Science

817 articles on Science

• Spanish Beach Portraits Study Families as Tiny Tribes
  Sitting there in the sand, mostly naked, with chairs, towels and belongings delineating territory, beach goers tend to form small fiefdoms with their friends and families. It's a phenomenon that Spanish photographer Lucia Herrero has exploited in her excellent portrait series, appropriately titled, Tribes.
  11.02.12

• Mattel Goes to Mars With Its 2012 Collection
  This weekend my boys and I happened through the toy aisles where I spotted this amazing little gem, just sitting on a shelf. Mattel has cast a die model of the awe-inspiring NASA Mars Curiosity rover. These little rovers are likely going to be extremely collectible and won't be in stores long.
  11.01.12

• Kid Uses D&D; to Advance Science
  Here at GeekDad, these sorts of stories make our hearts sing. Boy (in this case, then 12), chats with Dad (a scientist) about one of Dad's scientific conundrums. To solve the problem, the kid draws on his monstrous knowledge of, yes, Dungeons & Dragons, and the Monster Manual in particular, to solve it.
  11.01.12

• Curiosity Rover Takes Best Self-Portrait Ever
  NASA's Curiosity rover has been sitting tight on the Martian sand doing a few sciences for nearly a month now. But it recently took some time out for a vanity shot, producing this adorable self-portrait (click for a larger version).
  10.31.12

• SpaceX Completes First Delivery Trip to Space Station, Proves US Space Industry Is Still Alive
  This week SpaceX became the first US commercial company to deliver cargo to ISS and became the world's leader in returning cargo back to Earth from space.
  10.30.12

• What Is Daylight-Saving Time?
  Oh sure, you know what Daylight Saving Time is, but do you really know what is going on? There is some interesting physics here.
  10.30.12

• NASA Preps Drone Hurricane Hunters, But Misses Sandy
  Hurricane Sandy is now slamming onto the eastern seaboard and is expected to create widespread damage, flooding and potential loss of life across more than a dozen states. But at NASA, researchers are developing a pair of experimental unmanned drones to track future storms in the hope of being better prepared for when they strike.
  10.30.12

• For Sale: Laptop With First Presidential E-Mail (to John Glenn in Orbit)
  A 14-year-old Toshiba laptop that supposedly contains the first ever presidential email is up for sale on eBay. The "buy it now" price is a cool $125,000, but it does come with a fair amount of documentation, including letters signed by former President Bill Clinton and former astronaut and Senator John Glenn, the recipient of the first presidential email.
  10.29.12

• Nissan Taps NASA Research to Develop the Perfect Seat
  In the ongoing battle to keep drivers from getting sleepy, Nissan has debuted ¿fatigue-free seats¿ which keep muscles relaxed and decrease the stresses drivers experience during long drives.
  10.29.12

• SpaceX Dragon Splashes Down With Cargo, Including ... Frozen Blood?
  SpaceX successfully completed its second mission to the International Space Station on Sunday when the Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific with more than 1,600 pounds of cargo.
  10.29.12

• NASA Building Deep-Space Habitat From Spare ISS Parts
  Deep-space engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Texas are putting together a prototype of a deep space station from scrap parts of the ISS.
  10.27.12

• Pure Space Shuttle Porn (Without the Cheesy Soundtrack)
  Finally. A beautiful video of some amazing airplanes ¿ all shot air-to-air ¿ and mercifully devoid of a cheesy soundtrack or lame commentary. Just a camera, a pair of NASA F-18s, the agency's 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and the orbiter Endeavor.
  10.26.12

• Most Spectacular Shots From 50 Years of Robotic Solar System Exploration
  Some people complain that the age of exploration is over. But for the past 50 years we have made it our mission to explore far and wide in the solar system, sending robotic probes to every nook and cranny we can find.
  10.26.12

• Dinosaurs Sprouted Wings Earlier Than Thought
  Dinosaurs still walk¿and fly¿among us: We call them birds. Most paleontologists think birds descended from a group of winged dinosaurs, and thus dinos never went completely extinct. But where did the wings come from? New discoveries from Canada suggest that both wings and feathers arose earlier in dinosaur evolution than previously thought, possibly to attract members of the opposite sex or to protect hatching baby dinos.
  10.26.12

