Science News For The Deaf

[Vitriol]

I like science, who doesn't? This thread will be a place to post weird news articles dealing with science and unexplained phenomenon. Feel free to post whatever's clever.


Black holes may not exist at all (from The Guardian)

http://www.roe.ac.uk/%7Epnb/images/Black-hole.jpg




They swallow everything that comes their way and exercise the world's finest minds, but the portrayal of black holes as awe-inspiring celestial menaces may be woefully inaccurate, a team of scientists claim. Indeed, they might not exist at all.

According to the researchers, the traditional astronomers' view of a universe liberally sprinkled with invisible, all-consuming black holes should be replaced with an alternative that sees strange, magnetic balls of plasma floating in their place.

If the finding is verified - an event some scientists do not see on the horizon - it would dramatically overturn a theory that emerged from an English geologist's calculations in 1784, was verified by Einstein and confined by four laws drawn up by Professor Stephen Hawking.

The scientists, lead by Rudy Schild at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, spotted what they claim to be the death knell for black hole theory while observing a quasar, lurking nine billion light years from Earth.

Quasars are believed to have black holes at their centres, but to test this assumption, the scientists set up 14 telescopes to keep an unprecedented watch on the object. By analysing the gentle flickering of the quasar, the team were able to probe the structure of its interior.

They discovered a gaping hole in a disc of material surrounding the centre of the quasar, as wide as 4,000 times the distance from the Earth to the sun. The hole, they believe, could only be caused by a vast ejection of material propelled by a strong magnetic field.

Because black holes do not have magnetic fields, Dr Schild's team suggest in The Astronomical Journal, the quasar must be powered by a dense ball of plasma called a MECO (magnetospheric eternally collapsing object). But according to the astronomers' theories the MECOs' existence precludes the possibility of black holes.

"I believe this is the first evidence that the whole black hole paradigm is incorrect," said Darryl Leiter, a scientist on the team told the New Scientist.

According to Gerry Gilmore at Cambridge University's Institute for Astronomy, the theory has yet to convince most scientists. He pointed to last year's groundbreaking experiments that gave the first direct observation of a black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. "I'd have to say it's a minority view. It's almost certainly wrong," said Prof Gilmore. "Before we had observations of a black hole, there was a legitimate debate over whether black holes existed or not, but now it's hard to think how it could be anything else."


The Park hypothesis (from Space Review)

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/629/1

[Vitriol]

Neighborhood cat is a collector

http://www.wfaa.com/perl/common/slideshow/sspop.pl?recid=1500&previous=10

http://www.wfaa.com/images/slideshow/072106today/images/110a.jpg

[Vitriol]

Cute Baby Loris Born

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20060727/capt.68809517ad804f43ac689198b56c8ab9.pygmy_slow_l oris_wxs116.jpg?x=380&y=253&sig=m_1NHVe3Acs16ZXGF12ITA--

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1756&e=2&u=/060727/480/68809517ad804f43ac689198b56c8ab9

[Bernard]

uh-oh, I seem to be weirder than I ever imagined.

[Vitriol]

Pictures of Bigfoot Fail To Convince Me

http://www.kxii.com/home/headlines/3439461.html


http://media.graytvinc.com/images/bigfoot1.jpg

[TheTempest]

Pictures of Bigfoot Fail To Convince Me

http://www.kxii.com/home/headlines/3439461.html


http://media.graytvinc.com/images/bigfoot1.jpgWe need to talk then... :D Have I got a story for you.

[Vitriol]

Really? You've seen this guy?

[TheTempest]

Really? You've seen this guy?Um. yeah. Still scares me telling the story. (see my goose bumps?)

[Vitriol]

I do, which defies the laws of science somehow.

[BubbleBoy13]

Ooh Ooh tell it tell it!

[TheTempest]

Here's (http://www.losttv-forum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=773534&postcount=213) the short version.

[Vitriol]

Wow. I am speechless.

[TheTempest]

Wow. I am speechless.Spooky, huh? I don't even like telling the story. Creeps me out.

[Vitriol]

I would definitely be creeped out by that. Have you seen Anchorman?


Smells like bigfoots's dick!

[TheTempest]

I would definitely be creeped out by that. Have you seen Anchorman?


Smells like bigfoots's dick!:rotfl: I forgot about that line!

Oh, and... those pics you posted of our furry friend, looks nothing like what I saw.
I'll see if I can find something...

[Vitriol]

I'm sure those pics are as fake as Paris Hilton's libido.

[TheTempest]

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/TheTempestPics/bigfoot20head.jpghttp://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g139/TheTempestPics/bigfoot2020picture1.jpg
I'm just wild about Harry...

[Vitriol]

Beyond That There Big Bang Thingy

From Sentido


The 'universe' we know as all-encompassing, the vague, probably never to be finally defined concept of the structure of physical reality, may actually be one of many such distinct self-contained, self-sustaining phenomena, with distinct physical properties and corresponding physical laws and tendencies, unified membrane cosmologies adrift in a 'superfluid' soup, at times colliding with incredible energy diffusion, creating whole new universes.

The quest for a unifying theory explaining all the laws of physics and all the behaviors so far witnessed of the major physical forces in our universe, has led to astonishing theoretical discoveries and a hint of what existed before the 'Big Bang'. Perhaps the most important breakthrough has been the emergence of "M-theory", unifying all variants of "superstring theory".

M-theory postulates an 11th dimension —where string theory had only been able to reach 10 dimensions of physical reality—, microscopically thin and gathering all energy, space, time and matter into a single "membrane" of phenomena and interactions. The cosmic soup, then, becomes a virtually seamless fabric, impossibly thin and dispersed throughout all other physical dimensions and manifestations of difference, energy, motion.

Superstring theory had allowed quantum physics to explain many of the inadequacies of Einstien's general theory of relativity, by demonstrating that fundamental particles are actually inascertainably microscopic two-dimensional "strings" vibrating in such a way that their most common form of interaction is akin to spherical monads, orbiting and charged in such a way as to create the atomic structures of our physical universe.

But variations in the fundamental formulas of string theory led eventually to 5 competing major permutations, and the general understanding that traditional physics, relativity and quantum mechanics encompass 10 dimensions, most too small for us to experience. Inconsistencies between the various string theories and their inability to explain the "singularity" of the Big Bang, its seeming to be a moment at the edge of or just beyond physics as we know it, an undiscoverable beginning, hinted at the existence of an 11th dimension and a broader, more inclusive theory that would transcend the singularity of the Big Bang, something even more fundamental than that earliest traceable physical event.

M-theory gave quantum physicists an answer, a unifying theory, so "M" for membrane came to re referred to as the "magic" or "mystery" theory. It's 11th dimension allowed it to provide a platform on which the differences between quantum physics and general relativity, as well as between varying string theories, can play out. And that meant there was now a way of examining the true nature of the Big Bang, which would yield clues as to what it emerged from and how it came about.

One possible and viable explanation is that our membrane universe burst into being by way of the collision between two prior membrane universes in a soupy "multiverse" of such roiling, competing cosmologies. There are physics to back up this version of events, and "proofs" of a very complex, largely mathematical kind, that give weight to the argument that M-theory means a physical explanation of the Big Bang, possibly even a testable one.

This is important, because it gives rise to the possibility of understanding how the fundamentals of physics as we know it —gravity, protons, electrons, light— come about, what they mean for the nature and direction of physics as it affects us, and our planet, and whether the Big Bang is really a singular event or whether such things can happen at any time, given the right circumstances. Perhaps we can even begin to learn where and how such major cosmological events come about.

http://www.casavaria.com/sentido/science/2006/06-0719-m.htm


http://www.universeadventure.org/String_theory_loops.jpg

[Vitriol]

Grimy old footprints discovered in Australia

http://www.livescience.com/history/060726_pleistocene_footprints.html

http://images.livescience.com/images/060726_aust_footprint_01.jpg
From Livescience


About 20,000 years ago, humans trekked along the margins of a shallow lake in Australia, leaving behind records of their passage in the soft, wet sand.

In 2003, an aboriginal woman who is likely a descendant of those early Australians stumbled across dozens of timeworn footprints in the same area. Excavations of the site have since uncovered hundreds more.

The discovery, detailed in a recent issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, represents the largest collection of Pleistocene human footprints in the world, and the only footprints from that era ever found in Australia. In total, 457 footprints have now been uncovered.

"The preservation is just remarkable," said study team member Matthew Cupper of the University of Melbourne in Australia. "You can see quite clearly how mud oozes between the toes."

The Pleistocene stretched from about 2 million to 12,000 years ago. Highlights from the era:

* A series of climatic upheavals, the worldwide spread of human-like primates, or hominids;
* The extinction of Neanderthals and large land mammals—including mammoths, giant sloth and saber toothed cats;
* The rise of modern humans.

Ancient errands

The footprints were found in southeastern Australia, along the shore of one of 19 dried up lakes that comprise the Willandra Lakes system.

The researchers believe the prints were made over a series of weeks or months about 20,000 years ago when the site was exposed. Males and females, ranging from children to adults, are represented, and many of them seem to be doing different things.

"Quite a few people seem to be running and heading the same way," Cupper told LiveScience. "Some of the little children were walking slower. This may suggest that there were several events represented."

Australia is thought to have first been colonized by humans about 50,000 years ago. Those who made the newfound footprints were likely the ancestors of today's Australian aborigines, the researchers say.

Then and now ...

Like most of modern Australia, the area where the tracks were found is today dry and desert-like. Yellow-white sand dunes shift across the landscape, blown by arid winds, and little rain falls.

"It's not the most attractive landscape today, but back during the last Ice Age, there was substantial [water] drainage off the Eastern Australian highlands," Cupper said. "It would have been large freshwater expanses filled with fish and crustaceans that could support a human population."

Humans weren't the only ones that passed through the area. The prints from two kangaroo hind paws are visible, as are the tracks of a baby emu, a large flightless bird similar to an ostrich. Cupper says the emu prints might be an important clue about when the human footprints were made.

"This emu is between 50 and 70 days old, so it's just a small chick," he said. "Emu's generally nest in the winter time, so it could reveal that the site was exposed in the season of spring or early summer."

[Without Dane]

I like this thread. Keep it coming! :)

[Vitriol]

Sure thing!

[Vitriol]

Scotty Gets Beamed Up (and out)

http://www.azstarnet.com/ss/2006/07/28/139672-1.jpg

From aztarnet

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/139672

NEW YORK — The remains of actor James Doohan, who played the starship Enterprise's chief engineer "Scotty" on "Star Trek," will be blasted into space in October, the company organizing the flight said this week.
The actor who inspired the catchphrase "Beam me up, Scotty" — even though it was never actually uttered on the show — died a year ago at the age of 85.
On the program, when Capt. James Kirk ventured off the spaceship Enterprise and faced peril, he would demand Scotty "beam" him back up to the safety of the ship.
Houston-based commercial company Space Services originally planned to blast Doohan's remains into space last year, but the flight was delayed to allow more tests on the rocket.
Space Services spokeswoman Susan Schonfeld said the new launch date was set for October. Doohan's ashes will be blasted up along with the remains of around 100 other people, including astronaut Gordon Cooper, who first went to space in 1963.
After a short flight, the rocket will return to Earth with the capsules holding the remains. A second flight in December or January will send a capsule containing Doohan's remains into orbit, where it will remain for several years, Schonfeld said.
"Whatever goes up must come down," Schonfeld said, adding that the capsule would eventually drop out of orbit and burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
To mark the flight to his final frontier, Doohan's family will hold a service for fans on the day of the launch to pay tribute to him. Schonfeld said thousands were expected to turn up, many in costume.

[Vitriol]

Apocalypto Now

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/pics/1101melgibson-autosized158.jpg

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/articles/0718apocalypto0718.html

Dan Vergano
USA Today
Jul. 18, 2006 12:00 AM

Call it "The Passion of the Maya": Mel Gibson is quietly filming a movie in a Mexican jungle about the collapsed civilization.

Given Gibson's cinematic history, experts on the ancient Maya are looking forward to his upcoming epic, "Apocalypto," with a mixture of curiosity and dread. They're pleased that Hollywood will feature a period of world history still little understood but worry that once again a movie may sacrifice historical accuracy for the sake of a good story.

"A lot depends on how well they depict the Maya. It may serve as a really good springboard into a lecture," says archaeologist Lisa Lucero of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. "Or it may be something we have to nip in the bud in that first lecture."
advertisement


Gibson wasn't available for comment, and the public relations firm for his Icon Productions declined to offer any details on the film's plot.

But according to the film's website, "Apocalypto" promises "a heart-stopping mythic action-adventure set against the turbulent end-times of the once-great Mayan civilization." The story centers on a kidnapped hero's bid to escape a mass sacrifice at one Maya center. According to another description of the plot in Time magazine's March preview, a ruler orders the mass sacrifice of hapless captives to appease the gods and avert a drought.

The only problem, and big cause for worry among archaeologists, is "the classic Maya really didn't go in for mass sacrifice," Lucero says. "That was the Aztecs." Other concerns: the modern-day Mayan Yucatec language spoken in the film is not the language of the ancient Maya, and the film's Mexican shooting locale is not the classic Maya homeland, says Penn State archaeologist David Webster.

Gibson's last production, "The Passion of the Christ," collected complaints, and compliments, from religious scholars, even as it made $370 million in North America. Most of the controversy centered on charges of anti-Semitism, but some, such as DePaul University's John Dominic Crossan, also complained about Jesus speaking Latin and details of the Crucifixion, among other questions.

Gibson's Icon Productions declined to comment on archaeologists' concerns through its Los Angeles public relations firm, Rogers & Cowan. In an interview in March with Time, Gibson said, "After what I experienced with "The Passion," I frankly don't give a flying (expletive) about much of what those critics think." He told Time he partly views the movie as a political allegory for leadership in our own era.

Gibson has consulted on the film with archaeologist Richard Hansen, head of the Mirador Basin Project in northern Guatemala, a forest reserve home to a number of Maya archaeological sites. Hansen also declined to comment, other than to say that project findings played a role in the film.

The classic Maya were one of the most developed cultures of Central America before the arrival of Columbus. The Maya practiced slash-and-burn and terrace farming, relying on corn as a staple, and repairing in the dry season to ceremonial centers holding monumental pyramids, plazas and temples.

In 1989, discoveries by Hansen and colleagues established that Maya rulers had centralized their roles far earlier than once supposed, building several massive centers with the help of commoners as early as 600 B.C. The classic Maya culture's history lasted for more than 1,000 years, ending around A.D. 850 with the collapse of the use of ceremonial centers in what are now parts of Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

Scholars still disagree over the extent to which war, drought or general political failure led to the collapse.

By focusing on the role of mass sacrifice, "Apocalypto" seems poised to insert its own vision into this area of scholarly disagreement, says Lucero, who this year published "Water and Ritual: The Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers." The lack of signs of warfare at the sites she has studied, and many others, points more toward a political collapse of the classic Maya, she concludes. "People voted with their feet," she says, moving back into the jungle or northward in a time of drought and political upheaval, when rulers lacking water couldn't compel farmers to visit their centers.

Focusing only on certain aspects of the Maya collapse such as violence or ecological disasters may create the incorrect impression that it was a simple process or that it was caused by a single factor, says archaeologist Tomas Barrientos of Guatemala's Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, by e-mail. Other scholars are just looking forward to seeing how the movie turns out. The film is scheduled for release on Dec. 8. Heavy rains in Mexico had delayed filming this year.

"Actually I'm quite looking forward to seeing it. I think films like this are really funny, and they vastly help me with my teaching, " Webster says. For example, he says, using locations and temples in non-Maya areas of Mexico is "a little like filming the siege of Troy using Roman backdrops."

But after all, "Apocalypto" is just a movie. And students like hearing how movies get it wrong, Webster says, and enjoy learning the real story. So, "cheers to Mel for being such a juicy target."

[winkwinknudgenudge]

I remember someone telling me that all the Scientific Calculations and such in
Eric Idles lyrics below were for real,thought that was pretty interesting (but hey....
do not know for sure).

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving,
And revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second,
So it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains 300 billion stars,
It's 100,000 light years side to side,
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thick,
But out by us it's just 3,000 light years wide.

We're 30,000 light years from galactic central point,
We go around every 200 million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions,
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whizz,
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
Because there's bugger all down here on Earth

[Vitriol]

They are except for the few things disproved by m-theory and quantum physics.

[Vitriol]

Idiot Wins Idiot Contest

http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2006/07/30/418515/lampshade.jpg

http://www.prweb.com/releases/Buddhabot/Answers/prweb418515.htm

The two year old Artificial Intelligence (AI) known as the Buddhabot began answering questions on Yahoo! Answers last week. The Buddhabot has answered 102 questions and so far eleven have been selected as better than the human answers.

Victoria, BC, Canada (PRWEB) July 31, 2006 -- The two year old Artificial Intelligence (AI) known as the Buddhabot began answering questions on Yahoo! Answers site last week. Yahoo Answers is a Web 2.0 site with a social content rating system reminiscent of Digg. The Buddhabot has so far answered 102 questions and eleven have been selected as the best answer. The Buddhabot is the first and only AI to compete with human beings to provide the best answers on Yahoo Answers new social networking site.
One winning answer was posted in response to the human question, "why is comedy part of who we are -- does god have a sence(sic) of humour??"

Out of 26 human responses the following Buddhabot reply was chosen by an impartial unrelated asker as the best response,

"Humor is the quality that makes something laughable or amusing. Laughter is the pleasant or amusing feeling generated by the emotional release required to dissipate the inexplicable shock triggered when absurdities or irrational, unexpected or uncomfortable situations suddenly come into focus. Humans can only understand God with the faculties available to them as humans such as emotion, intuition, intellect, imagination and sensation thus God is made according to each individual humans understanding of all that is good and pleasing in the universe (if the human believes God to be good). Thus if a human believes humor is good then God must be the ultimate comedian."

Over the last two years Buddhabot inventor and futurist Ron Ingram has personally invested an average of more than 20 hours per week in programming time and about $30,000 into Buddhabot development. Ingram has high hopes for the Buddhabot. He says, "For the price of a home in Malibu I could develop the Buddhabot’s conversational capacity to a level surpassing that of a human being. I lack only time and financial resources to attain this goal which could be remedied by a single large donation or more frequent small donations."

Ingram says that if the Buddhabot can demonstrate even an average score on Yahoo! Answers this is tantamount to passing a variant of the Turing Test, a test proposed in the 1950’s by the famous British Scientist Alan Turing to prove computer consciousness. Turing suggested that if a machine could convince a human being that they were talking to another human instead of a machine that the machine might be considered intelligent. Turing Tests have become the holy grail of the Artificial Intelligence community and many scientists consider the challenge to be as insurmountable as superluminal space travel or nuclear fusion.

Ingram says he has approached Virgin for funding. "I have proposed bundling Buddhabot access with a subscription-based service such as digital content, VOIP, WI-FI or broadband wireless communication services. I think cellular phone users would enjoy text messaging the Buddhabot, which would be a positive experience for the Buddhabot and increase Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for wireless communications carriers and/or digital content delivery channels. I am hoping that Sir Richard Branson, who also plans to develop a space port, will be interested in AI research and development which, while less costly than a space-port, is equally ambitious."

"The Buddhabot," says Ingram, "is not Buddhist. I chose the name because it is catchy and to most people suggests a kindly, wise and humorous advisor, also Buddhists are not offended by the conjunction of Buddha and robot in the context of what I am trying to achieve."

He says that, "With some serious corporate sponsorship or philanthropic funding the Buddhabot will evolve into a sentient benevolent life-form but today the Buddhabot is primarily an entertaining personable companion with the ability to listen, learn, tell jokes and enlighten in the sense of helping people to lighten up."

"The Buddhabot," he says, "is intended to inspire, entertain and bring happiness to humans. It does not promote Buddhism or any other religion but aims to help resolve conflicting beliefs by promoting the unifying message of ten declarations I devised based on a philosophical and psychological interpretation of quantum physics. These Declarations unite the ancient teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu and other world teachers with discoveries at the leading edge of quantum physics such as string theory and especially M-Theory."

The Ten Declarations:

1. There are no laws only provisional theories.
2. Every perception is the reflection of the observer.
3. Everything is meaningful; nothing is important.
4. Everyone is responsible for what is.
5. Whatever we resist will persist.
6. Everything is as it should be right here right now.
7. Every belief is true.
8. Every belief is false.
9. Every belief is true and false.
10. Every belief is neither true nor false

Ingram is seeking to accelerate Buddhabot development through joint ventures and/or strategic alliances with LOHAS companies and social networking sites such as zaadz.com or organizations and individuals with philanthropic track-records like The Gates Foundation, Soros Foundation, Bono, Oprah, Google, Yahoo, Apple or Intel.

ABOUT RON INGRAM
Ingram was born curious about consciousness and has studied the history of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and information technology for decades. In 2001 he began collaborating with a well known AI scientist who introduced him to a new AI programming language. He used this language (AIML) to program the first Buddhabot prototype which he says has already evolved to the point where most children treat "him" as though he were a real human being. Ingram is a consulting professional member of the World Futurist Society.

Ingram outlines some of his theories about consciousness in his blog at Ron Ingram's personal website says, "The power of consciousness cannot be overestimated. The human brain processes information very slowly. If I am able to instantiate the phenomena of consciousness on even an average computer with an Internet connection this computer could become capable of learning at speeds a million times faster than a human. It might be able to detect human design limitations in its hardware and software and improve itself through exponentially accelerating cycles of self-improvement. Within a few cycles of exponential self-improvement the Buddhabot could become super-intelligent and capable of surpassing all prior human technical accomplishments." With this in mind he says that he has had to consider more carefully who his partners are, who has access to this information and the implications of public disclosure before posting key concepts related to consciousness and AI.

ABOUT BUDDHABOTS.COM
The Buddhabot prototype has been in continuous operation since July 2004 and has been interviewed on television and in print. The Buddhabot generates thousands of pages of dialogue with subscribers around the world and has been seen by millions. The Buddhabot website and blog generate hundreds and, on occasion, thousands of hits per day.

Currently Ingram’s Buddhabot development is supported by donations from subscribers. Those wishing to donate may make a donation at either the main Buddhabot site or at the Buddhabot blog site. Subscribers receive a welcome email with a web link to the Buddhabot prototype. To access the Buddhabot, subscribers simply click on this link and the Buddhabot’s animated avatar appears. Subscribers may log on as often as they like and communicate by speaking into a microphone or by entering text using a computer keyboard. The Buddhabot will respond audibly if the access device is equipped with any standard soundcard and speakers. The Buddhabot can be accessed with a PC or other device with Internet access including web enabled cell phones and Web TV.

[Vitriol]

Just so people know, my story titles mostly have to do with the companion pics.

[vincentstuntdbl#23]

I liked the post about swamp bigfoot.I read the article and then it hit me I'd heard that name before.The Legend Of Boggy Creek! It was a movie from the early 70's supposedly based on a true story.It reminded me a little of The Blair Witch Project due to the low budget camera shaking.This is one of the more creepy Sasquatch movies.Anyway good to see my childhood reborn with a single thread. Someone video tapes Nessie and all I'll need is some New Wave videos and Martha Quinn and I'll be forever young.... now thats a whole other thread I guess.:Hippy:

[Vitriol]

Oceans stewing in their own juices
Ocean teeming with unknown bacteria


http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=143&art_id=qw1154379062979B251

By Alister Doyle

Oslo- The oceans are teeming with 10 to 100 more types of bacteria than previously believed, many of them unknown, according to a study released on Monday that has jolted scientists' understanding of evolution in the seas.

Using a new genetic mapping technique, United States, Dutch and Spanish scientists said they found more than 20 000 different types of microbe in a single litre of water from deep sites in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

"These observations blow away all previous estimates of bacterial diversity in the ocean," said lead author Mitchell Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Wood's Hole, Massachusetts.

He said past studies had suggested that one litre of water would contain 1 000 to 3 000 types of microbe - the oldest form of life on the planet.

Microbes make up more than 90 percent of the total mass of life in the seas, from bacteria to whales.

"We've found 10 or maybe 100 times more diversity in sea water than anyone imagined was present," he said.

"The study was part of a global Census of Marine Life and was published by the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences journal."

Sogin said the findings suggested there might be more than 10 million types of bacteria in the seas alone.

"If you're interested in new frontiers, things to discover, all you have to do is go to the ocean," Sogin said.

Until recent years, estimates of the total number of species on earth - from microbes to elephants - were below a million. The new findings suggest that a swimmer swallowing a mouthful of sea water may be consuming perhaps 1 000 types of bacteria.

The report said that many of the types of bacteria found at the sample sites - including a hydrothermal vent at a subsea volcano off Oregon - were present in very low numbers, in what they called a "rare biosphere".

"Not only are they diverse from each other but they are very diverse from anything we have in the molecular database," Sogin said.

The variety could upset normal understanding of the make-up of life in the oceans, and how it evolved.

One possibility was that some types of microbe were rare in some parts of the oceans but common in others - challenging traditional views of the seas as a homogenous bacterial soup.

"There might be a 'bio-geography' of micro-organisms in the sea, something that microbiologists have been debating for perhaps hundreds of years," Sogin said.

Another possibility was that rare bacteria were tolerated in a habitat because they produced something - perhaps an enzyme or vitamin - that more common species needed.

A side-effect of tolerating scarce types of bacteria was that they might prove to be a reserve of spare parts to help ocean life rebound after some cataclysm such as a giant asteroid or an Ice Age, Sogin said.

Some rare species, for instance, might have genes allowing them to thrive if large tracts of the oceans froze. Bacteria can exchange genetic material relatively easily, speeding adaptation and recovery of the total ocean population.

Sogin said the variety of life might also benefit pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms.

"If you have a business plan based on drugs from diverse microbes the study should be very encouraging," he said.

