Tag: Science (1-10 of 89)

Apr 2 2013 10:37 AM ET

Illustrious Google doodle celebrates Swiss naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian

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Google’s going green today to honor a natural woman: Maria Sibylla Merian, a scientific illustrator born April 2, 1647. (She doesn’t look a day older than 360!)

Merian is best known for the illustrated text Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, which she published in 1705 after spending two years in the Dutch colony of Suriname with her daughter Dorothea (and, somewhat scandalously, without a male companion!).  The book included illustrations of both insect life cycles and the plants on which they lived, giving many Europeans their first extensive glimpse at the New World’s botanical and entomological features. Her work garnered several important fans, including Russian emperor Peter the Great. She died in Amsterdam in 1717, two years after suffering a stroke that left her partially paralyzed.

Celebrate Merian’s life today by browsing through a few of her gorgeous prints, not swatting any flies, and eating some pineapple — which the illustrator once described as “the most outstanding of all edible fruits.”

Read more:
Google launches ‘The Peanut Gallery,’ or a new thing for you to do instead of working
Google Reader shutting down
Google unveils ‘talking shoe’ at SXSW Interactive

Dec 10 2012 11:53 AM ET

Google Doodle celebrates world's first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace

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google-doodleIt’s only fitting that today’s Google Doodle honors Ada Lovelace — the woman widely recognized as the world’s first computer programmer.

The web giant celebrates the tech pioneer’s 197th birthday with an image of “the enchantress of numbers” writing the first computer algorithm beside machines she helped design that were considered forerunners to the modern computer. READ FULL STORY »

Nov 11 2012 10:33 AM ET

'Firefly: Browncoats Unite' reunion tonight: Why Joss Whedon's cult classic has endured for a decade

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Some television shows blaze bright and fade quickly. Others ignite and burn for years. Joss Whedon’s Firefly did neither. The sci-fi opus barely sparked during its 11-episode run on Fox in 2002, yet produced a uniquely vibrant afterglow, nurtured by stalwart fans, as well as new fans who continue to discover the series on DVD and cable. To celebrate the cult classic’s 10-year anniversary, Science will air a reunion special tonight called Firefly: Browncoats Unite, which brings together Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau, and more for a conversation (moderated by this reporter) about the show’s origins and legacy and where the series might have gone had it continued. READ FULL STORY »

Aug 23 2012 11:08 AM ET

The Curiosity rover's descent to Mars, now in HD! -- VIDEO

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Spoiler alert: Up close, the Red Planet looks more like the Beige Planet. Nevertheless, the following video — a 50-second HD thrill ride, captured by the MARDI descent imager as NASA’s Curiosity rover barrelled toward the surface of Mars on August 6 — is, for lack of a better phrase, insanely cool. The only thing that’s missing is a bombastic soundtrack; can someone please make a remix scored by “Space Oddity”? Or maybe “Major Tom,” in honor of the late, great Gale Boetticher? Click on to watch the descent in all its glory.*

READ FULL STORY »

May 15 2012 06:30 PM ET

Mockingjays: Coming soon to a laboratory near you!

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Hunger Games fans, are you unsatisfied with this ho-hum world full of naturally occurring animals? Well, never fear! According to a New York Times article, the books’ symbolic mockingjay — the Capitol-flouting hybrid of a mockingbird and the fictional jabberjay spy bird — isn’t inconceivable. “The tools needed to modify organisms are already widely dispersed in industry and beyond. Do-it-yourself biology is growing,” writes James Gorman. He cited Freeman Dyson of the Princeton-based Institute for Advanced Study (former home to Albert Einstein), who “envisioned the tools of biotechnology spreading to everyone, including pet breeders and children, and leading to ‘an explosion of diversity of new living creatures.’”

The chance to hear the mockingjay’s rebel song got us thinking: What other fictional animals would we like to see made real? Read on for a few of our ideas, then share your own. READ FULL STORY »

Apr 2 2012 09:31 PM ET

PopWatch Confessional: What obscure movie errors have driven you to distraction?

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It’s happened to all of us: You’re happily coasting along watching a movie you’re thoroughly enjoying, when up pops a glaring error that zaps you out of the movie and has you fuming to your friends as you exit the theater. At which point, you realize you were the only person to notice this so-called “error,” and all your friends think you’re a crank who totally missed the point of the movie and wish you would just shut up about it already.

