It glows deep red. It’s two feet long. It is your new standard in marine life glamour.
A large new species of deep red, glowing squid has been discovered living near undersea mountains in the southern Indian Ocean, scientists announced Monday.
At about 28 inches (70 centimeters) long, the as yet unnamed species is relatively big—though other squid can reach as long as 65 feet (20 meters), some species are barely three quarters of an inch (1.5 centimeters).
Scientists have discovered a Jupiter-like planet inside the Milky Way that once belonged to another galaxy. This smaller galaxy was swallowed up by the Milky Way between six and nine billion years ago and belongs to a group of stars left over called the Helmi Stream. Nearly 500 planets have been discovered outside of our solar system, but this is first to have an extragalactic origin.
Andrew invents a new form of binding legal document that could save your life should you be infected with a rage virus. Brian is faced with his darkest choice yet as his wife and children hang in the balance. Will he reverse the zombie apocalypse by making the most intimate sacrifice in human history? Justin is convinced the gang can get into space mining by crashing a few influential parties and charming those in the know. With Four Loko.
The newest generation of the Israeli snakebot is built from self-contained segments that can act independently of each other. If you cut this guy in two, then you will just have to deal with two Israeli snakebots. Its like smashing a spider and having its babies explode all over the floor.
Instead of being built like a normal snake with a head at one end and a tail at the other, each segment of this snakebot is totally self-contained with a brain, sensors, motors, and batteries. While the segments are designed to work together to form a long, stealthy snake that can do things like stand up and climb trees, each segment is capable of operating by itself if the snake gets damaged.
The segments can also be configured with alternate payloads, which are separated from the rest of the snake to perform their own missions. So, if the snakebot needs to plant a listening device, it can just disconnect a little piece of itself and leave it behind to eavesdrop. It can also detach segments packed with explosives if it’s feeling ornery.
Check out a video of the first generation snakebot:
Scottish police are investigating a mysterious explosion in Garadhban Forest in Gartocharn about 20 miles northwest of Glasgow.
Officials responding to the report “discovered some damage to the wooded area within the forest that would suggest some short of explosion had occurred,” the statement said.
Meteor? Mystery Missile? Wood Goblins? What do you think it is?
We’ve finally demonstrated the ability to create and sustain antimatter.
In a new study, physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva were able to create 38 antihydrogen atoms and preserve each for more than one-tenth of a second. The project was part of the ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus) experiment, an international collaboration that includes physicists from the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).
It is thought that most antimatter was eliminated shortly after the Big Bang. This will go a long way to our understanding of the mysterious phenomenon.
Japanese scientists have created a cyborg moth that can track odors by plugging a robot into the moth’s nervous system. The robot’s actions were controlled by electrodes plugged into the moth and the brain signals were rerouted to the motors of the robot. When the moth was exposed to the smell of a female, the robot replicated the moth dance in an attempt to track down the odor. Scientists believe that they can use this system in tracking down explosives.
Scientists in London claim that new materials with the ability to control the speed of light would not only be capable of bending light around the object, but also creating an invisibility cloak capable of hiding in both time and space. These materials currently only exist in the mathematical theory of “metamaterials”. Metamaterials are artificial materials “designed and manipulated at a molecular level to interact with and control electromagnetic waves.”
“In some senses our work is mathematically quite closely related to the idea of invisibility cloaking,” McCall told CNN. “It’s just that we’re doing it in space and time instead of just in space. It’s added a new dimension to cloaking, quite literally.”
The scientists are already thinking of real world uses for this technology:
“A safe cracker would be able, for a brief time, to enter a scene, open the safe, remove its contents, close the door and exit the scene, whilst the record of a surveillance camera apparently showed that the safe door was closed all the time,” they write.
Dust off that old jingoism and get your down payment’s ready, the Space Race is back and this time we’re getting all private sector up in this piece.
Russian companies are facing off with US competition to get a privately owned space station all up in great beyond within the next five years.
Both seek put up far more durable models that can survive debris impacts. The American candidate already has tacit commitment from six international space agencies should they get their project functioning. It’s possible the station could be fired into space by a Falcon 9 rocket, as created by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.
CERN research scientists have stated that their Big Bang project is going along so swimmingly that, by the end of 2011, they may be able to offer the first proof of extra dimensions beyond the known four.
Guido Tonelli, spokesman for one of the CERN specialist teams monitoring operations in the vast, subterranean LHC, said probing for extra dimensions — besides length, breadth, height and time — would become easier as the energy of the proton collisions in it is increased in 2011.
The LHC will be shut down for maintenance in early December, but will be starting up again in February running full blast looking for those extra dimensions.
According to an new study, we might have underestimated a T.rex’s foot speed by up to 45%. New computer modeling shows the beast’s massive tail is indicative of more powerful leg muscles than we’d previously given him credit for.
Also, scientists like to say funny things:
T. rex’s athleticism (and its rear end) has been given a makeover by University of Alberta graduate student Scott Persons. His extensive research shows that powerful tail muscles made the giant carnivore one of the fastest moving hunters of its time.
As Persons says, “contrary to earlier theories, T. rex had more than just junk in its trunk.”
Did you know that male nipples need to be surgically detached and repositioned sometimes? Then you probably didn’t know that the same Golden Ratio used in modern architecture is employed to make sure a gentlemen’s chest nubs look A-OK.
GPS tagged coyotes are roaming the streets of Chicago as part of an urban coyote research project. The coyotes are allowed to roam the streets as part of the program in order to eliminate nuisance rodents. The Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control assures Chicago that everything is fine.
“He’s not a threat…He’s not going to pick up your children,” Block said. “His job is to deal with all of the nuisance problems, like mice, rats and rabbits.”
He’s not going to pick up your children; carry on.
Researchers have discovered that all primates have an innate ability to repair spinal damage, including humans. They have never noticed this before because scientists usually use rodents in neurology experiments and rodents simply don’t possess neural sprouting.
The researchers found that the injured nerves didn’t regrow. Instead, new nerves sprouted in a process called “spontaneous plasticity,” essentially routing the spinal column around the injury. This kind of neural sprouting doesn’t occur in rodents, which are the animals that scientists typically use in neuroscience experiments. As a result, nobody had noticed this phenomenon before. This new study may lead to more testing on monkeys, but hopefully it will lead to discoveries that allow all primates to grow new nerve cells in the future.
