Between global warming and peak oil, researchers have been frantically looking for alternatives to fossil fuels. The latest of these is, apparently, the very place where we’ve been sitting to try to think of new energy sources. According to Popular Science, South Korean researchers have managed to extract enough energy from a single drop of…
Short film ‘Eye of the Storm’ shows the beauty of Icelandic winter
Ok, yes it also looks painfully cold. Winter is just barely over and I’m not really looking for reminders or images of ice and snow. There is no denying, however, that the images and time lapses, captured in Henry Juh Wah Lee’s short film are breathtaking, especially if you can watch them from a warm, dry…
Is there life in the water that lies deep beneath the Earth?
I’ve read several stories recently about the vast amounts of water that lie beneath the Earth’s surface. It is believed, by some, that there may be as much water beneath the surface of the Earth as there is on the surface. While this is interesting on its own, my question is: Is there life down…
Stunning time-lapse videos of Yosemite and the Aurora Borealis
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t love a good time lapse video? Skies are especially good subjects because they usually seem to be holding still, or close to it, if you just look up but they aren’t and we aren’t. I found a couple of good ones this week. The first is from Laughing…
Video: Bill Nye vs. Climate Change Denier Marsha Blackburn
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Bill Nye debated Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn an anti-science climate change denier. Sane people can only hope that the Republican party will continue to implode. At a time when science and technology are essential to our survival (economic and otherwise) their attacks on science and even logic are moving past stupid and…
Can oil spills cause heart disease?
New research in the February 14 issue of Science could greatly reduce the amount of oil that is considered “safe” in water. Researchers from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Stanford University were looking at the long term effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill on fish. Specifically what they wanted to know was why…
The Earth formed as a rock, so where did the water come from? (video)
As the folks at MinuteEarth point out, the Earth formed as a rock. It is actually classified as a “rocky planet” and is unlikely to have had any water at all in the beginning. Now 70% of the “big blue marble” is covered in water. So where did it come from? Well, just as we are (literally)…
Video shows the amazing problem solving skills of Crows
According to Popular Science, crows are “smarter than great apes and about on par with a 5-year-old child.” This video from the BBC is a small demonstration of that intelligence. The second video, also from the BBC, shows urban crows in Japan using cars as nutcrackers. The third video shows a crow using a plastic lid as…
‘There You Go’ a short animated film about how ‘development’ is robbing tribal people
This short film written by Oren Ginzburg and narrated by actor and comedian David Mitchell for Survival International takes a comedic look at how well intentioned people can ‘help’ tribal people to death. From my point of view anyway the lesson should not be ‘everything will be better if we just leave them alone.’ Instead…
15 second timelapse video from NASA shows 60 years of rising temperatures
This video from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, shows a running five-year average global temperature, as compared to a baseline average global temperature from 1951-1980. Yellow, on the map, indicates the average being reached while orange and red indicate that the average has been exceeded. According to NASA 2013 tied for the seventh warmest…