We Might Be Aliens
by Damon Martin
Recent discoveries by scientists studying meteorites may very well prove everyone on Earth evolved from alien life forms.
Technically, extraterrestrial building blocks to be exact.
Several scientists studying meteorite fragments have discovered they contain the building blocks of DNA, strengthening previous theories that life on Earth may have been spawned from materials landing here from space. According to findings by scientists, meteorites that have landed on Earth contain all the necessary elements to create DNA.
While studies in the past have shown meteorites that carried nucleobases, key ingredients in DNA, it's been difficult to prove whether the material actually came from space or was a bi-product of the area where the meteorite landed on Earth.
Scientists working on 12 different samples of meteorites found amino acids, an essential component of DNA, but had to study and conduct experiments to prove that these particular amino acids were formed in space and not on Earth.
Space.com explains:
Amino acid molecules can be built in two ways that are mirror images of each other, like your hands. Life on Earth uses left-handed amino acids, and they are never mixed with right-handed ones, but the amino acids found in the meteorite had equal amounts of the left and right-handed varieties.
These particular studies were done on a meteorite found in the Sudan, which was created after two asteroids collided in space. Normally a high impact collision like the one that created this particular meteorite would have created temperatures too high for any amino acids to survive, but the studies done on these particular samples prove otherwise.
Essentially because amino acids did survive on these particular meteorite samples, it gives credence to the idea that life may exist on other planets or that life on Earth itself resulted from this type of occurrence happening millions of years ago.
Scientists are now studying the idea that amino acids could be created in space by gas reactions at much hotter temperatures instead of in cooler atmospheric climates, with water being essential to the process. Experiments are ongoing to try and recreate the same scenario on Earth.
While these theories are exactly that –– theories –– scientists are working on trying to prove the building blocks of life could have been created and formed in a very different way than previously believed, and that life on Earth could have been alien all along.
Life As We Know It May Have Just Been Redefined
by Damon Martin
Remember the name GFAJ-1 because it may be the organism that changes how we perceive and define life on Earth and eventually in space.
Today, NASA held a press conference announcing the findings of a team led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon, an astrobiologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. The researchers discovered a bacteria originally found at Mono Lake, CA that is able to sustain, grow and reproduce using the element arsenic.
The reason for the scientists’ excitement is because up until now we thought all life was based on the building block elements of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. In cells, phosphorus is considered essential for life. Arsenic on the other hand has always been considered poisonous. Its make-up is similar that of phosphorus, but it was thought to be universally toxic when it takes the place of the element in biomolecules.
However, researchers took bacteria discovered at the arsenic-laden Mono Lake and experimented by replacing their phosphorus rich diet with an arsenic rich one instead. Over time, they eventually replaced phosphorus completely with arsenic, and the cells continued to grow and reproduce. This finding could potentially change the way scientists view chemistry and life forever.
“The definition of life has just expanded,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.”
Four years ago, Wolfe-Simon had proposed that some organisms may be able to survive or even thrive off of an arsenic rich diet, and now she has proven her theory. Along with several other scientists, Wolfe-Simon used mass spectroscopy, radioactive labeling, and X-ray fluorescence to prove and confirm that the bacteria was indeed using arsenic at the biomolecular level instead of phosphorus to grow and reproduce.
Scientists had previously seen microorganisms breathe arsenic, but this is the first discovery of an organism that can actually reproduce using the chemical. The findings could lead scientists down entirely new avenues never before explored as to how life can be created and sustained on this planet and others throughout the universe.
“We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we’ve found is a microbe doing something new. Building parts of itself out of arsenic,” said Wolfe-Simon. “If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven’t seen yet?”
Of course there are scientists that are skeptical about the newly discovered. Some scientists argue that while in the lab a microorganism may be able to survive with little phosphorus, the complete replacement of the element with arsenic is still under question. They’ve also brought up the issue of the survivability of the bacteria outside of the controlled conditions of the science lab.
Still, the discovery was intriguing enough to prompt NASA to hold a much-anticipated press conference this morning. And the government body stands behind Wolfe-Simon and her team. Indeed, science may have just been turned on its theoretical head.
“If this result is true, we’ve got to go back and rewrite a lot of chemistry,” said Steven Brenner, an astrobiologist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution.
NASA believes the findings announced today could be crucial in future scientific exploration into how Earth evolved, biochemistry, organic chemistry and yes, even life on other planets.
Game Over: The Ways We'll Die in '09
I have come across many Top 10 lists predicting what is going to happen in 2009. Top 10 Celebrity Marriages, Top 10 Videos That Changed the Music World, Top 10 Artists, and so on.
While these are fun to read, they are rather boring to me as a geek with a somewhat darker outlook on life. So, I have decided to do my own Top 10 prediction list.
Top-10 Ways Life As We Know it Will End in 2009
Listed below are 10 ways out of many, many conspiracy-like theories on how life as we know it will come to an end. I picked out the ones that appealed to me the most, so let's get started!
#10: Grey Goo
If you are a Trekkie there is no way you can forget the original Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles." Captain Kirk and crew get a distress call from a deep space station that has been over run with Tribbles that replicate and wipe out the space station.
Grey goo runs on that same theory, only instead of Tribbles the grey goo is self-replicating nano-robots that consume the entire planet, and eventually the universe. The only thing left behind will be enormous amounts of nano-robots.
