The largest eruption in the past million years was at Toba in Indonesia. How big was it? It erupted over 3000 cubic kilometers of volcanic debris. 3000 cubic kilometers! That would pave the entirety of Rhode Island in a kilometer keep of ash, rocks, and pumice. It would take roughly 300 Pinatubo-scale eruptions to match that. The eruption itself created a caldera formed when the land collapsed when all that material erupted that spans 100 kilometers from end to end and 30 kilometers fr ...read more
Most plants are sneaky. You think they're staying put, until one morning when you wake up to find your houseplant bent toward the window, or a vine that's clambered up your fence. But other plants operate more quickly. They close up their leaves at a touch, or fling their pollen onto a bee. Researchers discovered a previously unknown bit of plant acrobatics in Costa Rica. There, a flower works like a jack-in-the-box to shove its stamens into a hummingbird's face.
Dust ...read more
A brief letter in Nature got me thinking this week: Don’t belittle junior researchers in meetings
Anand Kumar Sharma writes to urge scientists not to grill their junior colleagues at conferences:
The most interesting part of a scientific seminar, colloquium or conference for me is the question and answer session. However, I find it upsetting to witness the unnecessarily hard time that is increasingly given to junior presenters at such meetings. As inquisitive scientists, we do not ha ...read more
We're about a month away from the 60th annual rattlesnake roundup in Sweetwater Texas. The event proudly calls itself the world's largest—and for good reason. Last year, nearly 8,000 lbs of snakes were killed in this barbaric slaughterfest. But there are so many reasons why this all-out assault on Texas' reptiles is a terrible idea. Rattlesnakes have complex social lives, can live for decades, and are essential to their native ecosystems. As predators, they help keep po ...read more
Image: Flickr/Tax Credits
Urban legend has it that “all” of our paper currency is tainted with cocaine. These scientists decided to test whether this is true, and if so, how much of the drug is there. By testing over four thousand bills of various denominations gathered from 90 locations over more than a decade, they estimate that the “average” bill carries only 2.34 ng of cocaine (a tiny, tiny amount), but any given bill has ~15% chance of having more than 20 ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine