A23a & Taylor Columns In 1986, a gargantuan ice chunk calved from the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The size of this iceberg – creatively dubbed A23a – is hard to comprehend. It was so big that, after it separated, it did not move. Estimated to be more than 1,100 feet tall and weighing nearly a trillion […]
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Red Adair, the Munroe Effect, & the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter On 20 February 1962, John Glenn became the third American to visit space, as Friendship 7 left Earth. When the craft successfully orbited our planet, Glenn was the first American to circle Earth above the atmosphere. He orbited three times during the nearly five-hour mission, giving Glenn
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Retention & Detention Small, artificial ponds have gained ubiquity in modern developments, such as neighborhoods and commercial centers. The body might have a fountain in the center, and a gaggle of annoying geese might chill there. They often feature an unnatural quality – geometry too straight or incongruous with the surroundings. Despite sticking out to
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Immortal Jellyfish One of the many features of video and computer games is the save or restart button. Make a mistake, fall down an abyss, lose a battle, and you can go anew at a previous game state. The real world doesn’t yet work that way for animate beings. Unless you’re one of a few
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Etna Vortex Rings One of the planet’s most famous and active volcanos sits on the island of Sicily, where the African and Eurasian Plates converge. Mt. Etna currently rises 11,014 feet (3,357 meters) above the Ionian Sea. It gains this altitude in under 12 miles from the water! The word “currently” must reside in the
Fibonacci, Da Vinci, and a Tree Walk into a Bar written by Deborah S. And Da Vinci said, “Hey, Tree, it looks like the cross-sections of your branches sum to the cross-section of the trunk!” Then Fibonacci said, “Hey, that sounds familiar…” The tree reacted, “Well, of course, it’s not like I want my branches
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The Golden Ratio and Leaves written by Deborah S. In our previous article, we learned about the Fibonacci Sequence. Today, let’s discuss another mathematical concept that is lesser known, yet also intricately linked: the Golden Ratio. Just as you may have heard of π (pi), which is equal to 3.14159…, and perhaps another constant, e, which
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Fibonacci and Trees written by Deborah S. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144… You may recognize the numbers above as the famous Fibonacci Sequence. Developed by Leonardo Bonacci – that’s right, his name is not Fibonacci; Fibonacci is short for filius Bonacci, which means “son of Bonacci,” and was applied by historians to distinguish this
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Eclipse Glasses In North America, we’re on the precipice of a total solar eclipse. On 8 April 2024, a swath of the continent, from Mexico, through the heart of the United States, and a small part of Canada, will experience one of the natural world’s great expositions. In some places, for up to four minutes,
Hubble Tension Our current cosmological history begins with the Big Bang. The model suggests that if one could go back far enough in time, the discernible universe would be packed into a highly dense and hot quantum, which then exploded into the dynamo reality we experience today. First proposed by Catholic priest and physicist Georges Lemaître,