Before the first atomic bomb was set off, physicists had to prove it wouldn’t set the Earth on fire. Now there is a lawsuit to prevent turning on the Large Hadron Collider for fears that it might create black holes, stranglets, and magnetic monopoles that could hypothetically destroy us all.
Science is a universal language, so even though today’s Moment is in Spanish, I think it’s possible to follow The Science of Cowboy and Cowgirl Flatulence:
Richard Dawkins has a review of Expelled online, confirming it relates Evolutionary Theory to Nazism and commenting on the hypocrisy of expelling a prominent evolutionist from seeing the film.
Global Warming theorists are taking part in an annual wager to guess when the Arctic ice will crack. I wonder if any skeptics would like put their money where their mouths are?
Pandas only have a few days to successfully mate each year, since the Pandas at the Smithsonian National zoo failed, zookeepers are resorting to artificial insemination.
The W Administration has made it extremely difficult to protect endangered species. 59 species have been added to the list in Bush’s 7 years of presidency, nearly the same number his father added every year of his presidency.
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research has found some surprisingly large marine life in Antarctic waters, including giant star fish and fields of sea lilies that stretch for hundreds of yards along the ocean floor.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has called for the suspension of funding to finding an HIV vaccine, which has made little progress and won’t make any for more than a decade, arguing that the money should instead be put into prevention.
Extracellular matrix is a powder made from pig bladders, and a man who sprinkled it on the missing tip of his finger grew it back.
Nazi Doctors, American Physicist enthusiastic about nuclear war, and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment are just some of the frightening tales from the Dark Side of Science Slideshow.
Easter, the Christian holiday where Jesus comes out of the cave and if he sees his shadow there will be more winter, is over, leaving Wal-Mart’s overstocked with themed candies. So it’s a good time for Science Experiments with Peeps!
Segway inventor Dean Kamen latest miracle, a water purifier, has been unveiled on the Colbert Report.
One in a 1,000 year droughts, air pollution five times above WHO safety standards, 50,000 kg of dead fish… Many disturbing photos of the big environmental picture.
This can also be done with test tubes and hung as a necklace, it’s a DIY Pocket Plant.
Irony can be so ironic. Or is this hypocrisy? Evolutionist blogger PZ Meyers was banned from seeing the creationist film Expelled, but they accidentally let his guest, Richard Dawkins in. I’m sure hilarity ensued.
The liberal Salon.com has an article up on how to hack the conservative Wall Street Journal’s articles so you can see them for free. This is the kind of divisive politics I wholly support.
Mars is covered in table salt, which is good news for when we go looking for fossilized life there.
Natural sciences describe our world, mathematics describes all possible worlds. The Riemann zeta-function holds the secret to how prime numbers are distributed, and the discovery of a new L-Function may hold the key to understanding the Riemann zeta–I have no idea what 95% of this article says, but I know it’s cool.
Social Networking needs to get more Web 2.0, the fact that we have to log into these applications is proof that they aren’t. “Tear down this wall (Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Linkdin, etc.)!!!”
Today’s Moment of Science, in memory of Arthur C. Clark:
Is drinking even an occasional beer what makes a bad scientist? Or is it that bad scientists comfort themselves with beer? And is it just Czech scientists? A study links beer-drinking to unsuccessful science careers (HT Douglas).
3,000 robots deployed in the world’s oceans have reported no warming this year. It doesn’t mean that Global Warming has stopped, but it does mean we have much to learn about how our planet processes heat.
Not really 20 things as the title proclaims, but Discover has an interesting list of things you don’t know about sex including the fact that homosexuality has been observed in at least 1,500 species of animal.
Despite the cold winter, the Arctic ice declined sharply. That might be because it was still warmer than average.
Biggest black hole ever, mass of 18 billions suns. The article also states that it is “about the size of an entire galaxy,” but that doesn’t grok (HT Douglas).
Own a pet? Be eco-friendly about it. Keeping your cat indoors is a big one I learned about a few years ago, and an action I plan to take with my next round of felines.
There are flickr sets capturing people’s reactions their first time seeing goatsee, tubgirl, or 2girls1cup (I won’t link to those things here). This scientific study showed people similarly disgusting videos to measure how well they could suppress their disgust.
For today’s Moment of Science: Go Outside and Look Around You. (Then report back here and tell me what it was like.)