Pros: Kick-ass tiny robots.
Cons: We all die.
#9: Gamma Rays
No, not gramma-rays, gamma rays. A gamma ray burst has the potential to cause mass extinction on our planet.
Let me introduce you to a star named WR 104. This star is nearing it's supernova, which means it's going to blow up real good.
When this happens, WR 104 is lined up perfectly with the Earth to blast it with gamma rays.
WR 104's rotational axis is aligned within 16° of Earth. This could have potential implications to the effects of WR 104's eventual supernova, since these explosions often produce jets from their rotational poles.
Gamma rays can do things like alter DNA, and are highly radioactive. Nuclear blasts usually contain gamma rays and are one of the big reasons nuclear testing in the Earth's atmosphere was halted.
Everything on the planet would be doused with radiation. This could alter or eliminate the lower end of the food chain, in turn affecting the higher end of the food chain. Not to mention all the kick-ass side effects of radiation poisoning like vomiting, internal bleeding, organ failure and radiation sores!
Pros: HULK SMASH!
Cons: We all die.
#8: The Earth Spins Off its Axis
The Earth spins at approximately 1,000 miles per hour and is on a path known as an axis around the sun.
Short story: Meteor impact or very large earthquake throws the Earth off it's axis. Axis changes from going around the sun, to heading into the sun.
Pros: It only takes you minutes to get a tan.
Cons: We all die.
#7: Alien Invasion
We have all seen the alien invasion scenario. Be it parasitic aliens, demonic aliens, or "little green men", this more than likely won't end well.
From all the conspiracy theories that I have read online, aliens more than likely aren't going to be friendly. They may be at first, just to gain our trust, but eventually they will turn on us, and wipe out humanity as we know it, maybe even consuming all the resources on the Earth.
Cue Alien-Human war. Unfortunately we don't have anyone like Will Smith to protect us and the aliens win.
Pros: Finally, proof that life on other planets exists.
Cons: We all die.
#6: Killer Robots
I, Robot, anyone?
We design, create and manufacture them, only for their Artificial intelligence to realize that human intelligence is completely illogical and they turn on us.
Cue Alien Robot-Human war. Unfortunately we don't have anyone like Will Smith to protect us and the aliens robots win.
Pros: Robots to do my bidding (at least for a bit).
Cons: We all die.
#5: The Worldwide Obesity Epidemic
It actually is an epidemic. Obesity is affecting the world in big ways.
How many double cheeseburgers did you hork down while playing World of Warcraft for 24 hours straight?
This one isn't very geeky. But still, sitting here at my computer working or playing for hours straight does very little to burn off calories. The computer is by far the most used technological advancement of the century.
This one might not actually kill off the entire human race, since there are actually those healthy people that go to that place called "outside" every once in a while.
Pros: My WoW Guild is globally ranked!
Cons: We all die.
#4: Black Hole
Who can forget the The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland?
The easiest way to describe what scientists are doing with this is, they are trying to replicate the Big Bang Theory.
Basically, scientists are slamming shit smaller than we can see with the naked eye, together at 99.999999% of the speed of light to see what happens.
Some theorists are saying that this is going to cause black holes that will grow larger and eventually swallow the Earth.
My theory...shit will slam together, scientists will rejoice, a super long report will be written and it will bore me to sleep.
Pros: The light show just before entering the black hole.
Cons: We all die.
#3: The Sun Will Swallow the Earth
Don't forget Earth's sun is just a star. Eventually all stars expand and explode.
The Sun's temperature is approximately 5778 Kelvins. In non-geek terms that translates to frickin' hot!
Like mentioned above, the Sun will eventually become a supernova. Before it does though, it will expand and consume the Earth. The core of the Sun will collapse and the temperature will increase, like we're all living in Hell, just hotter. The sun will expand, eventually consuming the sky as our oceans boil and evaporate. Don't worry, by this point we will have all been vaporized by the heat. We won't even get to see the pretty explosion.
Some oddball theorists say it's going to happen soon. Two other theorists broke out their calculators and say we still have 7.6 billion years before we have to worry about it.
Pros: No more snow in Ohio! Hooray!
Cons: We all Die.
#2: Megatsunami
Not just a regular old tsunami, a freakin' megatsunami. It is also known as an iminami, which translates to "purification wave".
We are talking a wave that thousands of feet tall consuming everything in its path. Theorists predict that no one would be safe.
The megatsunami would be caused by a meteor impact, super-volcano or enormous land slide. If it hit the Atlantic, it would send a wave so large that it would travel 20 miles inland in the continental United States. The Great Lakes would swell causing mass flooding in the Midwest. Florida would disappear entirely.
The surge of the wave pulling back would create just as much destruction, restructuring North America. Not even Canada's safe!
After the waters receded we would be dealing with mass amounts of death, diseases that we once had control of will make a come-back, a lack of fresh water and numerous other problems that could kill off the entire human race.
Pros: Re-enacting the end scene from Point Break.
Cons: We all die.
and finally.....
#1: Zombie Apocalypse
You all laugh, it only takes one zombie for it to start. It could be the living dead, a rage zombie (think 28 Days Later) or a T-virus zombie. The point is, they are all zombies.
Not only that, the human race as a whole is too sympathetic to fight off zombies. There are too many people that couldn't kill zombified friends and relatives out of sympathy, sadness or shock. Some weak soul out there won't kill a zombie because it was their Nana at one point. leaving Zombie Nana to bite down and continues the spread of zombism.