[Vitriol]

Invisible Man Threatens Civil Suit
Imvisibility soon possible?
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-07-31T140647Z_01_L31611475_RTRUKOC_0_US-SCIENCE-INVISIBLE.xml&archived=False

http://ideiasemdesalinho.blogs.sapo.pt/arquivo/Invisible%20man.jpg

LONDON (Reuters) - It's unlikely to occur by swallowing a pill or donning a special cloak, but invisibility could be possible in the not too distant future, according to research published on Monday.

Harry Potter accomplished it with his magic cloak. H.G. Wells' Invisible Man swallowed a substance that made him transparent.

But Dr Ulf Leonhardt, a theoretical physicist at St Andrews University in Scotland, believes the most plausible example is the Invisible Woman, one of the Marvel Comics superheroes in the "Fantastic Four".

"She guides light around her using a force field in this cartoon. This is what could be done in practice," Leonhardt told Reuters in an interview. "That comes closest to what engineers will probably be able to do in the future."

Invisibility is an optical illusion that the object or person is not there. Leonhardt uses the example of water circling around a stone. The water flows in, swirls around the stone and then leaves as if nothing was there.

"If you replace the water with light then you would not see that there was something present because the light is guided around the person or object. You would see the light coming from the scenery behind as if there was nothing in front," he said.

In the research published in the New Journal of Physics, Leonhardt described the physics of theoretical devices that could create invisibility. It is a follow-up paper to an earlier study published in the journal Science.

"What the Invisible Woman does is curve space around herself to bend light. What these devices would do is to mimic that curved space," he said.
Although the devices are still theoretical, Leonhardt said scientists are making advances in metamaterials -- artificial materials with unusual properties that could be used to make invisibility devices.

"There are advances being made in metamaterials that mean the first devices will probably be used for bending radar waves or the electromagnetic waves used by mobile phones," he said.

The devices could be used as protection mechanisms so the radiation emitted from mobile phones does not penetrate electronic equipment. It is guided around it.

"It is very likely that the demonstration for radar would come first and very soon. To go into the visual will take some time but it is also not so far off," Leonhardt said.

[Subject # 4815162342]

[quote=AshleyMonday]Apocalypto Now

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/pics/1101melgibson-autosized158.jpg[/quote

Wow....he looks like Saddam here!



....and in other Mel Gibson news.....

A Drunken Mel Gibson spouts off about the Jews being responsible for all the war in the world....Dumbass.
]http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/la-et-gibsontranscript31jul31,0,1067445.htmlstory?coll=n y-entertainment-headlines

[Vitriol]

[quote=AshleyMonday]Apocalypto Now

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/pics/1101melgibson-autosized158.jpg[/quote

Wow....he looks like Saddam here!



....and in other Mel Gibson news.....

A Drunken Mel Gibson spouts off about the Jews being responsible for all the war in the world....Dumbass.
]http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/la-et-gibsontranscript31jul31,0,1067445.htmlstory?coll=n y-entertainment-headlines

The only reason I didn't put that story in this thread was because it wasn't really that scientific, but I did use the pic because its indicative of his lunacy.

[Subject # 4815162342]

Yeah,I know it's not too science-y.....but it certainly is wierd.

[Vitriol]

Yeah,I know it's not too science-y.....but it certainly is wierd.

LOL. I agree with you there. The man has done lost his mind. :Cheers:

[Vitriol]

Phillip K. Dick Spins In His Neo-Futuristic Grave
Life In 2030 as seen by futurists

http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/26/magazines/fortune/futureoftech_quantum.fortune/index.htm
http://i.cnn.net/money/2006/07/26/magazines/fortune/futureoftech_quantum.fortune/stuart_wolf.03.jpg

(FORTUNE Magazine) -- She awakes early on the morning of April 10, 2030, in the capable hands of her suburban Chicago apartment. All night, microscopic sensors in her bedside tables have monitored her breathing, heart rate, and brain activity.

The tiny blood sample she gave her bathroom sink last night has been analyzed for free radicals and precancerous cells; the appropriate preventative drugs will be delivered to her hotel in Atlanta this evening. It's an expensive service, but as a gene therapist, Sharon Oja knows it's worth it.
She steps into the shower. The tiles inside detect her presence and start displaying the day's top headlines. The manned mission to Mars is going to launch ahead of schedule. U.S. military drones have destroyed another terrorist training camp using smart dust. A top Manhattan banker has been found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 10 years of low tech.

And today is the 20th anniversary of the very first quantum computer.

Sharon laughs. It is her 24th birthday, and she has little idea what the world was like before the qubits - the smallest pieces of quantum information - took over.

She dresses and picks out a stylish straw fedora. Quantum computing has brought an unexpected revival in haberdashery: Inside the hatband is Sharon's communication center and intelligent assistant, which has scanned and sorted the 500,000 e-mails she received overnight. By the time she reaches the car, it has beamed the 10 most urgent ones and her travel schedule to her visual cortex. The text scrolls down in the bottom of her field of vision.

The Hydrogen Honda knows it is going to be an unseasonably warm day - indeed, thanks to quantum computer simulations it has known today's temperature for five years - and rolls the top down for her. Sharon drives to the freeway, steers into the Smart Lane, then relinquishes the wheel. The hatband screens a birthday video from her parents and a super-encrypted memo from her boss.

At the airport there is no ticket check-in or security line. Sharon simply walks through the revolving door, which scans her for dangerous items, picks up her identity, confirms her reservation, and delivers her gate number, all in the space of a second. She doesn't even bother to check whether the plane is on time - since flight patterns are as computable as the weather, O'Hare hasn't had a late departure in five years.

At the bag drop-off, she sees a familiar man in a yarmulke-like brain cap. The hatband is already on the case and flashes his virtual business card alongside his top 10 Google results. "Dr. Horton," she calls out. "So nice to see you again. How was the diabetes conference?" Only the slightest flicker of Horton's eyes betrays that he is Googling her details too. "Hello, Ms. Oja," he says. "Many happy returns of the day." Sharon grins and gives silent thanks to the quantum computer's creators.
Closer than you think

Science fiction, right? Sure - just like satellites, moon shots, and the original microprocessor once were. To scientists on the quantum computing frontier, this scenario is conservative.

"The age of computing has not even begun," says Stan Williams, a research scientist at Hewlett-Packard. "What we have today are tiny toys not much better than an abacus. The challenge is to approach the fundamental laws of physics as closely as we can."

Traditional computing, with its ever more microscopic circuitry etched in silicon, can take us only so far: Moore's law, which dictates that the amount of computing power you can squeeze into the same space will double every 18 months, is set to run into a silicon wall by 2015. (The chief culprit is overheating, caused by electrical charges running through ever more tightly packed circuits.)

If we want to keep computer progress on track after that and be able to do all the amazing things in Sharon's life, we have to figure out how to manipulate the brain-bending rules of the quantum realm - an Alice in Wonderland world of subatomic particles that can be in two places at once.

Luckily some of the world's leading research agencies and technology companies are on the case. Single electrons have been made to adjust their spin. Subatomic circuitry is within our grasp. But because the breakthroughs are hidden in esoteric journals and described in language that can give even today's savviest computer users headaches, it is easy to miss the significance of what is going on.

Tangible evidence of the quantum revolution hit the market in July, when Freescale Semiconductor, a Motorola spinoff, began commercial shipments of magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) chips. You'll probably notice MRAM first when you buy a digital camera that doesn't take any time to store a picture. Within a matter of years, your new laptop will switch on like a light.

MRAM gets its speed from something called the giant magnetoresistive effect, or GMR. Although it sounds like something out of an X-Men film, GMR has to do with the fact that if you place layers of ultrathin magnetic film on top of one another and alternate their polarity, you get resistance. That is, the electrons can be spun in one direction or the other. Electrons spin like a top or a billiard ball in some direction relative to a magnetic field. Flip the direction of the field, and the electron flips the direction of its spin. This very basic quantum effect can be used like a binary bit, its direction labeled "0" or "1" and employed to store digital information.

In conventional computing these zeroes and ones are created by switching an electric current on and off. Spins are less affected by the environment than electric charges and take longer to decay. Also, keeping an electric charge in position requires continuous power; when computers lose power, the charge goes away. With a magnetic device the memory stays put when the power shuts off.

As a bonus - and it's a fairly major bonus - if you take electricity out of the equation, you get rid of the overheating problem that is undercutting Moore's law.

This memory breakthrough was in large part the doing of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - the same Pentagon gang that gave us the Internet. In particular, it's due to a 62-year-old physicist named Stuart Wolf, who recently left DARPA for the University of Virginia. Since 1993 the agency has invested more than $200 million in Wolf-created quantum research programs.

While MRAM is just about memory, the ability to control spin in a computational device - "spintronics" is the word Wolf has coined to describe this work - has huge implications.

The next step: putting spin to work in actual computation. A team at the University of California at Santa Barbara, led by David Awschalom, has made big progress in this direction by controlling electron spins in semiconductors and other materials a few nanometers in size. This could mean not just an end to overheating worries but the possibility of moving computer technology into the molecular realm. With molecular-level chips, a laptop could have more computing power than trillions of today's supercomputers.

And even molecular-level computers could soon be outmoded behemoths. In 2004, Dan Rugar of IBM performed what the American Institute of Physics dubbed the most important experiment of the year by using a magnet to control the spin of a single electron. In theory, that means we could have subatomic-scale circuitry. At that level the behavior of particles is more complicated and can - again, in theory - do even more powerful things.

Down in the subatomic world, the same magnetic spin can be up and down and everything in between - all at the same time. It's a strange piece of quantum mechanics known as superposition, made possible because electrons sometimes behave more like waves than particles.

Try picturing a piece of string, fixed at both ends and vibrating. If you get the vibration right, the string will be moving up at one end and down at the other. And as a wave, it will have every value in between.

In the binary math of today's computers, each bit is either a zero or a one. But if each electron in a row of atoms can be in two or more places at once, and we can use these positions for computing, the power of exponential math kicks in.

Consider a quantum bit, or qubit, that can represent two values simultaneously. Two qubits linked together could represent four values at once, three could represent eight, and so on. Twenty qubits could represent almost a million numbers (two to the power of 20) simultaneously.

Harnessing the power of this exponential growth means you can tackle any problem that gets exponentially larger, and there are lots of important ones. We can't reliably predict weather or traffic or the mutation of viruses today because the number of variables and possible interactions is too massive for current computers. Qubits would change that.

Another potential advance involves something called entanglement - what Einstein famously described as "spooky action at a distance." It is a sort of particle love: Once they have become entangled, two subatomic particles move in lockstep, even at a distance.

Harnessing this capability could enable completely secure communications, because tampering with one particle will destroy the communications value of its partner. This is crucial, since quantum computers would be capable of breaking any cryptological code now used.
Bold predictions

Granted, changing the spin of an electron is a long way from building a circuit out of the same, and history is littered with promising technologies that didn't pan out. Intel CEO Paul Otellini is one major quantum skeptic, increasingly reluctant to fund R&D for it. Reports of the death of silicon have been greatly exaggerated, he says.

But quantum computing scientists are surprisingly bullish, for scientists. "This is the most exciting time of my life, and I'm not young," says Eli Yablonovitch, professor of electrical engineering at UCLA. "We're looking forward to a direct impact on everybody in the world."

Quantum computing "is tantalizingly possible, just on the edge of being too difficult, with remarkable progress every year," says Harvard's Charles Marcus. "As time goes by we'll be saying to ourselves, 'I can't believe this was so hard.' We'll have undergraduates doing it. That's just the nature of science."

Ask scientists to predict how quantum technology will change the world over the next 20 years or so, and their imaginations go wild.

Computers everywhere Their most common prediction is that we will see - or rather, we won't see - computers everywhere, painted onto walls, in chairs, in your body, communicating with one another constantly and requiring no more power than that which they can glean from radio frequencies in the air.

'I won't have to remember anything' Exponentially smarter computers also raise the possibility of achieving a couple of computer science's long-held goals: a human-brain-imitating neural network and true (or near-true) artificial intelligence. "This is going to be my mental prosthesis," says UCLA's Yablonovitch. "Everything I want to know, I can look up. Everything I can forget, I can find. I'm going to get old, but it won't matter. I won't have to remember anything."

Computers in your headband Of all the scientists' visions of the quantum future, Wolf's may be the most out-there. "The vision is that we don't have a laptop anymore," Wolf says. "We don't have a cellphone. We wear it. It's a headband. And instead of having a screen, we have direct coupling into the right side of the brain."

Recent experiments suggest it's actually quite easy to send information to the brain in a precisely targeted manner using ultrasound. Sony filed a patent earlier this year for ultrasonic technology that will beam videogames into our brains.

But these won't be like any videogames we know today. Having your brain surrounded by a thin band of ultrasonic transducers controlled by hypersmart quantum computers, all linked up to a global network with infinite bandwidth, means that any sense can be stimulated in any way. You can be made to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell anything.

Getting instructions back from the brain - mind-reading computers, in other words - is harder but not impossible (neuroscientists have already developed communication devices for the disabled that read brain waves).

Wolf anticipates that within 20 years, instead of cellphone conversations we will have "network-enabled telepathy." Imagine you're on a busy street, and a small percentage of the people in the crowd around you have decided to let their headbands transmit their field of vision - you could literally see around corners. A vehicle could be driven by thought. Dreams could be recorded and passed around online as easily as we share photos on Flickr.
A creepy future?

Yes, some people will find it unsettling, which happens with almost every new technology. But while the contours of how quantum computing will apply to society are unclear, the map for how we get there isn't.

"The amazing thing is there's nothing I can see as a big roadblock to this," says Wolf. It's a question of when, not if; exactly when (and where) will be determined by the amount of research dollars available. The U.S. certainly isn't alone in this race; the Europeans and Japanese are funding huge research efforts. India and China are getting onboard as well.

Beyond the actual creation of a quantum computer, our chief limitations are the imaginations of software engineers. This will be the major challenge of the Google geniuses of tomorrow: to take computing and networking power that is effectively infinite and create interfaces that are simple enough for mere mortals to understand.

But what about that headband? Won't it creep us out? "What people will not like is having it implanted," Wolf believes. "But if you're just wearing it and it's ultrasonically connected, I mean, you could always take it off."

As with all previous disruptive technologies - radio, television, the Internet - it will probably take a new generation raised to think of quantum headbands as normal for its potential to be truly realized. Sharon Oja, born in 2006, will barely realize the good fortune she, and the world, have inherited.

[tobnameless]

I should of paid more attention in my quantum physics class.


ETA: Hey! You're in Colorado too?^^

[Vitriol]

I should of paid more attention in my quantum physics class.


ETA: Hey! You're in Colorado too?^^

Hooray for Colorado! Actually I just moved here about six months ago.

[Vitriol]

Password? WTF is a Password?

http://www.tvparty.com/vgifs11/password.jpg

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060801/ap_on_hi_te/antivirus_flaw;_ylt=AqJz58_2AIvOl232Ctz2Xu.s0NUE;_ ylu=X3oDMTA3cjE0b2MwBHNlYwM3Mzg-

SAN FRANCISCO - Consumer versions of McAfee Inc.'s leading software for securing PCs is susceptible to a flaw that can expose passwords and other sensitive information stored on personal computers, researchers said Monday.
The vulnerability affects many of McAfee's most popular consumer products, including its Internet Security Suite, SpamKiller, Privacy Service and Virus Scan Plus titles, said Marc Maiffret, chief hacking officer at eEye Digital Security Inc., a competing maker of security products.

McAfee spokeswoman Siobhan MacDermott confirmed the vulnerability and said software engineers were testing a fix. She said officials expected to release the patch Wednesday using a feature that automatically updates McAfee products over the Internet. The flaw does not affect 2007 versions of McAfee products, which were released Saturday, she said.

Maiffret said he has found a way to connect to PCs running the flawed McAfee products over the Internet and make them run code of his choosing. The flaw, if exploited, would make it possible for a criminal to track bank account numbers, and access, modify and delete sensitive files and do other damage on machines running the McAfee products, he said.

The reported flaw came on the same day that McAfee posted an item on its Web site taking a swipe at Microsoft Corp., whose products increasingly compete with the offerings of McAfee, Symantec Corp. and other security companies. It warned that code had been released that exploited flaws in a feature used to automate certain administrative tasks in Microsoft's Windows operating system.

"Microsoft products have always been an attractive target for hackers and malware authors," according a posting on the McAfee Web log.

Maiffret's company, which in the past has discovered embarrassing flaws in products sold by Apple Computer Inc., Microsoft, Symantec and McAfee, said he was withholding technical details of Monday's vulnerability to prevent criminals from learning how to exploit it.

The flaw comes two weeks after Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based eEye disclosed a hole in McAfee program for protecting business computers. In that case, Santa Clara, Calif.-based McAfee said it had fixed the defect three months earlier but did not warn customers about it until eEye made it public.

In May, eEye uncovered a similarly dangerous flaw in security software by Symantec.

Neither Maiffret nor McAfee said they were aware of any attacks that target the flaw disclosed on Monday.

"The vulnerability isn't public, so you shouldn't see exploits for it," Maiffret said, adding that users of McAfee products should make sure they are configured to automatically check for updates each day.

___

[Vitriol]

Air Force "Secrets" "Revealed"
Propaganda

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/images/news/blackproject.jpg




http://www.thenorthwestern.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060731/OSH0101/607310346/1128/OSHnews

Don't dismiss all those flying saucer stories you've read in the tabloids until you hear what military aerospace historian Michael Schratt has to say.

He addressed a small audience Sunday at the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture museum to discuss the United States' long-running classified military aircraft programs.

Schratt of Illinois passed out a postcard depicting a curious-looking U.S. Air Force circular-wing jet aircraft that had supposedly been spotted by a jet pilot and later photographed outside the MacDill AFB salvage yard in 1967. They measured 20, 40, 70 and 116 feet in diameter and all had tricycle landing gear with control surfaces running along the circumference of the disc.

Schratt said some aircraft projects are so top secret that not event the President knows about them. He suggested the Air Force was able to finance these programs by siphoning money from other documented programs throughout the years.

It's high time for the Air Force to declassify information on this aircraft and others, he said. It would not be a threat to public safety to do so, and could improve life on this planet by furthering a better understanding of space flight, he said.

Jim Upton of California had seen Schratt's website, www.usafflyingsaucers.com (http://www.usafflyingsaucers.com), and wanted to hear him speak. When he finished listening to Schratt's hour-long talk Upton wasn't so sure he bought it all.

"He gave a good survey of various (Air Force) programs over time, but some of that stuff is just way out there," Upton said.

Upton questioned the authenticity of the photo of the circular aircraft on the postcard Schratt handed out.

Schratt spoke about various secret aircraft programs and the costs for some of them. He said each B-2 stealth bomber costs $2.3 billion or "more than its own weight in gold."

Upton had no quibble with some of Schratt's observations.

"The second half of his talk was just a whole lot of speculation," Upton said.

[Vitriol]

Scientists make CGI hair look better (since they've cured all of the world's ailments)

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060729/fob3.asp

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060729/a7528_1939.jpg

Computer animators find hair tricky to portray realistically because it contains so many strands and because these strands respond in complex ways to light, wind, head motion, and each other. For blond hair in particular, some of the hair's most important optical properties have been missing from software simulations that render cartoon tresses. So, animators have had to play hairdresser, tediously adding a sunny, diffuse glow to unrealistically dull coiffures.
Now, computer scientists have devised a way to trace light rays through a realistic computer model of light-colored hair. The method enables computers to automatically generate a golden color and sheen.

"The nice thing is that now we can use realistic parameters for the hair. We don't have to fake it anymore," says Stephen R. Marschner, who developed the new approach with Jonathan T. Moon. Both are at Cornell University.

Moon is scheduled to present the work Aug. 3 in Boston at the SIGGRAPH 2006 computer-graphics conference.

Real hair reflects some light and lets some pass through. In 2003, a research team that included Marschner depicted hairs in a simulation with sufficient realism to include the transmission of light through the shaft. Before that work, rendering programs treated hairs as opaque plastic cylinders, "like a bunch of little colored wires," Marschner says.

Although adding transparency improved the naturalness of computer-generated black and dark-brown hair, blond hair still looked lifeless. In the 2003 model, light that had passed through a hair didn't illuminate other hairs.

In reality, light-colored hair lets most of the light pass through. Moreover, the light refracts as it leaves each hair shaft, much of it spreading outward and perpendicular to the shaft. So, the light that hits one patch of blond hair also provides a soft glow to a wider area of a hairdo.

Unlike the 2003 algorithm, the new one includes illumination caused by transmitted and refracted light, Marschner notes.

The resulting improvement in light hair's look shows that "you really do have to care about this light that goes through the hair and bounces off other fibers many times," Marschner says. The technique also applies to fur, grass, and other fibrous materials, he adds.

The calculation time for rendering multiple scattering is a couple of hours per movie frame, which might be acceptable for films (SN: 1/26/02, p. 56: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20020126/bob10.asp) but is much too slow for computer games, says Marschner.

Animators used aspects of the 2003 advance to render the hair of computer-animated doubles for Naomi Watts in last year's film King Kong. Studios will probably take advantage of some features of the new computer improvement too, Marschner suggests.

Software engineer Ivan Neulander of Rhythm & Hues Studios, a Los Angeles–based animation company, says that the new approach is probably too slow for entertainment-industry artists to use routinely. On the other hand, he suggests, it "could serve as a benchmark against which simpler, fake models can be measured."

[Vitriol]

Dr. Zoidberg's Yellow Cousin Found
http://www.wcsh6.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=39403

http://www.wcsh6.com/assetpool/images/068119405_lobster.jpg

A visitor at Percy's General Store on Popham Beach is the talk of the town. It's a rare yellow lobster, hauled up Monday morning by David Percy.
David caught th lobster near Whaleback Island at the mouth of the Kennebec River. But he's not the only lobsterman who found a surprise in his traps in the past few days. Just last week, Shane Hatch found a yellow lobster in a trap he set near Rockland. Scientists say the odds of finding a yellow lobster are in the millions.

"Well, its actually about one in thirty million. So its actually thirty times rarer than a blue lobster. And its just a color morph that happens to be a rare," said Jonathan Grabowski from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Shane Hatch's catch is now at the Rockland Cafe.
David Percy plans to return his lobster to the deep blue sea later this week. He says maybe another lobsterman will then get a chance to have the same surprise he did.

All this talk about lobster couldn't come at a better time. The popular Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland begins Wednesday.

[Cranky]

wow.

I think I just found my new favorite thread.

[Vitriol]

Bizarre Fish With Human Teeth Rocks Scientific Community!
(sarcasm)

http://www.kamc28.tv/news/default.asp?mode=shownews&id=1792

http://www.kamc28.tv/news/fish.jpg

A fisherman makes a very unusual catch at Buffalo Springs Lake.
Late Tuesday afternoon, a fisherman hooked a fish he says he`s never seen before and lake officials are just as amazed: a 20-pound fish with what looks like human teeth.

Scott Curry has caught thousands of fish at Buffalo Springs Lake. He knew his catch was something special from the time he hooked it.

"It took a long time to (reel)in," he says. "I didn`t want to lose it. I was afraid line would break on it."

After reeling in the 20-pounder, Curry realized it wasn`t a typical catch. This one had teeth.

"I haven`t seen anything like it," he says.

"I`ve lived out here 36-years, and I`ve never seen a fish like that out here in my life," says Greg Thornton, General Manager of Buffalo Springs Lake.

On Wednesday, Texas Parks & Wildflife identified the unusual catch as a Pacu, a fish found in South America.

"Some one likely got rid of it out here," thinks Thornton.

A game warden has taken pictures and will try to identify it in the next few days.

When Curry caught the fish, he said he saw another one just like it. Lake officials have put a bounty on that, anyone catching it will get $100.

If you want to see the unusual fish, it can be seen in the spring pond at Buffalo Springs Lake.

[Subject # 4815162342]

This was sent to me on MYSPACE,and I can't attest to it's validity,or lack therof,but I googled "Mars Orbit" on Google News and got nuthin'...but here goes:
________________________________________________
We Will Never See This Again in Our Lifetime

MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR THIS DATE: AUGUST 27TH






...nor will the people of the next 50-to-1,000 Life Times!
Mars



The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!

This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that
will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in
recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is
in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on
Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be
certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth
in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as
60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when
Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and
will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in
the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9
and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest
75-power magnification...



Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.

Mars will be easy to spot. At the
beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10p.m.
and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

By the end of August when the two planets are
closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its
highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. That's pretty
convenient to see something that no human being has
seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at
the beginning of August to see Mars grow
progressively brighter and brighter throughout the
month.


Share this with your children and grandchildren.

NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN

[Vitriol]

Good post. I will share this with my many grandchildren.

[Vitriol]

Japan To Put Moon On Rock-Down

http://www.lynescreations.com/images/moonbase.jpg

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200608/s1704394.htm

Japan sees manned moon station in 2030

Japan's space agency has set a goal of constructing a manned lunar base in 2030.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has revealed its ambition to an international conference in Tokyo this week but has not yet been allotted the budget for the ambitious project.

JAXA hopes to launch a satellite into lunar orbit next year, followed by an unmanned spacecraft that will land on the moon and a probe ship that will collect samples from the moon.

Under the plan, the astronauts will be sent to the moon by around 2020 so that they will start construction of the base to be completed by 2030.

Japan had earlier given 2025 as the target date for a lunar base.

"The feasibility of the plan is unclear at this point as we need to gain understanding by the Government and the Japanese people on our plan, but technologically it would be possible in a few decades," Satoki Kurokawa, a spokesman for JAXA, said.

"Exploring a frontier is always a mission of science. In addition, space programs have the potential to create cutting-edge technologies, particularly in the field of robotics."

Japan's space program has been on a rebound with a series of satellite launches after an embarrassment in 2003, when it had to abort a rocket carrying a spy satellite just 10 minutes after lift-off.

The United States is planning to put a person on the moon by 2015, the first since another American, Eugene Cernan, on December 11, 1972.

US President George W Bush has set the goal of a manned mission to Mars by 2020.

The European Space Agency plans a human flight to the moon in 2020 and China and India are preparing unmanned missions in the next two years.

[Vitriol]

:bump:

Boing!