The difference between you and Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is that the famed astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York was actually able to do something about it. Upon seeing Titanic in the theater, Dr. Tyson became incensed after Kate Winslet, delirious and nearly frozen in the black Atlantic Ocean, looked up at the night sky and saw the wrong set of stars for that specific time and place. Apparently, astrophysicists can tell you exactly what the night sky looked like in the North Atlantic in the wee hours of April 15, 1912, and that’s exactly what Dr. Tyson did. He sent a letter to James Cameron. Five years later, he cornered Cameron at an event and lodged his complaint once more. A few years after that, he brought it up again at an intimate dinner party with Cameron. And now, this Wednesday, Titanic will be hitting theaters in 3-D, with no other alterations to the film except that now, Rose Dawson will be looking up at the same stars those doomed Titanic passengers saw that fateful night. (You can watch Tyson recount his entire story here.)

This is such a specific complaint, it got me thinking: What nagging movie goofs only seem to bother me? READ FULL STORY »

Mar 19 2012 08:11 PM ET

Ashton Kutcher is headed to space! Somewhere, Lance Bass is crying.

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Ashton-Kutcher

Image Credit: Monty Brinton/CBS

Ground control to David Bowie — now we’re dealing with a real space oddity: Sir Richard Branson announced via his website on Monday that Ashton Kutcher had become the 500th “astronaut” to reserve space on his Virgin Galactic spacecraft, which will blast off… soon. The exact date has not yet been set. SpaceShipTwo is still in the midst of free-glide flight tests, giving us plenty of time to speculate on what AshtonStar Galactica will actually be like.

Now, keep in mind, Kutcher won’t be the only celebrity on board. Stephen Hawking will also be taking the suborbital tour, which will launch Kutcher and co. 50,000 feet into space, giving them a full zero-gravity experience and a dazzling view of Earth that most of us plebs only marginally experience at IMAX theatres, or EPCOT. The price tag for this madcap adventure? $200,000. A pretty hefty sum for those of us in the 99%, but a total steal for Lance Bass, who just couldn’t cough up the $20 million he needed to fly to the international space station back when boy bands still mattered. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 15 2012 05:58 PM ET

Speaking of golden globes, horse fly with shiny butt gets named after Beyonce

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Image Credit: Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com

Let’s pretend for a quick, brilliant moment that you’re Beyonce. You’ve just given birth to your first child, who’s already breaking Billboard records and has the acceptably eccentric celebribaby name of Blue Ivy — so you’ve got that going for you. But you’re also in the middle of a bad-PR mini-scandal involving the hospital’s handling of the security surrounding the delivery of said infant, threatening to tarnish even a smidge what should be a blessed, beautiful event.

And then someone names a horse fly after you.

Specifically, Scaptia (Plinthina) beyonceae, a rare fly native to Australia, that has been so christened because its hind quarters are filled with dense, gold hairs. That may make the insect sound visually appealing, but, well, it’s not:  READ FULL STORY »

Dec 28 2011 01:46 PM ET

Snooki, Michele Bachmann top 'Bad Science List'

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Image Credit: MTV

The Sense About Science (SAS) campaign has named Jersey Shore doctor of grain liquor Snooki and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann as two of 2011′s worst offenders of Bad Science. Bachmann went on TV to tell a story of a Tampa woman who claimed her daughter had become “mentally retarded” from an HPV vaccine, and Snooki — well, Snooki’s sort of a science experiment gone wrong in so many (and some delightful) ways that I’d like to give her scientific claim its own paragraph. Let it breathe a little, like seamen amidst a gust of sea air.

“I don’t really like the beach. I hate sharks, and the water’s all whale sperm. That’s why the ocean’s salty.”

The untethered inclusion of “I hate sharks” in there is almost poetic. Think about it for a few seconds. NO, I’m just kidding, don’t hurt yourselves. READ FULL STORY »

Nov 24 2011 09:00 AM ET

Punkin Chunkin 2011: Rooting for Team Chunk Norris, obviously

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It’s Thanksgiving, which means the return of Punkin Chunkin, the annual event that finds backyard “engi-nerds” building homemade contraptions to see who can hurl a pumpkin across a cornfield the farthest. MythBusters‘ Kari Byron, Grant Imahara, and Tory Belleci host this year’s TV special, airing tonight at 8 p.m. ET on both Discovery and SCIENCE. If the first time you heard of this kind of competition was on last night’s Modern Family, know that the real event is in its 26th year.

We endorse rookie catapulters Team Chunk Norris, if not for their name, then for the proud father who walks around wearing chain mail, carrying a sword, and saying things like, “$200,000 worth of engineering degrees, and this is what they do” and “I shall slay them if they lose.” Meet the team in the clip below. READ FULL STORY »

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