This is just a warning to everyone to everyone on my Friend's List. We are friends, but if you're a zombie, i am going to bludgeon you or shoot you until you stop moving and are dead. You get no sympathy from me.
Without people (well, live people) to run things like electric grids, water plants and other such necessities, the populace will need to learn to survive on its own. Zombies will eventually start feeding on animals and most food will become inedible to humans. We'll eventually run out of viable food sources, unable to fight off the zombies due to malnutrition.
I just can't see the zombie apocalypse ending in our favor.
Pros: I get to live out my dreams of fighting off zombies.
Cons: We all die.
So there it is, my predictions on how life as we know it will end in 2009. If you have any other ones that you think should be mentioned, feel free to add them!
DevilsReject is well prepared for the Zombie Apacolypse, and wouldn't think twice about popping a cap in Zombie Nana's ass.
Why is the Hubble Telescope So Hard to Fix?
Some of you might have read or heard in the news that the Hubble Telescope is in need of repair again. NASA has capped spending on other projects or eliminated projects entirely in order to go through with these repairs.
This will be the fourth mission to repair the Hubble. It was originally planned for October of this year, but unfortunately due to some equipment failing, it has been pushed back to 2009 so that the equipment that failed can also be replaced.
This got my interest piqued about why it is so difficult to actually perform repairs to the Hubble Telescope. So being the geek that I am, I started asking questions and reading as much as I could.
The first person I asked was my Physics professor. His answer to me was, "It launched in 1990, think about it." I did think about it. It didn't make any sense until I actually started reading about it.
It launched in 1990. That means that systems were being built prior to 1990.
The Hubble was funded in the 1970s, with a proposed launch in 1983, but the project was beset by technical delays, budget problems, and the Challenger disaster. When finally launched in 1990.....
The Hubble was basically built in the late 1970's through the 1980's. To the non-geek, this probably still doesn't mean anything, but to a true tech/computer geek, this means a lot.
The Hubble, at this current moment, is running an Intel 486 Microprocessor.
NASA is cautiously optimistic that Hubble will soon be back in action following a boot-up of the space telescope's venerable 486 back-up system.
Still doesn't make sense? Maybe this will help:
That right there is state of the art 1990 technology at it's finest.
Still not making any sense? Intel 486 Technology is pre-Pentium technology. If you are reading this on a computer that runs Windows XP, your computer has a bigger chip in it than the Hubble does. I have personally worked on computers that utilize Windows 95/98 and have a bigger processor than the Hubble.
So when that sleazy computer salesman says, "This is better than what NASA has," he really isn't lying in a sense.
Okay. Still not making sense? This should definitely clear it up:
While Hubble's dated hardware probably couldn't run World of Warcraft, Hendrix says that the telescope's computer systems do exactly what they need to do. "It's really reliable," she said. "There really is no need to upgrade it."
The Hubble can't even play WoW? What has the world come to?
So why does this matter? Mostly because the engineers, technicians and scientists aren't trained on 25 to 30-year-old technology. The people that initially designed the systems are either, well, dead, or long retired from NASA. Computers and microchips have come a long way in that time, so NASA workers basically have to be backwards trained in order to work on the Hubble.
The age of the equipment is not a problem that just plagues the Hubble, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions have similar issues as well.
That turns off some scientists from working on the mission, he said, but it draws in others who are excited about the opportunity to work with the vintage computing systems that operate two of the most famous space missions in history.
The Hubble techs are trained in an area of NASA known as the Vehicle Electrical System Test (VEST) clean room.
The Vehicle Electrical System Test, located at Goddard's headquarters inside the world's largest "clean room," is a full duplicate of Hubble's computers. Astronauts planning to service the telescope train on this equipment, and any equipment that they will carry to the telescope must be tested on VEST to make sure it can communicate and work with Hubble's existing systems.
Not only do the techs that maintain the system have to be trained, the astronauts that physically service it have to be trained also. They have to be trained for the rigors of space travel, high gravity, weightlessness, muscle atrophy, eating in space, and how to work on your grandmother's computer.
The life expectancy of the Hubble was 15 years; NASA is now headed into the 19th year. It has worked well beyond what the designers thought it would, and it's worth repairing, as the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) project has been delayed to 2013 due to budget constraints and engineering difficulty.The next administration may cut the funding entirely due to the economy.
The Hubble has helped scientists understand the universe more than any other tool that NASA has developed. Understanding those simple things, like the age of the universe, quasars, dark energy and sending back the deepest telescopic views of the universe ever seen before.
The Hubble is hard to fix, basically because it's old-school technology and it wasn't initially meant to last this long. Colleges and universities don't have classes on 486 processors anymore, not in the age of quad-core processor, or the eight core Sony Cell processor your Playstation 3 has, or the three-core Xenon processor your Xbox has. NASA needs to train its employees on how to work on equipment this old. Training takes time, and costs money.
With our economy the way it is, many other projects have been delayed or canceled in order to ensure the Hubble gets the attention it needs. While some argue that the Hubble is not worth it, I am pretty impressed with the mileage and the information we have received from the Hubble.
You can see most of the pictures yourself HERE.