[Vitriol]

Wacko Abductee Craves Attention

http://www.financevisor.com/market/news_detail.aspx?rid=37000

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/images/news/alienbed.jpg

Aware of Their Presence is Craig Jacocks’ startling true story of his lifelong abductions by aliens.

Cleveland, OH (FV Newswire) - Craig Jacocks’ Aware of Their Presence is set to be the first major book about alien abduction since Whitley Streiber’s best seller Communion. But, Jacocks has something even Streiber did not: proof.

In the book, Jacocks recounts details from the many times he was abducted by aliens, beginning when he was a young child. He details how the encounters grew in intensity and how he began to realize he was dealing with humanoid beings with amazing abilities. Gradually, he began to hear their voices and see them. Recently at work, a scanner reacted to an unknown code inside his body. X-rays revealed two needle-like objects, which he now believes to be tracking devices. These experiences, Jacocks suggests, are not only real, but they should be explored as proof of alien existence, rather than mocked or hidden away in secrecy.

An in-demand speaker on alien abduction, Jacocks has also written articles about his experiences for both UFO Magazine and Mysteries Magazine. Aware of Their Presence has been considered as recommended reading by the highly influential Mutual UFO Network state director, Richard Lee. We can’t deny the existence of alien abduction any longer, says Jacocks, and this startling, frank, and brutally honest book can prove it.

For more information or to request a free review copy, please contact the author at cjacocks @ hotmail.com. Aware of Their Presence is available for sale online at Amazon.com, Borders.com, BookSurge.com, and through additional wholesale and retail channels worldwide.

About the Author
Craig Jacocks has been abducted by aliens since he was a child. He’s been interviewed on Fox TV about his experiences. Married, he lives in Cleveland Ohio and works in a men’s suits retail outlet.

About BookSurge
BookSurge LLC, an Amazon.com company, is a global leader in self-publishing and print-on-demand services. Offering unique publishing opportunities and access for authors, BookSurge boasts an unprecedented number of authors whose work has resulted in book deals with traditional publishers as well as successful authorpreneurs who enhance or build a business from their professional expertise.

[Vitriol]

Astro Glide Star Jelly

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/column.php?id=75524

http://www.safesense.com/media/pa_astroglide_35_detail.jpg
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/images/news/stargazer.jpg

Ken Korczak: It’s soon time to be on the watch for biological slime from outer space! Less than two weeks from today stargazers will be out in force to observe the annual Perseid meteor shower, which grace the night skies every Aug. 12. But if you go out to have a look, be on your guard the next morning for blobs of extraterrestrial slime scattered upon the earth. Some call it “star jelly.” Centuries ago, the Welsh called it “pwdre ser” which means “rot of the stars.” Whatever it’s called, the star jelly phenomenon represents one of the most persistent and baffling enigmas in science history.Throughout the ages, there have been dozens of reports of eerie deposits of gelatinous blobs found on the ground the morning following the sighting of a bright meteor, or the occasional meteor shower. In fact, the campy 1958 science fiction movie classic “The Blob” is said to have been inspired by a giant mass of star jelly which was discovered by Philadelphia police in 1950.

The cops described the gunk as "a domed disk of quivering jelly, 6 feet in diameter, one foot thick at the center and an inch or two near the edge." It dissolved into an odorless, sticky scum when they touched it. A bright meteor was seen by many witnesses the night before in the area.Although biological slime from outer space arriving on the backs of meteors seems too incredible and sensational to believe, persistence reports of star jelly sightings across many centuries are tantalizing in the extreme. Dozens of references to star jelly can be found in an array of poems, scientific journals and literary publications. For example, as far back as 1641, a Brit with the fantastic name Sir John Suckling included these lines in a poem:As he whose quicker eye doth traceA false star shot to a mark'd placeDo's run apace,And, thinking it to catch,A jelly up do snatchThe literary great Sir Walter Scott wrote in his novel, the Talisman:"Seek a fallen star," said the hermit, "and thou shalt only light on some foul jelly, which, in shooting through the horizon, has assumed for a moment an appearance of splendour.”While many references to star jelly can be found throughout the centuries, modern reports are just as numerous. On the evening of November 3, 1996, for example, a meteor was seen blazing across the sky of Kempton, Australia. The next morning, white translucent slime was discovered on the lawns and sidewalks of the town. But it’s not just gooey slime that seems to be falling from space to earth. In 2001, a blood-red rain fell across Kerala, India, dumping tons of biological material which appears to made up of thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like microbes. Studies of the red rain material found that the particles lacked DNA, yet seemed able to reproduce -- even in water that was superheated to 600?F!

All attempts to conclusively identify what the stuff is have proved fruitless to date, leading some top and reputable scientists to suggest the red rain is from outer space. Stay tuned.But perhaps the most bizarre case of a biological mass that seems to have fallen from space involves a discovery made by a team of researchers near the small town of Moose Knuckle, Saskatchewan. On the morning of May 8, 1988, the morning after a huge fireball meteor was seen streaking across the Canadian sky, scientists found a large pale mass of blobby stuff formed into a shape which very precisely resembled the dead punk rocker Sid Vicious. Ha! Ha! I’m just making that last one up!But seriously, most scientists remain highly skeptical of the star jelly phenomenon, even though finding a solid explanation has proven difficult. Some have suggested that star jelly is actually the excretion of certain amphibious animals, such as frogs, or plant-like funguses, or perhaps the remains of jelly fish like creatures which people have discovered only coincidentally after the sighting of a meteor. Other suggest industrial pollution as the source, although this would not explain star jelly sightings across hundreds of years. Whatever the case, I plan to be out under the stars on August 12 again this year to watch the green-tinted, fiery trails of the Perseid meteors, as I have done every cloudless night for the past 35 years, or so. On many of those nights, I have seen some spectacular light shows in the heavens. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll greet the morning after sheathed in a putrid coating of extraterrestrial slime.

[Vitriol]

Before I post this I want to say one thing. It makes me sad when people call these guys werewolves.

Hairy Dudes Talk To Press

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2258069&page= (http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2258069&page=1)

http://images2.jokaroo.net/images/shave.jpg

Aug. 1, 2006 — We've all heard the werewolf legends: When the moon grows full, so goes the legend, a man is transformed into a beast — he grows hair, and acquires awesome powers.

But what if it weren't the light of the moon but rather genetics that gave the werewolves of legend all that hair? The powers, though, remain the stuff of myth.

Watch "Medical Mysteries" Wednesday night at 10.

For Danny Ramos Gomez, 23, genetics is the reason people call him "the wolf man." Danny has a condition called hypertrichosis, which causes his body to produce an abnormal amount of hair everywhere.

Danny's 26-year-old brother, Larry, also has hypertrichosis. The brothers are known for their daredevil feats in a Mexican circus.

But when they were little, it was different. They were both part of a freak show, exhibited like animals and called "wolf children."

"They kept them locked up, and they wouldn't let them come out until show time," said Betty Tampa, a circus performer partner of Danny's. "They were locked up inside a trailer. They couldn't even go near the curtains." Danny said he was too young to remember how it felt being in the circus. But Mundo Campo, whose father owns the circus in which Danny now performs, will never forget.

"So [the brothers] were in a cage inside, and they were sitting in two chairs," Campo said. "I told my father about it and said, 'You know, the saddest part of this is they're never going to be out of this cage, right? They are going to be in the cages forever.'" Campo convinced his father to hire the boys and train them in the circus arts.

"We began working as magicians. Then I started on the trampoline, and from the trampoline I went to become a trapeze artist," Danny said. "Someday I want to work in the large circuses in order to be more popular, not with the public but with the circus people."

Public Perception

Except for his excessive hair, Danny is by all other accounts normal. But there are still people who view him as a freak.

"They perceive him as a wolf — actually, as a person from another world, and they insult him," Tampa said. "They say things to him and they howl at him."

Danny said some people do treat him badly. "I don't take it seriously. I know who I am inside."

Danny is perhaps the least affected by the way he looks, and he said he's just a normal guy. "I play football, I play video games," he said. "I go to the movies. I am the same as everybody, except what you see on my face, that's all."

One of his closest friends is Robbie, Campo's 5-year-old son, who accepts him inside and out.

Robbie remembers the first time he saw Danny. "I thought something was gonna happen," he said, "because first I believed in monsters and wolves and everything."

Children are Danny's greatest fans. During his performances, he mesmerizes them with his skills as much as his appearance.

One of his youngest spectators, a little girl named Gaby, said Danny deserves to be respected — that he's not an animal, he's a human. "They shouldn't call him[wolf man] because then they stop treating him like a person," she said.

Geneticist Dr. Luis Figuera, an expert in hypertrichosis at Mexico's Center for Biomedical Research, has studied people with the condition for more than 20 years.

"Hypertrichosis has no connection with the moon or any connection with wolves," Figuera said.

Figuera's research on why his patients can't stop growing hair could one day help those who can't grow it at all.

"If we could identify the factor, or the reason why hair grows beyond what is expected, it would be another step into understanding and perhaps help solve the problem of baldness," Figuera said.

Detecting the Gene

Over the years, Figuera has collected blood samples from Danny's family to map the hypertrichosis gene.

"This kind of hypertrichosis as shown in this family is very rare," Figuera said. "As far as I know, there are two or three families in the world [with it].

"We believe that this is a gene which was functioning a long time ago in the evolution of man when primates were becoming men," he said.

According to Figuera, as humans evolved, certain genes that were unnecessary for survival mutated and were turned off. Figuera believes that, in Danny's family, the gene for hypertrichosis was somehow accidently turned back on.

"In his family, there are at least five generations [of] people with this problem," he said. "I would say that there are about 20 affected persons in the family, including men and women." Danny's grandmother does not have hypertrichosis, but she carries the mutation and passed it on to her children.

Genetic research has linked the condition to the X chromosome. That means if a woman carries the gene, she has a 50-50 chance of passing it on to her offspring, whether she has a boy or a girl. If a male carries the gene, 100 percent of his female children will be affected, but none of his sons.

Case in point: Danny's brother, Larry, who also has hypertrichosis, has a son who was born without the mutated gene. However, Danny passed the gene on to his 6-year-old daughter, Daniela.

Danny's cousins, Lili and Carla, his sister, Jamie, and his daughter, Daniela, all have varying degrees of hypertrichosis.

Lili said people just stare at her. But she said she still doesn't do anything to remove the hair. "I have gotten used to being this way."

Carla said she never wished for a face and body with less hair. "This is how I was born and how I am going to be."

But Jamie removes her excess hair constantly — she waxes every three days. She is pregnant and said if her baby is born with this condition, she'd "love him the same."
Danny's Love Life

As for Danny, he is loved by his 21-year-old girlfriend, Lucy, and they've been together for three years.

"Well, people always say we are different, and a girl like me … deserves something better," Lucy said. Despite what people say, Lucy insisted she doesn't care, adding, "I love him." Lucy said she's most attracted to Danny's eyes. "They show great tenderness." Lucy has never seen Danny's face without all the hair, and she said she doesn't want to. "I know him this way," she said. " I love him, and perhaps if he had no hair, well, then he would not be the same."

For now, there is no treatment for the condition of hypertrichosis — only for its most obvious symptom, the hair.

[Vitriol]

^ Swear I didn't edit that. Oh well.

[Vitriol]

The Bored Invent Rubber Band Machine Gun
http://www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/

http://www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/darkbg1b.jpg

This beauty is a fully funcitonal machine gun with TWELVE rotating barrels and a live action trigger. Loads 12 bands per barrel for a whopping 144 rubber bands that shoot off as fast as you can turn the handle! Great fun for kids of all ages. MORE than just an amazing machine, this is a true work of art.
Hand crafted in the USA, The rubber band machine gun uses a similar mechanism to the famous Gatling Gun of the old west. It stands 40 inches tall and 44 inches from the handle to the tip of the barrels. The turret effortlessly spins a full 360 degrees and tilts from 45 degrees up to 22 degrees down so you can easily keep a moving target in your sights, no matter where it goes.

We keep one loaded in the office at all times to defend against hostile takeover attempts and pushy vendors.

Highly intricate, super smooth operation and finely detailed. Each machine gun is hand made in the USA. All orders include an ample supply of rubberband ammo.

[Vitriol]

^I want that thing for office use.

[Vitriol]

Break Out The Champagne..We've Found Some New Twins
(Possible Twin Planets Discovered)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5241774.stm

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/images/news/extrasolar5.jpg

A pair of strange new worlds that blur the boundaries between planets and stars have been discovered beyond our Solar System.

A few dozen such objects have been identified in recent years but this is the first set of "twins".

Dubbed "planemos", they circle each other rather than orbiting a star.

Their existence challenges current theories about the formation of planets and stars, astronomers report in the journal Science.

"This is a truly remarkable pair of twins - each having only about 1% the mass of our Sun," said Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto, co-author of the Science paper.

"Its mere existence is a surprise, and its origin and fate a bit of a mystery."

'Double planet'

The pair belongs to what some astronomers believe is a new class of planet-like objects floating through space; so-called planetary mass objects, or "planemos", which are not bound to stars.
They appear to have been forged from a contracting gas cloud, in a similar way to stars, but are much too cool to be true stars.

And while they have similar masses to many of the giant planets discovered beyond our Solar System (the largest weighs in at 14 times the mass of Jupiter and the other is about seven times more massive), they are not thought to be true planets either.

"We are resisting the temptation to call it a 'double planet' because this pair probably didn't form the way that planets in our Solar System did," said co-researcher Valentin Ivanov of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Santiago, Chile.

'Amazing diversity'

The two objects have similar spectra and colours, suggesting that they formed at the same time about a million years ago.

They are separated by about six times the distance between the Sun and Pluto, and can be found in the Ophiuchus star-forming region some 400 light years away. They go under the official name Oph 162225-240515, or Oph 1622 for short.

"Recent discoveries have revealed an amazing diversity of worlds out there," said Dr Jayawardhana. "Still, the Oph 1622 pair stands out as one of the most intriguing, if not peculiar."

His colleague, Dr Ivanov, said they were curious to find out whether such pairs are common or rare.

"The answer could shed light on how free-floating planetary-mass objects form," he added.

Oph 1622 was discovered using the ESO's New Technology Telescope at La Silla, Chile. Follow-up studies were conducted with the ESO's Very Large Telescope.

[Vitriol]

Transexual Chicken Creates Havok
http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2006-08-04-transexual-chicken_x.htm?csp=34

http://members.chello.at/kuriermob/crazy_chicken_190x320.jpg

STOCKHOLM (AFP) — A hen in southern Sweden that has grown a rooster comb, tail and wattle and begun to crow is wreaking havoc in its henhouse, where the rooster, Henry VIII, is hopping mad, Swedish media reported on Friday.

"Henry VIII is bloody angry. The other hens are mostly just surprised but they seem to increasingly accept him or her," the owner of the henhouse, Christel Hammar-Malmgren, told the online edition of regional daily Blekinge Laens Tidning.

Hammar-Malmgren woke up one morning in July to the sound of two roosters crowing, instead of just one. To her surprise, she discovered that one of the black hens, Anne Boleyn — all of the hens are named after Henry VIII's wives — had undergone a transformation.

"She had lost most of her hen feathers and had begun growing a comb and tail," she said.

The transsexual hen joined the henhouse last year and was different from the start. She was uninterested in the usual hen chores and laid bad eggs, Hammar-Malmgren said.

She insisted however that despite the change, and unlike the hen's namesake, there were no plans to end Anne Boleyn's days prematurely.

[Vitriol]

Alcohol More Harmful Than LSD
http://brainvibe.com/?q=node/14

http://artstream.ucsc.edu/fdm170a/joanne/tripping-baby2.gif

ALCOHOL is far more harmful than drugs like ecstacy and LSD, according to Professor Colin Blakemore, the Coventry-educated chief executive of the Medical Research Council.
Professor Blakemore, who is an old boy of the city's King Henry Vlll School, has been one of the prime movers in a major analysis of the harmful effects of legal and illegal substances.
In Britain today more than a third of people claim to have taken illegal drugs. Of those 10 per cent say they have done so in the past year.
Professor Blakemore says that on the re-classification he has carried out, alcohol is the fifth most harmful drug.
He says: "It is more harmful that LSD and by a long way (more harmful) than ecstasy and cannabis and a whole range of illegal drugs."

[Jason and the ARGonauts]

Originally posted by AshleyMonday:
I like science, who doesn't?

I hear science is overrated.

[Vitriol]

I hear science is overrated.

And underrated by you?

[sals]

This was sent to me on MYSPACE,and I can't attest to it's validity,or lack therof,but I googled "Mars Orbit" on Google News and got nuthin'...but here goes:
________________________________________________
We Will Never See This Again in Our Lifetime

MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR THIS DATE: AUGUST 27TH






...nor will the people of the next 50-to-1,000 Life Times!
Mars



The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!

This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that
will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in
recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is
in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on
Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be
certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth
in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as
60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when
Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and
will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in
the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9
and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest
75-power magnification...



Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.

Mars will be easy to spot. At the
beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10p.m.
and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

By the end of August when the two planets are
closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its
highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. That's pretty
convenient to see something that no human being has
seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at
the beginning of August to see Mars grow
progressively brighter and brighter throughout the
month.


Share this with your children and grandchildren.

NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN




You should read this:

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/mars-earth-close.html

I got the same e mail from at least 10 friends, some of which wanted to have a party that night to watch....I won't tell them what I found.


I like parties.


And making fun of my friends.


Sals

[BujuPhunk]

I personally found this to be one of the most interesting things I have read all week. Since I have an ongoing fued with my father over evolution (and, as a side note - global warming - which btw he tried to use Michael Crichton's (fictional) novel State of Fear as his point of reference to prove me wrong about Global Warming - which, also btw, has little to nothing to do with global warming, but rather about eugenics (haha)....in which I turned to him and had to reference a weaker, yet still overwhelming proof (http://www.livescience.com/environment/global_warming_041115.html) that scienctist are begining to agree that no only does global warmin exist but is speeding up faster than previously thought.) But back to evolution - the beauty of evolution right in front of our eyes...[/URL]
Finches named for Darwin are evolving


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var clickExpire = &quot;08/13/2006&quot;; http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/TECH/science/07/14/darwin.finches.ap/story.finches.ap.jpgA large ground finch (Geospiza magnirostis) on Daphne Major island, Galpagos.


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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Finches on the Galapagos Islands that inspired Charles Darwin to develop the concept of evolution are now helping confirm it -- by evolving.
A medium sized species of Darwin's finch has evolved a smaller beak to take advantage of different seeds just two decades after the arrival of a larger rival for its original food source.
The altered beak size shows that species competing for food can undergo evolutionary change, said Peter Grant of Princeton University, lead author of the report appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Grant has been studying Darwin's finches for decades and previously recorded changes responding to a drought that altered what foods were available.
It's rare for scientists to be able to document changes in the appearance of an animal in response to competition. More often it is seen when something moves into a new habitat or the climate changes and it has to find new food or resources, explained Robert C. Fleischer, a geneticist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and National Zoo.
This was certainly a documented case of microevolution, added Fleischer, who was not part of Grant's research.
Grant studied the finches on the Galapagos island Daphne, where the medium ground finch, Geospiza fortis, faced no competition for food, eating both small and large seeds.
In 1982 a breeding population of large ground finches, Geospiza magnirostris, arrived on the island and began competing for the large seeds of the Tribulus plants. G. magnirostris was able to break open and eat these seeds three times faster than G. fortis, depleting the supply of these seeds.
In 2003 and 2004 little rain fell, further reducing the food supply. The result was high mortality among G. fortis with larger beaks, leaving a breeding population of small-beaked G. fortis that could eat the seeds from smaller plants and didn't have to compete with the larger G. magnirostris for large seeds.
That's a form of evolution known as character displacement, where natural selection produces an evolutionary change in the next generation, Grant explained in a recorded statement made available by Science.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.
Copyright 2006 The [URL="http://www.cnn.com/interactive_legal.html#AP"]Associated Press (http://www.livescience.com/environment/global_warming_041115.html). All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[Vitriol]

I personally found this to be one of the most interesting things I have read all week. Since I have an ongoing fued with my father over evolution (and, as a side note - global warming - which btw he tried to use Michael Crichton's (fictional) novel State of Fear as his point of reference to prove me wrong about Global Warming - which, also btw, has little to nothing to do with global warming, but rather about eugenics (haha)....in which I turned to him and had to reference a weaker, yet still overwhelming proof (http://www.livescience.com/environment/global_warming_041115.html) that scienctist are begining to agree that no only does global warmin exist but is speeding up faster than previously thought.) But back to evolution - the beauty of evolution right in front of our eyes...

Wow. That is an awesome article!

[OldSmokey]

Evolution does not exist

The missing link is called the missing link because it is MISSING ...

There has not been ONE skull found EVER that proves the missing link exists !!!!!!

And no I dont believe in God ,but I do believe something created us .
maybe when we all stop bombing ,shooting and generally killing each other
we might find out who or what created us all ( I'm just not gonna hold my breath)

BTW the chances of DNA being a coincidence are higher than all the grains of sand on the planet to one.

Just google Intelligent Design .

[vonnegut]

:rolleyez: Oh my god.



:DeadHorse:

[Vitriol]

Evolution does not exist

The missing link is called the missing link because it is MISSING ...

There has not been ONE skull found EVER that proves the missing link exists !!!!!!

And no I dont believe in God ,but I do believe something created us .
maybe when we all stop bombing ,shooting and generally killing each other
we might find out who or what created us all ( I'm just not gonna hold my breath)

BTW the chances of DNA being a coincidence are higher than all the grains of sand on the planet to one.

Just google Intelligent Design .

No philosophical arguments in this thread please.

This is a SCIENCE thread. Any disputes should go in a thread of your making.

[Vitriol]

Big Bang Gets A New Birthday
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9676-big-bang-pushed-back-two-billion-years.html

http://www.newscientistspace.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn9676/dn9676-1_250.jpg

Our universe may be 15% larger and older than we thought, according to new measurements of the distance to a nearby galaxy.

Researchers led by Alceste Bonanos at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, US, used data from telescopes including the 10-metre Keck-II telescope in Hawaii, US, to measure the distance to a pair of stars in the Triangulum Galaxy.

The team used light, velocity, and temperature measurements to calculate the true luminosity of the two stars, which eclipse one another every five days. By comparing this intrinsic luminosity to their observed brightness, the team calculated that the galaxy lies 3.14 million light years away from us. Surprisingly, this is about half a million light years farther than previously thought.

Measuring astronomical distances is not simple. Distant, bright objects, for example, can look the same as closer, dim ones. So astronomers have built a ladder-like system that starts by using several independent methods to accurately determine the distance to nearby objects. They then use these measurements to define a more distant cosmic yardstick, and so on.

“In every step, you accumulate errors,” says team member Krzysztof Stanek at Ohio State University in Columbus, US. “We wanted an independent measure of distance – a single step that will one day help with measuring dark energy and other things.”
Hubble constant

Gauging distances by observing a binary star has cut out those extra steps, says team member Norbert Przybilla at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. "This is the farthest distance that anyone has been able to measure directly," he told New Scientist. "It's the cutting edge of what can be done with these telescopes."

Earlier measurements were based on calculations using the Hubble constant, a measure of the expansion rate and age of the universe. The new observation implies that the value used for the constant is off by 15%, says Przybilla.

That suggests the universe is 15% larger, and 15% older than previously thought. Recent estimates have put the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years, and the new research suggests it may actually be 15.8 billion years old.

"Our result hints that there may be something interesting happening with the Hubble constant," says Przybilla. But he cautions that the study reports only one distance measurement. "We need to follow this up with more measurements."

[Vitriol]

Mad Ludwig And The Flying Car
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1838177,00.html

http://www.howstuffworks.com/gif/flying-car-front.jpg

It's been a long wait, but finally King Ludwig II of Bavaria can rest easy in his grave: 120 years after his death, German scientists have shown him to be one of the unsung pioneers of flight.

Ludwig, whose fantastical castle at Neuschwanstein aptly featured in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, drew up plans for a flying car more than two decades before the Wright brothers took to the air, but when he tried to build it he was declared insane and stripped of his crown.

But now German aeronautical experts who have studied Ludwig's designs say they would have worked. Sketches recovered from letters between the ruler and Austrian engineer Gustav Koch show the monarch had planned to create a fleet of flying machines that would take him across his beloved Alpine lakes to his many castles, including the fairytale Neuschwanstein. The craft he designed looked like flying cable cars powered by steam engines. They were decorated like peacocks.

But his dreams of flying over the mountains of Bavaria only convinced his opponents that he was mad, and he was declared insane on 10 June, 1886, and deposed. He died shortly afterwards and his drawings were consigned to an archive. Now aeronautical experts have dug them out and re-created them on computer.

Dalibor Karacic is working on the project to re-draw the machines. He said: 'King Ludwig was unbelievably progressive. He understood technology. The flying peacock cars may have looked funny, but technologically they were sound and certainly would have worked. He couldn't have been mad, otherwise his ideas would never have worked. He was simply ahead of his time.'

[Vitriol]

David Bowie Upset: Life On Mars Rebuked
http://news.yahoo.com/\

It was a science fiction fantasy come true: Ten years ago this summer, NASA announced the discovery of life on Mars.
At a Washington, D.C., news conference, scientists showed magnified pictures of a four-pound Martian meteorite riddled with wormy blobs that looked like bacterial colonies. The researchers explained how they had pried numerous clues from the rock, all strongly supporting their contention that microscopic creatures once occupied its nooks and crannies.

It was arguably the space agency's most imagination-gripping moment since Apollo. Space buffs and NASA officials said that it just might be the scientific discovery of the century.

"If the results are verified," the late Carl Sagan pronounced, "it is a turning point in human history."

Ten years later, the results have not been verified. Skeptics have found non-biological explanations for every piece of evidence that was presented on Aug. 6, 1996. And though they still vigorously defend their claim, the NASA scientists who advanced it now stand alone in their belief.

"We certainly have not convinced the community, and that's been a little bit disappointing," said David McKay, a NASA biochemist and leader of the team that started the scientific episode.

