Images of The Week, May 1-5
Dan Nosowitz
at 15:01 PM May 7 2012

This week's image roundup has a huge Tasmanian crab, a pink black hole, a monkey drinking from a straw, a catfish that detects earthquakes, and a curious item that washed all the way across the Pacific during the Japanese tsunami. It is a good one! Read it and look at it!

  • Giant Crab

    This massive Tasmanian giant crab weighs 15 pounds and has a 40 centimetre carapace, yet is still a juvenile. When it's fully grown, it could be twice that size. It's been saved from the cooking pot and sold to a British museum for just under five thousand dollars. Check out that claw!

  • Shore Thing

    This Harley-Davidson bike washed up on the shores of British Columbia last week, with some confusing details. The bike seemed to be in pretty decent condition, for flotsam, and it had Japanese plates. CBC ran the story, and it turned out the bike belonged to Ikuo Yokoyama, a resident of Miyagi Prefecture in Japan. His bike had washed out to sea during the tsunami. The two have now been reunited. 

  • Earthquake Fish

    This here is Professor Naoyuki Yada with his catfish, which he uses to predict seismic activity. Yeah, you read that right. The theory goes that catfish run wild when there's seismic activity, and Yada is using his subject to test that hypothesis. 

  • Flavouring Smoke

    David Edwards demonstrates Le Whaf, a flavoured smoke bottle created by designer Philippe Starck. It seems you can get any number of food flavours when you purchase special essence packs - anything from lemon tart to tomato soup. Liquids, like alcohol, also work particularly well. 

  • Pink Black Hole

    From NASA: "An extraordinary outburst produced by a black hole in a nearby galaxy has provided direct evidence for a population of old, volatile stellar black holes. The discovery, made by astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, provides new insight into the nature of a mysterious class of black holes that can produce as much energy in X-rays as a million suns radiate at all wavelengths."

  • Monkey Drink

    In this adorable picture, a monkey is given vitamins as part of research against the scourge of malaria on April 25th, the World Day for the fight against the disease. 

  • Jetman, Meet Jesus

    This morning PopSci's favourite Jetman, Yves Rossy, strapped on his four-engine rigid wing, took a helicopter up into the skies above Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and once again let it rip. Leaping from the helicopter over Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, Rossy zipped around the skies over Rio for more than 11 minutes, taking in some famous Rio landmarks along the way. 

  • Dinosaurs Had Giant Fleas to Bite Them

    This flea, some 10 times the size of today's fleas, used to climb up dinosaurs' feathery bellies and suck their delicious prehistoric blood. It has been found in fossil form in Inner Mongolia. Apparently they couldn't jump like modern fleas, but their bite would have felt like being injected with a hypodermic needle. Ouch.

  • Welcome Home

    Astronaut Dan Burbank smiles shortly after landing in his Soyuz rocket in Kazakhstan. He had been aboard the International Space Station for over five months. 

  • Climate Change Believers Are Evil

    According to this billboard and others posted in Chicago by the Heartland Institute, if you believe that humankind has influenced the global climate, you are in the company of the Unabomber, Charles Manson, and Fidel Castro. This form of logical fallacy is common enough to have earned a Latin name, the reductio ad hitlerum. No, seriously - look it up.

  • Successful Rocket Test at Canaveral

    On Monday, SpaceX conducted a static fire-test of their rocket at Cape Canaveral. The engine fired very nicely, while those of us watching the live webcast cheered. The rocket is going to launch into Space on May 19th, unless that date is moved again. 

  • MRI of a Good Doggie

    A group of researchers at Emory University trained two dogs to lie patiently inside an MRI tube and keep their furry heads perfectly still while their brains were scanned to see how they reacted to hand signals promising a yummy treat. 

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