In the following video, planetary scientist Joel Levine shows some intriguing — and puzzling — new discoveries about Mars: craters full of ice, traces of ancient oceans, and compelling hints at the presence, sometime in the past, of life. He makes the case for going back to Mars to find out more.
A a beautiful short movie inspired by numbers, geometry and nature, by Cristóbal Vila. Enjoy!
Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? In the following video presentation, Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.
Created by 3D artist Doug Ellison, this amazing flyby of the surface of mars is not only accurate (it was modeled after data gathered by the HiRISE project), but is probably the closest thing you’ll ever experience next to actually flying over the red planet. [Via Discovery]
In celebration of Pi Day last Sunday, many pies were baked and shared. ScienceBlogs, together with Serious Eats, held a Pi Day Bake-Off. They received 35 entries, which have been narrowed down to ten finalists. Not only are these “pi pies” decorated in a mathematically clever way, they look scrumptious! See the full-size pictures at […]
Mark Roth studies suspended animation: the art of shutting down life processes and then starting them up again. It’s wild stuff, but it’s not science fiction. Induced by careful use of an otherwise toxic gas, suspended animation can potentially help trauma and heart attack victims survive long enough to be treated.
Scientists from IBM and Stanford University have unveiled discoveries that could lead to the development of new types of biodegradable, biocompatible plastics. The result of a multi-year research effort, the breakthrough also could lead to a new recycling process that has the potential to significantly increase the ability to recycle and reuse common PET and […]
Neil Fraser wondered if a lava lamp would still work in the higher gravity environment of Jupiter. How such a question ever occurs to anyone is a matter of wonder in itself, but Fraser went ahead and built a ten-foot centrifuge in his living room to conduct an experiment to answer the question. The centrifuge […]
Dishwashing (or washing up, depending on your location), while a calming and meditative time for some, is not everybody’s idea of fun. But fortunately it offers two factors which should appeal to any geeks: science and logic. Whether you’ve been taught by a kindly relative, discovered it from trial and error, or resorted to a […]
By hooking up an EEG to a pinball machine, scientists from the Berlin Brain-Computer Interface project have demonstrated that brain power could be used to control almost any device. Check it out. [Via Neatorama]