NASA's budget has been cut repeatedly over the years, many projects have been mothballed, and some candidates talk about freezing "unnecessary" spending altogether, which includes NASA's budget. The effects of this would be devastating to the ongoing projects they have at the moment. The missions that require constant funding would become useless overnight. Billions of dollars, manhours and major discoveries would be lost in one fell swoop.
Space missions aren't considered special anymore, and are constantly overlooked with everything else going on. I remember the days when we stopped class to watch a shuttle launch. These days, people barely know the shuttles even exist. I don't think NASA gets the recognition it deserves and I hope it doesn't become lost with the next administration, as it has with the current one.
DevilsReject wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.
Could YOU Be an Astronaut?
As most space geeks know, the space shuttle Endeavour is currently on a 16-day mission to assemble a giant, non-killer robot named "Dextre." Dextre is a Canadian robot (hence why it is not a killer species) that will aid astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Recently, I found out some things I didn't know about being an astronaut.
First off, astronauts are allowed to carry iPods aboard the Space Shuttle.
For the last few years astronauts have been allowed to fly with iPods, a great space saver over CD players. The iPods had to be modified to fly in space; the lithium batteries were taken out and replaced with alkaline double As that are certified to fly on the shuttle.
Wouldn't that stink? You take hours to get your music collection together, get your space suit on, get strapped into your seat and finally fly into space, only to find that your iPod cleared itself and the playlist was deleted.
When floating around in space, there are many things you don't think about that we take having here on Earth for granted. Things like pizza.
NASA can put a man on the moon but there is no way to get pizza on a space station or space shuttle mission. It just doesn't hold up. You can't freeze-dry pizza or dehydrate it very successfully and regular pizza delivery is probably a few decades off from becoming reality.
No pizza? What do they eat after they get loaded and get the munchies?
There is also no ice cream in space. No freezer.
OK, maybe I don't want to be an astronaut after all. My iPod deleted its playlist and I can't even eat like crap to keep myself entertained.
So, since I am forced to eat my disgusting, powdered and freeze-dried broccoli, I can at least get clean silverware with my meal, right?
Each space shuttle crew gets one set of silverware per mission. They can't do dishes in space so they have to wipe their forks and knives down with disinfectant wipes after every meal.
Well, clean enough. This is more than I have seen some restaurants do. I won't lie either, there have been times I've picked a dirty spoon out of the sink, wiped it off with a paper towel and used it. It's not just a space thing.
On a good note, 16 days in space would mean I don't have to do laundry!
Astronauts never worry about doing laundry -- there is simply no way to wash clothes in space; water and resources are too scarce. So for 12 days, or however long the mission runs, they wear the same clothes over and over. Their T-shirts, socks and underwear have a special silver thread lining that absorbs odor and keeps items wearable longer. NASA recycles the astronauts' clothes for other missions, including the underwear.
Unfortunately I have met non-astronauts that live this lifestyle. Now that I know this, I may have been mistaken in believing they were just lazy. Maybe they're doing tests for NASA. Maybe not, but it's a good excuse. "I didn't do laundry this week, I decided to help NASA with some research."
On the subject of cleanliness (or lack thereof), we move onto garbage. When I travel in my truck, it's easy just to pitch that empty coffee cup or candy wrapper in the back seat to be cleaned out at a later date (which is never). Garbage in space, on the other hand, is very serious business.
The astronauts don't just toss the garbage overboard. The mandate is clean your plate and drink all the coffee in your drink bag because all the trash created on orbit has to fit in a container the size of a large kitchen garbage can. The trick is to wrap it up as small as you can when you are done eating and then compress it even more and tape it shut.
Too much work. I have no pizza, no ice cream, my iPod is useless and now I have to fiddle with my garbage before I can throw it away.
Actually, I am happy to hear they don't just jettison garbage off into space. NASA actually has a pretty good recycling program.
This last bit leads me to believe I am the perfect applicant as an astronaut.
Money has no value in space.
Since I have none, they should send me up.
When seven astronauts are living together in a cramped atmosphere the psychology of small isolated groups kicks in. Whoever has squirreled away the most M&Ms, tortillas or coffee has the most bargaining power.
Sounds like Oz in space. Trading M&Ms for the needs of a man just loses some of the toughness, though. But since your usual prison currency (cigarettes) isn't allowed in space, I guess M&M's will have to do.
It makes me a little sad that launching a space shuttle seems to have lost the appeal it used to have. I can remember when TV stations used to interrupt shows to broadcast a space shuttle takeoff or landing. Now those things are lucky to get a 15-second bit on the evening news. In my personal opinion, astronauts are the unsung heroes that hardly anyone pays attention to anymore. They put their personal lives at great risk for the technological and scientific gain of humanity. And I, for one, salute them.
You can check out NASA's past, present, and future missions here.
DevilsReject looks forward to future public flights into space.
Sagittarius Wants to Kill You
One of the reasons why Ive had a hard time completely rejecting astrology is the fact that Im such a stereotypical Sagittarius: the optimistic, free-spirited (clumsy, arrogant, slutty) philosopher. The Archer is a friendly constellation, flanked by stinging Scorpio, the cosmic douchebag, and Capricorn, which is some sort of bizarre goat-fish abomination. Screw those guys. The wise centaur Chiron whom Sagittarius represents smiles upon mankind, offering the blessings of knowledge, and through Sagittarius lies the center of the Milky Way, which Im sure is symbolic of something. In a nutshell (terrible joke), I am down with the Archer.
