SONG: “Math” (a penitential cover)
SONG: “Math” (a penitential cover) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This has no scientific source; it’s a penitential cover for being late for March’s song (which I […]
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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The pigs were dead for 10 hours, and then they weren’t: “The ethics of experimenting on partially reanimated brains is uncharted territory.”
So this is a study from Nature, but I like the way Vox covered it. Yale scientists, using a kind of artificial blood (and machine […]
U.S. measles outbreak keeps breaking….
Science News tracks the new outbreak of a disease we’d formally “eliminated”: The viral disease has sickened at least 555 people in 20 states, according […]
Science Art: Chandra X-ray Observatory close-up of the core of the M87 galaxy, by NASA/CXC/Villanova University/J. Neilsen
Click to embiggen This is not the famous Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) black hole image that you’ve probably seen by now. It’s a visualization of […]
New species of human discovered in the Philippines
Nature introduces Homo luzonensis, who was hanging out – possibly with other human species – in a cave in the Philippines 50,000 years ago: The […]
We’ve got a photograph of a supermassive black hole.
Science News has a historic snapshot that it took a long while to take – and from a long, long way away: A world-spanning network […]
Scientists discover a Peruvian four-legged whale – with “otter-like features”.
Science Daily has more on the creature named Peregocetus pacificus, which unfortunately hasn’t been around for a 42.6 million years, but was once a whale […]
Science Art: Verge Watch Escapement, from The Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary, Vol. 2, 1820.
A horological device called a “verge escapement” (on the bottom) with a balance wheel (on the top) from a pocketwatch. An “escapement” is the thing […]
Fix the climate… by making things the way they used to be.
The Guardian has a conservative (in the original sense) take on our biggest ecological challenge, with a science-based campaign to fight climate change by restoring […]
A “kelt” is a salmon that survives spawning. Again and again.
Hakai Magazine looks at the few mighty salmon who survive the rigors of the spawning run year after year. Where most fish die after (or […]
Quantum engine gives more power than a standard engine, for the first time.
Science News has more on the very tiny engine that could: The device is a type of engine called a heat engine. Traditional heat engines […]
Science Art: Plate LIL, Fig 3: Cepheus bifidatus Nymph, from British Oribatidae, 1884
Click to embiggen Mm. Mighty mite. From a this book of mites. Luckily for us, these mites (the Oribatidae) aren’t parasitic. They live in dirt […]
China opens a window on life before the dinosaurs.
Science News describes a dizzying array of unknown animals from “the Cambrian explosion,” when life took a sudden turn for the weird and wonderful. The […]
Science Art: Ichneumon Fly, from the USDA’s Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine, 1941
Click to embiggen “Lays eggs on larva boring in wood.” Add just one comma and that comes across as harsh criticism, but it’s really meant […]
Farming gave our languages “f” and “v” – because it altered the way we bite.
Science News has a fricative breakthrough – biting off a bit of linguistic evolution that took place when we started growing our own food rather […]