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Henderson unfurled his towel over the sparkling sands, stretched out luxuriously under a cobalt sky, and sighed. Fitting compensation for a hectic year of research, they'd said. Just get out there and relax. Think of anything but science for once. / The rhythmic collapse of waves on the shore was reminiscent of something in quantum mechanics. I'll bet the sand is mainly tectosilicates, he thought, probably alpha-quartz. The towel was cotton, and his trunks were Rayon, produced he recalled by acetylation of cellulose. Cobalt blue probably represents a range of wavelengths centered somewhere between 420 and 460 nanometres.. / Henderson's right hand idly toyed with the portable Dobson Spectrophotometer before he raised it to his eye for another look. No doubt about it, he thought, concentrations of ozone over this part of the beach are higher than elsewhere.. .

"Okay, does anybody know why Barry's on fire today?" / "No" / "No" / "Not me" / "Nope" // Studies reveal that at the first hint of OSH paperwork, 82.3% of scientists are able to voluntarily jettison their short-term memories.

Okay I admit it – we probably DO need a rocket scientist

Add the puppies. / Throw in the intern. // After years of experimentation, scientists remain dubious about whether there really is such a thing as the Cute Particle.

Astrophysics made simple

No specific caption. Does feature one FOOM!

No specific caption. Does feature a GLUB BLUB GLUB, followed four panels later by a GLUB GLUB GLUB GLUB GLUB

"Okay - who put my lunch through the mass spectrometer..?"

"Bravo Professor, you stumbled upon the one fact that makes sense of it all. Unfortunately humanity is not permitted to know that the Universe was designed by a committee of ducks."

If all children are natural-born scientists, society might be wise to at least quarantine the subset of these scientist-infants who are the atomic weapons specialists, before they kill us all with their crazy little lunchbox nukes.

(NO!) / (NO!) / (FOR GOD'S SAKE NO!) / (That's it! Nuclear-tipped megadeath for you!!) // You don't knead a Rocket Scientist.

"That? No that's not a U.F.O. It's on the ground now. And you've identified it. That makes it an I.G.O."

Fluffy, the "Galileo of the Lemmings," with his stopwatch.

Great events in Chemistry / 1865: Kekule, moments before his brilliant insight into the structure of benzene.

Biggins watched incredulously as Santa's sleigh, port stabilizer torn away, flipped gracefully over and entered a terminal dive to destruction. / Oh just great, thought Biggins, the night before Christmas and there goes my last chance at getting research funding.

"You're a selfish bastard, Lewis! Those stem cell lines were meant for people who've LOST an organ!"

Most scientists regarded the new streamlined peer-review process as "quite an improvement."

"Just ignore that one. It's totally unscientific."

DON'T MOVE, or I'll fill you full of 98% lead, 1% antimony, 0.75% silver, 200 parts per million nickel, trace amounts of cobalt, and other components below their respective detection limits! / Wait a minute! Are those values CERTIFIED?! / Analytical Chemists in the Wild West

As touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing boarded the charter flight for Havana, Professor Nicholson knew in his heart that he had lost more than just good friends. In fact, he had finally lost his senses.

Hmmm, interesting. . . Now, Thog, next YOU go in there and see where all my OTHER research students have gotten to. . . / Proto-Professor Algarth Zag, pioneer in fire research.

Scientists devise yet another way of delaying death.

Cambridge, 1953. Shortly before discovering the structure of DNA, Watson and Crick, depressed by their lack of progress, visit the local pub.

I think I can truly say that in this book we have all the elements of a first-class thriller. .. / Chemists as book-reviewers

"All those perfectly adequate brain-donors out there and Igor has to pick me a televangelist!"

My friends, as a result of our experimentation, we have just lost a dear and valued colleague. .. On the other hand, we have just gained a publication.

"Have you seen that weedy little rat that we're using to test out the new growth hormone..?"

Discovery of Crime Waves

Once again, war breaks out in the middle yeast.

Advances in Science, 37. Iconoclastic researcher Dr Alvin Henderson demonstrates that it IS in fact possible to become too familiar with the safety rules.

Cirrhosis of the river

The radiocarbon dating technique

The London School of Infectious Diseases Isolation Chamber Orchestra

An experimental burger and fries has broken from containment! It's spontaneously upsized! / God help us al. .. / 1960s USA: the obesity epidemic is accidentally unleashed

"In this laboratory we're always pushing the envelope to the Max."

