Stranger Than Fiction
Sometimes science is just plain strange. And other times, it's the scientists who are strange. This lens may discuss "fringe theories", but it will also discuss unusual phenomena easily explained by conventional science.
I challenge readers of this lens to make up your own minds, and not take anything for granted as fact or falsehood. This means you should personally investigate both conventional and unconventional scientific claims, and reach your own conclusions rather than easily relying on or readily dismissing the conclusions of others.
I intend to feature items here that are both educational and entertaining, and occasionally lighten the mood with science-themed humor.
The icon I have chosen to represent this lens is an interrobang, an unconventional punctuation mark, which seems thematically appropriate.
Investigate!
Curiously, clicking on one of the following links will take you directly to the corresponding section of this lens!
- "Cargo Cult Science"
- Curious Science Links
- Curious Experiments of Spurious Merit
- Curious: The Klein Bottle
- Curious: Electronic Telepathy?
- Curious View: Astronomy Picture of the Day
- News for the Curious from Scientific American
- Curious or Spurious?: Latest Stories from Cryptomundo
- Curious or Spurious?: Nikola Tesla
- Shopping for the Nikola Tesla enthusiast
- Questions and Suggestions
"Cargo Cult Science"
Don't be spurious while investigating the curious; learn more on Wikipedia!
Note from B7T: Calling something a science doesn't make it so; in order to separate true science from dubious claims, scientists should adopt a level of investigative integrity, and not fall victim to what physicist Richard Feynman dubbed "cargo cult science".
You may also want to read the following Wikipedia articles:
Scientific method
Pseudoscience
Cargo cult science is a term used by physicist Richard Feynman during his commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, United States in 1974 to describe work that has the semblance of being scientific, but is missing "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty".
Curious Science Links
science, technology, weirdness, speculation, and educational fun
- Time Cube
- One of the strangest theories out there; even those willing to take it seriously may find the presentation hard to understand.
- The Journal of Irreproducible Results
- This is the website for the infamous science humor magazine.
- Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
- entertaining science and technology projects, and other amusing projects with a science theme
- The CandyFab Project - The Revolution will be Caramelized.
- an Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories project that caramelizes sugar to make inexpensive three-dimensional prototypes from computer models
- Time Travel: Eternally Cool
- my Ever.com lens on time travel, in science and story
- Uncovering the Secrets of Ireland's Ancient Breweries - Wired Magazine
- Two archaeologists about to excavate one of the 5,000 grassy mounds in Ireland known as fulacht fiadhs, dating from 1500 to 500 BC, propose the Bronze Age relics might just be Ireland's first breweries.
- Latest "faster than the speed of light" claims wrong (again) - Ars Technica
- A paper submitted to the physics arXiv has been picked up by a number of major news outlets (e.g., the Daily Mail) because the paper suggests that its authors have measured something traveling faster than the speed of light. Unfortunately, the claim is worse than weak; it is silly.
- Edison's Quest to Talk to the Dead - Paranormal Insider
- As the holder of one thousand and ninety-three patents, one might be tempted to believe that Edison was a hard-nosed man of science, utterly dedicated to the cold, hard truths of technology. And yet the "Wizard of Menlo Park" not only had a passion for science and electricity, he also expressed a marked fascination with the realm of the paranormal.
Curious Experiments of Spurious Merit
Don't try these in your kitchen!
- Fun with Grapes - A Case Study
- White seedless grapes, halved and heated in a microwave, yield spectacular sparks!
- Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches
- Perhaps there is educational value here, and follow-up experimentation may actually yield interesting data. But is it really worth the destruction of a household appliance?
Curious: The Klein Bottle
from Wikipedia
Note from B7T: A Klein bottle only has one side; its inside is also its outside. If you're interested in seeing some real Klein bottles (or purchasing one of your very own), visit Acme Klein Bottle.
The Klein bottle is a mathematical certain non-orientable surface, i.e., a surface (a two-dimensional manifold) with no distinct "inner" and "outer" sides. Other related non-orientable objects include the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. Whereas a Möbius strip is a two-dimensional surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary. (For comparison, a sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary.)
The Klein bottle was first described in 1882 by the German mathematician Felix Klein. It was originally named the Kleinsche Fläche "Klein surface"; however, this was incorrectly interpreted as Kleinsche Flasche "Klein bottle," which ultimately led to the adoption of this term in the German language as well.
Curious: Electronic Telepathy?
Curious View: Astronomy Picture of the Day
from NASA
The thumbnails in this feed of course don't do the images justice; I recommend you visit the page to see the large images, especially since they are usually accompanied by informative text that may better explain what you are looking at, including unusual scientific phenomena, or the photography techniques used to capture the images.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byNews for the Curious from Scientific American
- Fight to protect California condors from lead ammunition moves to Arizona
- It has been 22 years since the last 22 California condors ( Gymnogyps californianus ) were collected from the wild and placed in captive breeding programs. The species, which nearly went extinct due to habitat loss, poaching, DDT and lead poisoning, has since rebounded to 332 birds, according to counts maintained by the Zoological Society of San Diego . But despite that conservation success, condors still face a major threat from lead poisoning, which often occurs when the birds eat carcasses killed by hunters' lead ammunition. [More]
- Circulation of LHC Beams Could Resume in Earnest over the Weekend
- The Large Hadron Collider , the world's most powerful particle accelerator, is drawing near to its long-awaited reboot. More than a year after the European collider's initial start-up was quashed by a helium leak caused by a faulty electrical connection , particle beams have been injected into the collider, known as the LHC, and may be guided fully through its rings in the coming hours. [More]
- Measuring Up: New NIST Director, Plus Big Budget Put Measurement Science in Public Eye
- Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Commerce confirmed Patrick Gallagher as the 14th director of its National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) . Although the title may be new to Gallagher, NIST's mission of developing measurement science, standards and technology isn't. The 46-year-old physicist began his career in the organization's NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) in 1993 to pursue studies in neutron and x-ray instrumentation; in 2004 he became NCNR's director. [More]
Curious or Spurious?: Latest Stories from Cryptomundo
Cryptomundo reports on cryptozoology, the study of creatures about which little is known; sometimes that includes proof of their very existence!
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byCurious or Spurious?: Nikola Tesla
- Nikola Tesla - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- "Tesla is best known for his many revolutionary contributions to the discipline of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution."
- Forgotten Genius
- "With all due respect for Thomas A. Edison, Nikola Tesla was an equal, if not greater, American inventor. Edison is highly lauded. Tesla is nearly forgotten."
- Thomas Edison versus Nikola Tesla: Who was more productive?
- "Should we really care who was brighter? Or is it productivity that really counts? Who was the more productive of these two famous men?"
Shopping for the Nikola Tesla enthusiast
Vote for your favorite, or add what's missing!
My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla by Nikola Tesla
Originally published in 1919 in Electrical Experim more...0 points
The Secret of Nikola Tesla - The Movie (UFO TV Special Edition)
Digitally Re-mastered. Long shrouded in mystery an more...0 points
Nikola Tesla American Electrician and Inventor Born in Croatia of Serbian Parents Photographic Poster Print, 24x18
AllPosters.com is the world's #1 seller of posters more...0 points
Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla : Biography of a Genius (Citadel Press Book) by Marc Seifer
Seifer's vivid, revelatory, exhaustively researche more...0 points
Questions and Suggestions
speak for yourself on the subject
Seen any curious or spurious science on the web? Perhaps there's something you'd like me to add to this lens? If you know of any links to videos of unusual phenomena in action, I'd especially appreciate these; not everything is on YouTube yet!
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