Marc "Zeke" Kossover is a science teacher in California. As such, he's always looking for real-world demonstrations of science principles, and he's pretty clever.

Let's say you you were into making solar ovens. Let's say that you decided a few years ago to make the best solar oven ever. Further, let's stipulate that you saw a nearly meter-diameter Direct TV antenna on the side of the road. An idea happened. You rushed to the local plastics store and bought highly reflective Mylar and glued it to the antenna.

Your solar oven was pretty amazing. While the hot spot wasn't super small, it was hot. Really hot. It can pasteurize a liter of water in 15 minutes.

The principle is called solar convergence. The problem is that a device like this will continue working even when you are not demonstrating the scientific principle. Kossover found that out when he took his homemade parabolic mirror to work and then forgot and left it in his car. In July. In California. You can read the story and see more pictures of the damage at The Blog of Phyz. -via Metafilter

The world watched and waited on edge of our seats while professionals from around the world came together to bring a young soccer team out of a flooded cave in Thailand. It's hard for us lay people to understand the difficulty of the task. Chris Peterman is a professional cave diver, safety diver, and instructor. He helps to paint a full picture of their work by stressing the five cardinal rules of cave diving:

• Be well-trained and do not dive beyond your certification level
• Never use more than one third of your breathing gas to enter the cave—reserve one third for exiting and one third for emergencies
• Maintain a physical guideline back to the cave entrance at all times
• Never dive below the appropriate depth for your breathing gas mixture
• Carry at least three lights per person—one main and two back-ups

Peterman explains each rule and relates how they would work in the Thailand rescue operation. He also tells stories from cave divers' experiences that illustrate what happens when you don't follow each rule. Read his fascinating insights at Ars Technica. 

(Image credit: Chris Peterman)

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Cats are so devious, they've fooled humans into loving them. Neuroscience Ph.D. candidate Shannon Odell explains the mechanism in our brains that make us defenseless against cute little baby cats. -via Nag on the Lake

The U.S. has lost quite a few astronauts: three during training for the Apollo 1 mission, seven during liftoff of the shuttle Challenger, and seven on the shuttle Columbia during re-entry. But no Americans have actually died in space. However, three cosmonauts died in orbit during the Soyuz 11 mission in 1971, as they began their journey home from Russia's Salyut 1 Space Station.

Throughout Russia, the disaster brought about an unprecedented wave of mourning. People wept openly in the streets for three men who for over three weeks had appeared nightly on their television screens—cosmonauts who were being presented as human beings and not cold, faceless supermen—and who had offered a clear response to Apollo that the Soviet Union was back in the manned space business and firmly in the lead. Now, instead of three heroes, bearing broad smiles and bedecked in medals and garlands of flowers, all the Soviet people had was … three funerals.

Read what happened to the Soyuz 11 crew at Real Clear Science.

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It's hot this summer in North Carolina, especially if you are a dog bred for cold climates. Mako the Husky has found a way around that, because he's found his place -inside the ice maker! He would have never been found if he'd pulled his tail in properly. Now the ice machine belongs to him. 



Boing Boing has another video where they caught Mako in the act of climbing into the ice machine.

Today it's hard to imagine a nuclear power plant in Antartica. Environmental regulations for the continent are pretty strict, and the many countries that operate on the continent are bound by them, with the goal of keeping Antartica as pristine as possible while conducting research there. But there was a small nuclear reactor at McMurdo Station in the 1960s, constructed to save money on shipping fuel to the American station.

“Nukey Poo” began producing power for the McMurdo station in 1962, and was refuelled for the first time in 1964. A decade later, the optimism around the plant had faded. The 25-man team required to run the plant was expensive, while concerns over possible chloride stress corrosion emerged after the discovery of wet insulation during a routine inspection. Both costs and environmental impacts conspired to close the plant in September 1972.

This precipitated a major clean up that saw 12,000 tonnes of contaminated rock removed and shipped back to the USA through nuclear-free New Zealand. The clean up pre-dated Antarctica’s modern environmental protection regime by two decades, and required the development of new standards for soil contamination levels.

Now it is illegal to remove even a single rock from Antartica. Read more about Nukey Poo and the evolving environmental standards standards for Antarctica. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Peter Rejcek, National Science Foundation)

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Jurgen Otto (Peacockspiderman) is known on the internet as for his spectacular photos and videos of peacock spiders. You might not have known that Otto, along with his colleague David Knowles, have discovered the majority of the 70 known species of peacock spider. Knowles spotted a spider with a peculiarly energetic dance he called the Hokey Pokey spider in 1994, but didn't bring back a specimen. He's been looking for it ever since. Knowles and Otto looked for the spider in 2015 and 2016, and almost gave up, but Otto went out into the Australian wild alone in 2017. That's when he found the Hokey Pokey spider, retrieved a specimen as well as pictures and video, and got to name the species Maratus tortus. On the same trip, he found yet another new species with spectacular markings that he named Maratus unicup. See more pictures and more complete videos of these new spiders at ABC News.

The picture here has been all over the internet for years as an example of pareidolia, or things that look like other things. These small windows are set into roofs in Romania to allow ventilation into attics where food is stored, yet they are small enough to keep light from getting in. This particular house is in the city of Sibiu. Yes, they look like eyes, as if the house itself is watching you. In Romanian, you might say “Vă vedem,” which means "We see you."

