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Tech NewsScientists Think They’ve Figured Out Why Van Gogh’s Sunflowers Are Fading
The vibrant colors of many of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings—including his Sunflower series—have been fading over the last 100 years. Now a team of Italian scientists has come up with an explanation as to why the lead chromate dyes favored by the artist when mixing his pigments degrade so much under light. They … Continued
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Tech News
These Pressed Record Albums Are Good Enough to Eat
Cheese, aubergine, ham, and tortillas are tasty in their own right, but in the hands of artist Matthew Herper, they also make beautiful music. He uses laser-etching to make edible—and still playable—record albums to explore the acoustical properties of food. The project is called Edible Sound, commissioned by London’s Science Gallery. It’s for a good … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Meet the Forgotten ‘Rocket Girls’ Who Helped NASA Reach the Stars
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a long and colorful history in rocketry and space exploration, from early missiles and rockets, to landing on the moon and remotely navigating rovers on Mars. Behind all the prominent men who spearheaded the programs was a group of unsung women. The forgotten women of JPL now have their own … Continued
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SciencePhysics & ChemistryNewton and Einstein Define Gravity in Physics-Themed Homage to Wicked
What do you get when you combine a Broadway musical about The Wizard of Oz with two giants of physics? You get “Defining Gravity,” the latest music mashup video from A Capella Science. As any Broadway aficionado can tell you, Wicked (the musical, as opposed to the book) focuses on the unlikely friendship between two … Continued
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ScienceBiology
The World’s Smallest Primate Can Do More Pullups Than You
The adorable gray mouse lemur weighs just 1.5 to 3 ounces, but its tiny frame belies its impressive strength. French researchers put the creature’s grip to the test and found, on average, that mouse lemurs can pull more than ten times their own body weight. While the species (Microcebus murinus) thrives only in Madagascar in … Continued
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Tech News
Aspiring Artists Can Make Like a Dutch Master with the LUCY Drawing Tool
Artist David Hockney once stirred up controversy by asserting that many of the great Dutch masters—folks like Vermeer and Ingres—had relied on optical drawing aids to create their masterpieces. Now everyone can channel their inner Dutch master with the LUCY drawing tool. It’s designed by Les Cookson, an artist and inventor who has been building, … Continued
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Tech NewsDating Service Lets You Pick Your Partner by Smelling a Sweaty T-Shirt
You’re young and single and looking for love in New York City, and the usual online dating services haven’t panned out. A new matchmaking service has a crazy idea: It wants to let you choose a lover by letting you smell a bunch of t-shirt samples. I know, it sounds like an April Fool’s prank. … Continued
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Tech News
Amazing Photographs Capture the Microscopic Iridescence of Peacock Feathers
Male peacocks are justly admired for their brilliantly colored plumage. Canadian photographer Waldo Nell has captured the underlying microscopic structure behind those stunning hues in extraordinary detail in his latest photographic series. It all comes down to a phenomenon called iridescence, which can also be seen in the wings of butterflies, dragonflies, cicadas, and in … Continued
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io9Books & ComicsBlack Hole Blues Gives a Ringside Seat to Discovery of Gravitational Waves
When the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves, it was the culmination of 50 long years of hard work and perseverance in the face of skepticism. In her new book, Black Hole Blues, and Other Songs from Outer Space, astrophysicist Janna Levin gives us a ringside seat … Continued
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Tech NewsVintage Mechanical Calculator Shows Why It’s a Bad Idea To Divide by Zero
Everyone learns in grade school that you can’t divide by zero, but few of us ever learn (or fully understand) why. The stock answer is that it gives you an answer of infinity. The truth is a bit more nuanced than that, and an old mechanical calculator offers the perfect illustration. Try to divide a … Continued
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Tech NewsForget Sea Monkeys, the Dino Sphere Is the Novelty Bio-Kit of the Future
Remember Sea Monkeys? Remember how disappointed you were when you found out they weren’t really humanoid organisms, but boring old brine shrimp? Now there’s a nifty alternative: the Dino Sphere, a decorative glass sphere that houses thousands of plankton. Swirl the sphere a little at night, and those plankton will emit a bright blue glow. … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
The Science of Using a Damn Coaster When You Are a Guest in This House
Two years ago, a Phoenix-based photographer teamed up with physicists at Princeton University to explore the unusually uniform rings a drop of whisky leaves behind when it dries. Now those same physicists have published their findings in Physical Review Letters. Inspired by his wife’s love of whisky, photographer Ernie Button began photographing various samples—notably, the … Continued
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SciencePhysics & ChemistryWind Down Your Day by Watching These Pennies Melt Under the Sun’s Intense Heat
The Internet is a wonderful place. Case in point: there’s an entire YouTube channel called Let’s Melt This, devoted to videos of, well, stuff melting. In the latest installment, the team placed two pennies under a Fresnel lens to see how long it would take for them to melt under the concentrated heat of the … Continued
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io9Books & Comics
The Same Rules of Nature Apply to Elephants and E. Coli
On the surface, herds of zebras roaming the Serengeti don’t seem to have much in common with the number of cells in our bodies. But what if there is an underlying hidden logic behind it all—a set of universal rules regulating the numbers of things that applies across all size scales? That’s the provocative thesis … Continued
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Tech NewsFour Sets of Identical Twins Staged a Time Travel Prank on an NYC Subway
Most NYC subway riders are pretty blasé when panhandlers hit them up for cash between stations. When a panhandler announced he was collecting funds to build a time machine, riders chuckled at the odd request—until another man boarded the train and announced he was the inventor’s future self. He implored them not to give any … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
How Physics Can Make You a Master Ribbon Curler
Most of us know how to get a ribbon to curl, by swiftly pulling a scissor blade across the surface. You’ve probably heard that the faster you do this, the tighter the curl. Physics begs to differ. A slower movement—combined with a sharp blade and just the right amount of tension on the ribbon—produces optimal … Continued
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Tech News
NBA Players Chill With Neil deGrasse Tyson for a Bit of Star Talk
What do NBA basketball players do when they have some down time in New York City? The Philadelphia 76ers dropped in on the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium to hobnob with director and famed astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. It just so happens that head coach Brett Brown is a long-time fan of Tyson’s, … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
The Quest to Hear Echoes From the Big Bang Enters Its Next Phase
Back in 2014, physicists on a collaboration known as BICEP2 thought they had detected gravitational waves. Those claims quickly evaporated when it became clear that they had really seen patterns from cosmic dust. But they haven’t given up the hunt. An upgraded version of the experiment, BICEP3, began taking new data at the South Pole … Continued
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Tech NewsThere’s No Cloning in Quantum Mechanics, So the Star Trek Transporter Really Is a Suicide Box
Remember last week’s video about the trouble with Star Trek’s transporter (a.k.a. a “suicide box”) by CGP Grey, delving into whether the teleported version of yourself would really be, well, you? Henry Reich of Minute Physics has posted a video response with his own resolution to the logical paradox. You know what that means…. NERD … Continued
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Tech News
That Time BB-8 Visited the Robots at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab
Not so long ago, in our very own Milky Way galaxy, a plucky little droid named BB-8 roamed the hallowed halls of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, rubbing elbows with its robotic brethren. Happily, a photographer was on hand to capture this moment for posterity. Contact the author at [email protected]. Follow on Twitter … Continued
Jennifer Ouellette
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