May 2012
1 post
October 2011
2 posts
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Double Eruption, Coronal Mass Ejection - October...
On October 1st around 10:17 UT, widely-spaced sunspots 1302 and 1305 erupted in quick succession, revealing a long-distance entanglement which was not obvious before. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded the double blast:
Since it was launched in 2010, SDO has observed many “entangled eruptions.” Active regions far apart but linked by magnetic fields can explode...
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10 Major Health Benefits Of Marijuana
via damnlol.com
September 2011
18 posts
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New Life-Forms Found at Bottom of Dead Sea
Middle Eastern salt lake a “fantastic hot spot for life,” scientist says.
A diver in the Dead Sea holds a rock sporting a thick microbial mat.
Photograph courtesy Christian Lott, Hydra Institute
Christine Dell’Amore / National Geographic News / Published September 28, 2011
Dozens of giant craters spewing fresh water and brimming with bacteria have been found at the...
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The Massive Vertical Structures Towering Above...
This one is a 10 on the Galaxy wow meter: In images made possible only as Saturn nears equinox, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has uncovered for the first time towering vertical structures in the planet’s otherwise flat rings that are attributable to the gravitational effects of a small nearby moon.
The search for material extending well above and below Saturn’s ring plane has been...
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Cosmic anti-matter enigma eyed in new CERN project
By Robert Evans
GENEVA | Wed Sep 28, 2011 2:16pm EDT
(Reuters) - Unraveling one of the great enigmas of the visible universe, why it is made up largely of matter, will be the target of a ground-breaking research project kicked off on Wednesday at a meeting of leading physicists from eight countries.
More precisely, the program will aim to find why there is so little left of the...
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Space Radiation Expected to Rise for Airline...
by Charles Q. Choi, SPACE.com Contributor
Date: 27 September 2011
SUN Whips Out Massive Flare CREDIT: NASA
Radiation hazards are likely to increase for air travelers and spacefarers in coming years due to changes in solar activity, researchers say.
Cosmic rays from deep space and high-energy particles from the sun can be hazardous to astronauts and also can expose airline crews and passengers...
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NASA's Falling UARS Satellite Explained -...
by Karl Tate, SPACE.com Contributor
Date: 23 September 2011
Via SPACE.com
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The Sunspots That Kicked Off This Week's Solar...
By Clay Dillow Posted 09.27.2011 at 3:55 pm
AR1302 Alan Friedman via Bad Astronomy
That gigantic solar flare that lashed out toward Earth on Saturday is “the geomagnetic storm that just won’t go away,” the NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, Colo., said via its Facebook page today. And that appears to be true. Active Region 1302, pictured above,...
Six CMEs in 24 Hours
This movie from the SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) shows the sun’s atmosphere – the corona – from September 17 to September 20. Numerous CMEs blasted off the sun during this period. Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO › Play/Download video › Download still
The sun let loose with at least six coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — solar phenomena that can send solar particles into space and...
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Do you really have a sexual fetish?
PSYCHOLOGY
Ever since the term “sexual fetish” was first used over a century ago, there’s been a raging scientific debate over what it means. Why does one person get off on shoes, while another gets off on certain large body parts? Are these erotic feelings signs of illness, or simply preferences that are as inexplicable and harmless as liking spaghetti more than sausage?
...
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7 Incredible NASA Corn Mazes: Cool Crop Circles...
by NANCY ATKINSON on SEPTEMBER 13, 2011
An amazing corn maze with a NASA theme, at Cornbelly’s in Lehi, Utah, one of seven around the US in 2011. Image courtesty of The MAiZE Inc.
Imagine looking out your airplane window (or alien spacecraft portal) and seeing a giant Mars Exploration Rover or an astronaut a half-kilometer long etched in …. a corn field? That’s exactly what is happening...
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Are We Entering the 7th Stage of Evolution on...
