This great little video takes a look at plant communication, at what plants talk about and at how they do it. We frequently forget, vegans especially, that plants are living organisms that evolved on this planet. They are, in fact, much older than humans or even mammals and have had a very long time to…
Star Trek tech: Designs for warp drive ship and tricorder unveiled this week
Do you ever get the feeling that most engineers & Physicists are also Treckies? In May researchers managed to turn energy into matter, bringing us one step closer to a proper replicator and then used quantum teleportation to move data. This week designs were unveiled for a tricorder which can analyze matter by scanning it and…
“Being a scientist means you never have to grow up” – an interview with SETI director Jill Tarter (video)
Since I first heard about it I’ve been a fan of the Emmy-nominated PBS series, The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers. I’m especially thrilled with this one because, I think, more people know the movie “Contact” than know who Jill Tarter is. Tarter is a renowned astronomer, the recipient of two public service medals from…
What Season 2 of Cosmos Should Look Like
All indications are that there won’t be a second season of Cosmos. Neil deGrasse Tyson has said that he’s not interested, the network doesn’t seem anxious to have another season and the original Carl Sagan Cosmos didn’t have a second season. Cosmos was never really intended to be an ongoing series. After all if, as…
Watch “Cosmos on Weed” from Nacho Punch
Personally, I don’t know if weed would help. Personally when I consider that we are made of the fallout of collapsing stars and that we are descended from tiny microscopic organisms – that our ancestors managed to live long enough to procreate despite predators, harsh conditions and mass extinctions over millions of years and that…
Grab NASA’s free ebook on communicating with aliens
This eBook isn’t nearly as ‘fun’ as it sounds like it should be. It does not tell you to leave a trail of Reese’s Pieces, or teach you how to speak Klingon. The book is not even about language per se. It is a substantive look at what happens when we find intelligent, extra-terrestrial life…
AsapSCIENCE Explores the Genetic Roots of Laziness vs. Activity
Research with mice has shown that the things that motivate us and how strong that motivation is, at least in part, is genetic. Additionally what we do and don’t do – how we respond to those motivations – gets passed down to the next generation. In other words, the less active we are the less…
For most people there is no reason to go gluten free.
As a child of the 70s I grew up in an era of fad diets and bad science. There has been since, at least, the 1960s a conspiracy mentality in certain circles: There was a sense that big pharma, big agriculture, big chemical, science, medicine and government generally were ‘killing us’ or making us less…
John Oliver and Bill Nye on an accurate climate change “debate”
Neil deGrasse Tyson recently gave television news media a slap on the wrist for giving climate change deniers equal time and hosting debates on whether or not climate change is real. At this point it is an absurd thing to do. Giving those who do not believe in global warming equal time is roughly the equivalent…
Join my new Facebook group on science, technology and society
It’s been a long time since I created a Facebook group. I have doubts about Facebook’s long term viability. However, it will do for now. The new group is for the discussion of emerging science and technology and its, potentially substantial, impact on us all. Rather than drag this out too much I will simply…