If you haven’t already met Ampulex compressa, otherwise known as the jewel wasp, now is as good a time as any. Someday you may be very grateful that you did.

This gorgeous animal, which measures just under an inch from mandibles to tail, lives across much of Africa and Asia, as well as a few Pacific Islands. Don’t be fooled by its lovely glittering appearance, though. This is a deeply sinister creature. Jewel wasps don’t rear their young in a familiar paper nest. For them, home is the inside of a cockroach.

Continue reading “If You’re Going To Live Inside A Zombie, Keep It Clean” →

Xue Sun writes, “I’ve attached a photo of some relatively recent ink I got on my waist, done by Nalla at Goose in Brooklyn, NY. It’s a diagram of the bubble chamber event that led to the discovery of the charmed baryon. While I’m actually a neuroscientist and not a physicist, it was learning about quarks in high school that gave me my first ‘Wow! Science!’ moment. When I found this image, I immediately knew I had to have it as a tattoo.”

Some details about the discovery of charmed baryons, plus the original diagram, can be found here.

You can see the rest of the Science Tattoo Emporium here and in Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.

Originally published January 6, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.

If you could have looked up at the sky 4 billion years ago, you would have seen a sun much dimmer than ours today. And if you looked down at the Earth’s oceans, you would have seen an expanse of bobbing waves.

That’s a problem–a simple one, but a big one. And scientists have been wrestling with it for fifty years. Continue reading “Life Under A Faint Sun” →

Today, The Guardian relayed one of those stunning medical stories that causes me to clean off my glasses and take another look to make sure I’m reading it clearly. They report that an outbreak of norovirus in Britain this winter has struck more than 1.1 million people with vomiting and diarrhea.

That’s right: 1.1 million. In Britain alone.

Continue reading “The Norovirus: A Study in Puked Perfection” →