Milan Ćirković of the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, and one of the world’s leading authorities on astrobiology and the evolution of galaxies and baryonic dark matter, has outlined along with philosopher Robert Bradbury the six great mega-trajectories of the biological evolution on Earth: 1. From the origin of life to the ”Last Common Ancestor” 2. Prokaryote diversification...
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Everyone has a 9/11 story. This one is mine.
A morning like any other..
I stumble down the stairs and make my coffee. I settle in to my office chair, jump in a local chatroom to say goodmorning to my friends. When I log on, the chat room in uncharacteristically empty. One of the few online saw me come on and without even saying hello, asked if I had turned on a TV yet. I hadn’t, so I did.
There was no way I could have been...
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The Evolution of 'Star Trek'
Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration
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Scientists unveil a newly-discovered, ancient...
HUMAN EVOLUTION
This skull belonged to Australopithecus sediba, a new hominin species recently discovered in South Africa. The two million year old fossils are some of the most complete ever discovered, and they could rewrite our evolutionary family tree.
As fossil finds go, the Australopithecus sediba find is a downright bonanza. Paleontologists first discovered the hominin at the Malapa site...
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HOW TO MAKE LOVE LIKE A CAVEMAN
Daniel Honan on September 3, 2011
If asked to imagine what prehistoric human sex was like, according to psychologist Christopher Ryan, most of us would conjure “the hackneyed image of the caveman, dragging a dazed woman by her hair with one hand, a club in the other…” Ryan says this image is mistaken in every detail. A much more likely picture of how it went down in...
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'Stem Cell Zoo' May Aid Endangered Species
Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer Date: 04 September 2011 Time: 02:09 PM ET
Scripps Research scientists produce first stem cells from endangered species. Cells could make it possible to improve reproduction and genetic diversity for some species, possibly saving them from extinction, or to bolster the health of endangered animals in captivity. CREDIT: San Diego Zoo
Stem cells are...
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A rainbow cloud shimmers over Ethiopia
New Scientist. Image: Esther Havens.
Here’s a rare look at a rainbow over the skies of Ethiopia. Find out how this cloud — known as as “pileus cloud” — brightens the atmosphere.
Pileus clouds are formed over the towers of cumulus clouds. The cumulus clouds puff up through convection, or the upwards motion of moist air in one section. The moisture in the air condenses and...
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Giant Chunk of Greenland Ice Set to Break Away
Sep 1, 2011 5:39 PM ET
By Andrea Mustain, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer
In 2010, the Manhattan-sized Petermann glacier iceberg enters the Nares Strait: Credit: European Space Agency.
An ice shelf is poised to break off from a Greenland glacier and float out to sea as an island twice the size of Manhattan, scientists say.
“I don’t know exactly when,” Jason Box, a...
August 2011
17 posts
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Closest Supernova in 25 Years Is a 'Cosmic...
SPACE.com Staff
Date: 26 August 2011 Time: 10:23 AM ET
The arrow marks PTF 11kly in images taken on the Palomar 48-inch telescope over the nights of, from left to right, Aug. 22, 23 and 24. The supernova wasn’t there Aug. 22, was discovered Aug. 23, and brightened considerably by Aug. 24. CREDIT: Peter Nugent and the Palomar Transient Factory View full size image
Astronomers have...
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Alien Planet Made of Diamond Discovered
by Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com Contributor
Date: 25 August 2011 Time: 02:01 PM ET
This illustration shows the alien planet PSR J1719-1438, where ultra-high pressures caused carbon to crystallize in the remnant of a dead star, forming the extrasolar world. The resulting planet is made of diamond and orbits a dense pulsing star with a radius smaller than that of our sun. CREDIT: Swinburne...
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New candidates for oldest fossils
Remains in 3.4-billion-year-old rocks hint at when cellular life arose, and how it powered itself.
Lee Sweetlove
Researchers have found what could be the oldest microbial fossils yet documented. The traces, discovered in 3.4-billion-year-old Australian rocks, might help to resolve the question of when cellular life arose, and how it produced energy.
Martin Brasier, a palaeobiologist at the...
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Spectacular sand pit found on Mars!
