In a very special episode of Weird Things, Andrew and Justin race to Cape Canaveral, Florida to see history in making as SpaceX attempts to launch their Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule. After already driving six hours there and back only to have the launch scrubbed three days prior, can the boys handle another disappointment? Brian mans the controls from Austin as the WTP discusses all things SpaceX on the eve of their greatest achievement.

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Talk about holding a grudge.

A pair of 1,600 year old black magic curses have been found, one each for a senator and an animal doctor named Procello who really gets cursed out.

“Destroy, crush, kill, strangle Porcello and wife Maurilla. Their soul, heart, buttocks, liver …” part of it reads. The iconography on the tablet actually shows a mummified Porcello, his arms crossed (as is the deity) and his name written on both of his arms.

And not to be left out, Fistus the senator…

“Crush, kill Fistus the senator,” part of the curse reads, “May Fistus dilute, languish, sink and may all his limbs dissolve …”

The curses are written in Latin and are believed to be directed toward the Greek goddess Hekate. They were originally discovered in Italy in 2009.

[Fox News]

Take a loot at the cross in the middle of this video. Keep you eyes focused on it.

The faces that grace the covers of magazines and open films to multi-million dollar bonanzas suddenly turn into grossly deformed freaks. You will swear they slip in a few photoshops, but watch the video again without staring at the cross and you’ll realize just how thin the line between beauty and bizarre really is.

This won second place at the Best Illusion of the Year competition.

Read more here about why the illusion works.

[MB Thompson Research]

Single cell microbes in the most remote portions of the ocean floor dating back to days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth are indeed alive. But not by much.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaarely alive. Which is a scientific term. Each “a” signifying how much closer to complete nonexistence it is.

Yet still, as Dr. Malcolm teaches us… life finds a way.

Røy and colleagues from Denmark and Germany surveyed red clays buried deep in the Pacific Ocean, along the equator and into the North Pacific Gyre current system. From the research R/V Knorr, they drilled core samples 92 feet into the ocean floor, dating to the time of the dinosaurs, and tested the cores with oxygen sensors. They found that organisms live in the deepest parts of these sediments and that they’re using oxygen for respiration — only incredibly slowly. The deeper the sediments, the less food and oxygen is present, and the less oxygen is used up, too. These organisms have not had access to a fresh food supply since their burial, 70 to 86 million years ago.

The finding could gives new insight into life on other planets. Now that we have an idea of just how durable life in on this particular rock we can have some hope that it could survive in a harsh environment elsewhere across the stars.

[Pop Sci]

German researchers have utilized the strategy behind PageRank, the revolutionary Google algorithm which finds relevant search results to determine critical cancerous biomarkers.

The results could facilitate earlier understanding of how aggressive the cancer is and lead to more accurate treatments.

Finding these biomarkers is often difficult and time consuming. Another problem is that markers found in different studies for the same types of cancer almost never overlap.

This problem has been circumvented using the Google strategy, which takes into account the content of a web page and also how these pages are connected via hyperlinks. With this strategy as the model, the authors made use of the fact that proteins in a cell are connected through a network of physical and regulatory interactions; the ‘protein Facebook’ so to speak.

This would equate really aggressive cancers with SEO experts.

Makes sense.

[Science Daily]

Thriller writer Andrew Mayne presents free audiobooks and short stories of mystery and adventure.

This episode features Payload, read by special guest Justin Robert Young.

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Turns out you can plop yourself amongst over 200 times the average level of background radiation for as long as you’d like, it’s probably not going to hurt you all that much. Despite popular thought that any radiation exposure increases the likelihood of cancer, new studies are showing that simply isn’t the case for prolonged low doses.

On the most recent Weird Things podcast the boys discussed what levels of radiation exposure were safe to work around with Brian landing on the right side of the research. As for Justin’s insistence that he would eat a bag of popcorn cooked by way of an radioactive reaction, he’s still an idiot.

[Medical Xpress]

A corporate jet pilot nearly collided with what he said looked like a remote controlled vehicle over Denver Monday evening. But no one will take credit for the mysterious airborne menace.

Law enforcement says their were no drones in the air. The local RC club says that members are forbidden from flying craft that high as they would otherwise cause this kind of commotion.

The pilot is heard telling air traffic control: “A remote controlled aircraft, or what? Something just went by the other way … About 20 to 30 seconds ago. It was like a large remote-controlled aircraft.

The corporate jet, a Cessna Citation 525 CJ1, was flying at 8,000 feet above sea level over Cherry Creek when the mystery object came close enough to make any pilot nervous.

What else could it be? UFO? Pterodactyl?

In our mind, there is only one culprit. Drogon is loose from the pits of Meereen!

[9News]

The revolution is here. The machines have risen. And they can juggle.

Chiba University presented the following this week at 2012 IEE International Conference on Robotics and Automatiion.

The robot is equipped with a three-fingered hand, each with 2 or 3 degrees of motion, and an arm with 7 degrees of motion. These pieces are coupled with a high-speed vision system (500 frames per second) that allows a controller to plan for catches and throws, the IEEE Automation Blog explains.

Next they’ll spin plates…

[MSNBC]

Gaydar, it’s not just a one liner from sassy friends in romantic comedies anymore. It’s science fact.