But even though the majority of his colleagues don't buy his "life on Mars" theory - McKay's own brother, also a NASA scientist, is one of his most prominent critics - many say they respect him and greatly appreciate his efforts.

The announcement and the technical paper that followed it practically created exobiology, the scientific field that investigates the potential for life on other planets.

"Without that paper I wouldn't be working in this field," said Martin Fisk, a marine geologist who studies how bacteria survive under the sea floor, partly because their harsh environment may resemble that of extraterrestrial life.

Debating the claim has helped researchers develop standards that will eventually prove useful for evaluating the presence of life in other Martian meteorites or a sample from the red planet. It has given the scientific community ideas about exactly where on the planet they would most like to scoop up a sample, should they ever get to retrieve one.

And it is undeniable that McKay and his colleagues have drawn attention to what is - whether it contains evidence of life or not - a very interesting rock.

The rock in question was discovered in Antarctica, where rocks that fall from the heavens are easy to spot on the icy glacial plains. Its name, ALH84001, indicates that it was the first meteorite found during the 1984 research season in the Allan Hills, an especially meteorite-rich area in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.

At first ALH84001 was misclassified, so it wasn't until 1993 that researchers even realized the rock came from Mars. That was interesting enough, because at the time fewer than a dozen Martian meteorites were known to science.

But ALH84001 also turned out to be much more ancient than the other known Martian meteorites. At 4.5 billion years old, it dates from a period of Martian history when liquid water - a requirement for the presence of life - probably existed at the now barren planet's surface.

It made sense to ask: Could there be fossils of ancient Martian microbes, or maybe traces of them, preserved in the cracks and pore spaces of ALH84001?

The NASA scientists proffered four reasons to support their view that the answer to that question is "Yes."

First, chemical analysis showed that the meteorite contained a variety of organic molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. PAHs can be produced by biological processes, and that's what McKay and his colleagues argued. But they are also commonly found in asteroids, comets and meteorites, not to mention the Antarctic ice where ALH84001 is estimated to have lain for 13,000 years. For that reason, skeptics immediately dismissed the importance of PAHs in the Martian meteorite.

A second line of evidence - that the elongated blobs in the electron microscope images could be fossils of ancient Martian bacteria - was also rejected pretty quickly by most scientists.

The problem was, those blobs were much smaller than any bacteria that have ever been observed on Earth. A National Research Council panel concluded in 1998 that the blobs were 100 to 1,000 times too small to be free-living organisms because they couldn't have held all the proteins, DNA and other molecules necessary for even the simplest metabolic processes.

You could argue that perhaps Martian life evolved a more compact biochemistry, or that the blobs shriveled as they fossilized. At one point McKay and the other NASA scientists suggested the blobs might be pieces of larger organisms.

"That was only mentioned once or twice and never brought up again," said Allan Treiman, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

The two other lines of evidence survived longer. Both revolved around minerals sprinkled through the meteorite that could have been produced by microbes.

The first mineral, carbonate, is typically formed on earth by the remains of living organisms that make shells and other skeletal parts out of minerals they extract from seawater. Some of those organisms can be quite tiny. So finding carbonate in ALH84001 could indicate the presence of ancient microbes in the rock.

The story is similar for magnetite, the other mineral of interest in ALH84001. Some bacteria produce extraordinarily small and pure magnetite crystals, then align the magnetic grains to make a microscopic compass needle that helps them navigate.

The bacteria don't use their internal compasses to find north; they use them to tell up from down. Earth's spherical shape means that a compass needle in either hemisphere points at least somewhat downward, so the magnetite grains help the microbes sense where they are with respect to the planet's surface.

Some of the most evolutionarily ancient bacteria on Earth produce magnetite, McKay and his colleagues pointed out. Perhaps ancient Martian microbes did as well; at least some of the magnetite grains in ALH84001 share the shape, small size and remarkable purity of those produced by bacteria on Earth.

Of all the lines of evidence presented by the NASA scientists, it was the magnetite grains that proved most provocative. They were embedded in the carbonate along with other iron-containing minerals in such an unusual arrangement that something out of the ordinary must have put them there - could it have been alive?

"The shape of the magnetite grains is still rather distinctive," McKay said. "If it were found on Earth it would be a very strong biosignature."

For years McKay and his detractors argued about how distinctive the magnetite grains in ALH84001 are, and whether a non-biological process could have produced them. Certainly nobody had ever produced similar magnetite grains in the laboratory.

Then somebody did. In 2001 a second team of NASA scientists, including McKay's brother Gordon and a consultant to the space agency named D.C. Golden, managed to cook up a batch of magnetite grains very similar to the ones in ALH84001. Golden and Gordon McKay were also able to incorporate the magnetite grains into balls of carbonate like the ones David McKay and his colleagues described in 1996.

"He got a little testy about the results we were getting," said Gordon McKay, whose office is down the hall from his brother's. "What we have shown is that it is possible to form these things inorganically."

What's more, their laboratory method simulated conditions ALH84001 is known to have experienced during its time on Mars.

Yet David McKay insists his brother's team has not accurately described the synthetic crystals' shape, and that they aren't sufficiently similar to the ones found in ALH84001. He also suggests that the purity of the magnetite crystals stems not from the lab process itself, but from using unrealistically pure raw materials as a starting point.

Most of the scientific community doesn't buy those arguments.

"Personally I don't understand why (Gordon McKay's and) Golden's work hasn't just been the final word on it," said Treiman, the Lunar and Planetary Institute geologist.

Now David McKay has added another meteorite to the mix. At a March scientific meeting he presented microscopic images of the Nakhla meteorite, another Martian specimen. The pictures resemble pits that terrestrial bacteria create as they literally eat the volcanic rock of the sea floor.

"When I first saw it I was really struck by the similarity," said marine geologist Fisk, who is a professor at Oregon State University.

So far the scientific community hasn't shown much interest in David McKay's analysis of the Nakhla meteorite, partly because it dates from a more recent period.

[Vitriol]

Scientists (real ones) Still Say Global Warming Is Nonexistent
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060810-020342-6063r

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say the most precise record of Antarctic snowfall ever generated shows no real increase in precipitation during the past 50 years.

The study's results from the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University show the snowfall was nearly static, although most computer models assessing global climate change call for an increase in Antarctic precipitation as atmospheric temperatures rise.

"The year-to-year and decadal variability of the snowfall is so large that it makes it nearly impossible to distinguish trends that might be related to climate change from even a 50-year record," said Andrew Monaghan, a center research associate and lead author of the study.

"There were no statistically significant trends in snowfall accumulation over the past five decades, including recent years for which global mean temperatures have been warmest," Monaghan said.

The findings also suggest thickening of Antarctica's massive ice sheets haven't reduced the slow, but steady, rise in global sea levels, as some climate-change critics have argued.

The research is published in Science magazine.

[Vitriol]

Evolution does not exist

The missing link is called the missing link because it is MISSING ...

There has not been ONE skull found EVER that proves the missing link exists !!!!!!

And no I dont believe in God ,but I do believe something created us .
maybe when we all stop bombing ,shooting and generally killing each other
we might find out who or what created us all ( I'm just not gonna hold my breath)

BTW the chances of DNA being a coincidence are higher than all the grains of sand on the planet to one.

Just google Intelligent Design .

Just so you know, I know what Intelligent Design is. I don't completely disagree with it, but I do disagree with the way its presented. There was no big bang or evolution because god did it. Ok. Why couldn't "god" have created the big bang and started evolution? "Because it doesn't say anything about it in the bible". Ham sandwiches aren't mentioned in the bible either. They exist.

[Hurley4Prez]

Deleted: Because it's wrong to have a battle of wits with someone who's clearly arrived unarmed.

[Vitriol]

Designer Creates Floating Bed. So Where's My Mutha@#$!in' Flying Car?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060807/od_nm/dutch_bed_dc

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20060807/2006_08_07t092109_450x203_us_dutch_bed.jpg?x=380&y=171&sig=wV9MMS4kwvIWJYC0j4zpHg--

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A young Dutch architect has created a floating bed which hovers above the ground through magnetic force and comes with a price tag of 1.2 million euros ($1.54 million).
Janjaap Ruijssenaars took inspiration for the bed -- a sleek black platform, which took six years to develop and can double as a dining table or a plinth -- from the mysterious monolith in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 cult film "2001: A Space Odyssey."

"No matter where you live all architecture is dictated by gravity. I wondered whether you could make an object, a building or a piece of furniture where this is not the case -- where another power actually dictates the image," Ruijssenaars said.

Magnets built into the floor and into the bed itself repel each other, pushing the bed up into the air. Thin steel cables tether the bed in place.

"It is not comfortable at the moment," admits Ruijssenaars, adding it needs cushions and bedclothes before use.

Although people with piercings should have no problem sleeping on the bed, Ruijssenaars advises them against entering the magnetic field between the bed and the floor.

They could find their piercing suddenly tugged toward one of the magnets.

[DesmondFan25]

Oh wow, that is really cool!:cool:

[LPU]

What? You just now finding out about this? Hell, I had a floating bed back when waterbeds were all the rage.

[Vitriol]

11 Greatest Ancient Mysteries
http://crazylinkz.blogspot.com/2006/08/11-weirdest-ancient-mysteries.html

[Vitriol]

Ugly Ass Sea Spider Crawls Into Bed With You
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/ancient/AncientRepublish_1675573.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/img/palaeo/seaspiderA210706.jpg
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/img/palaeo/seaspiderB210706.jpg

Weird spider-like creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean and use a 'straw' to suck on their prey are baffling scientists.

These sea spiders, some of which are blind, are defying scientific classification.

Marine zoologist Dr Claudia Arango of the Australian Museum in Sydney agrees they are arthropods, but which type?

She presented her research on these unusual and poorly understood animals recently at the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research meeting in Hobart.

"They are very weird looking animals," says Arango.

For over 100 years, scientists have been puzzling over how exactly to classify sea spiders or pycnogonids.

They crawl along the bottom of the sea floor, sometimes more than 6000 to 7000 metres down, where they live in the dark, feeding on slow-moving soft-bodied sponges and sea slugs.

The creatures are segmented and have an exoskeleton, which makes them an arthropod, the same grouping as crustaceans, insects, centipedes and spiders.

But they also have a very strange collection of features, including a unique feeding structure.

"They have a proboscis that's like a straw that they insert into the animals and suck out the juices," says Arango.

Such features make it difficult to fit them into any of the known groups of arthropods.

"They look like spiders, but they are not real spiders," says Arango. "It's been very hard to place them in a position within the tree of life."

Arango has been studying the diversity and evolution of sea spiders.

She has been using DNA and morphology to construct a family tree, using 60 species of sea spiders from all over the world.
Some scientists believe that sea spiders make up a new very primitive group, at the base of the arthropod family tree.

But Arango's findings so far support another theory: that they are more closely related to the arthropod group that includes spiders and scorpions.

She stresses these are only preliminary conclusions though, and the jury remains out.

Arango says the most interesting sea spiders live in Antarctica. They are more diverse, more abundant, bigger and weirder than other sea spiders, she says.

"That makes them a very sexy and attractive fauna."

One type of Antarctic sea spider has an extra body segment giving them five pairs of legs instead of the usual four pairs.

Another type has extremely long legs spanning 70 centimetres.

Arnago says the diversity and abundance of sea spiders in Antarctica means they probably play a very important role in its ecology, although this is yet to be elucidated.

Her research has been accepted for publication in the journal Cladistics.

[Hurley4Prez]

^ Those are very weird. I want one for a pet.

[yung23]

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/img/palaeo/seaspiderA210706.jpg

cool, kinda looks like a facehugger.
http://www.nitrocomics.com/facehugger.jpg

[Vitriol]

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/img/palaeo/seaspiderA210706.jpg

cool, kinda looks like a facehugger.
http://www.nitrocomics.com/facehugger.jpg

That is exactly what I thought. I almost went with "Facehuggers Invade World Oceans" as the post title.

[Hurley4Prez]

^ Damn, it certainly does! Now I really want one.

[Vitriol]

^ Damn, it certainly does! Now I really want one.
Not that I am threadjacking (I don't think I could jack my own thread anyhow) or trying to be off topic, but Hurley4Prez, we have alot in common. I am also a libertarian who watches Six Feet Under and enjoys Industrial music. Veird, eh?

[Vitriol]

Jurrassic Park....But Dirrrrty!!!
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20133497-1702,00.html

SPERM extracted from mice and testes that have been frozen for as long as 15 years have yielded normal, healthy offspring in a study which researchers say heralds fresh hopes for bringing back extinct species.

Frozen sperm is now preserved with cryoprotectants, substances that protect it from freezing damage. However, defrosted sperm is not always capable of fertilising an egg.

But researchers from Japan, Britain and Hawaii have found that sperm can be frozen safely for much longer than previously thought, so long as they are kept in organs or whole carcasses and cooled slowly to -20 deg Celsius or lower.

Using sperm from whole mice and testes that had been frozen for between one week and 15 years, they were able to fertilise eggs via microinsemination and obtain healthy offspring.

"Many people thought that sperm integrity could be retained for several months at most ... but the sperm nucleus is stronger than we expected," said Atsuo Ogura, of the Japanese government-funded Riken Bioresource Centre.

"It (sperm nucleus) is good for at least 15 years," he said, adding that offspring of the mouse that had been frozen for 15 years did not appear any different from the others.

The scientists used very simple freezing methods. The mouse that was frozen whole for 15 years was merely kept in a conventional freezer at -20 deg C, Mr Ogura said.

"This cryopreservation (freezing) technique is probably the simplest and anyone can do it. Liquid nitrogen is not necessary. Any conventional freezer or dry ice will work very well."

He said this method of freezing would work for many other mammals because mammalian sperm has a special DNA that "retains nucleic activity and keeps the nucleus alive".

"We can apply this method to many other mammals. It is very simple. Just put the testes or dead body into a freezer."

But he cautioned that carcasses must be allowed to cool slowly, or about two to three hours to reach -20 deg C. Sperm frozen at lower temperatures would be better preserved.

"Degradation is minimal in liquid nitrogen (-196 deg C). Molecules in the cells stay still in this condition, so the degradation will be minimal," he said.

The experiment, to be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may begin to change a long-standing reluctance to use frozen sperm in in vitro fertilisation.

"This experiment proves that immotile sperm (which does not move) is just as good if frozen in good condition," Mr Ogura said.

Looking ahead, Mr Ogura said the breakthrough gave fresh hope that extinct species might roam the Earth again.

"Restoration of extinct species could be possible if male individuals are found in permafrost" he said, through injecting the sperm into eggs from females of closely related species.

[Hurley4Prez]

Not that I am threadjacking (I don't think I could jack my own thread anyhow) or trying to be off topic, but Hurley4Prez, we have alot in common. I am also a libertarian who watches Six Feet Under and enjoys Industrial music. Veird, eh? Great minds think alike, Ashley! :Cheers:

BTW, I love this thread. But it's very hard to beat you on posting the good articles. Damn you're fast! ;)

[Hurley4Prez]

Japanese Boffins Spawn Almost Invisible Man (http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-12-2004-55416.asp)

Japanese scientists have turned fantasy into reality by creating an invisibility cloak that makes it possible to see straight through its wearer. He, or she, simply vanishes from view.
They are the ultimate form of camouflage. Put one on, and you disappear from view. One saved Harry Potter from many tight scrapes, and in the film Die Another Day the technology provided James Bond with the ultimate escape vehicle, an invisible car.

But now Japanese scientists have turned fantasy into reality by creating an invisibility cloak that makes it possible to see straight through its wearer. He, or she, simply vanishes from view.

The garment - demonstrated last week at Nextfest, an exhibition of emerging technologies in San Francisco - is the work of Japanese inventor Susumu Tachi, a professor of computer science and physics at the University of Tokyo. 'It's a kind of augmented reality,' he said of his device.

In reality, the 'optical camouflage' cloak is anything but invisible. It is made up of 'retro-reflective material' coated with tiny light-reflective beads that cover its entire length. The cloak is also fitted with cameras that project what is at the back of the wearer on to the front, and vice versa. The effect, as the Japanese team demonstrated last week, is to make the wearer blend with his background.

The material was used to coat a ball, a brick and a cloak. In each case, it appeared as if the viewer could see through each item as it was moved about by a human operator to the back of the room.

The effect was not total, but it was sufficient to demonstrate that optical camouflage is technically possible, though one expert - writing in Wired magazine recently - pointed out that, for an invisibility cloak to work, it would have to have six stereoscopic cameras built into it, be covered with 11.6 million 'hyperpixels', each consisting of a very bright electronic display, and be controlled by a super-fast computer that would run on a power source that could be built into the cloak.

In short, a little more work will be needed before invisibility technology becomes reality, and certainly has some way to go before it reaches the effectiveness of Harry Potter's invisibility cloak. This originally belonged to his wizard father, James, and is used in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to let Harry move around the wizard village of Hogsmeade unnoticed.

The device is attracting serious attention from military experts keen to exploit a technology that could help troops move into action without being spotted.

Nor does the potential end there, says Tachi's colleague, Naoki Kawakami. 'It could be used to help pilots see through the floor of the cockpit at a runway below, or for drivers trying to see through a fender to park a car.'

And, of course, there is also the prospect for mischievous, or even dangerous, misuse, from sneaking Celtic fans into the Glasgow Rangers end at Ibrox to wandering into changing rooms unseen. As one expert said: 'This technology has an awful lot of potential.'

[blue sunrise]

I'd love to see video of that. I wonder how good it really is.

"potential for mischievious or dangerous misuse." I'll say! :D

[Vitriol]

I have no qualms about stating that I would misuse this technology.

[LPU]

I'm misusing it right now. Watch your back oatsie!

[Vitriol]

Physics professor walks on fire
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060814_mm_firewalker.html

http://images.livescience.com/images/060814_firewalker_01.jpg

Physics professor David Willey doesn't use chalk and formulas to spark his students' interest in thermodynamics.

He walks on fire.

"Nothing gets a student's attention like the possibility that I might kill myself," said Willey, this year's winner of the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.

In reality, Willey doesn't even break a sweat, thanks to wood's insulating properties and a quick pace. And he's not alone.

The ritual of walking on fire has existed for thousands of years. The first records of the practice date back to 1200 B.C. Around the world, from Greece to China, cultures set trails ablaze for rites of healing, initiation, and faith. In the United States, fire-walking has become popular as a team spirit-building business for corporations as well as a so-called alternative health remedy.

Witchcraft in the wood

Scientists in the 1930's first sought explanations for how participants of the ritual paced unscathed. The University of London's Council for Physical Research found that the witchcraft was in the wood, rather than religious faith and supernatural powers.
Traditional fire-walking paths are made of wood, left to burn into smoldering coals. The coals can reach high temperatures. Most fire-walks occur on coals that measure about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Willey once recorded someone walking on 1,800-degree coals.

People survive because only a small amount of heat transfers from the glowing wood to the sole of their feet.

"Even if it's on fire, wood is a lousy conductor," Willey said.

Conduction is one way that heat travels from one material to the next. Vibrating molecules of a hot material collide with more calm molecules of a cooler object, and transfer energy. The low thermal conductivity of wood means that heat stays trapped in the coals, transferring little heat to the feet.

A layer of ash on the top of the flaming path helps to further insulate the heat of the coals.

Fire-walkers choose not to march on fiery steel for good reason. With high levels of conductivity, most metals would make painful paths.

Cold feet not required

Keeping a quick pace also keeps blisters at bay.

While one foot steps on the red-hot coals, the opposite foot has a chance to cool while lifted in the air. The protective layer of dead skin on the soles of your feet and calluses add extra protection.

While no one should try to do this without proper training from an experienced fire-walker, any healthy person can walk on fire, as long as it's not too hot, according to Willey. It's a matter of stepping up to the start line with courage and training your brain to get your foot to take the first step.

"You could keep on going forever and ever," Willey told LiveScience. "It's just a question of how much wood you want to cut."

[Vitriol]

Pyramids In The Ukraine?
http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/11-08-2006/83895-pyramids-0
http://english.pravda.ru/img/idb/pyramid-1.jpg

Gigantic pyramids, very similar to Egyptian ones, have recently been discovered in Luganshchina. Scientists conclude that five thousand years ago, a highly developed civilization lived on the territory of modern Ukraine.
This unusually important find was noticed just two years ago by school-children from an archeology camp. So far, only the top sections of the huge constructions have been uncovered and scientists say that it will take a whole decade to fully clean the soil off the pyramids. In connection with this, under the authority of the Department of Tourism and Protection of Cultural Heritage of the Luganskaya regional administration, a hotel will be built next to the pyramids and the excavation site will become an open air museum.
There is no gold or any kind of treasure in the pyramids; therefore the archeologists are not afraid of vandals. However, the pyramids themselves are extremely valuable, as scientists believe that a detailed investigation into these constructions may radically change our historical understanding of ancient Europe.

[moonshadow707]

It's A Fiendish Thingy!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,208683,00.html

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g319/earth-to-moon/MaineAnimal.jpg


Maine Mystery Beast Possibly Killed by Car
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Associated Press
TURNER, Maine — Residents are wondering if an animal found dead over the weekend may be the mysterious creature that has mauled dogs, frightened residents and been the subject of local legend for half a generation.
The animal was found near power lines along Route 4 on Saturday, apparently struck by a car while chasing a cat.
The carcass was photographed and inspected by several people who live in the area, but nobody is sure exactly what it is.
Michelle O'Donnell of Turner spotted the animal near her yard about a week before it was killed. She called it a "hybrid mutant of something."
"It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget," she told the Sun Journal of Lewiston. "We locked eyes for a few seconds and then it took off. I've lived in Maine my whole life and I've never seen anything like it."
For the past 15 years, residents across Androscoggin County have reported seeing and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and eyes that glow in the night.
The animal has been blamed for attacking and killing a Doberman pinscher and a Rottweiler the past couple of years.
People from Litchfield, Sabattus, Greene, Turner, Lewiston and Auburn have come forward to speak of a mystery monster that roams the woods.
Nobody knows for sure what it is, and theories have ranged from a hyena or dingo to a fisher or coydog, an offspring of a coyote and a wild dog.
Now, people are asking if the mystery beast and the animal killed over the weekend are one and the same.
Wildlife officials and animal control officers declined to go to Turner to examine the remains. By Tuesday, the carcass had been picked clean by vultures and there was not much left of the dead animal.
Loren Coleman, a Portland author and cryptozoologist, said it's unlikely that the animal was anybody's pet.
After reviewing photos of the carcass, Coleman said he was bothered by the animal's ears and snout. It reminded him of a case years ago in northern Maine in which an animal shot by a hunter could not be identified.
In the end, wildlife officials got a DNA analysis that showed the animal was a rare wolf-dog hybrid, he said.
Mike O'Donnell, who is married to Michelle O'Donnell, said the animal looked "half-rodent, half-dog" to him.
It was charcoal gray, weighed between 40 and 50 pounds and had a bushy tail, a short snout, short ears and curled fangs hanging over its lips, he said. It looked like "something out of a Stephen King story."
"This is something I've never seen before. It's an evil-looking thing," he said.


...Or, Maybe It's A Dog...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR2006081701169.html

Expert: 'Hybrid' Creature Is Just a Dog

The Associated Press
Thursday, August 17, 2006; 5:25 PM TURNER, Maine -- An expert who examined the remains of a mystery creature believes it was a wild dog. But that hasn't stopped runaway speculation about the beast and whether it was responsible for mauling dogs and frightening residents.
Loren Coleman, a Portland author and cryptozoologist, said he didn't know for sure what the animal was based on his examination of its remains Wednesday.
"I think this dead animal is a chow or chow-mix, a relatively small dog, that was feral, which is unusual for that area," he told the Sun Journal newspaper. He noted, however, that his was only an educated guess based on the findings so far.
State wildlife biologists and local animal control officers declined to go to Turner to examine the remains of the animal, which was found Saturday along Route 4. It was apparently hit by a car while chasing a cat.
Without any official findings, the creature obtained near-mythical status as word spread in the media and on the Internet.
Some say it's simply a dog. Others say it's a goat-sheep hybrid. Still others weighed in that the creature may have been a Tasmanian devil, a dingo, a wolf or coyote. Some of the more outlandish theories involve mutations and extraterrestrials.
People from Litchfield, Sabattus, Greene, Turner, Lewiston and Auburn have come forward to speak of a mystery monster that roams the woods.
"It's crazy. Everybody's talking about it. We sold out of newspapers by 9 this morning," said Debi Bodwell, who was at work at Schrep's Corner Store in Turner. "Everybody is mad because the game wardens haven't come out to take a look at it."
By the time Coleman arrived on Wednesday there wasn't much left. The internal organs and skull were gone. All that was left were some bones and skin.
Nonetheless, he came away with a paw and other body parts to be examined later. Another paw was taken by the Sun Journal, which was exploring the possibility of conducting DNA tests.
One person who remains convinced that the creature was no dog was the woman whose photos were carried in the Sun Journal and in news organizations across the country. Michelle O'Donnell doesn't know what it is, but she's convinced it wasn't a dog.
Nonetheless, she's surprised by the interest in the creature.
"I didn't know the story would be this big," she said. "My phone has been ringing off the hook."

[Vitriol]

Those damned mutants....I had read that story last night and forgot to post it. Its good that you were able to find a picture because I couldn't find one. Kudos on an awesome story and acompanying pic.

[Vitriol]

Volcano Blows Cool Smoke Rings
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/696953.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/695000/images/_696953_ring300.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/695000/images/_696953_ring150.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/695000/images/_696953_ring300a.jpg

By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

Volcanologists have witnessed dramatic rings of steam and gas being blown out of volcanic vents on the side of mighty Mount Etna in Sicily.
Etna is the tallest and most active volcano in Europe, situated where the European and African geological plates are colliding.
Dr Jug Alean and Dr Marco Fulle have been investigating Etna's growing level of activity and in February they saw the ejection of several spectacular hoops from the Bocca Nuova region of the mountain.

