Tag: jeff cannata
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Deep Sea Thriver
It’s like having “an elephant stand on your thumb.” That’s how deep-sea physiologist and ecologist Mackenzie Gerringer describes the pressure squeezing down on the deepest known living fish, some 8 kilometers down. For animals that live in such extreme pressures …
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Smite Angle
Hampshire’s Ipley Cross is a notorious crossroads where cyclists keep getting hit and even killed by motorists, despite the mostly level terrain around the place where two roads cross each other at a seemingly innocuous angle. A navigational hazard called …
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Black Bird Swinging in the Spread of Light
The mating dance of the male superb bird of paradise is like nothing else on Earth, thanks to their feathers, which absorb 99.95 percent of light. That’s nearly none more black, and virtually identical to what Vantablack, the world’s darkest …
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Big Skittle Lies
Do gummy bears really come in different flavors, or do we just think they taste different because they are different colors? While closing your eyes, your accuracy in differentiating flavors majorly declines. This phenomenon is something that scientists are studying- …
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The Hottest Fashion
The mid-19th century vogue for flowing, diaphanous women’s garments made from open-weave fabrics, combined with gas lighting, candles, and open fires meant that it was extremely common for women to literally burst into flames: on stage, at parties, at home. …
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Heroes of Blight and Tragic
At first glance, Miles Traer seems like any other scientist, but this Stanford University geologist has an alter ego. He beats back the forces of environmental destruction and holds the super-powerful to account. Traer and two colleagues have calculated the …
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Quantity Time
Despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life. The majority of the time spent with your parents is …
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Fool Poisoning
The year was 1902. With funding and consent from Congress, Harvey Washington Wiley was about to embark on an experiment he dubbed the “hygienic table trials,” but the Washington news media called his volunteers “the Poison Squad.” Wiley’s staff would …
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Halve A Seat
At the University of Chicago in the early 1920s, psychology grad student William Blatz built a remote-controlled trick chair that would collapse when he pressed a switch. (It was padded to avoid injury.) Then he had subjects sit in the …
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Up Sh%t Creek
Firefighters in Norway have pulled a man from the inside of a toilet after he lowered himself in to retrieve a friend’s phone and became stuck in the tank below. Oh yes, the story gets much worse from there. Anthony …
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