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The staircase that defies science
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The Loretto staircase – built within the Loretto Chapel in New Mexico, USA – is by far the most remarkable staircase ever built. It features a double-helical spiral structure that spans 20 feet in altitude, and remains intact without the use of a central pole. The staircase is built mostly out of wood and is held together by wooden pegs and glue rather than nails or other hardware. The staircase is venerated by Catholics as being miraculous, not due to its marvel, but based on the events that have been passed down by the Sisters of chapel ever since it was built in the late 1800s. Before the construction of the Chapel could be completed, the architect responsible for the building's design had suddenly died, leaving the nuns without access to ...
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5617 |
bio_man |
2 years ago |
First ever exoplanets discovered outside our galaxy
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Using a technique known as gravitational microlensing, Oklahoma University astrophysicists were able to detect several exoplanets within a quasar 6 billion light-years away called RX J1131-1231 (depicted in the illustration above, left). Their research shows that the planets range in size from masses as small as the Moon to ones as great as Jupiter. The idea behind this technique is derived from the Einstein's theory of general relativity. Since light waves bend when they pass through space warped by a large gravitational presence, a planet passing in front of a star can act as a lens to focus the light, creating a temporary sharp increase in a star’s brightness, and changing the apparent position of the star. Currently, it's the only known ...
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1104 |
bio_man |
6 years ago |
How to Prepare for Your Next Physics Exam
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Taking a physics exam without first practicing problem solving is like pinch-hitting in a crucial game without having taken batting practice.Preparing for an exam in physics has two parts. You must make sure that you know how to work problems given a list of formulae, and you must ensure that you can reproduce the formulae. These tasks are rather separate. The first step in ensuring that you can work problems is to keep up with the assignments as they are due. There is simply too much to learn to postpone this work to the last minute. As you go along you should make sure that you have mastered each type of problem. You should review assigned problems that you got wrong and get help with those where you do not understand what you did wrong. Y ...
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4943 |
bio_man |
6 years ago |
Hammers are no match for this glass
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The tough-yet-fragile physical properties of the tadpole-shaped pieces of glass known as Prince Rupert’s drops have puzzled physicists for as long as, well, there have been physicists. Bash the head with a hammer, and a drop gets barely a scratch. But break off its thin tail, and it shatters into fine powder. Researchers long ago realized that the strength of the drops - named for Prince Rupert of Bavaria, who presented five of them to Britain’s King Charles II in 1660 - has something to do with stresses in the glass created when a drop is made by letting a blob of molten glass fall into water, so that it cools rapidly. Twenty years ago, a pair of researchers took high-speed video of a drop disintegrating showing that, when the tail is brok ...
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3822 |
bio_man |
6 years ago |
How to learn anything using the Feynman Technique
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Richard P. Feynman (1918 - 1988) was a New York City born, Nobel Prize winner in Physics in 1965. He was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in quantum mechanics, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams (below). His passion for science and education later lead him to develop a universal learning model, now called the Feynman Technique, that could help you learn practically anything no matter how difficult or complicated. As long you or the educator uses simple terminology (no complicated words or terms), you ...
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15465 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
China closed the world's highest and longest glass bridge after just 16 days
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The world’s longest glass-bottomed bridge in China's Hunan Province, which opened just over two weeks ago has been closed to the public. The Brave Men’s Bridge is 984 feet long, and spans a 590-foot deep crevasse. People attempting to make the terrifying walk across resorted to closing their eyes, crawling, and holding on to the rope guide for dear life. According to officials, the bridge is attracting too many tourist, deeming it unsafe. The glass floor is made up of a 24 millimeter (approximately one inch) thick glass, and there’s nothing but air below. ...
