Even if you’re aware that glaciers are melting and sea levels are climbing, these facts can be difficult to connect with on an emotional level. A sound artist at the University of Virginia is hoping to change that by turning scientific data into music, and, well, the result is pretty damn cool.
In April 1815, a volcano in the East Indies erupted with cataclysmic force, releasing a plume of ash that circled the entire globe. In the weeks and months that followed, the skies grew dim and global temperatures plummeted. Crop failures, famine, disease, and death ensued. It was one of the darkest chapters in human…
Walking among the muted browns and greens and soft contours of shrubs and trees of Harvard Forest’s eastern hemlocks, it’s impossible to miss David Buckley Borden’s mark on the landscape.
Screw Rembrandt, Picasso and all that boring old guy paint-on-a-canvas stuff. The future of art is bacteria, ants, and the smell of sweat.
Last summer, the internet was overrun with six-eyed dog faces, human legs that are actually slugs, and other images reminiscent of the day you ate magic mushrooms and feverishly explored your kitchen floor. In fact, these were the dreams of an AI developed by Google. And it was only a matter of time before the…
It’s natural to think of sound as an exclusively auditory experience. But if you were to see a sound wave, what would it look like? Science photographer Linden Gledhill decided to find out using water and neon lights. And the result is some psychedelic synesthesia.
Like every other surface of your body, your mouth is teeming with a panoply of bacteria. It’s a thought most of us try to keep buried in the backs of our minds, but a new study shows that the tiny communities flourishing between your molars can be quite pretty. In a kaleidoscopic nightmare-fuel sort of way.
Spherical Rayleigh-Taylor Instabilities, to be exact. That’s what happens when two fluids of different densities collide under the force of gravity. The pattern can be seen in everything from the mushroom clouds of nuclear explosions to cosmic supernovae. But as science photographer Linden Gledhill demonstrates, you…
You might say Ken Libbrecht is into snowflakes. In fact, he’s made a career of studying them in his lab at Caltech. He’s even got a high-tech snowflake machine, which he uses to grow dazzling designer flakes of all shapes and sizes.
With gold-plated space telescopes promising to discover distant worlds and unravel the deepest mysteries of the universe, radio astronomy can sometimes feel a bit passé. But lest you think the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is no longer sexy, a glorious new photo collection featuring radio observatories…
Get me to the church on the Moon on time. Mural at Luna 9 in León, Spain. Photo by amateur photography by michel/Flickr.
We love to imagine how biotechnology might one day enhance our fleshy bodies, but too often, Earth’s wildlife are left out of the future entirely. Enter Kathryn Fleming’s future zoo, filled with a menagerie of fantastical, slightly disturbing, genetically modified mutants.
These videos aren't just colorful and fascinating — they're also educational. They're made using just some speakers and a non-Newtonian fluid, and they can teach us important principles in physics.
When an artist creates a beautiful work of art, she or he usually wants it to last forever — or at least, to outlive its creator. But sometimes, an artist just wants to create a work of beauty that will last a short time, and then be gone forever. Here are the loveliest short-lived works of art... made of sand.
When water hits a glass surface, it usually just spreads itself out. But when water containing the organic molecule propylene glycol (PG) hits glass, it comes alive. In a manner of speaking.
The greatest cities on Earth are always in motion. Their bustling activity forms a great collective organism, whose shape changes over time. So there's a good reason why we're all fascinated by timelapses of cities — and there's nothing cooler than timelapses of aerial footage. See the world's biggest cities in a…
These buildings by Kenzō Tange (1913-2005) look like matte paintings from futuristic movies — but they're actually some of the most unique megastructures in the world. One of the most famous architects of the 20th century, Tange combined traditional Japanese styles with modern architectural solutions and forms.