1,500 post offices in America are now offering special envelopes you can put your old (small) electronics in so they will be mailed to a company for recycling for free.
DIY!!! A British surgeon working in the Ukraine has been using a Bosch cordless drill to perform brain surgery.
Researchers at the University of Washington are looking into using satellites to locate food for starving herds in the Arctic. As the author notes, it’s sad that this is what we have come to in order to preserve species.
Geckos are NINJAS!!!
Whether someone can recover from a traumatic event or develop post-traumatic stress disorder is in their DNA.
New disorder, Drunkorexia, for people who skip meals to offset the calories consumed whilst binge drinking.
I think I’ve gotten really good at this since I started running with ideonexus full speed, keeping the daily posts stocked with photos I get from NASA, wikimedia commons, and other legitimate sources, like flickr creative commons photos.
However, I think it’s important to acknowledge that I did violate a photographer’s copyright in my 20071126 Science Etcetera post. In my rush to find a photo of a Mauve Stinger jellyfish, I went with a photo that showed up all over google images and wrongly assumed it was safe to use.
Richard Lord, a professional photographer, took that photo, and very politely e-mailed to let me know my mistake and ask for a link back. I’ve updated the original post to include the copyright info, but I also wanted to post this as a formal apology and to make my readers aware of my error. While I am a copyleft advocate, I do have total respect for copyright laws and the importance of people being able to own and profit from their ideas.
I also wanted to draw attention to Richard Lord’s work. Which is awesome. He directed me to this news story with photos (not his), about high tides swallowing roads and coming up to storefront doors in the Bailiwick of Guernsey. Richard himself has some even more amazing and shocking photos online of rising sea levels and storm wall damage from the 10th of March.
Sorry. Sorry. Missed this one. Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of NASA launching Vanguard 1 into space, a satellite still orbiting Earth today, making it the world’s oldest artificial satellite.
If mercury content doesn’t take tuna sushi off our plates, it’s imminent collapse will, farming tuna offers our only culinary hope.
Ohhhh. Busted!!! Americans are not running chronic sleep deprivation according to a recent study. All the studies that formerly made this claim were funded by sleep-aid pharmaceuticals. This is why I’m wary of the invisible hand.
drinkpeedrinkpeedrinkpee is an exhibit teaching people about how their urine impacts the environment, and are distributing kits for turning urine into fertilizer.
Urine to Fertilizer DIY Kit
A team from the University of Illinois’ SigArch computer architecture program are teaching a computer to play pinball, on a 1978 Star Trek pinball machine. So this news is doubly cool.
After building ELIZA, Joseph Weizenbaum became ambilvalent towards computers, warning against AIs and the possibility of computers taking human jobs.
For today’s Moment of Science, check out NASA’s JPL Solar System Simulator, which allows you to view any object in our solar system from the point of view of any planet or satellite:
New cognitive prosthesis I’m looking forward to one day having the time to test out evernote takes all of the digital data you collect throughout your day, stores it centrally, and categorizes it.
Dear President W. Thank you so much for stepping in to weaken the EPA’s ozone limits. For a second there, I was afraid someone was going to make an informed, well-researched policy decision, luckily you intervened just in time to make sure we don’t lose our precious precious smog.
Thanks also W for telling NASA to put a man on Mars, and then refusing to fund it, like you refused to fund No Child Left Behind. It’s true what they say, “Republicans argue that government doesn’t work, then they get elected and prove it.”
Looks like we’ll be adding Schnook Salmon to the list of tasty animals taken off our menus, as their numbers have dwindled to such a crisis point that U.S. Officials are expected to ban salmon fishing on the West Coast. Salmon is the tastiest sushi ever, expect prices to jump on this news.
Patrick Stübing and Susan Karolewski are siblings with four children. Because they grew up apart, their incest-aversion instinct did not kick-in when they met as adults; however, the German government has now taken three of their children away and put their father in jail. Dr. Martin Rundkvist critiques the irrationality of incest’s illegality.
Adding cynobacteria to Moon soil and a little water could unlock the nutrients to grow plants in it, which is good news for a 2020 Moon base.
For today’s Moment of Science, check out Google Sky, now available as a web-based application!
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Ryan Somma is a mild-mannered Software Developer by day, and an Amateur Scientist Ninja by night.
He also writes a blog for the Daily Advance Newspaper called Geeking Out,
maintains a list of interesting science links at
waygate,
and his previous blog was ideonexus beta.