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5105 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
How the Turing machine works
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A Turing machine is a hypothetical machine thought of by the mathematician Alan Turing in 1936. Despite its simplicity, the machine can simulate ANY computer algorithm, no matter how complicated it is. Put simply, the Turing machine isn't a physical machine, but you can imagine it as an never-ending line of tape, broken down into squares. On each of those squares is a 1, a 0, or nothing at all. The machine reads one square at a time, and depending on what it reads, it performs an action - it either erases the number and writes a new one before moving on, or simply moves on to a different square. Each of those actions, which mathematicians call a 'state', are determined by the mathematical algorithm or problem the Turing machine has been desi ...
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4822 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
Non-Newtonian fluids are no longer a mystery
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A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid with properties that differ in any way from those of Newtonian fluids - it changes its viscosity almost instantly under stress, so you can punch it as a liquid and it’ll turn into a solid (watch the video below), and you can literally walk across a pool of it. On the contrary, a Newtonian fluid is defined as the perfect fluid, where its viscosity is influenced mostly by its temperature and pressure. So if you have water at a moderate temperature and pressure, it will continue to act like a liquid no matter how much you punch it. Depending on how you manipulate it, the fluid-like substance can change states from a liquid to a solid, but how this happens has remained a conundrum amongst physicists. Scientists ...
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2996 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
The glue of the future, today
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Before I begin telling you about this fascinating new glue (adhesive), there's a thing or two you need to know about the animal that inspired it all, the gecko. Geckos are small lizards that have the ability to run up walls and scurry across ceilings with the help of tiny rows of hairs on their feet known as setae. Setae generate a multitude of weak attractions (called Van der Waals forces) between molecules on the two surfaces that add up to a secure foothold. Unlike glue or tape, a gecko’s sticky feet attach and detach effortlessly, which made it a perfect case study for engineers to model. To create their artificial gecko adhesive, a Stanford team of scientists started by making silicone micro-wedges, which imitated gecko hair. They asse ...
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18569 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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10879 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Here's what a magnetic field actually looks like
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If you want to be an effective science teacher, demonstrations are a must in the classroom. If you want to grab the attention of a young student then make it obvious, as shown in this visualization of a magnetic field!
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8342 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
All trees, regardless of size, break once this wind speed is reached
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The magic number is 42 m/s (94 mph). Using mathematical data and physical experiments, scientists say they have found the law that governs the resistance of wooden beams under stress. According to the study ( link), researchers hung weights from wooden rods and pieces of pencil lead to record the amount of force needed to snap the cylinder. As one might sense, they found that for a fixed length, increasing the diameter made the rods stronger: They could bend more before breaking. This would make tall skinny trees most vulnerable, but, as the team points out, trees don’t grow taller without getting disproportionately thicker as well. By incorporating established laws of tree allometry - which explain the relationship of tree size parameters ...
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12766 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Slow down!
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This semi-circular bridge in Uruguay, known as the Laguna Garzón bridge, was designed to force drivers to slow down and enjoy the panoramic views of this amazing landscape. The concrete structure consist of two semi-circular bridges, joined at either end to create a ring, and was built to replace a raft crossing between the cities of Rocha and Maldonado. The bridge also has a pair of pedestrian walkways.
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4106 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Watch how the ancient Babylonians tracked Jupiter in the sky
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It's hard to fathom the difficulties our ancestors had to contend with given how our world has advanced with technological sophistication over the past century. We shouldn't, however, underestimate the power of the human-mind, and how everything that was discovered in the past paved the way for the practices used today, especially those used in science. Of the very first astronomers, the ancient Babylonian were the first to use simple arithmetic to predict the positions of celestial bodies. Evidence reveals that these astronomers, working several centuries B.C.E., also employed sophisticated geometric methods that foreshadow the development of calculus. Historians had thought such techniques did not emerge until more than 1400 years later, ...
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5411 |
bio_man |
8 years ago |
Time to update the science textbooks
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The periodic table has been given four new elements, changing one of science’s most fundamental pieces of knowledge. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 will now be added to the table’s seventh row and make it complete, after they were verified by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry on December 30 th. The new elements were discovered by team from Japan, Russia and the USA, who will all get to name their own new elements. All of the four new admissions are man-made. The super-heavy elements are created by shoving lighter nuclei into each other and are found in the radioactive decay - which only exists for a tiny fraction of a second before they decay into other elements. The elements have been worked on since at least 2004, when st ...