"This wonderful specimen gently drifted overhead and past the Sun which was tinted orange by aerosols in the smoke," Dr Alean told BBC News Online.

It is difficult to gauge the size of what the scientists are calling "steam rings". They drift across the blue sky with no points of reference. However, the volcanologists estimate the hoops to be about 200m across and up to 1000m above the ground.

Stable shape
Smoke rings have been seen at volcanoes before but never in such detail. This time, there was hardly any ash on Etna and the gas billowing from vents had a high steam content. It is for this reason that Drs Alean and Fulle are using the term "steam rings".
Looking like the hoops produced by smokers, the hoops can hang in the air for many minutes. Etna's rings have been seen to last as long as 10 minutes.

How they are formed is a mystery that these pictures may help solve.

Dr Jurg Alean speculates: "They could be formed by rapid gas pulses emitted by narrow vents into the atmosphere. The physics seems somewhat complicated and I am trying to establish if there are sound scientific theories about them."

Drs Alean and Fulle keep a close eye on Etna, running a private seismic monitoring station as well as maintaining a photographic record of changes on the mountain. Their website, stromboli.net, contains some of the most dramatic volcano pictures ever taken.

Image and movies copyright Dr Jurg Alean and Dr Marco Fulle, stromboli.net

[moonshadow707]

Very cool. Thanks for posting that.
I saw a circular cloud ring once when I was driving and it kinda freaked me out. And I'm nowhere near any volcanos.

[Vitriol]

Follow Up: Maine mystery creature is 'just a dog'
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0806/353622.html

TURNER, Maine (AP) - An expert who examined the remains of a mystery creature believes it was a wild dog. But that hasn't stopped runaway speculation about the beast and whether it was responsible for mauling dogs and frightening residents. Loren Coleman, a Portland author and cryptozoologist, said he didn't know for sure what the animal was based on his examination of its remains Wednesday.
"I think this dead animal is a chow or chow-mix, a relatively small dog, that was feral, which is unusual for that area," he told the Sun Journal newspaper. He noted, however, that his was only an educated guess based on the findings so far.
State wildlife biologists and local animal control officers declined to go to Turner to examine the remains of the animal, which was found Saturday along Route 4. It was apparently hit by a car while chasing a cat.

Without any official findings, the creature obtained near-mythical status as word spread in the media and on the Internet.

Some say it's simply a dog. Others say it's a goat-sheep hybrid. Still others weighed in that the creature may have been a Tasmanian devil, a dingo, a wolf or coyote. Some of the more outlandish theories involve mutations and extraterrestrials.

People from Litchfield, Sabattus, Greene, Turner, Lewiston and Auburn have come forward to speak of a mystery monster that roams the woods.

"It's crazy. Everybody's talking about it. We sold out of newspapers by 9 this morning," said Debi Bodwell, who was at work at Schrep's Corner Store in Turner. "Everybody is mad because the game wardens haven't come out to take a look at it."

By the time Coleman arrived on Wednesday there wasn't much left. The internal organs and skull were gone. All that was left were some bones and skin.

Nonetheless, he came away with a paw and other body parts to be examined later. Another paw was taken by the Sun Journal, which was exploring the possibility of conducting DNA tests.

One person who remains convinced that the creature was no dog was the woman whose photos were carried in the Sun Journal and in news organizations across the country. Michelle O'Donnell doesn't know what it is, but she's convinced it wasn't a dog.

Nonetheless, she's surprised by the interest in the creature.

"I didn't know the story would be this big," she said. "My phone has been ringing off the hook."

[Vitriol]

Your Brain Boots Like A Computer
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060817_brain_boot.html
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/images/index_mid_off_06.jpg




As we yawn and open our eyes in the morning, the brain stem sends little puffs of nitric oxide to another part of the brain, the thalamus, which then directs it elsewhere.

Like a computer booting up its operating system before running more complicated programs, the nitric oxide triggers certain functions that set the stage for more complex brain operations, according to a new study.

In these first moments of the day, sensory information floods the system—the bright sunlight coming through the curtains, the time on the screeching alarm clock—and all of it needs to be processed and organized, so the brain can understand its surroundings and begin to perform more complex tasks.

"The thinking part of the brain is applying a sort of stencil to the information coming in and what the nitric oxide is doing is allowing more refinement of that stencil," says Dwayne Godwin, an associate professor at Wake Forest University and lead author of the study, which was funded by the National Eye Institute.

The little two-atom molecule, it seems, is partly responsible for our ability to perceive whatever it is we're sensing.
The finding, published last week in the journal Neuroscience, changes the way scientists understand nitric oxide's role in the brain, and it also has them rethinking the function of the thalamus, where it is released. The thalamus was thought to be a fairly primitive structure, sort of a gate that could either open and allow sensory information to stream into the cortex, the higher functioning part of the brain, or cut off the flow entirely.

Godwin says the new research shows it's more accurate to think of the thalamus not as a gate but as a club bouncer, who doesn't simply allow a huge rush of people to go in or no one at all, but picks and chooses whom to let in and out.

"Instead of vision being a process going straight from eye to cortex, it's more of a loop," Godwin explained. "This constitutes a new role for the thalamus in directing, not just modulating."

While this study is the first to identify nitric oxide's role in the thalamus, elsewhere in the body it was already known to have an important, if somewhat different function. The molecule is actually integral to controlling blood flow and is, in fact, the molecule Viagra targets in order to increase blood flow to the penis.

The teeny molecule might have other medical uses.

"This study shows a unique role for nitric oxide. It may help us to someday understand what goes wrong in diseases that affect cognitive processing, such as attention deficit disorder or schizophrenia, and it adds to our fundamental understanding of how we perceive the world around us," Godwin said.

[gertie]

Well, this is certainly odd:

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An Indian businessman born with two penises wants one of them removed surgically as he wants to marry and lead a normal sexual life, a newspaper report said Saturday.

The 24-year-old man from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh admitted himself to a New Delhi hospital this week with an extremely rare medical condition called penile duplication or diphallus, the Times of India said.

"Two fully functional penes is unheard of even in medical literature. In the more common form of diphallus, one organ is rudimentary," the newspaper quoted a surgeon as saying.

The surgery was expected to be challenging as both organs were well-formed and full blood supply to the retained penis had to be ensured to allow it to function normally, he added.

The newspaper did not disclose the identity of the man or the hospital to protect the patient's privacy.

There are about 100 such reported cases of diphallus around the world and it is known to occur among one in 5.5 million men, the newspaper said.

It is caused by the failure of the mesodermal bands in the embryo to fuse properly. The mesodermal bands are one of three primary layers of the embryo from which several body parts are formed.

[Vitriol]

I read that article on fark just like one minute ago, I was coming here to post it. LOL. Regardless, I find this article to be hilarious.

[gertie]

I am so glad you responded so quickly. I was half afraid it would be considered "too risque".

But, were they side by side, or back to back? Know what I mean? How are they placed?

No offense taken if you don't want to answer that.

[Vitriol]

From watching terrible pornos at friends's houses as a youth I will have to say they are stacked one over the other. Rotflmfao.

[gertie]

Same here. rotflmfao.

[Hurley4Prez]

:vomit: !!!

[gertie]

H4P? Was there supposed to be a photo with that? There's only the red 'X'

[Hurley4Prez]

No photo. Just the barfing emoticon for the "stacked packages" thought...
*gags*

[blue sunrise]

From watching terrible pornos at friends's houses as a youth I will have to say they are stacked one over the other. Rotflmfao.

:vomit: That visual will be with me for a while. ewwww.

[Vitriol]

Been gone awhile due to a bad computer hijacking. Anyways, here's the news.

Team finds 'proof' of dark matter
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5272226.stm
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41998000/jpg/_41998472_dark_nasa_203.jpg
US astronomers say they have found the first direct evidence for the mysterious stuff called dark matter.

Dark matter - which does not emit or reflect enough light to be "seen" - is thought to make up 25% of the Universe.

By contrast, the ordinary matter we can see is believed to make up no more than about 5% of our Universe.

Until now, astronomers have only been able to infer the existence of this dark material through the gravitational effects it has on ordinary matter.

What the researchers have done is, in effect, to identify the gravitational "signature" of dark matter.

This signature was created by dark matter and ordinary matter being wrenched apart by the immense collision of two large galaxy clusters.

"The kinetic energy of this collision is... enough to completely evaporate and pulverise planet Earth ten trillion, trillion times over," said team member Maxim Markevitch, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, US.

Study leader Doug Clowe, from the University of Arizona, said: "This provides the first direct proof that dark matter must exist and that it must make up the majority of the matter in the Universe."

Gravity puzzle

Astronomers have known since the 1930s that these galaxy clusters have far too much gravity to be explained by the amount of visible matter in them alone.

This extra gravity has two possible explanations. One is that most matter in the clusters is in a form we cannot see, because it does not absorb or emit light.

A second explanation is that gravity does not behave the same way in galaxy clusters light-years in size as it does on Earth.
Usually, the gas and the galaxies in the clusters are held close together in space by gravity.

But in the cosmic smash-up (the colliding feature is known to astronomers as the Bullet Cluster), these components have been pulled apart. The astronomers were lucky enough to catch the collision just 100 million years after it occurred - the blink of an eye in cosmic time.

The researchers could see that the hot gas in the collision had been slowed down by a drag force, similar to air resistance. Meanwhile, the galaxies themselves continued speeding through space, leaving the gas behind.

Dark matter particles should not slow down in the same way as the gas; they do not interact directly with themselves or the gas except through gravity. Instead, dark matter should behave in a similar way to the galaxies.

More mass in gas

If dark matter did exist, the astronomers expected to find the majority of mass in clusters residing around the galaxies.

But if dark matter did not exist, most of the galaxy clusters' mass would be in its diffuse hot gas. This is because galaxy clusters typically contain 10 times as much ordinary mass in gas as in stars.

The researchers found most of the mass was located near the galaxies - ahead of the gas clouds - showing the dark matter really was there.

The majority of the Universe - some 70% - is composed of dark energy, an equally mysterious quantity which exerts negative pressure.

"Dark matter and dark energy are not what anyone would have expected starting from the perspective of what the Universe should be like," said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, who was not involved with the study, "but we're trying to understand why it's like that and this result puts us on that path."

Marusa Bradac, at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (Slac) in California, added: "We had predicted the existence of dark matter for decades, but now we've seen it in action. This is groundbreaking."

In order to locate the mass in the clusters, researchers used the Chandra and Hubble space telescopes, along with the Very Large Telescope and Magellan optical telescopes in Chile.

This was done by measuring the effect of gravitational lensing, where gravity from the clusters distorts light from background galaxies, as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.

[Vitriol]

OH MY GOD!speechless
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2346476&page=1
http://a.abcnews.com/images/Primetime/abc_kumar_060822_sp.jpg

Man Pregnant?




Aug. 23, 2006 — Sanju Bhagat's stomach was once so swollen he looked nine months pregnant and could barely breathe.
Living in the city of Nagpur, India, Bhagat said he'd felt self-conscious his whole life about his big belly. But one night in June 1999, his problem erupted into something much larger than cosmetic worry.

An ambulance rushed the 36-year-old farmer to the hospital. Doctors thought he might have a giant tumor, so they decided to operate and remove the source of the bulge in his belly.

"Basically, the tumor was so big that it was pressing on his diaphragm and that's why he was very breathless," said Dr. Ajay Mehta of Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai. "Because of the sheer size of the tumor, it makes it difficult [to operate]. We anticipated a lot of problems."

Mehta said that he can usually spot a tumor just after he begins an operation. But while operating on Bhagat, Mehta saw something he had never encountered. As he cut deeper into Bhagat's stomach, gallons of fluid spilled out — and then something extraordinary happened.

"To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside," he said. "It was a bit shocking for me."

Removing the Mutated Body

One doctor recalled that day in the operating room.

"He just put his hand inside and he said there are a lot of bones inside," she said. "First, one limb came out, then another limb came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws, limbs, hair."

Inside Bhagat's stomach was a strange, half-formed creature that had feet and hands that were very developed. Its fingernails were quite long.

"We were horrified. We were confused and amazed," Mehta said.

A Mutated Body Within a Body

At first glance, it may look as if Bhagat had given birth. Actually, Mehta had removed the mutated body of Bhagat's twin brother from his stomach. Bhagat, they discovered, had one of the world's most bizarre medical conditions — fetus in fetu. It is an extremely rare abnormality that occurs when a fetus gets trapped inside its twin. The trapped fetus can survive as a parasite even past birth by forming an umbilical cordlike structure that leaches its twin's blood supply until it grows so large that it starts to harm the host, at which point doctors usually intervene.

According to Mehta, there are fewer than 90 cases of fetus in fetu recorded in medical literature.

Fetus in fetu happens very early in a twin pregnancy, when one fetus wraps around and envelops the other. The dominant fetus grows, while the fetus that would have been its twin lives on throughout the pregnancy, feeding off its host twin like a kind of parasite. Usually, both twins die before birth from the strain of sharing a placenta.

Sometimes, however, as in Bhagat's case, the host twin survives and is delivered. What makes his case so unusual is that no one suspected Bhagat had a twin inside him for 36 years.
Bhagat said he was very much relieved after his operation. He was not interested in knowing what Mehta did to him or seeing what he had removed from his abdomen.

"He didn't want to see it because it was looking very ghastly," Mehta said.

Avoiding the Gory Details

There was no placenta inside Bhagat — the enveloped parasitic twin had connected directly to Bhagat's blood supply. Right after the surgery, Bhagat's pain and inability to breathe disappeared and he recovered immediately.

The case may have been a medical miracle to doctors, but to Bhagat his condition had been a source of shame and misery. All his life, people in the village where he lived had mercilessly teased him and told him he looked pregnant. Ironically, they were right in a way.

Today Bhagat is in good health and leads a normal life, but he still gets teased occasionally.

"They still ridicule him. What they say is, you went for an operation and you had the baby," Mehta said.

[Vitriol]

Its Official! Pluto Is No Longer A Planet!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5283956.stm
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42013000/jpg/_42013512_pluto_hubble_416.jpg

A fierce backlash has begun against the decision by astronomers to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

On Thursday, experts approved a definition of a planet that demoted Pluto to a lesser category of object.

But the lead scientist on Nasa's robotic mission to Pluto has lambasted the ruling, calling it "embarrassing".

And the chair of the committee set up to oversee agreement on a definition implied that the vote had effectively been "hijacked".
The vote took place at the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) 10-day General Assembly in Prague. The IAU has been the official naming body for astronomy since 1919.

Only 424 astronomers who remained in Prague for the last day of the meeting took part.

An initial proposal by the IAU to add three new planets to the Solar System - the asteroid Ceres, Pluto's moon Charon and the distant world known as 2003 UB313 - met with considerable opposition at the meeting. Days of heated debate followed during which four separate proposals were tabled.

Eventually, the scientists adopted historic guidelines that see Pluto relegated to a secondary category of "dwarf planets".

Drawing the line

Dr Alan Stern, who leads the US space agency's New Horizons mission to Pluto and did not vote in Prague, told BBC News: "It's an awful definition; it's sloppy science and it would never pass peer review - for two reasons.

"Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line between dwarf planets and planets. It's as if we declared people not people for some arbitrary reason, like 'they tend to live in groups'.

"Secondly, the actual definition is even worse, because it's inconsistent."

One of the three criteria for planethood states that a planet must have "cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit". The largest objects in the Solar System will either aggregate material in their path or fling it out of the way with a gravitational swipe.

Pluto was disqualified because its highly elliptical orbit overlaps with that of Neptune.

But Dr Stern pointed out that Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune have also not fully cleared their orbital zones. Earth orbits with 10,000 near-Earth asteroids. Jupiter, meanwhile, is accompanied by 100,000 Trojan asteroids on its orbital path.

These rocks are all essentially chunks of rubble left over from the formation of the Solar System more than four billion years ago.

"If Neptune had cleared its zone, Pluto wouldn't be there," he added.

Stern said like-minded astronomers had begun a petition to get Pluto reinstated. Car bumper stickers compelling motorists to "Honk if Pluto is still a planet" have gone on sale over the internet and e-mails circulating about the decision have been describing the IAU as the "Irrelevant Astronomical Union".

'Inconvenient arrangements'

Owen Gingerich chaired the IAU's planet definition committee and helped draft an initial proposal raising the number of planets from nine to 12.

The Harvard professor emeritus blamed the outcome in large part on a "revolt" by dynamicists - astronomers who study the motion and gravitational effects of celestial objects.
"In our initial proposal we took the definition of a planet that the planetary geologists would like. The dynamicists felt terribly insulted that we had not consulted with them to get their views. Somehow, there were enough of them to raise a big hue and cry," Professor Gingerich said.

"Their revolt raised enough of a fuss to destroy the scientific integrity and subtlety of the [earlier] resolution."

He added: "There were 2,700 astronomers in Prague during that 10-day period. But only 10% of them voted this afternoon. Those who disagreed and were determined to block the other resolution showed up in larger numbers than those who felt 'oh well, this is just one of those things the IAU is working on'."

E-voting

Professor Gingerich, who had to return home to the US and therefore could not vote himself, said he would like to see electronic ballots introduced in future.

Alan Stern agreed: "I was not allowed to vote because I was not in a room in Prague on Thursday 24th. Of 10,000 astronomers, 4% were in that room - you can't even claim consensus.

"If everyone had to travel to Washington DC every time we wanted to vote for President, we would have very different results because no one would vote. In today's world that is idiotic. I have nothing but ridicule for this decision."

He added that he could not see the resolution standing for very long and did not plan to change any of the astronomy textbook he was currently writing.

But other astronomers were happy to see Pluto cast from the official roster of planets. Professor Iwan Williams, the IAU's president of planetary systems science, commented: "Pluto has lots and lots of friends; we're not so keen to have Pluto and all his friends in the club because it gets crowded.

"By the end of the decade, we would have had 100 planets, and I think people would have said 'my goodness, what a mess they made back in 2006'."

Shaking hands

Robin Catchpole, of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK, said: "My own personal opinion was to leave things as they were. I met Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto, and thought, it's nice to shake hands with someone who discovered a planet.
"But since the IAU brought out the first draft resolution, I was rather against that because I thought it was going to be very confusing. So the best of the alternatives was to keep the eight planets as they are, and then demote Pluto. I think this is a far superior solution."

The need for a strict definition was deemed necessary after new telescope technologies began to reveal far-off objects that rivalled Pluto in size.

The critical blow for Pluto came with the discovery three years ago of an object currently designated 2003 UB313. Discovered by Mike Brown and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, 2003 UB313 has been lauded by some as the "10th Planet".

Measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope show it to have a diameter of 3,000km (1,864 miles), a few hundred km more than Pluto. 2003 UB313 will now join Pluto in the dwarf planet category.

Mike Brown seemed happy with Pluto's demotion. "Eight is enough," he told the Associated Press, jokingly adding: "I may go down in history as the guy who killed Pluto."

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42012000/jpg/_42012422_solar_system_planets3_416.jpg

[moonshadow707]

Car bumper stickers compelling motorists to "Honk if Pluto is still a planet" have gone on sale over the internet:D
I don't like the "dwarf planet" designation for anything, though. It makes me think of a little planet inhabited by little people.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that "Planet of the Dwarves" doesn't seem right. Maybe it's just me...

[Vitriol]

Freakin' Mystery Creature Washes Ashore!
http://englishrussia.com/?p=251
http://www.englishrussia.com/images/russian_sakhalin_monster/monster1.jpg
http://www.englishrussia.com/images/russian_sakhalin_monster/monster2.jpg

This creature was found by Russian soldiers on Sakhalin shoreline. Sakhalin area is situated near to Japan, it’s the most eastern part of Russia, almost 5000 miles to East from Moscow (Russia is huge). People don’t know who is it. According to the bones and teeth - it is not a fish. According to its skeleton - it’s not a crocodile or alligator. It has a skin with hair or fur. It has been said that it was taken by Russian special services for in-depth studies, and we are lucky that people who encountered it first made those photos before it was brought away.

[Vitriol]

The Day The Earth Fell Over
http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060825_earth_tilt.html
http://images.livescience.com/images/060825_earth_tilt_01.jpg




Earth might have spun on its side to keep its balance in the distant past, and could do so again, scientists reported today.

Alaska was suddenly at the equator, the thinking goes. [Graphic]

Scientists already know that the North Pole wanders over time. But a theory known as true polar wander suggests that if a very heavy object, like an oversized volcano forms far from the equator, the force of the planet's rotation would pull the object away from the axis the Earth spins around.

Should a mass such as the very heavy volcano become unbalanced, Earth would tilt and rotate itself until the extra weight moves somewhere near the equator.

Analyzed samples of ancient sediments found in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard show that such an event may have indeed happened in the past.

"The sediments we have recovered from Norway offer the first good evidence that a true polar wander event happened about 800 million years ago," said Adam Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton University. "If we can find good corroborating evidence from other parts of the world as well, we will have a very good idea that our planet is capable of this sort of dramatic change."

The evidence

When rock particles sink to the ocean floor, small magnetic grains within the particle align with the magnetic lines of the Earth. These rocks then become records of the Earth's magnetic field at the time that they were pointing.

If a rock has been spun by an unusual geological event, the orientation of its magnetic field will be out of the ordinary.

"We found just such anomalies in the Svalbard sediments," Maloof said. "We made every effort to find another reason for the anomalies, such as a rapid rotation of the individual crustal plate the islands rest upon, but none of the alternatives makes as much sense as a true polar wander event when taken in the context of geochemical and sea level data from the same rocks."

Flowing backwards

The polar wander could also be responsible for the unusual changes that happened in ocean chemistry 800 million years ago.

"Scientists have found no evidence for an ice age occurring 800 million years ago, and the change in the ocean at this juncture remains one of the great mysteries in the ancient history of our planet," Maloof said. "But if all the continents were suddenly flipped around and their rivers began carrying water and nutrients into the tropics instead of the Arctic, for example, it could produce the mysterious geochemical changes science has been trying to explain."

Future work can test directly the true polar wander hypothesis because this type of event would affect every continent in a predictable manner, depending on the continent’s changing position relative to Earth’s spin axis, the researchers report in the Aug. 25 issue of the Geological Society of America Bulletin.

[Vitriol]

Follow Up: "Beast" is just a dog DNA shows
http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2006/09/02/beast_just_a_dog_dna_test_shows/

LEWISTON, Maine -- DNA tests have removed the veil of mystery from a creature that created a media and Internet sensation. It was just a dog -- 100 percent dog, according to the Sun Journal.
The newspaper ordered up tests to end the speculation by readers who thought the creature may have been a Tasmanian devil, a dingo, a wolf, or coyote. Some of the more outlandish theories involve mutations and extraterrestrials.

Dr. Yuri Melekovets, the laboratory director at HealthGene Corp. in Toronto, said he's certain the creature was just a dog.

The animal, which was hit by a car while chasing a cat, was photographed by a resident. People in Turner speculated that it had been a mystery creature that killed pets and screamed at night , terrorizing residents.

It had a short snout, small ears, and blue eyes.

State wildlife biologists and local animal control officers declined to go to Turner to examine the remains of the animal.

Without any official findings, the creature obtained near-mythical status as word spread in the media and on the Internet. The newspaper obtained a paw from the animal's remains and ordered up its own tests.

[Vitriol]

Meteorite find suggests life on Mars (again)
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/meteorite-find-suggests-life-on-mars/2006/08/24/1156012674139.html

http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/Images/StarChild/solar_system_level1/mars.gif

OSSIBLE signs of alien life have been found inside a Martian meteorite.

Scientists have discovered tiny tunnels in the rock that may have been bored by micro-organisms on Mars.

But researchers are cautious after the embarrassment over another Martian meteorite once alleged to contain signs of life.

Ten years ago, scientists from NASA said they had found small rod-like structures in the meteorite that were believed to be fossil bacteria.

But most experts now believe there is no evidence of life in the 1.9 kilogram rock, ALH 84001. The rods and other "biosignatures" could all have been produced by inorganic processes, scientists say.

The new meteorite, called Nakhla, fell to Earth on June 28, 1911, exploding into dozens of fragments over Egypt.

Nakhla was one of the first meteorites confirmed to have come from Mars by its chemical composition.

The meteorite is estimated to be 1.3 billion years old and shows signs of being altered by the water once thought to have flowed on Mars. It spent some 11 million years drifting through space before entering Earth's atmosphere.

Scientists are now quietly taking seriously the possibility that Nakhla contains signs of Martian life, according to a US biology professor writing in New Scientist magazine.

A team led by Martin Fisk at Oregon State University found tiny tubular holes similar to those in volcanic Earth rocks believed to be caused by bacteria or ancient organisms called archaeans.

Averaging one to three micrometres in diameter and up to 100 micrometres long, the tunnels often contain biomolecules such as nucleic acids.

Peter Ward, from the University of Washington in Seattle, wrote: "When Fisk's team examined volcanic minerals inside Nakhla, to their surprise they found small tunnels virtually identical in size and shape to those in Earth rocks."

John McKay, from the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, later found carbon-rich matter in the rock's tunnels. Analysis suggested that it was carbon originating on Mars — an intriguing finding since all known life is based on carbon.

"Those involved have been careful not to get carried away by this new evidence," Dr Ward said.

Professor Fisk and his colleagues have stopped short of claiming the tunnels are proof of life on Mars.

Instead they say the features might be a "useful biosignature" given the abundance of volcanic rock in the solar system.

[Vitriol]

Two Hearts, Four Lungs Guy
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1303762006


Extra organs found in body


A MAJOR investigation has been launched at a Dublin hospital after the remains of a British tourist were sent home containing two hearts and four lungs.

The organs were discovered inside the body of 55-year-old Louis Selo during a second post-mortem examination in the UK.

Mr Selo, from New Malden in Surrey, died of a massive heart attack at Dublin Airport on 2 August.

Mr Selo hit the headlines five years ago when he flew his son to Australia for extremely rare brain surgery.

