Maybe not what you have in mind but: phone cords. I don't know how many headsets or entire phones I've sent hurling across the room because I caught something on a cord. I almost forgot they had existed.

I guess I don't find it weird because even in classical physics light carries momentum, energy, and angular momentum.

Photons are also their own anti-particles. Basically any particle without any kind of charge (not just electric charge, but also weak and strong charges). The distinction from the above-discussed quasiparticles is that photons are bosons, not fermions.

Yeah, Penguin makes some nice books. The Penguin Horror imprint looks pretty nice, too, but I have other editions of most of that stuff already.

You mean that I had to go to another website to find out what I could of read off the cover in the picture above? I kind of realized that after posting :)

I'm gonna go looking for that right now.

Beats me, I'm not that kind of doctor. But various mechanisms can be used to manipulate the salinity of your body at a local level, so it could be used for delivery of components wrapped in the alcohol bubble.

I don't think the droplet is attracted to the salt in a direct line. Rather the salt dissolves somewhat into the maze creating a pattern of salt concentration throughout (that's the "salt gradient"). The droplet just follows the trail, always moving in the direction of higher salt concentration. It's basically like…

I know nothing about paleontology, so this is just a layman's opinion: That's awesome.

Always had a hard time keeping all the Bernoulli's straight. I do know that Johann could be said to have kicked off one of my favorite subjects in mathematics — the calculus of variations — by his posing of the brachistochrone problem. Of course, Jakob had to go ahead and one-up him on it by doing a harder version…

That's Neil's left :)

Weird Al Yankovic.

Speaking of banned books, y'all seen this pic, right?

"Banning" in this context usually means something like having the book removed from a school library, not a blanket outlawing of its possession or distribution. Stupid, but not unconstitutional or anything.

It makes plenty of sense that the people who are always trying to ban books also have no reading comprehension.

Interesting stuff. Yeah, I guess there could be a sweet spot for life in that regime.

I find it hard to imagine that an "X-ray environment" would be conducive to life. There wouldn't really be any stable matter since atoms would be stripped of their electrons continuously. Like you say, maybe it's possible, but it is literally beyond my imagination at present. But maybe I just have to imagine harder :)

I know she's not Newt's mom, but there's a real surrogate mother thing going on here, what with Newt's recently losing her parents and Ripley recently learning about missing her own daughter's entire life.

Good point, although for X-rays the problem goes in the opposite direction, demanding smaller lengths scales for the sensory organs. As you crank up the frequency of the light you'd want the organ to absorb, you'll eventually run into the atomic limit. It's hard to imagine the sensory chemistry being governed by…

It's worth mentioning that during the ice crew's later appearances in the game, the boos were accompanied by a lot of cheering from female fans.