My name is Stu Shepherd, and this was my science blog. I started The Bug Count in October of 2012. It wasn’t a great blog. It was mostly silly and mostly poorly written. I wrote about how nuclear fuel rod pools work, and the flashes of light that appear when you rub your eyes too […]
Baking soda is one of the most widely recognized chemicals in the world, and yet we don’t treat it like one. It is a relatively humble molecule: one atom each of sodium, hydrogen, and carbon, and three of oxygen. Unlike many other chemicals that have risen and fallen from public grace, baking soda has had a […]
The astronomy community is abuzz with the recent news that a global array of radiotelescopes are converging on the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. Us lowly Earthlings are mere weeks away from getting our first real look at the ‘edge’ of our patron black hole- our event horizon. An event horizon […]
As someone who witnessed the glow of Internet dawn from its blood-red beginnings, I am continually fascinated by this giant web of information that has expanded to connect (in one way or another) all but a few minds on this planet. I love how it’s changing us. I love this bizarre feeling I get when I […]
At 3:27:11 PM on the afternoon of January 15, 2009, United Airlines pilot Captain Chesley B. Sullenburger accidentally sucked an entire flock of Canadian geese through the twin turbofan engines of his Airbus A320. The geese instantly suffocated the airplane’s engines and induced an unpowered descent towards the sunlit rooftops of New York City. Sullenberger, […]