On:

The Winter Olympics are about to start and NFL football is about to end. I have to admit that I’m not terribly interested in luge. In fact, this is always a season of regret for me, my favorite sport is NFL Football. I have a special way of watching it. I like to watch it with the sound muted. That way, I can read a book in my lap but not miss any great plays.

UPDATE: I am using this technique more and more. I used it while watching the Olympics and the Westminster Dog Show at the same time, jumping between channels. When Whitley asked who won the gold, I blurted out, ‘why, the Wire-Haired Terrier, of course.’ He’s not up on sports, so he just said ‘oh.’ Luge was on the Olympics at the time. Who did win the gold? Could’ve been the Water Spaniel…read more

On:

The romantic notion of "stardust" has inspired authors, poets and song-writers for decades, leading to a dictionary definition that describes it as "a magical or charismatic quality or feeling."

Despite its enchanting reputation, this seemingly mystical substance is not merely confined to the imagination but is a genuine scientific term for the tiny cosmic dust grains floating through our solar system.
When Moby claimed in his 2002 song that "We Are All Made Of Stars," however, he may not have been too far from the truth, as scientific evaluations of this space dust over the past few years have yielded the surprising evidence that every atom in our bodies was once part of a star, maybe even several stars.
read more

On:

For centuries, ball lightning has captured the imagination of witnesses and defied scientific explanation, but now Chinese scientists have managed, by sheer chance, to capture an example of the mysterious lights on camera.

The image was actually obtained in 2012, in the Qinghai region of China, by researchers observing lightning during a thunderstorm using just a simple video camera in conjunction with a spectrometer, a device that used to measure the components of different types of light in order to identify the substances that may have produced it. The camera recorded a sizeable spark of ball lightning measuring 16 feet wide, which glowed continuously for about 1.6 seconds and floated for a distance of some 50 feet.
read more

On:

As if we needed any more factors to influence our already unpredictable weather, scientists are now concerned about the lack of activity on the sun, which appears to have diminished significantly.

The periodic changes in the sun’s activity, such as changes in levels of solar radiation, coronal mass ejections and solar flares, are known as the solar magnetic activity cycle. These variations, which can affect space weather and the Earth’s climate, have been noted to occur in eleven year cycles for hundreds of years. At this point in the cycle there should be a solar maximum, but space physicists have revealed that,conversely, activity is worryingly low.
read more