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16532 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Pluto up-close
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Taken from a range of just 17 000 km, these images were snapped during the spacecraft's closest approach to Pluto, from its flyby of the dwarf planet in July this year. They document an 80-kilometre strip of the planet's surface, offering an intimate perspective of its cratered, mountainous and glacial terrains. The photos scan from Pluto's jagged horizon about 800 kilometres north-west of the informally named Sputnik Planum, across the al-Idrisi mountains, over the shoreline of Sputnik, and across its icy plains. Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-05/new-pluto-close-ups-to-help-nasa-piece-together-planets-history/7004516 ...
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duddy |
8 years ago |
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duddy |
8 years ago |
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duddy |
8 years ago |
A closer look at Saturn's moon
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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft completed the first of three final flybys of Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus. On October 14, Cassini passed within 1838 kilometers (1142 miles) of Enceladus, providing unprecedented views of the moon’s north polar region. What's more, researchers predict that is contains a global ocean lying beneath its icy crust. Researchers found the magnitude of the moon's very slight wobble, as it orbits Saturn, can only be accounted for if its outer ice shell is not frozen solid to its interior, meaning a global ocean must be present. ...
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duddy |
8 years ago |
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duddy |
8 years ago |
Definitive proof of water found on Mars
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Since its discovery in 2010, researchers have been trying to solve the mystery of dark streaks that appear and disappear seasonally on the planet's surface (shown above). Scientists are now claiming that this phenomenon, known as the recurring slope lineae, is caused by a bath of saltwater. What is still unknown, however, is where the water is coming from, or if the chemistry is even right for supporting life.
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19311 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Images of Pluto!
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The images, taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft from a distance of 18,000 kilometres give Pluto a "strangely Arctic look", NASA scientists said.
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18963 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Next time you ask a scientist why something happens remember this guy
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This is Richard Feynman's take on a simple question, why do magnets repel each other? A little more on Richard Feynman. He was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. As always: A scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, but one who asks the right questions. ...
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2426 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
The quest to find Earth-like life on Mars
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NASA scientists have nominated eight potential new targets for a 2020 Mars mission. They're focusing on ancient river deltas and hot springs as sites that have the best chance of preserving signs of life on the red planet. New sites can still be considered, and mission engineers have yet to weigh in on the technical feasibility of landing the rover in the nominated sites.
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1187 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
The magnus effect
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An illustration of the magnus effect by trying to score a basket - with a twist. See for yourself!
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5610 |
ehd123 |
8 years ago |
NASA Spacecraft is 4 weeks and 32 million km away from Pluto
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After a journey spanning nine years and almost 5 billion kilometres, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is closer than ever to everyone’s favourite former planet, Pluto. On 14 July 2015, New Horizons is expected to fly within 12,000 km of the lonely cosmic body - about the distance between Seattle and Sydney - zooming through the orbits of its five tiny moons.
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1261 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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2651 |
ehd123 |
8 years ago |
Interesting sounds
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Have you ever wondered what may be among the loudest sounds? Or possibly what may happen being exposed to such sounds other than bursting your eardrums? Take a look at this informative video
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4605 |
ehd123 |
8 years ago |
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5727 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
How physics textbooks should teach electricity
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Everything is easily explained with cartoons or a childrens book. That is why we do it for children, but apparently adults need it too, that is why we have comics and video games. I found the analogy portrayed above perfect in explaining how voltage and current relate.
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duddy |
8 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
Rockets of the world
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No, we're not referring to the candy. Humanity has done great! Here's a more intricate version of the poster above. It was created by professor Peter Alway and was published in the book Rockets of the World: ...
