Monthly Archives: November 2008

Ajolote

Fol­lowing on from such weird and strange (and ugly) creatures as the blobfish, the komondor, the dumbo octopus and the glass squid … I bring you: The Ajolote [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5FFghfc0F4[/youtube]   The ajolote (Amphis­baenia Bipe­didae Bipes Biporus) lives under­ground and eats insects and … Continue reading

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Meteor over Western Canada

A meteor entered Earth’s atmo­sphere over the Alberta-Saskatchewan border on Thursday night and the first videos of its entry are starting to filter through onto YouTube. [youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=e_2aX-784sw[/youtube] [youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PSL3b6bCR7s[/youtube] This is some of the best meteor footage I’ve ever seen.

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Aerogel

Aerogel (often called solid smoke) is one of the world’s weirdest mater­ials. In the picture blelow a piece of aerogel with a mass of just over two grams is holding up a brick with a mass more than a thousand … Continue reading

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Moving pictures in water

First watch the video: [youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0HeUixe_Lpg[/youtube]   Physics question: why do all the images stretch as they fall?

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Boobies

The Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii) is my new favourite bird. It has hil­arious blue feet. The male Booby attracts females by showing off its cool blue feet and waving its wings about.

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Optical phenomena

Envir­on­mental Graffiti has a great post about optical (light) phe­nomena; I’ve picked out a couple of my favour­ites: Crepus­cular Rays Crepus­cular rays are caused by the scat­tering of beams of light; beams created by an object such as a tree or a cloud. … Continue reading

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Logic gates with dominos

Being able to con­struct logic gates is essen­tial in order to create a computer. These logic gates can be created with just about anything  —  sticks and string, cogs and gears, even DNA. The only reason com­puters are elec­tronic is because logic … Continue reading

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