Digging through the web this week, I 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.
Science to Read, Watch
You are a skeuomorph, and corn on the cob is fruit
The sky is blue because the atmosphere is making the white-hot sun look blue-hot
8 Reasons Discovery’s Snake-Eats-Man-Alive Show Is A Terrible Idea
More than 300 species of spiders practice myrmecomorphy
∞ The dietary supplement industry should scare you. Here’s why
The “polar vortex” isn’t really a weather event. It’s pretty much just winter weather
A giant crustacean and the world’s longest hunger strike
This is “The Insominator.” It keeps bees awake so we can study their dancing
We need better glass to save the 600 million birds a year that die hitting windows in the U.S.
This little bee can’t sting you, so it bites you until it dies
∞ The frilled shark has teeth like parking lot spikes
This worm produces digestive enzymes to eat wood…in its gills
∞ Scientists reach the bottom of the mysterious Siberian crater. Lots of data, no aliens
Dragonflies are not any less vicious when they live underwater
For Every 1°C of Global Warming, Lightning Strikes Will Increase By 12%
Why Some Microbiome Studies May Be Wrong
Kill your darlings: Figuring out why male mammals commit infanticide
Can we track disease rates by using Wikipedia page hits?
Los Angeles has a healthy population of cannibals and body snatchers. They are bugs
These giant, blind torpedoes of sharks stay deep, so we didn’t know that they are everywhere
“When tiger keelback snakes get pregnant, they eat as many poisonous toads as they can find.”
How do you “teach” a baby otter to swim?
New survey shows we have no idea how our populations are made up. We think teen pregnancy is 14x higher than it is
Live jelly cam at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. That is all.
Plankton bust a move to best get around without being felt
∞ Hermit Crabs Line Themselves Up From Biggest To Smallest To Swap Shells
“Philae did the f*cking tallest, longest, slowest JUMP ever done.”
∞ Comet 67P is singing to us
Goodnight sweet little lander, you did a great job.
The APEC Summit Turned World Leaders Into Star Trek Cosplayers
Get cosmic advice from a Carl Sagan chatbot made in 24 hours
The science of planetary motion lets us illuminate our veterans at 11/11, 11:11AM each year
We’ve discovered the ideal beach bodies for elephant seals
∞ A timelapse of the Sun in 4K
Mantis shrimp does home renovations
With “Lord Kelvin’s Thunderstorm” you can get electricity from falling water and no moving parts
These Rainbows Are Animals Taking Shape
There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written
With 80Gb of photos, some video, and a pinch of dubsteb, Guillaume Juin made my favorite ISS timelapse video
How you milk a snake and make antivenin, in six steps
A scientific survey on which sexual fantasies are the most/least common
Chronicling NASA’s abandoned launch sites in photos
More Etymological Maps of the Brain
Extreme Nerdery
I for one welcome our katana-wielding robot overlords
Someone put Super Smash Bros. on a calculator
∞ “Vaporizing a droplet of water with a laser is more complicated than it sounds.”
If you have a 3D printer you need to do this? Right now?
When Darth Vader quotes Bible verses, he is even scarier
∞ You can’t finish the fight without physics. How do you build a Halo ringworld?
The speculative physics behind a Smaug-killing arrow
Where is Comet 67P between a Borg Cube and the Death Star? These are the important questions
Don’t try to sweep this robot’s leg
“Interstellar isn’t the first sci-fi film to descend into new age platitudes, here’s why it should be the last”
Google teamed up with Interstellar to create downloadable lesson plans based on the movie’s physics for students
∞ Rust Cohle already explained the ending of Interstellar to us
Sciencey GIFs and Images
The maneuvering that got Rosetta to Comet 67P
The celestial surfaces we’ve seen
We are pretty sure praying mantises can take down hummingbirds, but not this one
∞ Astoundingly detailed x-ray of a “pancake stingray,” Heliotrygon gomesi
∞ A punch in slow-motion is like having your face glitch
If this really is mimicry, it is unbelievably cool evolution
Zeus the screech owl is blind, but inside his eyes are galaxies
∞ Reflexes
Physics tricks are the best tricks, and also are all the tricks
Your brain likes models and assumptions. That’s why this lady looks cut in half and floating
A real snowpiercer
∞ A murmuration of starlings is like an organism
The inner eyelid of cats — the palpebra tertia — is weird, just like your kitty
Liquid nitrogen and hot water makes a N2 mushroom cloud
Pearl, a leucistic raven
The full xckd comic of Rosetta’s success, in one GIF
The awesome fluid mechanics of a landing plane
∞ What do you think the instantaneous PSI on a katana blade is?
Biologists call these bits on a baby stingray “walky parts”
Something explodes in the Jovian atmosphere
We in the engineering business call this “close enough”
∞This is how NASCAR tire changes are so fast: Take advantage of momentum
Considering the forces, this person was lucky their attempt at gun clearing didn’t backfire
A camouflaged road in Finland during WW2
Maybe this is why tennis players check their rackets after each volley h
A representation of how exhaust gases flow through an engine nozzle with Schlieren photography
Watch the shockwave as these two beasts butt heads
This is brilliant: Stabilize the sky instead of the ground and you can see the world turn
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field shows thousands and thousands of galaxies, but it is only a tiny slice of sky
The quickest way to put on a swimming cap is with fluid physics
Pop Culture Happenings
Robin Williams had Lewy Body Dementia, which may have contributed to his death
Interstellar highlights the Hollywood trend of scientists as heroes and heroines
Coming home as an internet journalist person
Cosmonauts Used to Carry Insane Machete Guns In Space
∞ Woman expertly photoshops herself into photos of her younger self
Kind of amazing to see foley artists making an action sequence in real time
AARP runs vomit-inducing, quackery-filled breast cancer piece with Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge
Ray Harryhausen performing his brand of magic for Jason and the Argonauts
The Unbelievable Skepticism of the Amazing Randi
∞ Net neutrality is not “Obamacare for the Internet”
Meet the Mysterious Creator of Rumor-Debunking Site http://Snopes.com
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