A fantastic series of photos exploring the world as it was. The photo of Louie Armstrong playing his trumpet in front of the Egyptian pyramids is pretty cool, but I’m going to call out this one. NASA’s Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related…
Of Archimedes, he who allegedly popularized the word “Eureka!”: “His cleverness is beautiful. Understanding Archimedes is like understanding the most elegant joke in the world.” The researchers paid their respects to the 10th-century scribe who copied down works by Archimedes of lasting importance. The palimpsest contains the only version of “On Floating Islands” in Greek…
The greatest abstract for a journal article ever – 22 Words.
More likely a measurement error than a scientific breakthrough. Either that, or I’m one of the fools the mad scientists are thinking of when, in the glow of their V-shaped sparky wire climbing arc thingy, they raise their rubber-gloved fists and scream, “Fools! I shall destroy them all!” A total of 15,000 beams of neutrinos…
An online game has helped determine the structure of an enzyme that could pave the way for anti-AIDS drugs. The game, called Foldit, allows players to create new shapes of proteins by randomly folding digital molecules on their computer screens. In the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, scientists write that they have been puzzled…
Through our local theater school, our children have gained confidence, seen first-hand the value of hard work, mentored younger children, learned from gifted and generous teenaged role models, and had a lot of fun. Oh, and they’ve also done a lot of singing, dancing, and acting. Thirteen-year-old Peter reads voraciously for pleasure, on topics ranging…
Until today, the understanding I had of black holes was as a spherical “event horizon” with a singularity at the centre. The event horizon is the surface of no return – anything which goes past it can never escape. The singularity is where quantum gravity kicks in, and is very handy for evading the speed-of-light…
Images from an extended tour of a cold war submarine. (We liked the tour we took last year so much, my son and I came back.) [portfolio_slideshow size=medium trans=scrollHorz ]
In 2008, when her scientific publication, the Journal of Zhejiang University-Science, became the first in China to use CrossCheck text analysis software to spot plagiarism, Zhang was pleased to be a trailblazer. But when the first set of results came in, she was upset and horrified. “In almost two years, we find about 31 percent…
LEGO figurines representing the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno and Galileo Galilei are flying to Jupiter. (NASA/LEGO) August 4, 2011 — They have launched aboard the space shuttle, visited the space station, and flown to Mars. Now, three more “very special” LEGO figurines are set to fly to Jupiter with NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The…
Another example of how easy it is for a hoax to spread, when the content fits an esablished “narrative,” and editors are hungry for evidence supporting a story they already believe is true. I have no particular love for IE, but the truth is worth publishing.. All you diehard Internet Explorer users can relax this…
Again with the mean scientists! Using a statistical method called Bayesian reasoning, they argue that the life here on Earth could be common, or it could be extremely rare — there’s no reason to prefer one conclusion over the other. With their new analysis, Spiegel and Turner say they have erased the one Drake factor…
Those mean scientists. First they get rid of ether, then they demote Pluto, and now this. A group of physicists at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology found out that a single photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum. The study reaffirms Einstein’s theory that nothing travels faster than…
The inter tubes are clogged with pundits mocking the AP for a story claiming that “residents are bracing themselves for temperatures near and above boiling point.” In defense of the AP, I will point out that the article does not specify the planet on which these “residents” reside, so this could be a northeastern quadrant…
After observing children on playgrounds in Norway, England and Australia, Dr. Sandseter identified six categories of risky play: exploring heights, experiencing high speed, handling dangerous tools, being near dangerous elements (like water or fire), rough-and-tumble play (like wrestling), and wandering alone away from adult supervision. The most common is climbing heights. “Climbing equipment needs to…
In an occurrence which became somewhat of a tradition for shuttle crews and those of the International Space Station expeditions, the Expedition 28 crew and the STS-135 Atlantis astronauts formed a microgravity circle for a portrait aboard the orbiting complex’s Kibo laboratory of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. This image was taken on July 15,…
Then the researchers handed over the instructions and taught the PCs a “machine-learning system so it could use a player’s manual to guide the development of a game-playing strategy.” They didn’t teach the PC how to play Civ, but they taught them how to read about it. The system had no pre-programmed notion of turn-based…
Predictably, Wired celebrates the freedom that comes from depending on computers instead if your own memory. (The story includes a link to Nicholas Carr’s opposing view.) By sharing and comparing our memories, we can ensure that we still have some facts in common, that we all haven’t disappeared down the private rabbit hole of our…