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13745 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Sunlight continues to damage skin even after dark
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Researchers have discovered that sun exposure gives skin cells a postsunshine hangover that lasts for hours. In fact, UV rays damage skin cells for hours after you've stepped out of the sun - and even if you're in complete darkness!
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duddy |
9 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
She developed the building blocks for modern 'software engineering'
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Margaret Hamilton was the leader of the team that developed the flight software for the agency's Apollo missions. The concepts she and her team created became the building blocks for modern 'software engineering.' One example of the value of Hamilton's software work occurred during the Apollo 11 mission. Approximately three minutes before Eagle's touchdown on the moon, the software over rode a command to switch the flight computer's priority processing to a radar system whose 'on' switch had been manually activated due to a faulty written operations script provided to the crew. The action by the software permitted the mission to safely continue. Source: http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11Hamilton.html ...
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20981 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
This knife can cut a water droplet in half!
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It's called a superhydrophobic knife and it slices water droplets easier than a butter-knife cuts through butter. As its name suggests, anything that is 'superhydrophobic' is highly hydrophobic, i.e., extremely difficult to wet. This special knife uses polyethylene - a common plastic - zinc, and copper. Its surfaces was dipped into a solution of silver nitrate and a superhydrophobic solution called HDFT for 20 seconds, and once it was washed and air-dried, it was super-great at repelling water.
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10694 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
What do sounds look like?
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In this video, sand is sprinkled onto a metal plate attached to a speaker, which is then turned up the to bring the whole thing to life in a pulsating, dance of intricate patterns.
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15476 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
We are the stars, we are the universe
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I'd like to share this mind-opening video. Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" This is his answer. By far, one of the best...
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4496 |
ehd123 |
9 years ago |
Rosetta's Comet - Update
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Remember Philae? That little lander that was targeting comet Rosetta? https://biology-forums.com/index.php?article=1050It was very big news around two months ago... Sadly, Philae landed incorrectly in a rather awkward position due to technical failings. After all, it was trying to land on the harsh, unstable, deteriorating/burning up surface of a comet. It bounced three times to a site away from the targeted position and ended up in a shady place with insufficient sunlight to recharge its energy reserves. And so it died out after 60 hours of touchdown. Recent tabloids have now reported that Philae is missing! Scientists from the European Space Agency have tried to analyze the images that Philae returned but things just keep on getting more ...
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ehd123 |
9 years ago |
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12941 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
Brilliant minds
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Colourized photo featuring some of the greatest science thinkers of our time, including Curie, Durac, Pauli, Einstein, Schrodinger and more. Can you name them all? ...
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duddy |
9 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
What does Chernobyl look like after so many years being abandonment?
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The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 was one of the worst man-made disasters of the 20th century. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe. During the accident itself, 31 people died, and long-term effects such as cancers and deformities are still being accounted for. An abandoned ferris wheel and buildings reclaimed by nature - the remains of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster show what a city looks like when everyone disappears.
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1381 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
What a flame looks like in microgravity
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Flames look a little different in space. On Earth, gravity causes a candle flame to be teardrop-shaped, and carries soot to the flame's tip, making it yellow. In microgravity, where these forces are absent, the flame is spherical, soot-free, and blue.
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3553 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
When chemistry and physics come together
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When chemistry and physics come together, it looks awesome. This is the emission spectra of the Elements - in other words, these are the colors they emit in the gaseous state.
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4087 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Rosetta's Comet
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Two days ago, I streamed history being made for the first time ever online, and witnessed the Philae lander's touchdown on Rosetta's comet. The journey took 10 years, 6.4 billion kms away from here, and a 7 hour long landing. Unfortunately, it was an awkward landing where Philae landed approximately 1km away from its intended landing site that currently, one of its 3 legs is not on the surface of the comet and it itself is oriented in a way that no sufficient sunlight is being recieved enough to charge its batteries ever 12 hour rotation. At the moment, plans to try to "hop" the robot back into a position for enough sunlight are being studied, hopefully in time to execute them before Philae dies out sometime between next Friday and Saturday. ...
