Science

Mark Allen was selling dangerously strong magnets for $5 a throw, unfortunately he’s sold out, but you can still get them from All Ellectronics.

These are neodymium rare earth magnets with a magnetic field strength in the 45MGOe range. 45MGOe! I’m not kidding around here! Should two become co-joined by mishap, they are very very difficult to pull asunder. These magnets will fly eagerly through the air to reach each other, possibly crushing your fingers in the process. Let us be honest with each other — I’m simply not responsible enough to have these around.

As much as I’d love one of these babies, I’m not responsible enough to be allowed anywhere near them either.

Each year less light reaches the surface of the Earth. No one is sure what’s causing global dimming — or what it means for the future. In fact most scientists have never heard of it

The Argonne National Laboratory have designed nanoparticles which identify, and then latch onto, target molecules. The nanoparticles are injected into the bloodstream, where they circulate through the body, picking up their target toxins as they go. Once they have made their rounds, all that’s needed to remove the particles from the body are a magnet housed in a handheld unit and a small, dual-channel shunt inserted into an arm or leg artery

Richard Paselk makes replicas of medieval scientific instruments out of whatever materials he happens to have at hand

Are mini black holes raining down through the Earth’s atmosphere? Theodore Tomaras, a physicist at the University of Crete in Heraklion, Greece, and his Russian colleagues Andrei Mironov and Alexei Morozov think this could explain mysterious observations from mountain-top experiments over the past 30 years

Broken-down Fisher and Paykel washing machines are being converted by Taranaki engineer Michael Lawley into smart new wind turbines for the renewable energy market — via The Green Man

Outrage is growing over a factory processing dead bodies in northeast China for a German company that puts them on display in major European cities. The plant, near Dalian city, is used by Body Worlds which was founded by Günther von Hagens, the German anatomist who has created a stir with his exhibitions of flayed human corpses in a variety of poses