A lot of our readers either love spiders, or love to hate spiders. Either way, in 2013 three spider stories are among our 13 most popular posts. Space, the meaning of consciousness and our impending plutonium shortage were also popular topics. Here’s the list of the stories you liked best (or at least clicked on the most).
1. Voyager 1 Discovers Bizarre and Baffling Region at Edge of Solar System
In June, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft entered a bizarre new region at the solar system’s edge that baffled physicists. Their theories hadn’t predicted anything like it. Three months after we published this story, NASA officially confirmed that Voyager 1 had left the solar system and entered interstellar space in August 2012.
2. Absurd Creature of the Week: 10-Foot Bobbit Worm Is the Ocean’s Most Disturbing Predator
This is Eunice aphroditois, also known as the bobbit worm, a mix between the Mongolian death worm, the Bugs from Starship Troopers, the Graboids from Tremors and a rainbow. It hunts in the most nightmarish way imaginable, digging itself into the seabed, exposing a few inches of its body - which can grow to 10 feet long - and waiting.
3. New Giant Tarantula Discovered in Sri Lanka
We reported in April that a new type of tarantula about the size of your face had been found in northern Sri Lanka. Scientists found the spiders - with a leg span up to 8 inches across - living in trees and the old doctor’s quarters of a hospital. Our comparison of the spider’s size to your face helped this story crawl creepily into the far corners of the internet, and even onto the Colbert Report.
4. 4 Billion-Pixel Panorama From Curiosity Rover Brings Mars to Your Computer Screen
Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA’s Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. The mosaic was created by photographer Andrew Bodrov of Estonia. It stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover’s two MastCams.
5. WTF Is This Weird Web-Tower Thing? We Asked Around. No One Knows
Something in the Peruvian Amazon is making weird, intricate structures that resemble white picket fences surrounding an Isengard-like spire. When we first reported on the phenomenon in September, experts we consulted didn’t know what was making them. So in December, we followed some scientists into the jungle and found the answer.
6. Watch the Biggest Explosion Ever Seen on the Moon
In May, NASA scientists recorded the biggest explosion from a meteorite impact seen on the moon in eight years of monitoring. The lunar burst was caused by a 40-kilogram boulder-sized rock slamming into the surface at about 90,000 kph. It generated a flash 10 times brighter than anything seen before.
7. NASA’s Plutonium Problem Could End Deep-Space Exploration
Most of what we know about the outer planets came back to Earth on plutonium power. Cassini’s exploration of Saturn, Curiosity’s roving of Mars and the 2015 New Horizons flyby of Pluto are all fuelled by plutonium-238. This metal’s radioactive decay makes it a super-fuel, and there is no other viable option. But there’s a problem: We’ve almost run out.
8. A Neuroscientist’s Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious
It’s a question that’s perplexed philosophers for centuries and scientists for decades: Where does consciousness come from? We know it exists, at least in ourselves. But how it arises from chemistry and electricity in our brains is an unsolved mystery. Neuroscientist Christof Koch of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, thinks he might know the answer.
9. Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine
Sam Parnia practices resuscitation medicine. In other words, he helps bring people back from the dead - and some return with stories. Their tales could help save lives, and even challenge traditional scientific ideas about the nature of consciousness. And new techniques promise to even further extend the boundary between life and death.
10. The Forgotten Cold War Plan That Put a Ring of Copper Around the Earth
During the summer of 1963, Earth looked a tiny bit like Saturn. The United States launched half a billion whisker-thin copper wires into orbit in an attempt to install a ring around the Earth. It was called Project West Ford, and it’s a perfect, if odd, example of the Cold War paranoia and military mentality at work in America’s early space program.
11. Why You Need Not Fear the Poor, Misunderstood Brown Recluse Spider
It’s hard to think of a critter that inspires as much hyperbolic hysteria as the brown recluse spider. If you believe the tales, these small arachnids are biting people all day, every day, producing massive, stinking flesh-craters that require months of intensive care. Though there are strands of truth in the hype, on the whole, it’s bunk.
12. Help Wanted: Astronauts Needed for Mars Colony
Mars One, a non-profit organization that intends to establish a human settlement on Mars in 2023, needs astronauts to volunteer for a one-way trip to the Red Planet. In January, Mars One released its application criteria. Among other virtues, astronaut candidates must be resilient, adaptable, curious, creative and resourceful. And a little crazy?
13. Pew Pew! Scientists Build Lasers Out of Sound, Call Them Phasers
Using a nanoscale drum, scientists have built a laser that uses sound waves instead of light like a conventional laser. Because laser is an acronym for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation,” these new contraptions - which exploit particles of sound called phonons - should properly be called phasers.
Top image: Artist's concept showing NASA's two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath, the outer shell of the bubble of charged particles around our sun. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
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