Science

Stellar Collapse Models: 500TB of Data, 200 Milliseconds of Insight

Though we’ll never see close-up what happens at the core of a massive star collapse, scientists are doing their best to understand what happens when they do—and the results of the theoretical 3D models they create are absolutely stunning. It’s easy to understand what happens at the surface of a collapsing star—because we can see…

Angry Beaver Stops Traffic To Protest Climate Change

Only in Canada could a lost beaver create a traffic hazard. CBC news reports that the beaver spent most of the afternoon on Tuesday roaming around the streets of Miramichi, causing traffic delays due to concerned drivers who didn’t want to harm the wayward rodent. Jim O’Neill was driving his taxi when he noticed a…

The Antarctic Neutrino Camera Is About to Get Much, Much Bigger

The University of Wisconsin’s IceCube neutrino detection system has been quietly operating amid Antarctica’s barren tundra for more than four years now. In that time, the fledgling detector has captured more than 100 cosmic neutrinos, many of which originated far outside our Milky Way galaxy. And if project leaders get their way, its imaging quality…

Impact of Cosmic Rays on Cognitive Health

As part of investigations into the impact of long-duration space travel on squishy biological creatures, researchers at Johns Hopkins University blasted rats with high-speed particles. Shockingly, the irradiated rats failed to develop awesome superpowers, instead developing cognitive issues. Whoops. Down here on Earth, our magnetic field protects us from high speed particles. It not just…

Snoopy the Astrobeagle, NASA’s Mascot for Safety

After the Apollo 1 fire, NASA needed to rebuild its devastated Apollo program. They approached Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts, for permission to use Snoopy as their mascot for safety. He agreed, and Snoopy set off on safety-conscious mission to the Moon. Snoopy and Charlie Brown supervise Mission Operations Control Room on the first day…

Pig Bladders Could Be the Secret to Healing Severe Muscle Injuries

When large chunks of muscle are lost in severe injuries, they don’t grow back. But now, scientists have discovered a way to regenerate some lost muscle with material from pig bladders—a technique actually quite common in medicine. The five men in this study published today (April 30) in Science Translational Medicine all suffered leg injuries…

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Emu Poo

All emu poo is not created equal. Hoot, one of the science communication triad at BuzzHootRoar, explains, “it turns out that emus are pretty good at helping seeds spread around by scarfing down fruits and plant material and plopping out fertilized seed cakes all over the land.” Their infographic is one of the best on…

What It Will Take to Farm Sunlight from Space

Whether they’re producing voltage directly from solar rays or focusing them to melt salt like Ivanpah, even Earth’s biggest and baddest solar power plants are hamstrung by all this damnable atmosphere getting in the way. But a new kind of off-world solar energy plant could soon provide the whole planet with plenty of power—we just…

Car-Sized Hunk From Satellite Launch Found in the Amazon

A Brazilian fisherman floating down the Uriandeua river in northern Brazil bumped into perhaps the last thing you’d expect to find in the Amazon: a huge chunk of metal that the UK Space Agency says came from the launch of Europe’s largest telecom satellite last year. How in the hell did it get there? As…

Fish Learn To Use Tools, So Let’s Rethink the Definition of Tool Use

When you think of Atlantic cod, you probably think of a strip of fish, battered and fried. But new research suggests that the fish might be able to use tools, and that might cause us to rethink how we evaluate tool use in other animals. In a recent study, a group of researchers led by…

This Transparent Jumping Spider is the Stuff of Nightmares

There are more than 5000 species of jumping spider. This one, spotted in an Ecuadorian reserve by zoologist Wayne Maddison is both fascinating and terrifying. One thing that unites all jumping spiders is their four pairs of eyes, with one larger pair set a bit farther back from the others. What’s delightfully creepy about this…

Urban Birds Make Music With Their Bodies in “Birds on the Wires”

Prepare to be blown away by the beauty found in apparent randomness. Usually birds make music by singing; these birds did it just by sitting. Brazilian musician Jarbas Agnelli took a photo of birds sitting on electric lines and, using the birds’ positions as musical notes, turned the scene into a song. I was surprised…

A scientists puts the finishing touches to a space launcher thrust chamber at EADS Airbus Space Transportation in Ottobrunn, Germany. If it looks a lot like science fiction, that’s because… well, it is. [ESA]

Science’s Dirty Secret: All You Need to Know About Fecal Transplants

This is how far a mother will go. Your daughter has been sick for more than four years with a severe autoimmune disease that has left her colon raw with bloody ulcers. After multiple doctors and drugs have failed, you are frantic for her to get better. Then you send her disease into remission, virtually…

How Much Soup Could You (Hypothetically) Make From A Megalodon?

Shark fin soup is a traditional Chinese dish made from the cartilage found inside the fins of sharks. The growing demand for shark fins is one of the main drivers of the global decline in shark populations. One blogger wondered how much soup you can make from the fin of a single megalodon, so he…

Can Animal Behavior Help Us Understand Empathy and Dehumanization?

She was just thirteen years old when my grandmother last saw her parents at Auschwitz. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, it’s worth pausing to reflect on how our species led my grandmother to find herself in such a horrific place, and how it might have been avoided. My grandmother was born in a small town in…

This Trick Will Let You See Anything Without Glasses

If you’re ever in a fix without glasses but need to see, this trick lets you see the world again—however blurry you vision is. Minute Physics explains the science behind the trick, which just requires you to make a tiny little hole with your hand to peer through. Somehow, magically, it brings a blurry world…

Wildlife Vets Treat A Lioness Who Was Gored By A Buffalo

Sometimes nature really is “red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson famously wrote. It’s also red in horn, as this lioness found out recently. The Africa Geographic blog reports that rangers discovered the female, who they know as Siena, with a nasty gore in her flank from a buffalo’s horn. They quickly got in touch…

This Newborn Seal Pup Was Kidnapped Before Even Exiting The Birth Canal

In this slightly uncomfortable video captured by Earth Touch, watch a female fur seal give birth near Capetown, South Africa. And then watch another female kidnap the infant pup before it’s even left the birth canal. Fair warning: the video is fascinating but not for the squeamish. So, let me get this straight: first the…

This Graceful Orion Test Flight Is Really Simulating a Launch Disaster

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is this generation’s moonshot: mankind’s first-ever manned spacecraft built to go beyond the moon into deep space. It’s equipped with a Launch Abort System that safely lands the craft if a problem occurs during liftoff. This week, NASA drop-tested the system. Falling from 13,000 feet never looked so graceful. Dropped from a…