As birthdays come and go, they seem to get closer and closer together. It’s a common feeling across all cultures. As you get older, time feels as though it’s going faster. But why? Well, the only correct answer to this question is: nobody knows. The brain is a complex instrument and time perception is the result of many areas of the brain working together. We just don’t know how it works. However, there are some hypotheses.
Sand. The final frontier. No wait, that’s space. Never mind. Sand is still really cool though, really! Keep reading. How deep is the sand in the Sahara? The Sahara is the world’s hottest desert though it’s not the biggest. It’s third in size. The two biggest deserts are, somewhat counter-intuitively, the antarctic and the arctic. Even though they are covered with ice, they are dry enough to be considered deserts.
There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation around the interweb regarding dark matter. Much of it sounds like pseudo-scientific borderline-religious arguments, both from strong ‘believers’ (sorry to use that term but I have heard it used so often in this context) and people who don’t like the idea of dark matter and cling to older/other theories. It is after all I suppose a little like a religious argument, not being able to see it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not there.
Come closer and put your tinfoil hat on. I’m going to tell you something crazy. The government is controlling the weather. That’s right, they are. They spray carbon dioxide in clouds to increase the formation of rain. To like, increase the water supply in a region or something equally sinister! And we’re not entirely sure if it works, actually. Well, ehm, but let me tell you, it’s a conspiracy! If you can’t tell, the previous paragraph was sarcastic. Claims that governments are somehow creating hurricanes and using the weather as a weapon are unfounded. The one method used to ‘manipulate’ …
[audio http://piecubed.jellycast.com/files/audio/Pie%20Cubed%20Podcast%2008%3A05%3A2013.m4a] This week on the Pie Cubed podcast we talk about the scientific merits (or lack of) of the paleo diet, antioxidants increasing risk of cancer, how doubt is used to undermine scientific findings, 3d printed guns and freedom, how sleep patterns change as you get older and much more. Subscribe on iTunes or Subscribe to podcast feed
The oldest surviving sea-washed lighthouse, the Bell Rock Lighthouse is a triumph of engineering and persistence. There is a reef, off the coast of Scotland, called Bell Rock. Legend has it that an Abbot, in the 14th century, managed to install a giant bell on the reef, warning seafarers of the danger. However, a dutch pirate stole the valuable brass bell just one year after it was installed and ironically perished when his ship hit the then-unmarked rock some time later.
Why is waiting half a day for the bus not a big deal to the Aymara? Because to them, the future is not in front, the past is. Read part 1 here. If I asked you to think of the future, where does the future lie? If I asked you to point ‘towards’ the future, where would you point? You will probably point forwards. To us, the past is behind us and the future is ahead. But it’s not true of all people. Time is quite a difficult concept to express and all languages resort to metaphors to describe it. In …
Hey there Stumblers! Click here for more awesome lists or here for more amazing science facts. Can you use a man to measure a bridge? What’s your bacon with the US President? What’s a beard-second? Can you hit the broadside of a barn with a particle accelerator? How much power is in a donkey? Units are a fundamental component of science. Without units, you have no measurements and without measurements you have no experiments. We are all familiar with the basic units of science, the metre, the Kelvin, the kilogram, etc. However, there are others, sometime less useful units, that …
In the last few years we have produced more data than in all of human history. We live our lives constantly producing a stream of data, it controls our lives, not in a Matrix or Skynet kind of way, but every time we interact (text, call, tweet), conduct a transaction, perform an internet search, complete a national census or even simply give birth or die, you are creating data and contributing that in the right hands is valuable and powerful tool. A recent EMC study claims that less than 1% of global data is actually analysed.
This week on the Pie Cubed Podcast we talk about the Herschel telescope running out of fuel, the current space race, biofuel-producing bacteria, using unnecessarily complex words, beards and more. Subscribe on iTunes or Subscribe to podcast feed
