Posts Tagged ‘appearances’

For Christmas, some Oxford geologists built an amazing cake based on the geologic time spiral—a way of visually representing the order and flora/fauna of the different stages of deep history. It’s a pretty damn epic cake. It’s creation involved 32 eggs, 3 kg of marzipan, 7 people, and 30 hours of labor. Video Link Via

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How To: Build a geologic time spiral cake

Last week, I got to interview astronaut Rex Walheim using questions submitted by BoingBoing readers. Those readers (plus one runner up) are entitled to a Jackhammer Jill pin and an awesome BoingBoing sticker. But to get those prizes, you need to email me. Kansas, Scratcheee, spocko, ganman, and Titus: You should email me at maggie.koerth@gmail.com.

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Contest winners – Contact me!

Rex Walheim is an astronaut. He’s gone to space three times, including on the last flight of the space shuttle. He has spent an accumulated 36 hours outside the ISS on spacewalks. He has tweeted from 240 miles above sea level. Walheim reached those heights the old-fashioned way: Air Force test pilot school (plus a

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Five questions with astronaut Rex Walheim

One interesting fact and one bit of useful advice, courtesy the Neuroskeptic blog: • When bees use nectar from wild Rhododendrons the honey they produce is poisonous. Not poisonous as in, “dude, you have to try this poison honey it made me see god,” but poisonous as in “was once left out as a deadly

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Don’t eat the poison honey

Reader Pete Johnson took this awesome photo of the red-splotched abdomen of a poisonous black widow spider. One of my favorite things about this shot: The fact that you can see hairs growing on the spider’s abdomen. Extra bonus: Until checking out this photo—and subsequently reading up a bit on black widows—I had no idea

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Black widow spider

Now available on eBay: The naked archaeologists calendar you may or may not have been waiting for. Via Kristina Killgrove

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Archaeologists expose everything in 2012

Some archaeologists get to discover Tutankhamun’s tomb. Others go down in history for finding Kaiser Wilhelm’s urinal. (Via A blog about history and Cort Sims)

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Fate and the archaeologist

A good soul named Chris Nelson has taken the time to catalog some of history’s greatest end-of-the-world predictions and arrange them in a handy timeline format. Use A Brief History of the Apocalypse as a fascinating way to explain why you are pretty certain the world won’t end on x date. Or, use it to

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A brief history of the apocalypse

Recoding Innovation is a National Science Foundation-funded documentary that’s basically about the anthropology of science and engineering. If you’re a scientist or an engineer, you can participate. How does your culture, values, and beliefs make your work happen? The idea here is that ethics aren’t something that hold science back

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Scientists: How do ethics and culture shape your work?

Wikipedia helpfully catalogs the major fictional diseases. (via Maria Popova)

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Fictional disease

There’s a great write-up on Good about my city and my mayor, R.T. Rybak. Minneapolis isn’t a perfect city, by any means. But it remains the best place I have ever had the privilege of living. And I think a huge part of that is the unofficial city motto that Good highlights here: “Minneapolis: We

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I am thankful for Minneapolis

This is what a turkey looks like after it has been stuffed with cubed, toasted Twinkie cake and glazed with a mixture of Twinkie filling and honey. Chow’s Joyce Slayton did this, following a recipe in a 2006 Twinkie cookbook. She describes the smell as “like a turkey being roasted in a cupcake-scented Yankee Candle.”

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A very Twinkie Thanksgiving

The above image is an illustrated and translated version of an actual “to-do” list written by Leonardo da Vinci. It was put together for NPR by Robert Krulwich and illustrator Wendy MacNaughton, based on information found in a new book, Da Vinci’s Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image,

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What’s on Leonardo daVinci’s "To-Do" list?

Scientific American and YouTube are offering teenagers a chance to participate in real science. It works like this: Think up a question that can only be tested via an experiment performed in space. Make a video about your idea and submit it to the contest by December 14. The two best ideas will actually be

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Teenagers: Enter YouTube Space Lab competition by December 14

View more presentations from Terri Oda A great look at math, and real vs. imaginary Bell curve distributions. Thanks to Gideon for bringing this to my attention!

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How does biology explain the low numbers of women in computer science?

You’ve probably seen this caveat pretty often: Just because a study that uses mice as subjects produces a specific result, doesn’t mean you’d get the same result using human subjects. Mice are handy research animals, but they aren’t perfect analogues to humans. A mouse study is a stepping stone towards better evidence. It is something

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The trouble with lab mice

Electrical engineer Greg Leyh built the giant Tesla coil in this video, and wants to construct an even larger version: Two 10-story-high towers that would send lightning zinging across an area the length of a football field. New Scientist interviewed Leyh, to find out what the point of this is (besides the obvious inherent awesomeness):

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Behold: The world’s largest Tesla coil

I’ll be honest. I did not realize that you could just apply to be an astronaut like it was any old job listing. Nor would I have guessed that the NASA “Apply to be an Astronaut!” recruitment video would feel as odd and strangely lame as the recruitment video for any old normal job. Astronauts:

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NASA now accepting applications for astronaut position

Dayton’s Wall is an underwater geologic formation named for Paul Dayton, a marine ecologist who studies the lives and interactions between seafloor-dwelling organisms. Located in Antarctica, in an area of the Ross Sea between McMurdo Station and Cape Armitage, Dayton’s Wall is a great place to spot creatures that live on the rocky Antarctic seafloor.

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Music video set beneath the Antarctic sea ice

This amazing shot was taken in Norway by Ole Christian Salomonsen. It’s one of the many photos featured in National Geographic’s upcoming photo book, Visions of Earth. You can check out a video preview of some of the other photos on YouTube.

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Jaw-dropping northern lights

I got to have another great conversation with synthetic biologist and blogger Christina Agapakis on Bloggingheads.tv’s Science Saturday. Christina and I chatted about some of the issues that came up at an energy conference I spoke at recently, examined the possibility of using synthetic biology to create fuel, and talked about how we navigate the

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The future of energy and the future of risk

Last week, physicist Brian Greene answered a lot of questions—including a few submitted by BoingBoing readers!—at a live event in New York City. If you missed it, you can watch a recording of the event online now. But wait, there’s more! Dr. Greene only had an hour to talk, and a metric crap ton of

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Ask physicist Brian Greene anything

I love serendipity. On the same day that Anja Austerman posted this awesome knit hat to my Google+ feed, Kevin Zelnio also posted a link reminding me of the existence of the The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art. Xeni posted about the museum here back in 2008. But it’s awfully fun to contrast

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Fabric brain art

Minute Physics serves up another nifty video. Via Jennifer Ouellette Video Link

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How To: Break the speed of light in your own backyard

The publication process for a research paper about physics works a little differently than other subjects. That’s because of arXiv. Funded by Cornell University, this site posts research papers, before they’re formally published in a scientific journal. Unlike most scientific journals, which charge big fees for subscriptions or even to view a single paper, arXiv

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Faster-than-light neutrino update: What’s going on behind the scenes?