U.S. Explodes Atomic Bombs Near Beers To See If They Are Safe To Drink
So you're minding your own business when all of a sudden, a nuclear bomb goes off, there's a shock wave, fires all around, general destruction and you, having somehow survived, need a drink. What can...
View ArticleGetting Slower And Slower: How Slow Can You Go?
Before we go slow, let's go fast, so fast you can't go any faster. That would be light in a vacuum, traveling at 670 million miles per hour ...Light, of course, can slow down. When light passes through...
View ArticleDo You Know Where Your Children Are? Is That Always A Good Thing?
There was a time — and it wasn't that long ago — when kids would leave home on a summer morning and roam free. "I knew kids who were pushed out the door at eight in the morning," writes Bill Bryson of...
View ArticleAre Those Spidery Black Things On Mars Dangerous? (Maybe)
You are 200 miles directly above the Martian surface — looking down. This image was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Jan. 27, 2010. (The color was added later.) What do we see? Well, sand,...
View ArticleObama's Secret Weapon In The South: Small, Dead, But Still Kickin'
Look at this map, and notice that deep, deep in the Republican South, there's a thin blue band stretching from the Carolinas through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. These are the counties that went...
View ArticleTough Old Lizard To Face Grave Romantic Troubles, Say Scientists
Oh, dear.First off, this lizard? It's not really a lizard. It's an almost vanished species, a reptile like no other.Its nearest relatives are ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs, animals that lived during the...
View ArticleCharles Darwin And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
I guess everybody, even the smartest people who ever lived, have days when they feel dumb — really, really dumb. Oct. 1, 1861, was that kind of day for Charles Darwin.In a letter to his friend Charles...
View ArticleCelebrating Autumn All Year Round ... By Becoming A Leaf
It is autumn, and where I live the leaves are peaking; there is a riot of them everywhere, narrow ones, broad ones, droopy ones, crunchy ones. Leaves come in so many shapes, hues, textures — the closer...
View ArticleFinnish Underwater Ice Fishing Mystery Finally Solved
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIs00QjiJZQ
View ArticleDeath, But Softly
It was 1569, or maybe early 1570, when it happened: A young French gentleman was out for a ride with his workers, all of them on horseback, when suddenly, "like a thunderbolt," he felt something thick...
View ArticleThe Big Apple's Mayor Makes A Very Scary Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtqSIplGXOA
View ArticleWhy Not Say It Simply? How About Very Simply?
There are people (and I hear from them constantly) who think if a subject is sophisticated, like science, the language that describes it should be sophisticated, too.If smart people say torque,...
View ArticleAnother Year And I'm Still Here: A New Year's Meditation
Look at yourself. Right now.You are muscle,skin, bone, brain, blood, warmed by energy, and all of you, every cell, even the subsets of those cells, all trillions and trillions of them, are going to...
View ArticleGrrr, Said The Grylloblattid. I'm Not Leaving. Not Yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbR-dT83zKM
View ArticlePhooey On Flu
A lot of you have had it by now, or are having it or are about to be exposed. This year's flu is called "H3N2" and this week it's doing big business in about 47 states, Chicago and New York. If you've...
View ArticleWhat Happened When Humans Met An Alien Intelligence? Sex Happened
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i_oJn-9d_0
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