Science
Shut Up and Let Me Drive
We all know that distractions make driving significantly more difficult and dangerous. Cell phones top the list, at least from lawmakers’ perspectives, and we now have laws in several states which limit cell phone use while driving. Sadly, lawmakers have not found a way to make children stop bugging their parents during car trips. “She’s […]
Photographs of Mercury
This morning the Gee Whiz department brings us photographs of the planet Mercury, taken by the MESSENGER probe on its first fly-by.
I don’t know about you but I grew up in the stone ages, when seeing a planet meant looking at a bright spot in the sky. As a child, I never imagined being able […]
What a Job!
You’ve got to see this to believe it. And even then, you might not believe it.
glumbert.com - High Power Job
I was dubious until another member of a forum where this video appeared wrote,
My neighbor works for Santee Electric in the transmission line area and he does this. He is 60 year old and still rides […]
Bacteria Use Radioactive Uranium Instead of Energy from the Sun
Were you looking forward to another boring day on this run-of-the-mill planet Earth?
Researchers from Indiana University Bloomington and eight collaborating institutions report in this week’s Science a self-sustaining community of bacteria that live in rocks 2.8 kilometers below Earth’s surface. Think that’s weird? The bacteria rely on radioactive uranium to convert water molecules to useable […]
What happens when lightning strikes an airplane?
What happens when lightening strikes an airplane?
According to Edward J Rupke, senior engineer at Lighting Technologies, Inc., not much. (Image courtesy of Edward J. Rupke and borrowed from Scientific American.com.)
Although passengers and crew may see a flash and hear a loud noise if lightning strikes their plane, nothing serious should happen because of the […]
Amazing Space Shuttle Video
I’m a space junkie so I was thrilled to read in Slashdot
Jivecat writes: “All those extra cameras NASA has added to the Space Shuttle to watch for debris impacts have yielded what may be the coolest Shuttle launch footage ever. The forward-facing view from the right-hand SRB shows, at about the 2:58 mark, booster separation […]
Geometric Whirlpools
Nature.com reports, in Geometric whirlpools revealed - Recipe for making symmetrical holes in water is easy, that it is surprisingly easy to make “holes” in a bucket of water that have all kinds of interesting shapes.
The researchers found that once the plate was spinning so fast that the water span out to the sides, creating […]
National TBIS Key Exchange Program
This is really important and the last day of the program. See the web site for complete details.
National TBIS Key Exchange Program
Breaking News
Exciting, Breaking News, from the Weizmann Institute. Scientists have finally figured out how a material cracks:
Physicists attempting to find a formula for the dynamics of cracking, to allow them to predict how a crack will advance in a given material, have faced a serious obstacle. The difficulty lies in pinning down, objectively, the fundamental directionality […]
Deciphering The Mystery Of Bee Flight
ScienceDaily reports in Deciphering The Mystery Of Bee Flight that scientists have finally figured out how bees fly.
Their wings beat over a short arc of about 90 degrees, but ridiculously fast, at around 230 beats per second. Fruit flies, in comparison, are 80 times smaller than honeybees, but flap their wings only 200 times a […]
Seed of extinct date palm sprouts after 2,000 years
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
When the Romans invaded ancient Judea, thick forests of date palms towering up to 80 feet high and 7 miles wide covered the Jordan River valley from the Sea of Galilee in the north to the shores of the Dead Sea in the south. The tree so defined the local economy […]
Mission to build a simulated brain begins
New Scientist ran an article on Monday titled, Mission to build a simulated brain begins. It opens with,
An effort to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level, was launched on Monday.
The “Blue Brain” project, a collaboration between IBM and a Swiss university team, will involve building […]
