Sometimes, over the holidays, it’s easy to think there’s nothing to do. If you feel that way, Sci-ence! wants to have a word with you.

[Click to exnihiloenate.]

And why, yes, that comic does describe me as a child.

… and maybe as an adult, too.

- In which I disagree with cartoon Neil Tyson

[I don't repost very often, but this one from last year still works. -- The BA]

I know some people have Christmas on their mind today, but this is a bit too literal: a brain scan taken at Newcastle University turned up a familiar face nose:

I always pictured him as somewhat bigger.

The part of the brain they were imaging? The hippocampus. Eh, close enough.

Happy holidays to all, and to all a clear night!

Tip o’ the stirring creature to BABloggee Michael Lonergan

One of my favorite astrophotographers, Alan Friedman, spied something odd on the Moon.

Flying reindeer I’ll buy. But an inertialess propulsion system? C’mon.

Happy holidays everyone!

Credit: Alan Friedman

I watched "Battle: Los Angeles" recently, a movie about aliens invading the Earth. It wasn’t terrible, and it wasn’t great. It was watchable, and worked sufficiently well in lowering our supply of popcorn at Chez BA.

But like every alien invasion movie I see, there’s one small, really eensy-weensy problem: the reason they give for the invasion itself was dumb. [SPOILER] They came to steal our water? And use it for fuel? Say WHA?

Ignoring the silly idea of using water for fuel — that’s got physics exactly backwards, since you get energy out of combining oxygen and hydrogen to make water, and it takes energy to crack them apart — there’s an even bigger problem…

… which I won’t tell you here, because I go into all sorts of detail in my latest Blastr article, 6 Reasons Why Aliens Would NEVER Invade Earth. Mind you, I’m not talking about aliens just coming here to shoot the breeze, but aliens coming here to shoot us. It’s hard to think of a good reason they’d do so, and certainly the reasons given in pretty much every movie don’t make sense. And I have a real problem with just how bad aliens are at taking over. Wiping us out should be pretty easy; heck, I wrote a whole other Blastr article about that, too.

So head on over there and give it a read. Agree, disagree? Leave a comment there, too. But if you disagree, be nice: I’m way better at wiping out life on Earth than any Hollywood alien could hope to be.

- Blastr: So, you wanna blow up the Earth?
- Blastr: My Favorite TV Scientists
- Blastroid
- Blastr: Other than that, Spock, how was the movie?
- Blastr: I Was A Zombie For Science
- Big budget movies that got their science right
- Master of Blastr

I have a billion things to do this weekend, but since today is conspiring to just be silly, I’ll just leave this here for you. Click it, and don’t forget to hover over the red button at the bottom.

P.S. That’s not my real tattoo, though Zach got the location correct.

You see, this is why I didn’t do very well in my graduate quantum mechanics class.

I couldn’t think outside the box.

Alternate captions:

"My quantum trap finally succeeded for capturing a mewon."