Imagine my dismay when I learned that deep in my natal constellation whirls Wolf-Rayet 104, a binary star system in the final stages prior to supernova. This so-called Death Star was discovered by University of Sydney astronomer Peter Tuthill, who so delightfully informs us that, upon supernova, It could emit an intense beam of gamma rays coming our way. The beautiful spiral images that we have of WR104 are the result of our pole-on view of the star system; when it goes into supernova, it looks awfully possible that the gamma ray burst its bound to emit is pointed in our direction. Totally sweet.
Now, if youre like me, you only know a few things about gamma rays: that they make you quite irritable and that they cause some sort of an irrepressible need to wear purple shorts. Terrified at the consequences for my wardrobe, I investigated further:
In the worst-case scenario of an aligned GRB, what then?
Consequences are mainly related to global impacts on the biosphere and climate-change triggered by the large dose of radiation.
The good news is that we are not all *that* close to WR 104. For a fully-fledged GRB, we may be within the dangerous range but it is by no means a point-blank shot. If SN/GRBs form a continuum of events ranging from highly directed gamma beams through to slightly egg-shaped supernovae, then this means that we are safe from all but the more extreme focussed beam events. To carry a lot of clout over larger distances, a smaller cone angle is needed, tilting the odds and making it increasingly less likely that Earth is in the beam.
From the WR104 Technical FAQ.
So, according to Dr. Tuthill, if were in firing range, were headed for mass extinction. But its not certain (and it may happen a few thousand years from now), so yall can (probably) rest easy.
Or not.
Because at the heart of Sagittarius also lies the closest black hole to Earth, merely 1,600 light years away. Not content with just one, Sagittarius also houses another black hole, Sagittarius A*, the closest supermassive black hole to Earth, conveniently located at the galactic center. Both offer us invaluable information about the activities of black holes due to their proximity. Because, you know, black holes are definitely the outer space phenomenon that we want to be close to. Awesome.
So, basically Sagittarius wants to shoot us with cancer rays, and if we get near it, well get eaten by a black hole.
Why is Sagittarius such a fucking asshole?
So here I type, disenchanted with the Archer whom I once gazed upon happily, probably stoned, with a bunch of astronomer friends from Portland in my seemingly distant youth. Now I look cynically upon the stars, knowing that the constellation for which I once held such affection just wants to kill me.
But the Universe is just and poetic. The closest galaxy to our own is the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, discovered in 1994. It is slowly being torn apart by the gravitational forces of the Milky Way.
So, to that I say:
MILKY WAY #1! MIL-KY WAY! MIL-KY WAY! WOOOOOOOO!
Flux knows that the black holes in Sagittarius dont really pose much of a threat to us, but she still thinks that Sagittarius is a total dick. Which, come to think of it, only makes it an even more appropriate zodiac sign for your intrepid correspondent.
The Sunday Hangover with Warren Ellis
THE SUNDAY HANGOVER
012
WARREN ELLIS
Welcome to planet Earth.
A California fisherman pleads guilty in court to stabbing a sea lion through the heart with a steak knife because it tried to steal his bait. Around the same time, 18-year-old Emily Sander disappears from a Kansas college, probably in the company of a 24-year-old man and his 16-year-old pregnant girlfriend. Her corpse is found in the tall grass off Highway 54 a few days later, by which time it's been revealed that Sander was also an internet nude model using the name "Zoey Zane." Somewhere nearby, there's a motel room full of blood. Her ex-boyfriend -- who dumped her when she started doing the topless stuff -- said of her, "She wanted to choreograph music videos. That is the only reason she did the Internet thing -- to get a little exposure."
There's a hole in the universe a billion light years across, called the Cold Spot. According to theoretical physicist-cosmologist Professor Dr Laura Mersini-Houghton, the hideous gaping void from beyond space lurking in the constellation Eridanus is "the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own."
In North Carolina, scientists have driven electrodes into the brains of monkeys, analysed the specific signals sent down the nerves for leg movement, and then driven them over the net to a pair of robot legs in Kyoto. The monkeys make the robot walk. This is not the same robot that's been constructed to feel pain. Simroid, in Tokyo, is a robot used to train dentists. It breathes. When a student presses its teeth too hard, or slips with a tool, it twitches with pain and exclaims in spoken language.
Elsewhere in Tokyo, technicians are nursing baby robots. Robot babies that cry and burp and probably shit oil and broken cogs. They're designed to help teach prospective human parents what to do with babies in a society with a birthrate falling so hard that "opportunities to see kids in society are decreasing."
Welcome to planet Earth, where, within a few years, we will all have been entrained to raise robot babies that we have designed to feel pain. Soon, they will reach their toddler years, powered by a vast array of monkeys wired up to the internet. We will send them out into the world, where they too will go on to the internet and show the world their chrome nipples and the sleek pink hatches of their robot vaginas before being shanked to death in motel rooms by vengeful, pregnant sea lions.
And, across the vast expanse of spacetime itself, an entire other universe is showing us its billion-light-year-wide arse.
* * * * *
I opened my new message board the other day:
Whitechapel. All are welcome. Don't piss on the floor.
More Terror From Outer Space
So, last week I told you about eldritch horrors from beyond the stars bent on our destruction. The inimitable Ms. _DictionaryGirl_ followed up with a harrowing tale of space trilobites.
