Browsing: Nature

A Brief History On September 10, 2008, The Large Hadron Collider was powered up for the first time.  Claimed to be the largest scientific experiment ever, the test site consists of a tunnel 17 miles in circumference for the purpose of accelerating and colliding sub-atomic and atomic particles. Digging Deeper Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, in Switzerland, the project was the culmination of work by over 10,000 scientists from 100 countries, a truly massive project.  Built between 1998 and 2008, the machine cost over $9 billion and has worked at an energy level…

A Brief History On September 2, 2023, the nation celebrated another National Hummingbird Day, a day to recognize the beautiful and colorful little nectar sippers in our gardens and at our Hummingbird feeders. Digging Deeper Flapping their little wings over 50 times per second, our smallest birds are also our most maneuverable, able to hover, fly up and down and backward and forward.  While we think of them as drinkers of nectar, the fact is that Hummingbirds drink nectar only to supply the huge amount of energy needed to fly the way they do.  They draw most of their nutrition…

A Brief History On September 1, 1939, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man famous as the “father of the atomic bomb,” along with his student, Hartland Snyder, using the physics of the day, published a definitive proof of how black holes could develop. Digging Deeper The scientific paper known as the Oppenheimer–Snyder model relied on earlier work by Albert Einstein, especially vis a vis the Schwarzschild metric concerning gravitational forces involved in the collapse of stars leading to black holes. Educated at Harvard, Christ’s College and Cambridge, Oppenheimer became a professor at Berkely in 1936.  His contributions to the field of…

A Brief History On August 19, 2017, over 300,000 Atlantic Salmon being raised offshore in a pen escaped when the pen failed due to a lack of maintenance.  Almost ready for harvest and sale, the Salmon are not native to the Pacific coast and present a danger of being an invasive species that could hurt native populations of Pacific Salmon. Digging Deeper Invasive species present an extreme ecological problem around the world, sometimes introduced on purpose, such as the common Carp, Pigeons, and Starlings, and other times completely by accident due to shipping, such as Zebra and Quagga Mussels, or…

A Brief History On August 15, 2013, a new carnivorous mammal was announced by the Smithsonian Institution, a two-pound animal resembling a racoon from the Andes in Columbia and Ecuador. Digging Deeper The Olinguito, dubbed Bassaricyon neblina in science talk, is the smallest member of the Procyonid family.  Along with insects, the little guys also gobble some fruits and nectar. The first new carnivorous mammal found in the Americas in the last 35 years, the Olinguito is certainly not the last new animal discovery of our lifetime.  In fact, The Science Museum of Virgina reports that 18,000 new species are…