What Happens While You Sleep And How It Affects Your Every Waking Moment

The Ancient Greeks believed that one fell asleep when the brain filled with blood and awakened once it drained back out. Nineteenth-century philosophers contended that sleep happened when the brain was emptied of ambitions and stimulating thoughts. Even today, sleep remains one of the most poorly understood human biological functions.

In Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, journalist David K. Randall explores 'the largest overlooked part of your life and how it affects you even if you don't have a sleep problem.' From gender differences to how come some people snore and others don't to why we dream, he dives deep into this mysterious third of human existence to illuminate what happens when night falls and how it impacts every aspect of our days.

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Stories Of A Hollow Earth

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In 1741 the Norwegian-Danish author Ludvig Holberg published 'Klimii Iter Subterraneum,' a satirical science-fiction/fantasy novel detailing the adventures of its hero Niels Klim in a utopian society existing beneath the surface of the earth. Peter Fitting, author of Subterranean Worlds: A Critical Anthology, explores Holberg's book in the wider context of the hollow earth theory.

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The Bodélé Depression

The Amazon rainforest with all its plant and animal life, and all its astounding biodiversity could not exist as we know it without a patch of African desert. The soil the rainforest is producing isn't very nutrient rich. All the minerals and nutrients that fertilize the rainforest have to come from someplace else.

Scientists have known for a while that this natural fertilizer is crossing the Atlantic in the form of dust storms, but science writer Colin Schultz ran across a 2006 paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters that not only produces evidence for a much larger trans-oceanic transfer of dust than was previously assumed... it also pinpoints the exact (and astoundingly small) location where all the fertilizer in the Amazon is coming from.

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Could A Man Handle Pregnancy?

This infographic questions the assumption that men are stronger than women by asking: Could a man handle pregnancy? While many have speculated, this infographic relies on science to examine whether men are structurally and psychologically tough enough to withstand the physical, emotional and chemical changes that a woman undergoes during pregnancy.

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Opening Secret Tomb Of China's First Emperor Waits For Science

Buried deep under a hill in central China, surrounded by an underground moat of poisonous mercury, lies an entombed emperor who's been undisturbed for more than two millennia. The tomb holds the secrets of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who died on September 10, 210 B.C.

The answers to a number of historical mysteries may lie buried inside that tomb, but whether modern people will ever see inside this mausoleum depends not just on the Chinese government, but on science.

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Mammals Shaking Themselves Dry In Slow-Motion

This is not just another cute animal video compilation. This is science. David Hu and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA, filmed 33 wet mammals as they shook themselves dry. Watch their slow-motion footage and find out how fast different speies need to shake.



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(thanks Cora)

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Tesla Science Center At Wardenclyffe

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Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal, is at it again. In conjunction with the non-profit Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, Inman has started a fundraiser to raise $850,000 to purchase the land that includes Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe laboratory in order to eventually turn it into a museum.

The area is currently up for sale and there's apparently a second offer on the table from someone that wants the land. This could mean that the lab would be torn down to make way for something else, because we don't have enough shopping centers.

(via Geekosystem)

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Ten Things You May Not Know About The Solar System

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A collection of 10 unexpected and intriguing facts about our solar system - our sun and its family of planets - you probably did not know.

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Severe Abnormalities Found In Fukushima Butterflies

Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment has caused mutations in butterflies found in Japan, a study suggests. Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae and wing shape mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident. The link between the mutations and the radioactive material was shown by laboratory experiments, they report.

By comparing mutations found on the butterflies collected from the different sites, the team found that areas with greater amounts of radiation in the environment were home to butterflies with much smaller wings and irregularly developed eyes.

(via TISOTIT)

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A New Human Species Has Been Identified In Africa

Homo erectus was not alone in ancient Africa. Newly discovered fossil evidence, detailed in the latest issue of Nature, strongly suggests that no fewer than three distinct species of early humans from the genus Homo co-existed on the continent between 1.7 and 2 million years ago.

The findings, which run counter to the hypothesis that modern humans evolved linearly out of Homo erectus, provide some of the most compelling evidence to date that there were multiple, parallel lines of evolution early in our genus' history.

