At the end of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, we are reminded, in a singalong, to “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” It’s a pitch black comic moment, because, as you know if you’ve seen the film, the titular Messiah Brian and others singing have all been crucified and are waiting to die. […]
It’s the time of year when things ice up and it can be a struggle to get down a sidewalk without breaking a hip. But most of us manage to do it. Scientists have recently discovered that this minor miracle is the result of a cluster of nerves in our spinal cord that serve as […]
Using laser-driven compression, a team of researchers have created an experiment that’s giving new insight into what it’s like in the cores of giant super-Earths and during the birth of earth-like planets. The experiment subjects synthetic stishovite, a high density form of silica, to laser-induced shock compression. It then measures the short-lived reaction using extremely […]
If you went back to visit your earliest known primate ancestors, you’d find them in the trees. New fossil evidence shows Purgatorius, a small, squirrel-like insect and fruit-eating mammal, was a tree-dweller. Paleontologists analyzed 65 million-year-old fossil ankle bones found in Northeastern Montana to clear up questions about the habitat of Purgatorius, which started kicking […]
Every review I’ve read of the new Nintendo 3DS and its head-tracking technology has been impressed with how it improves the 3D effect, but scientists in Vienna are working on a new approach to glasses free-3D that might make Nintendo’s device seem as the magic lantern is to today’s HD movies. The prototype 3D display […]
Did you know your DNA is about five percent virus? It’s true. Scientists have long known that endogenous (having an internal cause or origin) retroviruses, millions of years old, make up five percent of our DNA. They had assumed this was just junk data, an evolutionary oddity, because viruses, amiright? But researchers have recently discovered […]
A human being knows that the image in the mirror is she. That’s why we spend so much time staring into them. Great apes have a similar capacity for narcissism. Monkeys, however, don’t make the connection between the monkey in the mirror and themselves. But that doesn’t mean they can’t. Chinese scientists have shown they […]
Astronomers have found eight new planets orbiting in the “Goldilocks Zone,” around their stars, that area where conditions are “just right” to support liquid water and maybe life. Two of the planets found are the most Earth-like ever discovered. “Most of these planets have a good chance of being rocky, like Earth,” said study lead […]
New research shows that blue eyes in people originated between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago with one single common ancestor. Originally, it was boring, brown-eyed-only world out there for early humans, said Professor Hans Eiberg from the University of Copenhagen Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. Blue eyes started with a mutation that affected the […]
To deal with the growing problem of dangerous space junk, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) has turned to nature for a sticky solution. The “Gecko Gripper” system is modeled after the sticky feet of the gecko. The little lizards have no problem climbing various surfaces because their feet are covered with tiny hairs that give […]
Les Baugh lost both of his arms at the shoulder level to an electrical accident 40 years ago. It’s a long time to adjust to life without them, to forget them. But it’s all coming back to him now thanks to new research at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), where Baugh has shown […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover has found the first real proof of organic molecules, the building blocks of life, on the surface of Mars. The little rover drilled the sample from the clay of what scientists think was an ancient Martian lakebed as it trundled about investigating Mars’ Gale Crater, but it took a team of scientists, […]