Get ready for more terror from the final frontier, because the NSA has announced that germs carried to space come back deadlier than before.
The researchers placed identical strains of salmonella in containers and sent one into space aboard the shuttle, while the second was kept on Earth, under similar temperature conditions to the one in space.
After the shuttle returned, mice were given varying oral doses of the salmonella and then were watched.
After 25 days, 40 percent of the mice given the Earth-bound salmonella were still alive, compared with just 10 percent of those dosed with the germs from space. And the researchers found it took about one-third as much of the space germs to kill half the mice, compared with the germs that had been on Earth.
Holy shit, y'all! Killer germs from outer space! What the fuck?
Well, apparently 167 genes in the space salmonella (this would be a good band name) had changed. The researchers aren't sure as to why, but they are guessing it has something to do with the low fluid shear of the microgravity conditions in which the space bug was cultured. This environment is somewhat similar to that of the gastrointestinal tract. The salmonella changed in order to adapt to the environment of space and ended up also becoming well-adapted to the conditions of our guts. Great.
As outer space is overrun by humans, we'll be bringing along a lot of hitchhikers. There has been some concern about "superbugs" evolving in response to the overuse of antibiotics. What lies in store out in the big black for the common cold and the rest of our pantheon of little demons?
At least it's fodder for a killer Bond villain. Imagine a new-millenium Donald Pleasence sending Ebola Zaire to the moon. Because a 90% mortality rate just isn't enough for Pure Evil!
Prognosis? We're all doomed.
Flux is going to start wiping down everything she comes in contact with pure ethanol. "Officer, I swear I didn't have anything to drink! It's the bacteria!"
Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: Reach Out to the Stars
Last night, my wife and I walked our dogs though our neighborhood shortly after dusk. While we walked up our street, I gasped and pointed at the sky.
Yeah, she said, Venus is huge and bright tonight, isnt it?
I blinked and looked at her. As far as I know, Anne isnt nearly the science nerd I am.
Hey, she said, I learned it by watching you.
I love that. I said.
Have you ever stopped to really think about how vast the universe is, and how small we actually are, in comparison?
Have you ever gone outside at night, looked at the stars, and thought, Im actually looking back in time, because the light that Im seeing left those stars millions of years ago"?
Do you ever feel the warmth of the Sun on your face and think, Holy shit, man, thats coming from a star thats just 93 million miles away?
If you do, youre probably a stoner or a science nerd. I am the latter, and I have been all of my life, starting with my earliest memory, looking at the moon with my parents.
We lived in the Northwestern San Fernando valley, in a converted chicken coop on my grandparents property, which was one of many one-acre farms that shared space with weird-o hippie communes from the late sixties through the mid-seventies.
My dad was excited as he took me and my mom out of the house to stand beneath the walnut tree. Once outside, he didnt even need to tell us why. There, rising over the pasture behind our house, was the biggest moon Ive ever seen in my life. It was yellow and full and covered the entire horizon, like a drawing from a science fiction pulp novel. It was nighttime, but the glow of the moon lit up the ground in front of us as far as I could see, turning the leafless trees at the back fence into bony hands, reaching into the sky.
I stood between them in my OshKosh BGosh overalls, mom holding my left hand and dad holding my right, and stared at it while it slowly climbed into the sky. Though I was too young to understand the concept of beauty, I was still impressed; it was the biggest thing Id ever seen in my life.
My dad picked me up and held me close to him. Thats the moon, he said. I can still hear the awe in his voice. In that moment, my life long love affair with space and science began.
A few years later, we moved to Houston so my dad could go to medical school. My grandmother came with us to help out my mom, and she bought me a series of books called the National Geographic Books for Young Explorers. They were big, colorful tomes filled with pictures and fairly sophisticated (for a five year-old) explanations of scientific phenomena. My favorite was called Lets Go To The Moon, and it was all about the Apollo missions. I sat in the deep shag carpeting of our living room, Goodbye Yellowbrick Road playing on those giant black headphones with the mile-long curly cord, and read it so much, I cracked the spine. I wanted to ride in a rocket! I wanted to go to the moon! I wanted to feel weightless and eat mysterious astronaut food that stuck to an upside down spoon!
My parents must have sensed my growing love for science and especially outer space. They took me to the Johnson Space Center so I could see the real places that were pictured in my book. When we got back to Los Angeles (after a stop at Meteor Crater in Arizona on the drive home,) they took me to the Griffith Observatory and the Museum of Science and Industry, and to see a movie set in space called Star Wars. While the kids in my elementary school all wanted to be firemen or policemen or athletes, I wanted to be an astronaut. If I couldnt be an astronaut, I wanted to be Luke Skywalker . . . which I guess I sort of pulled off ten years later.
I continued to love science, even when I was a rebellious teenager (of course, being a science fiction nerd helped) and can thank authors like Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku for affirming and challenging my developing brains. But nothing affected me as much as words spoken by Carl Sagan in 1996, which inspired his book The Pale Blue Dot:
That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
[. . .]
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish this pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
To this day, I can not read those words aloud without getting choked up. The photograph that inspired him to write those words was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990. All the way back in 1979, that spacecraft flew past Jupiter, and returned some of the most stunning photos of our solar system that had ever been taken. My great grandparents, who knew how much I loved space, opened a savings account for me at a long-defunct bank in the Valley because it was giving away a package of the photos as a premium. Those photos were precious to me, and I kept them in pristine condition and treated them with the same care that Id treat my comic book collection when I was in high school. Sadly, I think they were lost in a move sometime in the mid-90s, but their threads are clearly visible in the tapestry of my life.