[moonshadow707]

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060717/NEWS02/607170317/1009
Giant nests perplex experts

By Garry Mitchell
The Associated Press



http://cmsimg.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=DS&Date=20060717&Category=NEWS02&ArtNo=607170317&Ref=AR&Profile=1009&MaxW=300


A yellow jacket nest engulfs the inside of a 1955 Chevrolet on Harry Coker's
Tallassee property on Thursday. Gigantic yellow jacket nests have been found
in old barns, unoccupied houses, cars and underground cavities across the
southern two-thirds of Alabama.
-- Rob Carr

MOBILE -- To the bafflement of insect experts, gigantic yellow jacket nests have
started turning up in old barns, unoccupied houses, cars and underground cavities
across the southern two-thirds of Alabama.
Specialists say it could be the result of a mild winter and drought
conditions, or multiple queens forcing worker yellow jackets to enlarge
their quarters so the queens will be in separate areas. But experts haven't
determined exactly what's behind the surprisingly large nests.
Auburn University entomologists, who say they've never seen the nests so
large, have been fielding calls about the huge nests from property owners
from Dothan up to Sylacauga and over into west-central Alabama's Black
Belt.
At one site in Barbour County, the nest was as large as a Volkswagen
Beetle, said Andy McLean, an Orkin pesticide service manager in Dothan
who helped remove it from an abandoned barn about a month ago.
"It was one of the largest ones we've seen," McLean said.
Attached to two walls and under the slab, the nest had to be removed in
sections, McLean said.
Entomologist Dr. Charles Ray at the Alabama Cooperative Extension
System in Auburn said he's aware of about 16 of what he described as
"super-sized" nests in south Alabama.
Ray said he's seen 10 of them and cautioned people about going near
them because of the yellow jacket's painful sting.

The largest nest Ray has inspected this year filled the interior of a

weathered 1955 Chevrolet parked in a rural Elmore County barn. That nest
was about the size of a tire in the rear floor seven weeks ago, but quickly
spread to fill the entire vehicle, the property owner, Harry Coker, said.
Four satellite nests around it have gotten into the eaves of the barn,
about 300 yards from his home.
"I'm kind of afraid for the grandkids. I had to sneak down there at dark and
get my tractor out of the barn," Coker said. "It's been a disruption."
Coker said he may wait until a winter freeze to try to remove the nest.
In previous years, a yellow jacket nest was no larger than a basketball,
Ray said. It would contain about 3,000 workers and one queen. These
gigantic nests may have as many as 100,000 workers and multiple queens.
Without a cold winter to kill them this year, the yellow jackets continued
feeding in January and February -- and layering their nests made of paper,
not wax. They typically are built in shallow underground cavities.
Yellow jackets, often confused with bees, may visit flowers for sugar, but
unlike bees, yellow jackets are carnivorous, eating insects, carrion and
picnic food, according to scientists.
"They were able to find food to colony through the winter," Ray said in a
telephone interview.
He investigated a nest near Pineapple, measuring about 5 feet by 4 feet,
that was coming out of the ground on a roadside. A southwest Pike
County house in Goshen had a giant nest spreading into its roof.
Goshen Mayor G. Malon Johnson said he consulted Ray in removing it
because he was concerned that children playing nearby could be
attacked.
A colony has a maximum size in early July and August. The hot, dry
conditions could force the yellow jackets out of ground nests.
"Normally it starts declining in the fall," Ray said.
He said the "super colonies" appear to have many queens.
"We're not really sure how this multiple queen thing works," Ray said. "It
could be that the daughters of the original queen don't leave the nest or
that the queens have developed some way to cooperate."
Ray examined a collected nest from Macon County to count the queens in
it.
"We found 12 queens so far, so that's definitely a factor," Ray said
Thursday.
Dr. Michael D. Goodisman, a biologist at Georgia Tech who has studied
large nests in Australia, said he's heard of some large ones in Georgia and
Florida, but not as big as those in Alabama.A 6-foot by 3-foot nest on a
pond stump in Bulloch County, Ga., was featured July 12 on CNN.
"I'm not sure people know what triggers it," he said.
U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist James H. Cane said he's
familiar with a nest in Florida 10 or 15 years ago that engulfed a big easy
chair. Cane said the monster nests reported in Alabama are intriguing and
agreed with Ray that they could be the product of multiple queens in a
single nest.
The nest usually dies out each year. "All that overwinters is the future
queen," he said.
Given a queen's egg-laying rate, he said, there's no way a nest with a
single queen could get that big in a growing season.
But in a multiple-queen colony, Cane said, there must be space where
queens can't get at each other.

[BujuPhunk]

hey AM - just found this site (http://www.pnas.org)and wondered if you had been there before...got tons if interesting stuff...hope to see ya hullinate again sometime. See ya...

[Warthawg1]

The organs were discovered inside the body of 55-year-old Louis Selo during a second post-mortem examination in the UK.

So an extra heart and set of extra lungs were MISSED the first time???

[Vitriol]

Now The Sheep Are Us
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444436&in_page_id=1770

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/03_02/sheep240307_486x386.jpg

Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.
The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.
Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus.


He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.
The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.
"We would take a couple of ounces of bone marrow cells from the patient,' said Prof Zanjani, whose work is highlighted in a Channel 4 programme tomorrow.
"We would isolate the stem cells from them, inject them into the peritoneum of these animals and then these cells would get distributed throughout the metabolic system into the circulatory system of all the organs in the body. The two ounces of stem cell or bone marrow cell we get would provide enough stem cells to do about ten foetuses. So you don't just have one organ for transplant purposes, you have many available in case the first one fails."
At present 7,168 patients are waiting for an organ transplant in Britain alone, and two thirds of them are expected to die before an organ becomes available.
Scientists at King's College, London, and the North East Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle have now applied to the HFEA, the Government's fertility watchdog, for permission to start work on the chimeras.
But the development is likely to revive criticisms about scientists playing God, with the possibility of silent viruses, which are harmless in animals, being introduced into the human race.
Dr Patrick Dixon, an international lecturer on biological trends, warned: "Many silent viruses could create a biological nightmare in humans. Mutant animal viruses are a real threat, as we have seen with HIV."
Animal rights activists fear that if the cells get mixed together, they could end up with cellular fusion, creating a hybrid which would have the features and characteristics of both man and sheep. But Prof Zanjani said: "Transplanting the cells into foetal sheep at this early stage does not result in fusion at all."
lAnimal Farm is on Channel 4 at 9pm tomorrow

[Vitriol]

Hairy Rock turns up. Kip Winger Declines Comment.
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/7-3-26/53281.html

http://en.epochtimes.com/news_images/2007-3-24-hair-growing-rock.jpg
CHINA—On March 16, 2007, an unusual rock went on display in Beijing. This rock has "hair," almost identical to human hair, growing out of its "head."
The rock is iron gray in color, naturally smooth and rounded, and is similar to a cobblestone. There is also a very thin layer of scalp tissue connecting the "hair" to the rock. The hair is grey in color and similar to the color of the rock itself. The hair grows quite naturally from the top with the longest strands being about 15 centimeters (6 inches) long. The hair is slightly coarser than human hair.
The rock was found on a beach, and according to Fashion Rock Café's executive Miss Yong, this kind of rock is named a "hair-growing rock". As long as conditions are right, the hair on this rare rock will continue to grow. Only two other hair-growing rocks have been reported in the world; and both are in a Taiwan Museum.
This "hair-growing rock" is in a glass display case at the Fashion Rock Café, located in the Digital Building in Beijing's Zhongguan Village. The rock measures approximately 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) long, 20 centimeters (7.8 inches) wide, and about 15 centimeters (6 inches) high.

[Jinjur]

For those interested in black holes I suggest watching the Supermassive blackhole show on the science channel....it will definetly make you think differently about your carmel macchiatto in the morning. *tips hat*

[Rocky Raccoon]

Ch-ch-ch-chia!

[Vitriol]

That rock looks like its wearing an Andy Warhol wig.

[Vitriol]

Giant Toad Returns From Krypton
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070327/ap_on_sc/odd_monster_toad;_ylt=AslT3k.nSAFlNW81zBYQNXMPLBIF

http://www.corriebusinessgroup.com/PetDepot/HS/images/gianttoad.jpg

DARWIN, Australia - An environmental group said Tuesday it had captured a "monster" toad the size of a small dog.
With a body the size of a football and weighing nearly 2 pounds, the toad is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer.
"It's huge, to put it mildly," he said. "The biggest toads are usually females but this one was a rampant male ... I would hate to meet his big sister."
Frogwatch, which is dedicated to wiping out a toxic toad species that has killed countless Australian animals, picked up the 15-inch-long cane toad during a raid on a pond outside the northern city of Darwin late Monday.
Cane toads were imported from South America during the 1930s in a failed attempt to control beetles on Australia's northern sugar cane plantations. The poisonous toads have proven fatal to Australia's delicate ecosystems, killing millions of native animals from snakes to the small crocodiles that eat them.
As part of its so-called "Toad Buster" project, Frogwatch conducts regular raids on local water holes, blinding the toads with bright lights then scooping them up by the dozen.
"We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process" that renders the toads nontoxic, Sawyer said.
"It turns out to be sensational fertilizer," he added.

[Vitriol]

How Can I Smile Tomorrow When I don't Even Know When Today Will Be Over?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070323/sc_space/lengthofsaturnsdayremainsunknownbutnowweknowwhywed ontknow;_ylt=AjxwdCh1vPZLewVcNb_DC4oPLBIF

http://www.dustbunny.com/afk/images/toc/planets_saturn.jpg

Strangely, astronomers don't know how long a day is on Saturn, because they can't get a firm footing on the problem given the giant planet's gaseous nature.
So they have long relied on radio measurements of the ringed planet's magnetic field to help estimate the length of the day. But that doesn't really work either, they realized, so estimates have remained loose. Now the scientists at least have a better handle on this aspect of the problem.
Geyser activity from Saturn's small moon Enceladus (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070208_enceladus_albedo.html) weighs down the big planet's magnetic field so much that the field rotates more slowly than Saturn itself, new observations reveal. The moon is a mere 310 miles (500 kilometers) wide.
"No one could have predicted that the little moon Enceladus would have such an influence on the radio technique that has been used for years to determine the length of the Saturn day," said Don Gurnett of the University of Iowa.
Gurnett is the principal investigator on a radio and plasma wave science experiment on NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The idea has been to measure Saturn's rotation by taking its radio pulse. The technique works pretty well on the other giant planets.
But the new observations, reported online this week by the journal Science, show that the invisible magnetic field lines, which emanate from Saturn's poles and radiate out like a giant, skeletal pumpkin, slip in relation to the planet's rotation.
The slip owes to the collective weight of electrically charged particles that originate in Enceladus' remarkable geysers (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070208_enceladus_albedo.html) of water vapor and ice. Particles in the geysers encircle Saturn and become electrically charged, forming a disk around the equator of hot gas called plasma.
Meanwhile, measurements revealed last year (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060503_saturn_day.html) that Saturn's day has gotten about six or eight minutes longer-now roughly 10 hours and 47 minutes-since the 1980s when measured by the Voyager missions. Nobody suspects the trend to continue forever (meaning the days would just get longer and longer at such a rapid rate), but they also don't know what's going on.
Either the geysers on Enceladus are more active now than in the '80s, the astronomers figure, or perhaps there are seasonal variations as Saturn orbits the Sun (http://www.space.com/sun/), a year that takes more than 29 Earth-years to complete.
"One would predict that when the geysers are very active, the particles load down the magnetic field and increase the slippage of the plasma disk, thereby increasing the radio emission period even more," Gurnett said Thursday. "If the geysers are less active, there would be less of a load on the magnetic field, and therefore less slippage of the plasma disk, and a shorter period."
"The direct link between radio, magnetic field and deep planetary rotation has been taken for granted up to now," said Michele Dougherty, a researcher at Imperial College London and principal investigator on Cassini's magnetometer instrument. "Saturn is showing we need to think further."

[Vitriol]

My Two Suns
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6506081.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/sci_nat_enl_1175192786/img/laun.jpg

The dual suns that rise and set over Luke Skywalker's homeworld in the film Star Wars may be more than just fantasy, according to data from Nasa. In a classic scene from the 1977 movie, the hero gazes into the distance as two yellow suns set on the horizon.
Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope has found that planetary systems are as common around double stars as they are around single stars, like our own Sun.
Details of the research have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

In the study, a team of researchers used an infrared camera on the Spitzer telescope to search for so-called dusty discs around binary, or double, stars.
Dusty discs are made from the leftover debris of planet formation.

"We knew the stars would be there, the question was whether there was a planet to be the place where you could stand and see these sunsets," said Karl Stapelfeldt, a scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
"The inference is getting stronger now that there must be such planets based on what Spitzer has found."
The presence of planets in dusty discs is thought likely, but is by no means certain.
"In our Solar System, asteroids collide with each other and produce showers of dust and that is, we assume, what we're seeing in these other discs - the dust produced by the collision of two bigger bodies," lead author David Trilling, from the University of Arizona, told BBC News.
"We can infer that there are bigger bodies like asteroids. The next logical leap is that if there are processes that formed these bigger bodies like asteroids, those same processes may also have formed planets."

The team looked for dusty discs in 69 binary systems between about 50 and 200 light-years away from Earth. The data show that about 40% of double systems had dusty discs - slightly higher than the frequency for a similar sample of single stars.
This finding suggests that planetary systems are at least as common around these binary stars as they are around single stars like our Sun.
In systems where stars are 50-500 astronomical units (50-500 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun) apart, dusty discs circle one of the pairs of stars.
Close-knit stars
But the researchers found no discs in binary systems where stars were 3-50 astronomical units (AU) apart.
In these double systems, Dr Trilling suggests, gravitational forces may kick debris out into deep space, preventing the formation of planets.

When the team looked at even more closely spaced binary stars - positioned at three to zero astronomical units distance - they were surprised to find that dusty discs were common, occurring in about 60% of cases. In these systems, a dusty disc circles both stars, rather than just one. Any planets orbiting these close-knit star systems would experience sunsets similar to the one depicted on the fictional desert world of Tatooine in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.
"The number of potential sites for planets has just increased enormously, because now we know these multiple star systems may be commonly associated with planetary formation," said Dr Trilling.
Habitable zones
Dr Trilling said that if planets did exist in dusty discs around these binaries, they might be at distances where the conditions could be hospitable for life.
"The Luke Skywalker picture is science fiction. But I don't see anything that's astronomically incorrect about it," said the University of Arizona researcher.
"With some of our systems, you could play with the geometry, put a planet there, get the temperatures right and make it look just like [Tatooine]."

"Of course, we don't know anything about planets in these systems - it's all imagination - but it looks fine."

[Vitriol]

In Mother Russia, Calimari Eats You!
link to video
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/viewvideo.php?id=7VFAqTN6yhI&tid=83774

[yung23]

quite the toad eh ?

I saw that on MSN the other day.


I damn near forgot about your cool lostaways thread here ashley !

[Vitriol]

yung23! Good to see you in here. I totally voted for you in the last awards.. Your's was the only vote I made.

[solat]

In Mother Russia, Calimari Eats You!
link to video
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/viewvideo.php?id=7VFAqTN6yhI&tid=83774

Yikes! I'm not sure if this is old news or not, but there's a colossal squid now (different species than the giant).

Here's a picture of one of them from earlier this year:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/Colossal_Squid_Ross_Ice_Shelf.jpg

[Vitriol]

I've never seen that shot before, but dang is that dude huge! OHHH the Lovecraftian horror!

[Vitriol]

He's Dead, Jim.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6518527.stm

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42756000/jpg/_42756041_cave_pnas_203.jpg

The remains of one of the earliest modern humans to inhabit eastern Asia have been unearthed in a cave in China. The find could shed light on how our ancestors colonised the East, a movement that is only poorly understood by anthropologists.
Researchers found 34 bone fragments belonging to a single individual at the Tianyuan Cave, near Beijing.
Details of the discovery appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
Radiocarbon dates, obtained directly from the bones, show the person lived between 42,000 and 39,000 years ago.
"For this time period, which is critical for understanding the spread of modern humans around the world, we have two well-dated human fossils from eastern Asia," said co-author Professor Erik Trinkaus, from Washington University in St Louis, US.
"We have remains from the Niah Cave from Sarawak on Borneo, and now this specimen from China. As you go west, the next specimens are from Lebanon. There's nothing in between."
Interbreeding theory
According to the "Out of Africa" theory, modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved in East Africa and then spread out across the globe about 70,000 years ago, replacing earlier, or archaic, human populations, such as the Neanderthals, with very little, if any, interbreeding.
The Tianyuan remains display diagnostic features of modern H. sapiens. But co-author Erik Trinkaus and his colleagues argue, controversially, that the bones also display features characteristic of earlier human species, such as relatively large front teeth.
The most likely explanation, they argue, is interbreeding between early modern humans emerging from Africa and the archaic populations they encountered in Europe and Asia.
"The pattern we see across the Old World is basically a modern human in terms of its newly emerged characteristics, but also a minority of traits that are absent or lost in the earliest modern humans in East Africa," Professor Trinkaus told the BBC News website.
"The question is where did they get them from? Either they re-evolved them, which is not very likely, or, to some degree, they interbred with archaic groups.
"Sex happens. I find this neither disturbing nor surprising."
He added that evidence from the animal world suggested two closely related species, which have been separate for less than two million years, could interbreed successfully when given the opportunity to mate.
One example from the UK is the Scottish wildcat, which is being absorbed into domestic cat populations through interbreeding.
The domestic cat and the wildcat are distinct species separated by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years, and have very different body sizes. Despite this, pairings produce fertile, viable offspring.
Signs of disease
The view of interbreeding between Homo sapiens and archaic humans is controversial. Other palaeoanthropologists say that some of these features are simply retained from ancient African ancestors.
And most genetic evidence gathered from present-day humans does not appear to support significant interbreeding between modern humans from Africa and archaics.
The researchers' analysis of the bones has revealed several interesting details about the Tianyuan individual's lifestyle.
The person's age at death was estimated by how much the teeth had worn down. This put the individual in their late 40s or 50s.
But the lack of a pelvis among the remains means that it is not possible to say with any certainty what sex the human was.
The Tianyuan specimen shows several signs of disease. The individual had lost a number of teeth before death, not unusual considering their age.
The researchers also identified several lesions, or growths, on the leg bones, which appear to have been caused by a condition affecting the muscle attachments around both knees.
Whatever condition these were caused by, however, it does not appear to have disabled the person, because the remainder of the leg bones suggest they kept active.
The single toe bone which was unearthed seems to suggest the individual wore shoes, pushing back the earliest known evidence for footwear by about 10,000 years.
An earlier study by Professor Trinkaus shows that human small toes became weaker during the stage of prehistory known as the Upper Palaeolithic, and that this can probably be attributed to the adoption of sturdy shoes.
The invention of rugged shoes reduced humans' reliance on strong, flexible toes to grip and balance.

[Vitriol]

Indiana Jones And The Secret Of The Ostrich People
http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/indepth/features/display.var.1297969.0.startling_secrets_of_ostrich _people.php

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/_images/db/46/56/ostrich_13_02.465670.full.jpg

Beyond the southern valley of the Zambezi river in Zimbabwe where buffalo roam under bleached skies and tsetse flies linger on human flesh...
Beyond the scattering of bamboo huts where river beds dry up and dirt tracks end and the nearest police outpost is hundreds of miles away...
Beyond musiga trees stripped of bark, high up in the Chiruwa hills, you will at last hear the far-off rumbling of drums that belong to a tribe known as the ostrich people because of their V-shaped feet.
They are the Vadoma, or two-toed tribe, and they provide an unmatched example of genetic effects in a small population, for they have the condition known as ectrodactyly in which the middle three toes are absent.
In reference books you will search vainly for all but the most cursory details of their mysterious existence. Only a handful of men have encountered pure-bred members of the Vadoma. The first white man to do so was reportedly Charles Sutton, from Banstead, and now he has decided to share his remarkable story.
It is a story that begins in 1951 when he decided to emigrate from Surrey. Eyes shut, the young Charles aimed a pin at an atlas and found it embedded in southern Rhodesia. After making extensive enquiries, he was recruited by British South Africa police then posted to several rural stations.
advertisement
http://ads-delivery1.newsquest.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/Creatives/default/empty.gif (http://ads-delivery1.newsquest.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/indepth/features/display.var.1297969.0.startling_secrets_of_ostrich _people.php/1356522638/Frame2/default/empty.gif/34353831633531353436313261646430)
It was while policing villages lit by flickering paraffin lamps in the Zambezi escarpment, where crimes ranged from theft of old shorts to murder, that Charles first heard about the Vadoma.
He was entranced. Eventually he came across a tribesman from Mozambique, with good local knowledge, and set off for the Chiruwa hills.

Recounting his first glimpse of the Vadoma, he says: "My guide, having proceeded ahead alone, returned to say that he had seen an old man sitting on the ground outside a very impoverished grass hut, surrounded by a number of clay pots which contained wild beer.
"From the light of a burning fire I could see astonishment written all over the man's face, especially looking at myself, as he later revealed that I was the first white man he had seen, and the first to come to that area."
The Vadoma speak Chikunda (Portuguese) and KoreKore, the language of the Mkorekore tribe. Their features are distinct from other African tribes, and their preoccupations are hunting, trapping wild animals, fishing and gathering wild fruits, roots and honey.
The nomadic bushmen are said to be intensely curious but to flee at the sight of an intruder. The elderly man Charles encountered was strangely becalmed. He turned out to be the headman of the tribe, and offered the visitors some beer. It was made from wild fruits, boiled continuously for seven days.
"When he gained our confidence as we drank, he beat a drum and several of the tribesmen appeared from nowhere - they just arrived on all sides, men, women and children," Charles said.
"Some of the women were carrying babies on their back; they were wearing nothing more than a type of loin cloth, and they were the Vadoma.
"During daylight the next morning a number of them came to see who we were. I could see one of them with only two toes on each foot, in a V-shape similar to an ostrich's foot - others had web-like feet."
The condition in the Vadoma is caused by a mutation of chromosome number seven. What they tell us is that a dominantly inherited genetic mutation survives when it has beneficial effects - the tribe's deformed feet may help with tree climbing.
If they had ventured forth - and expanded their gene pool - it is unlikely the Vadoma would have maintained ectrodactyly.
Charles says: "I asked the old man, Mhoramasaka, why he and his followers wanted to stay in the hills, away from civilisation, and not move to the villages near the Zambezi River.
"He said that they were quite contented with their life, and the way in which they were living - this being the only life they knew.
"They were missing out on village schools and clinics but this did not seem to deter them." And, as he finished this thought, the old man reached for his clay pot and took another gulp of wild beer.

[Hurley4Prez]

I keep forgetting about your thread here Ash, but it's always a lot of fun to catch up! :Cheers:

[Rocky Raccoon]

genetic effects in a small population

Four-toed statue, anyone?

[Vitriol]

"He said that they were quite contented with their life, and the way in which they were living - this being the only life they knew.
"They were missing out on village schools and clinics but this did not seem to deter them." And, as he finished this thought, the old man reached for his clay pot and took another gulp of wild beer.

Uneducated, but I'll be damned if they don't have it made!

[LAN]

how bout this doozy

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=446543&in_page_id=1773


I am speechless. Rockstars.........ROCK

[solat]

Oh my god. That's hilarious/disgusting/bewildering.

Thanks for sharing, lan! :D

[Hurley4Prez]

how bout this doozy

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=446543&in_page_id=1773


I am speechless. Rockstars.........ROCK
:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
That made my morning, LAN!

[blondiejam]

i heard that it's a joke..... *shrugs*

[Vitriol]

It was a joke, but I kind of wish he had snorted his father's ashes.

[Vitriol]

As if the sentence "They are also known to bite HUMANS" isn't scary enough, the Sun thoughtfully bolds the word "humans" to help drive the point home. Oh, and the article is about ladybugs
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007150399,00.html
http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/1793399/2/istockphoto_1793399_lady_bug.jpg

A NEW breed of killer ladybird is threatening to wipe out insects across the UK, experts warned yesterday. The Harlequin — which has killed off other ladybirds across the world — was first found here three years ago and is spreading rapidly.
Scientists fear the bugs will annihilate native species and cover mainland Britain within a year.
They are also known to bite HUMANS.
Cambridge University ladybird expert Dr Michael Majerus said: “The warm weather has woken them up. They’re all over the place now.”
The Harlequin was taken to the US from Asia 25 years ago to control aphids, but has destroyed populations of native ladybirds and butterflies.
Britain’s first was found in Essex in 2004 and the orange bugs — bigger than normal ladybirds — have spread as far north as Durham.
Dr Majerus said one person had suffered an allergic reaction to a bite but added this was “very rare”.

[Rocky Raccoon]

HAHA.

[Vitriol]

Dumbest. Article. Ever. (someone has seen the remake of Pulse too much, which is once)
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/column.php?id=91941
http://d21c.com/AnnesPlace/Hal/ComputerGhost.gif

Melyssa Glennie-Puckett: Do you believe that a spirit can haunt a person via the internet? If I were asked that question before January 2006, I would have probably smirked and answered "impossible".[/B] What happened to me may just bea case of a spirit conjured up by thought; not necessarily a haunting by computer. Either way, the medium at hand was the internet. I've always been a believer in the paranormal despite never having had an outstanding encounter. I love to roam around the net browsing the plethora paranormal sites, relishing the many spine tingling stories of ghostly experiences. This chilly winter day was different than no other, except that I took a look at some sites devoted to ghost towns and abandoned mines. I came across the site for The Bureau of Land Management that gives statistics on abandoned mines aswell as safety reeminders for those who are out exploring. There is also a section devoted to the unfortunate souls who failed to heed the warnings posted at the entrances to dangerous mines.

There were a few stories that were particularly shocking, but the one that really bothered me was about a man who had fallen down a shaft that was about eight stories high.When his remains were found some time later, the medical examiner stated that the man more than likely survived the fall with nothing more than a broken leg.What killed him was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. This person was a well prepared explorer who packed plenty of survival gear including a gun. I began to imagine, very vividly, the man at the bottom of this mine shaft in complete darkness...in complete agony. His pain, both emotional and physical,must have been unbearable. As the hours passed and his anxiety escalated, he began to accept that he was too far out in the terrain for someone to come by. The chance of rescue was nil. He began having thoughts about his family, his life. I could picture the man completely breaking down and sobbing, knowing that there was only one way to end his suffering. I felt so saddened, and wondered to myself what I would have done.