NOBEL PRIZE AWARDS / "Just a freak accident with some firefly DNA and suddenly the sun shines out of his arse!"

At last! An Ethics Committee that will listen to reason!

Dear sir, Could we please have a grant of $5 million from your corporation to allow us to research possible antidotes to a novel new colorless, skin-absorbed and slow acting nerve toxin? / P.S. It is possible that some of this toxin may have been inadvertently spilled on the envelope.

Until Bob entered her life, Lisa never even knew the meaning of the phrase 'acute multiple drug-resistant infection by transgenic Staphylococcus aureus.' / Funny now to think back. .. Somehow all these little things change when you date a careless microbiologist. ..

Tips pointing skyward in watchful expectation, sophisticated instrument packages tuned to detect airborne objects emitting at the red end of the visible spectrum, the deadly array of surface-to-air missiles glinted menacingly in the moonlight. / Biggins gazed toward the horizon and grinned wryly as his target came into view. "Last year you refused to give me a research grant," he muttered quietly, pressing the launch button. "This year we rid civilization of the scourge it calls 'Santa'."

It was a brighter meteor than most, and Biggins allowed himself a quiet smile as he contemplated the immense speeds involved as it burned itself up in the atmosphere. .. / Who would have guessed, Biggins mused as he fingered his recently delivered lump of coal, that Santa's sleigh would have a detachable heat-shield..?

Biggins regarded his gift from Santa with mixed emotions. On the one hand, he now had a whole year's worth of research funding. .. / On the other hand, the scope of his research project had been modified slightly; from the impacts of global warming on Pacific Island beaches, to examination of abandoned coal-mines in Bosnia.

Biggins emerged from his hiding place and peered up his chemically-treated chimney. Santa had arrived in the dead of night, slid carefully into the fireplace, left a single lump of coal, and departed as quietly as he had arrived. / Biggins smirked with pleasure at a satisfactory exchange of gifts. Yes it's true that I got a lump of coal, he thought, but in sliding down my chimney, Santa got a coating of the most powerful moth pheromones known to science. ..

Unknown to the rest of the world, members of the scientific community have been making their own babies to order for quite some time now.

You the guy who just made a seven-coordinate compound of chromium III..? Well we've got a MESSAGE for ya / Chromium III doesn't LIKE being seven-coordinate. .. / Late that night, Professor Robinson's laboratory was overrun by hostile elements.

Wait! I've had a new idea! Let's try it without the big hairy thing on the end! / Disturbing fact: the first recorded boomerangs were made of mammoth tusk

30 JUNE 1908 / Nicola Tesla during the time of the Siberian "Tunguska Event"

"Sooo . .. when did you first realize that you might be a scientist..?"

"This is not a breakthrough, Gareth, it's circular reasoning..! All you've arrived at here is yet another formulation of our original objective..!"

"Keep an eye on Davies. Whatever he's doing, it's not accounting."

"There is a unique solution to this conundrum," said the chicken, "but in order to be sure, I'll need to cross the road."

You know how the Universe is receding away from us at an accelerating rate? / Uh..huh? / As if a powerful force is stretching the very fabric of spacetime? / "Dark Energy" / Yeah. Well I've just figured out what that is. / Yeah right, Melvin..! / Imagine you're on a beach, and a TSUNAMI TROUGH arrives. What happens first? / All the water is sucked out to sea..? / Mmmm. Well it seems that a huge higher-dimensional ENERGY-WAVE is rapidly sweeping in through our cosmological horizon. .. / You mean..? / Yup..! It turns out that so-called "Dark Energy" is nothing more complex than spacetime drawback caused by the COSMIC TSUNAMI OF DEATH. ..

A Cosmic Tsunami of Death..? That's ridiculous..! / Such a huge energy-wave would need an IMPOSSIBLY massive external event to set it off! There's NO PRECENDENT! / Give me just ONE EXAMPLE of a huge flood of mass-energy suddenly appearing out of nowhere! / Hmmm. You mean like some sort of "BIG BANG"..?

"Change of plan. The policymakers say they'll now only listen to climate scientists if we can present our ideas in simple bullet-point format."

"I've been sent home to lay low. If anyone asks, no one in my virology lab knows anything about a rampaging army of pangolin-bat hybrids."