This idea dates back to the Russians in the early 1970s. The surface of Venus is far too hot, and the atmosphere too dense, for Earth life. However, our air is a lifting gas on Venus with about half…

The near-infrared vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given us a new view deep inside the Tarantula Nebula - and its more than 800,000 stars and protostars within. Also known as 30 Doradus,…

Bearing in mind that the word ‘ovoid’ means ‘egg-shaped’, the question : ‘Why are eggs ovoid?’ has much in common with questions like or ‘Why are hearts heart-shaped?’ or ‘Why are sausages sausage-…

I will try to keep my Newtonian wig on. Digressions will be in well-defined sidebars. Time to serve the meat and potatoes. The Action for the Newtonian Gravitational Field Two things go into this…

In the comments section of my previous article I demonstrated an optical Theremin. This article is the build for that circuit. The circuit and circuits that are similar to it in function have also…

Everyone has seen what athletes do after a victory - footballers may take their shirts off and slide on their knees, baseball hitters may pump their fists.  That instinctive reaction that occurs…

This idea dates back to the Russians in the 1970s. The surface of Venus is far too hot, and the atmosphere too dense, for Earth life. However, our air is a lifting gas on Venus, with about half the…

Marine cyanobacteria are tiny ocean plants that produce oxygen and make organic carbon using sunlight and CO2, and so they are primary engines of Earth's biogeochemical and nutrient cycles. They…

The Battle of Raphia occurred in 217 BC near modern Rafah during the Syrian Wars. It was documented by Polybius and the orders of battles listed tens of thousands of foot soldiers, thousands of…

The Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories is moving us toward a fusion future by stepping into the past - in this case using a 19th century device called a Helmholz coil, which is a pair of…

The 14 year old kid in the picture on the right was named Aitzaz Hasan Bangash. His name is a difficult one to remember for westerners, but that is a pity, because he ended his life as a true hero.…

Type 2 diabetes, which is blamed for over three million deaths each year, is on the increase and various food pundits and politicians say they can cure it if people would just ban trans fats or…

Culturally, it's discussed that being a man in the Western world is going out of fashion. People are instead supposed to be homogenized into some sort of gender-neutral swirl of beliefs and actions,…

Because caffeine is a mild diuretic, there is a common assumption that caffeinated beverages, such as coffee, also have this effect. The problem is that a kernel of scientific knowledge can be…

With increased regulations on pharmaceutical companies, billion-dollar research that will fail 95 percent of the time and a short window to sell successful products before genetic versions and…

The Fleckvieh is a breed of cattle that originated in the Alpine region and is now found on every continent, with an estimated worldwide population of around 40 million. Legacy genetic optimization,…

America is back at mid-1990s levels of carbon dioxide emissions. Some of that is due to the ongoing recession, of course, but a large chunk is due to the switch from the dirty coal plants that…

A new study may have a solution for both acid mine drainage and natural radioactivity in hydraulic fracturing – fracking –   wastewater that can be found in 'flowback fluid.' In…

If you donate money to Greenpeace and get a tax deduction, is your act less moral? Indeed it is, at least in the perception of other people, according to a new psychology paper on the "tainted-…

Messier 83, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, is one of the largest and closest barred spiral galaxies to us.  At 15 million light-years away, it is one of the most conspicuous galaxies of its type…