“In the 1960s we noticed there was a problem with time,” says Witold Fraczek, an analyst at Environmental Systems Research Institute in Greater Los Angeles. In 1948 Harold Lyons at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. built the world’s first atomic clock, an instrument that keeps time based on the vibration of atoms […]
The six undergrads that trickle into the Aquatic Ecosystems Research Laboratory at the University of British Columbia are unsure about what they’re in for. The room they enter is all black from the carpet to the walls and the ceiling. A conference table partitioned into six sections is illuminated in the middle. They each take […]
“It’s not your usual rock that you would find,” says Jonathan O’Neil, a geologist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC. It’s a bit of an understatement because O’Neil is referring to what he believes is the world’s oldest rock, a funny-looking basalt embedded in the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt in northern Quebec. The rock itself […]
The University of Victoria conservation field class is rapt. A blowtorch has just been ignited, oomph, and Patrick Keeling, champion of eukaryotes and microbiologist at the University of British Columbia, feeds a straw-thin glass capillary pipette through the hot blue flame. He removes the pipette from the flame and stretches it apart into spun hair. […]
When it comes to complex courtship displays, birds of paradise are right up there. They do this whole hanging-upside-down-from-a-branch thing. And granted, the mantis shrimp has an impressive suite of wooing manoeuvres, used to communicate amorous intentions to the potential mate in question (otherwise the wooer might come across as an aggressor to the wooee). […]