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A few months ago, the Italian Wikipedia blanked out temporarily in protest to SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), a misleading titled act which, if passed, will change the face of the internet as we know it, maiming numerous sites – Wikipedia included. So Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder made a public poll to see how people feel […]
Isaac Newton is one of the most influential figures in physics, the first to stipulate the fundamental laws of motion and gravity, among many other breakthroughs. Now, anyone can come closer to understanding how Newton first discovered planetary motion or stated his three fundamental principles by reading his own personal notes, recently digitized and released […]
Mark is a former park ranger who found the world’s biggest insect so far: this giant weta is so big that it can actually eat carrots. This little critter was found on an island off New Zealand, and it’s one of the few survivors from its species, which were almost wiped out by rats accidentally […]
Amazing architecture goes hand in hand with amazing engineering, and a Swiss/Italian team is showing how the pair will be used in the future to revolutionize the buildings of tomorrow. The FRAC Centre in Orléans, France will host the first ever self-constructing exhibit – a simple, yet charming 6 meters tall tower comprised of 1,500 […]
The term “urban jungle” gets tossed a lot, however it can take a literary connotation when you think of beautiful moss graffiti. As people become more eco-friendly and environmentally aware, the idea of making living, breathing graffiti has become a more green and creative outlet for graffiti artists. Moss paint is a lot more eco-friendly than […]
There’s a lot going on today, besides rabid shopping sprees. This Friday (Nov. 24), a partial solar eclipse will occur above the Earth’s southern hemisphere, a delight for residents lucky enough to cross its path, albeit quite small in numbers. This is the forth time the moon will block the sun in a spectacle of […]
Less than a month ago, on the 28th of October, the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite launched into low-Earth with the main purpose of observing our planet’s environment and climate, some 800 km above our planet. Here you can see one of its first pictures, and what a picture it […]
First of all, let it be said that this is not a post for kids – and for the most sensitive; advance at your own risk. But now that you’ve been warned… The world of animal sex would be considered weird by most, and it’s definitely not what you’d expect. When I was a kid, […]
This year, mankind celebrated 50 years of space exploration since Yuri Gagarin‘s pioneering flight around Earth’s orbit, however the American Museum of Natural History is more concerned to set its eyes towards future, once with the opening of its new “Beyond Planet Earth” exhibit, which features tomorrow’s space age wonders, as well as relics from the […]
Ulan Bator is a weird town; while some people live in skyscrapers, or big fancy villas, some still live in tents in the city outskirts. But they have plants to get even weirder: they want to keep the city cool by creating an enormous urban glacier. What they want to do is capture some of […]
A new study which capitalized on an extensive ongoing survey, shows that children with high IQs, especially girls, are more likely to indulge in illicit drug use in their 30’s than people with lower IQs. Dr. James White of Cardiff University and his team of researchers used data gathered from the British Cohort Study, an ongoing […]
The rotifer is an extremely fascinating creature, mainly due to its wheel-like head, which also also earns it the name of “wheel animal”. A microphoto of a rotifer, which can be seen depicted above, earned the photographer, Charles Krebs, the first prize in the 2011 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition. Rotifers are only 0.1–0.5 mm long, and are commonly […]
Conservationists are prepared to declare the Western Black Rhino officially extinct soon, after poaching killed off the remainder of already scarce wild specimens scattered around the area of Cameroon. Until 2000, ten wild specimens were still roaming free, however prized by poachers for the animals’ horns, used in traditional medicine practice by the local populace, […]
Ross Technology Corp, a company that focuses on steel products has created a new product based on the spray known as NeverWet – which aside from being useful, is also pretty cool. Now, this might not seem particularly interesting, but it has a myriad of applications; it is built from nanoparticles and it is hydrophobic […]
Yes, you’re seeing just fine – this reservoir is filled with millions of black balls; and it’s not all part of some joke or anything – things are as serious as it gets. This all took place in 2008, at the Ivanhoe Reservoir, when local crews put 3.000.000 black bird balls in the water. They […]
The drama continues for the Russian Grunt mission, which had the purpose of going to Phobos and extracting samples. The mission was supposed to launch, go to Mars, orbit it for a few months, then land on Phobos, extract samples of soil and rocks, then lift back up and return to Earth. However, the mission, […]
A recent art photography exhibition, dubbed Amazon, is currently on display at Somerset House in London, which brings together two remarkable, distinct bodies of photography to highlight the plight of the Amazonian rainforest and the people living within it. Thus, the work of Brazilian Sebastião Salgado depicts the virgin beauty of the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical […]
