This amazing mummy rests in peace at the Museum of the Weird At the Museum of the Weird we feature a mummy that might date back 3000 years. The process of mummification is an ancient art practiced by the Egyptians to preserve and prepare the body for the afterlife. Elaborate tombs were built to house the preserved body along with belongings and largess that showed off the wealth of the deceased. The process was very detailed and took months to complete. Poor people could not

What in the world is going on here? This is actually an image from a Bell Laboratories ad from Life magazine in 1947. This technician is using an elaborate apparatus to film this woman’s vocal chords. This does not look comfortable! It reminds me of the scene from Ghostbusters when Venkman hooked people up to electric shock equipment to test ESP. Haven’t seen it? It’s worth a look. Even if you have seen it, it’s worth seeing again. Will people in the future look back at our s

In an article the other day we talked about a tragic story where parts of remains were confiscated by the state. While that battle is being waged we discover an area where technology is creating body parts using 3D printing technology. Here is video showing a heart valve replacement. According to this article by Forbes Magazine, there are several areas where 3D printing may revolutionize medicine by fashioning replacements rather than requiring donors. Besides heart valves he

Alvin, a bearded dragon, is our official lucky lizard, live and on display The late, great Torgo titled “Random lizard at Museum of the Weird” by Mike M (Oct 2012) At the Museum of the Weird we have Alvin, our official lucky lizard. He’s been with us for about seven years or so. We’ve had a number of other live animals around, including our beloved Torgo, a Nile Monitor who was with us for many years before finally succumbing to old age. Anyone who has spent time with animals

According to an article from Collective Evolution millions of genetically modified mosquitoes are set to be released. Here’s a news report from a channel in Fort Meyers, Florida. I don’t pretend to be a scientific expert in this area and I do believe in progress through science, but a few questions come to mind: The report says that the mosquitoes will be manually sexed so that no females are released. (Apparently this is done by looking at the antennae.) How would you like t

A few days ago in my post about the guy making a warp drive in his garage I mentioned that I didn’t get my flying car. Then I find this demo video, complete with dramatic Euro music. This isn’t exactly what some of us imagined when we thought of a flying car. Essentially this is an airplane that you can drive in traffic. I imagine it will still require a pilot’s license. It also requires a conventional runway to take off and land. However, it is a flying car. We can’t complai

Hundreds of thousands poured into theatres this weekend to experience Jurassic World. While movie-goers are excited, not everyone is thrilled about the film. Some palaeontologists are preparing themselves for all of the stupid questions they will have to answer about dinosaur cloning. So, do we need to worry about a Jurassic Park disaster? There you have it. Based on what we currently understand about cloning, we don’t have any way to regenerate a dinosaur. We’re just going t

Portable library, 1920s style Another idea in the early 20th century was the first book killer. Long before gadgets like computer tablets, inventors already had their sights set on fixing the problem of carrying around cumbersome books. The June 1922 edition of Scientific American shows one solution. The Fiske Reading Machine printed books in tiny print and provided a modified magnifying glass that you could hold up to your eye to read. One can only imagine how this would wor

You’ve probably heard about the epic battle between inventors, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla about how electricity would be delivered to the masses. If not, this video will catch you up. As the video shows, Edison’s campaign was pretty grim. He was convinced that AC power was unsafe and publicly electrocuted a number of animals, including an aging elephant, to prove it. AC had advantages for cheaply delivering power over long distances, so it ultimately won out…or did it. In

With summer upon us it’s time to break out the grill for some tasty steaks (or veggies). Of course, if you’re a science student at Syracuse University  you might take things a little further. When first erupted from a volcanic vent, lava has a temperatures from 700 to 1,200 °C (1,292 to 2,192 °F). Since most oven broilers top out at about 575°F, lava would be pretty efficient. The goal of the steak project was to demonstrate that lava is something to be respected but not fear

Photo by NBC News In 1995, divers discovered bizarre configurations about 6 feet in diameter off the coast of Japan’s Amami-Oshima Island. They resembled crop circles. Were these underwater aliens? The answer turned out to be a newly classified pufferfish, Torquigener albomaculosus. The “Crop Circle Fish” was among many species that received scientific names over the last year. The International Institute for Species Exploration has listed their their top 10 of nearly 18,000

Dr. Melba Ketchum’s announcement of Zoobank accepting her proposed name for the Bigfoot species. Dr. Melba Ketchum announced today that Zoobank has officially granted the creatures popularly known as “Bigfoot” the latin name: Homo sapiens cognatus. http://zoobank.org/NomenclaturalActs/40E2FA1F-10A1-4D42-8B02-A007347F1B43 (And the race to the finish line starts heating up!) #Yeti #Bigfoot #Zoobank #mystery #Cryptozoology #Cryptid #science #Homosapienscognatus #weirdnews #museu

Former heavyweight boxing champion-turned-Bigfoot hunter Nikolai Valuev joins host Mark Evans as they investigate the Almasty. For those of you who have not had the chance to watch the first episode of the excellent show Bigfoot Files, you can watch it in its entirety here: The show is well-worth watching, and is an example of the type of programming cryptozoology needs more of. Bigfoot Files takes a scientific approach to the search for answers to the mystery of Bigfoot, fol

“The Incredible Bionic Man” makes his debut at the Washington Air and Space Museum. A first-ever walking, talking “bionic man” built entirely out of synthetic body parts made his Washington debut on Thursday. The robot with a human face unveiled at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum was built by London’s Shadow Robot Co to showcase medical breakthroughs in bionic body parts and artificial organs. “This is not a gimmick. This is a real science development,” museum

Abominable Snowmen book and my mummified “Yeti” finger. I was tipped off to this news several months ago (and again a few days ago) that Oxford University geneticist Dr. Bryan Sykes would be announcing some “unexpected results” concerning his DNA study of supposed Yeti hair samples. Well, now those results are being officially announced to the world, and I would think it’s safe to say they are not what anybody had expected, but no less amazing in my opinion. For centuries, ta

#CosmicSwirlyStrawsFeedGalaxy #astronomy #science #stringtheory #universe

#moon #NASA #astronomy #lunarexplosions #science #meteors

Photo by Thomas Shahan A research development team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has created a new digital camera composed of 180 individual lenses to mimic an insect’s intricate eyesight. The initial images are low resolution, but display an immense depth-of-field. It is the hopes of the research team that this new technology will eventually be used in surveillance and for endoscopic investigations of the human body. Such cameras could also be used in ins

So, as we all expected, everyone woke up from their slumber this morning. Some are safe and sound in warm beds and some are getting ready for another day at work. Both, are not worried about the world coming to it’s end… at least not yet. So, when will the world really end. Like, reeaaallly end. Luckily for us lamen, there’s the fine folks of Discovery News to bring us the actual science behind answering these types of questions. Read on to see what they have to say and be co

Clear soil will help researchers track how plants and other things survive in soil. There’s a whole world of things to learn  and discover about this world,  some of the unanswered questions lie right below our feet so, scientists have decided to look into and see what they can find, with clear soil! Discovery Science writes: The clear soil was developed by theoretical biologist Lionel Dupuy at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee, Scotland. It’s is made of a synthetic materi