Hi, folks! As the social media landscape fractured, I’ve been dragging my feet about making some needed changes. But no longer. As of November 2024, I am no longer updating Keep reading
How Cooling Towers Work
Power plants (and other industrial settings) often need to cool water to control plant temperatures. This usually requires cooling towers like the iconic curved towers seen at nuclear power plants. Keep reading
A New Mantle Viscosity Shift
The rough picture of Earth’s interior — a crust, mantle, and core — is well-known, but the details of its inner structure are more difficult to pin down. A recent Keep reading
Jets, Shocks, and a Windblown Cavity
As material collapses onto a protostar, these young stars often form stellar jets that point outward along their axis of rotation. Made up of plasma, these jets shoot into the Keep reading
“Flowing Kelp”
This CUPOTY-shortlisted photo by Sigfrido Zimmerman shows giant kelp drifting in the current. At the base of each blade is an inflated bladder that helps keep the algae buoyant. The Keep reading
Holding Steady
Before a mammalian cell divides, the spindle — a protein structure — divides the cell’s genetic material in two. As it does, the cytoplasm inside the cell forms a toroidal Keep reading
The Best of FYFD 2024
Welcome to another year and another look back at FYFD’s most popular posts. (You can find previous editions, too, for 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and Keep reading
Tracking Ice Floes
To understand why some sea ice melts and other sea ice survives, researchers tracked millions of floes over decades. This herculean undertaking combined satellite data, weather reports, and buoy data Keep reading
Tar Pit, Sweet Tar Pit
The La Brea Tar Pits have delivered countless creatures to their doom over tens of thousands of years. But the sticky quagmire of the pits’ natural asphalt is a comfy Keep reading
“Magic of the North”
Fires glow above and below in this award-winning image from photographer Josh Beames. In the foreground, lava from an Icelandic eruption spurts into the air and seeps across the landscape Keep reading
Dry Plants Warn Away Moths
Drought-stressed plants let out ultrasonic distress cries that moths use to avoid plants that can’t support their offspring. In ideal circumstances, a plant is constantly pulling water up from the Keep reading