He believes this is more than a trivial distinction. Our clothing has as much as 20 square feet of external surface area, touching nearly every part of the body. That means a piezoelectric textile could potentially hear our surroundings, sense our movements and monitor internal organs, such as our heart and lungs, with unprecedented fidelity. It could also generate energy as we walk.
And piezoelectricity is only one of many electronic capacities Fink’s lab is systematically mastering. Mich ...read more
The longest sea route possible. Confused as to why it’s curved? Check this out. (Credit: B. Chabukswar et al)
When your reddit debate spurs a scientific paper, you know it’s a good one. Back in 2012, reddit user kepleronlyknows posted a map to the r/MapPorn subreddit purporting to show the longest straight line you could sail around the planet without encountering land.
It ran from Pakistan to Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, barely scraping by the east coast of Africa and tunne ...read more
A tequila farmer walks down rows of blue agave planted for harvest. (Credit: T photography/Shutterstock)
In the late 1950s, “Tequila,” The Champs’ most famous song, popularized the spirit beyond Mexico. Just a few years later, margaritas, a classic tequila-based cocktail, were all the rage in American bars. The Rolling Stones even showed their love for the liquor, calling their ‘72 tour “The Cocaine and Tequila Sunrise Tour.”
In the ‘90s, with the spir ...read more
The summit lava lake at Kilauea, seen on April 30, 2018. The lake level had dropped 15 meters over the weekend. USGS/HVO.
We’ve been keeping a close watch on Kilauea over the past couple weeks and now, after weeks of high lava lake levels and inflation, events might be starting to unfold.
Yesterday, the crater floor at Pu’u O’o on the East Rift partially collapsed, suggesting that the lava that was filling in below the crater floor was draining away. This came during a bout of ...read more
Songs of the Humpback Whale was a 1970 album consisting of about 35 minutes of mellow blooping. It was extremely popular. But as a vocal star, the humpback may have unfairly overshadowed another whale—the bowhead. Recordings high in the Arctic have revealed that these animals have a far more extensive repertoire than the humpbacks do.
Researchers lowered microphones into the Fram Strait, a chilly strip of sea east of Greenland, for three years between 2010 and 20 ...read more
Dogs’ lack of fear might explain why they’re so at risk of life-threatening snakebites. Photo Credit: Nantawit Chuchue/Shutterstock
If you feel your stomach flutter uncomfortably at the mere image of a slithering serpent, you’re not alone. It’s thought that snakes make about half of us anxious, and 2-3% of people are Ophidiophobic—that is, they’re deeply afraid of snakes. Such fear is thought to have deep roots; over the course of our evo ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
The Earth’s magnetic field has been declining about 5 percent every 100 years since at least 1840, and possibly even earlier. The dip in strength has spurred worries of an imminent “flip,” a reversal of magnetic polarity that could be catastrophic to our modern technological networks.
But a study released Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences brings some good news. A reversal is not likely in the near future, say Europe ...read more
Disaster Averted
“This has been my dream for almost 30 years,” says Banerdt.
He was in graduate school in the 1970s when NASA’s Viking landers attempted to collect seismic data from Mars, and was even relying on that data to reveal the thickness of Mars’s crust. Unfortunately, Viking’s seismic results weren’t usable—the seismometer wasn’t placed on the surface of the planet, which rendered its data too noisy.
Since then, Banerdt put in more than a ...read more
The mandible of a victim of the Hiroshima bombing. (Credit: Credit: Sergio Mascarenhas (IFSC-USP))
Before dropping the first nuclear bomb ever used in combat, American scientists studied Japan looking for a target that could maximize damage. Hiroshima’s flat, open landscape caught their eye – it offered little topography that could slow the blast. Then weapons engineers dialed in the bomb’s settings – they wouldn’t need much pressure to level the city’s that ...read more
A photo of Thwaites taken during a reconnaissance flight. (Credit: U.S. National Science Foundation)
An elite team gathered in the United Kingdom on Monday to plot their plan of attack in a daring effort to hold off a global catastrophe. No, it isn’t the latest Avengers flick. This group, roughly 100 strong, consists of some of the world’s top polar scientists. And their quarry is an absolutely massive chunk of ice. They’re calling it the Thwaites Invasion.
Of all the glacier ...read more
