News Briefs 09-10-2012
Posted by Greg at 02:05, 09 Oct 2012Can't talk, writing…
- Curiosity rover is distracted by shiny objects: Mars Science Lab stops scooping dirt to investigate an anomalous bright object on the ground. Quite obvious that it's a prawn head…I'll set to work on the District 9: Origins script immediately.
- Private rocket company SpaceX acknowledges problems with yesterday's launch, including debris from an engine failure.
- Global Consciousness Project finds significant result during Burning Man 2012.
- Dan Brown fiction coming to life? Pope's butler was fascinated by Freemasons, spies, and the occult.
- Organism without a brain creates external memories for navigation.
- Quantum weirdness gone wild.
- Wasp's tiny brain is a mystery of physics.
- Spider attack caught in amber is a freeze-frame from 100 million years ago.
- Submariners surprised to spot a diving bird 150 feet (50 metres) underwater.
- Dog tracks down ailing owner at hospital two miles away.
- Humans may be one of the early intelligent species in the Universe. Or one of the dumbest.
- Astronomer wants UFOs studied with science. But what if their science is bigger than our science?
- UFOs and Hollywood.
- More evidence that Voyager has left the Solar System. Take that Elvis!
- National Geographic Society members start to ask questions about the NGS's relationship with Zahi Hawass (Part one, part two).
- Powerful magnets can switch off cancer cells.
- Signs of the coming robopocalypse: co-ordinated quadcopters throw and catch balls.
- Decoding secret societies: what are all those old boys' clubs hiding?
- Christopher Columbus was an a-hole.
- Image of the Day: Russian villagers collecting scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies.
Quote of the Day:
I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait.
I do not think we will have to wait for long
Arthur C. Clarke (The Sentinel)
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Comments
6 April 2010
3 min 46 sec
just awesome.
...I forgot how I got here but everyone seems to be heading off in that direction. I hope someone brought food. I have a feeling this is going to be a long journey................
6 April 2010
3 min 46 sec
Yup, he's an asshole by today's standards, but then again most settlers were to the native peoples no matter where they came from, especially the missionaries who would destroy and burn holy places in front of the natives. All that said, the founders of North America probably were from what is now Russia which descended from European groups which descended from Africa, then migrated over the frozen land bridge that connected North America to Russia following herd animals. Either that or Atlantis, whatever makes people happy ;)
...I forgot how I got here but everyone seems to be heading off in that direction. I hope someone brought food. I have a feeling this is going to be a long journey................
6 April 2010
3 min 46 sec
“The writer said he knew that because he’d ridden through that town on trains and the windows on the buildings had a purple tint to them. Well, the reason they have a purple tint is because they’re old glass. The glass through the late 1800s had an impurity in them. When the windows were created they were clear, but because of sunlight, over time, the glass turns purple. People who collect glassware know that. Anywhere you found old windows, they were purple.
I'm sorry but as a nerd who collects bottles I would like to mention that the reason they turn purple is because the mixture of glass contains manganese, where as today it would be more likely made out of cheaper selenium. it takes almost 100 years to start to turn "purple" depending on the thickness of glass, how long it was in constant sunlight, and the percentage of manganese in the mixture. They continue to turn color until they get "black." Selenium consequently turns it yellow.
and that's your fun fact of the day...
...I forgot how I got here but everyone seems to be heading off in that direction. I hope someone brought food. I have a feeling this is going to be a long journey................