What is Quantum Gravity [Video]

The force of gravity is the lost sheep of physics, and physicists have struggled for the best part of a century to unite it with the rest of their flock of particles and forces. An unexpectedly fruitful approach has been to think of how gravity might operate if space were only two-dimensional. By simplifying the problem, they hope to get to the heart of what gravity is and then apply the lessons to our higher-dimensional space.

#SciAmBlogs Wednesday - feathered tyrannosaurs, coral transplants, nanomedicine, Kawasaki Disease, and more.

Yes! We’ve made it! Forget NYTimes or BBC or NPR SciAm Blogs were featured in The Onion! That is the pinnacle nowhere higher to go. We are now part of the popular culture see the video… of course, we made it our newest Video of the Week

And now back to more serious fare…

#SciAmBlogs Officially Pop Culture Icon

Video of the Week #37 April 4th, 2012

#SciAmBlogs Tuesday - DNA Patents, Supernova, Power of Mindset, Bat-Killing Fungus, and more.

News tidbit of the day? The #SciAmBlogs make an appearance in an Onion video (around 1:57-2:04).

100 Years Ago: Loss of the Titanic

April 1962

Supernova turns inside out and kicks neutron star

Artists illustration (left) of the inner layers of Cassiopeia A's predecessor star, just before it exploded. Chandra image (right) of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant today. Iron is shown in blue, other elements are sulphur (green) and magnesium (red). Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/GSFC/U.Hwang J.Laming

Astronomers have taken a fresh look at an old supernova and found that it was turned inside out during its explosion. Iron, which forms during the stars death, is usually in the centre of the supernova remnant. But in Cassiopeia A they found it on the outside instead.

YouTube Winner Sends Spiders To Space

The first YouTube Space Lab contest has announced its winners. Young people entered by creating a short video of their idea for an experiment to be done in space. I was a judge.

Shooting for the Moon [Slide Show]

Right now, twenty-six groups of scientists, engineers and students from around the world are competing to be the first non-government team to get a rover on the moon by 2015. In this month's issue of Scientific American , Michael Belfiore explores what the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition means for the future of private spaceflight and tells the story of one of the most impressive teams - team Astrobotic. In this Web Exclusive, take a behind-the-scenes look at Astrobotic's preparations for a trip to the moon.

Entrepreneurs Race to Get a Rover on the Moon and Win $30 Million (preview)

On a muddy, rubble-strewn field on the banks of the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, a five-foot-tall pyra­midal robot with twin camera eyes slowly rotates on four metal wheels, its electric motors emitting a low whine. In a nearby trailer, students from Carnegie Mellon University huddle around a laptop to watch the world through the robot’s eyes. In the low-resolution grayscale images on the laptop’s screen, the rutted landscape looks a lot like the moon, which is the robot’s ultimate destination.

#SciAmBlogs Monday - Craigs List Avenue, Religion and Medical Care, Words With Rocks, Bad doctors, Futuristic Foods and more.

Most important news of the day we have a new blog! Check out Rosetta Stones !

Second, as it is Monday, we have a new Image of the Week .

The Celestial Goldfish

Image of the Week #36, April 2nd, 2012:

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100 Years Ago: Loss of the Titanic

April 1962

Supernova Turned Star Inside-Out

It’s a blast from the not-too-distant past.

Raw Footage From An Alien World

An alien world in the raw (see below)

Have you ever wondered what it would really be like for a person to journey to a truly distant and alien place; another planet, even another planetary system? What kind of things would we first see through our windows, or our cameras? What would our sensory experience be in such a distant realm? Would we sit back and admire glossy high-definition displays, or have to assimilate quick and grainy snapshots the result of serendipitous astronomical cin ma-v rit as we swooped into a system? The Apollo astronauts arguably had only partial sightings and limited views of a true moonscape until the very moment they set foot on the lunar surface. Certainly those of us trapped back on Earth merely caught our first excited glimpses of live human lunar exploration through fuzzy video-feeds.

Is It Possible to Build an "Unsinkable" Ship?

The claim that the RMS Titanic was "practically unsinkable" may have been more a marketing tactic than a commentary on its engineering, but its prelaunch reputation of being impervious to the perils of the high seas has lingered for the past 100 years. [More]


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Open Laboratory 2013 - submissions so far

It is now expected by the science blogosphere that I post the full updated listing of all the submissions every Monday morning. This serves as a reminder for bloggers to submit their (and other people s) posts, and to some extent prevents duplicate entries. But most importantly, it presents a growing listing of some of the most exciting work on science blogs. This is a weekly post where bloggers can discover each other and discover blogs they were not previously aware of. Thus it is also a promotion for all the bloggers involved.

The submission form for the 2013 edition of Open Lab is now open. Any blog post written since October 1, 2011 is eligible for submission . We will close the form on October 1st, 2012.

Foods in the Year 2000

A lot of proposed synthetic biology applications can seem pretty out there, but some are really out there . NASA is currently advertising open postdoctoral positions in synthetic biology, with particular emphasis on food production in space. Engineered organisms have the potential to do lots of things that would be useful for space colonists, from producing food and fuel to treating wastewater. Because organisms replicate themselves, future astronauts would only have to bring some spores and seeds and empty bioreactors, the organisms would do the rest of the work.

Matt Mansell--Synthetic Biology in Space

#SciAmBlogs Friday - Van Gogh s sunflowers, billion stars, bioluminescence, mitochondrial networks, and more.

Have a great weekend!

- Jalees Rehman Dynamic Mitochondrial Networks in Cancer

One billion stars (and a huge amount of data)

To say a picture is worth a thousand words would be selling this one rather short.

Full image containing (at least) a billion stars. Click for a bigger version, see text for the really big version, or scroll down for zoomed in view. Credit: Mike Read (WFAU), UKIDSS/GPS and VVV

#SciAmBlogs Wednesday - Cesarean Sections, post-run shivers", Planthoppers of Iran, food insecurity, Apollo 11 in the sea, and more.

As it is Wednesday, here is the brand new Video of the Week for your enjoyment (and laughter).

- Kirstin Hendrickson Cesarean Sections in the U.S. The Trouble with Assembling Evidence from Data