Stories tagged Amazing fact

Did you just uncover an interesting tidbit of knowledge related to current science? Tell us.

No, it wasn't Thomas Edison. Rather, French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville developed a primitive sonogram -- a means of making a picture of sound -- nearly 20 years before Edison's phonograph. Unfortunately, de Martinville had no way of playing the sound back -- a rather serious limitation. Recently, however, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California programmed a computer to read the sonogram and reproduce the sound -- a mere 148 years after the picture was made. Edison still gets credit for the first machine to play recorded sound.

Well I'll be!: A dinosaur on a bus.
Well I'll be!: A dinosaur on a bus.Courtesy T-Oh! & Matt
Peruvian officials discovered a 19-pound dinosaur jaw bone the cargo hold of a bus this week.

The bone appears to be from a triceratops, or one of its relatives, although such dinosaurs have never been found in Peru before.

More perplexing to scientists, however, is the prospect of a population of dinosaurs living and dying in a bus's cargo area.

Where's Athena?

by Liza on Mar. 12th, 2008

Falcons have been spotted regularly at the Black Dog nest box in Burnsville, MN, since December, and were observed mating on February 23. (You can follow what's going on with those falcons at the Raptor Resource/Black Dog Forum.)

But the former High Bridge nest box was moved, and so far, there's no sign of Athena. (There's also a Raptor Resource/High Bridge Forum.) Cross your fingers and hope she finds and approves of her new digs before it's too late for chicks this year...

Not the same turtle: But I only count one flipper.
Not the same turtle: But I only count one flipper.Courtesy jurvetson
This green sea turtle was found by tourists after having lost all but one of her flippers. With the help of the nonprofit group Sea Turtle Inc. she was able to survive, and her wounds were healed. Unfortunately, with just one flipper, the turtle can only swim in counterclockwise circles, and has to push herself off the floor of her pool with her head in order to surface for air. That's mostly sad.

She does, however, have a little stump left where one of her flippers were, for which her caregivers hope to construct the first prosthetic sea turtle limb ever (probably.)

A prosthetic turtle flipper. All right.

In recent conversations with friends and family, I have encountered a number of people who "Don't Believe in Global Warming". This confuses me as it appears to be an established scientific fact that human activity is directly impacting environmental patterns and that the accumulation of greenhouse gases is increasing faster than the earth's natural processes can adapt. Why do people treat this as a "belief" versus a fact?

They say things are always bigger in Texas, which must include the large numbers of people reporting seeing UFOs over the Texas skies recently. Go ahead, you have my permission to create your own joke.

The 1507 Waldseemuller map was the first to identify North and South America by that name. The map recently went on display at the Library of Congress.

Scientists in California are developing a way to tell cancer cells from normal cells, using nanotechnology to measure the cells’ softness.

The British government is encouraging schools to allow young boys to play with toy guns. Their studies have shown that such play helps boys’ development, by allowing them to experiment with risk-taking behavior in a safe environment. This in turn helps their intellectual development.