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• September 12, 2020

  The Shocking Story of the Electric Eel

  The electric eel is an air-breathing fish native to the Orinoco and part of the Amazon River basins in the northern part of South America. The scientific name, Electrophorus electricus, refers to the eel’s capacity to produce electricity.  This eel is a sizable fish: the eel can grow to more than six feet and weigh…
• September 11, 2020

  Something Else to Worry About. A Carrington Event

  A Carrington Event is one of those things that are not very well known, but if one occurs, we all may be in deep trouble.  In 1859, our sun was highly active and spat out a coronal mass in what is now called a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). It caused the largest known geomagnetic storm…
• September 4, 2020

  Kentucky Bluegrass is a Lie

  Kentucky Bluegrass isn’t from Kentucky and it isn’t blue. It is also known as smooth meadow grass and by other names.  Poa pratensis is, like so many Americans, an immigrant. It occurs naturally in Europe, parts of northern Asia and the mountains of Algeria and Morocco.  It’s not clear how it got to the Americas…
• September 3, 2020

  Centenarians

  A centenarian is a person who has achieved a hundred or more years of life. Throughout most of human history, it was very rare for people to reach such a great age, because of recurrent famine, war, droughts, plagues and the other afflictions accompanying history. A few people made it to a century in age,…
• September 3, 2020

  The Virgin Mary and Cleopatra’s Eye Shadow

  If you’ve ever seen a Medieval European painting that has a deep, rich blue, you’ve seen a color called ‘ultramarine,’ which was made from the semi-precious stone called lapis lazuli.  The stone was ground to a fine powder, then mixed with oil or some other medium. It gave a rich blue that did not fade…
• September 3, 2020

  The Biggest Living Thing

  No, it’s not a blue whale, or a California coastal redwood. There are two candidates: a fungus called Armillaria ostoye and an Aspen tree named Populus tremuloides. The Armillaria lives in Oregon, and covers 2,385 acres (that’s not quite 10 square km). It’s a clonal growth, estimated to be 2,400 years old, and might weigh…