How hardcore is this?

Drilling into an active volcanic doesn’t sound like the safest idea, but a plan to do so along a volcano near Naples, Italy, could help protect the city from a potentially catastrophic eruption.

Geologists will drill into the volcanic formation, called Campi Flegrei, early next month. The volcano, part of a larger volcanic arc that includes Mount Vesuvius, last erupted in 1538. The ground around the volcano, however, has been swelling for the past 40 years, stoking fears of an eruption that would threaten the roughly 1 million residents of Naples.

“The role of deep drilling at this area is then crucial,” according to the drilling project description by the International Continental Scientific Drill Program (ICDP), which is planning the drilling study.

This is either the dumbest plan ever or the most metal heroic thing ever conceived and executed.

[Live Science]

Even back in the day, Stonehenge was a tourist trap. One of the oldest human remains found near the site was identified as having Mediterranean origins.

The British Geological Survey’s Jane Evans said that the find, radiocarbon dated to 1,550 B.C., “highlights the diversity of people who came to Stonehenge from across Europe,” a statement backed by Bournemouth University’s Timothy Darvill, a Stonehenge scholar uninvolved with the discovery.

“The find adds considerable weight to the idea that people traveled long distances to visit Stonehenge, which must therefore have had a big reputation as a cult center,” Darvill said in an e-mail Wednesday. “Long distance travel was certainly more common at this time than we generally think.”

Of course people travelled long distances, what else where they going to do without internet or TV? Watch each other’s hair grow?

It would be so easy to get me to go on a 2 month boat trip back then. “Hey were going to see a cult center in the north country, you might die and we’ll probably run out of food but at the same time it’s going to be a couple dozen centuries until someone invents an iPhone… so you in?”

[AP]

Those rascally scamps at io9 have issued this artists rendering of what a colony on the newly discovered Earth-like planet could look like. Since one side of the planet is constantly exposed to the sun and the other is frozen like year-old leftovers from Chilis, only the border areas between the two would be hospitable for life.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a dispute about the name. io9 has been calling it Gloaming and the UC Santa Cruz team that discovered it has dubbed it Zarmina. Meanwhile… some people who deliberately called dibs on the planet when it was announced Tuesday are wondering why their chosen name of Bonearth is not being recognized.

Painting by Don Dixon.

[io9]

Seriously, pack your bags. We found a new Earth and I am personally going to wait at Cape Canaveral until someone will sell me a ticket on the first Space Ark to Splitsville.

Our new digs are right in the Goldilocks Zone and according the team that located it, the chances of life are pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.

And the planet’s discoverers are optimistic about the prospects for finding life there.

“Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent,” said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today. “I have almost no doubt about it.”

Now if you’ll excuse me I am going to be running up all my credit cards. Try and follow me with that score to space, suckers!

[Space]

Holy crap! That is all.

[Nat Geo]

Ladies and gentleman, the Tailless Whip Scorpion otherwise known as the Whip Spider which is actually neither a scorpion nor spider. Discuss…

[Nat Geo]

Here is the XOS 2, a creation of Raytheon that is billed as the closest thing to an Iron Man suit but is really just a super sick exoskeleton that allows for increased strength without having to be tethered to a power source.

Also, Paramount demo’d one of these as a promotion for the home video release of Iron Man 2. Pretty boss move by them.

[Live Science]

Possibly. But probably not.

[Pop Sci]

There has been a long simmering debate in the scientific community over “the Hobbit” or Homo floresiensis by it’s fancy name. On one side is a cadre of folks who claim that the Hobbits (whose remains were first found inside a Indonesian cave in 2003) are a different species than humans.

But new research suggests those people can stick that theory in their pipes an smoke it. It looks like Homo floresiensis could be just regular old Homo sapiens afflicted with an iodine deficiency.

Oh well.

[Science Daily]

According to some retired Air Force officers, UFOs have a habit of hovering over military bases and shutting down nuclear missiles. Although they concede that the objects may not have been alien in origin, according to them, their memories are undeniable.

“I was on duty when an object came over and hovered directly over the site,” Salas said, regarding the March 16, 1967, event at Malmstrom AFB in Montana. “The missiles shut down, 10 Minuteman missiles. And the same thing happened at another site a week later,” he said.

Six former officials will discuss this happening and others at an event at the National Press Club. Please tell me someone who reads this site works there or will be attending that day. Please?

[Fox News]

Andrew tells the story of his father’s encounter with a mermaid. No really. Well, kind of sort of. President Bri and team plan to rob a third world country of its national treasures.

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You may in your lifetime have thought Utah a bit odd, it’s okay, I’m writing this from Florida we all have our quirks. But if you thought the Beehive State was weird before, imagine when these two were farting around:

Two remarkable new species of horned dinosaurs have been found in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah. The giant plant-eaters were inhabitants of the “lost continent” of Laramidia, formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, isolating the eastern and western portions of the continent for millions of years during the Late Cretaceous Period.

One of the two featured 15 (count ’em, 15!) horns. That’s hardcore.

[Science Daily]

Worried about abduction? Worried about Spot getting sick? Like to race on your Segway? Don’t want an to be on the hook for your ransom payment? Check out this handy infographic to find out exactly what you can expect to pay for your weirdest insurance needs:

(Source: www.thirdshift.nu)

A new species of buffed-cheeked gibbon with a very distinctive call was identified by German researchers. Not only does this have implications on the heavily endangered gibbon in general, but the ape song could be the precursor to human music…

“An analysis of the frequency and tempo of their calls, along with genetic research, show that this is, in fact, a new species.”

The distinctive song “serves to defend territory or might even be a precursor of the music humans make,” the statement added.

Buffed-cheeked gibbon sounds like a third guy in on a remix, like “Tik Tok by Ke$ha feat. Lok D and Buffed-Cheek Gibbon.”

[AFP]

Okay, there is still no evidence that it actually happened but now science can explain a scenario in which the biblical parting of the Red Sea could have gone down. You know, without the power of a all-knowing God and stuff:

A strong east wind, blowing overnight, could have swept water off a bend where an ancient river is believed to have merged with a coastal lagoon along the Mediterranean Sea, said study team member Carl Drews of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. While archaeologists and Egyptologists have found little evidence that any events described in Exodus actually happened, the study outlines a perfect storm that could have led to the 3,000-year-old escape.

“People have always been fascinated by this Exodus story, wondering if it comes from historical facts,” Drews said. “What this study shows is that the description of the waters parting indeed has a basis in physical laws.”

Get all the specific calculations and a use of the word “jibes” in a headline at the main article.

[Live Science]