Science

How Many Laser Pointers Would It Take to Kill a Human?

Everybody knows not to shine laser pointers in your eye. They could damage your vision! (Emphasis on could, since your eye’s blink reflex would probably protect your retina.) But what if you were an evil villain determined to make a death ray? How many laser pointers would it take to create a deadly weapon? This…

Hissing Cockroaches Hatch Right Out Of Their Mom’s Butt 

I’ll bet you didn’t know that Madagascar hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa) brooded their babies inside their bodies. Now you do. It’s not exactly like pregnancy in a mammal like a cat or a human, where food and oxygen get passed from mother to developing young. In this species of cockroach, a mother puts her fertilized…

Good News!  You Live in a World with Sea Angels

The more we study the oceans, the clearer it becomes that the land got screwed in terms of the quality of our soft invertebrates. This diaphanous, scrimshawed angel is the ocean’s version of the slug. It’s vicious, but it’s beautiful. Sea angels are aqua-slugs that have lived in the ocean long enough that the “foot”…

The Best Way To Make it to Mars? Go Back to the Moon.

Getting to the Moon was one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. But now, the Moon may be reduced to a mere pit stop for space travelers headed elsewhere. A Mars mission might be much easier, say researchers at MIT, if we use the Moon as a refueling station. Slipping the bonds of gravity…

How to Use Magnets to Trap a Skittering Droplet of Liquid Oxygen

A liquid oxygen droplet flattens, rushes back and forth, and then seems to be caught in an invisible trap in the above video. Why does this happen? There are two phenomena at work here: the Leidenfrost effect and paramagnetism. You’re most likely to see the Leidenfrost effect at breakfast, when you heat up a pan…

Why Does a Falcon Live at This Space Antenna?

This is Nalla. She’s a female peregrine falcon — a bird capable of 200 mph hunting dives, before ripping prey apart with her razor-sharp talons. So why the hell does she live at the European Space Agency’s Cebreros deep space antenna in Spain? In the past, scientists have found that small birds quite like to…

Californium: The Element That Kickstarts Nuclear Reactors

This element is one of many first made at UC Berkeley in the 1950s. Unlike most manufactured elements, though, this one is actually useful. This is how it starts up nuclear reactions. Researchers first made californium in 1950. They didn’t make much. The first cube of the element had sides 27 nanometers long. A human…

New Hubble Video Shows Jupiter in Glorious Ultra High Definition

Using data acquired by the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists at NASA have updated their maps of Jupiter. The new images—shown in 4K ultra high definition—reveal changes to the Great Red Spot and rare waves not seen since the Voyager 2 mission. NASA updates its maps of Jupiter each year, but this year’s project proved to…

The National Zoo Built the World’s Best Orangutan-Only Rope “Sidewalk”

What happens when you want to give an animal one proper-sized enclosure, but you only have two half-sized enclosures? You need a sidewalk designed for the world’s most arboreal ape. The National Zoo in Washington DC is best known for its pandas, but if you ask locals what they like most, many will talk about…

How Is It Possible That Galaxies Are Moving Away From Us Faster Than the Speed of Light?

According to Albert Einstein, the speed of light is an absolute constant beyond which nothing can move faster. So, how can galaxies be traveling faster than the speed of light if nothing is supposed to be able to break this cosmic speed limit? I’m a little world of contradictions. “Not even light itself can escape…

Jason Bittel is obsessed with what breasts can do, and he’s not ashamed to let everyone know it. Writing in Slate, he raves about the amazing flexibility of milk-making in humans, the so-high-fat-it’s-practically-cheese milk of marine mammals, and all sorts of nipples. Check it out! Contact the author at [email protected].

How Oklahoma Declared War on Obesity—and What’s Happened Since

When Oklahoma declared a “war on obesity,” it planned to change the city’s infrastructure and encourage healthy living at a huge scale. So far its population has lost a million pounds of fat—but is that enough to defeat obesity? When Velveth Monterroso arrived in the USA from her hometown in Guatemala, she weighed exactly 140…

China Put a Robotic Telescope on the Moon 2 Years Ago—and It’s Working Great

You may remember that it’s two years since China put its first lunar rover onto the moon. What you might not know, though, is that the lander that took it there also carried a robotic telescope — and now Chinese researchers have described how well it’s been working. New Scientist reports that the ultraviolet light…

The Strange Correlations Between Your Body Parts and Medical Conditions

If you poke around data sets for long enough, you can unearth some interesting correlations. Here, the guys at Information Is Beautiful have complied how links between you body parts and health conditions stack up. It’s worth reinforcing the fact these are correlations and that it’s unlikely that strong causal links could be identified. Despite…

This Is Europe’s First Mercury-Bound Mission Craft, Due to Launch 2017

This colorful trio — collectively known as BepiColombo — will make up the European Space Agency’s first ever mission to Mercury in 2017. Lit up here for an open day at the ESA, the three modules actually remained behind glass in cleanroom conditions the whole time. The ESA explains what you can see: This photograph…

What Is This Animal? No, Seriously, What Is It?

The animal captured on this camera trap is one of the more reclusive natives of southeast Asia. It may be the only animal that has confused people as to whether it’s a cat or a snake. Actaully, it’s a linsing. (Above is the banded linsang; the one below is the spotted linsang.) If you hunt…

The Fourth Man To Walk On the Moon Also Paints Beautiful Space Art 

Since you consume the internet excessively, you’ve probably at some point seen the image above, maybe with the added text: MY NOSE ITCHES. This is a very funny meme, well done internet. However, you may not know the artist behind that painting of the slightly awkward astronaut. So our ongoing aerospace artists series is pleased…

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Behold the Mysterious Beauty of a Black Hole Collision

Toss a pebble in a pond and watch the tiny ripples radiate outwards. The waves you’ve created bear striking resemblance to another phenomenon, one taking place trillions of miles away at the center of a distant galaxy. The difference is, when two black holes collide, their impact surges across the fabric of spacetime itself. Black…

We Asked a NASA Botanist to Help Us Design a Better Farm on Mars than The Martian’s 

In The Martian, Mark Watney claims to be “the great botanist” on Mars—but is he really? Join us as we go down the rabbit hole to try and claim the greatest fictional Martian farmer crown for ourselves. Top Image: Greenhouse on Mars / NASA What would you need for a Martian farm? Just like on…