Awesome Science

After enabling us to explore the Earth, the sea and the streets, Google is thinking smaller. From the company’s Labs comes the Body Browser, which is basically Google Earth for the human body.

Artist Iori Tomita uses a special process to turn the bodies of marine critters translucent, then injects dyes into their skeletons to produce these dramatic and educational biological specimens.

Using an incredibly well-focused mirror, this thing can harness the power of the sun into a 3500°C, rock-melting weapon. If you thought frying ants with a magnifying glass was something…

If you ever wondered how the radiation inside a microwave flows, this science experiment using a grid of neon bulbs and wire should help explain things. Plus, it just plain looks cool.

The Southern White-faced Owl has a couple of creepy transformations, but it’s got nothing on the Mimic Octopus. This strange cephalopod can copy the look of 15 species, from snakes to shrimps.

Peter Chinn combined three-dimensional ultrasound scans, computer graphics and footage from tiny cameras to come up with these eerie yet beautiful pictures of animals in the womb.

Hank of the Vlog Brothers gives us a primer about quarks via a catchy tune and kinetic typography. If only high school Physics was this addictive. “Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Top, Bottom…”

Segway inventor Dean Kamen shows off his incredible marvel of modern science – a prosthetic arm which can be controlled by the wearer’s mind, as if their real arm were still there.

There is a difference between setting yourself on fire and burning yourself. As explained by Theodore Gray, stuntmen often use a water-filled polymer to protect their skin. More at PopSci.

Did you know that when ants get separated from their colony, they start following each other in a circle until they drop dead? The phenomenon looks like an insect hurricane. Nature sure is weird.

Despite the fact that you’re never supposed to stick any part of your body into liquid nitrogen, PopSci’s Theodore Grey figured out a way to quickly dunk his hand without injury. Don’t try this at home.

Jeff Potter’s tattered cookbook features recipes and lessons from the world of food science, and interviews with geeks, chefs and scientists. We also think it’s the first O’Reilly Cookbook with food.

Researchers at Japan’s Nagoya University had 22 cars drive in a perfect circle to see if they could recreate those phantom traffic jams that come out of nowhere. They did. We still don’t understand it.

Biologist Mike Dickison must have had some spare time during his PhD research on flightless birds, since he had time to spend figuring out the lineage of Sesame Street’s tallest resident.

Wiley Post helped to develop the first pressure suits for high altitude flying, which eventually evolved into today’s space suits. Check out this list of some of the coolest designs ever created.

Sampling Carl Sagan and popular science shows, The Case for Mars is the latest in the Symphony of Science video series, designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.

Check out Karl Tate’s intriguing infographic that explores the highest and deepest points on earth; it also includes egg boiling time and the Horizon oil rig as points of reference. (Thanks, Stephen!)

Neil Harbisson, born with achromatopsia causing him to see only black and white, created an eyeborg camera that sees colors and converts them to sound waves, which he uses to create art.

This interactive infographic from Newgrounds user Fotoshop takes us on a journey from the edge of the universe to the quantum foam of space time. (Thanks Artur!)

Yeah, yeah, we know the Diet Coke and Mentos meme is so 4 years ago, but since this is the first time we’ve seen a vehicle powered by the fizzy stuff, we had to look. So should you, in 3-D.

The unattached balloon is sucked from behind and to the side of the fan; it’s inducement and entrainment of air at work, neatly demonstrated by the engineers at Dyson and their Air Multiplier fans.

The Scorpion’s Tail, a nearly vertical waterslide loop at Noah’s Ark Water Park in Wisconsin Dells, is 10 stories high, 400′ long and has an initial drop that reaches speeds of more than 50 feet/second.

Listen and watch in amazement as this Faraday-suit wearing DJ takes on a half-million volts of electricity from a pair of Tesla coils in this performance by Arc Attack at Maker’s Faire 2010.