A University of Washington study flashed faces for less than a blink of an eye and asked respondents to determine if the person was gay or straight. Not only did results come more accurate than chance, they also tracked accurate when displayed upside down.

Here are the parameters of the study:

In the study, 129 college students viewed 96 photos each of young adult men and women who identified themselves as gay or straight. Concerned that facial hair, glasses, makeup and piercings might provide easy clues, the researchers only used photos of people who did not have such embellishments. They cropped the grayscale photos so that only faces, not hairstyles, were visible.

By the numbers, women had more “gaydar readable” faces. Participants were 65 percent in choosing sexual orientation when the faces were right side up. 61 when upside down. Sorting the men proved harder, participants had 57 percent accuracy right side up and 53 upside down.

[Science Daily]

George Lucas wants to build a studio on some ranch property he owns. Sound familiar? It should, because he did it with Skywalker Ranch in the 1970s. Back then neighbors hemmed and hawed about how he would ruin property values by attracting tour buses and helicopters.

Nothing awful happened. Well, some things. Either way, peace was retained in the ‘hood and Ranch folk become happy members of the community.

His property at Grady Ranch however, won’t have the option to do the same. Neighbors have successfully soured the permit process enough for Lucas to pull his studio plan entirely.

Instead, he wants to build low-income housing. You know, like for Ewoks.

“The level of bitterness and anger expressed by the homeowners in Lucas Valley has convinced us that, even if we were to spend more time and acquire the necessary approvals, we would not be able to maintain a constructive relationship with our neighbors,” Lucasfilm said in its statement.

…It may seem as if the affordable housing project is a way for Lucas to stick it to his opposition, but Tom Peters, the CEO of the Marin County Foundation disagrees. “I know Lucas and checked with him on that point personally and directly. It was essential that I was convinced that it was not done out of spite. I would not have accepted the project if I thought it was,” he said.

Build or do not, there is no spite.

[CNN Money]

Alright, it’s a little easier when someone puts a tiny circle around it. What you are seeing is China’s Tiangong-1 space station transiting the Sun. This is the handiwork of Astrophotographer Thierry Legault who had to time this perfectly to snap this picture since since the station zoomed through this shot in only .09 seconds.

Notice how the massive sun spot completely dwarves the Tiangong-1 meager size which is only 10.3 x 3.3 meters.

Check out the close up shots at the link below.

[Universe Today] via Bri G

Fight! An epic battle ensues when Brian wonders aloud if everyone would be okay with sending a willing volunteer on a one way trip to Mars. Is it a bold, necessary step toward brining humanity beyond the stars? Or a gruesome galactic human sacrifice with no real value? Meanwhile! A secret is unearthed underneath the Kodak building in Rochester. Can Justin resist the temptation to cook a bag of popcorn on it and eat the tainted, yet delicious, results?

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Angel Killer just click on the image below.

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings051612.mp3

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It’s asteroid fever! Catch it.

Folks are trying to mine ‘em and now NASA is talking about landing on one. The Telegraph reveals today that the US space agency will reveal their plan next month. The mission will including the first British astronaut Major Tim Peake.

A manned mission will aim to rendezvous with an asteroid up to three million miles from the Earth, taking around a year to make the entire round trip. The astronauts could stay on the asteroid for up to 30 days.

The officials will say that such missions to asteroids could help test technology for future human missions to other planets including Mars.

Nasa hopes that such missions will provide new scientific information about the early universe while also providing valuable information for ways of defending Earth from collisions with asteroids.

The paper says a mission could happen by the next decade. Twenty years to land on a tiny rock? Really NASA? JFK is frowning.

[Telegraph]

There are a lot of bad ways an affair with your friend’s wife can end. Some, like death or violent maiming, could be a little more permanent. But few are weirder than what went down in Kenya last week.

A man cheating with his friends wife found himself stuck inside his adulterous lover by way of an alleged black magic spell. The husband, who suspected shenanigans, visited a witch doctor who placed the spell.

The next time the scandalous pair got together for some down low dirty time, they didn’t come apart.

Authorities were called in and things only ended after the lover paid a ransom of $240 to the cuckold husband and a priest was called in to remove the hex.

[UK Zambians] via Tony Ley

Are exploding supernovae guiding life on Earth? If a new ground breaking theory is to be believed, the answer is yes.

According to the study by Henrik Svensmark published by the Royal Astronomy Society in London the explosions of stars relatively close to Earth has proven itself to be the variable for life on our planet.

In short, according to the Watts Up With That blog, this is as big of a claim as the theory of plate tectonics was for geology.

Here is the short, short, short, short version:

Here are the main results:

• The long-term diversity of life in the sea depends on the sea-level set by plate tectonics and the local supernova rate set by the astrophysics, and on virtually nothing else.

• The long-term primary productivity of life in the sea – the net growth of photosynthetic microbes – depends on the supernova rate, and on virtually nothing else.

• Exceptionally close supernovae account for short-lived falls in sea-level during the past 500 million years, long-known to geophysicists but never convincingly explained..

• As the geological and astronomical records converge, the match between climate and supernova rates gets better and better, with high rates bringing icy times.

The implications here are massive. Not only for our understanding of the natural world but even politically charged debates like climate change.

But this theory easily encapsulates the reason we write this blog. One day you can wake up and the world is radically different then when you went to sleep. Amazing.

[Watts Up With That]