This is a fun story. It’s like a Guinness book entry, but i doubt it will ever reach well known status like the world’s fattest twins.  from todayinsci.com, (continue reading…)

click me, im from the NYTimes

The NY Times is reporting that North Korea’s missle launch, supposedly of a communication satellite, was a failure. What a difference an administration makes; four years ago, we may have gone to war with one of the legs (the really short one) of the “axis of evil”. My favorite comment from the article: (continue reading…)

twitter, facebook, text messaging, gmail, chat, im, all owe their existence to these major leaps in human communication: (continue reading…)

Courtesy of todayinsci.com:

In 1859, Lescarbault, a French medical doctor and amateur astronomer reported sighting a new planet in an orbit inside that of Mercury which he named Vulcan. He had seen a round black spot on the Sun with a transit time across the solar disk 4 hours 30 minutes. He sent this information and his calculations on the planet’s movements to Jean LeVerrier, France’s most famous astronomer. Le Verrier had already noticed that Mercury had deviated from its orbit. A gravitational pull from Vulcan would fit in nicely with what he was looking for. However, it was not consistently seen again and it is now believed to have been a “rogue asteroid” making a one-time pass close to the sun.

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Fun fun fun, science science science: (thanks to todayinsci.com)

The Curie's

In 1903, The Times newspaper reported that the French physicist, Pierre Curie assisted by Mme Curie, communicated to the Academy of Sciences that the recently discovered Radium “possesses the extraordinary property of continuously emitting heat, without combustion, without chemical change of any kind, and without any change to its molecular structure, which remains spectroscopically identical after many months of continuous emission of heat … such that the pure Radium salt would melt more than its own weight of ice every hour … A small tube containing Radium, if kept in contact with the skin for some hours … produces an open sore, by destroying the epidermis and the true skin beneath … and cause the death of living things whose nerve centres do not lie deep enough to be shielded from their influence.”

In 5th grade I did a book report on Marie Curie and I wore a dress for the class presentation. I can’t recall if i did a good job. The gimmick makes me believe that I was low on historic, informative content.  I do remember how sad the end of Curie’s life became with the horse trampling death of her husband, and her eventual cancer death due to high exposure to radioactive material. She used to keep radio active material in her desk drawer.  Curie is the only person to win 2 Nobel prizes. It’s a Women’s History month moment!

And a bonus moment: (continue reading…)

The first event courtesy of Todayinsci.com is an interesting reminder of the possible dangers of policy formed by incorrect science. I am very curious how the researchers made such extreme claims during a time period devoid of such basic molecular biological tools like electrophoretic sequencing gels (1977) and PCR (1984): (continue reading…)

Today’s historic event is something that I would imagine most of us New Yorkers take for granted as one of the most powerful inventions that shape city life: (continue reading…)

Today was a very busy day in Science history, but this one is ineed my favorite:  Courtesy of todayinsci.com:

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