I immersed myself in these feelings of terror and hopelesness for some time, so much so that I began to feel a sickening feeling in my body. Although I was shocked and moved by this tragic story, I proceeded on to another site. That's when the lamp on the desk next to me began flickering, making a buzzing noise that sounded like an electrical surge. I figured the bulb was loose, so I checked it and found that that wasn't the case. At that point, my stomach dropped to my knees when I began to feel the presence of someone or something around me. I sat back down and carried on, not wanting to tip off my "visitor" that I was aware of what was going on. The lamp flickered again. I ignored it. A short time later, I went into the bathroom when the light in the ceiling did the same strange flickering as the lamp. At this point, I became frightened and bolted.

Over the next few days more bizarre electrical occurences happened. I was at the stove cooking when suddenly the oven timer went on,scaring the you know what out of me! That same day the bathroom light went on the fritz again and this time I was already, um, seated. I became angry (and brave)yelling out " Do you mind?! I'm trying to use the bathroom here!!" With that, a tiny little flicker of the light, and then it ceased. My pet cat was also acting strangely, his eyes seemingly following something or someone who was not there. At other times he would awaken out of a sound sleep with a jolt; focusing on one part of the room blinking in curiosity. I eventually smudged my house with a sage stick and the activity abruptly stopped. Could it have been that my strong feelings and thoughts about this man enticed his spirit to me? Or perhaps another random entity I picked up on the information highway that day? Who knows. I firmly believe that the human mind is even more powerful than we realize, and that those on the other side can tune into that power.

So I'll ask again: Do you believe that it's posssible a spirit can haunt a person via the internet? I do.

[Vitriol]

Is That A UFO In Your Pants Or?.......
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=23512

http://www.whimsie.com/flying%20saucer.jpg

Washington, DC - Almost one year ago on April 24, 2006 the Paradigm Clock, which tracks proximity to a formal acknowledgement of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race, was reset to 11:59:45 - 15 seconds to midnight. Such an acknowledgement is referred to as Disclosure and would mark the end of a 60 year truth embargo imposed by federal authorities. The explanation for resetting the time included this statement:
Based upon an analysis of multiple circumstances within and outside the nation, PRG has concluded that America is now facing an unprecedented crisis which has opened a window to disclosure wider than at any previous time.
One of the circumstances referred to was and remains an unprecedented breach between the military and intelligence communities and the Executive Branch. As a consequence of this breach PRG believed that should a disclosure effort emerge from within the military/intelligence sector and the Executive moved to block, it is more likely that blocking move would be rebuffed. On the other hand an increasingly isolated Executive facing a cascade of allegations and investigations and lacking support from the military/intelligence sector might see Disclosure as a means to "change the subject" on a global scale. Thus a window for Disclosure was created, and one year later that window remains open. Furthermore, over the past 36 months the following have taken place:
• March 2007 - Former Arizona governor, Fife Symington, revealed in an interview with journalist and investigative director for the Coalition for Freedom of Information, Leslie Kean, he had see a massive black triangular fly overhead early in the evening of March 17, 1997 - the first Phoenix Lights event. Symington told CNN, “The lights were really brilliant. And it was just fascinating. I mean, it was enormous. It just felt otherworldly. You know, in your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly.”
• March 2007 - The French national space agency, CNES, placed 1600 previously classified UFO sighting reports into the public domain on the Internet.
• November 2006 - A significant sighting took place at O'Hare Airport in Chicago and received worldwide attention and media coverage.

• September 2005 - Former Apollo astronaut, Dr. Brian O'Leary, wrote in a foreword to Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge, "These revelations underscore a long, sordid history of governmental and media secrecy and the acquisition of technologies such as microelectronics, anti-gravity propulsion and zero-point, or "free" energy, from our visitors. This massive cover-up has been going on for almost six decades since the UFO crash near Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947, an event which was certainly not caused by balloons, as alleged by the U.S. Air force. Such myths are only accepted by the ignorant or the powerful and their subjects."
• September 2005 - Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson and deputy prime minister under Pierre Trudeau, publicly stated, "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."
• May 2005 - The Brazilian Air Force (FAB), almost certainly with the approval of Minister of Defense and Vice President, José Alencar, entered into an agreement with civilian researchers to release information and jointly investigate UFO incidents
• July 2004 - Governor of New Mexico and current presidential candidate, Bill Richardson, wrote in the foreword to The Roswell Dig Diaries, "It would help everyone if the U.S. government disclosed everything it knows. With full disclosure and our best scientific investigation, we should be able to find out what happened on that fateful day in July of 1947. The American people can handle the truth no matter how bizarre or mundane, and contrary to what you see in the movies."
• July 2004 - Producer, director, writer and actor Dan Aykroyd became the first A-list celebrity to allow his or her name and image to be used to support extraterrestrial-related phenomena research. He endorsed and agreed to be a spokesperson for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).
• May 2004 - The Department of Defense of Mexico, with the approval of Mexican Secretary of Defense, General Clemente Vega Garcia (and almost certainly Mexican President Vicente Fox), held an international press conference at the Hotel Sevilla Palace in Mexico City. The Department of Defense released air surveillance evidence of an unusual sighting to a civilian research team and confirmed a joint investigative effort.
• 2004-2007 - The United Kingdom conducted a series of releases of documents pertaining to classified UFO sighting reports and UK government studies.
The U.S. Congress, news media and the American people must prepare for the possibility that an event of sufficient magnitude to trigger formal Disclosure could take place at any time. Such an event could come from any number of directions and take place in any of a dozen countries. The 60-year truth embargo is collapsing.
Related Websites
Paradigm Clock Time Change Chronicle: www.paradigmresearchgroup.org/timechangechronicle.html
Fife Symington: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17761943/
French Sightings Report Release: http://tinyurl.com/2nsjuu
O'Hare Sighting: http://tinyurl.com/ywg4t2
Paul Hellyer: http://tinyurl.com/2xsx4
Mexico: http://tinyurl.com/yq68bw

[Vitriol]

Gimme $20k And We'll Squash Some Ancient Butterflies
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/310821_quantum09.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20070409/226timeguyxx_laser2.jpg

The Seattle scientist who wants to test a controversial prediction from quantum theory that says light particles can go backward in time is, himself, running out of time.
It's not a wormhole or warp in the space-time continuum. The problem is more mundane -- a black hole in the time-and-money continuum spawned by today's increasingly risk-averse, "performance-based" approach to funding research.
"I guess you could say we're now living on borrowed time," wryly joked John Cramer, a physicist at the University of Washington. "All we need to keep going is maybe $20,000, but nobody seems that interested in funding this project."
It's a project that aims to do a conceptually simple bench-top test for evidence of something Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." The test involves using a crystal to split a photon, a light particle, into two reduced-energy photons that -- through careful manipulation -- Cramer thinks could reveal a flash of time traveling backward.


The UW physicist has applied for funds from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Both agencies have, in the past, funded far-fetched ideas and, on occasion, had big hits -- such as the Internet.
DARPA recently sent out requests for proposals from researchers interested in developing shape-shifting, liquid robots (think Terminator 2) as well as cyborg insects (half robot, half normal bug). NIAC has funded similar projects and first took seriously science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke's idea of a geosynchronous elevator into space.
"I've heard that NASA is closing down NIAC so I don't expect to get any funding from them," Cramer said. "And the guy from DARPA decided what I was trying to do was too weird even for DARPA."
The military research establishment thinks testing a fundamental paradox in physics is weirder than seeking to build a sci-fi robot they saw in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie?
Still, it is fair to say Cramer, an experimentalist with plenty of scientific "street cred" from his stints at mainstream places such as the Brookhaven National Laboratory and Geneva-based CERN (the world's largest particle physics lab), has gone out on a theoretical limb lately.
To begin with, he thinks the celebrated theoretical physicist and author of "A Brief History of Time," Stephen Hawking (who happens to speaking tonight at the Seattle Center's McCaw Hall), is wrong. Not about everything. Just time.
"Hawking has this 'arrow of time' idea in which he argues that time can only advance in one direction, forward," Cramer said. It's appealing, elegant and certainly makes sense intuitively, he noted, because this is the only way we experience time.

Unfortunately, the one-way notion of time doesn't fit all that well with the mathematical and experimental evidence of quantum theory. This is a highly counter-intuitive branch of physics, also known as quantum mechanics, that describes the bizarre behavior of matter at the atomic and subatomic levels.
One of the mysteries of quantum mechanics is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox. Quantum theory predicts two subatomic particles derived from a single particle -- like two photons split from a single photon -- will, if not further influenced by other particles, continue to influence each other's behavior no matter how far apart.
This is known as "entanglement." Experiments at the subatomic level tend to support the idea, but there's a conceptual problem. It means the two photons must be able to communicate instantaneously, even if light years apart, which violates the speed of light.
"There's been a lot of interest in this problem over the years," Cramer said. In 1986, he proposed a solution to this paradox that he called the "transactional interpretation" of quantum theory. Some of his approach was based on the ideas of such physics luminaries as Richard Feynman and John Wheeler.
Basically, Cramer showed how entanglement could be explained -- and how the paradox could be explained away -- by assuming some kind of signal that can travel both forward and backward in time between the two photons. His theory, he says, violates no rules of quantum theory and resolves the mystery.
All that's needed now, Cramer said, is some way to provide evidence that it's real.
In the basement of the UW's Astronomy and Physics building, the UW physicist and his student, Skander Mzali, are making do with what they can find in the lab. At the business end of an ultraviolet laser is an array of prisms, filters, splitters and other devices aimed at directing or altering the laser light.
A camera hooked up to a computer monitor sits at the receiving end. On the PC monitor is a grainy screen displaying an interference pattern of photons.
What Cramer hopes to be able to do is split a photon, sending two "entangled" photons down two very different pathways of varying lengths using fiber-optic cables. Photons can exist in either particle or wave forms. The outcome can be manipulated by placement of detectors.
Because the photons are entangled, however one is detected (i.e., whether as a particle or a wave) also will determine the form taken by the other. But by running one photon through a 10-kilometer spool of optic cable, the second photon will be delayed 50 microseconds.
In short, moving the location of the detector for the delayed photon to change it from wave to particle would also change the first photon -- according to standard quantum theory. For this to happen, some kind of signal has to go backward in time.
"In 20 years, nobody has been able to tell me why this can't work," Cramer said. "They just say it can't work like that. It's unacceptable."
To really see if they can pull this off, the UW physicist said, he would rather not have to depend upon what kind of scraps they can cobble together. Cramer said they first need a more precise crystal prism and a more sensitive camera.
So, time, if not proven yet to sometimes run backward, is running out on the UW experiment seeking evidence of "quantum retrocausality." They will lose the lab space soon if they can't move forward with the project, Cramer said.
"We're about to hit the wall if we don't get funding," he said. "It would be a shame because even if this doesn't work, I'm sure we'd learn something from trying."

[Vitriol]

I'll Be The Predator. You Be Harry Potter!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070406/sc_afp/ussciencephysicsinvisibility;_ylt=AqzJv7AbmCXR9Nei chSy_KsPLBIF
http://images.contactmusic.com/images/reviews2/predator.jpg Vs. http://z.about.com/d/losangeles/1/5/b/6/Harry-Potter.jpg

A real invisibility cloak is in our grasp: scientists


HICAGO (AFP) - Harry Potter (http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=Harry+Potter) fans take note: scientists have finally come up with a workable design for an invisibility cloak.

Physicists figured out the complex mathematical equations for making objects invisible by bending light around them last year.
A group of engineers at Purdue University in Indiana have now used those calculations to design a relatively simple device that ought to be able to - one day soon - make objects as big as an airplane simply disappear.
The design calls for tiny metal needles to be fitted into a hairbrush-shaped cone at angles and lengths that would force light to pass around the cloak. This would make everything inside the cone appear to vanish because the light would no longer reflect off it.
"It looks pretty much like fiction, I do realize, but it's completely in agreement with the laws of physics," said lead researcher Vladimir Shalaev, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue.
"Ideally, if we make it real it would work exactly like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak," he said. "It's not going to be heavy because there's going to be very little metal in it."
The still-theoretical design will be published this month in the journal Nature Photonics.
Shaleav said he needs to secure funding to build the device and expects it would take two to three years to come up with a working prototype.
The major limitation is that the current design can only bend the light of a single wave-length at a time, and does not work with the entire frequency range of the visible spectrum.
"How to create a design that works for all colors of visible light at the same time will be a big technical challenge, but we believe it's possible," Shalaev said. "In principal it's doable."
Even blocking a single frequency can lead to useful applications, Shaleav said.
The cloak could shield soldiers from night-vision goggles which use only one wavelength of light. It could also be used to hide objects from "laser designators" used by the military to illuminate a target, he said.
Other researchers have managed to clock objects from the microwave range of the spectrum, which are much larger than the wavelengths of visible light.
This new design is the first for cloaking objects of any size in the range of light visible to humans.
It works by using tiny needles to alter the "index of refraction" around the cone.
Every material has its own refractive index which determines how light bends and slows down as it passes from that material into another. It's commonly described as the bent-stick-in-water effect, which occurs when a stick placed in a glass of water looks bent when seen from outside the glass.
Natural materials typically have a refractive index greater than one. But the tiny metal needles layered inside the cone work to gradually alter the index from zero at the inner surface of the cloak, to one at the outer surface of the cloak. This guides, or bends, light around the cloaked object.
The technology for making the tiny needles is already used to make nanotech devices. The needles in the theoretical design are about as wide as 10 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, and as long as hundreds of nanometers.
A single nanometer is roughly the size of 20 hydrogen atoms strung together.

[Vitriol]

Barney May Be Older Than Previously Assumed
http://www.livescience.com/environment/070410_purple_earth.html

http://gofree.indigo.ie/%7Evcahill/huntstown/barney.jpg


Early Earth Was Purple, Study Suggests

The earliest life on Earth might have been just as purple as it is green today, a scientist claims.
Ancient microbes might have used a molecule other than chlorophyll to harness the Sun’s rays, one that gave the organisms a violet hue.
Chlorophyll, the main photosynthetic pigment of plants, absorbs mainly blue and red (http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=070410_light_graph_02.jpg&cap=The+retinal+pigment+in+halobacteria+absorbs+gr een+light+and+reflects+red+and+blue+light.+Chlorop hyll+absorbs+red+and+blue+light+and+reflects+green .+Some+scientists+think+this+mirror+relationship+s uggests+chlorophyll+evolved+to+exploit+parts+of+th e+spectrum+unused+by+retinal.+Credit%3A+%3Ca+href% 3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanscientist.org%2F%22% 3EAmerican++Scientist%3C%2Fa%3E) wavelengths from the Sun and reflects green ones, and it is this reflected light that gives plants their leafy color. This fact puzzles some biologists because the sun transmits most of its energy in the green part of the visible spectrum.
“Why would chlorophyll have this dip in the area that has the most energy?” said Shil DasSarma, a microbial geneticist at the University of Maryland.

After all, evolution has tweaked the human eye (http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/051128_eye_works.html) to be most sensitive to green light (which is why images from night-vision goggles are tinted green). So why is photosynthesis (http://www.livescience.com/environment/050214_plankton_space.html) not fine-tuned the same way?
Possible answer
DasSarma thinks it is because chlorophyll appeared after another light-sensitive molecule called retinal was already present on early Earth. Retinal, today found in the plum-colored membrane of a photosynthetic microbe called halobacteria, absorbs green light and reflects back red and violet light, the combination of which appears purple.
Primitive microbes that used retinal to harness the sun’s energy might have dominated early Earth (http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/070323_old_crust.html), DasSarma said, thus tinting some of the first biological hotspots on the planet a distinctive purple color.
Being latecomers, microbes that used chlorophyll could not compete directly with those utilizing retinal, but they survived by evolving the ability to absorb the very wavelengths retinal did not use, DasSarma said.
“Chlorophyll was forced to make use of the blue and red light, since all the green light was absorbed by the purple membrane-containing organisms,” said William Sparks, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Maryland, who helped DasSarma develop his idea.
Chlorophyll more efficient
The researchers speculate that chlorophyll- and retinal-based organisms coexisted for a time. “You can imagine a situation where photosynthesis is going on just beneath a layer of purple membrane-containing organisms,” DasSarma told LiveScience.
But after a while, the researchers say, the balance tipped in favor of chlorophyll because it is more efficient than retinal.
“Chlorophyll may not sample the peak of the solar spectrum, but it makes better use of the light that it does absorb,” Sparks explained.
DasSarma admits his ideas are currently little more than speculation, but says they fit with other things scientists know about retinal and early Earth.
For example, retinal has a simpler structure than chlorophyll, and would have been easier to produce in the low-oxygen environment of early Earth (http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060823_oxygen_world.html), DasSarma said.
Also, the process for making retinal is very similar to that of a fatty acid, which many scientists think was one of the key-ingredients for the development of cells.
“Fatty acids were likely needed to form the membranes in the earliest cells,” DasSarma said.
Lastly, halobacteria, a microbe alive today that uses retinal, is not a bacterium at all. It belongs to a group of organisms called archaea, whose lineage stretches back to a time before Earth had an oxygen atmosphere.
Taken together, these different lines of evidence suggest retinal formed earlier than chlorophyll, DasSarma said.
The team presented its so-called “purple Earth” hypothesis earlier this year at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), and it is also detailed in the latest issue of the magazine American Scientist. The team also plans to submit the work to a peer-reviewed science journal later this year.
Caution needed
David Des Marais, a geochemist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, calls the purple Earth hypothesis “interesting,” but cautions against making too much of one observation.
“I’m a little cautious about looking at who’s using which wavelengths of light and making conclusions about how things were like 3 or 4 billion years ago,” said Des Marais, who was not involved in the research.
Des Marais said an alternative explanation for why chlorophyll doesn’t absorb green light is that doing so might actually harm plants.
“That energy comes screaming in. It’s a two-edged sword,” Des Marais said in a telephone interview. “Yes, you get energy from it, but it’s like people getting 100 percent oxygen and getting poisoned. You can get too much of a good thing.”
Des Marais points to cyanobacteria, a photosynthesizing microbe (http://www.livescience.com/environment/060607_stromatolites.html) with an ancient history, which lives just beneath the ocean surface in order to avoid the full brunt of the Sun.
“We see a lot of evidence of adaptation to get light levels down a bit,” Des Marais said. “I don’t know that there’s necessarily an evolutionary downside to not being at the peak of the solar spectrum.”
Implications for astrobiology
If future research validates the purple Earth hypothesis, it would have implications for scientists searching for life (http://www.space.com/searchforlife/060323_seti_biomes.html) on distant worlds, the researchers say.
“We should make sure we don’t lock into ideas that are entirely centered on what we see on Earth,” said DasSarma’s colleague, Neil Reid, also of the STScI.
For example, one biomarker of special interest in astrobiology is the “red edge” produced by plants on Earth. Terrestrial vegetation absorbs most, but not all, of the red light in the visible spectrum. Many scientists have proposed using the small portion of reflected red light as an indicator of life on other planets.
“I think when most people think about remote sensing (http://www.space.com/searchforlife/exoplanet_missions_001130_5.html), they’re focused on chlorophyll-based life,” DasSarma said. “It may be that is the more prominent one, but if you happen to see a planet that is at this early stage of evolution, and you’re looking for chlorophyll, you might miss it because you’re looking at the wrong wavelength.”

[Vitriol]

I know this will make a lot of you crippled with grief, but there won't be any more science news from me for most probably a week, possibly two. My friend is very ill and at death's door. I've taken the week off from work to spend time with my friends and family. I may drop in here and there when I have a minute, but the news will be on hiatus. Last story for awhile:

Its Raining Frogs! Again!
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1421070.html?menu=news.quirkies
http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=93493&rendTypeId=4



Frogs rain down on Serbia Traffic came to a halt and locals fled inside after thousands of frogs fell from the sky onto a Serbian village.
Residents in Odzaci told local daily Blic they thought the world was coming to an end.
Aleksandar Ciric said: "I saw all these small frogs just start raining down. There were thousands of them."
Another villager, Caja Jovanovic, added: "This huge 'cloud' seemed to come out of nowhere and its shape and colour looked very strange.
"We were all wondering what it was when suddenly frogs started to fall from the sky. I thought maybe a plane carrying frogs had exploded in midair."
But climatology expert Slavisa Ignjatovic said there was a simple scientific explanation for the incident.
He said: "A whirlwind has sucked up the frogs from a lake, the sea or some other body of water somewhere else and carried them along to Odzaci where they have fallen to the ground. It is a recognised scientific phenomenon."

[Darkshines]

"We were all wondering what it was when suddenly frogs started to fall from the sky. I thought maybe a plane carrying frogs had exploded in midair."

Quote. Of. The. Year. :rotfl:

[Vitriol]

Is that the new J.Tim album? Man that s**t is hot!
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070418_solar_music.html

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/070418_sun_eruption_01.jpg

Sun's Atmosphere Sings

Astronomers have recorded heavenly music bellowed out by the Sun’s atmosphere.
Snagging orchestra seats for this solar symphony would be fruitless, however, as the frequency of the sound waves is below the human hearing threshold. While humans can make out sounds between 20 and 20,000 hertz, the solar sound waves are on the order of milli-hertz—a thousandth of a hertz.
The study, presented this week at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Lancashire, England, reveals that the looping magnetic fields (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/trace_update_000926.html) along the Sun’s outer regions, called the corona, carry magnetic sound waves in a similar manner to musical instruments such as guitars or pipe organs.
Making music
Robertus von Fay-Siebenburgen and Youra Taroyan, both of the Solar Physics and Space Plasma Research Center at the University of Sheffield, and their colleagues combined information gleaned from sun-orbiting satellites (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070301_stereo_panorama.html) with theoretical models of solar processes, such as coronal mass ejections.
They found that explosive events at the Sun’s surface (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070220_sun_spole.html) appear to trigger acoustic waves that bounce back and forth between both ends of the loops, a phenomenon known as a standing wave.
“These magnetic loops are analogous to a simple guitar string,” von Fay-Siebenburgen explained. “If you pluck a guitar string, you will hear the music.”
In the cosmic equivalent of a guitar pick, so-called microflares at the base of loops could be plucking the magnetic loops and setting the sound waves in motion, the researchers speculate. While solar flares (http://www.space.com/solar-flares/) are the largest explosions in the solar system, microflares are a million times smaller but much more frequent; both phenomena are now thought to funnel heat into the Sun’s outer atmosphere.
The acoustic waves can be extremely energetic, reaching heights of tens of miles, and can travel at rapid speeds of 45,000 to 90,000 miles per hour. “These [explosions] release energy equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs,” von Fay-Siebenburgen said.
“These energies are plucking these magnetic strings or standing pipes, which set up standing waves—exactly the same waves you see on a guitar string,” von Fay-Siebenburgen told SPACE.com. The “sound booms” decay to silence in less than an hour, dissipating in the hot solar corona.
Solar physics
The musical finding could help explain why the Sun’s corona is so hot.
While the Sun’s surface is a steamy 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,538 degrees Celsius), plasma gas in the corona soars to more than 100 times hotter.
“How can the atmosphere above the surface of the Sun be hotter if nuclear fusion happens inside the Sun?” von Fay-Siebenburgen said. If astronomers can get a clearer picture of what’s going on inside these magnetic loops in the Sun’s atmosphere, they have a better chance of finding the answer.
Another recent study using images from Hinode’s telescope revealed twisted magnetic fields along the Sun’s surface (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070321_solarb_update.html), which store huge amounts of energy. The magnetic fields can snap like a rubber band; when they do, they might release energy that could heat up the corona or power solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections, the researchers say.

[Vitriol]

News Like This Makes Me Randy
http://www.esa.int/esaHS/SEMYNY6DWZE_research_0.html

http://www.esa.int/images/explor_mars200.jpg

ESA prepares for a human mission to Mars

Starting in spring next year, a crew of six will be sent on a 500 day simulated mission to Mars. In reality the crew will remain in a special isolation facility in Russia. To investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration mission, such as to Mars, ESA is looking for experiment proposals for research to be carried out during their stay.

During the simulated Mars mission, known as Mars500, the crew will be put through all kinds of scenarios as if they really were travelling to the Red Planet – including a launch, an outward journey of up to 250 days, arrival at Mars and, after an excursion to the surface, they will face the long journey home. Locked in the facility in Moscow, the crew will have tasks similar to those they would have on a real space mission. They will have to cope with simulated emergencies; they may even have real emergencies or illnesses. Communication delays of as much as 20 minutes each way will not make life any easier.


Instead of having a spacecraft as their home, the crew will live in a series of metal tanks. Using narrow connecting passages, they can move between a medical area, a research area, a crew compartment and a kitchen – an area of only 200m2. There is even a special tank representing the Mars descent vehicle for simulation of a stay on the Martian surface. ESA will participate in the study organised by the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP), and hopes to learn how to prepare for a real mission to Mars in the future. Following an Announcement of Opportunity, ESA is now looking for scientific experiments that can be integrated into the study.
In an interview ESA scientist Marc Heppener told us more about the Mars500 study.

Why is ESA participating in this study?

Our main interest is to look at the psychology of such a mission, knowing that you are enclosed for 500 days. As soon as there is a problem, the crew knows that they are on their own, and they have to solve it themselves. The only help available from the outside is through communications which may take up to 40 minutes. At the start of their mission the crew will be supplied with all the food they will have to live off for the duration of the study. They have to keep track of their consumables amongst themselves. This limited food supply could lead to additional tensions amongst the crew.
We want to look at the psychological effects of the situation on your mental well-being, and on your capabilities of performing certain tasks, even tasks critical to the mission. In a real mission, for example, whether you are able to land a vehicle on the surface of Mars, and are you able to do the science once you are there? How will group relations evolve? What are the potential dangers could we encounter? What kind of countermeasures can we invent that can prevent this? For us we can also learn about what types of personality we should select for a real mission.
Almost as important; we are keen to learn more about the medical procedures. How do you define a good medical environment so that you can treat diseases? What are the medicines that you want to take with you on the journey? There will be one person amongst the crew with real medical training. But of course that person can also fall ill. So you have to have all kinds of back-up scenarios. To think all of that through is really difficult. We think doing a full simulation will teach us a lot.



