A blink sends the message: You are my friend. I am not angry. I am not threatened, or threatening. This kind of message is very important in the wild, where cats battle for territory. Run across a neighboring cat and youd better make your intentions...
June. Nineteen sixty-nine. Not one airliner but two, plus the pilot of an Air National Guard fighter plane, report being harassed by a team of UFOs. One man estimates the glowing ships have come within a few hundred feet. The pilot of the fighter pla...
Cats send all sorts of nonverbal signals, both to each other and to us humans. One of those signals is a blink. If you own a cat and havent ever noticed it blinking at you, keep an eye out. It usually happens just as the cat enters a room where you a...
Heres one you probably never thought to ask about before. Youre in the woods building a campfire. You pile up some dry kindling and light a match. Hold the match under the kindling and, sure enough, the kindling starts burning. Okay, so why is that?...
On the Earth's surface, sand is everywhere. In fact, it's even more common than rock. On today's Moment of Science, we'll learn where all this sand comes from. Most grains of sand originally started as part of a larger rock. A giant rock might seem s...
Don: Ready, Ya?l? Ya?l: Yep. D: Here goes 3.1415 9265 3589 7932 3846 2643 3832 79. Ta da! Y: Wow, you really can recite pi to the thirtieth decimal place. Very impressive, Don! You must have the memory of an elephant. D: Thanks, Ya?l, but do elephant...
If you go to any outdoor, nighttime event these days, youre likely to see people wearing glowing plastic necklaces. These necklaces seem to glow magically, as though they were made from cool, flexible neon lights. Each necklace is a hollow, plastic t...
on this Moment of Science Yael and Don discuss what causes the brown spots on bananas. Y: So Don, yesterday I was walking down the produce aisle when I saw it--long, ripe,yellow. The perfect banana. It really looked delicious and I had to have it. I...
Like a theater curtain, a slit pupil can close as much as necessary to prevent too much light from entering the eye. For humans and other animals active mainly in the daytime, visual sensitivity is not as important as the ability to see small details...
Whitecaps are small waves that grow too tall to support themselves on their short bases. Its kind of like piling up dry sand on the beach. You can make a sand hill only so high before it collapses. If the base is very wide, thoughas is the case with...
In Canada's arctic, winter is the best driving season because every winter, ice roads are built over frozen rivers and lakes, connecting communities that are usually accessible only by air. Ice is surprisingly strong and forms early in the arctic. By...
Human beings have round pupils; cats have pupils shaped like vertical slits. Whats the advantage for cats and people, respectively, in those different pupil shapes? Different pupil shapes seem to be an adaptation to different activity patterns during...
If you got this one wrong, dont worry: almost everybody does. For some reason the out-and-then-down scenario seems more sensible to us. But lets look at it again. Gravity is always pulling your car downward, even when its sitting still on the road. S...
On this Moment of Science Yael and Don discuss some interesting findings about baboons. Y: That film about climbing Mount Everest was pretty amazing. Have you ever thought about doing something like that, Don? D: Are you crazy? The day I think about...
Until recently, for many of us anthrax was the name of a mid-80s heavy metal band. Now, unfortunately, we know anthrax as a deadly disease that threatens our safety. One way to protect ourselves is to know what anthrax is, and what causes it. Anthrax...
