Pristimantis attenboroughi (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Sir David Frederick Attenborough, OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FLS, FZS, FSA, is the best. That sounds like an opinion, but it’s pretty much objective fact at this point. The British broadcaster and naturalist has been narrating the wonders of the natural world for over 50 years now, traveling to almost every country on Earth to do so.
His crowning achievement is a massive documentary series known si ...read more
In a recent Washington Post opinion piece, actor and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda called on Congress to bring lasting relief and recovery to Puerto Rico where thousands remain without electricity or access to clean water nearly three months after Hurricane Maria made landfall.
In the interim, the Rincón chapter of the Surfrider Foundation’s Blue Water Task Force (BWTF) has stepped up its efforts to help communities undertake their own water quality testing and identify places ...read more
Jürgen Vogel is Ötzi the Iceman. (Credit: Port au Prince 24/Bilder)
From a block of ice to the silver screen; Ötzi the Iceman, an archaeological star, is getting his own feature film.
From German director Felix Randau, the movie is a fictionalized account of Ötzi’s life and eventual death at the hands of an unknown archer in the Alps. Though the story is mostly fictional, the clothing, props and setting were all recreated with the help of researchers fr ...read more
This painting (circa 1836) titled “Destruction” is one painting depicting in a five part series by Thomas Cole called “The Course of an Empire.” (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
At some time or another, every historian of Rome has been asked to say where we are, today, on Rome’s cycle of decline. Historians might squirm at such attempts to use the past but, even if history does not repeat itself, nor come packaged into moral lessons, it can deepen our sense of what it ...read more
This image shows Cassini’s last two orbital phases. The ring-grazing orbits are shown in gray (far left), while the Grand Finale orbits — during which Cassini’s collected unprecedented measurements of Saturn’s ionosphere — are shown in blue. The orange line shows Cassini’s final plunge into Saturn on September 15, 2017. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
In April of this year, NASA nudged the Cassini spacecraft into an orbit that took it through a narrow gap between ...read more
Poor fella. (Credit: Dmitry A/Shutterstock)
Scientists aren’t always considered to be the most festive group of people. But The British Medical Journal does its part to celebrate the spirit of the holidays with its annual Christmas issue.
Once a year, the journal opens submissions for studies with a slightly lighter tone, but just as much science. The key to inclusion in the Christmas issue is originality and clever ideas — not bad science. “While we welcome light-h ...read more
Apollo 11 leaving the Earth. NASA.
Within 10 minutes of a Saturn V launch, the first two stages had fallen away as the spacecraft settled into Earth orbit. Within another 10 minutes, both stages had crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. They weren’t recovered for reuse; their jobs were done before the half hour mark on any lunar flight. But the third stage of the Saturn V lived on, following crews all the way to the Moon. Once there is was also left to crash, but this time it was sma ...read more
What is this, a “Euthanasia Coaster” for ants? (Credit: Julijonas Urbonas)
I have a friend who loves roller coasters. He once told me, a fellow coaster-head, “You ever get the feeling that most people say they like roller coasters, but then when they’re in a park they just ride one or two of them and call it a day?” I nodded in the shared sentiment.
All of that said, there’s at least one roller coaster that I, or my friend, am not interested in trying out: t ...read more
(Credit: YouTube/Adam Fish)
The eruption of the Agung volcano in Bali, Indonesia has been devastating, particularly for the 55,000 local people who have had to leave their homes and move into shelters. It has also played havoc with the flights in and out of the island, leaving people stranded while the experts try to work out what the volcano will do next.
But this has been a fascinating time for scholars like me who investigate the use of drones in social justice, environmental activism and cr ...read more
