Category Nature/Biology

Oct 10 2012

Mirrors on Easels that Look Like Paintings

Indianapolis-born and New York City-based photographer Daniel Kukla spent last March living in Joshua Tree National Park in southern California as part of an artist’s residency. While hiking and driving, he would catch glimpses of the border where the Sonoran Desert met the high Mojave. In the ecological sciences, the border space created by the meeting of distinct ecosystems is referred to as the edge effect. To document this unique confluence of terrains, Kukla took a large mirror and painter’s easel into the wilderness and captured opposing elements within the environment.

Oct 10 2012

50 Sacrificial Skulls Unearthed at Aztec Temple

Mexican archaeologists said Friday they uncovered the largest number of skulls ever found in one offering at the most sacred temple of the Aztec empire dating back more than 500 years.

The 50 skulls were found at one sacrificial stone. Five were buried under the stone, and each had holes on both sides – signaling they were hung on a skull rack.

Oct 2 2012

Carbon Dioxide Snowfall on Mars?

NASA has ‘clear evidence’ of carbon dioxide snowfalls on Mars, the space agency revealed today – making this the only known example of carbon dioxide snow falling anywhere in our solar system.

Frozen carbon dioxide, better known as ‘dry ice’, requires temperatures of about -125C (-193F) which is much colder than needed for freezing water.

Oct 2 2012

Fire Tornadoes

The so called fire tornado or fire whirls generally form when superheated air near the surface of a large fire zone rises rapidly in an airmass where sufficient horizontal or vertical vorticity (spin in the atmosphere) is also present. Much like a dust devil or whirlwind, the rapidly rising air above a wildfire can accelerate and turn the local vorticity into a tight vertical vortex, now composed of fire instead of dust.

Sep 2 2012

How Does Alcohol Get You Drunk?

There’s a whole lot of things that people stuff in their faces. Some of them keep those people alive. Some of them taste good to those people. Some of them help those people win pie-eating contests. Alcohol does none of those things. Why do people keep putting it in their bodies? And what does it do once it gets there?