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I really hope everybody knows who Einstein is, and many people know why he is famous and how he left is mark in the scientific world. Still, aside from his brilliant results in physics (mostly), he is also very well known for his aphorisms, metaphors and overall interesting way of expressing himself. I’ve always […]
Let’s start with the beginning, shall we ? A black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, not even light, can escape its pull after having fallen past its event horizon. That means that electromagnetic radiation (e.g. visible light) is unable to break away from the […]
Photo by ±‡ U a € ï ¥ a H ‡± Life has ups and downs, reminding more or less of an emotional rollercoaster; but some memories stay in your memory way longer than the others. Emotional memories of traumatic life events (physical or mental), especially cases of accidents or serious illnesses are stored […]
Photo by Wolfgang Staudt In the previous post of this waterfall series, I wrote a list of the 5 tallest waterfalls in the world. I bet some of you were surprised not to hear more famous waterfalls or to see that the ‘big boys’ are not that spectacular – not the massive amount of water […]
I’ve always been fascinated by intelligence as a human trait. Smarter and more intelligent people seem to have this sort of aura that surrounds them, but how much of this ability is native and how much can be developed? Ever since the experiments conducted on fruit flies showed that the flies that were taught […]
Photo by bocavermelha Sometimes, animals are better than humans. Quite a lot of times actually, but that’s not the point here. We’re going to take a look at some record holding animals that are (or do things that are) just unbelievable! The biggest – the blue whale. Photo by Dan Shapiro. Credit: NOAA via pingnews […]
There's something special about the raw power and beauty a waterfall. There's no sight quite like it. These marvelsserve as a testament to the power and beauty of our planet's diverse landscapes. But while some waterfalls, like Niagara or Iguazu, stand out in terms of water flow, others tend to be taller and slimmer.Now, imagine […]
Or at least this is what a study conducted by scientists from Mcgill suggests. They made the largest study of breastfeeding and the results they found were that it increases both IQ and academic performance. In the article in which the study was published, Dr. Michael Kramer reports the results from following the same […]
Well this sure sounds like a good plan to me… Scientists found out that Ketamine (also called Special K if you hang out with the right people), which is used as a horse tranquilizer but also as a club drug could ease depression. Who would have guessed ? Ketamine, which can also cause […]
Some places in the world are just like heaven, some are just like hell; almost literally. Human activity can sometimes have devastating effects not on just the environment, but on the population too. Here’s a list of five of the most polluted cities in the world, in no specific order. Linfen, China Potentially Affected People: […]
Photo by konaboy Contrary to popular belief, “going green” is not something you can do just when you finish work or when you’re in the mood. It’s something that must became a part of your life at all time (when possible). Many people aren’t even close to realizing how much green potential your job has. […]
Well this is a bit of a stretch; the thing is an 87-million-year-old praying mantis was found encased in amber in Japan. Scientists believe it may prove to be very useful in establishing a connection between mantises from the Cretaceous period and modern-day insects.Researchers have been searching for this “missing link” for many […]
Recently, the NASA observatory published some great images of some cities. For a man looking at those cities at night, man’s work seems both impressive and insignificant. But the view would be fantastic: regular patterns of irrigated cropland, straight lines of roads and railways running across continents, reservoirs on river systems, and the cement rectangles […]
Our life may be better or worse, our health may be better or worse, but one thing has definitely improved over the past decades: technology; and that’s a really big thing. So what better way to prove the progress of technology than 2 pictures of Earth? The first was taken from the weather […]
I’m going to continue with this month’s mountain theme, as it seemed to be really loved (even more will follow after this). In the previous post I wrote, with the 5 highest mountains in the world I felt bad because I didn’t have the chance to mention two mountains which fascinated alpinists from all around […]
Recently, a team of researchers (with the help of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and a host of international telescope partners) have managed to get the clearest observation yet of the “core” of a black hole. A black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field […]
How can this be? Medicine has progressed… we have drugs for everything, surgery, etc. So how come people live less and less in a country that claims to be the most civilized in the world ? In fact, it decreased with more than six years for women between 1960 and 2000. Now, a new, long-term […]
A rundown of the five tallest mountains in the world.
