According to the 1950s, we should have jet packs and flying cars by now. Another lost transportation method from yesteryear: jet shoes. In the 1960s, NASA engineers built jet shoes for astronauts, which, in the revised history of everyone’s dreams, could have eventually trickled down to a consumer version.
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Jet shoes emerged because engineers and mission planners really didn’t know what kinds of challenges astronauts would be facing in on spacewalks. They just knew ...read more
A soft robotic device powered by popcorn, constructed by researchers in Cornell’s Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab. (Credit: Cornell University)
Robots have always been cool and futuristic. Since we live in such ultra-modern times we’re seeing more and more of them, whether it’s to clean our floors, drive our cars or even give us extra limbs. But usually the focus is on what robots can now do, and less on what actually powers their abilities.
Not today: A team of Cornell ...read more
(Credit: Ivan Marjanovic/Shutterstock)
If the quintessential ecological battle cry of the seventies was “Save The Whales,” today it is “Save The Bees.” From news headlines to environmental campaigns to alarming documentaries, we’re warned that if the bees go extinct, we’ll go with them.
It makes sense — about 75 percent of crops are reliant on animal pollinators, which are often honeybees. Without them, the theory goes, we’d not only lose $212 bi ...read more
(Credit: Hayk_Shalunts/shutterstock)
Zebra finch males sing just one song their entire lives. It’s a tune to woo females and keep away other males. Now scientists find they may have a way to reconstruct the songs these birds sing in their dreams.
Birds sing by using muscles to vibrate air. Prior work suggested that each of the different muscles that play a part in bird song just controlled one acoustic feature of singing. However, recent work hinted that each muscle could play more ...read more
(Credit: Neil Bromhall/Shutterstock)
In colonies of naked mole rats—wrinkly, pink-skinned rodents with oversized front teeth that live in extensive underground tunnel systems—one special couple gets to reproduce, creating the entire next generation for the colony.
For most mammals, breeding comes at a heavy cost — reproduction shortens lifespans. But for naked mole rats, procreating appears to slow aging, the exact opposite of whatâ ...read more
The view of the main plaza at Tikal. (Credit: WitR/Shutterstock)
Though today it is a wilderness, in the time of the Maya, the Central American lowlands they called home would have looked far different. Where emerald jungle canopies roll for miles on end, cities, roads, reservoirs and terraced fields would have covered the hilly landscape in southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.
Millions of people called this land home, members of a loose alliance of interconnected city-states. The Maya devel ...read more
Prepare to be smashed. (Credit: Roy L. Caldwell, Department of Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley)
A version of this article originally appeared on The Conversation.
When you think about fearsome predators in the ocean, the first thing that pops into your mind is probably a shark. Sure, sharks are OK, with their sleek, menacing shape and their gaping jaws with rows of jagged teeth. But if you were a fish living on a coral reef or cruising along the shore over the sands of a tropical island, you ...read more
Astronomers have long theorized that newly formed stars can occasionally consume their planets, but until now, they have never observed such a feeding frenzy. This artist’s concept illustrates the destruction of a young planet around a star, which can knock material directly into the star itself.(Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss)
Astronomers generally agree that planets form out of the massive disks of leftover debris that surround most newborn stars. As these disks of gas and dust ...read more
Indonesia’s Flores Island, once home to diminutive Homo floresiensis (skull cast shown above), also has modern pygmy populations. Researchers sequenced DNA from some of the individuals to determine if they might be descended from the archaic “hobbit.� (Credit: Australian Museum)
From the home of the “hobbit� (and I’m not talking about The Shire): Researchers have sequenc ...read more
This spectacular impact crater on Mars, imaged by HiRISE on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, spans 100 feet (30 meters) and shows a clear system of rays in enhanced color.(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)
Fiery chunks of rock are constantly bombarding the planetary bodies of our solar system, leaving behind long-lasting scars. These gouges, in the form of craters, can be used to learn about the history of our little nook in the vast universe, prompting scientists to feverishly study ...read more
