Human Behavior, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 17, 2018

The Amazing Tech in 'Black Panther' Is More Realistic Than You Think

In the blockbuster film Black Panther, the kingdom of Wakanda is a wonderland of fantastic, futuristic technology. There are self-piloting aircraft; cars and planes that can be remotely operated through virtual reality (VR) interfaces; high-definition holographic displays; and magnetic levitation train systems. There is also the newly updated Black Panther...

May 16, 2018

What Is Trepanation?

Paul McCartney revealed in a 1986 interview in Musician magazine that John Lennon once asked him and his wife, Linda, You fancy getting the trepanning done? He was referring to trepanation surgeries that put holes in the skull using hand drills, cutting or scraping techniques. Trepan comes from the Greek...

Jun 1, 2018

Mystery of the Coral Castle Explained

In Homestead, Fla., not far from Miami and off the South Dixie Highway, sits a world-famous structure called the Coral Castle. Though not really a castle — and not really made of coral — it is nonetheless an amazing achievement. More than 1,000 tons of the sedimentary rock (oolite limestone)...

Jun 21, 2018

Scientists Piped Music Into Women's Wombs to See If Fetuses Like Freddie Mercury

When Freddie Mercury sang, Mama, life had just begun, in the second verse of Bohemian Rhapsody, he probably didn't have an audience of fetuses in mind. Let's consider it a happy coincidence, then, that unborn babies really do seem to love Queen. According to a new, as-yet-unpublished study by the...

Oct 2, 2018

Rare Quintuple Rainbow Captured by Photographer in New Jersey

While shooting a sunset in New Jersey recently, photographer John Entwistle got another gorgeous sight: a sky painted with what looked like a set of five rainbows. I could be wrong but that sure looks like a quintuple rainbow at sunset tonight over the Jersey Shore, NJ, Entwistle wrote on...

Oct 4, 2018

Stephen Hawking's 1st Wife Blasts Biopic 'The Theory of Everything'

Jane Hawking, the ex-wife of the late and renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, asserted that The Theory of Everything, a film about the couple's life and family, got a lot wrong. Don't ever believe what you see in films, Jane Hawking said this week at the Henley Literary Festival in Oxfordshire,...

Oct 16, 2018

Photos: Peer at Glittering Insect Eyes and Glowing Spider Babies in Prizewinning Photos

Weevil eye (Image credit: Courtesy of Nikon Small World)From Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, photographer Yousef Al Habshi secured first place in the 2018 Nikon Small World photography contest using reflected light at a magnification of 20x to record this image of the eye of a Metapocyrtus subquadrulifer beetle. [Read...

Oct 17, 2018

Why Is it Fun to Be Frightened?

John Carpenter's iconic horror film Halloween celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Few horror movies have achieved similar notoriety, and it's credited with kicking off the steady stream of slasher flicks that followed. Audiences flocked to theaters to witness the seemingly random murder and mayhem a masked man brought to...

Nov 5, 2018

After a Zombie Apocalypse, Here Are 9 Keys to Rebuilding a Civilization

In AMC's The Walking Dead (which airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. CST), now in its ninth season, characters have survived years after the zombie apocalypse began and are now working to expand their simple communities into a stronger, more capable and civilized society. You're gonna be evidence that...

Nov 7, 2018

Watching People Beatbox in an MRI Machine Will Blow Your Mind

Patil is a beatboxer, a musician who can create convincing drum beats and other percussive sounds using only her vocal tract. She's also a researcher at the Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL) at the University of Southern California (USC), where she and her colleagues are working to understand how...

Dec 10, 2018

How to Survive the 'Game of Thrones,' According to Science

If you want to survive the Game of Thrones, it pays to be noble, female and flexible about the concept of loyalty. In a new published study (yes, really), epidemiologists at Macquarie University in Australia analyzed the deaths of the key characters in the Game of Thrones HBO series and...

Feb 26, 2019

Charles Dickens Plotted to Send His Sane Wife to an Asylum

Being married to the Victorian author Charles Dickens was definitely not the best of times. Long-hidden letters reveal that Dickens sought to have his wife, Catherine, forcibly consigned to an institution — a scheme that fell apart when doctors found no evidence of mental illness in the woman. At first,...

Feb 27, 2019

What Are Radio Waves?

Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation best-known for their use in communication technologies, such as television, mobile phones and radios. These devices receive radio waves and convert them to mechanical vibrations in the speaker to create sound waves. The radio-frequency spectrum is a relatively small part of the...

Mar 15, 2019

French Painting Stolen by Nazis in 1940 Raid to Be Returned to Owner's Descendants

An artwork by Paul Signac — a painter who helped invent the pointillist style — was stolen from a French home during a Nazi raid in 1940. Signac's painting recently resurfaced in a private collection, and German cultural authorities said it will be returned to the descendants of its original...

Mar 29, 2019

Here's What the Speed of Light Looks Like in Slow Motion

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second (300 million meters per second) and is believed to set the unsurpassable speed limit of the universe. But what does the speed of light actually look like? It might sound like a ridiculous question, but optical researchers at the California Institute of Technology...