archive

April 30, 2012 Think about the sunsets you've seen. Often the sky turns golden, orange or sometimes pink and red. But on Mars, the sunsets are blue. Why?

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April 28, 2012 Some books are so good, we want to open them up and jump right in if we could. The Academy Award-winning short film, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore brings this feeling to life in an amazingly imaginative way.

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April 26, 2012 The Romans played with palindromes in the form of the famous "Sator Square." Today, modern artists have created "ambigrams" — words and phrases in creative fonts that can be read in the mirror or upside down.

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April 24, 2012 She's been visiting grandma since 1697, when her story was first published in a French anthology of children's stories. Now, more than 147 versions of the story later, a Swedish designer has turned the tale into a snappy PowerPoint-like sales infographic.

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April 20, 2012 Some 3 to 5 million years ago, giant wild rabbits roamed the Mediterranean island of Minorca. These fuzzy giants of the past were six times as big as ordinary, modern-day rabbits, but they lacked some bunny basics.

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April 17, 2012 For Vi Hart, a self-professed math geek, patterns, shapes and numbers are like wine; they make her giddy, speed up her already speedy conversational style, and lead her into drawing dizzying illustrations.

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April 15, 2012 Fred Warren, who runs PostSecret.com, learns secrets from people all over the world.

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April 14, 2012 When explorer Robert Ballard discovered the Titanic on the sea floor in 1985, he also found a pair of leather shoes sitting on the deck near the stern of the ship.

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April 12, 2012 Is it possible that humans are too creative? Innovation creates a wonderful paradox, says author Jonah Lehrer: "Creativity is the only solution to the very real problem of creativity."

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April 10, 2012 Sea surface currents look uncannily like a van Gogh sky. In this visualization, watch how wind dances on the ocean's surface, twisting and turning around the continents.

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April 9, 2012 Two data artists who "invent new ways for people to think and talk about data" have taken on a new challenge — visualizing wind patterns across the U.S.

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April 2, 2012 All over the world, neuroscientists are trying to answer a question: How do gooey, stringy brain cells produce a mind? If you look deeply into a brain, into the 80 billion brain cells coiled inside your head, could you see a thought in there? A dream? Desire?

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March 31, 2012 What if we had the technology to craft entire worlds with just the swish of a finger? What would you make? What would you sculpt? How would you play?

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March 30, 2012 When researchers showed subjects pictures of Jennifer Aniston, very specific neurons lit up. And these neurons weren't triggered by pictures of other people. This curious finding is one that brain scientists hope to solve by tracing the pathways in the human brain and creating a map called a connectome.

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March 28, 2012 Here's a handy guide to the amorphous and vibrant mimic octopus, courtesy of the webcomic xkcd.

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