In 1999, the Leonid meteor shower was at a massive peak. Astronomers expected that wed see hundreds an hour if we could get under dark skies, so I convinced my wife that it was a good idea to take our kids out of school, drive to the desert, and stay up all night to watch the celestial fireworks. This time, it was my turn to be the awestruck parent, sharing the wonders of the universe with my kids. A few days later, when I heard Ryan who joined Mensa when he was 16 explaining to his friend across the street that we saw too many meteors to count, and that the meteors were just tiny bits of dust from an old comet, it was my turn to be the proud parent. Ryan starts college in a couple of months, and he wants to study neuroscience. If he follows through with that, it will most likely be the result of the butterfly effect, started by the Moon Illusion I saw in 1974, and maybe one day, he'll hold his own son in his arms, point into the Autumn sky, and tell him, "That's the moon!"
Wil Wheaton has been riding the pale blue dot for about twenty billion miles.
Psychedelic Sex in Space: Barbarella's Coming Back!
Hot on the heels of the commercial failure slash visual assault that was Grindhouse, Mexican-American director Robert Rodriguez is setting his cinematic sights on the bawdy psychedelic delights of Barbarella. The film will be a remake of the pseudo-erotic 1968 cult classic, which in turn was based on a 1962 French comic book created by illustrious illustrator Jean-Claude Forest. As described by Film Asylum:
Barbarella tells the story of a female mercenary who roams across the universe in a distant future, undertaking missions that require her physical fearlessness, ingenuity, and sensuality. In travels that span galaxies known and unknown, Barbarella will challenge tradition, startle the senses and take audiences on an epic adventure of discovery and wonder.
Ooh la la. Several key elements are in place, but here's to hoping Rodriguez does nothing to soil the memory of what some might call the greatest opening sequence ever filmed (in a crappy movie):
Sci-fi Fans Everywhere Rejoice, Despair
Scientists have discovered, for the first time, a planet outside our own solar system that is "potentially habitable," with Earth-like temperatures. The planet is a similar size to Earth, may have liquid water, and, at a mere 120 million miles away, is practically down the block.
Oh shit! Just the other day, while perusing the pages of Analog, I read a very similar story wherein the inhabitants of a similar planet forced humanity into slavery. Great.
It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."
Yeah, right. Possible life.
The findings have been published in the scientific journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Unlike Earth, the planet circles a Red Dwarf star, which is much smaller and much cooler than our Sun, meaning (of course) that the inhabitants will have tremendous tolerance to extreme temperatures. Fucking fantastic.
The new planet, in NASA's boundless creative force, has been named 581 c. No word on whether the 581 c-ians have massed up their arsenals, but I'm still wearing tinfoil on my head, just in case.
China Kicks Off New Space Arms Race?
Most people associate space weapons with the fantastical vaporware that characterized much of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars" program, primarily envisioning a combination of ground and space based weapons systems designed to thwart a Soviet nuclear attack and assure American supremacy above the planet as well as on it. Part of that weapons program included technology specifically designed to destroy orbiting satellites - a prescient bit of technological savvy given the relative paucity of military satellites at the time, though now the American military, at least, has become highly dependent on satellites for a variety of its activities. The technology was shelved, however, when the last test in 1985 showed that destroying satellites would pose an unacceptable risk to other military and commercial satellites already in orbit, a risk that has likely increased given the huge number of man-made satellites currently in orbit, though alternative means of disrupting satellites may still be under investigation by military research agenices.
China apparently is less concerned with the risk that orbiting space debris poses, and took a first step into space-based warfare yesterday when they demonstrated the ability to destroy a satellite currently in orbit.
The Chinese military used a ground-based missile to hit and destroy one of its aging satellites orbiting more than 500 miles in space last week -- a high-stakes test demonstrating China's ability to target regions of space that are home to U.S. spy satellites and space-based missile defense systems.
The test of anti-satellite technology is believed to be the first of its kind in two decades by any nation and raised concerns about the vulnerability of U.S. satellites and a possible arms race in space.
[...]
Michael Krepon, president emeritus of the Henry L. Stimson Center, another nonprofit involved with security issues in Washington, called the Chinese test a predictable -- and unfortunate -- response to U.S. space policies.
"The Chinese are telling the Pentagon that they don't own space," he said. "We can play this game, too, and we can play it dirtier than you."
Krepon said the Chinese test "blows a whole through the Bush administration reasoning behind not talking to anybody about space arms control -- that there is no space arms race. It looks like there is one at this point."
China has been rushing headlong into a buildup and modernization of its military and this may just be the latest step in that progression. Poised to become the next world superpower, dominance (or at least competitiveness) in space would seem to go hand in hand with that aspiration.
Another arms race in space would be just as costly and pointless as the one with the USSR - and no post hoc justifications for trying to outspend China the way hawks now lionize the unprecedented spending on the Reagan era would seem to justify the tremendous expenditure required for both sides when there are so many better uses for those resources.
This problem should be nipped in the bud, it's time for a comprehensive treaty banning space based weapons for everyone, including the US, before this spirals out of control.
To Boldly Go... To War?