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6608 |
ehd123 |
9 years ago |
World's largest vacuum
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See what happens when scientists drop a bowling ball and a feather in the world's largest vacuum; for the science-illiterate viewers out there (sorry ), a vacuum is a space entirely devoid of matter (also known as an absolute vacuum). A lot of you probably already know how this one ends, but that doesn't make watching it play out any less spectacular. ...
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6624 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
From the Earth to the Moon
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Did you know that you could fit all the planets of the Solar System into the distance between the Earth and the Moon? But please don't - it would kill us all.
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4606 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Be a kid again with Kinetic Sand!
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What do you get when you combine ultra-fine sand and the key ingredient in Silly Putty? Kinetic Sand, and this 'non-Newtonian fluid' has got some bizarre properties.
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5855 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
India's full-disk image of Mars
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This is a full-disk image of Mars, showing nearly an entire hemisphere of the Red Planet. It was captured this week by India's Mars Orbiter Mission and shows a storm brewing in the north (around the 11 o'clock position).
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duddy |
9 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
This is a full-color image of the surface of a comet
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Desolate, frozen and black as coal - welcome to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This is one of the closest colour images ever of a comet, taken from just 29 kilometres away by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft. Rosetta will soon land on this rugged surface.
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duddy |
9 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
Coin shiver in dry ice!
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An American coin shivers in ice made from carbon dioxide (temperature below -78.5 degrees Celsius).
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duddy |
9 years ago |
Stalking the sun
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This image, released by NASA a few days ago, overlays a year's worth of photographs of the Sun, revealing the migration of active regions towards the equator.
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duddy |
9 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
Shape-shifting metal
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Ever seen 'memory metal' in action? Watch this paperclip - made from an incredible shape-shifting metal called Nitinol - be bent completely out of shape and then restored instantly as it touches a simple bowl of warm water.
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duddy |
9 years ago |
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9 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
The moon isn't round
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Although it may look perfectly round from Earth, the Moon isn’t a sphere. New research suggests that because of the way it was formed it’s more like a lemon, with a bulge in the middle.
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duddy |
9 years ago |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
Does it rain in the Sun?
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Physicists have figured out how colossal rainstorms are formed in the Sun's atmosphere, and it's surprisingly similar to how we get our rain. It turns out that plasma rain falls on the sun at 200 000 km/h. Each raindrop is the size of Ireland!
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duddy |
9 years ago |
NASA Rover finds conditions once suited for ancient life on Mars
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Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon -- some of the key chemical ingredients for life -- in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.
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2011 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Have you ever seen the sun like this?
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The Sun, through an H-alpha filter, which captures a narrow band of light containing the frequency of photons emitted when a hydrogen's electron drops from the 3 rd energy level to the 2 nd.
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duddy |
9 years ago |
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9 years ago |
What if the moon was closer... a lot closer?
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What would happen if the Moon orbited at the same distance as the International Space Station? An animator has created a mind-blowing video of what it would look like:
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duddy |
9 years ago |
Earth-rise from the moon
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This is a breathtaking 'earthrise' viewed from the surface of the moon. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter sees the Earth rise 12 times a day but is usually so busy imaging the moon's surface it doesn't get to capture the moment. This colourised image was taken on 1 February 2014.
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duddy |
9 years ago |
Did humans really step-foot on the moon?
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This is not an illusion or some kind of sci-fi illustration. It's an actual laser beam, being shot at the eclipsed Moon on the 15 April 2014. The laser's target is the Apollo 15 retroreflector, which was left on the Moon by astronauts in 1971.
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3158 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Beer companies are trying to get scientists drunk
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| After winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, Carlsberg gave Niels Bohr a perpetual supply of beer. The brewing company had a pipeline running from the brewery to Bohr’s house, so that he could have fresh beer on tap all the time. |
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duddy |
9 years ago |
This moon looks like a ball of cheese
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The strangest moon in the Solar System is bright yellow. Taken by the Galileo spacecraft, this image shows Jupiter's moon, Io, and its incredibly bright colours derived from sulphur and molten silicate rock. Io is covered in volcanoes that are so active, they effectively turn the whole moon inside out. And some of Io's volcanic lava is so hot, it glows in the dark.