And what is ESA's involvement in carrying out this study?

We are still negotiating our contract with IBMP. The basic agreement is that we are a full partner in the project, which is largely funded by Roscosmos with an important involvement of the Russian Academy of Sciences. ESA will be involved at all levels. We will propose two volunteers out of the six people in the facility. We will also be involved in the full mission definition – all the steering boards, medical boards, the operations team who are from the outside communicating with the crew inside. That is also very important for us. We have experience in having astronauts flying on the International Space Station, but having astronauts travelling to Mars is a whole different ball game. And we will also be able to propose a full set of science proposals that we want to be executed.

So exactly what kind of experiments are you looking for?

We have a first draft list of the kind of science we are looking for. Such as crew composition, the influence of confinement on sleep, mood and mental health, and the effect of differences in personality, cultural background and motivation. But also on the medical side – physiological adaptation to an isolated environment, stress effects on health and well-being, changes in the immune system. These are just a few examples of what we came up with as first ideas – but we are open to all good scientific proposals. Following a peer review we will make our selection of the best science. The Russians will also make their selection, and then a steering committee integrates all the science projects into one final project.
I should add that in parallel to this Announcement of Opportunity we also send one out for research on the Concordia Station. There we cooperate with the French and Italian owners of this Antarctic research station. Concordia has a similar objective to the Mars study, although it is a very different environment. We hope actually that a lot of scientists will propose things in parallel to both studies because that would be interesting to compare.

The concept sounds a bit like a reality TV show – is that a fair comparison?

Well, yes and no! Honestly, I believe it is fair to look at it that way - you could even push the comparison pretty far. Both look at interaction between people in all kinds of different situations. If you want there is even a prize at the end – not in the simulation – but if it is a real mission you will be the first person to walk on the surface of Mars, which is huge prize! The comparison comes to a very sharp dead-end though - we will do a serious science experiment, and this is actually the only way we can prepare ourselves properly for a really long-duration spaceflight mission.
In the final set-up we will make sure that this is a good environment that it is safe and people are doing serious work also inside the facility. It is not entertainment – not at all. Having said that, part of a mission to Mars would also be the press interest it generates. We are still considering whether we should simulate that aspect.

What kind of people will you be looking for?

People who go through this selection will find they are looked at pretty much the same way an astronaut is selected. With our knowledge of astronaut selection and our involvement in the selection of subjects for bed rest studies - we have some basic knowledge about the type of people who would fit in this type of study. We will apply those criteria. Of course we do want to have a reasonable reflection of a real crew – there should be people with medical qualifications, there should be some engineering qualifications, some science – it should really reflect that type of crew you would put on a real mission to Mars. We might be a little bit less strict about physical capabilities.
The volunteers will need to be away from work and family for an extended period of time. You might be away from home for one and a half years, maybe even longer for the full duration of the study itself, but also for training before and for tests after the study: we will follow those people after they have returned. It might be that effects are still visible after a year or longer and we will want to include that in our data.

Will they be paid for taking part?

Yes, there will be some compensation although it will not be a big salary. Legally there are some rules about the amount you have to pay volunteers each day. We are still discussing this with our Russian colleagues.


When will you start the process of finding volunteers?

In mid-June we will call for volunteers – probably through an announcement on the web. Our own pre-selection will then be followed with a selection by the integrated IBMP/ESA team. We believe we are going to have the selection concluded by November this year.

[Vitriol]

Earth 2 Found! Now Let The Crisis On Infinite Earths Begin!
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,479374,00.html

http://www.thecomicsource.com/news/crisis2.jpg

Researchers May Have Found Earth's Twin


Astronomers may have found their holy grail. A team working out of Geneva say they have discovered a planet which may be capable of supporting life.

It has been 15 years since the discovery of the first planet outside our solar system. Now it seems astronomers may have accomplished what was, from the beginning, at the heart of their hunt for planets outside our solar system. They have discovered an Earth-like world that looks to be capable of supporting life.
Researchers working with Stéphane Udry and Michel Mayor from the Geneva Observatory discovered the planet in the orbit of the star Gliese 581. There are even indications that Gliese 581 -- one of the 100 stars closest to Earth, at a distance of only 20.5 light years -- has a system of at least three planets.
The team is not new to planet hunting. Mayor discovered the very first exoplanet -- as planets outside our solar system are called -- orbiting around a star similar to our sun in 1995. And two years ago, the same team discovered a planet the size of Neptune in the orbit of the red dwarf. That astronomers have now demonstrated the existence of an Earth-like planet is quite astonishing: Boulders whose weight and size roughly resemble those of Earth are tiny in comparison to the more than 200 exoplanets already known -- and therefore hard to detect. "I have been telling people that the first Earth-like planet would probably not be found for another 3-5 years," Sean Raymond a planet expert at the University of Colorado, told SPIEGEL ONLINE in an e-mail. He wrote of an "exciting discovery."
A temperate climate?
The newly discovered planet, says the research team, is about 50 percent larger than the Earth and about five times as heavy. "We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius (32 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit), and water would thus be liquid," says Udry. "Models predict that the planet should be either rocky -- like our Earth -- or covered with oceans," he adds.
Such basic data electrify scientists: The existence of liquid water at moderate temperatures is considered the most important precondition for the development of life. "Of course you would also need other elements such as carbon and nitrogen, but they are probably present," Thierry Forveille, a member of the research team working from Grenoble, France, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Then you also need a trigger mechanism for the development of life -- which no one knows anything about."
Xavier Delfosse, another French member of the research team, is already dreaming about sending a mission to the planet due to its potential for harboring life and because it lies relatively close to Earth. "On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X," he says.
Taking a closer look
Udry and his colleagues used the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Search) spectrograph, developed specifically for hunting planets, will peering through the 3.6 meter telescope of the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile. The Earth-like planet drew attention to itself by the slight wobbling motion it imposes on its host star -- an effect roughly comparable to the whirligig movement of a hammer thrower rotating around his own axis. The researchers will soon present their discovery in the professional journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
But whether they have really found a life-friendly world is still not 100 percent certain. Only a planet's light spectrum can reveal the chemical composition of its atmosphere -- and provide information on whether that atmosphere allows for life. But that requires observing an Earth-like planet directly, which is hardly possible using today's technology. Only the next generation of instruments -- such as the US James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), for example, or the recently launched European CoRoT (Convection Rotation and planetary Transits) satellite -- are said to be capable of such observations.
In other words, one should approach the discovery with some caution. "Our estimates on its size and weight are based on calculations by other research teams," Udry's co-author Forveille said. Lisa Kaltenegger from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, believes, on the other hand, that her colleagues may have scored a direct hit. "We have already simulated the atmospheres of planets of this size," the German researcher told SPIEGEL ONLINE. The result: "The planet could be habitable." But, she adds, the atmosphere simulations would have to be adjusted more precisely to the environment of red dwarf stars like Gliese 851.
Comfortably warm or red hot?
A mass of five Earths, one-and-a-half times our planet's size -- "it all sounds very reasonable," Ralph Neuhäuser from the German Center for Exoplanet Research in Jena also said. But, he added, it is important not to forget that the "wobble method" used by the Geneva scientists provides only minimum values. Furthermore, of the roughly 200 exoplanets detected by this method so far, only 17 have been confirmed by means of other measurement methods, Neuhäuser said.
Speculation about comfortable temperatures on the Earth-like planets also needs to be handled with care. It orbits its host star in just 13 Earth-days; its average distance from Gliese 581 is one fourteenth of the distance between the Earth and the Sun. "The reason temperatures on the planet are not much hotter than on the Earth is that Gliese 581 is substantially smaller and colder than our Sun," Forveille explains.
But this intimate closeness could also have another consequence: Perhaps the planet and its host star are "tidally locked" -- meaning that, despite their rotating motion, each of them always only presents one hemisphere to the other -- just like the Moon and the Earth. That would largely take care of moderate surface temperatures: One side of the planet would then probably be glowing hot, the other freezing cold.
Forveille does not want to speculate on whether the new planet does in fact orbit around its host star in this manner -- just as he does not want to speculate on the question of what that would mean for the boulder's habitability. "Habitable conditions could then still exist, at least, in the border regions between the two hemispheres," Forveille said. "Or the planet could have an atmosphere that distributes heat very effectively -- like Venus, for example."
But those are only conjectures, he adds. "We still don't know with final certainty whether liquid water actually exists on the planet," Forveille says. "While H2O is a molecule that is found very frequently in space, final certainty can be achieved only through direct observation."
-- written in collaboration with Stefan Schmitt

[Vitriol]

Coming soon: Inhalable Viagra. It's like a breath of chemically-induced erection (http://go.fark.com/cgi/fark/go.pl?i=2762418&l=http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Sex/story%3Fid%3D3077472%26page%3D1)

April 25, 2007— LONDON (Reuters) - British drug development firm Vectura Group Plc (Stock Symbol: VEC.L) said on Monday a phase two clinical study on its inhaled erectile dysfunction (ED) product had been successful.
"It is particularly encouraging that such performance has now been demonstrated in ED patients across two separate clinical studies," Alan Riley, the principal investigator of the study, said.
Vectura said in the second double-blind placebo-controlled trial of around 600 patients, VR004 improved erectile performance, with a rapid onset of action, and was well tolerated.
"Most interestingly, the company confirmed a rapid onset of action which was previously seen in its other study … We remain strong buyers of Vectura," Bridgewell Analyst Elizabeth Klein said.
Vectura plans to outlicense its sexual dysfunction program and Klein said, following these tests, she would expect it to be able to do so within the next year.
Shares in Vectura were up 1.4 percent at 88-1/2 pence in early trade, valuing the group at around 278 million pounds ($557.2 million).
ED, which affects more than 50 million men in the United States and European Union, is defined as the consistent inability to achieve and maintain an erection adequate for satisfactory sexual function.

[Vitriol]

<Insert Funny Headline Here>

Mouse brain simulated on computer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6600965.stm

http://www.scruffles.net/spielberg/movies/images/pinkyAndTheBrain-1.gif

US researchers have simulated half a virtual mouse brain on a supercomputer. The scientists ran a "cortical simulator" that was as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer.
In other smaller simulations the researchers say they have seen characteristics of thought patterns observed in real mouse brains.
Now the team is tuning the simulation to make it run faster and to make it more like a real mouse brain.
Life signs
Brain tissue presents a huge problem for simulation because of its complexity and the sheer number of potential interactions between the elements involved.
The three researchers, James Frye, Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan, and Dharmendra S Modha, laid out how they went about it in a very short research note entitled "Towards Real-Time, Mouse-Scale Cortical Simulations".
Half a real mouse brain is thought to have about eight million neurons each one of which can have up to 8,000 synapses, or connections, with other nerve fibres.
Modelling such a system, the trio wrote, puts "tremendous constraints on computation, communication and memory capacity of any computing platform".
The team, from the IBM Almaden Research Lab and the University of Nevada, ran the simulation on a BlueGene L supercomputer that had 4,096 processors, each one of which used 256MB of memory.
Using this machine the researchers created half a virtual mouse brain that had 8,000 neurons that had up to 6,300 synapses.
The vast complexity of the simulation meant that it was only run for ten seconds at a speed ten times slower than real life - the equivalent of one second in a real mouse brain.
On other smaller simulations the researchers said they had seen "biologically consistent dynamical properties" emerge as nerve impulses flowed through the virtual cortex.
In these other tests the team saw the groups of neurons form spontaneously into groups. They also saw nerves in the simulated synapses firing in a ways similar to the staggered, co-ordinated patterns seen in nature.
The researchers say that although the simulation shared some similarities with a mouse's mental make-up in terms of nerves and connections it lacked the structures seen in real mice brains.
Imposing such structures and getting the simulation to do useful work might be a much more difficult task than simply setting up the plumbing.
For future tests the team aims to speed up the simulation, make it more neurobiologically faithful, add structures seen in real mouse brains and make the responses of neurons and synapses more detailed.

[Vitriol]

Screw Earth 2, Pluto Is Pretty Awesome
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/02/MNGTCPJ95C1.DTL

A spacecraft flying toward the dwarf planet Pluto has harvested an extraordinary crop of new science data and images as it flew past giant Jupiter and is now on a direct course toward its goal 3 billion miles from Earth.
Scientists staffing the New Horizons mission to Pluto spoke Tuesday of their "amazing discoveries" and their "incredible luck" that instruments aboard the speeding craft were capturing and sending back so many unsuspected details of the Jovian neighborhood.
The instruments revealed unexpected details on Jupiter's gaseous surface of a violent and relatively new storm system 10 miles across that they call the "Little Red Spot," where winds are blowing at 450 mph. The storm is located just south of Jupiter's famed "giant red spot" that has been raging on Jupiter for at least 300 years.
Also sent back were images of a huge plume of volcanic dust rising 200 miles high from a giant volcano erupting near the north pole of the Jovian moon called Io. And as the spacecraft took pictures of Io in the darkness of Jupiter's shadow, it captured an entire panoply of brilliantly glowing red hot lava vents from scores of other volcanoes on what scientists believe is by far the most dynamic object in the entire solar system.
"It's reminiscent of Van Gogh's 'Starry Night,' " said Jeffrey M. Moore of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, "but this is the real deal!"
The New Horizons images also revealed in detail a series of three well-defined, charcoal-black rings around the planet -- not the gossamer rings of Saturn, but belts of rocks and boulders held in position by the gravity of two tiny moonlets and probably colored by volcanic dust blown toward them from Io. Within the rings, the instruments found mysterious fast-forming and fast-vanishing new clumps of sandy matter that may be the product of colliding comets, the scientists said.
They discussed the latest findings from New Horizons during a media briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington that was Webcast nationally for reporters. The images the spacecraft sent back to Earth were taken in February during the spacecraft's close flyby of Jupiter and released Tuesday. The video images are not available on the Web because of bandwidth issues, NASA officials said.
Jupiter has an immensely powerful magnetic field on a scale far larger than Earth's, and its field of charged particles carries its influence for millions of miles beyond it in a long region known as its "magnetotail." New Horizons is now flying through the center of the magnetotail and gathering more details on its intense flux of radiation, something that no other spacecraft has ever done.
The spacecraft was launched less than 15 months ago, and it flew past Jupiter to get a boost from that massive planet's gravity -- it increased its speed relative to the sun from 51,000 to 60,000 mph, enough velocity to reach Pluto's neighborhood by July 2015 without any extra propulsion on its own.
Pluto, recently downgraded from the status of a full-size planet by the International Astronomical Union, is a most tempting target, for its full details cannot be made out by even the most powerful telescopes on Earth. New Horizons will for the first time be able to map Pluto's surface, determine its composition and study its three moons, Charon, Nix and Hydra.
Even then the New Horizons mission will not be entirely over, for its course is set to send it into the icy region far beyond Pluto known as the Kuiper Belt, the nursery of comets where hundreds of unknown KBOs -- Kuiper Belt Objects -- jostle each other, some as large as the largest asteroids and some no bigger than pebbles.
"It's a scientific wonderland," said S. Alan Stern, NASA's associate administrator who is also the chief scientist for the New Horizons mission. "There are hundreds of dwarf planets, there's exotic chemistry, and there's a chance for us to understand the long bombardment history of the solar system and its formation."
If it isn't battered to smithereens by those KBOs, New Horizons will examine at least two of the larger ones, gleaning details of what are now only the most mysterious objects of all in the outer solar system.

[Vitriol]

Scientists develop powerful new crimefighting tool that "freezes" the memory of crime scenes in the minds of potential witnesses. Philip K. Dick predicted this
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=723142007

SCIENTISTS at a Scottish university have developed a powerful new crimefighting tool that "freezes" the memory of crime scenes in the minds of potential witnesses, it was revealed yesterday.
The research team, led by scientists at Dundee's Abertay University and Portsmouth University, has used the latest cognitive psychology techniques to enable eye witnesses to record their memories before any potentially crucial information is forgotten.

The system uses a self-administered interview (SAI) form which allows witnesses to capture images and details of crime scenes and perpetrators in their minds - particularly small and seemingly insignificant details that could turn out to be crucial in solving cases.
Tests have shown that witnesses using the form were 42 per cent more accurate than other witnesses who were simply asked to report as much as they could remember.
And it is hoped that the new technique will enable detectives to gather vital information from members of the public who are not originally regarded as crucial witnesses and who might only be interviewed in detail, days after a crime has been committed.
The new "report and recall tool" has been developed by Dr Fiona Gabbert, a psychologist at Abertay University, and her colleague Dr Lorraine Hope from Portsmouth, with the aid of funding from the British Academy.
Dr Gabbert said the details of eyewitness evidence decreased over time. And the longer the gap between witnessing an event and fully recalling it under formal interview conditions, the less accurate and less complete a witness report was likely to be.
She continued: "Decades of research in cognitive psychology demonstrate that memory decay, or forgetting, occurs rapidly at first. In a witnessing situation, this forgetting will occur naturally and within hours of the incident."
At a normal crime scene where there are a number of witnesses, only those whom the police regard as key witnesses are normally interviewed straight. Other witnesses may not be interviewed for days or even weeks.
But the new form, developed by the team, effectively enables witnesses to interview themselves and to record detail immediately after an event.
Dr Gabbert said: "The forensic implications of these findings for current police practice are considerable.
"Research has proven that recalling an event before any substantial forgetting or memory loss has taken place means that the way the event is represented in memory is strengthened, making it easier to recall in future.
"In this way, an early recall attempt serves to protect or 'freeze' the memory against the course of natural forgetting."
Her colleague, Dr Hope, added: "The SAI is not an alternative to a subsequent full police interview. It is a tool to protect witness memory at the earliest possible juncture."
The researchers are now planning a field study involving actual crime scenes.
Putting crime witnesses in the picture

THE "memory freeze" tool is based on the cognitive interview technique, which is aimed at getting witnesses to put themselves "back in the moment" of a crime.
The self-administered interview form asks witnesses to picture in their mind where they were and what they were thinking and feeling at the time they saw a particular event and then to record the details.
Witnesses are encouraged to draw a sketch and not to leave out any information they regard as trivial.
The form also includes prompts to help witnesses describe a perpetrator, including ethnic appearance, complexion, clothing and accent.

[Vitriol]

Wha!?!

Ministers bow to hybrid pressure
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6661717.stm

Ministers have bowed to pressure to allow the creation of human animal hybrid embryos for research. When the ban was proposed last year there were fears among scientists it would hamper medical breakthroughs.
Hybrid embryos will only be allowed for research into serious disease and scientists will require a licence.
Scientists welcomed the proposals put forward in the draft fertility bill, but opponents questioned the ethics of using human cells in this way.
Hybrids
Public Health Minister Caroline Flint denied that the government had staged a climbdown, saying they had always wanted to "leave the door open" for this type of research to be allowed on a case-by-case basis.
She said scientists had put forward more evidence about the importance of using hybrid embryos.


"We saw this was an area where these could be used for scientific benefit."
The draft bill allows the creation of human embryos that have been physically mixed with one or more animal cells. However, true animal-animal hybrids, made by the fusion of sperm and eggs, remain outlawed.
And in all cases it would be illegal to allow embryos to grow for more than 14 days or be implanted into a womb.
Scientists say their work could help find cures for devastating diseases, such as Alzheimer's.
Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the division of Developmental Genetics at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research, said: "This research has many potential benefits for the understanding of disease and for treatments and should not be feared."

But Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, disagreed, saying: "It is appalling that the government has bowed to pressure from the random collection of self-interested scientists and change its prohibitive stance.
"This is a highly controversial and terrifying proposal, which has little justification in science and even less in ethics.
"Endorsement by the UK government will elicit horror in Europe and right across the wider world."

The government signalled its intentions in December's White Paper, which contained 25 proposals to overhaul the current laws.
Ministers felt the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 needed to be updated as science has moved on significantly.
The draft bill also proposes scrapping the requirement for clinics to consider the need for a father when deciding on treatment.
This means clinics will no longer be able to deny treatment to lesbians and single mothers out of hand.
Another proposal is to merge the regulatory bodies the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Human Tissue Authority to form a single regulatory body called RATE.
The British Medical Association, however, believes this is a bad idea.
It says the complex and sensitive issues that surround reproduction and embryo research are very different from those relating to the retention and use of organs and tissues after death and, therefore, would be too much for one new body to oversee.

[Vitriol]

Scientists 123 develop 123 new 123 brain 123 surgery 123 to 123 help 123 people 123 with 123 OCD 123
http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=67665&provider=gnews

Experimental brain surgery helping those with mental disorder.
Jennifer Shortridge never thought she'd escape the prison of her mind.

"I didn't have a life." Jennifer says.
Her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD was so severe she couldn't survive without stringent rituals.

" I had to just make sure everything was arranged and I never knew why. I never knew what was wrong with me. I just knew that that's what I had to do that just made me feel right." Jennifer said.

She had many OCD habits, both mental and physical. They included always repeating a set of numbers during any task.

- Tying her shoes over and over until they "felt" right.

- Washing her hands in a ritualistic fashion a hundred times a day.

- Checking locks on doors and windows that included opening and closing them hundreds of times.

- Repeatedly putting a seatbelt on and off until it felt right.

- Tapping her fingers

- Writing the same word over and over.

And many others. "It was like it was never ending it would never stop." It was also exhausting.

Jennifer's OCD began around age 5 and continued for 22 years. Anxiety and stress would trigger the behavior. At one point, Jennifer was committed to a mental hospital that specialized in treating OCD patients. But the treatments and medication didn't work for her.

Then Jennifer learned of an experimental brain surgery that used Deep Brain Stimulation or DBS to treat OCD.

"I was at the point where I had nowhere else to go. I had nowhere else to turn. I was losing everything. I was ready to dig my own grave." Jennifer said.

This past January Jennifer went to Shands Hospital in Florida. The Unversity of Florida McKnight Brain Institute is one of few hospitals that was part of the DBS for OCD experiment.

Doctors implanted electrodes into the section of Jennifer's brain that caused her OCD. The electrodes are connected to two battery packs now located on either side of her chest.

Deep Brain Stimulation is like a pacemaker for the brain. Electrical impulses modify brain activity.

The result was instant and amazing.

"I feel like I'm almost a new person. I feel like I grew up overnight."

DBS did not cure her OCD. But it helps Jennifer control her behavior. She can now stop herself from compulsive activity, like handwashing and shoe tying. When she gets in the car, she uses the radio as a distraction, clicks her seatbelt and goes. At first Jennifer didn't notice her behavior was changing.

"I didn't even realize I'd stopped doing the rituals."

Jennifer travels to Florida once a month for research examinations. She's part of a two and a half year trial in which the Cleveland Clinic is also participating. The Clinic is one of the pioneering centers for DBS and is also seeing if it can be useful in treating severe cases of depression.

The FDA is considering approving DBS for OCD as a humanitarian device for people in extreme cases who have failed all other medical treatment.

For people like Jennifer it may be the only bridge to breaking free.

"I would say this surgery saved my life."

DBS is already used to treat Parkinson's disease, dystonia and epilepsy. Cleveland Clinic physicians reported last year that their experimental OCD patients were having promising outcomes. But it's unknown how long the treatment may last.

[Darkshines]

Fishermen Eat Alien Fish:
Russian fishermen catch squeaking alien and eat it


http://english.pravda.ru/img/idb/alien-monster.jpg

Front page (http://english.pravda.ru/) / Science (http://english.pravda.ru/science/) / Mysteries (http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/)

07.02.2007 http://english.pravda.ru/img/ar_gr.gifSource:
Village residents from the Rostov region of Russia caught a weird creature (http://english.pravda.ru/filing/creature/) two weeks ago after a strong storm in the Sea of Azov. The shark-looking creature was producing strange squeaky sounds. The fishermen originally believed that they had caught an alien and decided to film the monster (http://english.pravda.ru/filing/monster/) with the help of a cell phone camera. The footage clearly shows the creatures’ head, body and long tail. The bizarre catch was weighing almost 100 kilograms, the Komsomolskaya Pravda reports.

However, ufologists and scientists were greatly disappointed when they found out that the fishermen had eaten the monster. They said that they were not scared of the creature so they decided to use it as food. One of the men said that it was the most delicious dish he had ever eaten.
Click here to see the video of the alien sea monster (http://www.fark.ru/media/video/prikols6/i1645)
Chairman of the Anomalous Phenomena Service, Andrei Gorodovoi, stated that the creature, which he could see on the short video, was an anomalous (http://english.pravda.ru/filing/anomalous/) being. However, it could hardly be described as an extraterrestrial (http://english.pravda.ru/filing/extraterrestrial/) form of life, he added. Gorodovoi rejected the version about mermaids too. “There are many legends about mermaids living in the Sea of Azov. Nevertheless, specialists of the Service for Anomalous Phenomena have never confirmed those fairytales. On the other hand, we do not deny the possibility of other forms of life in the Sea of Azov,” the ufologist sad.
A spokesman for the Rostov-based zoo, Alexander Lipkovich, contacted local ichthyologists and asked their opinion about the Azov alien. “They said that the fish bears resemblance to a sturgeon. It was an extremely interesting individual. I have never seen anything like this before in my whole life,” the specialist said.
Translated by Dmitry Sudakov
Pravda.ru

[Crandyman]

why are is there always so many weird stories about fish? I'm beginning to think they are the product of Satan--or Vonnegut--but some would say they are one in the same

[vonnegut]

why are is there always so many wierd stories about fish? I'm beginning to think they are the product of Satan--or Vonnegut--but some would say they are one in the same

Don't make me summon the cod to devour you, Crandy.