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Peanuts, Blackjack And Pee: Strangest Space Mission Superstitions

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The tension was palpable in the control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the minutes leading up to the August 5 landing of the Mars rover Curiosity. Rows of headset-clad flight controllers in matching pale blue polo shirts huddled over their computers, awaiting the rover descent's 'seven minutes of terror.'

Then, seemingly from nowhere, bottles of peanuts started to appear, and soon all the engineers and scientists were munching on handfuls of the proteinaceous snack. It's just one of a slew of superstitious NASA traditions, and the Russian space program has its own share. Here are some of the timeless traditions of the world's space-exploring elite.

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The Medical Book

image courtesy Cliff Pickover

The Medical Book: From Witch Doctors to Robot Surgeons is Cliff Pickover's new book. Cliff is known for his excellent blog Reality Carnival which has been on my blogroll for ages.

In The Medical Book, Clifford Pickover explores 250 of the most intriguing medical milestones from 10,000 B.C. to modern times. Along with odd and perplexing marvels like prehistoric skull trepanation and using cocaine as a local anesthetic, you can also read about the Hippocratic Oath, biological weapons, human cloning, general anesthesia, face transplants, near-death experiences, the placebo effect, alternative medicine, and the role of war and violence in accelerating the pace of medical understanding.

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Can Your Job Be Done By A Robot?

Can your job be done by a robot? If you think not, you're in for a rude awakening; turns out robots might do your job way better than you do.

According to this infographic, robots are not only slowly becoming able to do simple jobs like 'retail cashier' but also complex, high paying jobs that require massive amounts of education and practice for humans, like surgery or pharmacy.

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Secrets Of Sticky Feet Revealed

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Sure-footed lizards and beetles keep their feet dry to secure their grip, according to scientists. Previous studies have attributed both species' remarkable 'sticking power' to microscopic hairs on their feet.

These hairs are attracted to surfaces by the forces between molecules, creating a strong footing. Two studies now suggest that the animals 'walk on air' to overcome wet surfaces, trapping bubbles between these tiny hairs.

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Are Butterflies Two Different Animals in One?

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Here's a dangerous, crazy thought from an otherwise sober (and very eminent) biologist, Bernd Heinrich. He's thinking about moths and butterflies, and how they radically change shape as they grow, from little wormy, caterpillar critters to airborne beauties. Why, he wondered, do these flying animals begin their lives as wingless, crawling worms? Baby ducks have wings. Baby bats have wings. Why not baby butterflies?

His answer: The radical change that occurs does indeed arguably involve death followed by reincarnation. The adult forms of these insects are actually new organisms.

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First Images Taken By NASA's Curiosity Rover

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NASA's most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has successfully landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation.

The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway maneuver of the rocket backpack.

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Chemistry On Mars

After an epic 354-million-mile trek through space, the Mars Curiosity Rover is zooming along at 13,000 miles per hour toward a scheduled August 6 landing on the Red Planet.

The video explains several chemical processes that Curiosity is equipped to perform. Test results from these instruments will pave the way for future Mars missions, and may provide insight in the search for life on other planets. A video by Kirk Zamieroski and produced by the American Chemical Society.



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(thanks Kirk)

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Martian Dune Buggy

NASA engineers take the Curiosity test rover to California's Mojave desert to learn how to drive on Martian sand dunes.



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(thanks Cora)

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Mars One Plans One-Way Trip To The Red Planet For 2023

There's an old joke about sending someone you hate on a one-way trip to Mars. Now, a Dutch entrepreneur has formed a company around this concept - and it's no joke. Bas Lansdorp, the 35-year-old founder of Mars One, says his company is serious about a one-way mission. The company will hold a worldwide lottery next year to select 40 people for a training team. They will then set up a mock colony in the desert, possibly somewhere in the U.S., for three months. This initial team will be reduced to ten crew members.

They will then be sent to Mars, never again to return. Lansdorp says: We will send humans to Mars in 2023. They will live there for the rest of their lives. There will be a habitat waiting for them, and we'll start sending four people every two years.

(via Bits & Pieces)

Official Mars One website.

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New Maya Temple Found

Some 1,600 years ago, the Temple of the Night Sun was a blood-red beacon visible for miles and adorned with giant masks of the Maya sun god as a shark, blood drinker, and jaguar. Long since lost to the Guatemalan jungle, the temple is finally showing its faces to archaeologists, and revealing new clues about the rivalrous kingdoms of the Maya.

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