Mar 15 How to Get Chromium-6 Out of Your Water In the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, Julia Roberts plays a scantily-clad file clerk in a small law firm who traces a cluster of health problems in a California desert town to a chemical in the groundwater there, and… Continue reading
Mar 12 How to Eat an Apple in Space Oh to be Chris Hadfield, eating maple syrup from a tube and casually gazing down at a smoke plume streaming from Italy's Mount Etna volcano while performing experiments to improve the metal in turbine blades and dental fillings. Continue reading
Mar 08 Curiosity Sleeps Through Solar Flare This animation shows the path of the magnetic field that was discharged from the sun causing the Curiosity team to power down the rover this week. The modeling was carried out at the NASA Goddard Space Weather Research… Continue reading
Mar 05 What the Sequester Means for Science A lab technician pipettes liquid into test tubes. Photo by Photo by Apostrophe Productions. Scientists nationwide are bracing for the impacts of the sequestration cuts, which are poised to strike a fierce blow to research. Policymakers aren't the… Continue reading
Mar 01 Seawater Saltiness Seen from Space The ocean, by some estimates, holds enough salt to cover the entire surface of the Earth, layered to the height of a 40-story office building. Much of the salt in the ocean comes from rock that gets… Continue reading
Feb 25 What a Missing Section of One Man’s Brain Taught Science About Memory This image shows an MRI of a normal hippocampus.The cortical folds are clearly visible. Photo By BSIP/UIG via Getty Images. I recall being equally parts shocked and fascinated the first time I learned about the man known as H.M. Continue reading
Feb 22 Hanging Out Live With Astronauts From the International Space Station Are dreams affected by microgravity? How do you exercise in space? What's that on Chris Hadfield's forehead? These were among the questions posed to NASA astronauts -- three of whom are orbiting 240 miles above the Earth, from… Continue reading
Feb 08 Earliest Placental Mammal Described in Breathtaking Detail Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid possibly as big as Mount Everest plowed into the Earth, wiping about 70 percent of all species, including dinosaurs, off the planet. Why this event killed off the dinosaurs but spared other species,… Continue reading
Feb 04 Now Is the Winter of Our Discovery: Tracing History Through DNA By Ray Suarez Project osteologist Jo Appleby points out damage to a skull, believed to be that of Richard III, during a news conference in Leicester, central England, on Monday. Photo by Darren Staples/Reuters. King Richard III, depicted by some as a wicked,… Continue reading
Feb 01 Whip Scorpions and Jungle Nymphs: Behind the Scenes at the Insect Zoo An eastern lubber grasshopper, or Romalea guttata sits on a leaf at the Insect Zoo at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Photos by Jenny Marder. And now, an end-of-the-week pause to celebrate insects and the people who love… Continue reading