Check. This. Out: a perfectly-formed collapse pit on Mars that leads to an underground cavern!
This was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in July 2011. See the hole in the bottom? You can tell from the lighting that this is an underground opening to a cavern — a skylight. Quite a few of these have been found on Mars, actually. We see them on Earth and even on the Moon. Given the...
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Sunspot-Spotting Method May Improve Solar Storm...
by Denise Chow, SPACE.com Staff Writer
Date: 18 August 2011
A photo of a sunspot taken in May 2010, with Earth shown to scale. The image has been colorized for aesthetic reasons. This image with 0.1 arcsecond resolution from the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope represents the limit of what is currently possible in terms of spatial resolution. CREDIT: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, V.M.J....
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Antarctica Ice Map Is Game Changer For Glaciology
Image courtesy Eric Rignot, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and University of California Irvine
The first complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica will help scientists to track future sea-level increases, according to the team behind the project.
NASA-funded researchers this week revealed the map, which shows glaciers flowing thousands of miles from the continent’s...
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Room with an intergalactic view: Russian firm...
By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE
Tiring of the annual two-week break in a Med hot spot? Fed up with overcrowded resorts with no room to move?
Then how about a real get-away-from-it-all holiday with plenty of space – in space?
Russia yesterday announced plans for a hotel in orbit 217 miles up which would house seven guests in four cabins and have huge windows for views of the Earth turning below.
...
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Space junk could be tackled by housekeeping...
By Jason PalmerScience and technology reporter, BBC News
Scientists have proposed a viable solution to the growing problem of space junk.
The idea involves launching a satellite to rendezvous with the largest space debris, such as spent rocket bodies.
The satellite would then affix a propellant kit, driving the debris to its doom in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The authors claim the...
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Computer Chip-Sized Spacecraft Will Explore Space...
by Peter Murray August 15th, 2011
We knew to expect a paradigm shift with the end of the space shuttle program, but this is ridiculous. Mason Peck and his group of forward-thinking engineers are taking NASA’s slogan of Faster, Better, Cheaper to the extreme. Their spacecraft will cut down travel time to Alpha Centauri from thousands of years to just a few hundred, and instead of the $1.7...
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New drug could cure nearly any viral infection
Anne Trafton, MIT News Office August 10, 2011
Researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Lab have developed technology that may someday cure the common cold, influenza and other ailments.
Most bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotics such as penicillin, discovered decades ago. However, such drugs are useless against viral infections, including influenza, the common cold, and deadly hemorrhagic...
Success! Functioning Anal Sphincter Grown in a...
Eyes, sperm, you name it: these days, chances are someone’s cooking it up on a little slab of agar and gearing up to graft/sew/implant it in anything that comes near. Today’s body part is the anal sphincter, that handy little ring of muscle that maintains the separation between your insides and your outsides. Researchers grew them from cells, implanted them in mice, and compared the new...
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Strange alien planet is impossibly black
TrES-2b is a Jupiter-sized planet located about 750 light-years from Earth. It reflects just 1% of the sunlight that reaches it, making it essentially one vast black sphere. In fact, it’s darker than just about any substance found on Earth. We’ve never observed anything remotely like this before.
The key concept here is albedo, also known as the reflection coefficient, which...
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Success! The SETI Telescope Array will soon be...
Full size
Let the search for extraterrestrial life resume!
Back in April, the SETI Allen Telescope Array was shut down due to lack of funding. Now, the institute’s search for extraterrestrial life is set to resume, thanks in no small part to more than $200,000 in donations from thousands of fans.
“We’re not completely out of the woods yet, but everybody’s smiling...
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Solar Storms Building Toward Peak in 2013, NASA...
by Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 09 August 2011 Time: 05:06 PM ET
This image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the X6.9 solar flare of Aug. 9, 2011 near the western limb (right edge) of the sun. CREDIT: NASA/SDO/Weather.com View full size image
Solar flares like the huge one that erupted on the sun early today (Aug. 9) will only become more common as our sun nears...
