This Week’s NOVA Next Feature
Two recent discoveries could finally make fast, efficient electronics based on wonder material graphene possible. NOVA Next contributor and AAAS Mass Media Fellow Anna Lieb reports the story.
In other news:
- Magnetic “wormholes” made from metamaterials may improve MRIs.
- Your blood may know more about your thoughts than you do.
- Humans speaking whistled “bird language” use both sides of their brain to talk, not just one.
- Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But if it could, would time run backwards ?
- Venom from the Brazilian wandering spider can give men a lost-lasting, painful erection.
- A trash bin marks the true location of the Greenwich Meridian , 334 feet to the east.
- There’s a corpse flower blooming at the Denver Botanic Gardens. These plants take eight to 20 years to initially bloom—and when they do, they smell like rotting flesh. Watch the “StinkyCam” live feed on our Gross Science Tumblr .
What We’re Reading
- The hyperloop may sound crazy , but construction is now confirmed to start in 2016. [ArsTechnica]
- Humans kill adult fish populations at 14 times the rate that marine life preys on itself. [BBC News]
- A Florida sinkhole has reopened two years after one in the same spot killed a sleeping man. [Washington Post]
- A tiny hummingbird eats between 1.5 to 3 times its own body weight in nectar each day. [Slate]
- The Obama administration has announced new rules to cut methane emissions . [The New York Times]
- This might justify your late-summer potato salad plans . [Popular Science]
- The latest superconductor candidate? Hydrogen sulfide , the gas that gives rotten eggs and flatulence their distinctive odor. [Wired]
To learn more about the science of sinkholes, watch "Sinkholes—Buried Alive" streaming online.