Photo by Stefan Everybody (or almost everybody) believes that no matter what, USA remains “polluter no. 1”. Don’t take my word for it, just ask BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin – he says the same thing. The industry is by far the most developed, so that would seem logical, despite the fact the China and […]
Photo by jago In a study conducted by researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University that claimed a different perspective, it was published that it takes between 3,000 gallons and 6,000 gallons of water to power a 60-watt incandescent bulb for about 12 hours per day in a year. As it turns out, size […]
Two years ago, the Finnish Meteorological Institute made public the fact that they had created an electric solar wind sail. Now, scientists believe that this kind of propulsion could benefit space travel significantly, throughout the Solar System. Doctor Pekka Janhunen who invented the sail, believes it could revolutionise travelling in space, as using solar winds […]
University of Maryland researchers have managed to shed some light in an important matter which puzzled medical scientists and not only for ages: how iron carried in human blood is absorbed and transported into the body. Among the benefits of this discovery I’ll just name a better understanding of iron deficiency, the world’s number one […]
Volcanic eruptions are impressive natural phenomena; it begins when pressure on a magma chamber forces magma up through the conduit and out the volcano’s vents. Seen on the TV or in the newspaper, they’re just fantastic and gorgeous. But if you’re unlucky enough to be there… it’s really deadly. But volcanic ash can also bring […]
Bikini Atoll (also known as Pikinni Atoll) is an uninhabited 2.3-square-mile (6.0 km²) atoll in one of the Micronesian Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Its historical importance lies in the fact that along with more than 20 nuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1958, the world’s first test of a practical dry fuel hydrogen bomb […]
I’m not fond of alarmist theories or “bad things are happening, fast” attitude, but… bad things are just going to happen soon in California. The likelihood of a major quake of magnitude 7.5 or greater in the next 30 years is 46%-and such a quake is most likely to occur in the southern […]
What makes us different is not who we are, not what we think, but the decisions we make. That defines us, it’s what makes us different from others. But aside what you’d want to think, it turns out decision-making may be a process handled to a large extent by unconscious mental activity. A team of […]
It's a chilling list.
Green fuels are a really hot topic, with every single day bringing a new (claimed) discovery or breakthrough, but many of them are just minor improvements. Still, every once in a while you hear about something that sounds really promising (like green gasoline). Now it seems that chemists are describing development of a “revolutionary” process […]
The Aztecs were the dominant civilization in Mexico for several hundred years, when their “reign” was stopped by the Spanish in the early 1500s. An astonishing thing about them (among others) is the fact that they left behind really extensive mathematical writings, intriguing scholars ’til this day. Two manuscripts in particular have been object to […]
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have made a significant breakthrough in the development of biofuels (“green gasoline”), a liquid identical to standard gasoline yet created from sustainable biomass sources, such as poplar trees and switch grass. Poplar plants have been in the scientific spotlight before, as they are considered to disarm toxic pollutants 100 […]
The first lungless frog has been discovered lurking in the jungles of Borneo. This amphibian is totally enigmatic, at least until now, for scientists who haven’t been able to figure out how come it gets all its oxygen through its skin. Scientists first discovered these frogs about 30 years ago but because they’re so rare, […]
Recently, it seems there’s a gene for everything, from generosity to ruthlesness. That still doesn’t mean that you can blame everything on your genes, but it may go to show the fact that even some of the world’s most cruelest dictators may owe their behaviour partly to their genes, at least according to a study […]
It’s said that even though computer have so much processing power, it some ways, it can never even get close to interpreting information like the human brain does. But is that really so? Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, right? Right ?! The thing is that according to scientists at Tel Aviv University, […]
The threat that global warming is has definetly been underestimated, and if something doesn’t develop quite fast that could handle this problem or at least diminuate its effects (could it be iron fertilization?), the perspectives are quite dire. Everything and everybody is affected, and the effects include the melting of glaciers and the destruction of […]
