Dropping A Water Balloon At 3000 feet per second!

There is something about high-speed photography that always gets to me. You don’t really learn all that much from watching this film clip… but it sure is interesting and, more importantly, fun! Footscray City College Science Students use the Photron high-speed camera to shoot balloons at 3000 frames per second. I don’t know about you [...]

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Gaseous Emissions from Dinosaurs May Have Warmed Prehistoric Earth

Dino Farts Contributed to Mesozoic Global Warming? That’s the thought that flitted through my mind when I saw the headline… Gaseous Emissions from Dinosaurs May Have Warmed Prehistoric Earth As a Vampyre Fangs blog article disclosed a short time ago, this staggering information comes hot on the heels of another theory implicating (albeit with the [...]

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Where Is The Center of the Universe?

In the beginning, the universe was a single point. But where was that point exactly? What was its location? As explained in an article in the FYI section of PopSci.com, it was, and still is… everywhere. In other words, no matter where you are in the universe, you’re at the centre! [1] It’s answers like [...]

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When Blood-Sucking Mega-Fleas Stalked the Earth!

The giant dinosaurs that roamed the world some 150 million years ago shared the planet with equally daunting parasites: blood-gobbling fleas that were up two centimetres long. This according to a recent article in Nature, the international weekly journal of science. (Long, serrated piercing tubes and grasping claws suggest adaptation to feed on hairy animals or feathered [...]

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Dust Devils on Mars!

Dust devils occur on Earth as well as on Mars. They are spinning columns of air, made visible by the dust they pull off the ground. Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day when the ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground. As heated [...]

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The Most Astounding Fact (Neil DeGrasse Tyson)

Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” This is his answer. Truly inspiring. __________________________________________________________ Today, Friday April 6, at sundown is the beginning of Passover. It is by far my favourite holiday. I will be [...]

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Plants mimic scent of pollinating beetles

How about this for sneaky-boots behaviour!? Plants mimic scent of pollinating beetles This conclusion, reported both in ScienceDaily.com and PhysOrg.com, really caught my eye. How could a flower pull a fast one on an insect? It is a generally accepted belief that the colour and scent of flowers and their perception by pollinator insects evolved [...]

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Sex-starved fruit flies driven to drink more alcohol!

Let’s file this under the “Yew jus’ cain’t make this $#!t up!” category, shall we? Apparently… and I am NOT making this stuff up… sexually deprived male fruit flies exhibit a pattern of behavior that seems ripped from the pages of modern man’s ‘That’s the Story of My Life!’ When female fruit flies reject their [...]

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Ring Around the Moon

Earlier this month (February 7, to be exact), was the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat. Like some other Jewish holidays, it occurs on a full moon. But unlike Purim (the following full moon), Passover (the next full moon after that) or Succot (either a Harvest Moon or Hunter Moon), the Tu B’Shevat full moon happens [...]

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Bees Use Sign Language to Give Hornets the Finger!

We all know that bees do the most amazing things. They set up intricate societies. They wage war on other bee colonies. They clear their beehives of debris and dead bee bodies. But perhaps one of their most famous talents is the ability to communicate with other bees by means of a ‘wiggle dance’ by [...]

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