Hot Science Experiments News Stories

News: Jane Goodall Was a Babe (and One of History's Greatest Conservationists)

National Geographic recently published a retrospective of the lovely Jane Goodall, one of the world's most accomplished conservationists. The feature includes every image of Goodall to ever appear in the magazine for the past fifty years.

News: Metal Isn't Flammable... Right?

Theo Gray of Gray Matter explains the principle behind sending steel up in flames- as long as it's steel wool, of course. The process is beyond simple. Spend 2 bucks and 2 minutes: purchase a steel wool pad, hold in pliers, light with a match. But the question is, why is steel wool flammable, while other forms of metal are not? Explanation below the video. Theo says:

News: Look! A Diamond the Size of the Moon!

Lucy, whose real name is BPM 37093, is a diamond roughly the size of our moon. At around 4000 kilometers in diameter (2,485 miles), Lucy is estimated to be around 10 billion trillion trillion carats. A billion trillion trillion? x 10? It's easier to imagine dividing by zero than to put this ridiculous number into perspective.

News: Cheeseburger Dipped in Acid (Plus: Why You Should Fear McDonald's)

Ok, so first Periodic Tables demonstrates how a McDonald's cheeseburger breaks down in your stomach during the digestion process. Everybody has hydrochloric acid in their stomach, so drop a burger in acid and you can see it happen before your eyes (minus the amino acids a human stomach would supply). Seems innocent enough. Here's what happened after 3.5 hours: NASTY. So my question is: does healthy food look the same? What would a pile of broccoli or granola look like? Probably just as nasty....

News: Super Slo-Mo Lightning Looks Like Mother Earth's Fireworks Show

Mother Earth, God, Buddha, the Universe, energy fields... whatever you call it, lightning slo-mo'ed looks like some higher being set off some major fireworks. Beautiful. Two videos in the gallery below.

News: Hand Fully Submerged in Liquid Nitrogen (OUCH... Right?)

Apparently submerging a hand in liquid nitrogen isn't as painful as one might suspect (if you trust the Leidenfrost effect as much as Theodore of Gray Matter):

News: Rear End Illusions

Let's take a look at the softer side of illusions! Check out the images below and see if you can crack what's really behind these photos. This type of optical illusion is usually referred to as an ambiguous image. Your brain tries to make quick sense out of the information coming in, and sometimes an interpretation of one image gets preference over the other.

News: 30 Insane College Courses That Will Have You Itching to Go Back to School

PopSci has compiled an amazing list of 30 college labs that would tempt anybody to re-enroll. If you know any high school juniors or prospective grad students, pass this along. They just might reconsider their initial choices.

News: Krispy Kreme Mitosis

Take a lesson in mitosis (or cell division) with artist Kevin Van Aelst's Krispy Kreme explanatory photography series. Mmm... I think my stomach's growling.

News: In the Face of Nature, Art Doesn't Stand a Chance

Sometimes a human-made representation just can't beat the real deal. You may be convinced once you watch these science-art videos, a collaborative project titled Morphologics, by marine biologist Colin Foord and musician Jared McKay.

News: Drop Dead Gorgeous Periodic Table

Utterly mind blowing CC-licensed photography of the periodic elements by Wikipedia user alchemist-hp. Beautiful examples below, click through for the whole project (in German).

News: Japanese Scientists Turn Dead Animals Into Art

In what appears to be some kind of hybrid science-art project, Japanese researchers have discovered a method for rendering a dead animal's body completely transparent, in order to dye the skeletal system. Simultaneously creepy and beautiful.

News: Multiply Each Tiny Dot By a Billion

Yup. Every single dot represents a galaxy containing BILLIONS of stars. Holy... Just think about it. Insane.

News: Why Are Our Brains Fooled By Optical Illusions?

My mind is playing tricks on me! Discover Magazine systematically dissects five fantastic optical illusions. The scientific explanations are logical:

New CSI Spinoff: Iceman 3300 B.C.

Who dunnit? Forensic pathology is an art form we take for granted. Scientists are busy debating why a 5' 5", 5300-year-old man coined Otzi was murdered.

News: Booze Explosions Create Microscopic Rainbows

For some, vodka, tequila, and whiskey are key ingredients to a good time. But, take a sample, dry it out, magnify x1000, and you've got yourself an unexpected work of art. Prints below by BevShots.

News: Brooklyn Dude Does Gucci by Day, Nuclear Fusion by Night

Upon first glance, one may think Mark Suppes is just another thirty-something-year-old dude living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. However, the Gucci web designer by day has a significant (to say the least) project-in-progress by night. The amateur scientist bicycles to a non-descript building in Brooklyn to chip away at his homemade nuclear fusion reactor. BBC reports:

News: NurdRage Shatters Mysteriously Procured Human Heart

WonderHowTo science geek favorite, NurdRage, completely shatters a human heart using liquid nitrogen. Now, what I wanna know is... and I'm really asking... where the hell do you get a human heart?

News: DARPA Spy Camera Capable of Scanning Eyeballs in a Crowd

DARPA and Dallas's Southern Methodist University are collaborating on a super high tech camera, capable of scanning eyeballs in a moving crowd.

