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Articles

Can You Fry Things in Space?

Can the good old American tradition of caking foods in grease continue in the vast recesses of space?

A U.S. destroyer, part of the U.S. 6th Fleet, sits near Syria.

Syria’s Chemical Weapons Are Going on a Convoluted Journey Before They’re Destroyed

Multiple nations and multiple hand-offs will take Syria’s chemical weapons out of the country for disposal

Hadza hunter-gatherers on the hunt for dinner.

Animals And Humans Use Similar Tactics to Find Food

The authors think this particular foraging method may have evolved in early humans and stuck around through the eons due to its effectiveness

A member of the Texas Camel Corps.

Cool Finds

The United States Army Used Camels Until After the Civil War

When the first American settlers started moving west, their horses and mules weren’t cut out for the long, dry treks

The Carmat artificial heart features sensors to monitor and adjust blood flow depending on the body's demands.

The World’s First True Artificial Heart Now Beats Inside a 75-Year-Old Patient

The two-pound Carmat heart quickens or slows blood flow based on a person’s physical activity

Tvilight, which automatically dials down the brightness when no one is around and restores maximum radiance upon detecting the presence of oncoming human activity, has been installed in cities in Holland and Ireland.

Tech Watch

Clever? Smart Street Lamps Light Up Only When Needed

The Tvilight lighting system is designed to dim when no one’s around, saving cities as much as 60 percent on energy bills each year

Decorations in Thailand.

Christmas Is Huge in Asia

From India to Thailand to China, even non-Christians are getting into the holiday spirit

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The Coolest Science of 2013, in GIFs

This year, we saw dissolving electronics, flying meteors, gravity-defying chains and rotting pineapples

Cool Finds

Some Spiders Eat Salads

Most people think of spiders as terrifying carnivores, laying in wait to trap their prey. That’s mostly true, but sometimes spiders eat other things too

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Cool Finds

This Trippy New Headband Supposedly Allows Wearers to Take Control of Their Dreams

A startup called iWinks is attempting to commercialize lucid dreaming, or dreams in which the dreamer realizes she’s dreaming

Victorians Made Jewelry Out of Human Hair

Hair work went out of fashion around 1925, but it was popular for hundreds of years before that

A screenshot of the first video of a giant squid in the wild.

The Top Five Ocean Stories of 2013

This year we’ve seen amazing footage of marine creatures, discovered how plastic works its way into the food chain, employed 3D printing to build new reefs

Measured snowfall from this past weekend.

Here Are Your Odds of Getting a White Christmas

If nothing else, it gives you an excuse to sit inside all day drinking hot chocolate

We’ve Done So Well by Chesapeake Oysters, We Can Start Eating Them Again

Perhaps this time we can keep ourselves from eating them to oblivion

How the North American Aerospace Defense Command Got Into the Business of Tracking Santa

It all began in 1955 with Sears, a wrong number and a very confused Colonel

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See Every One of Santa’s International Guises

An entrepreneurial kid could potentially rack up on the gifts by traveling around the world, hitting three Christmas jackpots in one short month

Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement

Nearly a billion dollars a year is flowing into the organized climate change counter-movement

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck Costa Rica on September 5, 2012, producing a strong shaking through much of the country.

Scientists Successfully Forecasted the Size and Location of an Earthquake

Well before Costa Rica shook in a magnitude 7.6 quake in September 2012, geoscientists forecasted that the region was due for a magnitude 7.7 to 7.8 quake

NASA Recreated the Moment When Apollo 8 Astronauts Captured the Iconic Earthrise Photograph

Cockpit recordings and modern mapping are used to show what, exactly, the astronauts were seeing out their windows when Earthrise was photographed

What Did the FAO Schwarz Catalog Look Like in 1911?

Old photos from an FAO Schwarz 1911 catalog provide a glimpse at past holiday toys

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