Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts

Monday, August 2, 2010

Paleontology Retcon: Triceratops never existed, now introducing the incredible shape-shifting Torosaurus!


So I don't know about the rest of y'all, but when I was a kid I went through three major phases growing up. I had a horse phase (aka My Little Pony phase), a teddy bear phase (aka Care Bear phase), and a Dinosaur phase. I memorized paleontological information like a tiny child-computer. I spent hours building skeletal models of dinosaurs, putting together dinosaur jigsaw puzzles, and playing with dinosaur toys (My 5th birthday party was dinosaur themed, complete with a craft station where we made stegosaurus hand puppets... my mom was AWESOME).

But suffice it to say that I was dino-cuh-razy, and the dinosaur that was at the top of my all time cool list was the Triceratops. Nothing was more kick-ass than the three horned beast. T-Rex? over compensating. Brontosaurus? Bronto-SNORe-us! Triceratops was where it was at. That's easily why my favorite Power Ranger was Blue Ranger Billy with the Triceratops dino-zord (and I infinitely despised the fact that I shared a name with that tool of a Red Ranger and fake-native american).

Now imagine my horror when I read the headline this morning that revealed scientists releasing a paper detailing how they believe that the Triceratops never actually existed. #horror

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Science FACTion: I CAN HAZ WEB SHOOOTERZ?!

So, it turns out our friendly neighborhood Spiderman had it right all those years ago. Evidently Scientists have been trying to figure out just how those nifty spiders create their silk which has a greater tensile strength than steel! According to inhabitat, scientists at two universities have made a decisive breakthrough in their research:

Spider silk may seem fragile, but it actually has a tensile strength that is a whopping five times more than steel! Scientists have been trying to replicate and harness the properties of the elusive material for years and now researchers from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and the University of Bayreuth have actually unlocked the secret of how spiders construct the elastic fibers. Armed with this new knowledge, they’re planning to build an artificial spinning apparatus that will mimic a spider’s silk glands, which could eventually lead to a material that could have an unlimited number of applications from medical to construction.

All I can say is that if I'm not webswinging by 2020, I am suing Science. Cuz I was promised flying cars and FTL travel, and they have produced neither.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

I Was A Teenage Cyborg or CRAZY CONTACT LENSES

Whether its Robocop, Terminator, or BSG Cylons, nerds love cyborgs. We are now getting closer and closer to becoming the high tech uber-men of science fiction thanks to scientists at the University of Washington who have developed solar powered augmented contact lenses. These lenses are intended to be embedded with hundreds of small LEDs in order to create images directly on the eye. The scientists postulate that the use of these lenses could be used for anything from augmented reality applications to assisting hearing impaired people identify location of noises. via inhabitat


Alls I know, is I want me some Geordi LaForge eyes: