Humanity Responds to 'Alien' Wow Signal, 35 Years Later
Just in case any aliens out there in the universe are listening, more than 10,000 Twitter messages, plus videos from celebrities such as comedian Stephen Colbert, have been beamed into space as a big "Hello!" from Earth.
The messages are intended as a response to what's called the Wow! signal, an intriguing radio signal detected on Aug. 15, 1977 that some thought was a call from extraterrestrials. The 72-second transmission was picked up by the Big Ear radio observatory at Ohio State University, coming from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. |  |
How Your Brain Cleans Itself—Mystery Solved?
Talk about brainwashing—a newfound plumbing system, identified in mice, likely helps the brain empty its waste, a new study says. Because mouse biology is similar to ours, the same findings should apply to people too, experts say.
Thanks to a blood-brain barrier—a natural wall that protects the brain tissue—the organ never touches blood, thus protecting it from microbes, viruses, and other pathogens. To get nutrients to brain tissue and remove its waste, the brain makes a liquid called cerebrospinal fluid. But exactly how the fluid removes gunk generated by brain cells wasn't certain until now. |  |
Genetically engineering 'ethical' babies is a moral obligation, says Oxford professor
Professor Julian Savulescu said that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a "moral obligation" as it makes them grow up into "ethically better children".
The expert in practical ethics said that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children as it meant they were then less likely to "harm themselves and others". The academic, who is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, made his comments in an article in the latest edition of Reader's Digest. |  |
Sun is the most perfect sphere ever observed in nature
The sun is the most perfectly round natural object known in the universe, say scientists who have conducted precise measurements of its dimensions.
As a spinning ball of gas, astronomers had always expected our nearest star to bulge slightly at its equator, making it very slightly flying-saucer shaped. The planet Jupiter demonstrates this effect well. Its high rate of spin - once every 10 hours - means that it is almost 7% wider across its equator than the distance from pole to pole. |  |
Neanderthals did not interbreed with humans, scientists find
Cambridge University researchers concluded that the DNA similarities were unlikely to be the result of human-Neanderthal sex during their 15,000-year coexistence in Europe.
People living outside Africa share as much as four per cent of their DNA with Neanderthals, a cave-dwelling species with muscular short arms and legs and a brain slightly larger than ours. The Cambridge researchers examined demographic patterns suggesting that humans were far from intimate with the species they displaced in Europe almost 40,000 years ago. |  |
Maldives floating island masterplan tests the waters
From tourist paradise to devastation to sustainable future, an imaginative path toward rebirth is possible for global coastal populations at risk of being wiped out by rising sea levels. That path lies in artificial floating islands. The Maldives government is in a joint venture with the architectural firm Dutch Docklands International for the world’s largest artificial floating-island project. The present phase will focus on tourism. In turn super-rich globetrotters will enjoy the high end living activities they are accustomed to without having to fear being suddenly wrapped around a pole and dying.
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Hunt Is On for Gravity Waves in Space-Time
Because black holes are impossible to see, one of scientists' best hopes to study them is to look for the ripples in space-time, called gravitational waves, that they are thought to create.
Gravitational waves would be distortions propagating through space and time caused by violent events such as the collision of two black holes. They were first predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity; however, scientists have yet to find one. That could change when the latest version of a gravitational wave-hunting facility gets up and running. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) is actually a pair of observatories, in Louisiana and Washington state, that began operating in 2002. Newly sensitized detectors are being added to both. |  |
Tibetan Plateau May Be Older Than Thought
The rise of one of the highest, flattest places on Earth, the Tibetan Plateau in China's Sichuan province, began much earlier than thought, according to a new study.
"Our study suggests that high topography began to develop as early as 30 million years ago, and perhaps was present even earlier," Penn State researcher Eric Kirby said in a statement. Most researchers believe the high mountains in eastern Tibet developed during the past 10 million to 15 million years as deep crust beneath the centralTibetan Plateau flowed to the surface, thickening the Earth's crust and causing the area to rise, Kirby said. But Kirby and his colleagues used radioactive dating to find the uplift began twice as early. |  |
Wreckage of doomed explorer's famed ship Terra Nova located
A research vessel testing its underwater mapping equipment recently made a remarkable discovery: the wreck of the Terra Nova, the famed ship that took British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on his fateful voyage to Antarctica a century ago.
The ship was discovered off the coast of Greenland on July 11. A crew aboard the Falkor, a research vessel operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute (as in Eric Schmidt of Google fame), was testing the ship's acoustic sonar, when they spotted something unusual emerging from the seafloor data — a long, narrow shape that resembled a ship's hull. |  |
The Secret Tomb of China's 1st Emperor: Will We Ever See Inside?
Buried deep under a hill in central China, surrounded by an underground moat of poisonous mercury, lies an entombed emperor who's been undisturbed for more than two millennia.
The tomb holds the secrets of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who died on Sept. 10, 210 B.C., after conquering six warring states to create the first unified nation of China. The answers to a number of historical mysteries may lie buried inside that tomb, but whether modern people will ever see inside this mausoleum depends not just on the Chinese government, but on science. |  |
How an Ancient Stone Seal May Point to Samson's Famous Lion Fight
It's a story many Jews and Christians have known since childhood. Something shared in Synagogue or Sunday School. A young man of Israel, Samson, is attacked by a lion and experiences a miraculous gifting of strength. He's then able to kill the creature with his bare hands. His life is saved. As the Old Testament has it:
"Then Samson ... came to the vineyards of Timnath: and, behold, a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him ... he tore the lion apart as he would have a young goat" (Judges 14:5-6).
It's all long ago and far away, right? The stuff of legend. Then again, maybe not.
"Then Samson ... came to the vineyards of Timnath: and, behold, a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him ... he tore the lion apart as he would have a young goat" (Judges 14:5-6).
It's all long ago and far away, right? The stuff of legend. Then again, maybe not.
PayPal Founder Backs Synthetic Meat Printing Company
The Thiel Foundation has made a six-figure grant to a series of biotechnology startups, including a company that wants to 3-D-print meat.
Modern Meadow is a Missouri-based startup that believes 3-D printing could help to take some of the environmental cost out of producing a hamburger. He said: “If you look at the resource intensity of everything that goes into a hamburger, it is an environmental train wreck.” The company claims that by carefully layering mixtures of cells of different types in a specific structure, in-vitro meat production becomes feasible. It’s set a short-term goal of printing a sliver of meat around two centimeters by one centimeter, and less than half a millimeter thick, which is edible. |  |
NASA Pilots Capture Perseid Meteor Dust at 65,000 Feet
Many astronomy fans are focused on the Perseid meteor showers this week and pilots at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center are no different. But rather than waiting for nightfall and simply watching the streaks of light across the sky, the pilots are flying a Cold War-era spy plane on several missions this week to capture samples of the cosmic dust as it settles through the stratosphere.
The airplane is a civilian version of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane known as an ER-2 (Earth Resources). The aircraft have been used by NASA as a high-altitude science platform for decades, which is actually one of the cover stories used by the airplane maker and CIA when the airplane was originally being developed. This week one of NASA’s ER-2s will fly three separate eight-hour missions at more than 65,000 feet to collect dust from the Perseid meteor showers. |  |
NASA Pulls Off 350-Million-Mile Software Patch
If you think it’s tough to keep your computer or smartphone’s software updated, try keeping a space robot updated from 350 million miles away.
Last Tuesday the team at NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory finished what amounted to a complete overhaul of the Curiosity Rover’s software. Asked why this was necessary, Ben Cichy, Curiosity’s chief software engineer, explains that the software required to help Curiosity land on the surface of Mars and the software it needs to drive around and avoid obstacles is completely different. But as we’ve reported, Curiosity’s hardware is pretty modest. Cichy says it didn’t have enough memory to hold the software for both the landing mission and the surface mission, so the software had to be swapped out remotely after landing. |  |
Curiosity's 'voice' is captured during nail-biting Mars landing
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity may seem like the strong, silent type, but the 1-ton robot was making a lot of noise during its harrowing Red Planet touchdown on Aug. 5.
Curiosity phoned home throughout its daring and unprecedented landing sequence that night, giving its nervous handlers step-by-step status and health updates. The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter recorded some of this chatter, and now we can hear what Curiosity had to say. |  |
Galaxy Cluster Stuns Scientists—Supermassive and Spewing Out Stars
It seemed too good to be true: a superbright newfound galaxy cluster possibly more massive than any other known, forging fresh stars nearly a thousand times faster than normal.
But as many as ten telescopes have confirmed the strange case of the Phoenix Cluster. And despite the cluster's rarity, scientists say, the findings may help explain the evolution of all such clusters. |  |
Antarctic Moss Lives Off Penguin Poop
Verdant green carpets of moss that emerge during the brief Antarctic summer have an unusual food source, a new study reports: The mosses eat nitrogen from fossilized penguin poop.
Plant biologist Sharon Robinson, who has studied the mosses for 16 years, sought to find their nutrient source; Antarctic soil generally lacks nourishment for plants. "Most of the soil is very, very poorly developed; it's mostly just gravel," said Robinson, a professor at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. |  |
Skeleton Army Rises from Bog
The remains of hundreds of warriors have resurfaced from a Danish bog, suggesting that a violent event took place at the site about 2,000 years ago.
Discovered in the Alken Enge wetlands near Lake Mossø in East Jutland, Denmark, the skeletal remains tell the story of an entire army's apparent sacrifice. Following work done in 2009, archaeologists have so far unearthed the hacked bones of more than 200 individuals. |
The Most Dangerous Word in the World
If I were to put you into an fMRI scanner—a huge donut-shaped magnet that can take a video of the neural changes happening in your brain—and flash the word “NO” for less than one second, you’d see a sudden release of dozens of stress-producing hormones and neurotransmitters. These chemicals immediately interrupt the normal functioning of your brain, impairing logic, reason, language processing, and communication.
In fact, just seeing a list of negative words for a few seconds will make a highly anxious or depressed person feel worse, and the more you ruminate on them, the more you can actually damage key structures that regulate your memory, feelings, and emotions.[1] You’ll disrupt your sleep, your appetite, and your ability to experience long-term happiness and satisfaction.
In fact, just seeing a list of negative words for a few seconds will make a highly anxious or depressed person feel worse, and the more you ruminate on them, the more you can actually damage key structures that regulate your memory, feelings, and emotions.[1] You’ll disrupt your sleep, your appetite, and your ability to experience long-term happiness and satisfaction.
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