Good morning, Geeks. Please take your seats. Today we’ll discuss the science behind solar flares and the distinction between a flare and coronal mass ejections. By now you’ve all seen the images and video from Tuesday’s M2.5 flare and CME. What you may not have gotten is a look at what solar flares actually are […]
Biology was comparatively boring by the time I got there, but if you were in high school sometime in the 70s, maybe you’ve seen this. The only way I can even begin to explain this is with a conspiracy theory: Jim Morrison took a season off from touring with the Doors to teach Bio II. […]
Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his career trying to reconstruct a dinosaur. He’s found fossils with extraordinarily well-preserved blood vessels and soft tissues, but never intact DNA. So, in a new approach, he’s taking living descendants of the dinosaur (chickens) and genetically engineering them to reactivate ancestral traits — including teeth, tails, and even […]
In the following video, Bill Hammock, the Engineer Guy, explains everything there is to know about a hard drive by tearing one apart to show us the role of each of its components. This is by far the best explanation I’ve heard on how hard drives work. Check it out:
An intimate tour of Earth’s most impressive landscapes… as captured by astronauts with their digital cameras. Dr. Justin Wilkinson from NASA’s astronaut team describes the special places that spacemen focus on whenever they get a moment. [Via]
Researchers at CERN have revolutionized the ability to isolate and hold onto antimatter, a move which could transform our ability to study the issue. It was only last year that researchers being able to trap anti-matter and hold onto it for 0.2 seconds was considered a literally epic win. Now the staff of the ALPHA […]
Years before Sputnik launched and even longer before The Jetsons debuted, Popular Science was tracking Space Age trends in automobiles, appliances, architecture and interior design. Check out the PopSci gallery of Space Age-design articles from 1951 – 1968, which include everything from rocket-shaped cars to a lunar-base summer camp. [PopSci]
This week saw the start of the fourth series of British radio series The Infinite Monkey Cage, which aims to present “a witty irreverent look at the world according to science.” (The show has proven so successful it even produced a national live event tour, which I reviewed recently.) British readers who missed the show […]