I found this interesting
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Do they mean “predate” as in “date from before”, or “predate” as in “the thing that predators do”?
(A: ¿Por que no los dos?)
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How is this part not the headline??
“Soon after, we succeeded in stopping a light pulse completely in an atomic cloud cooled to a temperature just above the transition temperature for BEC,” the team explains on the Hau Lab website. “At the time when the light pulse is slowed, compressed, and contained within the atomic sample, we turn off the control laser field abruptly and then turn it back on at a later time. When the control laser is turned back on, the light pulse is regenerated: we can stop and controllably regenerate the light pulse.”
Good Lord, that’s mindboggling!
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I hope that when they turned it back on, someone shouted, “Let there be light!”
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A Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) …[can]…explode in a way similar to a supernova, termed a bosenova.
But what can we blame that name on? 
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Or, does not in fact, crap out as it is promoted to do.
(Yes, obviously, it’s a Dr. Beth Mole article)
Probiotics as treatment for constipation have never really worked, and the rationale behind the idea never really made sense to me. Probiotics certainly have their place, but good ol’ Lactobacillus bulgaricus is just fine. Any naturally fermented food consumed uncooked will do the job nicely. But if you have poop issues, get some fiber in your diet.
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I feel like getting results from probiotic supplements/health foods is a crap shoot.
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Tracing the lineages of agricultural ants to their most recent common ancestor revealed that the ancestor probably lived through the end-Cretaceous mass extinction—the one that killed off the dinosaurs. The researchers argue that the two were almost certainly related. Current models suggest that there was so much dust in the atmosphere after the impact that set off the mass extinction that photosynthesis shut down for nearly two years, meaning minimal plant life. By contrast, the huge amount of dead material would allow fungi to flourish. So, it’s not surprising that ants started to adapt to use what was available to them.
Fascinating stuff!
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Ok, this is one of the coolest videos Veritasium has posted, and that’s a really high bar.
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Ooh, yeah. Thermite is amazing stuff. My high school chem teacher demonstrated it to us one day in class. He put some over a pan filled with three inches of vermiculite and ignited it it. It burned through the holder on the ring stand, through the vermiculite, and through the pan. Good stuff!
Of course, he also almost set his sweater on fire when he moved it over the bunsen burner he was going to use to ignite the demonstration, which was also exciting. (Slicked down all the fuzzy wool on one sleeve really, really well, IIRC.)
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Mine too. Old Carl “chemical Carl” Ferguson knew how to keep our attention. IIRC he put the thermite in a clay flower pot filled with earth. Not quite as dramatic as your example, but impressive. His demo of a dust explosion was even more spectacular. Maybe all chem teachers are basically twelve years old.
When I worked for the power company, we used thermite (Cadweld) to weld ground rods at the stations.
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My company uses real tiny amounts of thermite to weld cathodic protection nodes onto steel pipe (it’s related to corrosion). I’ve seen it used and its neat 
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