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Six Complex Scientific Concepts Explained in Preschool-Level English
Science is complicated, so people tune it out. This proud human tradition began around the time of the advent of science itself, and continues on today. However, gifted science writers can often...
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A Roof-Gap Jump Video to Get You Nauseous
Not much else to say here, really, other than that I immediately recognized this as my native Chicago, where even the amateur parkour scene just seems to be on an entirely other level. I can remember...
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South Korea Is Spending a Cool Billion on Fusion Power
Inside the Joint European Torus tokamak reactor. Energy rules everything around us: It's at the core of the interplay between our economy and environment, and is a major influencer in geopolitics....
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Heems Wants 'A Pretty Drone to Take Home Tonight'
And thus joins the ranks of breakout music blog sub-genre-darling dronewave, from Pashtun drone pop to autotuned drones to paranoid drone hop. It's only fitting, too, that Heems, of Brooklyn's...
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The Manatee Nebula Is a Space Cow Born of a Dead Star
Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, K. Golap, M. Goss; NASA’s Wide Field Survey Explorer (WISE). Astronomers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory have discovered a supernova remnant that's nearly 700 light...
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Researchers Used Sesame Street to Predict Kids' Test Scores
Mitt Romney kicked the hornet's nest during the presidential debates last fall when he promised to put the kibosh on Sesame Street if we put him in office. The audacity! The popular publicly-funded...
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Obama Says He Will Lead Us On a Holy Quest to Defeat Climate Change
Obama kept most of his inaugural speech focused on the now and couched in the language of the past; his words were draped in typical Founding mythology and fiery Puritanical bombast. All presidents...
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North Korea's Rocket Was Mostly Homemade
Image: AP You didn't think the North Korean rocket story would go away, would you? Last time we checked in, it looked like North Korea had help from Iran, which was worrisome because Iran has more...
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Atari Inc. Filed for Bankruptcy to Begin Its Comeback
In 2013, Atari still has a ton of brand recognition, despite trading on nostalgia for years. But today, Atari's US-based operation made a large step forward towards a comeback: The firm filed for...
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This Mathematical Formula Absolutely Does Not Predict the Most Depressing Day...
Today is so-called Blue Monday, which has been engrained into popular mythology as “the most depressing day of the year.” That descriptor is supposedly the product of scientific inquiry—Welsh...
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Web Activists Are Waging a Guerrilla War to Free Martin Luther King from...
Last Friday was the one year anniversary of the massive online and real-world protests that helped bring down Congress' Stop Online Piracy Act, but the celebration online was bittersweet. The death of...
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The Deadliest Guns of All Are the Ones We Point at Ourselves
There have been a lot of conversations started since the Sandy Hook shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, last month. There have also been a lot of non-starters, connections that people have tried to...
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Old Men Are the Biggest Frauds in Science
Blame nature, blame nurture. Overall, men are simply more physically and socially aggressive than women. As noted here last week in an article about violence, men are three times more likely than...
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The First 3D-Printing Museum Lets Visitors Snag a Hard Copy of Themselves in...
3D printing is now officially enough of a cultural institution in China that it's got its own museum. The DRC Industrial Design and Creative Industry Base (sort of Beijing's answer to a hackerspace, I...
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Aaron Swartz's Art: What Does Your Google Image Search Look Like in Other...
You might not need to type "Obama" into Google Image Search to know what you'll find. You can already call up those images in your mind--photos from speeches, majestic Air Force one embarkations,...
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Is Drone Maintenance Our Last Stand Against Going Off 'the Loop'?
Mechanics tend to a US Reaper drone at dusk (via Battlespace Flight Services) One of the bigger fears over the increasing reliance on semi-autonomous hunter-killer drones is that humans are being...
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NASA's New Evidence of Water on Mars Suggests It's Hiding Underground
A render of ice in a different crate (not McLaughlin) from the ESA When it comes to planetary exploration, NASA’s mantra has always been “follow the water.” Water is essential for life on Earth, so...
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An Unpopular Argument for Taxing the Internet
A public event to bring Google Fiber to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2010. Image via A lot of things on the Internet are free, and it's awesome. Log in to Facebook, stalk some friends, post some inane...
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The World’s Biggest Wind Farm Will Be Built at the Site of the Decade’s...
Sometimes an event is just so thick with symbolism that just reciting the facts seems cliché. Case in point: After experiencing the biggest nuclear disaster of the new century, Japan is building the...
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The Five Existential Risks That Global Leaders Are Discussing at the World...
We quite likely will have to geoengineer our way out of climate change, but what happens if a billionaire decides to do it on his own by floating fart gas out of his yacht? How we choose to address...
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