Andrew, Brian and Justin lay out their brilliant plan for escaping the evil clutches of alien overlords. They then realize how easily a famous psychological experiment could have gone horribly wrong if the three of them had been selected. Brian also shares with the audience his disturbing camouflage technique. Plans for a mission to an Indian massacre are discussed.

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Ohmygod! Complete underwater volcano! All the way! It’s so intense! What does it mean? (begins crying)

[Nat Geo]

A Polish plant biologist is suggesting that plants are capable of thought.

Plants “remember” information about light, and a certain type of cell transmits that information, much like nerves do in animals.

In the study, which has not yet been published, the researchers found that light shone on one leaf of an Arabidopsis thaliana plant caused the whole plant to respond. The response lasted even after the light source was taken away, suggesting the plant remembered the light input.

Different wavelengths of light produce a different response, suggesting the plants use the information to generate protective chemical reactions — like pathogen defense or food production.

Rick Moranis is terrified.

[Pop Sci]

Not only will Austrian stuntman Felix Baumgartner attempt to redefine the official limitations of which height a human can fall from without dying immediately he also hopes to break the sound barrier on the way down.

Starting in the stratosphere at 120,000 feet above the ground, Baumgartner will leap from a capsule suspended by a helium balloon near the boundary of space.

Sponsored by the energy drink company Red Bull, Baumgartner’s mission — called Red Bull Stratos — seeks to extend the “safety zone” of human atmospheric bailout last set in 1960 by diver Joe Kittinger. This limit defines the uppermost altitude a human being can safely jump from.

Awesome. Also, he’s already leapt off the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Double complete rainbow.

[Space]

Here is one paragraph for you to read:

“Accordingly, our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe.” So concludes Nikodem Poplawski at Indiana University in a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time.

If that doesn’t make you want to read the rest of this post, you’re a real silly goose.

[Technology Review]

Joan Ginther came from Bishop, Texas. She earned her doctorate in math from Stanford in the 70’s but in more recent times locals saw her exiting a town convenience store carrying $50 reams of scratch off tickets at a time.

Joan Ginter has won the Texas lottery 4 times. She is a millionaire many times over and has declined every attempt by reporters to get her on the record about her winnings.

So how did Ginther do it, then?

Good luck pinning her down to ask.

Ginther has never spoken publicly about her lotto winnings and could not be found for comment. She now lives in Las Vegas after moving away from Bishop, and an answering machine message for a telephone number listed at her address says not to leave a message.

She asked the few people who’ve exchanged more than brief pleasantries with her not to grant interviews and sneaked into lottery headquarters in Austin to collect her winnings with the least publicity the state offers jackpot winners.

Is Joan Ginther astronomically lucky and press shy? Or has she achieved what so many have dreamed of, a mathematical flaw in a system designed to rake in money with only a glimmer of a statistical chance for a payout?

[AP]

Someone print a t-shirt! Thanks to Weird Things reader Katy for sending this in.

[WFAA]

[CNN]

Where does, “Mommy, an alligator bit my hand off” rank in the Top 100 Calls You Never Want To Make?

[CNN]

There’s some kooky stuff going on inside the rings of Saturn. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has identified distinctive giant propellers that could be created by a new class of moon.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spotted the distinctive structures inside some of Saturn’s rings, marking the first time scientists have managed to track the orbits of individual objects from within a debris disk like the one that makes up Saturn’s complicated ring system.

“Observing the motions of these disk-embedded objects provides a rare opportunity to gauge how the planets grew from, and interacted with, the disk of material surrounding the early sun,” said the study’s co-author Carolyn Porco, one of the lead researchers on the Cassini imaging team based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. “It allows us a glimpse into how the solar system ended up looking the way it does.”

Chew on that.

[Space]

You’ve found the physical remains of a dinosaur who a gaudy heart-shaped skull which by all probability was used to capture the attention of the opposite sex. What do you call it?

Over a few beers with fellow paleontologists one night, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: Mojoceratops.

“It was just a joke, but then everyone stopped and looked at each other and said, ‘Wait — that actually sounds cool,’ ” said Longrich, a postdoctoral associate at Yale University. “I tried to come up with serious names after that, but Mojoceratops just sort of stuck.”

With the publication of Longrich’s paper describing his find in the Journal of Paleontology, the name is now official.

Imagining the above clip a heart-headed dinosaur in the Austin Powers role has made my morning, please do the same! Hat tip to Dan Wheeler for sending this along.

[Science Daily]

From The Daily Mail:

Chinese airport was closed after this mysterious object was spotted in the sky.

Arcing over Zhejiang’s provincial capital Hangzhou, the UFO appeared to glow with an eerie white light and left a bright trail in its wake.

Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected at around 9 pm and dozens of flights had to be diverted.

No word yet on the origin of the mystery craft but if you have the gumption to fly across the galaxy, you could at least be courteous enough to obey local no-fly zones, right?

[Daily Mail]

So you’re a cute little monkey, scampering about the Amazon. For the sake of this discussion, your name is Joe. All of a sudden you hear someone yell, “Hey Joe! Nice haircut!” You look around, but don’t see anyone. What anonymous stranger is shouting compliments through the thick underbrush of the rain forest? Do they really like my haircut, or was it one of those backhanded compliments?

Lost in thought you make a left through a bush only to find yourself face to face with a gigantic jungle cat. You’re paralyzed with fear. The cat repeats his haircut compliment in what you now realize is just an uncanny monkey impression.

“By the way,” Jungle Cat purrs in his natural brogue. “Your hair makes your face look fat.”

And with that, you’re devoured. Victim of a deadly impression.

[Live Science]