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Strapping a Camera to a Shark Is as Awesome as You’d Expect
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- Monday, August 11
- Discuss
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Scientists strap cameras to the badasses of the sea.
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Scientists strap cameras to the badasses of the sea.
A gallery of images from The Great War From The Air shows the aerial photography that World War I’s strategists used to gather intelligence.
Solar power needs get a lot more efficient before it truly goes mainstream. One way to achieve that is with better power inverters—the devices that turn the direct current coming from solar panels and batteries into alternating current you can use in your home to play Xbox and keep your beer cold. A new contest sponsored by Google will pay out a million dollars for a smaller, more innovative design.
A new iridescent plastic that reveals hidden images with a breath is described in a paper published today in Advanced Materials. Researchers at the University of Michigan hope to use this technology for anti-counterfeiting purposes, replacing the ubiquitous hologram stickers used on things like luxury handbags and passports with a humidity-activated logo.
Ah, Hawaii. The resplendent luaus and awe-inspiring volcanoes. Tom Selleck and his mustache running around private-investigating stuff. The beautiful white-sand beaches made of fish poop. More absurd creatures: 10-Foot Bobbit Worm Is Ocean’s Most Disturbing Predator The Ferocious Bug That Sucks Prey Dry and Wears Their Corpses This Marsupial Has Marathon Sex Until It Goes […]
The Aeromedical Biological Containment System used to transport Kent Brantly, the American doctor infected with Ebola, had never been used before. Brantly’s flight was its first real test.
Hundreds of feet underwater, where dim rays of sunlight mix with flickers from bioluminescent fish, lanternsharks rely on their sensitive eyes to survive. A new study shows how their eyes have adapted.
The thing hampering efforts to quell the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Africa and treat Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, two Americans with the disease now at Emory University Hospital in Georgia, is that the FDA has approved no medications or therapies specific to Ebola. Researchers and laboratories around the world are working to change that.
In a city famed for its oddities, New York City’s Wild Bird Fund is a rather unusual place. It’s the city’s first wild animal hospital; since 2001 they’ve taken in more than 10,000 feathered patients—snowy egrets and starlings, peregrine falcons and pigeons. Lots of pigeons.
There are a whole lot of places in the universe that aren’t exactly conducive to the proliferation of life: the vacuum of space, for instance, or the poisonous, boiling atmosphere of Venus, or anywhere Chuck Norris goes. But surely the most brutal are the unimaginably hot surfaces of stars like our sun, furnaces so powerful […]
A grey Gulfstream III carrying Nancy Writebol, an American aid worker diagnosed with Ebola, landed at Dobbins Air Force Base north of Atlanta Tuesday morning. An ambulance took her 14 miles to a special isolation facility at Emory University Hospital that was designed not just to treat the worst diseases, but to make sure those diseases don’t get any farther than its walls.
You’re in the shower. The water sounds like a gentle, rainy static, and feels like a Plinko massage. You’ve just started to lather up and suddenly, you’re hit with a flash of brilliance. Maybe it’s the answer to a vexing problem at work, the location of your lost USB drive, or perhaps it’s just a random, inconsequential […]
Pesticides linked to declining bee and bird populations have been found in streams and rivers across the upper midwest, raising yet more concerns about these chemicals’ environmental effects.
Follow Space Photo of the Day on Twitter The 2013 WIRED Space Photo of the Day Gallery The 2012 WIRED Space Photo of the Day Gallery For caption information and links to high-resolution images, please use the full-screen version of this gallery. For more mind-blowing space photos, see the entire WIRED Space Photo of the […]
Yesterday, I flew over downtown San Francisco. I swooped past the Transamerica Pyramid, taking care not to get speared, and winged it out towards the water. A heavy fog covered the bay, as usual, so I decided to head back into the city. I dove sharply, and the wind started whipping across my face. I […]
For billions of years, single-celled creatures had the planet to themselves, floating through the oceans in solitary bliss. Some microorganisms attempted multicellular arrangements, forming small sheets or filaments of cells. But these ventures hit dead ends. The single cell ruled the earth. Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of […]
The air in airplanes is way fresher than you may think, and it’s constantly being scrubbed by high quality filters.
