Science

Physics Comics from the Golden Age

The Golden Age of comic books overlapped with a period of optimistic obsession with science. Reaching out to people with a passion for technology and comics led to the creation of a glorious collection of education mixed with entertainment. Physics Central has gone archive-diving for their favourites. The physics blog explains that the science in…

L.A. Glows Red in This Photo From the International Space Station

Viewed from this unfamiliar angle and in the infrared rather than visible spectrum, Los Angeles reveals itself in new ways. City lights and thermal radiation create an abstract, russet shape that’s barely recognizable as metropolitan Southern California. Black voids dominate the frame; many of these are hills and mountain ranges, but the emptiness at the…

If The Lion King Was An Accurate Science Documentary

All was quiet on the arid plains of Africa when, suddenly, hundreds of animals rushed out of hiding and in a lumbering stampede ran towards Pride Rock, the highest point on the Serengeti. Elephants sounded, cheetahs bounded and flamingos soared in groups so large they darkened the sky. One thing and one thing alone would…

This Is What Space Debris Does to the Kevlar Skins of Spacecraft

Gravity wasn’t too far off the mark. You’re looking through a hole, made by simulated space debris, in the reinforced Kevlar–Nextel fabric that makes up the outer skin of European Space Agency spacecraft. The test was carried out by researchers from the Fraunhofer Ernst Mach Institut for High-Speed Dynamics, who fired a 7.5 mm-diameter aluminum…

How Scientists Are Finding New Ways to Treat Pain

Pain medication is many, varied, confusing and, on occasion, ineffective—which is researchers around the world dedicate their lives to working out how to treat our discomfort better. This documentary takes a close look at where new drugs come from, and how they might help us all in the future. https://gizmodo.com/which-pain-reliever-should-i-take-for-a-sports-injury-1385346352 Created by Mosaic, it follows…

This Is How NASA Could Have Rescued Astronauts Stranded In Space

The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, which killed all seven astronauts on board, effectively ended the US Shuttle Program. Now, a former engineer is proposing a radical (albeit hypothetical) solution to rescuing stranded astronauts that was inspired by the disaster. The plan proposed by David Baker is no less ambitious than the one that brought Apollo…

Strap A Go-Pro Onto A Polar Bear And Get The Most Amazing Footage Ever

Filmmaker Adam Ravetch of Arctic Bear Productions likes telling visual stories about polar wildlife. By strapping a Go-Pro camera onto one of a group of four polar bears, he managed to capture some of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful footage of these creatures I’ve ever seen. Put on your headphones, set the quality to HD, enlarge…

New Software Can Spot Rare Genetic Diseases From Family Photographs

Spotting rare genetic disease is, by definition, a little tricky. But now a team of scientists from the University of Oxford has developed software that can spot such conditions by analyzing family photographs. Many genetic conditions are known to exist but impossible to test for, because the gene variants that cause them haven’t actually yet…

The Beijing Zoo Opened A Virtual “Online Zoo”

China is a big place, and not everyone can easily get to the zoo. To solve the problem, the Beijing Zoo went virtual. It’s an interesting approach to the stated mission of most zoos, which is to educate the public and to promote awareness of conservation-related issues. If the public can’t come to the zoo,…

This might look like a routine scientific experiment, but you’re actually looking at European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst (tick) as he sets fire to samples of various solids (tick) aboard the International Space Station (tick) to see how they burn (tick). This man truly has a wonderful job. [ESA]

Happy World Giraffe Day!

Well, it was Saturday. But every day is giraffe day, right? https://backtalk.kinja.com/today-is-world-giraffe-day-live-giraffe-cam-1594327996

Wimbledon Hired A Hawk To Scare The Pigeons Away

The Wimbledon tennis championships started today, and if you pay close attention, you might notice an unexpected employee keeping the riff-raff of the courts: a hawk named Rufus. Every morning, from 5-9am, Rufus patrols the skies above Wimbledon and scares away any pigeons. And he’s been at it for fourteen years. Lucky for the pigeons,…

The ISS Is Getting an X-Ray Machine That Works in Space

Human bodies are of course not built for microgravity. We’ve long known that astronauts lose bone mass, but studying the process in space is tricky. The International Space Station is getting its first medical X-ray to examine on-board lab mice and rats. But making a space X-ray machine was no easy task. The Bone Densitometer…

What Happened to the Flags on the Moon?

On July 10, 1969, Apollo 11 touched down on the moon. At 10:56 pm eastern standard time, Neil Armstrong accomplished another first. With the immortal words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” (or something like that) Neil Armstrong became the first human to step foot on a major celestial…

The Brightest Star in the Sky as You’ve Never Seen It Before

It might look like a drunken rainbow, but you’re actually looking at a view of Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, as its light gets refracted by our atmosphere. Usually when you gaze upwards, the stars in the sky appear to twinkle. In fact, that’s a results of the light passing through our…

A Bobcat Plays With Its Food

Who said you can’t play with your cake and eat it too? The cake, in this case, is probably a dusky-footed woodrat. The Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a field station affiliated with Stanford University, outfitted with dozens of camera traps. One trap recently caught a bobcat playing with its unfortunate next meal. [via @JRWildlife]

In the dark recesses of video games, hiding beneath the plot and behind the art, interacting with the very hardware of your system, lurk the fundamental subroutines that determine lighting… Learn about the role of physics plays in determining dynamic lighting effects in video games.

Invisible Illness: When Sick Animals Pretend to Be Well

Illness is a powerful force in evolution, pushing animals to evolve a suite of behaviors – “sickness behaviors” – to help them get over those illnesses more efficiently. For a long time, doctors thought that they were just side effects of being sick, but in recent decades researchers have increasingly come to recognize the valuable,…

The Problem With 3D Printing in Space

Recently, NASA’s been toying with the idea of 3D-printed spacecrafts, and the prospect alone has fans of the medium positively giddy. But in our 3D-printing-for-space frenzy, we’ve overlooked the simplest problem of all: Imperfect surfaces and outer space don’t mix. The potential of 3D printing in space is phenomenal. Not only does the process itself…

Black Bear Safely Relocated After Sneaking Onto NIH Campus

Scientists working at the National Institutes of Health are usually concerned with problems like infectious disease and brain development. Yesterday, they were concerned with a black bear who found its way onto their campus. According to Bethesda Magazine, black bears have been making themselves more and more visible in Montgomery County. The NIH intruder marked…