You are hereby commanded to pay your respects to the Great and Terrible Aquatic Ruler, here on a visit to land in his robotic chariot. “All Hail Pinkie, the Fish King! Bow before him or suffer his wrath!”Â
This NASA link with pictures and info about how water boils in space is a great help for obscure and weird facts a writer needs to know for credibility. That’s what I love about NASA. They may not make American taxpayers happy with their space progress, and they really need to keep their shuttles in better working order, but
Who else thought, “Aww, the guy’s getting downsized,” when Pluto got bumped out of the planet category? All my life I’ve enjoyed the fact that our solar system wound itself up with a quirky little rock that zipped through a crazy orbit–kind of cool, really. While we lived in the DC suburbs the kids took us
Anybody else old enough to remember the Paul Simon song by that name? I never did understand all the words, but it was fun to sing. Now I’ve come across some info that says some people don’t have fingerprints, and the people at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have found out what causes it.  Apparently it’s
Check out this link on Microscopic Microbe Motors (whew-try saying that fast) and then let your imagination go wild. Anybody got a sweet tooth? Obesity on the rise? Just get yourself a Microbe engine and let the little bacteria eat up your extra sugar. While they’re in there, they may as well run your music device,
These lovely geysers reminded me of the fun I’ve had plotting all the things that can go wrong after a colony ship reaches a new planet and gets settled in. Imagine a lovely Martian morning: rising, stretching. Heating up a cup of cocoa to celebrate the survival of your first month on Mars, then- voomp! A geyser bursts
Recent studies done by Paul Manger from Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand indicates that dolphins may not be as bright as they’ve been given credit.  Without jumping into the fray and taking sides on the issue (I’ve never spent much time with dolphins, myself), it did get me wondering. How often do people really like smart animals? Within dog breeds, it is
I found an article (sorry – the link is eluding me) about the possibility of hot-blooded dinosaurs. While the study didn’t make any firm statements, the jist of it is that some dinosaurs may have used thermal inertia to keep their body temperature up, just as alligators, Komodo dragons, and Galapagos tortoises do today. This would be
This article on happenings in Cryobiology has all kinds of potential for speculative fiction plots. Tonight I’ll have to grab a cup of hot cocoa to keep back the frost bite and indulge in a brain storm.