NASA announced today that its next Mars rover will have advanced cameras, more sophisticated lasers, and the ability to see underground as it explores the Red Planet starting in 2020.
The rind of good cheese is a thriving microbial community. A single gram—a tiny crumb—contains 10 billion microbial cells, a mix of bacteria and fungi that contribute delicious and sometimes funky flavors. But even though humans have been making cheese for thousands of years, we know very little about what all those bugs are and […]
The image above shows a simulation of Jupiter’s magnetic field, whose intricate complexities make it extremely difficult to accurately model. While it may look like the gas giant is vomiting up some enormous space worms, the visualization is actually capturing details of the gas giant’s magnetism with greater precision than ever before. Everything’s bigger about […]
In 1986, a two-and-a-half year-old girl named Michelle Funk fell into a stream and drowned. By the time paramedics found her, she hadn’t been breathing for more than an hour. Her heart was stopped. In other words, she was dead. Somewhat inexplicably, the paramedics continued to work on her, and so did doctors in the […]
On the 556th evening of successfully not being murdered by her chucklehead king of a husband in the Arabian Nights, Scheherazade relates the tale of Sinbad’s tanglings with a beast most cruel. Sailing from city to city with merchants, Sinbad eventually comes to a deserted island, where he spies a huge white dome half buried […]
It’s five o’clock, and your dog is excitedly wagging her tail and nuzzling against you. Your furry friend is hungry and seems to know that this is the hour you usually feed her. But was this performance a simple reaction to a rumbling in Ginger’s tummy or are canines actually able to somehow read the clock? […]
Iltifat Husain has seen an awful lot of sickness and injury during his time as an emergency room doctor, but lately, he’s worried about something new. He’s worried about the ill effects of mobile healthcare apps. There are hundreds of medically themed apps in Apple’s App Store and Google Play, and by most accounts, they’ve […]
You can watch the spectacular night sky show of the Delta Aquarid meteor shower with a live online broadcast from the Slooh Space Camera, starting tonight at 7 p.m. PT/10 p.m. ET. Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through the debris left behind by a comet as it swung in close to the sun […]
Katherine Freese, a physicist who will soon lead the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, reflects on the hunt for dark matter and how dark matter heating may have produced the first stars.
In a new study, scientists tracked the activity of 80 percent of the neurons in the brain of a baby zebrafish as the animal as the animal responds to what it sees. The scientists who made it say their new technique, called light-sheet imaging, will allow them to study the neural mechanisms of behavior in unprecedented detail.
“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare once asked, apparently in Romeo and Juliet, which I just learned from Google because I did not pay attention in that class in college. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” I think this means that a name doesn’t matter for much, because […]
Just because Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine is fictional doesn’t mean it’s immune to the effects of climate change. This map shows how, in the past 110 Galactic Standard Years, Tatooine has turned from a sprawling, desert wasteland into an even hotter sprawling, desert wasteland. It comes from Tatooine’s first Intergovernmental Report on Climate […]
You are looking at the most precise gravity map ever made of a distant galaxy cluster. Using the map, astronomers have determined that the cluster is roughly 650,000 light-years across and contains enough matter to make 160 trillion suns. The cluster, known as MCS J0416.1–2403, is located about 4 billion light-years away and consists of […]
I’ve been busy in the SHRIMP-RG lab at Stanford for the last week, but I’m going to try to catch up on a few volcanic developments: Italy Both Etna and Stromboli have been in the news recently. Over at Etna, activity that had been occurring in the Northeast Crater has diminished over the course of […]
MoreA newly published case report on how a woman might have gained empathic awareness following surgery seems exciting. But, does it add anything beyond mystery and confusion to the scientific literature on the subject?
MoreA gallery of images from The Great War From The Air shows the aerial photography that World War I's strategists used to gather intelligence.
MoreA new video narrated by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Felicia Day celebrates the Curiosity rover's second anniversary on Mars.
