Science

An emerging maker culture building Cincinnati, a “Green Line” making a Mexican city healthier, and a car-free festival changing L.A.—all that, plus preserving post offices in an age of email and three plans to save San Francisco from a housing crisis, in this week’s Urban Reads. “In America, nearly every city and town has, or…

NYC’s Charming Water Towers Are Actually Bacteria-Filled Horrorshows

Ah, New York—the sparkling skyline! The bustling streets! The… poop-filled water tanks? According to a new report from The New York Times, the city’s roughly 17,000 water tanks are totally unsanitary and widely unregulated. First of all: Why does NYC still use water tanks? The answer is relatively simple: Many buildings taller than six or…

How to Make the World’s Most Expensive Cup of Coffee

According to a 2013 survey, over eighty three percent of Americans drink coffee in the morning and the average citizen drinks multiple cups per day. Between the dark brew, the flavored lattes, the frozen caffeinated treats, and the whirling gadgets, coffee is now a thirty billion dollar industry. Coffee is big business and companies like…

Five Scientific Steps to Pouring the Perfect Beer at Home

Pouring beer at home can be hit and miss: too much foam, not enough, and never ever the same as in a bar, that’s for sure. But help is at hand, in the form of beer science. In this video, Chris Clarke explains five scientific steps for pouring the perfect beer at home. In scientific…

What a Rover Looks Like After a Decade on Mars

Curiosity is the hip name in Mars-rovin, but the Opportunity rover was doing it long, long before. Just yesterday Opportunity hit its ten-year anniversary on Mars—it left Earth ten years ago in July. Not bad for a mission intended to last a mere three (Earth) months. In celebration it sent back a selfie. https://gizmodo.com/10-years-ago-opportunity-rover-began-a-90-day-mission-t-693893908 This…

17 Vintage NASA Photos of Exploration in the Space Age

Pictures of space are thrilling. Period. For All Mankind is a new exhibition at London’s Breese Little Gallery, highlighting a treasure trove of vintage NASA photos taken from 1964 to 1983. It’s pretty wonderful to see these faded, full-color visuals from a time when the bold explorations were just getting started. We’re so used to…

A Combination of Volcanic Smog and Sunglint Is Breathtaking

You’re looking at a picture of the Vanuatu Archipelago in Australia, shrouded in vog—a word used to describe the kind of volcanic smog which is formed when gases from a volcano react with sunlight, oxygen and moisture. The results are stunning. You can see the vog as a light blue-gray plume which arcs from the…

Wet Dwarf: Astronomers Spot Water In Our Asteroid Belt

Liquid water is considered the single most important factor in our search for extra terrestrial life, so the recent discovery of vaporous H2O spewing from a dwarf planet here in the solar system has Earthbound astronomers over the moon. “This is the first time water vapor has been unequivocally detected on Ceres or any other…

Virgin Galactic Doesn’t Have FAA Permission to Fly You to Space

If you’re one of the 700 or so people who bought tickets to fly to outer space on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic rockets, don’t pack your space bags just yet: Smithsonian notes that the company doesn’t have the Federal Aviation Administration permit required to take passengers to space. Hope you folks got traveler’s insurance. Or…

These Robotic Super Socks Will Aid Rehabilitation

Science fiction has given us a vision of the future where humans might one day enjoy super-strength and abilities while wearing a rigid robotic exoskeleton suit. But back here in reality, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a soft bio-robotic socks designed to assist those who have difficulty with something as simple as walking.…

There’s More to This Image of Saturn Than Meets the Eye

Although it might look like a lot of the other images you’ve seen of Saturn, there’s far more to this picture than meets the eye. https://gizmodo.com/the-most-beautiful-photo-of-saturn-youve-ever-seen-1447226686 Actually, it’s an infrared image captured using a special filter which only allows light polarized in a single direction to hit the sensor. That allows researchers to understand more…

This Digital Stethoscope Can Spot Extra-Subtle Heart Murmurs

Physicians have been successfully diagnosing heart conditions using just their stethoscopes and ears for years now. But how many particularly subtle issues, like heart murmurs, have gone unnoticed? With the ViScope MD from HD Medical Inc., hopefully none ever do. It adds audio filters, a visual readout, and automatic murmur detection to a standard stethoscope…

This Is How People Thought of Fever Before They Knew What It Was

Having a fever can be pretty terrible—but imagine having it before there was any cure, when nobody really knew what it was. This picture, from the 18 century, depicts just that. One of 100,000 pictures depicting the history of medicine which were made freely available this week by Wellcome Images, this picture shows how artist…

All the World’s Preventable Disease Outbreaks, Visualized

Although medical science has advanced immeasurably in the last century, many preventable diseases still claim lives due to ineffective vaccination programs. This map shows when and where that happens. The Council of Foreign Relations Global Health Program began tracking vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks in 2008, and now it’s produced an interactive map that visualizes the data.…

Scientists Discover Water in Stardust and It Suggests We’re Not Alone

Stardust sounds magical enough as it is, but now scientists have for the first time observed that it contains water—which, in turn, could suggest that life is universal. The water forms within dust grains when they’re bombarded with charged winds from the sun. The chemical reaction set up by the winds was hypothesized by scientists…

NASA’s Astronaut Escape Plan Uses Hand-Me-Down Army Trucks

This past December, a free shipment of four heavily armored vehicles arrived at NASA courtesy of the U.S. military. The Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected Vehicles (MRAPs) are all veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they’re about to embark on an unexpected second life as getaway vehicles in case something goes horribly wrong at the Kennedy…

Did Unicorns Ever Exist?

On November 30, 2012, the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s government “news” agency, reported that scientists had “reconfirmed” the existence and location of the final resting place of the unicorn ridden by King Dongmyeong, the founding father of Goguryeo of an ancient Korean kingdom. The unicorn’s grave was located under a rock near the…

The Universe’s Most Important Alarm Clock Will Wake Up Rosetta Tomorrow

Two and a half years is a long time to sleep—even for a machine. That’s how long Rosetta has slumbered in its decade-long journey towards the comet where it will land. But in the dead of the night, at 2am PST tomorrow morning, Rosetta will awaken. Here’s how its alarm clock works. Rosetta is many…

How Low Earth Orbit Astronauts Are the New Pioneers

The first element of the International Space Station (ISS) launched over fifteen years ago, on November 20, 1998. For more than thirteen years at least two human beings have been continually living off the surface of our planet. Assembly of the Space Station is now complete. It is being utilized by its crews and scientists…

This Table Detects Breast Cancer Using Sound Waves, Not X-Rays

Traditional mammography machines—besides being uncomfortable—rely on ionizing radiation to image a patient’s breasts. And as all we all know, radiation ironically increases the risk of cancer developing. So a company called Delphinus Medical Technologies has developed a safer alternative called the SoftVue which instead uses ultrasonic sound waves bouncing around inside a large water tank.…