Science

LAS VEGAS--When you come to CES here, you expect to see computers and TVs galore. Mobile phones, sure. Printer and speakers? Check. But a 50-foot-long mechanical snake?

Though we're in an arid, desert-like Nevada environment (never mind all the cement and golf courses), this isn't Burning Man. But sure enough, just behind the CNET trailer here, Titanoboa is strutting its stuff. And indeed, Titanoboa is a 50-foot mechanical snake.

Created by EatArt, the Vancouver arts collective, Titanoboa seeks to invoke the promise -- or the threat -- of global climate change, and the kinds of things we might start to see happen on this wonderful planet of ours. According to the Titanoboa project page: … Read more

At the center of our galaxy, chaos ensues: a supermassive black hole absorbs everything, young stars materialize, and elder stars explode. This violently beautiful cycle of activity creates galaxy-size bursts of charged particles that eject from the center of the Galactic Plane, and now you can see what those emissions look like.

Ettore Carretti, who works with Australian scientific research organization CSIRO, along with several other researchers around the world, describes the mega waves of energy in last week's issue of Nature. Team member Gianni Bernadi notes that the supersonic outflows -- which travel in excess of 621 miles per second -- originate from more than 100 million years of stars forming and exploding at the center of the Milky Way. … Read more

I've always heard that smell plays an important role in how food tastes. I didn't expect that color could also sway the taste buds. A study published in the Journal of Sensory Studies found that the color of a cup can influence the way people taste hot chocolate.

Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, and Charles Spence, a professor at the University of Oxford in England, subjected 57 participants to what may be one the tastiest science experiments ever.

The participants tasted samples of hot chocolate served in four different colors of plastic cups: white, cream, red, and orange. The sippers preferred the flavor of the beverage in orange or cream-colored cups. … Read more

My brother has told me that if a manned Mars mission were seeking volunteers, he'd be the first in line, even if it meant never coming back. I wouldn't want him to go, but my desire to keep him Earth-bound is even more intense after checking out a new study on the impact of radiation on potential manned Mars missions.

A study published in PLOS One looks at the effects of galactic cosmic radiation on mice. Researchers exposed the mice to particle irradiation like that found in space. The result was cognitive impairment in line with the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.… Read more

Norovirus is a particularly nasty virus that causes severe gastrointestinal upset. It's famous for turning cruises into nightmares. It's a tough little number that spreads easily and is hard to kill. To study it, you can't just ask a bunch of sick people to pop down to the lab and vomit on demand. That's where a robot nicknamed Vomiting Larry comes in.

Larry is a one-robot upchucking machine in residence at the Health & Safety Laboratory in Buxton, U.K. He's an anatomically correct model and his favorite hobby is barfing for science. He helps scientists determine how far the norovirus can spread. … Read more

Bazinga! Scientist Sheldon Cooper, a character on the TV show "The Big Bang Theory," already has two Ph.Ds and an IQ of 187. But now he also has a bee dedicated to him.

A new species of the Brazilian orchid bee -- dubbed Euglossa bazinga -- has been named after Dr. Cooper's catchphrase "Bazinga."

On CBS' TV series (disclosure: CBS is CNET's parent company), Cooper, played by actor Jim Parsons, uses the word after he pulls a trick on someone. Brazilian biologist Andre Nemesio from the Universidade Federal de Uberlandia recently discovered a new bee species that he thinks fits the "bazinga" bill. Because the new species so closely resembles the Euglossa ignita, a more common Western Brazilian orchid bee, it wasn't recognized as a separate species -- therefore it "tricked" scientists for years. … Read more

No matter how much you keep up with technology, it's challenging to predict its impact past a few years down the road. There are so many possibilities on the horizon -- especially considering the non-stop advancements in connectivity, nanotechnology, and other expanding fields of next-gen science -- that future generations may think of the early 2000s in the same way we think of the early 1900s: as a time when society stood on the cusp of incredible change.

A new BBC Future infographic takes a shot at what could happen in the realm of science, technology, and society as a whole from now to 2150. The predictions, which come from a cavalcade of sources (IBM, MIT, NASA, news outlets, and many others), indicate that the world we know today could be largely different in just a decade. … Read more

Looking out my window, it's a beautiful sunny day. Perhaps it's even a bit sunnier than usual here in New Mexico. Turns out, there may be a reason for that. The Earth is as close to the sun today as it will be for the whole year of 2013.

How close is close? The Earth is a mere 91,402,560 miles away from the sun today. Usually, we're right around 93 million miles. The phenomenon of getting all cuddly with our closest star is called perihelion. "Peri" means near and "Helios" was the Greek god of the sun. … Read more

We already know how to explore planets with relatively low gravity, like Mars. The Curiosity Rover is engineered to hang onto the planet's surface, despite it having just 38 percent of the gravity we enjoy on Earth. What happens if you want to check out a small moon or an asteroid with a fraction of that gravity? You design a robotic hedgehog, of course.

Stanford University researchers and NASA are working together on spiky space balls that could dance across the surfaces of moons and asteroids whose low gravity and rough surfaces would bog down a regular rover. … Read more