MoreAt some point in the introductory physics class, the students look at the idea of center of mass. The usual explanation is that when you are dealing with a rigid object, you need to know what forces are acting on the object and where these forces are acting. The difficult force is the gravitational force. […]
MoreOur lives are filled with encounters with novelty. Whether it’s reading a new word or learning some new facts, these kinds of experiences are what makes life interesting. And often, these encounters lead us to find other new things; ever looked up one thing on Wikipedia and then discovered over an hour has passed as […]
MoreIn her book Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us About Human Relationships, Jennifer Verdolin takes inspiration from the rest of the animal kingdom and applies it to human romantic relationships.
MoreYou probably couldn't walk on the surface of a comet. But you could skip. But how high could you skip without breaking the comet's gravity?
MoreThere’s a scene from a disaster movie I watched as a small child that I’ll never forget. As passengers attempted to flee a ship sinking and on fire, they reached a missing section of walkway above a perilous drop. It looked like they were all doomed, but one of the male passengers turned himself into a […]
MoreHow did Lake Erie go from flammable in the 60s, clean in the 80s and 90s, and back to toxic today in just 40 years?
MoreThe Pallas' cat (Otocolobus manul) is a small wildcat known for its cute face, but it has plenty of other awesome features.
MoreLego sets come in all different sizes with different numbers of Lego pieces. Of course bigger sets cost more, but is there a linear relationship between set size and cost?
MoreI’ve stayed out of the Ebola news so far, for a couple of reasons. First, as longtime readers know, I’m writing a book; I’m in the last 6 months of it and the work is intense and involves a lot of travel. I’m not always available at the exact moment news breaks. Second, I try […]
MoreThe 1970s vision of space stations matched the big ambitions of the era's monster rockets.
MoreThe Rosetta spacecraft is getting close to the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (which I will just refer to as 67P from now on). If you think about it, this is pretty exciting. A spacecraft will not only make a close approach to a comet, but it will also drop a small lander on the comet’s surface. That’s […]
MoreLewis Dartnell, author of The Knowledge talks about his day job: Helping build Europe's mission to Mars.
MoreAn interview with Lewis Dartnell, astrobiologist and author of The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch, about the most important skills to carry into a new civilization.
MoreSo, the summer has melted away quickly and now it’s time for me to make my (nearly) annual pilgrimage to the SHRIMP-RG lab at Stanford University. I have two students working with me this summer and they will be blasting zircon from the Lassen Volcanic Center, along with some from a couple new locations along […]
MoreA new pygmy grasshopper found in amber is named for Sir David Attenborough. Featuring a video explainer narrated by Sir David himself!
MoreSuppose you have a cylinder on an ramp and you let it start rolling down. What will be its acceleration? Great question, right? I like this because it brings in many different concepts in introductory physics. Also, I’m not too fond of the way most textbooks solve this problem. Point Mass vs. Rigid Object In […]
MoreThere's worrisome news here in the southeastern US, buried in a journal that is favorite reading only for superbug geeks like me. The rate at which hospitals are recognizing cases of CRE -- the form of antibiotic resistance that is so serious the CDC dubbed it a "nightmare"---rose five times over between 2008 and 2012.
MoreThese works highlight that beauty doesn't just exist at the human-sized scale that we encounter everyday, but is also hiding out of sight, from the scale of the universe to inside a drop of blood.
MoreJust because Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine is fictional doesn’t mean it’s immune to the effects of climate change. This map shows how, in the past 110 Galactic Standard Years, Tatooine has turned from a sprawling, desert wasteland into an even hotter sprawling, desert wasteland. It comes from Tatooine’s first Intergovernmental Report on Climate […]
MoreYou are looking at the most precise gravity map ever made of a distant galaxy cluster. Using the map, astronomers have determined that the cluster is roughly 650,000 light-years across and contains enough matter to make 160 trillion suns. The cluster, known as MCS J0416.1–2403, is located about 4 billion light-years away and consists of […]
MoreThis beetle is fabulous and shiny. Also, purple.
MoreThere is a lot of excitement around the current trend to get more people to be into computer programming. Whether or not they end up becoming coders, we can all at least can gain a bit from “computational thinking.” Perhaps with this movement, computer users will all eventually become computational creators. Unlikely, but we can […]
MoreThe new Luc Besson movie Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson, opened in theaters countrywide on Friday. It's based on the premise that we use only 10 percent of our brains. That's not true, but it's a myth that just won't die.
