Happy Hanukkah to all of our Jewish readers. Err… I can’t find any digital gelt. Would this be an appropriate gift for the children?
- Germs trapped in amber lived with first dinosaurs.
- Mammals may have soared before birds.
- Humans first migrated out of Africa 70,000 years ago, but 30,000 years later some of them moved back.
- Update: Discovered buried under mud in 2002, a 3,246-year-old dam built by the Hittites – complete with purifying pool to make the water drinkable, as well as irrigation channels – is now back in service in a Turkish village.
- New transcription reveals Newton’s rare ‘theory of everything’.
- Freak solar explosion disrupts satellites.
- Astronauts reroute space station’s power, but retracting the solar array proves tricky.
- Dust samples from comets upend scientists’ beliefs.
- Venus Express sees right down to the hell-hot surface.
- Australian astronomers strike gold in search for planetary nebulae, the beautiful remains of dying stars.
- Some physicists think stars can be strange.
- Alternative theory of gravity explains large structure formation – without dark matter.
- Very high frequency radiation makes dark matter visible.
- Structure of self-assembling nano-ice resembles DNA.
- Cryptologist takes a crack at deciphering DNA’s deep secrets.
- Remember Toxoplasma gondii, the brain parasite that may be driving us crazy? Researchers may have just discovered its Achilles’ heel.
- Brain tumors and other neural system cancers may be contageous.
- Breast cancer may be sexually transmitted.
- World’s first cloned cat has kittens – the old-fashioned way.
- After years of preparing them for life in the wild, conservations say 200 orangutans are ready for release in Borneo forest.
- Enviro-cateclysm of the week: Study based on air temperatures and sea level changes, rather than computer models, suggests oceans could rise much faster and higher than previously thought.
- Worldwide, 2006 is set to be the 6th hottest year on record, but it’s Britain’s hottest year since records began in 1659.
- 2006 brought a deluge of severe record-breaking weather, and a new study predicts more wet and wild weather in the decades ahead.
- Inventor claims pump device could reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by almost one third. Good – thing, huh?
- UN says world’s livestock industry is degrading land, contributing to the greenhouse effect, polluting water resources, and destroying biodiversity.
- Discovery of a relatively shallow deposit of natural gas hydrates brings use of one of Earth’s biggest untapped energy sources a step closer.
- Cool idea from British scientists: A magnetic fridge based on quantum spin’s magnetocaloric effect.
- Announcing they’ve produced a prototype that ran independently for four weeks, and have built another free-energy motor that produces enough energy to power a Porsche, Steorn reiterates the free energy claims which have outraged scientists around the world.
- A cut above fiberglass: London barber makes chair from recycled human hair.
- From the ‘you can’t make up headlines this good’ department: The world’s tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards.
- Wisconsin hunter bags hermaphroditic deer – with 7 legs. More.
- Called in to fix a blocked toilet, Oz plummer looks down to find head of seven-foot-long python peering at him from the bottom of the bowl.
- Amphibian cryptid caught in Bolivia.
- Sasquatch sighted in Saskatchewan.
- Had a car crash? New study says it’s all in the stars.
- Cool UFO photos.
- Bush administration clamps down on scientists at U.S. Geological Survey, the latest agency subjected to controls on research that might go against official policy.
- UK diplomat’s previously suppressed evidence lays bare Tony Blair’s lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The whistleblower that ministers tried to muzzle, and full transcript of evidence. (Read, save, or pay-per-view later.)
- Saddam seen as no threat – then politicians got to work.
- Boston air traffic controller says 9/11 was an inside job. He also says other air traffic controllers have been ignored or silenced.
Thanks, Pam.
Quote of the Day:
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
Ray Bradbury
