Jul 5, 2012

In April an explosion in the sky over the Sierra Nevadas had concerned citizens calling their local authorities about the blast. Turns out it was an exploding Meteor from the Lyrid Meteor showers. The boom was of the sonic variety (sonic boom) but could have just as easily been a steam explosion, much like the giant Tunguska explosion of 1908 over...

Jul 4, 2012

Our oldest extant relative was found in a lake in Norway! Thumbs up for 4 flagella! Doesn’t look like us (single celled), doesn’t smell like us (Norwegian lake scum), but somehow through the magic of evolution, we should be inviting it around to dinner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodictyon

Jun 30, 2012

This is a cool question that doesn’t have an easy or clear answer. I’m thinking it’s related somehow to the same reason the sky is blue, and the origins of rainbows. In physics there is a phenomena called backscattering, when the white light from the sun hits our atmosphere, most of the light comes through pretty easily, except blue...

Jun 26, 2012

Can you measure the human eye with megapixels, and if so how many megapixels is the human eye? Yes and no. There are about 120 million rods (black and white receptors) and about 5 million cones (colour receptors), so the total resolution of your eye would be about 125 megapixels… But you can’t really stop the comparison there, since about 5% of your...