Stories — Science

Something Tiny Tells a Big Story

Pale Blue Dot is the name given to a photograph of planet Earth taken on 14 February 1990 by Voyager 1, a robotic explorer built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In the photograph, taken from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometres, Earth's apparent size is less than a pixel. The planet appears as a tiny dot against the vastness of space, among bands of sunlight reflected by the camera. The phrase "Pale Blue Dot" has come to represent a contemplative perspective on humanity's relationship to the cosmos.

Single Continuous Surface

What do the Google Drive logo, old fashioned conveyor belts, and Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude all have in common? They each pay homage to the Möbius Strip, a single-sided, non-orientable surface.  

The Shape that Shouldn’t Exist

Have you ever wondered how a dome-shelled tortoise turns itself back the right way up when placed upside down (a survival reflex known as “self-righting”)? It’s because its shell resembles a Gömböc (pronounced goemboets), the first-known three-dimensional homogenous object that has just one stable point and one unstable point of equilibrium when placed on a flat surface.

Look Again

Love a good optical illusion, don’t you?

The image looks like a spiral, but it's actually a series of concentric circles. Try counting them without touching the screen.

Instant Pets from an Evil Marketing Genius

Sea-Monkeys have been a popular stocking stuffer for children since their “discovery” in 1957. So, what are they exactly? Despite their name, they're not monkeys. And they don't live in the sea.