Guess what’s lurking in your genome? Bits of Ebola and other viruses! Happy Friday!

Viruses do not make good fossils. But advances in genomic technology have allowed scientists to peer into the genetic material of viruses and their hosts to search for clues about their shared evolutionary history.

Genetic code from retroviruses has been found to compose some 8 percent of the human genome, having been copied in during replication and left to be inherited by us and our progeny. But non-retroviral RNA viruses do not use their host’s DNA to replicate—and some do not even enter the host cell’s nucleus. Nevertheless, new research has turned up surprising evidence that some of these viruses are enmeshed in the genomes of vertebrates—including humans and other mammals.

The rapid evolution of the virus to be blame for the genome biting. But if they start manifesting into physical beings, I am going to be very upset.

[Scientific American]

You want dragon? Here is how you’d make one with revisionist evolution…

[Pop Sci]

there is a one in a thousand chance that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE BY THE CRUSHING BLOW OF AN ASTEROID. the probability of IT KILLING US ALL BY REIGNING UNHOLY DESTRUCTION FROM SPACE is about one in one thousand. however, half of that fraction points to THE ASTEROID ENDING ALL MODERN CIVILIZATION AND THEREFORE DAMNING US INTO A DREARY HELLSCAPE WHERE HUMAN PELTS ARE OUR ONLY CURRENCY in the year 2182.

Please plan accordingly.

[Science Daily]

A Portuguese professor believes force fields enveloping space ships that take us to Mars could be a reality.

…a mini-magnetosphere stretching a few hundred metres beyond the craft could be used in conjunction with the heavy shields that would stop neutral and high-energy radiation from frying the astronauts. “If you go out in the rain, you can wear a coat – but you can also carry an umbrella,” she says. “That’s what a mini-magnetosphere is – a plasma umbrella held up by magnetic fields. Even if it screened only 50 per cent of the solar particles, it could still help protect a big-mass shield, enabling it to be lighter,” she says. That would allow the craft to carry less fuel.

Bamford is in talks with the European Space Agency and NASA about the possibilities her team’s experiment raises, though she can’t give many details at this stage. “There are confidentiality and patent issues,” she says. What she will say is that NASA agrees that the old assumptions about the limits of magnetic shielding need to be revisited. “They want to work with us on this – a solution to their biggest problem with crewed exploration of space.”

Awesome.

[New Scientist]

Humans effectively synchronize brain wave patterns when telling a story to one another. Look Spock, no hands!

[New Scientist via Kruzweil]

National Geogrphic has some really interesting historical findings on where the Dead Sea Scrolls might have originated. Also:

And on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion, archaeologists recently discovered and deciphered a two-thousand-year-old cup with the phrase “Lord, I have returned” inscribed on its sides in a cryptic code similar to one used in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

…either that or Jesus was really fussy about people using his favorite cup so he had to write his name on it.

[Nat Geo]

Low water level + tons of snacks = 300 Gators freaking the hell out in a random Georgia canal while a fisherman slowly cuts through them on his way to fish.

[CNN]

Remember the 1995 Sandra Bullock romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping? This story is nothing like that.

Paramedics in Vienna had a shock when they answered a call – and found a man “eaten alive” by maggots.

Ambulance crew were called out yesterday (Tues) after a woman rang to say her elderly partner was having breathing difficulties.

But when they turned up they found the man’s corpse covered in maggots.

Police spokesman Roman Hahslinger said today the 34-year-old woman had been arrested to clarify the background of the man’s death.

“She lived with the 61-year-old man for more than 10 years in Brigittenau district,” he explained, adding that the man had been bedridden and partially paralysed after a stroke some years ago.

Remember the Wham! song “Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go)”? In light of this, they should probably tack on “…Or If I Am Being Eaten Alive By Maggots”.

Thanks to Weird Things writer Darcy for passing this along.

[Australian Times]

Who’s got two thumbs and wants to get all up in some sacred Mayan pools once believed to be portals to the underworld where offerings were dropped down to appease the evil forces waiting below?

These guys!

Steering clear of crocodiles and navigating around massive submerged trees, a team of divers began mapping some of the 25 freshwater pools of Cara Blanca, Belize, which were important to the ancient Maya. In three weeks this May, the divers found fossilized animal remains, bits of pottery and — in the largest pool explored — an enormous underwater cave.

Would it be totally against the rules to leave a burger while you’re down there, you know, just in case?

[Science Daily]

A research team in Egypt has identified a “fresh” crater thought to be formed by a crashed iron meteor, could mean incoming space rocks would hit earth in bigger chunks than we once suspected.

The Italian-Egyptian team that found the crater in pictures recently visited and studied the 147-foot-wide (45-meter-wide), 52-foot-deep (16-meter-deep) hole. The team also collected thousands of pieces of the space rock that littered the surrounding desert.

Current impact models state that iron meteors around this size and mass should break into smaller chunks before impact. (Related: “Comet ‘Shower’ Killed Ice Age Mammals?”)

Instead, the existence of the newfound crater implies that up to 35 percent of these iron giants may actually survive whole—and thus have greater destructive power.

Hold on to your butts.

[Nat Geo]

Justin Robert Young: Issac Asimov’s Foundation (Foundation Novels)

Brian Brushwood: Peter F. Hamilton’s The Reality Dysfunction (The Night’s Dawn)

Andrew Mayne: Matthew Ridley’s The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

Karen Stollznow: Benjamin Radford’s Scientific Paranormal Investigation

Purchasing from the above Amazon links helps support Weird Things. We thank you.

File this under “Things We Didn’t Know Were Super Cool Until We Heard It Was Real”:

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Researchers have discovered four new species of octopus in Antarctica with venom that works at sub-zero temperatures.

They hope to analyze the venom to see if it has medical uses, said one of the researchers, Bryan Fry, of the University of Melbourne. Their discovery, during a six-week expedition to Antarctica in 2007, was published in the journal Toxicon.

Experts have long known there were octopuses in Antarctica, but what surprised Fry and his colleagues was the sheer biodiversity and how natural selection changed the way they hunted and the nature of their venom.

The question now, does Sub-Zero Venom make a name for a band, album or song?

[Reuters]

Darth Vader robbed a bank in Long Island.

Don’t you know it’s hard out here for a Sith?

Hustle & Force.

Point Bespin.

I’ll stop now. Thanks to Weird Things friends Katy and Lawrence for making sure this came our way.

[Daily Mail]

A ceremonial ground designed by a long-gone culture to mark and celebrate the lunar cycles… just over the river from modern-day Kentucky.

This year archaeologists began using computer models to analyze Moorehead Circle’s layout and found that Ohio’s Woodhenge may have even more in common with the United Kingdom’s Stonehenge than thought—specifically, an apparently intentional astronomical alignment.

The software “allows us to stitch together various kinds of geographical data, including aerial photographs and excavation plans and even digital photographs,” explained excavation leader Robert Riordan, an archaeologist at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

If this isn’t somehow referenced in a Chad Ochocinco touchdown celebration this season, we will be very disappointed. Child please.

[Nat Geo]