We recently explored the concepts that Faraday introduced regarding the relationship between electricity and magnetism. In this article we focus on their treatment by Maxwell. The work of Oersted, Ampere, Henry, and finally Faraday had established two basic principles of electromagnetism: 1. An electric current in a conductor produces magnetic lines of force that circle […]
Looking for a sexual partner outside your species is not very common, but that is what the males of a type of spider mite do. Even more, a recent work suggests that this kinky behaviour could have been key to colonization of new environments. Tetranychus evansi is a species of red spider mite originally from […]
One of the worst things that can happen to someone that loves talking as much as I do is losing my voice. What to most people is just a temporary inconvenience -or a relief depending on who you ask- for some is a real hindrance. Patients that suffer from a permanent impairment to their ability […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Strands of dark matter may create “beard” around Eart Earth may have a “beard” of dark matter shooting out from it, and the roots may hold a wealth of information about the elusive stuff and Earth itself. The model shows how dark matter streams may interact with a planet’s gravity, passing straight through and producing […]
Brood parasites are organisms that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among fishes, birds and insects, including some species of ants. Slave-making ants capture brood from other ant species to increase the worker force of their colony through regular, destructive raids that frequently finish with the killing of many workers and […]
Newton suggested that the apparent colours of natural objects depend on which colour is most strongly reflected or scattered to the viewer by the object. In general, there is no simple way of predicting from the surface structure, chemical composition, etc., what colours a substance will reflect or scatter. However, the blue colour of the […]
We got it wrong. Media have outlined a rosy picture of Oxytocin as the “love hormone” that floods our brain when we interact with toddlers, puppies and beloved ones. However, scientific evidence portrays a dark side of Oxytocin, which better matches the ambivalences of human nature. In addition, Oxytocin has a long time ignored sibling […]
If you have been following this series, I guess you will by now have learned a few surprising details about the history of western thought. For example, the fact that Ancient skeptics considered that it was suspension of belief , rather than the search for certainty , what most plausibly could lead us to happiness […]
Humanities & Social Sciences • Science • Technology • Weekly Selection
Lots of dark matter may lurk inside dwarf galaxy Triangulum II, a dwarf galaxy that doesn’t have any star-forming regions, may harbor a vast amount of dark matter. The discovery was made while attempting to measure Triangulum II’s mass. “The total mass I measured was much, much greater than the mass of the total number […]
Ants are among the most diverse, abundant and ecologically significant organisms on earth. They have colonized almost every landmass on Earth and the only places lacking indigenous ants are Antarctica and a few remote or inhospitable islands. Ants thrive in most ecosystems and may form 15–25% of the terrestrial animal biomass. Although their species richness […]