Enlarge / Researchers tested medieval gunpowder recipes in this replica of an early 15th-century stone-throwing cannon. (credit: T.S. Ritchie et al., ACS Omega 2021) Gunpowder—as opposed to modern smokeless powder—isn’t used much these days in current weaponry, although it’s still useful for historical weapons and remains popular for fireworks and other pyrotechnics. An interdisciplinary team […]
Enlarge / A 1729 Stradivari known as the “Solomon, Ex-Lambert” on display at Christie’s in New York in March 2007. (credit: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images) Along with Andrea Amati and Andrea Guarneri, Antonio Stradivari dominated the so-called Golden Age of Violins (roughly 1660 to 1750), and the instruments they crafted remain the gold standard today in […]
Enlarge / A medieval form of mead called “bochet” calls for caramelizing raw honey in a cauldron over an open flame. (credit: Screenshot/Gemma Tarlach/Gastro Obscura ) Ah, mead , that sweet, honeyed alcoholic beverage that has been a staple at Renaissance Fairs for decades (along with giant turkey legs ). It’s also increasingly popular among […]
Enlarge / German chemists combined two complementary mass spectrometry techniques to analyze 467 different commercial beers from around the world. (credit: Natasha Breen/Getty Images) People have been brewing beer for millennia, and the basic chemistry of fermentation is well understood. But thanks to advanced analytical techniques, scientists continue to learn more about the many different […]
Nobody nails onscreen chemistry like Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone . The dynamic duo have appeared together in three films so far, creating swoon-worthy romances each time. Their creative collaboration may have peaked with La La Land (which won Emma an Oscar ), but it all started with the rom com Crazy Stupid Love , […]
Ancient Rome’s emperors did some pretty bizarre stuff—bursting into uncontrollable fits of laughter, appointing a horse as a priest, dressing in animal skins and attacking people… the list goes on. Why did they act this way? Possibly… lead poisoning. There are any number of factors that contribute to the demise of an entire civilization, like […]
French physicist Gabriel Lippmann pioneered color photography and snagged the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physics for his efforts. But according to a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lippmann’s technique distorted the colors of the scenes being photographed. Physicists at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland […]
Enlarge / Normal DNA uses adenine (left), while some viruses use diaminopurine instead. DNA is the genetic material used by every living organism. But, in a few edge cases, the four bases of DNA—adenine, thymidine, cytosine, and guanine—undergo chemical modifications. And in viruses, things are far more flexible, with many using RNA instead of DNA […]
Enlarge / A five-year-old boy with boxing gloves poses in front of a huge mural of himself in Denver, Colorado. (credit: Blaine Harrington III/Image Bank/Getty Images) Mention the word “graffiti,” and many people’s thoughts immediately turn to vandalism in the form of defacement of property. But there is also graffiti that rises above such negative […]
Now you can walk through a virtual spider web, using VR headset and controllers to interact with a web sonification model. A spider weaving its intricate web is a bit like a person composing a song, at least in the eyes of MIT materials engineer Markus Buehler, whose research involves translating web structure into musical […]