Science Feb 28 Shuttle Debris, Explained Viewer question: Was there any comment on the two pieces of debris that came off about 5:48 into the video? (Watch the Discovery launch here). Updated: 4:40 pm EST | By 10:47 am EST Monday morning, astronaut Steven Bowen…
Science Feb 03 Searching for the Source of Phantom Sounds A Georgetown neuroscientist's theory on the origins of tinnitus, the phantom ringing that plagues millions of Americans and countless military veterans.
Science Jan 31 Mars Rover Overbudget, Long-Lasting Dispersants and Dancing Brittle-Stars The Brittle-Stars Danced. The Stingray Smoked a Pipe. Sea creatures with bodies like snakes and heads like sea urchins. Monkeys with Lollipop Paws. Dancing brittle-stars. A wonderful, whimsical article on the connection between nonsense verse and biology and…
Science Jan 25 What is a Neutrino…And Why Do They Matter? Neutrinos are teeny, tiny, nearly massless particles that travel at near lightspeeds. Born from violent astrophysical events like exploding stars and gamma ray bursts, they are fantastically abundant in the universe, and can move as easily through lead as we…
Science Jan 18 How Does Salt Battle Road Ice? Since as early as the 1930s, a variation on simple table salt has been used to keep wintry roads from getting dangerously slippery. The mechanism is simple: When liquid water freezes into ice, the loose water molecules arrange themselves into…
Science Jan 11 How Close Are We to Finding an Earthlike Planet? And what constitutes an "earthlike planet" anyway? The Kepler Space telescope has found a small, rocky planet, the smallest yet found orbiting a star outside our solar system, the Kepler team announced Monday at the annual meeting of…
Science Jan 06 Methane-Munching Bacteria Ate Potent Gas From Gulf Oil Leak at Top Speed Researchers collect water samples to study bacteria and methane gas. Photo by Elizabeth Crapo/NOAA As soon as oil began spewing into Gulf of Mexico waters, bacteria went to work, gobbling up mass amounts of methane. And as the oil…
Science Jan 04 Birds Tumbling From the Sky; Fish Floating Dead in the Water: How Unusual Are These Animal Die-Offs? On New Years Day, residents of Beebe, Ark., awoke to find some 5,000 dead blackbirds strewn across roads, lawns and rooftops. Three days later, 125 miles from Beebe, thousands of fish were found dead on riverbanks and floating along the…
Science Dec 21 Just Ask: Probing the Sun … How Close Can We Get? Here's this week's Just Ask! science query: At what point would a spacecraft approaching the sun vaporize? -- Bob Rinehuls We all know the tale of Icarus. He attempts to escape imprisonment in Crete with wings made of feather, wood…
Science Dec 18 Coast Guard Report Examines Oil in Sea Floor Near Blown-Out BP Well A federal report released Friday detailed the levels of oil that remain lodged in sea floor sediment around the blown-out BP well in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil was found in concentrations too small to collect in most…