Jan 15 2012
Update 12:10 AM CDT: nothing official but it seems to have reentered and crashed into Pacific Ocean a few mins ago. Click image above for latest info. Follow the latest events on Twitter using the hashtag #PhobosGrunt and follow @PHG_Reentry. The ill-fated Phobos-Grunt mission, which would have returned samples from the tiny Martian satellite Phobos, will …
Jan 12 2012
If a princess were to kiss this tiny amphibian and turn it into a person, she would have a pygmy for a prince.
Jan 10 2012
Title partially inspired by the post below about careers and non careers, but mostly by this newly discovered plant that chows down on annelids – correction from comments, Phylum Nematoda, aka roundworms: (MSNBC) — The rare plant Philcoxia minensis is found in the tropical savannahs of Brazil, areas rich in biodiversity and highly in need of conservation. Although some of …
Jan 04 2012
The thing about Antarctica is it’s cold. Really cold. As in an average temperature of about 15 F on the warmer coastline and even more frigid in the interior. So maybe it’s no surprise that warm seeps and hydrothermal vent communities in that neck of the woods would march to their own beat. That’s exactly …
Dec 08 2011
The already rather fearsome anomalocaris just got even more ferocious. Paleontologists found a well preserved specimen with detail on the eye arrangement, and this top predator of the Cambrian Explosion had eye stalks: (MSNBC) — When you look at the animal it has these really gnarly looking grasping claws at the top of its head, for …
Dec 02 2011
Alas, a favorite climate change denial trope is on its deathbed. Specifically, the zombie lie that modern polar ice sheets formed during a period of rising carbon dioxide. New analysis of CO2 levels from the time, about 33 million years ago, show the greenhouse gas dropping sharply and the ice caps forming right along side:
Dec 01 2011
On July 2, 1967 two top secret US survelliance satellites, Velas 3 and 4, spied an alarming phenomenon. The Vela sats were designed to detect the telltale radiation of nuclear tests by the USSR. But on that day these two picked up a flash of gamma rays from the other direction, not here on earth, but …
Dec 01 2011
Believe me, if you grew up in Texas, where summer heat tops the century mark for weeks on end and even the morning lows offer little relief, you’d feel December was pretty damn magical. This month dawn and dusk stretch out, as the sun marches steadily to the Winter Solstice. The solstice was a magical time for …
Nov 29 2011
An amateur astronomer using a homemade 25 cm (10 inch) telescope has recorded an exquisite image of a nearby star and surrounding planetary disk. Beta Pictoris is 63 light-years away and resembles a slightly more massive, hotter version of our sun and primeval solar system in the early stages of planetary formation. The New Zealand star-gazer, named Rolf …
Nov 24 2011
Behold the roast turkey jammed with stuffing, or better yet deep-fried in one big sleek pot fired up and humming like a jet turbine on full afterburner. Smoked is good too! And it’s a great choice for a feast, the turkey has an illustrious history. In fact, Ben Franklin felt one humble member of genus …
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