Science

In the fictional "Game of Thrones" world of Westeros, only one thing seems more inevitable than the show's unending wanton violence and each of the story's heroes meeting an untimely death: winter is coming.

Fans of the HBO show based on George R.R. Martin's novels will know that the problem for the various Westorosi clans is that exactly when winter will arrive and how long it will last is anyone's guess. Summer in the fantasy world may last for years, but when winter sets in -- and there's no apparent way to predict when that will happen -- it can last for generations.

Now, at last, science is stepping in to aid fans and Ravens alike by positing an explanation for why all efforts to adopt an effective system of fictional meteorological forecasting seem so hopeless. A group of graduate students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University have published a research paper (PDF) suggesting that the most likely cause of the unpredictable weather in Westeros is that the world is orbiting not one, but two stars.… Read more

There are some baseball players known for their strong arms, but a lot of people probably stood up and took notice when 13-year-old Nick LeGrande threw a baseball 1,800 miles today.

Before you scoff at the physical impossibility of such a notion, take solace in the fact that technology was very much behind LeGrande's feat, telerobotics to be precise. The Kansas City, Mo., teen, who suffers from severe aplastic anemia, a rare blood disease, threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the Oakland A's-New York Yankees game in Oakland, Calif., tonight. … Read more

This week, experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats will install the world's first "Quantum ATM" in New York City.

Part art installation, part science experiment, and part social commentary, the new not-so-automated teller machine at 20 Rockefeller Center will take deposits and transfer them to a so-called quantum superposition, allowing the real-world cash to proliferate itself into seven billion accounts in the Quantum Bank.… Read more

If you've spent much time looking into the peculiar world of quantum physics and the notion of a so-called quantum superposition that theoretically allows a particle to be everywhere at once, you've surely thought of some ways that being able to manipulate such properties could be pretty awesome.

In my case, it's the strongest evidence I've found since turning 12 that the Santa Claus I grew up hearing about could actually exist.

But experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats is setting out to put quantum physics to a much more practical use, no matter how impractical the world of finance may find it.… Read more

In high school science classes, students are encouraged to memorize the first 20 elements of the periodic table. There are other methods employed at the university level for all 118 -- many students swear by mnemonics.

When it comes to tremendously catchy fun, though, a new song by AsapScience has them all beat. Called simply "The New Periodic Table Song (In Order)," it's a chemical adventure that romps along to a section of "Infernal Galop" (otherwise known as the Can-Can music) from Jacques Offenbach's opera "Orpheus in the Underworld."

It goes, appropriately, at a fast gallop, but listen a few times, and you'll soon find yourself confidently singing along. … Read more

Engineer Ben Kokes is a lot of things. He's an outdoor enthusiast. He's a Bronco mechanic. He's a tinkerer who builds electronic gadgets for fun. He's also in love.

I'll let him tell his story in his own words: "Once upon a time, a boy met a girl. Then a short amount of time later, the boy decided to design and build a ring for the girl, because doing things in the most complicated way possible is just what he does to show the love." To that end, Kokes made a ring. But not just any ring. It's a titanium ring with internal illumination.… Read more

My high school science project looked at how row covers could help plants grow in cold weather. Not a bad idea, but not nearly as cool as high school student Eesha Khare's science project, the creation of a supercapacitor that could potentially be used to fully charge a cell phone within 20 to 30 seconds.

Khare, an 18-year-old from California, won the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award and $50,000 for her participation in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair run by the Society for Science & the Public. Think of it as the world's largest science fair. Khare took home one of the top prizes for "a tiny device that fits inside cell phone batteries, allowing them to fully charge within 20-30 seconds."… Read more

NICASIO, Calif. -- Growing up in the 1960s, Ben Burtt was such a big "Star Trek" fan that when he went off to college at a school where he had no TV, he had his father record the audio from each week's episode and mail it to him.

Sitting in his dorm room, Burtt would listen to the shows with headphones on, taking in each new episode with no pictures. But he didn't need the video to understand what was going on. "It was so vividly portrayed with excellent sound effects," Burtt said, "… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--If you don't think a playable Lego electric guitar, complete with the ability to play different notes and adjust pitch, is possible, you don't have enough faith.

Later this year, Lego will launch the third generation of its popular Mindstorms programmable robotics platform. Known as EV3, the third-generation kit will come with plans for 17 different models. But 12 of those models were created by members of an elite, hand-picked, team of Lego community members.

Now, with the eighth-annual Maker Faire hitting the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend, Lego is unveiling three of the 12 community-created … Read more