Elite athletes distinguish themselves from others through hard work, and, most importantly, raw talent. However new research suggests that the most accomplished athletes also share another common feature – a handsome face.

Basically, it seems the more attractive an athlete is, the more likely it is that they will be one of the better athletes in their chosen sport. Read more here.

So this guy played basketball for his country in the 2008 Beijing Olympics:

And while he is OK looking, I bet his brother is way more attractive.

The Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition is a dynamic international photo competition that honors the world’s most extraordinary microscope images of life science subjects. For example check out this photo of the Cancer cell alphabet, which only got an honourable mention:

See more cool pictures here.

The Leopard seal (Hydrurga leptonyx) is the second largest species of seal in the Antarctic (after the Southern Elephant Seal).

It is a mammal and a carnivore. It has an average lifespan of 12 to 15 years in the wild. It measures 3 to 3.5 m (10 to 11.5 ft) in length and it weighs up to 380 kg (840 lbs).

They are the most formidable hunters of all the seals and the only ones that feed on warm-blooded prey, such as other seals. Leopard seals use their powerful jaws and long teeth to kill smaller seals, fish, and squid.

These effective predators live in frigid Antarctic and sub-Antarctic waters, where they also eat penguins. They often wait underwater near an ice shelf and snare the birds just as they enter the water after jumping off the ice. They may also come up beneath seabirds resting on the water surface and snatch them in their jaws.

If I encountered a leopard seal in real life I would be very, very scared. This guy apparently wasn’t:

A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust. For example this is the Ring Nebula:

The Ring Nebula lies about 4,000 light years away, and is roughly 500 times the diameter of our entire Solar System.

Every time you jump, you experience gravity. It pulls you back down to the ground. Without gravity, you’d float off into the atmosphere.

Gravity causes any two objects in the universe to be drawn to one another. Read more here.

If it weren’t for gravity, this trampolining video wouldn’t be anywhere near as awesome as it is:

It can be extremely difficult to change a persons behaviour. Psychologists study behaviour change, and some people believe that the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better is by making it fun to do. Like this:

A drop of water at regular speed is boring.

A drop of water seen at 2000 Frames per second is awesome:

Boring things made fast do become interesting!

Last month NASA smashed a rocket, called the LCROSS, into the moon. It gouged a 30-meter-wide (100-foot-wide) hole in a shadowy crater near the moon’s south pole, letting fly more than 200 tons of material.

After analysing the explosion the scientists found a significant amount — about a dozen bucketfuls of water. The presence of water on the moon opens “a new chapter” that could allow for the development of a lunar space station.

The confirmation of water is welcome news both to future explorers who might set up home on the lunar surface and to scientists who hope that the water, in the form of ice accumulated over billions of years, could hold a record of the solar system’s history. Read more here, here, here, here or here.

Fireworks are pyrotechnic explosives that contain colour-producing chemicals. The colour-producing chemicals are basically metal compounds. That is because different metals emit different coloured light when they are heated.

For example here are some common metal compounds and the colour they emit:

• SrCO3 (strontium carbonate) – Red
• CaCl2 (calcium chloride) – Orange
• CuCl2 (copper chloride – Blue
• KNO3 (potassium nitrate) – Purple
• Titanium, aluminium, or magnesium powders – White
• For more colours go here.

To see which colour a metal emits you can use a flame test. A flame test is a procedure used to detect the presence of certain metals, based on the flame colour that the metal produces. It looks cool, see:

Humans are very closely related to chimpanzees in evolutionary terms. But why can we talk while they can’t?

Well, it seems it’s all in our genes. Genes are little bits of DNA that decide how living things look and function.

Two tiny changes in the sequence of one gene could have helped install the mechanisms of speech and language in humans. The differences could affect how the brain develops, and so explain why only humans are capable of language.

The speech gene is called Foxp2 but it doesn’t control speech all by itself. It actually turns on and off a bunch of other genes, and all together they work to enable human speech. Read more here, here, here or here.

Petroleum also called crude oil is a thick, black liquid. It is the most important world energy source. And it supplies 38% of the world’s energy at present. Oil is a non-renewable resource.

According to a recent report, the world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit. Read more here.

Oh no!

What are we going to do if we run out of oil?

