As kids, we all liked to imagine scenes where big dinosaurs squared off against each other for gigantic battles - if you're young, imagination is like a Transformers movie, but without $100 million…

Usain Bolt, sprinter from Jamaica, currently holds the world record in the 100 meter sprint with a time of 9.69 seconds.  Whenever new records are set, people ask 'what is the limit on human…

Uncompressed hydrogen will require a tank the size of a bus to take your car 300 miles but compressed hydrogen can be ... explosive ... unless the materials for storage get a lot better. Engineers in…

As you might imagine, I get a lot of press releases.  As I have said here before, I like getting them because it's difficult for me to know all the good things happening out there, especially if…

Before we consider the issue of health insurance it is useful to examine the basis of insurance, generally, and how revenue is generated within that business model.  The basic premise is that a…

Hitler's gift to astronomy? What? Believe it or not, Hitler wanted to give Mussolini and Rome a planetarium*. Rome was among the first in the world to build a planetarium. Italy (and Mussolini) had…

Until recently, I had only known of Thomas Carlyle as a writer, mightily significant in the 19th century, but somehow superannuated by the time I heard of him.  However, recently I learnt that…

Stabbed by his once most faithful man after many other blows received by the conjurors, Julius Caesar pronounced those words, according to reports, before falling to death. Now, is history repeating…

There's this little company you may have heard of called GE.   Yeah, it's the one Edison started and I don't know where you come down in the whole Westinghouse/Edison fight but one of those guys…

It's easy for Arizona residents to hope for widespread solar power usage - they don't have to think about the thousands of miles of new power lines on land that will be grabbed under eminent domain.…

HD 87643, a member of the exotic class of B[e] stars, is in a very rich field of stars towards the Carina (the Keel) arm of the Milky Way. It recently became part of a set of observations that…

Scientists at Imperial College London have created detailed 3D computer models of two fossilized specimens of ancient creatures called Cryptomartus hindi and Eophrynus prestvicii that lived around…

Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter), is a red supergiant, one of the biggest stars known, and almost 1,000 times larger than our Sun. To put that in…

The world's environment ministers, government officials, diplomats and campaigners are preparing for the biggest poker game of their lives - the COP15 conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. It's…

CO2 reduction targets can be met with affordability. An EPRI report released this week concludes affordability requires a "full portfolio" of electricity sector technologies. Diverse…

Almost everyone seems to be opposed or at least guarded about the government becoming engaged in more services.  There seems to be a general assumption that it will be badly run, or simply bad.…

Big Pharma gets a bad rap, and sometimes deservedly so. After covering the industry for a number of years and working with them (not for them), I know the good, the bad, and the ugly of industry well…

I remember in grade school, as the box of crayons expanded into the hundreds, a cool new color of pink was invented, called Tickle Me Pink – well, probably just the name was invented.…

Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny. 1. Ancient beer is apparently all the rage!   Wired and Switched (Switched wrote about it shortly after Wired but the news…

What's that, you say? Science is coming? I thought it was already here - then what are we talking about on Scientific Blogging? Fear not, befuddled blog readers. For when I speak of science coming to…