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duddy |
9 years ago |
On Venus it snows metal
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At the very top of Venus’s mountains, below a thick layer of clouds, is snow. But not snow as we know it - with some surfaces reaching 480°C, Venus is way too hot for that. So what is this stuff? Researchers have figured out that Venus's heat is vaporising minerals called galena and bismuthinite, causing them to enter the atmosphere as a metallic mist before condensing into a shiny, metallic frost that rains down on the mountaintops.
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duddy |
10 years ago |
World's first x-ray image of a human body part
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Wilhelm Conrad Röentgen, a physics professor at the University of Wurburg in Germany, was experimenting with electric current flow in a partially evacuated glass tube in 1895 and one night he noticed a glow caused by an unknown radiation. He named the phenomenon x-radiation and few months later he took the first x-ray photograph of a body part: the bones in his wife’s hand – and one can even see her wedding band. The first even x-ray image was of a key.
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1930 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
A foot in a high stiletto
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A foot in a high stiletto. Can you see the tiny nails used to make the shoe? X-ray artist Hugh Turvey, who captured this image a few years ago, thinks the shoe looks like a torture device, what do you think?
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duddy |
10 years ago |
Solar panels on the moon could one day power Earth
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Architectural and engineering firm Shimizu plans to solve Earth's climate crisis by building a band of solar panels 400 kilometres wide along the entire 11,000-kilometre equator of the Moon. The energy generated will be beamed back to Earth in the form of microwaves and converted into electricity at ground stations. The team hopes to start building the "Luna Ring" from Moon materials in 2035.
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7367 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
The Verrückt: The world's biggest water slide
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A water park in Kansas City is building a water slide, whose name aptly comes from the German word for "insane", that is over 164 feet tall. While nothing has been released about the speed of this slide, by our estimates, we'd say it'll be extremely terrifying.
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8943 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Are the laws of physics the same everywhere on Earth?
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The vortex is a spherical field of force, or a magnetic disturbance. The vortex is 165 feet in diameter and sits half way above ground and half below. The disturbance, or vortex causes unexplainable changes in perception, causing naturally occurring visual and perceptual phenomena that has been caught on film many times. Within the spherical distortion, people stand at an angle. The disturbance alters your relative gravity, causing you to stand at an angle of varying degrees. It is not possible for someone to stand vertical inside the vortex. It will also make someone who is walking away, seem taller, or shorter depending on where you stand. Balls roll uphill, brooms stand straight up and down on their own, and chairs appear to be held up b ...
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6577 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
How much memory does our brain have?
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While it's hard to calculate the memory capacity of the human brain, some estimates have put the number closer to 2.5 petabytes. But this is a great rough comparison.
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7316 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Imagine building the tallest tower
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Engineers led by sci-fi writer Neal Stephenson have unveiled plans for the tallest building in the world. Tall Tower would be 24 times the height of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, considered the tallest building in the world, and would double the maximum heights for commercial airspace, as the designers believe the tower could also be used to launch rockets into space. A building this high poses many structural issues, and we don’t know if it will ever be built.
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3028 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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2613 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
What happens when all the oil (petroleum) is used up?
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Peter Diamandis makes a case for optimism -- that we'll invent, innovate and create ways to solve the challenges that loom over us. "I'm not saying we don't have our set of problems; we surely do. But ultimately, we knock them down."
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5657 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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5041 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Cool shiny metal
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This is bismuth, a brittle metal with a white or silver-pink hue and an iridescent oxide tarnish that produces a rainbow of colours from yellow to blue. It is the most naturally diamagnetic metal in the world, which means it can create a magnetic field in opposition to an externally applied magnetic field. ...
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3603 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Why does water bridge form in the presense of electricity?