Starting in the winter months of 2017, hundreds of thousands of people in Romania came out to protest, after a newly elected government moved to decriminalize corruption and put laws into place that could help politicians escape investigation. According to Transparency International, Romania is one of the most corrupt countries in the European Union and those February protests were some of the largest in Romanian history. That slogan, Vă vedem, appeared on their streets under suspicious, slanted eyes.

Almost a year later, in December 2017, protests continued, and in Sibiu, where the Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis, had served four terms as mayor, a group of protesters adopted the “Sibiu eyes” as their logo.

Since then, people from all over the world have been using the stylized symbol of those windows to show their support for Romanians fighting corruption. Read the story and see those symbols at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Flickr user lucianf)

The center subject of this photograph, circa 1900, is Ismat al-Muluk, granddaughter of the King of Persia Nasir al-Din Shah, along with some family members. You can enlarge those goofy faces here. It is apparent that Ismat al-Muluk was greatly interested in photography, and had fun with it.   

In Iran, the Qajar era lasted from 1796 to 1925, and was notable for its great strides in the modernization of the nation. Harvard University has an online bilingual archive called Women's Worlds in Qajar Iran containing literature, personal writings, photographs, artworks, and more that bring insight to the lives of women during the Qajar period. Mefite elgilito has selected quite a few particularly intriguing photographs from the archive that are linked here. They serve as an entertaining introduction to the vast archive, and a glimpse into the Persia of 100 years ago.

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Science fiction speculates on the march of science and technology. The best science fiction raises questions about how those things affect humans and the way we live. PBS Digital Studios looks at the development of science fiction from Frankenstein to Black Panther with a delightfully animated video. -via the AV Club

Scotland has the Loch Ness Monster, Lake Champlain in New York/Vermont/Quebec has Champ, and Sweden has its own monster called Storsjöodjuret, which supposedly lives in Lake Storsjön. Accounts of sightings go back over 300 years, of a creature that's estimated to be anywhere from 10 to 42 feet long.

Of the creature in question, the late Mark Chorvinksy said the following: “Fisheries officer Ragnar Björks, 73, was out checking fishing permits on Sweden’s Lake Storsjön when he had the fright of his life. From the placid waters a huge tail suddenly broke the surface near Björk’s 12 foot row boat. The colossal creature attached to the tail appeared to be 18 feet long, grey-brown on top with a yellow underbelly. When Björks was alongside the monster, he struck at it with his oar, hitting it on the back. Angered, the creature slapped the water with its tail and the rowboat was thrown nine to twelve feet into the air. ‘At first I didn’t believe that there was any monster in the Storsjön…but now I am convinced.'”

Some theorize that Storsjöodjuret is an animal that was trapped in the lake during the last ice age around 15,000 years ago. Read some other tales of Storsjöodjuret encounters at Mysterious Universe. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Andreas Eriksson)

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During Comic Con weekend, movies studio trot out thrilling trailers for movies that may be just around the corner, or may not be out for another year. Such is the case for Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the third Hollywood-made Godzilla film, and a sequel to the 2014 Godzilla. It will be the 35th overall Godzilla film. And like the Japanese film series, this one expands to include other giant monsters.

The new story follows the heroic efforts of the crypto-zoological agency Monarch as its members face off against a battery of god-sized monsters, including the mighty Godzilla, who collides with Mothra, Rodan, and his ultimate nemesis, the three-headed King Ghidorah. When these ancient super-species – thought to be mere myths – rise again, they all vie for supremacy, leaving humanity's very existence hanging in the balance.  

Godzilla: King of the Monsters will be in theaters in May of 2019. -via Tastefully Offensive

Cara Wohr's dog loves to play in the sprinkler water. How much does he love the sprinkler? Enough to drag it into the house through the doggy door! Was he thinking of sharing this wonderful water with his humans, or was it just too hot outside? We don't know, but she managed to take a picture for the insurance adjuster and her blog. See more pictures of Wohr's dog and the sprinkler at Cats, Beavers & Ducks. You can just hear the insurance guy now: "We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two." -via Mashable

(Image credit: Cara Wohr)

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The Walking Dead will return in about ten weeks. Here's the first trailer for season nine, which is apparently about rifts in the rather large community of allies. We already know a couple of the core cast members won't survive the season, but we don't know yet how they will leave. It had better be spectacular. There's plenty of drama behind the scenes of The Walking Dead franchise, too. Meanwhile, in Texas...

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Morgan, Victor, Alicia, and a bunch of new characters are looking for a new story line. Fear the Walking Dead will be back next month for the second half of the

The National Aquarium of New Zealand erected a sign last year to shame their Naughty Penguin of the Month, complete with the reason for the award. In contrast, they also named a Good Penguin of the Month. It was a cute way to remind visitors that penguins are not all alike; in fact they all have their own distinct personalities. The Aquarium has kept up the idea, and posted a new Naughty Penguin and a new Good Penguin each month. Regular visitors got to know the best -and worst- penguins. Now @jonnywaistcoat has curated and posted evidence of each Penguin of the Month over the past year with commentary so that internet users all over the world can get to know the individual penguins, too!

It's good to know that Timmy, the original naughty penguin, actually made the good list once, but then fell back into his old ways. But we learn that Timmy is also a victim of bullying. Mo made the naughty list so many times, they turned to shortcuts to describe his behavior, as you can see in the picture above. And the new guy, Burny, is turning out the be a real sweetheart. See all the Penguins of the Month at Thread Reader.  -via Metafilter