How is spider silk so strong? It’s so thin and light! The properties of spider silk—also known as gossamer—can seem mysterious if we try to think of it as a kind of string; however, the strength of spider silk comes primarily from its complex structure on the microscopic scale. Gossamer[Read More…]
Search Results for author "Daniel Galef"
Ask a scientist: Why isn’t the sky blue?
Two questions stood out for our first column. First, “Why is the sky blue?” This is a well-known one, but the subject has also been tackled by just about every scientific blog and answer column under the blue sky. The second attention-grabbing question was “Why isn’t the sky blue?” That query[Read More…]
Ask a Scientist: What Is “Ask a Scientist”?
Since this is the first instalment of this column, there are not yet questions to answer. But, not to worry! The first question we’ll answer will be: “What is Ask a Scientist about?” In answering it, SciTech hope to drum up enough interest and enthusiasm from you, the readers, to[Read More…]
Move aside elephants—birds are the smartest non-primates
Footage from a revolutionary behavioural experiment showed non-primates making and using tools just like humans. In the video, a crow is trying to get food out of a narrow vessel, but its beak is too short for it to reach through the container. Nearby, the researchers placed a straight wire,[Read More…]
Students discovered in suspended animation under melting snowbanks
When April arrives with its sweet showers to herald spring and the end of the term, and the giant snowbanks that have dwarfed all other campus structures for the past six months finally begin to melt, what was once hidden shall be revealed. We meet again our old friends the[Read More…]
McGill professor wins top Canadian science award
Professor Victoria Kaspi, astrophysicist in McGill University’s Department of Physics and Director of the McGill Space Institute, was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, the nation’s top scientific honour, last month. Kaspi is one of the world’s leading experts on neutron stars, tiny stellar remnants[Read More…]
Rewriting the history of the moon
A research team out of UCLA, when testing the compositions of moon rocks, determined that they possessed a striking similarity to rocks found here on Earth. This has led the scientists to believe that the Earth and the moon have the same origin. McGill Earth and Planetary Sciences professor William Minarik,[Read More…]
McGill remembers Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky, the MIT scientist, philosopher, and author, passed away last week at the age of 88, from a cerebral hemorrhage. Known around his campus as “Old Man Minsky,” he was a pioneer in a number of fields from cognitive and computer science to philosophy of mind and information theory.[Read More…]
The best scientific publications at McGill
While every newspaper at McGill, including the Daily, the Reporter, and the Tribune, has a Science & Technology section, McGill University is also home to a number of specialized publications that cover all aspects of scientific journalism and inquiry. Many of these, despite fascinating content and a hardworking staff (often[Read More…]
What the galaxies have in store
Last year was an exciting year in space. In 2015, the Dawn orbiter visited the dwarf planet Ceres, scientists photographed the surface of Pluto in unprecedented detail, and Matt Damon even got stuck in space again. But knowing what’s already happened is easy—it’s predicting the future that’s hard. But that doesn’t[Read More…]