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If you fill two beakers with water, apply an electric voltage across them, and then separate them, you will form a water bridge. This phenomena was discover some 120 years ago and researchers believe it occurs because the voltage makes the water molecules line up, generating a dielectric tension that defies gravity, stopping the bridge from falling. Understanding how water bridges form could help engineers develop better electrowetting displays. ...
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2702 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Will the Big Bang be a thing of the past?
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Cosmologists have formulated a new theory that suggest the universe didn’t start with the Big Bang. They believe the birth of the universe happened after a 4D star collapsed into a black hole and ejected debris, which helps explain why the universe has an almost uniform temperature.
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3069 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Floating train
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Scientists in Japan have built a levitating train that in recent trials hit speeds of almost 500 km/h. It's hoped that by 2027, this floating 'maglev' train will cut 55 minutes off the current travel time between Nagoya and Tokyo on today's high-speed trains.
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3233 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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3353 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
A sculpture made from light
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This sculpture is constructed by quickly rotating a rope stretched from ceiling to floor through white light. The vibrating string becomes invisible, but the white light that’s being reflected off the rope becomes visible in an exchange that let’s our eyes see magic, as real as science can make it. The colors change and twist, forming double-helixes that stem from the shape of the swinging rope. Some of these light sculptures are small and handheld, but many of the larger ones include touch screens that allow viewers to adjust the beams. All of them are spinning at very high speeds that result in a constantly moving body of light. ...
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3599 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Why does airplane food taste strange?
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If you've been fortunate enough to fly on an airplane, you've probably noticed that the food tastes a bit strange. It turns out that it's not actually because of the food itself (even if you are sitting in economy) but the reduced atmospheric pressure on board and the dry nose and mouth we get from flying, says an expert.
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2737 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
A cratered inferno
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Mercury's surface looks similar to our Moon's. Each is heavily cratered and made of rock. Mercury's diameter is about 4800 km, while the Moon's is slightly less at about 3500 km (compared with about 12,700 km for the Earth). But Mercury is unique in many ways. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, orbiting at about 1/3 the radius of the Earth's orbit. As Mercury slowly rotates, its surface temperature varies from an unbearably cold -180 degrees Celsius to an unbearably hot 400 degrees Celsius. The place nearest the Sun in Mercury's orbit changes slightly each orbit - a fact used by Albert Einstein to help verify the correctness of his then newly discovered theory of gravity: General Relativity. The above picture was taken by the only sp ...
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2707 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Personal drones – another step to absolute laziness
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Engineers are building special drones that will deliver food to your table – or home. Besides the iTray, which brings customers sushi at a Japanese restaurant in London (above), researchers have developed a 'tacocopter' and 'pizzacopter' that can traverse six kilometers in ten minutes. But don’t get your hopes up yet, there are plenty of technological barriers to overcome before drones deliver pizzas to our homes.
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3560 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Surviving nuclear war
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This Bonsai tree was planted in 1626, and survived the atomic bomb at Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, 68 years ago today. It was given to the people of the United States as a Bicentennial Gift in 1976.
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3114 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Planetary grid system
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After discovering that there were 12 main areas that all of these activities seemed to be occurring (such as the Bermuda Triangle and Dragon's triangle in Japan), he then noticed that they were also equidistant from one another. When you connect all of these points together with lines (called ley lines), you have a perfect icosahedron. Russian scientists Goncharov, Morozov and Makarov found that if you take this icosahedron and flip it inside out into the dodecahedron and then plot these new points on the planetary grid with the original 12 points of the original icosahedron, you now have a worldwide grid plotting every single major monolithic structure in the history of the world. ...
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2018 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
How big is the international space station?
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"The ISS is the largest man made object in space. Here's how it compares to other notable objects, both real and fictional, all drawn to scale."The ISS isn't just the largest space craft ever built, it's also the world's most expensive object. According the Government Accountability Office, it cost upwards of 100 billion dollars to complete.
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3440 |
duddy |
11 years ago |