Weird Science

[Hudson]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/21/sol...ges/index.html

[Cyclopea]

Originally Posted by Hudson

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/21/sol...ges/index.html

WOW. I hadn't even heard of this space telescope that was launched in February!
I guess the news was too busy talking about Tiger Woods or something or maybe I just missed it.
I can't even believe these images are real! Amazing.
TY for posting.

[Cyclopea]

New Car Is Steered With Your Eyes, Not Hands
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_549255.html

[Mrs. Strutt]

Our five-year-old daughter, Katie, is starting kindergarten this fall and we were extremely fortunate to be accepted to an area magnet program for mathematics and engineering. It is one of the only elementary schools in the country to focus on math, science and engineering in its core curriculum starting at the kindergarten level.

Thursday night, as an incoming kindergarten family, we were invited to something called "Under the Stars", an event they held in conjunction with NASA and the St. Petersburg Astronomy Club. They set up big telescopes for the kids in the school parking lot, plus there was a presentation by NASA on their space program and several other activities. It was totally cool and I am really looking forward to next year!

Incidentally, the educator from NASA told us they provide completely free education seminars on our space program for any school around the country if you are interested in having your school contact them.

He also told us about Stellarium, a free open source planetarium software program you can download to your computer that shows the "realistic sky" in 3D. He did some demos and it was amazing!

[violaine]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unle...us-cancer.html

[Cyclopea]

The Mating Game: Meet the Zedonk, Plus 5 More Exotic Animal Hybrids

Kathryn Yao
AOL News



(July 28) -- Zedonk! It may sound like onomatopoeia, but it's actually a rare hybrid of zebra and donkey that popped up recently at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve in Lumpkin County, Ga. The week-old foal has her donkey mother's ears and her zebra father's stripes on her legs.

According to C.W. Wathen, the preserve's founder and general manager, the foal has a zebra's instincts. He adds that in about two weeks, the new addition to the family will be able to roam with the rest of the animals.

Donkeys and zebras mating is not a common occurrence: The last time the preserve had a zedonk was 40 years ago.

Unlike the most recent zedonk birth, most animal hybrids occur through artificial insemination -- chalk it up to humans' desire to play god. Hybrid animals usually don't occur in nature if left to their own devices.

As for what kinds of combinations are possible, Surge Desk scoured the Web for five of the most exotic examples.


1. Cama
Camel + llama
The Camel Reproduction Centre in Dubai aimed to create an animal with the size and strength of the camel, but the docile temperament of the llama. The first cama, a male named Rama, was born in January 1998. His face is a fairly equal mix of camel and llama, and he has no hump. There have been four camas born since the experiment began.



2. Leopon
Leopard + lion
The leopon's head is similar to that of a lion, while its body carries similarities to a leopard's. While the animals have reportedly been bred in Indian and at zoos in Europe and Japan, no leopons are known to exist today.



3. Liger
Lion + tiger
Lions and tigers normally don't interbreed in the wild, and when they do, their offspring usually don't survive. The size and appearance of the liger depends on genetic traits passed down to that specific animal. It can have full-body stripes or no stripes at all. There are currently only two ligers in North America: Hercules and Sinbad, who can be seen at Miami's Jungle Island theme park.


4. Wolphins
Whale + dolphin
It all began in December 2004, when a female calf was born to a false killer whale and an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin at Sea Life Park Hawaii. The calf grew to the size of a whale, but her features are dolphin-like. She then mated with a bottlenose dolphin; her third and only calf, a female, has thus survived.

[IMG]http://michigan-beefalo.com/jackson003.jpg[IMG]

5. Beefalo
Cow + buffalo (bison)
Mixing the American bison with the cow started when the buffalo population was threatened, but has also boosted American beef production. Full-blood beefalo are exactly three-eighths bison and five-eighths cow. Because of the profits that beefalo meat brings, this species will survive.

[Cyclopea]

Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us

28 July 2010 by Graham Lawton

DINOSAURS were shape-shifters. Their skulls underwent extreme changes throughout their lives, growing larger, sprouting horns then reabsorbing them, and changing shape so radically that different stages look to us like different species.

This discovery comes from a study of the iconic dinosaur triceratops and its close relative torosaurus. Their skulls are markedly different but are actually from the very same species, argue John Scannella and Jack Horner at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana.

Triceratops had three facial horns and a short, thick neck-frill with a saw-toothed edge. Torosaurus also had three horns, though at different angles, and a much longer, thinner, smooth-edged frill with two large holes in it. So it's not surprising that Othniel Marsh, who discovered both in the late 1800s, considered them to be separate species.

Now Scannella and Horner say that triceratops is merely the juvenile form of torosaurus. As the animal aged, its horns changed shape and orientation and its frill became longer, thinner and less jagged. Finally it became fenestrated, producing the classic torosaurus form.

This extreme shape-shifting was possible because the bone tissue in the frill and horns stayed immature, spongy and riddled with blood vessels, never fully hardening into solid bone as happens in most animals during early adulthood. The only modern animal known to do anything similar is the cassowary, descended from the dinosaurs, which develops a large spongy crest when its skull is about 80 per cent fully grown.

Shape-shifting continued throughout these dinosaurs' lives, Scannella says. "Even in the most mature specimens that we've examined, there is evidence that the skull was still undergoing dramatic changes at the time of death."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ceived-us.html

[Medusa]

Scientists Capture Anti-Matter!!!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/1..._n_785252.html

[katsarecool]

How on earth did I miss this thread!!!

[femmeInterrupted]

Amphioctopus marginatus, also known as the coconut octopus and veined octopus, is a medium-sized cephalopod belonging to the genus Amphioctopus.
It is found in tropical waters of the western Pacific Ocean.
It commonly preys upon shrimp, crabs, and clams, and displays unusual behaviour, including bipedal walking and gathering and using coconut shells and seashells for shelter

[femmeInterrupted]

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT.
The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second.
The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3.
This incredible image is a lighten blended version of the 304 and 171 angstrom wavelengths.

[Source: NASA]

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[Beast Lee]

I would recommend googling an analogy of physical matter. For example ( I read this years ago so don't quote me) sub atomic particles are to small for us to imagine so put it on a scale that u can. If a proton in a diamond were the size of a soccer ball, the electrons spinning around it would be smaller than gnats and several miles away. The next soccer ball sized proton would be 10 miles away. The point? Matter is essentially an energy field.
If the sun were the size of a basketball the earth would be the size of a peppercorn 30 yards away. That makes me suspicious of gravity. You can google your own analogies. I'm watching u gravity