Seriously, just stare at this picture for some 10-20 seconds – blinking is ok; you’ll see it vanish, bit by bit. This is called the Troxler effect, after the man who discovered it: Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler, in 1804. What happens here is that your visual system constantly adapts to all the external stimuli. This is […]
“I’m never gonna get used to the 31st century. Caffeinated bacon? Baconated grapefruit? Admiral Crunch?”, Fry, Futurama. The clumsy yet beloved Futurama hero did have an extremely valid point this time. The latest product to come off a tiny Army research facility near Boston, where new food rations are developed and tasted tested, might turn him […]
A biblical-like creature has sprung out into the world recently, when a two-headed albino milk snake was born – an event of extreme rarity. This comes right on the heels of the three-eyed fish found next to a nuclear power plant in Argentina. In this case, nature alone and its experimentation seems to be responsible. The snake hatched […]
Right now, you’re probably asking ‘how does an earthquake look like in 3D ? What does that even mean?’; well, brilliant artist Luke Jerram created the small piece you see below to contemplate the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. He did this by taking a seismograph recording of the event and rotating it in 3D. The piece […]
I’m a bit of a stand-up comedy fan, and no too long ago I used to gobble up anything Comedy Central cracked up, however somewhere along the line something terribly wrong happened – it stopped being funny anymore. Racial jokes? Died off for me after the first tastes like chicken line. Impressions? Whoo, I bet […]
Looks like one of NASA‘s latest priorities is to protect its lunar heritage from illegal black market trade of moon artifacts, evident in a recently highly publicized case in which a 74 year old grandmother attempting to sell a moon rock was intercepted by armed government officials. Part of an elaborate operation, federal agents tracked down Joanna […]
Portability is one of the best things brought by technology, but sometimes it just seems a little over the top, doesn’t it? I mean, now we can carry a computer with us at all time, a phone that is also a small computer, music on mp3 players, audiobooks, and so much more! You’d think that’s […]
Using a pair of satellites that monitor the Earth, NASA recorded over 10.000.000 fires throughout the planet; they then took the recorded material and created an animation with it, as can be seen below. The animation also includes vegetation, snow cover, cloud cover, surface temperatures, and more. Africa was by far the ‘hottest’ continent, being […]
While the Earth is steadily being depleted of its natural resources, it might become imperative to look to the sky for alternatives. Studies so far alone has shown that the moon has twenty times more titanium and platinum than anywhere on Earth, along with helium 3, a rare isotope of helium, which is nonexistent on our planet, […]
What you just saw in the video above is a perfect demonstration of the quantum levitation effect, through a fairly simple set-up made by Tel Aviv University scientists, comprised of a track and a semiconductor. The quantum levitation is actually a perfect demonstration of the Meissner effect, which describes the expulsion of a magnetic field […]
Bosco Verticale is an ambitious eco project in Milan, designed by architect Stefano Boeri, which tries to blend two discrepant mediums, urban and nature, into one harmonic whole. The project is comprised of two towers with giant cantilevered staggered balconies that permit fairly big trees to be accommodate, since there is a minimum of two storeys over […]
A virtual trek, that is. NASA has just released a stunning video comprised of 309 photos the agency’s Opportunity Rover took during it’s three year journey from the crater Victoria to the crater Endeavor. Although the spanned distance is only 13 miles, the whole trip lasted a whooping three years. Granted, a relatively animated view […]
Bug bite leads to photography award No matter who you are or what you do, you’ve been bitten by a bug at some point in your life – and they really are a nuisance. But for Igor Siwanowicz, a bug bite turned out to be all but annoying, as it helped him win the 2011 […]
Strollers along the San Diego shoreline experienced their own kind of Northern Lights these past few days, only the western coast equivalent is less about skyline astral projections, and more about a grand neon blue light show luminating from within the ocean’s waves. And less cold. The event is actually a bioluminescence phenomenon and is […]
I’d like to divert from a potential discussion which might build around the trillions of dollars spent on defense by the US government or the more or less futile efforts enterprised in the middle east, and stick to the point at hand – spy drones! Yes, scary, paranoia inducing flying unmanned vehicles whose sole purpose is that […]
A while ago I posted a piece on NASA‘s Spirit Rover last transmitted photo from Mars, before it ultimately died off completely after more than seven valiant years of service, time in which incredible volumes of photographs and other important metrics from the surface of the red planet have been fed. Like I said, a […]
