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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Bacteria that Commit Honourable Suicide

How can any samurai, kosher or otherwise, NOT be attracted by this title? The Bacteria that Commit Honourable Suicide Bio-cell seppuku. Kamikaze microbes. Organically pre-programmed harikiri. You got to love it. OK, kids, it goes something like this… In multicellular organisms (like us) it is essential that every cell behaves and does the job it [...]

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Dogs may have helped Humans beat the Neanderthals

Dogs may have helped Humans beat the Neanderthals One of the most compelling – and enduring – mysteries in archaeology concerns the rise of early humans and the decline of Neanderthals. For about 250,000 years, Neanderthals lived and evolved, quite successfully, in the area that is now Europe. Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, [...]

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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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Hubble’s Greatest Snapshots!

On April 24, 1990, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was launched into space. In the 22 years since, it has sent back over a million observations. Here are just some of Hubble’s greatest images, year by year, courtesy of those wonderful space geeks at HubbleCast. ___________________________________________________________ Articles about ASTRONOMY: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=astronomy (Speaking of milestones, my friendly neighbourhood blog [...]

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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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