Asking and answering...

the important questions: How Well Does Scotch Age in Zero Gravity? A Distiller Launches Some to Find Out.

Evolution...

Courtesy The Wall Street Journal.

Zoom through 62 orders of magnitude...

in scale from the mind-boggling small to the unimaginably huge at The Scale of the Universe 2.  Pretty cool visualization.  Check it out, people who like to check things out.

Hat tip:  The Bu bro.

RELATED:  Here's another similar demonstration of scale that I posted earlier.

Pretend you're an astronaut...

and apply now for the Cornell/University of Hawaii Mars analogue mission and food study.  This could be an interesting experience, you get get to spend four months in Hawaii and are paid $5,000 if selected.  The application window closes 29 February.

Good luck and bon appétit.

Not quite Soylent Green...

but nearly as creepy:  Test tube hamburgers to be served this year.  As yucky as the process sounds, culturing strips of meat from stem cells in laboratories, at least animals aren't being slaughtered so it's "ethical" meat.  (I sure hope the burgers taste like bacon.)

NOTE:  If you're a young person and don't get the title reference for this post, then click here.  It's a sci-fi classic.

And they're pretty, too...

Ancient Plants Resurrected from Siberian Permafrost

Russian scientists reach Lake Vostok...

beneath 2.4 miles (3.8 km) of Antarctic ice after two decades of drilling.  The enormous sub-glacial lake is thought to have been isolated from the Earth's atmosphere for about 20 million years, and will be carefully sampled for microbial life during the next field season.

Absolutely riveting...

and a webcam too: The Pitch Drop Experiment.

Yeah, it's a lot like watching grass grow.

Mythbusters stunt goes awry...

and sends cannonball through nearby homes.  Fortunately nobody was injured, and be sure to watch the video at the link.  Should make for an interesting episode when it airs.

UPDATE:  More here with another video.

The physics behind...

swirling wine. You can practice with your Zinfandel on this holiday.

Just don't be too overly enthusiastic in your experimentation in oenodynamics, both in volume and acceleration.

I guess I'm stuck here...

Walking through doorways causes forgetting, new research shows.

Why science majors...

change their minds (it’s just so darn hard).  Indeed, science curricula are difficult and challenging, and demand an innate curiosity and aptitude from those that pursue them successfully.

Reminds me of this.

Did pumice provide the foundation...

for early life on Earth?

Here's the on-line article (.pdf) published in Astrobiology, but it's only freely available for the next several days, so take a look while you can.

I thought my students were bored...

but it's more about brain temperature regulation: More than a sign of sleepiness, yawning may cool the brain.

How people in science...

see each other.  Heh.

Hat tip:  CN.

Big science...

The Universe's Ten Most Epic Projects

Adaptation...

The Mystery of the Canadian Whiskey Fungus

Not only is this an interesting article, it illustrates how good science is done. (And also the lonely lives of some scientists.)

You should believe in magic instead...

Pope: Humanity isn't random product of evolution.

A very good reason...

to study geology, rather than biology: Scientists Study Belly Button Bacteria.  Eww.

10 stunning science visualizations...

in a gallery at Wired.com.  It's an interesting mix of images, renderings and videos, and the HIV virus is as creepy looking as it is lethal.