stick” for a […]
One vaccination against TB, diabetes, and MS?
Science News reports on the BCG vaccine, short for Bacillus Calmette-Guérin. Originally, it was a treatment to prevent tuberculosis, but now it’s showing promise for […]
Science Art: Cypress root system exposed 4 feet deep by wave action…, 1915.
Today, Folklore Twitter is celebrating #SwampSunday, so I thought I’d slip this stately scientific illustration into my queue. This is what’s going on underneath that […]
Sending baby squid to the space station.
BBC reports on a NASA project that’s transporting cute little cephalopods into orbit, launching 128 baby bobtail squid and 5,000 tardigrades to the International Space […]
Today’s batteries are better.
Ars Technica busts a long-running myth about batteries – that they’re always five years away from any real improvement – with a look at how […]
Science Art: Circular Twilight Halo at Sunrise (Kreisförmiger Dämmerungsschein Bei Sonnenaufgang) by Eduard Moritz Pechuël-Loesche, 1884
A soft and beautiful drawing of distant, unimaginable destruction. Eduard Moritz Pechuël-Loesche was a naturalist in Hereroland (now Namibia) when he painted this watercolor in […]
The world’s oldest tattoo gear.
Science News looks at some sharpened bones found at a site in Tennessee. They seem to be 3,600-year-old Native American tattoo tools: These pigment-stained bones […]
Wormholes in space and time could be engineered.
Scientific American reports on new findings about wormholes. Theoretically, these black hole-related phenomena make a great part of science fiction, giving people the ability to […]
SONG: Lawns are the Enemy
SONG: “Lawns are the Enemy”. ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Scientific American, 9 Apr 21, “Brood X Cicadas Could Cause a Bird Baby Boom,” as used in […]
Science Art: Alternator by Ganz & Co, 1905
This is a Wechselstrommaschine, an alternator. The wheel goes around, and the spokes hit contacts – one set makes the electricity go in one direction […]