Robbie Gonzalez

The Large Hadron Collider Is Back, Baby

It’s been closed for renovations and upgrades since 2013, but on Sunday, the Large Hadron Collider powered on with no sign of complications, and successfully carried two proton beams, fired in opposite directions, around its 27km circumference. Above: The New and Improved LHC, with numerical callouts designating the particle accelerator’s upgrades – click to enlarge.…

Check out Germination, A New Blog On ‘Diseases, Drugs, Farms, and Food’

The supremely talented Maryn McKenna – who writes on public health, infectious diseases, food policy, and more – has some new digs over at National Geographic. Her new blog, which launched last Thursday, is called Germination, and is well worth adding to your feed reader of choice. Above: Shigella in culture | Credit: Todd Parker…

Why Do Fingernails Grow So Much Faster Than Toenails?

You would not believe how much scientists know about toenail and fingernail growth. Photo Credit: Radarsmum67 via flickr| CC BY 2.0 The short answer is that, like many of the body’s physiological mechanisms, the reason for differential growth rates isn’t 100% clear. That said, we do know a surprising lot about nail growth (more than…

This Puzzle Is So Simple It’s Hard

Every so often, a puzzle comes along with a solution that is so patently, painfully, groaningly obvious, you can’t help but overlook it. This is one of those puzzles. I am genuinely ashamed of how long it took me to solve this puzzle, the first time I encountered it. Sunday Puzzle #26: Links in a…

Can You Identify 20 Of The Most Common Birds in North America?

Add this picture quiz on common backyard birds to the list of things you never thought you’d care about but then actually became weirdly and unreasonably invested in once you tried them. What? Just me? I’ve never been one for Internet quizzes. I’ve also never been one for birdwatching, so I did terribly (8/20, bad…

You Can Reproduce The Awesome ‘Dancing Droplets’ Phenomenon At Home

Have you watched this video yet? It showcases some beautiful experiments performed by researchers studying the interaction of two-component fluids. The footage has been online for a few weeks now – but did you know you can reproduce this mesmerizing phenomenon in your own home? Stanford researchers Nate Cira, Adrien Benusiglio, and Manu Prakash –…

Stop What You’re Doing And Watch This 11-Hour Video Of Puppies Sleeping 

Exactly what it says on the tin, folks: 11 hours and 1 minute of puppies sleeping. That’s 39,660 perfect seconds of snoozing pups, complete with twitching, yawning, stretching, and paralyzingly adorable cooing noises. Isn’t it time you indulged in some longform puppy footage? Haven’t you earned it? That one little dude is a real ham:…

Newly Developed Liquid Perfume Starts To Smell Good When You Sweat

Antiperspirants reduce perspiration and deodorants conceal its associated smells, but a new perfume developed by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast uses sweat to its advantage, releasing pleasant aromas when it comes into contact with moisture and trapping molecules responsible for BO. Photo Credit:Justin Brown | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The researchers call their creation a “pro-fragrance…

You’re looking at an unpowered “ankle exoskeleton” that researcher report can improve walking efficiency by 7 percent. Carnegie Mellon engineers Gregory Sawicki and Steve Collins describe the lightweight, spring actuated prototype in Wednesday’s issue of Nature. Rachel Feltman has more info – and video – at WaPo.

Kidney Failure Linked To – Let’s Be Frank – Utterly Hedonistic Tea Habit

A puzzling medical case in which a 56-year-old man suddenly developed weakness, fatigue, and body aches, was, upon further investigation, revealed to be linked to the patient’s daily consumption of sixteen 8-ounce glasses of iced tea. Photo Credit: Peter Moore | CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 The man’s doctors describe his case in Thursday’s issue of the…

How To Watch Saturday’s Total Lunar Eclipse, The Shortest Of The Century

The first total lunar eclipse of 2015 will begin Saturday, April 4th at 6:16 a.m. EDT (3:16 a.m. PDT). You’ll want to be prepared; totality will last just four minutes and forty-three seconds (!), making this weekend’s total lunar eclipse the shortest of the 21st Century. Here’s how to make the most of the experience.…

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a website where you’ll find definitions for invented words like “sonder,” a noun describing the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. The DOS isalso a YouTube series. H/t Real Future Contact the author at [email protected].

Watch What Happens When You Put A Hummingbird In A Wind Tunnel

High speed footage can reveal the unusual mechanics of a hummingbird’s wingbeat. Here’s how this remarkable aerialist keeps a level head, even in the face of aggressive wind and rain. For its season finale, KQED’s outstanding science series Deep Look (previously here and here) caught up with scientists at UC Berkeley who are studying the…

Journey to the center (ahem, “centre”) of the earth, with this interactive applet created by the folks at BBC Future. It’s… surprisingly engaging. Contact the author at [email protected].

Stunning New Images Of Rhea Herald More Photos Of Saturn’s Icy Moons

For nearly two years, the orbital path of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has limited the mission’s encounters with Saturn’s moons. These newly released photos of the icy moon Rhea mark the spacecraft’s return to the planet’s equatorial plane, realm of the ringed world’s frozen satellites. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Sez NASA: Cassini’s orbit will remain…

Watch This CD Rip Apart –  At 170,000 FPS

The Slow Mo Guys filmed a CD spinning up to 23,000 rpm at a genuinely incredible 170,000 frames per second. It’s the highest frame rate they’ve ever employed on the channel, and it’s pretty spectacular to watch. (For reference, the footage up top was shot at “only” 28,500 FPS.) What most impressed me about this…

Sunday Puzzle Postponed

Due to unforeseen circumstances, today’s Sunday Puzzle column has been postponed until next week. In the meantime, here’s a little brain teaser to tide you over: Cross out nine letters from the string of characters above such that the remaining letters spell a single word. Previous Weeks’ Puzzles This Week’s Puzzle Has A Very Simple…

How long would it take to fall through Earth? For years, physics students have been told the answer is 42 minutes. But a new calculation, published in the latest issue ofThe American Journal of Physics, gives a more accurate travel time of 38 minutes. Over atScience, Adrian Cho unpacks the new equation.

All Hail Opportunity Rover, Future Martian Terror

Back in 2010, XKCD’s Randall Munroe devoted a surprisingly moving webcomic to Spirit, NASA’s ill-fated and ultimately abandoned Mars rover. Today’s comic is about Spirit’s twin, the apparently indomitable Opportunity, and its tone is markedly less sentimental. For those of you keeping track at home, NASA’s opportunity rover has now exceeded its projected mission duration…

Listen To Every Single Musical Genre, Ever

If you’ve ever wanted to hear the difference between traditional funk and Memphis soul, or understand where they fit in the context of more than 1300 musical genres, you might want to clear your schedule. An interactive project called Every Noise at Once is about to devour the rest of your day. According to project…