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Geneticists Develop Fruit Flies That Can Count
It took them 40 tries, but a group of geneticists have developed a generation of fruit flies that can count. Flies that can count, you say? Apparently, it’s possible, and it could give researchers some...
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Scientists Predict Insurgent Attacks Using WikiLeaks Data
War is, you might think, unpredictable, especially when it comes to insurgent attacks carried out by loosely-organised factions. But while strikes might appear to come from nowhere, researchers have...
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Why Spiderman’s Strong-as-Steel Webs Are Mathematically Possible
When you’re watching the Spiderman movies, you hardly ever stop to think about whether Peter Parker could actually physically swing from buildings on threads of silk. C’mon! Suspend your disbelief!...
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Calc.exe Is Dead, Long Live Google’s Calculator
Google’s search-based calculator is a bit of a God-send when it comes to impromptu math, but now the Big G has gone and extended its functionality by rolling out a full-on, 34-button scientific...
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How Twitter Can Predict When Individuals Will Get Sick
If you’ve been walking around a public place lately, you’ve come into contact with a lot of people. Some of those people may have been sick. And if you’ve been hanging around enough of them as they...
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Let’s Figure Out Infinity Once and For All
It’s probably time to fire up that second cup of coffee; the journey that TED-ED lecturer Dennis Wildfogel is about to take you on is one of infinite infinities. In other words, it’s going to make your...
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What Is This?
Is this some strange new GM flower? An awful piece of abstract art? Or just what happens if you take too much LSD? Actually, it’s none of those things; keep guessing, you’ll never get it. It is, in...
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Maths Can Make Your Batteries Charge Twice as Fast
Most battery advances concentrate on improving hardware, but researchers from the University of California San Diego have developed new algorithms that can cut lithium-ion battery charge times in half....
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Can You Fly By Firing Guns at the Ground?
It might be the preserve of fantastical action movies, but we’ve probably all wondered at some point or other if it’s actually possible to fly through the air by firing bullets down at the ground....
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You Won’t Believe How Much Graphing Calculators Have Changed
Twenty-seven years after introducing the world’s first graphing calculator, Casio has developed its most sophisticated educational Game Boy ever. Indeed, the new Casio fx-CP400′s 320 x 528 resolution...
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How Tall Can a Lego Tower Be Before It Crushes Itself?
Every building material has a theoretical limit which it can’t be used beyond: at some point, the weight of material above is enough to crush what’s below. Now, a team of engineers has worked out that...
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It Takes 20 Seconds Before People Get Annoyed About Waiting for the Elevator
Theresa Christy, a mathematician who works for Otis Elevator Co (they probably power your building), told the WSJ that once you press a button and wait for the elevator, it takes about 20 seconds...
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How Much Physical Space Does the Internet Take Up?
The internet is one of the most ethereal concepts in tech: it’s nowhere and everywhere, all at once. But if you could measure the thing, how much physical space would it take up? Fortunately Randall...
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Scientifically Speaking, Would Following a Star Have Gotten Three Wise Men to...
Two thousand years ago, wise men of this world weren’t lucky enough to have GPS. In the Christmas story, then, the wise men chose to follow a star to navigate their way to Bethlehem—but, scientifically...
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Math + Animated GIF = Nerdgasm
This could be the most deliciously geeky animated GIF ever created. Just in case you didn’t believe that Pythagoras’ Theorem worked, you now have no reason to doubt it whatsoever. [Chart Porn]
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Calling All Music Nerds: Hole Up With This Awesome Board Game
We’re still getting hit by the snow in a lot of the country, fun in the beginning, but you’re going to need something to occupy you. Booze is a good start, but the next step is Virtuoso, a music...
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The Secret Algorithm That Controls Everything About Orange Juice
If you ever wondered how orange juice can always taste so damn perfect every time you have it, it’s because of an algorithm. Coca Cola, which makes Simply Orange and Minute Maid, has an algorithm...
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The Hidden Fractals in Jurassic Park
If you’ve ever read the Jurassic Park novel and wondered what those crazy sets of spirals were between chapters, you need to watch this video. Also: if you’ve never read the Jurassic Park novel, you...
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The World’s Newest, Longest Prime Number Is Over 17 Million Digits Long
The world’s largest prime number just got much, much bigger. Say hello to 257,885,161-1, a prime number that is over 17 million characters long when written out in full — enough to fill 13,000 pages of...
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How Your Ears Do Maths Better Than Mathematicians
When you listen to music, when its waves of sound collide with your ear, you don’t hear a wall of sound. A great deal of information might travel in a sound wave and, if that sound wave were actually a...
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