• NASA Testing a Space Capsule/Helicopter Hybrid
  NASA engineers are testing out a new version of an old idea: Fitting rotary wings to a space capsule for a helicopter-like reentry method.
  10.25.12

• Sleepy Students More Likely to Get Hurt on the Field
  Teen athletes who get more than eight hours of shut-eye each night are 68 percent less likely to be injured than those who sleep less, according to research presented this week at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference.
  10.25.12

• Storyboard: David Quammen on the World's Most Dangerous Diseases
  What do HIV, Ebola and SARS have in common? For one, they have terrifying fatality rates. But more importantly, they are all zoonotic diseases, meaning they jumped from animals to humans. [HTML1] We've been dealing with zoonoses since the dawn of humanity -- think of our old friend rabies -- but the threat seems to be getting worse. ...
  10.24.12

• View From the Bottom of the World: A GeekDad Goes to Antarctica (Gallery)
  GeekDad contributor Brian McLaughlin is taking a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Antarctica as part of his work with NASA, and is sharing it with us via pictures. You can also follow Brian's exploits on his Facebook page.
  10.24.12

• Raw Food Not Enough to Feed Big Brains
  Eating a raw food diet is a recipe for disaster if you're trying to boost your species' brainpower. That's because humans would have to spend more than 9 hours a day eating to get enough energy from unprocessed raw food alone to support our large brains, according to a new study that calculates the energetic costs of growing a bigger brain or body in primates.
  10.23.12

• The Weekly, Geekly Rewind - October 23, 2012
  Links from near and far in the geekosphere. Perfect for that afternoon break.
  10.23.12

• Blue Origin Successfully Tests Crew Capsule Escape Rocket
  Blue Origin has hit its second milestone in as many weeks after the successful test of its crew escape system.
  10.23.12

• Navy's Top Geek Says Laser Arsenal Is Just Two Years Away
  Never mind looming defense cuts or residual technical challenges. The Navy's chief futurist is pushing up the anticipated date for when sailors can expect to use laser weapons on the decks of their ships, and raising expectations for robotic submarines. In an interview with Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, the head of Naval research, the Navy's laser arsenal should come aboard in 2014.
  10.22.12

• Elon Musk's Mission to Mars
  Wired magazine's editor-in-chief Chris Anderson interviews SpaceX's Elon Musk about the possibilities of putting humans on Mars.
  10.21.12

• Big, Smart and Green: A Revolutionary Vision for Modern Farming
  What they're doing on Marsden Farm isn't organic. It's not industrial, either. It's a hybrid of the two, an alternative version of agriculture for the 21st century: Smart, green and powerful. If the approach works at commercial scales, and there's good reason to think it will, it might just be an answer to modern farming's considerable problems.
  10.19.12

• Drug-Resistant Superbugs Found in Wild Animals
  One of the most notorious and hard-to-treat bacteria in humans has been found in wildlife, according to a new study in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases. The researchers isolated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in two rabbits and a shorebird. Wild animals may act as an environmental reservoir for the disease from which humans could get infected.
  10.19.12

• The Wired Guide to the Ultimate High-Tech DIY Haunted House
  Without a doubt, Halloween haunted houses are the ultimate holiday project. Wired Design sat down with the masterminds behind New York City's nightmare fright fest, Killers, to get pointers on how to assemble the perfect house of terror, and came away so inspired by their tips that we rounded up eight additional tech-filled DIY projects to help freak people out.
  10.19.12

• Curiosity Rover Finds More Strange, Bright Objects in Martian Soil
  NASA¿s Curiosity rover took three scoops from a small Martian sand dune and found several bright particles in the soil. Scientists think these are unrelated to the odd bright object that Curiosity saw last week, which turned out to be plastic that fell from the probe, and are probably indigenous Martian mineral flecks.
  10.18.12