News: Artificial Butterfly Could Unveil the Mysteries of Flight

Researchers Hiroto Tanaka and Isao Shimoyama (of Harvard University and University of Tokyo) have constructed a tiny replica of the swallowtail butterfly. The crudely made model uses just balsa wood, rubber bands, and a steel wire crank. The goal is to better understand the biomechanics of butterfly flight. Via Wired,

News: The World's Most Ginormous Telescopes

DVice posts six of the world's most powerful telescopes and, man, they are HUGE. Check it out. The Keck I and Keck II

News: Kick Ass at Pinball (Telekinetically)

At Germany's 2010 ceBIT Technology Fair, a company called Berlin Brain-Computer Interface demoed technology for mind controlled pinball. The game is controlled solely with brain impulses.

News: Turn Your Arm Into a Touchscreen Display

Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up to to create an armband that projects a touchscreen interface directly on to your skin. The best part? Skinput knows which part of the body you've tapped, based on the sound that's matched against skin, muscle or skeleton.

World's Scariest Science: Sci-Fi Future is Potentially Bone Chilling

Innovative or downright frightening? Popsci examines five of the world's scariest science experiments-in-progress.

News: Mosquitoes Annihilated By Death Ray Laser

Laser gun + killing mosquitoes = lots of little boy fun, but what's it all about? Quite possibly the most entertaining, thrilling, and well, downright life-saving presentation at this year's TED conference was Intellectual Ventures' mosquito death ray.

News: Man Shoots Lightning from Hands (Wearing Faraday Suit)

No kidding, watch below as 500,000 volts of electricity literally course over a man's body. Of course, he has a little protection: the faraday suit. The video was shot in Austin, Texas, for a German television documentary. Producer Johannes Wiebus is quoted as saying:

News: 100 of YouTube's Coolest Science Experiments

The X-Ray Vision-aries Blog has compiled a list of YouTube's 100 Coolest Science Experiments. I particularly enjoy their introduction to the selection:

News: HD Tour of the Brand New International Space Station

Take a tour of the ISS (International Space Station), just posted on YouTube this week. The ISS is an international project, including the five participant space stations: American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the European Space Agency (ESA).

News: Teenager Invents Technology for Deep "Cave-Texting"

16-year-old Alexander Kendrick has invented a low-frequency radio that allows for cave-texting, meaning deep underground cellular communication.

News: Artificial Organs Whipped Up With an Inkjet Printer

Dr. Anthony Atala landed a place in PopSci's Best of 2006 with his homegrown bladders. Now Atala returns to the spotlight at a recent TED talk, discussing his current project of "printing" organs.

News: Make Edible Lasers (Jell-O or Gin & Tonic Flavored)

Remember the glowing pickle? Well, here's another sci-fi food-oddity. Sounds entirely fictitious, but apparently you can make edible lasers.

News: 2009's Most Amazing Hubble Space Telescope Images

Mind blowing cosmos art, seen through the lens of the Hubble telescope. Click through to Discovery News for more information behind these beautiful images.

News: Man Spies Spacewalking Astronauts With Backyard Telescope

Apparently a little amateur astronomy can go a long way. On March 21, 2009, Ralf Vandebergh, sitting in his backyard, pointed his 10 inch telescope at the sky and "saw a few bright pixels appear precisely where the work was going on at exactly the moment it was being conducted."  A few bright pixels = an astronaut!

News: 2009's Most Amazing Scientific Images

Popsci has posted 2009's most amazing scientific images, and there's quite a few great ones in there. A few of our favorites below, click through for all 62.

News: Ew. Livestream of Patient's Brain Being Sliced. Watch Now.

Neuroscience (live!) resumes its 50 hour slicing session 8:00 am PST this morning. According to Gizmodo,

News: Bomb-Proof Your Home With Wallpaper

Incredible. A company called Berry Plastics (in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) has developed a working bomb proof wallpaper. The technology has the ability to protect against both natural disasters and warfare.

News: Freaky Cornstarch Speakers Explained

The beautiful ectoplasmic dance of the cornstarch speaker monster is finally elucidated. In addition to being captivated by its eerily vibrant dance, you can now understand exactly why it happens, thanks to Collin Cunningham from MAKE. He gives a great explanation of cymatics - the study of visible sound and vibration. Check out this amazing hi-def sonic cornstarch sculpture from WonderHowTo's very own WonderDude Mike:

News: Bloodless Virtual Autopsies Nab Criminals

Virtual autopsies are the wave of the future in forensic medicine, using three-dimensional x-ray techniques instead of hacking through a mess of blood and guts. The Virtual Autopsy Table allows the cause of death to be determined quickly to aid in criminal investigations. Amazing - straight out of Bones or CSI.

News: Eyeballs Can Now Control a Cell Phone

Yep, just what the headline says. Believe it or not, NTT DoCoMo has showed off "a set of prototype in-ear headphones that can detect and measures changes in the body's electrical state when your eyes move." Forget voice activation, eye gesture recognition is the thing of the future. Image.

News: LED Wand + RIFD Waves = Awesome Science Art

Using a combination of technology and animation techniques, two students at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design have created a visual model of RFID fields.