Fission, Fusion, Hot and Cold It’s always a great episode when we get to open with a clip from Back to the Future. In the final scene from the 1985 film, Christopher Lloyd’s Doc Brown arrives from 2015 to take Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker back to the future. As he attempts to wrangle the surprised […]
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Do Fish Drink Water? What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? –The Bridgekeeper Life, as we currently understand it, depends on water. Perhaps, somewhere in the universe, a form exists that does not require the liquid; but, on our pale, blue orb, anything alive needs dihydrogen monoxide to survive. You and I
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Gravity Hills If you’ve ever taken an extended, curvy driving tour through mountainous, rural America – Hatfield and McCoy country or deeply forested Oregon, perhaps – you might have encountered a sign much like this one: Mystery Hill in Blowing Rock, North Carolina Known as gravity hills, mystery hills, magnetic hills, mystery spots, and a slew of other catchy
It’s All Mustard Today, we connotatively view mustard as a yellow condiment we might slather on sandwiches. It’s easy to forget that delicious spread comes from the seeds of plants known as mustards. In the grand genealogical tree, mustard plants fall into the Brassicaceae family. This demarcation not only includes mustards but also cabbages
Shinrin-yoku The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. — John Muir Many of us inherently sense the benefits of the woods. A few of our patron thinkers – Thoreau and Muir, amongst others – tied their lives to the notion that humans should not be separated from the wilderness. For
Petrichor Today’s topic sits at the center of the Venn diagram comprised of “fascinating science,” “fun vocabulary,” and “fantastic aromas.” This trio might rest near the top of the rankings for possible The Mountains Are Calling Venn diagrams. Some scents occupy unique positions in our experiences and memories. We all have things we enjoy smelling, but most
They Can Talk When we think of animals and speech, the paragon is the bird. Our avian friends are the only other creature on the planet that can produce human speech. Though they cannot currently ape human vocalizations, gorillas and chimpanzees can employ sign language. Despite the fact that we can intuit how many species feel
Necrobotic Grippers Perhaps no other topic to date better fits the dual classification of “science” and “horror” better than today’s case. If you’re like us, you’ve never before encountered the term “necrobotic.” You’re not behind the curve; this phrase is a neologism. The prefix “necro” is from the Latin for “death, corpse, or dead tissue.”
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Chronostasis To the younger readers out there, the following statement may shock you: in the Dark Ages, clocks were not on phones and their faces contained things other than numbers. Timepieces were, bizarrely, not digital at all. For the vast majority of the existence of clocks, they were mechanical creations of analog wonder. Clocks
Sand Batteries Renewable energies – mainly solar and wind – are the future. They undoubtedly make sense, too. Not only will they arrive on an unlimited time scale, but they are safe to harness and free, beyond the initial infrastructure and sporadic upkeep. With current technology and usage, a solar panel the size of Nevada