|
Subject |
Blog |
Comments |
Views |
Author |
Date Written |
|
Biology Forums Blog |
1 |
2584 |
savio |
10 years ago |
A cratered inferno
|
view preview
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 ...
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
0 |
2723 |
savio |
10 years ago |
A sculpture made from light
|
view preview
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. ...
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
2 |
3606 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Beetles the size of period
|
view preview
The water beetle is about 1 mm in length and has been named Hydraena ateneo. Most of the discoveries made in the Philippines occur in their forests, making this discovery even more surprising.
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
2 |
3552 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Birds evolving from fish, a possibility?
|
view preview
A flying fish moves its tail up to 70 times per second to propel itself up and out of the water. Those specialised pectoral fins are spread wide and tilted slightly upward to provide lift, and then folded back against the body to lower the fish back into the ocean. Flying fish (family: Exocoetidae) are eaten by dolphins, tuna, birds, squids and porpoises, so they needed to develop an ingenious mode of escape - such as flying - in order to survive.
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
1 |
2881 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Birds of Paradise
|
view preview
A must see introductory video about paradise birds. This video reveals the astounding beauty of 39 of the most exquisitely specialized animals on earth. After 8 years and 18 expeditions to New Guinea, Australia, and nearby islands, Cornell Lab scientist Ed Scholes and National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman succeeded in capturing images of all 39 species in the bird-of-paradise family for the first time ever.
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
2 |
3265 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Blue blood is quite costly
|
view preview
Did you know one quart of horseshoe crab blood costs $15,000 dollars? The critter's blue blood is a sort of bacteria killing machine that clots around ‘invaders’, eliminating them and protecting horseshoe crabs from lethal infections. Researchers have been harnessing the power of this blue blood to test medical supplies for contamination.
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
2 |
3717 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Brain defects go a long way
|
view preview
This is a human brain without grooves and folds, a condition known as lissencephaly. It belonged to a patient who died in a mental health facility in 1970, and almost a year ago a photographer found the jar containing the brain in a collection at the University of Texas, Austin. People with this rare condition suffer from seizures, muscle spasms, a range of learning difficulties, and usually die before the age of ten. ...
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
0 |
5188 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Can anyone whisper, evolution?
|
view preview
Zookeepers at Central Park Zoo in the US assumed their cotton-top tamarins were falling silent every time someone entered their enclosure, but spectrograms, which provide visual representations of sound, revealed what was really going on. These little monkeys were actually whispering their alarm calls instead of shouting them, which is the first evidence of whispering in a non-human primate species.
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
1 |
3068 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Catch me if you can
|
view preview
The relative speed is based on body length. The tiger beetle ( Cicindela hudsoni) run so fast, their eyes can’t process information as quickly as they need to and they temporarily blind themselves. Some sources claim that the tiger beetle can up to 9 km/hour! When attacking prey, the beetle will aim itself at its target and start running, but will need to stop and relocate the prey because it cannot keep an eye on it. Once it has reoriented itself, it charges forward again and hopes to run into the target. ...
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
1 |
4405 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Chimpanzees have a gift for numbers
|
view preview
Watch this video.It turns out that our evolutionary cousins can recall number placement better than people can. In the experiment, the task requires the chimp to touch the numbers in ascending order and he has only seconds to make his decisions. The numerals appeared only for a certain limited duration, and were then automatically replaced by white squares. After touching the number one, the rest of the numbers are obscured by squares, making the chimp reliant on his memory to correctly pick the numbers in the right order. After a whistle sounds, the numbers reappear in different positions, so the chimp has to remember the position of all nine numbers after seeing them only briefly. And the chimp quickly aces the test time and time again, r ...
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
1 |
3250 |
bio_man |
10 years ago |
Commensalism
|
view preview
Sloths have a commensal relationship with several insects. Their thick fur readily traps bacteria and algae, which makes a good home for many beetles. The beetles are able to lay their eggs in a place that is rich in nutrients upon hatching, and the sloths don’t care either way. One sloth was reported to have over 900 beetles living in its fur!
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
0 |
4606 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Cool shiny metal
|
view preview
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. ...
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
0 |
3622 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Ever seen a potoo?
|
view preview
Potoos are a small New World family of solitary and nocturnal birds. Most are so poorly known they seem more fiction than substance, their gruff or wailing cries ghostly delusions of the dim nocturnal world they inhabit.
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
2 |
2742 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Fewest feathers of all birds
|
view preview
Hummingbirds, like this little golden rufous hummingbird, have up to 1,500 feathers, which is the fewest number of feathers of any bird species in the world.
|
|
|
Biology Forums Blog |
0 |
3229 |
savio |
10 years ago |