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Science in Aggregate: Week 22

I have dug through the Internet this week and uncovered all this geeky goodness. You can find the thousands of links from previous weeks here.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


I have dug through the Internet this week and uncovered all this geeky goodness. You can find the thousands of links from previous weeks here.


I have marked my favorite links with a ?. Enjoy.


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? Could Benedict Cumberbatch could crush your skull? Star Trek Into Skull Trauma. I answer all the important questions at Slate.

Science on the Vine: Flower Sexy Time. My continuing 6-second science series

How big a phone would all the iPhones on Earth make?

Cruel and unusually interesting: Injecting a plump tick with hydrogen peroxide

Someone please find me a place to buy this space-time carpet

A slower GIF of how dog tongues work. Still amazing

? Um, food coloring in milk is one of the prettiest things

SPACE PRON: The Witch’s Broom nebula

Carl Sagan+Lando Calrissian=…… [Hint: Still a cool dude]

XKCD makes reading technical reports way more fun

? The difference between a congratulatory handshake from Bones and a tearful Vulcan salute from Spock is a water bear

Why do we drive on the left or right side of the road? Probably imperialism or farming or war

? A wonderful application of worms: Making art out of silk worm work (be sure to watch the video)

Awesome macro-organism behavior from caterpillars. Move faster as one!

? “I don’t care what Stephen King says. I don’t need the supernatural to be in awe of nature.”

Why you don’t want to land an airplane in a crosswind

What are the most controversial topics on Wikipedia? Really interesting to see it broken down by language

Do you actually feel the temperature of something? It’s a hot answer, maybe, I don’t know.

What on Earth is the Richat Structure?

A neutron star doesn’t look so big when placed next to Manhattan. But the gravity would kill everyone. (And the shadow is wrong.)

Relax, Passengers: Aircraft Doors Can’t Open In Flight

Sea stars might channel heat into their arms until they damage them enough to detach. (Like a Mass Effect thermal clip)

Mermaids Return From the Depths of TV’s Chum Bucket. On the agonizing demise of science content on Animal Planet

Hell yeah steampunk AT-AT

I’m finding tons of great stuff at the Scientific Illustration Tumblr

? Sync a camera’s frame-rate with a helicopter’s blades and it looks like the thing hovers impossibly

Watch a white blood cell chase bacteria around. Your immune system is basically THE BLOB

Sometimes, the fish fight back. The other danger Asian carp’s pose

Professor to Discovery Institute: “Best wishes for the speedy demise of the sham institution that employs you.”

That awkward moment when you realize you’re an NPC

With Alzheimer’s Comes…Empathy. How a degenerative disease surprisingly increases feelings of warmth and connectedness

Long for the universe? You could always step into one of these infinity rooms

? Camouflage can’t hide this owl’s beauty

“We opened the Moon for colonists…it wasn’t long until they took over Earth

Have you ever seen a carpet bombing? GIF of war

XKCD on cancer research. A lot of things kill cells in a dish…

Dolphin midwives are the worst idea ever

Penguins riding on pale ice

? “The wonderful thing about science is that it doesn’t ask for faith, it just asks for your eyes.”

Just how dead is a doornail? A team of doctors answer

The eyes of the world

When the only tool you have is a field-biology kit, everything looks like a male. When years or searching only turns up female bats.

The 10 rules of evolution in science fiction are delightfully 13-year old brained

Dear students and teachers, we love your emails, it’s why we do what we do, but we can’t do your homework

There is natural majesty in everything. Even this bench

Sound it Out: Do You “See” or “Hear” Words You Have to Spell?

? Why fears about “new allergens” in GM food are precisely wrong

A robot Bald Eagle is a scary thing

Death Star Public Relations: Your move, internet.

? Watching two smoke rings perfectly collide is like watching a perfect kiss

When you look at a human colonization GIF, it’s like planet cancer

Octopus mushroom anyone?

? If homeopathy worked, a pool would know who peed in it: The Miracle of Molecular Medicine

When a 9-yr old boy solves a train engineering problem with a simple loop

How do you figure out why dogs yawn? Put them in a test chamber and yawn at them!

Super Mario World 1-1, completed by a million little Marios

Where do the world’s atheists live?

A beautiful, if a little macabre, Japanese illustration of decomposition from the 1800s

? I am vengeance. I am the night. I am…fabulous

Lion meat tacos: A bad idea in every way

I’m pretty sure this is what Sagan was envisioning when he spoke of the “shores of the cosmic ocean.” Maybe stoned

Bill Nye explains that Superman must grind down his beard

What if there was no Internet? I’d be out of a job and have an additional 12 hours of free time

The glaciers erode away, leaving ridged, icy blue remnants

? Michael Collins is the only human, living or dead, not contained in the frame of this picture

A fun New Yorker interactive: A universe of popular movie franchises

I am blow away how far you can zoom in on a 45 Gigapixel camera shot

Cockroach Jawa!

? Is there any photo of Enceladus that isn’t amazing?

Underground nuclear explosions look incredible

Fill light bulbs with cool stuff then blow them up. Much prettier than it sounds

If you have a medical emergency mid-flight, shout, “Is there a doctor in the fuselage!?”

Five reasons mermaids are impossible. A pretty fishy fable.

I think this is great science communication: Teaching physics through Angry Birds and experiment

How Tardigrades Saved The Enterprise

? Mesmerizing. Watch Google searches in real-time

Someone is stealing the mysteriously roaming rocks from Death Valley.

A creeping disease in cognitive neuroscience: Making it psychology

Seeing an iceberg from the top of a sailboat mast gives me serious vertigo

BuzzFeed isn’t genius, it’s a machine

Put it to rest: Hair doesn’t grow after death

Gyroscopically stabilized cameras are SORCERY

This is what Kickstarter is for: Turn your bike wheels into GIF-projectors

? For some reason, #2 is the worst for me: 9 Predators With The Most Brutal Hunting Techniques

Homemade lightsaber strong enough to ignite paper.

Maybe the best way to get aliens to notice us is a kamikaze probe

What is the limit on human speed? Math vs. Usain Bolt

Light refraction makes it look like this boat is impossibly floating

Strawberries don’t start red

I really enjoyed Joss Whedon’s commencement speech. “Be the part of life other than death.”

What would I use to show how information propagates? A slinky, definitely

? One of the best insect documentaries I’ve seen is on the return of the cicada. Planet Earth-level stuff

Kyle Hill is a science communicator who specializes in finding the secret science in your favorite fandom. He has a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering and a master's degree in communication research (with a focus on science, health, and the environment) from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Aside from co-hosting Al Jazeera America's science show, TechKnow, Hill is also a freelancer who has contributed to Wired, Nature Education, Popular Science, Slate, io9, Nautilus, and is a columnist for Skeptical Inquirer. He manages Nature Education's Student Voices blog, is a research fellow with the James Randi Educational foundation. Email: sciencebasedlife@gmail.com

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