Could brief flashes of gamma explosions billions of light years away be the very seems of our cohesive universe?

According to theories of high-energy particle physics, the strings would have been created when matter in the very early universe went through what’s called phase changes, such as when liquid water freezes to become solid ice.

Cosmic strings, the theories state, are imperfections in space-time akin to the cracks that form as water freezes.

Although there is no observational evidence for cosmic strings, most theories predict that the strings should stretch through the universe to its horizon.

“You can picture a cosmic string as an extremely long conducting wire with the same length-scale of the universe,” Cheng said.

Most gamma explosions come from collapsing stars, but those last more much longer. These fireballs are different, shorter. Could they be the subtle imperfections in our universe?

[Nat Geo]

It meandered about the sea, a living blob named Drakozoon kalumon. Surviving by glomming on to other creatures and surviving on the tiniest morsels of food, this 1.7 millimeter creature was protected by a leathery outer skin bigger than it’s own body.

Until it was imprisoned in volcanic ash for 425 million years. But now, Drakozoon is back! Or at least a 3-D model of him is.

Its two coiled arms likely did the work of feeding. “If it worked like a brachiopod, and I suspect it did, it would have used fine setae (hairs) on the arms to generate currents, catch tiny pieces of food in the seawater, and pass them down the arms into the waiting mouth,” Sutton told LiveScience.

The preserved blob was attached to the fossilized shell of a type of spineless shellfish known as a brachiopod. Researchers made the discovery about six years ago in the Herefordshire Lagerstatte, one of England’s richest deposits of soft-bodied fossils.

Doesn’t Drakozoon kalumon just sound like it needs to be chanted by an evil mastermind trying to resurrect some Lovecraftian leviathan? Just asking.

[Live Science]

In a letter to CNN Lucasfilm indicates that Wicked Lasers has provided sufficient evidence that they are not intentionally marketing their new (awesome) laser as a light saber. That means Lucasfilm Legal is powering down their Death Star and will allow the fledging beam mongers to go about selling their wares.

Awesome.

[The Force.net]

Want to hear something awesome? Squids can squirt their way out of the water engaging in what many marine biologists classify as flight. The phenomenon was so random that little photographic evidence existed of the practice. New proof seems to confirm the notion that squids fire themselves above out of the water and use some combination of their fins and tentacles to stabilize and increase distance.

The 2004 paper’s authors argue that “gliding” is too passive a term to describe what squid do when they leave the ocean for the air: “flight” is more fitting.

“From our observations it seemed like squid engage in behaviors to prolong their flight,” Maciá says. “One of our co-authors saw them actually flapping their fins. Some people have seen them jetting water while in flight. We felt that ‘flight’ is more appropriate because it implies something active.”

This article also contains my favorite first five words of a paragraph ever: “On a LISTSERV dedicated to mollusks…”

[Scientific American]

My feeble brain can’t process how this could be used, but I’m pretty sure it’s awesome.

“It’s kind of surprising that we’ve been using lasers for 50 years or so, and only now somebody noticed something pretty fundamental,” says Marin Solja?i?, a physicist at MIT who was not involved in the work.

Instead of amplifying light into coherent pulses, as a laser does, an antilaser absorbs light beams zapped into it. It can be “tuned” to work at specific wavelengths of light, allowing researchers to turn a dial and cause the device to start and then stop absorbing light.

“By just tinkering with the phases of the beams, magically it turns ‘black’ in this narrow wavelength range,” says team member A. Douglas Stone, a physicist at Yale University. “It’s an amazing trick.”

The option remains on the table to create a dual laser/anti-laser combo. Which is pretty much the coolest thing we’ve heard of today.

[Wired]

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]

Kidnapped by scientists who dress like Nazis, but aren’t actually Nazis, the trio is pushed to try a radical new procedure that would make them temporarily gay. With the life of a young child on the line, they have to confront their own concept of sexuality and identity and make a potentially life changing choice and end up offending just about everyone. Then it gets kind of boring, but there’s a twist ending and a guy with mutant feet.

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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]