Umm … maybe …. we could start getting our energy from renewable resources like  wind, rain, tides, geothermal heat, and of course sunlight. Maybe we should follow the lead of Spain, which now gets about 53% of it’s total electricity needs from solar power. Read more here.

Antarctica is a large continent located at the far south of the world. The weather there is extremely cold and about 98% of Antarctica is covered with snow and ice.

Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent on Earth. It is also considered a desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm along the coast and far less inland.

Antarctica is the only continent with no countries in it. By international treaty (another word for agreement), none of the land in Antarctica belongs to any country.

It is also a very big place. This picture should give you some idea as to its size:

The mirror test is a measure of self-awareness. Basically, if you can look in a mirror and understand that the reflection you see is in fact you, then you pass the test.

Only a select list of species–elephants, dolphins, magpies, gray parrots, some primates, and humans–can pass the mirror test. As such, scientists regard the ability to use a mirror as evidence of complex cognition.

Miss Piggy, the famed porcine muppet, knew a thing or two about mirrors. In fact, she was seldom without one. She may have been vain, but she was also one smart pig.

Now, it turns out, Miss Piggy isn’t the only clever porker. Real pigs also understand the value of their reflection, they can pass the mirror test, thus putting them into the elite group of animals. Read more here.

When hydrogen peroxide decomposes (breaks down), it gives off oxygen gas and water. As it is an exothermic reaction it also gives off heat. The reaction is:

2 H₂O₂ → 2 H₂O + O₂

Under ordinary circumstances, it decomposes very slowly, but potassium iodide can act as a catalyst — making the reaction tremendously fast. If there is some liquid soap mixed in with the hydrogen peroxide, steamy foam will gush out of the container. And the foam looks kind of like big toothpaste, thus the reaction is sometimes called the ‘elephant toothpaste’ reaction. Check it out:

A solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun. It will then block the rays from the sun.

The umbra is the darkest part of the shadow. In astronomy, an observer in the umbra is said to be in the shadows experiencing a total eclipse.

The penumbra is the region in which only a portion of the Moon is obscuring the Sun. An observer in the penumbra experiences a partial eclipse.

An island is any piece of land that is surrounded by water. An atoll is an island of coral that partially or completely encircles a lagoon.

Atafu (Nasa image, Google maps) is an atoll located in the south Pacific Ocean.

The typical ring shape of the atoll is the result of coral reefs building up around a former volcanic island. Over geologic time, the central volcano has subsided beneath the water surface, leaving the fringing reefs and a central lagoon that contains submerged coral reefs. See here for an animation.

Unfortunately, the approximate elevation of Atafu Atoll is only two meters above the tidal high-water level. This of course means that the 500 inhabitants of Atafu may need to find a new place to live if global warming continues to raise sea levels, just like these folk.

More cool island pictures from above here, more satellite images here.

… NOT!

The Peacock spider or Gliding spider (Maratus volans) is a species of jumping spider.

The spider is only found in Australia and measures about 5mm in size.  The males have a colourful pattern on flaps that extend from their abdomen during breeding/mating.  In addition to this, they raise their back pair of legs and dance from side to side to win over their plain brown females. Weird huh. Read more here or here.

From their very first days, newborn babies’ cries already bear the mark of the language their parents speak.

A new study of crying babies has found that they start learning language in the womb—and are born with what you might call “accents”.

The melodies of newborn babies’ cries follow the same intonations of the languages the babies hear in the womb. French babies’ cries, for example, tend to end on a rising note.

Amazing! Read more here, here or here.

A giant crack in Africa formed in just days and could be the forerunner to a new ocean.

The crack is the surface component of a continental rift forming as the Arabian and African tectonic plates drift away from one another. Eventually it could reach the east coast of Ethiopia and fill up with seawater. Unfortunately, this won’t happen any time soon – it would take around 4 million years for the crack to reach the size of the Red Sea. Read more here.

The Briggs-Rauscher reaction, also known as ‘the oscillating clock’, is one of the most common demonstrations of a chemical oscillator reaction. The reaction begins when three colorless solutions are mixed together. The color of the resulting mixture will oscillate between clear, amber, and deep blue for about 3-5 minutes. See:

The overall chemical reaction can be written as:

IO₃^- + 2 H₂O₂ + CH₂(CO₂H)₂ + H⁺ –> ICH(CO₂H)₂ + 2 O₂ + 3 H₂O

Looks complicated, and it is! To learn how to do it go here.