Is That A Lark I Hear? A Nightingale? Surprise! It's A Bat
Bats produce "pings" or "clicks," right? They make these high-pitched sounds, too high for us to hear, but when their cries ricochet off distant objects, the echoes tell them there's a house over...
View Article2 Ways To Think About Nothing, One Mo' Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpCWh3IFtDQ This being my last weekend with this blog, I wanted to repost a story I wrote a few years ago that has continued to intrigue me ... I'm going to show you two...
View Article'Murdersquishing' Them To Death: How Little Bees Take On Enormous Hornets
I know, I know. You have Putin to worry about, ISIS to worry about, Britain's near breaking, Washington's broken, and the globe keeps getting warmer — so why bring up Japanese giant hornets ? You have...
View ArticleHowling Babies Drove Prehistoric Warriors Into Battle?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm-sQnazFAQ If you have ever seen, or spent time with (or, God forbid, had to live with) a colicky baby, this will make perfect sense to you. It may not make actual...
View ArticleWhat Makes A Star Starry? Is It Me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVAKFJ8VVp4 Notice what Tyler Nordgren does in these posters. He's an artist, an astronomer (from Cornell, Carl Sagan's department); he's worked for NASA. He's an expert...
View ArticleSouls Tumbling In The Light
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGQ2msn0OR0 Every year on Sept. 11, this happens ... When it gets dark, New York City turns on 88 7,000-watt xenon light bulbs to produce two powerful beams that shoot...
View ArticleMapping What You Cannot See, Cannot Know, Cannot Visit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENyyRwxpHo When I was a boy I had a globe. I could take it in my hands, rest it on my lap, give it a spin and look down on Africa, Europe, North America and Asia...
View ArticleBuilding Me: A Puzzlement
It's a puzzle — the deepest puzzle I know. The question is: What are we? One answer , from physicist-novelist Alan Lightman , is we are stuff. Just stuff. "Let me explain. A highly unpleasant idea, but...
View ArticleGlenn Gould In Rapture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB76jxBq_gQ What's going on here, I can only guess, but here's what you're about to see: In the video below, the great musician Glenn Gould, supreme interpreter of Bach,...
View ArticleRoadways You Can Install Like Throw Rugs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiCLMePjK-Y Magic carpets you know about. Aladdin had one. But how about this? A country road carpet? Walk into a meadow, drag it behind you, and wherever you go, the...
View ArticleWhen Venus Was Filled With Venusians — 50 Billion Of Them
What a difference 180 years makes. Back in the 1830s, a Scottish minister and amateur astronomer named Thomas Dick tried to calculate the number of intelligent creatures in the universe. He assumed...
View ArticleIf You're Born In The Sky, What's Your Nationality? An Airplane Puzzler
Here's a puzzle I bet you've never pondered. Imagine you are very, very pregnant. For the purposes of this mind game, you are a married American woman (with an American spouse) and you are about to...
View ArticleWhen Snails Lose Their Way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSN-kqAmxw Every so often, and I wish it were more often, Vi Hart becomes a snail. Vi is one of the Web's finest math geeks . Her site is where millions (and I mean...
View ArticleElemental Storytelling
There's a photograph I know that shows a kid's bicycle lying on its side, one wheel turned upright, a smear of blood tracing its path on the concrete. There's a little package still latched to the...
View ArticleWhat A Balloon Shouldn't Do, But For Some Reason Does
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8mzDvpKzfY Great teaching — just plain old knock 'em dead, get it right, make 'em laugh, make 'em wonder instruction — is always going to be rare. Good teachers abound....
View ArticleHow To Cross 5 International Borders In 1 Minute Without Sweating
So many nations are breaking up. Ukraine is in pieces. Moldova is teetering. Libya has no government to speak of. Sudan broke in two last year; now both sides are fighting. Yugoslavia is seven...
View ArticleGuess Who's Been Waiting In The Lobby For A Hundred Million Years?
Sometimes the quiet ones surprise us. Take moss — those fuzzy green pads you see on the sides of old trees, or hanging onto rocks. Who notices moss? It's just ... there, doing whatever it does — so...
View ArticleWhere The Birds Are Is Not Where You'd Think
This is a trick question. Where would you expect to find the greatest variety of birds? Downtown, in a city? Or far, far from downtown — in the fields, forests, mountains, where people are scarce? Or...
View ArticleAn Animal Makes A $10,000 Deposit, But Not At The Bank
Editor's note: We've added an update at the bottom of this post with results of the auction. Read on! It's a highly specialized category to be sure: "Longest." But that's what the auctioneer is...
View ArticleWhat's Better Than A Total Eclipse Of The Sun? Check This
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyZoD7BRTtg Any eclipse is worth seeing. A total eclipse — where the moon completely blots out the sun, where day turns to night, where solar flares ring the moon's...
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