Photography

A Heart as Big as a Whale 0
- Earth & Environment, Photography
- December 6, 2012
This is a replica of a blue whale heart, life-sized. An adult can crawl through it with little difficulty. The replica is on display at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Since a real blue whale heart has never been recovered from a dead whale, the builders had to rely on whaler’s records,
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Nudibranch’s Colorful Defense 0
- Earth & Environment, Photography
- December 4, 2012
Most sea-dwellers evade predators by camouflage, a hard shell, or very fast responses. So, it would seem that the thousands of nudibranch’s (or “sea slugs”) wouldn’t have a chance; they’re brilliantly colored, slow and soft. But survive they do: their coloring is thought to warn prey that they are toxic. Sometimes, the warning has more
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Historical Days in Tahrir 0
- Photography, Society
- December 3, 2012
Though it hasn’t been covered with the same amount of enthusiasm by the international press, last week hundreds of thousands of people retook Tahrir Square in a scene reminiscent of the famous “Arab Spring” days of 2011. Their return comes as the current president tries to push through his own constitution and give himself sweeping
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Grasshoppers Change their Tune 0
- Earth & Environment, Photography
- November 27, 2012
Grasshoppers have adapted to a lot of conditions, and now they’re adjusting to another: city life. Male bow-winged grasshoppers that live in cities have added louder bass when making their mating calls, while their less urbanized cousins maintain lower sound production. It’s an unusual evolution by an insect, but they have been around longer than
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Curiosity Digs Up Something “for the History Books” on Mars 1
- Photography, Space & Physics
- November 21, 2012
Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), the car-sized rover affectionately known as Curiosity, only recently begun digging into Martian soil, but it has already turned up something of significant interest. SAM, the Sample Analysis at Mars, is a scoop that had previously been using its instrumentation to search for methane, produced by life on Earth, in Mars’
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Ocean’s Crown of Thorns 0
- Earth & Environment, Photography
- November 15, 2012
The tropical Pacific and Indian oceans are home to an unusual sea star. The Crown of Thorns (COT) lives by crawling over coral reefs, eating coral polyps as it moves along. It’s almost too successful: the sea star is one of the things wreaking devastation on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Populations of the star are
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