The McGurk effect is something that you’ll just have to hit play on the video above to experience.
It’s like some weird magic trick and the secret is that your brain, eyes and ears have to work together to make things understandable.
But sometimes? They’re like awful college roomies and there’s a whole lot of misunderstanding going on.
Centuries ago, in AD 774, some guy in Britain is keeping a written record of life’s goings-on.
In that year he mentions witnessing something strange…a weird “red crucifix” hanging in the sky.
Fling yourself forward in time. Researchers are unable to explain a strange spike in carbon 14 levels that manifested in unique growth rings in Japanese Cedar trees that year.
UC Santa Cruz biochemistry major Jonathon Allen was listening to a Nature podcast when he heard about the trees and something clicked.
According to Allen’s theory, the spike in carbon 14 that caused the change in the ring patterns of the trees and the ancient text reporting the glowing crucifix in the sky, which seemed to occur around the same period in time, may have both been the same incident…a possible supernova or massive solar flare.
Most scholars that Allen has presented his theory to seem to agree that some kind of massive stellar event took place back in the eighth century and that both nature and the author of an ancient text witnessed it.
[Nature]
Check out this huge, 20-meter deep sinkhole that opened up in that appeared overnight in Schmalkalden, Germany. Officials are unsure what caused the crater that took a car and parts of a garage, but say they plan to fill the gaping hole with gravel. Kind of boring if you ask me.
A hybrid zebra/donkey was born this past week at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve in Dahlonega, Georgia.
According to the Preserve’s staff, “zedonks” (as the hybrids are known) are very rare. Turns out zebras usually find donkeys “out of their league.” Darn prissy zebras! You know they always settle for a donkey after they turn 30.
This baby was recently born in California with 6 perfectly functional fingers and toes on each hand and foot, respectively. The condition, known as polydactylism, is not uncommon. What is unique about this case is that the baby’s extra fingers and toes are all proportional and work perfectly. One thing is for sure, you don’t want to play this kid in Mortal Kombat.
And while we are talking about mutations, do the muttonchops on the Doctor in this video count as a mutation? Like Wolverine needed another power…
We all remember a couple of years ago when all the bees started disappearing. Now it seems non-winged animals are also taking flight.
A new study has revealed that eight species of snakes have seen their number dwindle since the mid-90’s. Some populations have lost 90% of their members. Researchers are baffled as to why this is happening. Some blame El Nino, while others see it as a broader trend among animal populations as a response to pollution and global warming.
Unfortunately nobody has suggested the most obvious solution: Check the Plane.
[BBC News]
With all the talk of flooding in Tennessee, it helps to look back into history to gain perspective. After all, at least it wasn’t the megaflood that completely redefined that Alaskan landscape 15,000 years ago.
One of at least four megafloods from ancient Glacial Lake Atna, the deluge breached ice dams and covered more than 3,500 square miles (9,065 square kilometers) of land of what is today the Copper River Basin northeast of Anchorage. (The lake would’ve covered Rhode Island three times.)
Megafloods by definition have a flow of at least 264 million gallons of water per second (1,000 million liters of water per second). The largest known freshwater megaflood released about 4,500 million gallons of water per second (17,000 million liters of water per second) and originated out of Glacial Lake Missoula in Montana.
The megaflood from Atna likely had a flow of about 792 million gallons of water per second (3,000 million liters of water per second), and released a total of as much as 336 cubic miles (1,400 cubic kilometers) of water – enough to cover an area the size of Washington, D.C., to a depth of 5 miles (8 km).
So, at least they have that going for them.
In all seriousness, if you’d like to help by donating money or time to the relief effort in Tennessee, head here for more information.
A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…
In an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation called the “The Chase” a long running problem in Star Trek was finally solved – Why do all the aliens in Star Trek look humanoid. The answer was not “budget”. It was that a race that lived 4.5 billion years ago seeded the galaxy with its DNA. Humans, Vulcans, klingons etc., all got their imprint from them. We kind of look like each other because we all look like some alien race from 4.5 billion years ago. Problem solved. But is Intelligent Design really a satisfying answer?
If we find aliens that look like us, what other explanations could account for them?
Kidnapping
Having to deal with a slightly more sophisticated audience that grew up watching Star Trek, the producers of Stargate and the producers of the television series had to come up with a simple explanation for there being humans all over the galaxy in present day time. Their solution was a popular one in sci-fi literature: We were kidnapped. Over the last 100,000 years humans have been relocated to the distant corners of our universe. Once there, they go about their business. Building monuments to their gods (Star Trek and Stargate) or becoming thriving interstellar civilizations more advanced than us on earth (Iain Banks’s The Culture).
Bubbly Creek looks placid enough in the photo above, but its shallow depths hold a gruesome secret. This small section of the Chicago River was named Bubbly Creek because of the bubbling gas coming off the riverbed below that has been present for the last hundred years.
So what makes the creek bubble? Rotting blood.