Have you ever thought about how small we actually are in the greater scheme of the universe? Or how large we are compared to some of the things around us. Two Asian twins thought the same, and have created an amazing interactive map to show you exactly how big you are.
An 83-year-old woman has successfully had her lower jaw replaced with a 3D-printed model by scientists at Belgium’s University of Hasselt. This is the first such implant in the world, and was a much faster process than traditional artificial implants – we’re taking hours instead of days.
A question for all those hyper-nice, socially aware, dream dinner party guests out there – have you ever considered that your people-pleasing tendencies may be making you fat?
People who like Pink Floyd references, rejoice, because NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission has beamed back its first video of the dark side of the moon. Click through to see what that astronaut that everybody forgets about saw while Armstrong and Aldrin were hogging all the glory.
Brazilian science takes on the US of A as the mystery of the porky C-section babies deepens…
A brand new study has revealed there really is no such thing as the female G-spot. So that’s disappointing. But scientists have been trying unsuccessfully to find the mysterious sexual hot button for so long now that we were all getting bored anyway. (Right?)
A recent study by Chinese experts has found that internet addiction affects your brain in the much the same way that cocaine, and other drugs, does.
I’d forgotten that this was something people still did! That metaphorical ‘Doomsday Clock,’ that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists uses to represent the threat of nuclear war, was moved to five minutes to midnight, the closest to doomsday it’s been since North Korea’s 2007 nuclear weapons test.
NASA has launched an open-source portal to make it easier for agencies to evaluate and improve upon its projects. The initial setup works as a simple directory of open-sourced projects in development, which is hoped to expand into a platform for tracking, hosting and planning the various pieces of software created by the American space agency.
Five days into 2012 and we’ve already got fancy new technology. A team from Cornell University have developed a light-distortion device that can mask events as if they hadn’t happened; they managed to use light distortion to hide an event for 40 picoseconds. Which, granted, is 40 trillionths of a second, but the research is groundbreaking in the extreme.
According to the exciting world of Science, the men in white coats have discovered a molecule in the brains of mice that, when switched on, gives these mice super memories. This could work for humans too – but the question is, do you really want to?
It’s 08h00 on a Monday morning, so how better to welcome the week than with some complex physical graphs and equations explaining the world’s most popular mobile gaming app, Angry Birds. Ready? Let’s go! (Ka-kaaw!)
As if it isn’t already enough that just about everything is made in China, now they’ve started making blood, from rice.
A new laser is to be built that is as powerful as “concentrating the rays of the sun for the entire earth onto the tip of a pen”. Scientists claim it could allow them boil the very fabric of space, AKA the vacuum. Because that’s a fantastic idea. It is official, mankind has a death-wish.
When reversing genetics in an attempt to create a real, live, man-eating dinosaur, it pays to know what the consequences may be. In this case, being the paleontologist who advised Steven Spielberg on the making of four Jurassic Park movies and decades of children’s nightmares about killer lizards should just about cover it.
It’s Nobel Prize Week! Which is when regular people get their egos crushed under the weight of the giants of literature, chemistry, physics, economics, and “peace”. Which sucks. But click through, and you can wow your friends with your knowledge of this year’s Nobel winners, and give that ego a little boost.
For all those shallow Hal’s, cheap dates and general sloppy drunks (we all know at least one), this little guy’s for you. The “stay-sober pill”, is still in development stages, but is said to allow you to drink as much as you want and still stay sober as a judge. Or prevent you from getting laid.
The unmanned spacecraft, Tiangong-1, which translates awesomely to Heavenly Palace, is set to blast off tonight from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gansu province, marking the start of China’s first rendezvous and docking mission. That guy is set to take off between 13h16 and 13h31 GMT.
The University of Washington has finally found a way to make us of the mental energy expended by online gamers – recruiting them to decipher the structure of monomeric enzymes, found in retroviruses like HIV, by playing an online game called Foldit. Researchers had been working on it for the past decade; the collective gamers did it in three weeks.
Screw climate change, we’ve found a new home. Well, I mean that’s my attitude whenever astronomers says they’ve found new planets within the “Goldiclocks zone” of core temperature – like the one European astronomers announced yesterday, the catchy-sounding HD85512b, which fits life support parameters, and is a little over three times the size of Earth.
No, not Season 4 of Jersey Shore, this is some truly traumatic Tuesday Science! Last weekend, a 16-year old girl in Florida died due to a rare species of amoeba infecting her brain cavity and eating her brain!
What did you do today? New York elementary school student Aidan Dwyer has designed and constructed a solar array based on the Fibonacci sequence that stores and generates energy between 20% and 50% more effectively than existing setups. He got the idea after noticing growth patterns in oak trees.
Here’s some crunchy biology for your Tuesday! Our bodies are covered in vestigial traces of biological functions we’ve long left behind us. Once, we were able to move our ears like monkeys and cats, had tails, and may have even had a third eyelid, much like most reptiles do today.
I know temporary tattoos are usually pretty lame, but the ones they’re making over at the University of Illinois are looking pretty rad. Because unlike regular temporary tattoos that fade within two days and look like awful birthmarks, these guys come with diagnostic sensors, LEDs, wireless antennas, and solar cells for power. Take that, Kinder Surprise.
Two Israeli scientists say they have developed a sensor that can accurately detect date-rape drugs in drinks 100 percent of the time – a tiny, drink-stirrer-looking device that, when dipped into your appletini or other refreshing beverage, can detect the presence of dissolved drugs. Nice job, science.
Dave MacKay, 53-year-old British pilot, will be the first captain of Virgin Galactic‘s commercial space fleet, taking up the role first with the maiden voyage of SpaceShipTwo, scheduled for 2013. MacKay has over 30 years of regular flying experience, but like pretty much everybody, he’s wanted to fly spaceships since he was a kid.
Australian artist and ‘body architect’ Lucy McRae, in collaboration with Harvard biologist Sheref Mansy, is releasing these little digestible capsules that make human skin emit perfume scents. Which is nice and futuristic, I think. And by futuristic I mean I have no idea how this thing works.
Next time you’re on the beach (and frankly, given the current weather in Cape Town, that may be later today), bear in mind that there’s more to the scenery than meets the eye. Sand is ba-yoodiful, too – beyond what our human eyes can perceive. Have a look at these shots of tiny grains of sand magnified to 250 times their real size.
VW are proposing a new technology that will allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel at speeds up to around 130km/h, and let the car’s system temporarily take over. Look, it isn’t exactly Knight Rider, but it’s good that VW’s looking after people who want to multitask while cruising down highways.
Researchers at the University of California have put together tiny robot brains that replicate the long term memory function in rats; using this, they could switch long-term memory on and off with a button. Which means ‘electronic memory’ and the possibility of knowing stuff without having to learn stuff is suddenly a real thing.