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This Week in Science: Ant Toilets and Delicious Cholesterol

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

∞ Even conspiracy theorists must admit that stabilized Moon driving looks awesome

The perfect poster for any planet atmosphere nerd (yes they exist)

Let’s help Smarter Every Day bring space down to Earth

Looks like egg is back on the menu boys

Nerve agents: The V series

Where do I apply for the teaching otters how to float job so my heart can explode

∞ The fish that have ice in their veins, literally

My favorite nature videos are now time-lapses of coral with trance music

Does the Many Worlds Hypothesis have to deal with its own philosophy before we take it seriously?

During a solar power tower test run, it vaporized over a hundred birds

∞ To get people to drink recycled water, psychologists will have to solve the problem of disgust

A bunch of high mice just gave us clues as to why marijuana causes the munchies

We know too much to think of sex as a binary anymore

The DNA that separates us from chimps gave mice bigger brains

Step aside spider silk, the strongest biological material is a rock-scraping limpet tooth

∞ Ants have “toilets”

1,826 Stunning Days of Solar Activity in Five Minutes

Meet the 100 people who are hoping to die on Mars

We can now see ocean acidification happen in real-time. It’s still bad

We found a cave filled with gorilla-sized lemur skeletons

NASA is basically daring you to make these sounds your ringtones

Vaccines work so well that we can forget about the diseases they prevent, but we can’t

Penguins can hardly taste at all

Popcorn jumps like a muscle fires

Nestlé just went “all natural,” but that’s meaningless

Burrowing animals are “fossorial,” a word you should use today

Almost all supplements are nonsense, but how can you tell the good from the bad?

If you were at the ‘photon sphere’ of a black hole you could look somewhere and see the back of your head

∞ Luna moths avoid bats with long tails that serve as auditory distractors

Take a minute to explore the 100,000 stars around our sun with this beautiful interactive

Crossing your legs won’t give you varicose veins, or make them worse

 

Extreme Nerdery

Can you (efficiently) clear the snow in front of your car with a flamethrower?

An 118 mph wind blowing at 18.3 degrees could lift Mary Poppins, because science

∞ How much do cats actually kill? TOO MUCH

Could Mario’s world even exist in our universe?

A chart of a flowchart of charts

 

Sciencey GIFs and Images

∞ An owl practicing adorable killing strikes

The weekend versus your workday on Friday

My favorite deal with it has an owl’s crazy neck

∞ Your mouse cursor, the jumping spider’s natural prey

When an octopus is to a crab what a crocodile is to a thirsty wildebeest

These blocks aren’t moving one after another. C’mon brain you can do this

Why would you even need a railgun to shoot something so darn fast? Penetrating power.

∞ Wetsaws are finger friendly. But not heart-rate friendly

Comet Lovejoy grows a tail

Totally unintuitive: A bullet won’t make it through a bunch of water balloons

Saw-whet owls are totally dorbs, also have perfectly stabilized heads

∞ We evolved hyper-sensitive pattern-seeking brains probably because of this tiger

A catdial

First contact with aliens is going to look like this fish underneath an Antarctic ice sheet seeing people

Sea sponges look useless, but they are fantastic water filters

 

Pop Culture Happenings

Green initiatives are now putting apiaries at airports

∞ “The Food Babe” makes claims that are misleading, mistaken, and full of worse stuff than food dye

Food Babe Slams Kraft Over Three Dyes but Sells Same

Therapists who say homosexuality can be cured are committing consumer fraud, N.J. judge says

Oklahoma committee voted to ban AP U.S. History class, persuaded it only teaches students “what is bad about America”

Warning labels aren’t enough for homeopathic “medicines.” We shouldn’t be selling them

Gorgeous animation of Kirk Wallace’s Zelda prints

∞ Oh nothing, just a real fox, falcon, frog, and hare being Star Fox

Inside a statue of the Buddha, a mummified monk

All 141 SNL Cast Members Ranked

In Focus: Study Finds Jack Shit

∞ The Game of Thrones Mountain and Viper duel drew from some actual gruesome battles

3D printers are making prosthetic hands for little heroes

Winds sculpt the frozen sand of Lake Michigan’s shores into mini canyons

Simon Stalenhag is still creating fantastic art for his unique universe at his blog, FYI

Twitch is now trying to catch all 151 Pokémon in Pokémon Red

∞ John Oliver is an absolute force. In-depth reporting on tobacco companies, subversive campaigns, brilliant.

Get ripped with David Byrne’s Stop Making Sense exercises

Tyson Boop

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