A University of Washington fish expert claims to have discovered a whole new species of fish, that would rather crawl into crevices than swim, and that may be able to see in the same way that humans do. Well this is certainly something unexpected, and there is no species that does the same kind of […]
The hunt is on for finding other planets we can live on; this is probably the next step for us as a species, and may just be crucial, considering how things are developing on Earth. But we haven’t had much luck with that so far. Now, scientists are using a method which is claimed […]
The controversy between the climate and energy researchers has been fuelled by the recent studies which suggest the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has seriously underestimated the challenge and costs of stabilizing greenhouse-gas emissions in the 21st century. Climate policy expert Roger Pielke Jr, climatologist Tom Wigley, and economist […]
After the “crash site” in Peru, meteorites keep the headlines again! This time, scientists from the University of Oxford and the University of Aberdeen found the biggest meteorite to ever crash in the British islands. The scientists believe that a large meteorite hit northwest Scotland about 1.2 billion years ago near the Scottish town of […]
Well somehow BBC always manges to find a way to surprise and thrill us; while I was browsing their site I somehow managed to not see the story about the flying penguins (no bull, just follow me). Luckily, environmental graffiti paid more attention and they found this fascinating video. Yes, penguins to take off and […]
According to a new research, published in PLoS, as the total number of different species in a certain group grows, the chance of the rate of new species apprearing decreases greatly. The research team believes these findings suggest that new species appear less and less as the number of species in a region approaches the […]
The date of March 19, 2008 will be remembered as a very important day in astronomy and science; it’s the day mankind had its first chance of witnessing the birth of a black hole. It all started when the “Pi of the Sky” telescope detected the brightest ever optical outburst from a distant place, about […]
Prions (or proteinaceous infectious particle; on comes from analogy to virion) are the nasty little buggers responsible for disorders such as mad cow disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. They’re dangerous especially as they’re really hard to detect before symptoms appear. Now, according to Nature, scientists are trying to develop sensors that can detect […]
Recently, a small Aerospace company located in California has announced a new type of sub-orbital spaceship that can make your dream come true; that is, if you’ve got the right amount of money and you want to travel into outer space. This spaceship is claimed to provideaffordable front-seat rides to the edge of space for […]
Recently, the University of California, Riverside provided some materials that shocked me, to say the least. According to that research, scientists from all around the world have reconstructed changes in Earth’s ancient ocean chemistry during a broad sweep of geological time, from about 2.5 to 0.5 billion years ago. What they found was that the lack of […]
There’s always been a lot of effort put into understanding what (if something) makes humans superior to other man-like mammals. The science world seems to be split into two camps, which can’t agree with each other. Now, researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have identified a language feature unique to the […]
After things seemed to be going a bit towards the right way, when fishing was banned in the 2nd largest coral reef in the world, a new study pointed out the fact that not a single square meter in the oceans has been left untouched by man’s activities. Corals are especially threatened, and protecting them […]
Professor David Lambert and his team from the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution performeda study of New Zealand’s “living dinosaur” the tuatara. They recovered DNA sequences from the bones of ancient tuatara which are up to 8000 years old. The conclusions they drew were amazing: despite all the ods, the tuatara has […]
A recent study has shown that certain types of air pollution can actually help by creating extra doses of atmospheric cleaner. Of course, we’re talking about just a small fraction of the total pollution which triggers the right chemical process. The lab study pointed out that nitrogen oxides (which result mostly from agricultural pollution) can […]
A problem which a decade ago would have seemed just absurd is now becoming more and more pressing: water. More and more areas are suffering from drought or other problems caused by the lack of water.How can there not be enough water? Well let’s make the math. Out of the total quantity of water, just […]
In what is a great leap for science, scientists from UCLA and the University of Washington have succeeded in creating “designer enzymes,” a major milestone in computational chemistry and protein engineering. The two groups were led by UCLA’s chemistry professor Kendall Houk and Washington’s biochemist David Baker. Designer enzymes will have applications for defense against […]
