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Category: Sciences

Laniakea Supercluster
By The Generalist Posted on June 1, 2020April 17, 2021

The Great Attractor

Somewhere in the sky, obscured from our view by the Milky Way, an unknown anomaly called the Great Attractor pulls a hundred thousand galaxies around.

Categories: Astronomy, Sciences
Cyborg beetle
By The Generalist Posted on May 29, 2020January 25, 2023

Remote control animals

Something creepy for your Friday: attaching electrodes to animals’ brains so their movements can be controlled remotely.

Categories: Animals, Sciences, Technology
Carbonado
By The Generalist Posted on May 27, 2020April 17, 2021

Black diamond mystery

Where do black diamonds come from? We don’t actually know.

Categories: Africa, Astronomy, Earth science, Places, South America
Brushturkey
By The Generalist Posted on May 26, 2020January 25, 2023

Compost birds

Some Australian birds make compost heaps.

Categories: Animals, Oceania, Places, Plants, Sciences
Nucleogenesis
By The Generalist Posted on May 23, 2020January 25, 2023

The origins of elements

Where do the elements come from? Nuclear astrophysics proposes several origins, depending on the element: the Big Bang, dying and exploding stars, and cosmic rays.

Categories: Astronomy, Physics & chemistry, Sciences
Grave
By The Generalist Posted on May 21, 2020January 25, 2023

Pirates hate metric

Who keeps the metric system down? In the United States, pirates do.

Categories: Early modern history, History, North & Central America, Places, Sciences, Weights & measures
Bee larvae
By The Generalist Posted on May 20, 2020April 17, 2021

Animal diseases

Animals have some of the best old-timey disease names, including heartwater, foulbrood, bluetongue, glanders, scrapie, camelpox, and bumblefoot. 

Categories: Animals, Health & medicine, Sciences
Double rainbow
By The Generalist Posted on May 17, 2020April 17, 2021

The darkness between rainbows

When a double rainbow happens there’s a dark shadow between the bows. This is Alexander’s band.

Categories: Earth science, Sciences
Lahpet
By The Generalist Posted on May 16, 2020January 25, 2023

Pickled tea

In Myanmar you can drink tea or you can eat it.

Categories: Food & agriculture, Places, Religion & belief, Sciences, Southeast Asia
Sleep
By The Generalist Posted on May 14, 2020January 25, 2023

Medieval sleep

The historian A. Roger Ekirch has argued that in Medieval Europe, and in many places prior to the Industrial Revolution, people would habitually wake up for an hour in the middle of the night.

Categories: Europe, Health & medicine, History, Medieval history, Places, Sciences
By The Generalist Posted on May 13, 2020January 25, 2023

Stages of death

When a human dies, they go through several distinct stages. In order: pale, cold, stiff, mottled, putrefied, decomposed, skeletonized.

Categories: Health & medicine, Sciences
Horoeka
By The Generalist Posted on May 9, 2020January 25, 2023

Bird spikes

A tree in New Zealand grows downwards-facing spikes for the first 15 or 20 years of its life; this is thought to be a remnant defence against gigantic now-extinct birds.

Categories: Animals, Oceania, Places, Plants, Sciences
Bushfire
By The Generalist Posted on May 7, 2020April 17, 2021

Fire birds

Several bird species have been implicated in the spread of wildfire in Australia.

Categories: Animals, Earth science, Oceania, Places, Sciences
Runaway stars
By The Generalist Posted on May 5, 2020April 17, 2021

Runaway stars

Most stars are part of galaxies, but some are hurled out of their usual orbits by supernovae, galactic collisions, and black holes. These are the runaway stars, some of the fastest stars known.

Categories: Astronomy, Sciences
Hippo
By The Generalist Posted on May 2, 2020April 28, 2021

First hippo

When he arrived in London in 1850, Obaysch was the first hippopotamus in Europe for more than a millennium.

Categories: 19th century history, Ancient history, Animals, Europe, History, Places, Prehistory, Sciences
By The Generalist Posted on May 1, 2020April 28, 2021

Baroque perspective

There is a courtyard gallery in the Palazzo Spada in Rome that is designed to fool the eye. It looks like it should be 37 metres long, but in fact it’s only 8 metres in total.

Categories: Architecture, Art, Arts & recreation, Europe, Mathematics & statistics, Places, Sciences

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