As a person with a sleep cycle that is best described as erratic (but more accurately, nonexistent), I’m fascinated by body clock studies. In this short TED Talk, Jessa Gamble talks about the influence of circadian rhythms on culture, and vice versa. In today’s world, balancing school, work, kids and more, most of us can only […]
Have you played with Google Labs’ NGram Viewer? It’s an addicting tool that lets you search for words and ideas in a database of 5 million books from across centuries. Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel show us how it works, and a few of the surprising things we can learn from 500 billion words. […]
If you’re into science and need something a little more substantial than the MinutePhysics videos we talked about earlier today, you should know about ScienceAtNASA on YouTube. Every time there’s a breaking development, interesting find or something your life might be substantially emptier for not knowing (thundersnow, anyone?!), the fine folks at NASA post a […]
If you aren’t subscribed to the minutephysics YouTube channel, you’re really missing out. With concise explanations (coupled with Crayola marker drawings to illustrate key points), MinutePhysics tackles gravity, dark matter and quantum tunneling (to name a few) in under a minute. Here’s a recent video, “Taming Infinity.” If you haven’t seen the earlier video referenced […]
Scientists leveled up this week with the help of some online gamers. Players from the site Foldit were able to unravel an enzyme structure that caused an AIDS-like virus in rhesus monkeys, something scientists have been trying to solve for the past decade. The gamers figured it out in three weeks. Foldit users were able […]
Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous evolutionary biologist and one of science education’s most passionate advocates, has spent his career elucidating the wonders of science for adult readers. But now, in a dramatic departure, he has teamed up with acclaimed artist Dave McKean and used his unrivaled explanatory powers to share the magic of science […]
The answer depends largely on where you’re from and what you do in life. [Source]
NASA has discovered a real life Tatooine: a planet that orbits two different suns. But there’s unlikely to be anyone there who can save the universe. The planet currently has the rather humdrum working name of Kepler-16b. That’s Kepler after the observatory-fitted spacecraft that’s on a three-year plus tour of part of the Milky Way, with […]
Why fire is red, gas flames are blue, why you’re too cool to glow, and why fire moves in an upward, dancing manner. [Youtube]
As always, science has giving us plenty of awesomeness in the last week. Here are a few of the biggest stories rounded up for your reading pleasure. Glowing Cats Shed Light on AIDS It’s hard to decide whether a kitten amped up on fluorescent jellyfish protein is cute or freaky, but before you try to […]