MoreThe popularity of drones is climbing quickly among companies, governments and citizens alike. But the rules surrounding where, when and why you can fly an unmanned aerial vehicle aren’t very clear. The FAA has tried to assert control and insist on licensing for all drone operators, while drone pilots and some legal experts claim drones […]
MoreMost volcanoes are inherently unstable features. They are constructed of loose piles of volcanic debris (tephra) and lava flows on relatively steep slopes. This means that they can be prone to landslides. This is especially so inside calderas, a depression formed by the collapse of the land surface. The inner slopes are usually steep and […]
MoreThis was my greatest lecture. Yes, everyone has looked at springs before. But has anyone done all of this in one single lecture? Have they? Yes, they probably have. Here is my version. Stretching a Spring Here is a spring hanging vertically with a mass on the end – a 100 gram mass. The mass […]
MoreMt. Fuji might be gearing up for an eruption, but can we really trace it back to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake?
MoreWe know that bats use echolocation to navigate obstacles and hunt prey, but new research shows that they base their internal compass on the orientation of the setting sun's scattered light.
MoreThis amazing mass emergence is a giant orgy. And good news about water quality.
MoreUsually in Beyond Apollo I devote most of my attention to technical documents and their historical context. I do not normally focus on press conference transcripts. The 26 January 1967 NASA Headquarters press conference led by George Mueller, Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, and Charles Mathews, Director of the Apollo Applications Program (AAP), is, […]
MoreHow do you calculate the force of a falling piano?
MoreGetting a mission to Mars is always a long process, full of budgetary, technical, bureaucratic, and logistical obstacles. But even by these glacial standards, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission has had a turbulent journey.
MoreAt the moment, Beyond Apollo is a blog I’ve neglected! You know the drill; things have come up. However, I will finish last weekend’s post this weekend. When delays happen, I don’t stop my research. I think the delay will lead to an improved post. Tonight, for example, I read a document that reviewed the […]
More"It’s not normal to get your testicles bitten off, of course, but it can happen.�?
MoreA first look at how becoming a father changes the structure of men's brains.
MoreBarnacle penises adapt their shape and size in response to the motion of the ocean.
MoreSuppose you want to learn upper level physics. Do you have to use a physics textbook or a lecture? Is that the only way to learn? What Is Upper Level Physics? Traditionally, there are three big things in the physics curriculum: Classical Mechanics Electricity and Magnetism Quantum Mechanics At the introductory level, student typically study […]
MoreRemember those six vials of smallpox-causing variola that the feds found last week? They were found in the company of 321 other vials of various deadly diseases.
MoreThe nation's top health leaders will appear in front of congress today to answer questions about the recent lab accidents involving smallpox and avian flu.
MoreSometimes I have to write stuff so I won’t forget how to do it. This is one of those times. In my recent post on the angular size of a soccer goal, I created a contour plot. Despite what you might think, I’m not a Jedi Master at python. So, here is a quick guide […]
MoreIt took 16 years and data from four orbiting spacecraft to assemble, but the U.S. Geological Survey’s new map of Mars is awesome. In beautiful color and excellent detail, the map shows the geology of the Red Planet’s surface today, and reveals a new understanding of its past.
MoreVolcanoes spend most of their existence not erupting, and they store most of their heat deep below the surface. Here's how water brings that thermal energy to the surface.
MoreThe Volcano World Cup is over and we have the inaugural champion of this explosive competition. Unlike the FIFA World Cup, the championship game wasn’t even close, with Chile running away with the title by an astonishing 77%-23% over the USA with over 2,500 votes cast. So congratulations to the 2014 Volcano World Cup champion […]
MoreMoth Week: Not at all like Shark Week, actually. Get outside and participate!
MoreThe scientist who led the effort to eradicate smallpox in the 1960s speaks out about the vials of the virus recently found in a storage room.
MoreWhen combined, maps and comic books are irresistible to fans who want to explore their favorite fictional worlds.
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