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DNA components confirmed to come from space
Posted on August 9, 2011 - 04:29 by Emma Woollacott
The building blocks of DNA have been arriving here from meteorites in greater quantity than previously thought, lending weight to the idea that the seeds of life on Earth originated in space.
While certain components of DNA were first found in meteorites in the 1960s, scientists weren’t able to rule out the possibility that they...
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First observational test of the ‘multiverse’
The signatures of a bubble collision at various stages in the analysis pipeline. A collision (top left) induces a temperature modulation in the CMB temperature map (top right). The ‘blob’ associated with the collision is identified by a large needlet response (bottom left), and the presence of an edge is highlighted by a large response from the edge detection algorithm (bottom...
July 2011
21 posts
4 tags
Discovery of first Trojan asteroid found in...
Studying images compiled by NASA, an astronomer from The University of Western Ontario has proved the existence of the first Trojan asteroid found to share Earth’s orbit. The findings of Paul Wiegert and his colleagues at Athabasca University and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope were published today as the cover story for the July 28 issue of distinguished journal, Nature.
A Trojan asteroid...
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Ancient black hole contains 100,000 Suns worth of...
A distant, hyper-energetic black hole known as a quasar contains the largest reserve of water in the known universe, equivalent to 140 trillion times the water on Earth. The solution to our water crisis is only 12 billion light-years away!
Technically speaking, quasars occur when giant black holes suck in huge amounts of gas and dust, spewing back out equally immense amounts of energy. This...
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Mystery Solved: Water on Saturn Comes From Icy...
by Denise Chow, SPACE.com Staff Writer
Date: 26 July 2011 Time: 01:36 PM ET
At least four distinct plumes of water ice spew out from the south polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 25, 2009. CREDIT: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute View full size image
An icy moon around Saturn is...
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Owl Print
Photo: Sally Arnold/ZUMA Press
An imprint of an owl is seen on a window where a bird apparently crashed in Kendal, England, on July 12. The homeowner found no sign of the owl and assumed the bird flew off — startled but unharmed. Experts say the white mark left on the glass are from the bird’s powder down, a part of a bird’s feathery coat composed of fine dust particles of keratin....
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Tonight, a NASA Probe Will Orbit Massive Belt...
By Rebecca Boyle
Approaching Vesta NASA’s Dawn spacecraft snapped this photo July 9, 2011, from about 26,000 miles away. Dawn is set to enter orbit around this protoplanet asteroid later tonight. NASA
Enough with the lasts at NASA these days — here’s a first for you. The Dawn spacecraft is about to become the first probe to orbit a main-belt asteroid.
After speeding through the solar...
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Propaganda posters of Soviet space program...
Glory to the Fatherland of Heroes!
Glory to the workers of Soviet science and technology!
Let there be peace!
We will open the distant worlds!
October opened the road to space!
Soviet means excellent!
In the name of peace and progress!
Glory to the conquerors of the universe!
To the glory of communism!
Into the space!
Glory to the Fatherland of Heroes!
With...
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Propaganda posters of Soviet space program...
Several interesting historical posters.
Fatherland! You lighted the star of progress and peace. Glory to the science, glory to the labor! Glory to the Soviet regime!
I am happy - this is my work joining the work of my republic
In the name of peace
We were born to make the fairy tale come true!
Conquer the space!
The way for man is open!
Sons of October - Pioneers of the...
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Computer teaches itself English so that it can...
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Alasdair Wilkins — Computers may be naturally fluent in binary, but how might they fare with learning human languages? Computers were tested by playing the gameCivilization. Random chance let them win about half the time…but then they started reading the instruction manual.
MIT researchers gave their AI this particular challenge because winning a game...
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The human genome contains a million years worth of...
Alasdair Wilkins — Our genes don’t just help determine who we are — they also preserve an incredibly ancient record of who our ancestors were. Our genomes can actually reveal human population sizes dating all the way back to before humans even existed.
Richard Durbin of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Heng Li of the Broad Institute examined the handful of complete human genome...
