There are so many species on Earth that each year biologists discover, describe, and name scads of new ones. The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University has taken to producing a top ten list of particularly interesting … Continue reading
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) website is always worth a visit, and yesterday’s entry is particularly interesting. We often think of the Earth as a watery planet because water covers so much of the surface, and evidence of … Continue reading
In this excellent set of video clips made on Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, astrovideographer Daniel López has added a new twist to time-lapse video of the night sky: Moving the camera during the shot with a motion-control mount. … Continue reading
By way of summary I can’t do better than Pinker’s own opening paragraph: “This book is about what may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history. Believe it or not—and I know that most people … Continue reading
A currently popular Internet rumor is that Bill Nye the Science Guy was “recently” (or in 2009, or sometime) “booed off the stage” in Waco Texas for mentioning that the Moon does not generate its own light but merely reflects … Continue reading
In 1976 NASA’s Viking program placed two spacecraft into orbit around Mars and landed two more on the planet’s surface. The landers were equipped to perform experiments intended to detect organic compounds and biological activity. While the test for biological … Continue reading
Update: For more information about the graphic, see http://explainxkcd.com/1040/ The XKCD online comic strip frequently has some interesting graphics. Below is one illustrating the relative depths (and some heights) of places on Earth. The depths and ship lengths show are … Continue reading
Astrophysicist and writer Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, testifies before a U.S. Senate committee on March 7 about space exploration’s benefits to the country: (Thanks to my friend Dave Locke for pointing this out.) by … Continue reading
As expected, it appears that the report of faster-than-light neutrinos was a consequence of an error, in this case a loose cable. A short post on website of the journal Science explains: According to sources familiar with the experiment, the … Continue reading
Or misconceptions about animals, anyway: by … Continue reading