Archive for July, 2008
What do Bees and Serial Killers have in Common?
For what is probably the first time in history, biologists and criminologists are teaming up to test geographic profiling outside of a search for a criminal. The involvement of the criminologists is not hard to explain, but why the biologists? Because the tests are being carried out on bumblebees.
Most of us would have heard […]
Stars Growing up in Bad Neighborhood
“Star formation is something we don’t really understand, even if it’s not near a black hole,” said Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, to New Scientist. His comment refers to evidence that he and colleagues have presented suggesting that there are stars growing up some 6 to 20 light years from the center […]
Did Supermountains Give Us the Air We Breathe?
When looking around the galaxy and the enumerable planets that are being discovered, one thing continually manages to go unfound: a planet with a breathable atmosphere. So just where did planet Earth get its oxygen from, and when?
New research from a group of Australians suggests that supercontinents and supermountains may have played a major role […]
Collaborating Program Helps Decipher Biology
Computer programs have pretty much acted as tools to the human endeavor. Whether it be something simple like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word, or the more advanced programs of which I have no names, but am vaguely aware exist in universities and laboratories the world over. Each of these act as a tool, to make […]
Atlantic Ocean Formation Responsible for Ancient Global Warming
The planet’s climate systems is nothing really but a large game of dominoes, with one consequence or event always linked or linking to another, continuing down a chain. The formation of the Atlantic Ocean, in particular its northeast corner, may have been one in a line of dominoes that created a planetary global warming some […]
GPS for the Moon
When the new iPhone was finally released this year, one of its top new features was the built-in GPS functionality. One of the criticisms was that it had taken so long for Apple to install such a device in the iPhone, so dependant are we upon the technology now.
For some of us, our sense […]
Large Hadron Collider Going Colder than Space
Based underneath the line that separates France and Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider has become the center of scientific endeavor for the general public to focus on. First prophesied to bring ruin to the whole universe (or at least that little bit that surrounds us), the LHC has now been deemed safe. Subsequently, knowing that […]
Are We Living in a Giant Void?
As a science fiction fan, I have come across something that annoys me. There seem to be a limited number of things that can happen in a series, and episodes start repeating themselves from series to series. One such occurrence is the idea of a ship being trapped in a void of stars; being literally […]
The International Space Station, a test-bed for future space exploration
Only a week after author and Washington Post columnist Michael Benson theorized that the International Space Station should become an interplanetary vehicle, the Heads of the International Space Station (ISS) Agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States met Friday at ESA Headquarters in Paris, France, to review ISS cooperation.
In a joint statement […]
Sleepless Responsible for Sleeplessness
Though I take mild offense at being compared to a fly, a new scientific discovery may provide a clue as to why humans and animals alike experience insomnia. A new genetic mutation found in flies can cause 80% less sleep than normal flies, forcing the flies to get by with much less sleep.
The mutation, now […]
Were Antarctica and North America Once Connected?
The continual shifting of continents has led to the theories that, as in the cases of Pangaea and Rodinia, many, if not all of our continents, were at one time or another connected. One particular theory evolving from this is the SWEAT theory, standing for southwestern United States and East Antarctica, which theorizes that […]
The Reality of Batman
It is no surprise that with the release of the next Batman movie, The Dark Knight, only days away, the number of stories focusing on Gotham’s hero is increasing. The latest concerns a book written concerning the likelihood that Batman could actually exist, and what the toll on the human body would be after a […]
Is the ISS an Interplanetary Spaceship waiting to be Launched?
The International Space Station, the ISS to most of us, has often been called the most expensive thing ever to be built. At $156 billion so far, with probably more to come later on, the ISS doesn’t seem to be doing a whole lot. The pinnacle of international cooperation so far, one would imagine that […]
Tracking Disease with the Internet
There is no doubt in most minds that the internet is going to play a pivotal part in the future of humankind; and not just for the stashes of porn every which way you look. We’ve already seen the hidden benefits in programs like Twitter, which have kept people up to date on everything from […]