Tell Me, Wave, Where Did You Come From? Who Made You?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qQQXTMih1A
View ArticleA Tough Little Droplet Fights To Stick Around
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbGz1njqhxUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtlgI34y3Wc
View ArticleThe Most Astonishing Wave-Tracking Experiment Ever
I'm standing on a beach and I see, a few hundred yards out, a mound of water heading right at me. It's not a wave, not yet, but a swollen patch of ocean, like the top of a moving beach ball, what...
View ArticleNeil Whosis? What You Don't Know About The 1969 Moon Landing
Forty-five years ago, this week, 123 million of us watched Neil and Buzz step onto the moon. In 1969, we numbered about 200 million, so more than half of America was in the audience that day. Neil...
View ArticleWhat's Better Than A Total Eclipse Of The Sun? Check This
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyZoD7BRTtg
View ArticleAn Animal Makes A $10,000 Deposit, But Not At The Bank
It's a highly specialized category to be sure: "Longest." But that's what the auctioneer is selling. According to the catalog of I.M. Chait Gallery, in Beverly Hills, "This truly spectacular specimen...
View ArticleWhere The Birds Are Is Not Where You'd Think
This is a trick question. Where would you expect to find the greatest variety of birds?Downtown, in a city?Or far, far from downtown — in the fields, forests, mountains, where people are scarce?Or in...
View ArticleGuess Who's Been Waiting In The Lobby For A Hundred Million Years?
Sometimes the quiet ones surprise us.Take moss — those fuzzy green pads you see on the sides of old trees, or hanging onto rocks. Who notices moss? It's just ... there, doing whatever it does — so...
View ArticleHow To Cross 5 International Borders In 1 Minute Without Sweating
So many nations are breaking up. Ukraine is in pieces. Moldova is teetering. Libya has no government to speak of. Sudan broke in two last year; now both sides are fighting. Yugoslavia is seven...
View ArticleWhat A Balloon Shouldn't Do, But For Some Reason Does
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8mzDvpKzfY
View ArticleElemental Storytelling
There's a photograph I know that shows a kid's bicycle lying on its side, one wheel turned upright, a smear of blood tracing its path on the concrete. There's a little package still latched to the...
View ArticleWhen Snails Lose Their Way
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSN-kqAmxwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW-tzEKwD7g
View ArticleIf You're Born In The Sky, What's Your Nationality? An Airplane Puzzler
Here's a puzzle I bet you've never pondered.Imagine you are very, very pregnant. For the purposes of this mind game, you are a married American woman (with an American spouse) and you are about to...
View ArticleWhen Venus Was Filled With Venusians — 50 Billion Of Them
What a difference 180 years makes.Back in the 1830s, a Scottish minister and amateur astronomer named Thomas Dick tried to calculate the number of intelligent creatures in the universe. He assumed that...
View ArticleBuilding Me: A Puzzlement
It's a puzzle — the deepest puzzle I know. The question is: What are we?One answer, from physicist-novelist Alan Lightman, is we are stuff. Just stuff."Let me explain. A highly unpleasant idea, but one...
View ArticleMapping What You Cannot See, Cannot Know, Cannot Visit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENyyRwxpHo
View ArticleHowling Babies Drove Prehistoric Warriors Into Battle?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm-sQnazFAQ
View Article'Murdersquishing' Them To Death: How Little Bees Take On Enormous Hornets
I know, I know. You have Putin to worry about, ISIS to worry about, Britain's near breaking, Washington's broken, and the globe keeps getting warmer — so why bring up Japanese giant hornets? You have...
View ArticleIs That A Lark I Hear? A Nightingale? Surprise! It's A Bat
Bats produce "pings" or "clicks," right? They make these high-pitched sounds, too high for us to hear, but when their cries ricochet off distant objects, the echoes tell them there's a house over...
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