The Slinky is one of the most popular toys in the world, being used by children in the playroom and NASA scientists trying to demonstrate physical principles, alike. Surprisingly or not, slinky springs are filled with even more secrets of physics besides simple energy and momentum releases. For example, in these two incredibly entertaining videos […]
In January, 1997 Lottie Williams was strolling through a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her friends around 3:30 AM, when a dashing fireball appeared over the sky, much to the promenaders’ admiration. Moments later, Williams was hit in the shoulder by a small piece of fabric-like metal that weighed as much as an empty soda can. […]
Recent figures published in a report prepared by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency show that the world’s CO2 emissions have been steadily and significantly growing during the past two decades, reaching an all time peak this past year. Carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause of global warming, rose 45 […]
A bridge or tunnel of some sorts which physically connects Asia with North America through the Bering Strait has been considered for many years now, but apparently each proposed project for such a titanic engineering feat has up to now remained in the fantasy stage. Recently, the Russian government put its seal of approval for […]
On July 29th the Cassini orbiter probe captured a stunning glimpse of five of Saturn’s satellites beautifully aligned. Cassini has been sending incredible photos of Saturn and its surroundings since 2004, as well as remarkable insights like the discovery of a salty ocean under one of its moon’s surface. Click the photo for a larger […]
It’s already the third year in which the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London is hosting the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, and the winner has been chosen out of some 800 entries. Categories were ‘Earth and Space’, ‘Our Solar System’, ‘Deep Space’ and ‘Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year’, and there was also an […]
Virgin Galactic, Virgin’s commercial space flight branch, just recently announced that the first phase in the construction of the world’s first spaceport available to civilian consumers has been completed, making the ambitious project 90% complete. ‘Spaceport America’, as it’s been dubbed, is being built on an 18,000-acre site in the desolate sand plains of New […]
Using 14 years of images put together, astronomers have managed to animate the fantastic chaos that takes place inside the supersonic jets of newborn stars. Using pictures taken from 1994 to 2008 and a little image animation, NASA astronomers managed to put together these videos of supersonic jets being ejected out of stars. “We’r trying […]
For men everywhere beer lovers everywhere, yeast is probably the best microorganism there is, because it is used in one of the most popular drinks: beer. But its identity has puzzled researchers for decades now, as they were unable to pinpoint its exact origins. However, they now believed they have solved this puzzle and traced […]
A small, yet frightening earthquake, registered at 5.9 magnitude, sent shivers down people’s spines all the way from Ottawa, Canada to North Carolina as it hit the North American east coast. The earthquake first caused ground shacking at 1:51 p.m. ET, when it measured 5.9 in magnitude and lasted only 45 seconds, according to the […]
I was lucky enough this weekend to be away from the city and at an altitude of about 1800m, deep in the mountain side. The rare, clean atmosphere allowed for an uncanny view of the night sky, at least for an urbanite as myself, filled with the most distinguishable stellar bodies I’ve ever been granted […]
Cooking green is a lot easier than you might think. The idea is to simply learn how to save energy in the kitchen and use foods and cooking practices that are better for both your wallet and the planet. Luckily, there are dozens of ways to accomplish the goals of cooking healthier, cooking cheaper and […]
Well, I guess Han Solo should be more careful where he parks his spaceship from now, since Swedish treasure hunters just recently found an unidentified object beneath the Baltic seas which portrays an uncanny resemblance to Star Wars’ most iconic of spaceships. The whole find occured while the Ocean Explorer team, led by researcher Peter […]
UAE might harbor in its Dubai oasis the world’s current tallest building, its Burj tower, but neighboring Saudi Arabia isn’t keen on showing that it has a smaller ego and is planning on building the world’s tallest building in the world – the Kingdom Tower. They don’t intend on adding a few more feet to […]
More than just a SciFi dream, Paypal founder and billionaire Elon Musk wants to make “man on Mars” a reality. Speaking at a recent spaceflight propulsion conference held by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics on Tuesday, Musk unveiled during his keynote how his company, SpaceX, plans on sending humanity to Mars in coming decades. […]
The famous volcano in Sicily has been subjected to a number of eruption in this highly active past year. This weekend however, residents of nearby towns on Sicily were treated to a spectacular show of tectonic fireworks as Europe’s most active volcano, Mt Etna, erupted in glorious fashion. Get just a hint of the real […]
You might think you’re eating healthy and avoiding sugar – but do you even have a clue what’s hidden in your food ? Would you eat ten sugar cubes in just a few minutes ? Most definitely not; but that’s exactly what you do, when you drink a simple can of coke. Sugar stacks is […]
