We’re mostly empty space. Don’t believe me? Check out this online scale model of a hydrogen atom. The big blue ball is 1,000 pixels across. It’s a proton. The one-pixel spot is the atom’s electron. In between? 50 million pixels, or, at 72 pixels per inch on the average monitor, about 11 miles of nothing. …
Giving sight (well, almost) to the blind.
They’re called Nix and Hydra. But if astronomers decide Pluto isn’t a planet, can it still have moons? Or do they all become just “trans-Neptunian objects”? Inquiring minds want to know…
Thirty years ago this month, I graduated from high school at Western Christian College, then in Weyburn. And here I am delivering my valedictory speech (an extended riff on our class motto, “Climb Every Mountain”–why yes, the school had staged The Sound of Music that year, how did you guess?) at the graduation ceremony on …
…or at least peoplecicles…looks a bit more likely.
This sounds promising: “Georgia Tech researchers have created a new combustor (combustion chamber where fuel is burned to power an engine or gas turbine) designed to burn fuel in a wide range of devices – with next to no emission of nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO), two of the primary causes of air …
Humans have always enhanced their senses with technology. We can’t hear as well as cats, or see as well as hawks, but with parabolic microphones and binoculars, we make up for it. One sense has lagged in technological enhancement: smell. In the mammalian nose, smelling takes place in tissue called the olfactory epithelium. We have …
Robert J. Sawyer has an op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen in response to Stephen Hawking’s call for space colonization, a call, you’ll recall (is that one too many calls?) that I agreed with. We need to move into space to protect our species from the threats that could extinguish us as long as we’re confined …
It’s intended for medical wear, but this virus-proof fabric–impervious to HIV, H5N1, and other scary letter/number combinations–could be something everyone will someday want in their closet, if the long-feared influenza pandemic arrives.
More photos here.
…as if we didn’t already have enough cranks on the radio, like (insert your favorite right- or left-wing blowhard or annoying morning show host here), here comes another one. Albeit one of more practical use.
