Someday, optical communications and high-speed computing might owe their success to a little ocean creature: the sea urchin. Materials scientists have fabricated a photonic crystal using a piece of ...

The pointy shell of sea urchins hides a remarkably complex neural network that resembles the brains of vertebrates, new research suggests.

A mountain of sea urchin shells, about 5000 specimens, was found in recent days by the Barracellare Company on the northern coast of Alghero. The echinoderms had been emptied, probably to obtain the ...

When it comes to their neighbors in Norway, the good people of Denmark and Sweden have a limitless fount of jokes, many of which are reductive and in questionable taste; none of which should, under ...

Building on a concept first introduced by the late Danish engineer Ture Wester, the designers have created a minimalist modular system that is lightweight and self-supporting, expansive, and yet ...

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts. Sea urchins can be pretty intimidating to the uninitiated (picture a ...

Kelp forests are the marine mirror images to the towering redwoods onshore, the scaffolding that supports the image of the classic northern California coastline. But these oceanic forests are ...

Last weekend, a lone, gray heart-shaped shell drifted ashore, nestling itself upon a beach in Cornwall, England. It was quickly joined by another—and then another. Before long, hundreds of these ...

The first time I tried sea urchin was at a French bistro about 20 years ago. A high-end call girl I was writing a story about egged me on: She thought I needed some sexing up. I was at first alarmed ...

This spectacular sautoir is a masterful example of the centuries-old skill of glyptics, where jewelers must carefully carve designs into a semiprecious or precious stone by hand. Each bead on this ...

A sea urchin is a study in contradictions: tenacious and spiky on the outside, vulnerable and velvety on the inside. With a beauty both fragile and fierce, it can burrow for decades into rock, but die ...