News Briefs 21-03-2011

Merry equinox!

• Mexican pyramids under threat from New Age Equinox revellers.
• Twelve stolen pieces from the Cairo Museum have been recovered.
• Forget our super-Moon…Saturn has a flying saucer-moon.
• God's wife edited out of the Bible….almost. Typical men, claiming all the glory.
• The metaphysical limitations of neuroscience.
• Biology's "dark matter" hints at a fourth domain of life.
• Craig Venter to correct the genetic code of his synthetic DNA - seems he misquoted Feynman, and got a cease-and-desist letter from the estate of James Joyce. Wonder if God's legal team have contacted him yet...
• DIY hallucinogenic goggles. In the old days I think they called them "mushrooms".
• U.S. military deploys gunfire detection system. In the old days I think they called them "ears".
• The cosmonaut who crashed into Earth "crying in rage".
• New report links naval sonar exercises to whale stranding.
• 'Arsenic life' biologist continues to annoy and frustrate mainstream scientists.
• Brain-computer interface allows paralysed patients to play music with their minds.
• Empathological: woman can feel the pain of others.
• New insights into brain plasticity.
• Mass honeybee deaths now occurring worldwide, says United Nations.
• Megadeth frontman sorry for embracing black magic when a teenager.

Quote of the Day:

Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

Sir Martin Rees