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For many of us who do not live close to the poles (say, south of Canada for the Northern Hemisphere), a view like this is quite rare. They’re the Aurora Borealis, strange northern lights which are relatively common occurrences during the spring and fall equinoxes. But despite being described by humans for centuries, we’re only marginally closer to understanding why and how they happen at all.

NASA is trying to change that. With THEMIS.

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What do dinosaurs and Phobos have in common? Nothing. Though I have to admit to buying my son a dinosaur book, very much like this one, not just for it’s intrinsic and educational value, but also for the fact it came with a set of red/green 3D glasses.

That purchase came about a year ago, when images from Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity beamed back picture after picture of beautiful images, many of which were rendered in 3D for the general public. At the time, I couldn’t justify spending the $2 to get a mail-order set of 3D glasses, so Amazon came to the rescue.

Let’s just say I’m making better use of the glasses now than my son.

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Sigh. If only it were true.

Folks over at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego are presenting donors with an opportunity verging on immortality. They (meaning possibly you) can have their name live in perpetuity by making a sizable donation to the Institute, and in return receive naming (and bragging) rights for a number of newly found ultra-cool-looking critters. Read more…

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We at TinySci don’t condone drug use, and with this finding to be reported in tomorrow’s New England Journal of Medicine, there’s another good reason to be wary. Doctors in Leipzig, Germany were alarmed by a recent dramatic jump in lead poisoning amongst its residents. After decades of seeing no such cases, 29 appeared during a 3-4 month period within four hospitals in the area.

Clinicians were able to put two and two together after noticing a trend amongst these patients: they were young unemployed smokers with body piercings.

Oh yes, and they all smoked pot. Read more…

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I can’t give you a picture of “Hubble” because this one’s a computer program. But I can give you one of the “black holes” it looks for, because these pertain to the dead spots you probably come across at times while trying to access another computer on the web, say, like TinySci.com. Read more…

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It was once believed that this tiny, yet extremely pervasive blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria (specifically, Synechococcus) helped moderate the increase in carbon dioxide emissions as it underwent photosynthesis across the world’s oceans. While generally true, scientists at Stanford and the Carnegie Institution noticed something odd while working with these critters in the lab – the amount of photosynthesis activity measured didn’t match the amount of carbon dioxide being consumed.

Uh oh.

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