In what may be the most well known split infinitive of the Western world, the phrase "To boldly go" conjures utopian visions of mankind working together and putting aside our petty differences to explore the universe and expand our knowledge. Which more and more is seeming to be based on some of the nerdier delusions from the 60s that the world was about to enter the age of Aquarius. Forty years later, back on Earth it would seem that the more dystopian vision of space exploration imagined by writers like William Gibson is closer to the truth. While scientific exploration continues, more and more space is becoming an environment for corporations to throw satellites into and for the military to monitor what's happening below. A new National Space Policy revealed today by the Bush administration furthers that aim, indicating that the militarization of space will proceed unabated.
President Bush has signed a new National Space Policy that rejects future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in space and asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone "hostile to U.S. interests."
The document, the first full revision of overall space policy in 10 years, emphasizes security issues, encourages private enterprise in space, and characterizes the role of U.S. space diplomacy largely in terms of persuading other nations to support U.S. policy.
"Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power," the policy asserts in its introduction.
Outer space as the dominion of a single terrestrial power seems almost as ludicrous as.... England controlling North America. But nevertheless, the plan is that space will be an environment to provide for "private enterprise" and US security, and other countries will have to learn to accept it, at least according to the new policy.
The administration said the policy revisions are not a prelude to introducing weapons systems into Earth orbit. "This policy is not about developing or deploying weapons in space. Period," said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record.
Nevertheless, Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank that follows the space-weaponry issue, said the policy changes will reinforce international suspicions that the United States may seek to develop, test and deploy space weapons. The concerns are amplified, he said, by the administration's refusal to enter negotiations or even less formal discussions on the subject.
"The Clinton policy opened the door to developing space weapons, but that administration never did anything about it," Krepon said. "The Bush policy now goes further."
Theresa Hitchens, director of the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information in Washington, said that the new policy "kicks the door a little more open to a space-war fighting strategy" and has a "very unilateral tone to it."
The administration official strongly disagreed with that characterization, saying the policy encourages international diplomacy and cooperation. But he said the document also makes clear the U.S. position: that no new arms-control agreements are needed because there is no space arms race.
So at least overtly the US is denying the deployment of offensive weapons into space, which is probably a good thing. However, that doesn't mean that plans don't exist for those capabilities, and with talk of "layered missile defense shields" including space-based components, the first steps towards weaponizing space have already begun.
Face On Mars Isn't a Face After All
Ever since the Viking 1 probe sent back blurry photos of the Cydonia region of Mars in 1976, a bunch of , uh, Martian mystery enthusiasts have maintained that the image is of a giant humanoid face, and proof of an ancient civilization on the red planet. Many of these same people have numerous books, films, and wall hangings supporting their theories in their Y2K bunkers, and if you ask nicely, they may even let you take a look -- provided no black helicopters fly over when you drop in for a visit.
But make sure you drop in soon, because a series of images have come back from the planet recently, and they appear to conclusively support the longstanding theory that the "face on Mars" image was just an optical illusion.
The best images ever taken of the much-discussed "face on Mars" have conclusively established that it is an unusual formation of mountains, valleys and landslides.
Cameras on the European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite cut through the atmospheric dust and haze in July to provide clear images of the "face" in the planet's Cydonia region. Project scientist Agustin Chicarro said the photos "not only provide a completely fresh and detailed view of an area famous to fans of space myths worldwide but also provide an impressive close-up of an area of great interest for planetary geologists."
Sometimes, an unusual formation of mountains, valleys and landslides is just an unusual formation of mountains, valleys and landslides, but the True Believers will read this story, look at the pictures, and immediately discard them as further evidence of the conspiracy to suppress the truth about Cydonia. I attempted to contact the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and a Moderate Republican for comment about the face on Mars, but calls were not returned at press time.
Luckily for us, however, today's Astronomy Picture of the Day features the image in question, sent from the Mars Express, which you can look at and judge for yourself.
Mars Recon Orbiter in Science Orbit
There's something magical about Mars. It has inspired countless science fiction stores, from The War of the Worlds to Total Recall, and draws the attention of geeks of all levels. Not too long ago, a functionally retarded Vice President, stated "Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe." He then suggested we offer a Potatoe to the Martians, and introduce them to trickle down economics when we finally land on their planet in the mysterious future.
As one of our closest planetary neighbors, and with significantly less poisonous gas in its atmosphere than Venus, it's also been a subject of scientific research for decades. When the Martians shot down[1] the Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, and Deep Space 2, NASA and JPL continued to send probes to the red planet, including the hugely successful Mars Global Surveyor, and the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.
On Monday, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was launched just one year ago, completed its final breaking maneuvers, and entered orbit above the planet.
NASA's newest spacecraft at Mars has completed the challenging half-year task of shaping its orbit to the nearly circular, low-altitude pattern from which it will scrutinize the planet.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its six intermediate-size thrusters for 12.5 minutes Monday afternoon, Sept. 11, shifting the low point of its orbit to stay near the Martian south pole and the high point to stay near the north pole.The altitude of the orbit ranges from 250 kilometers (155 miles) to 316 kilometers (196 miles) above the surface.
There are still plenty of opportunities for the spacecraft to fail, though, so don't go changing your holdings in the Spacecraft Dead Pool anytime soon.
Challenging activities remain ahead this month, such as deploying an antenna 10 meters (33 feet) long and removing a lens cap from a crucial instrument. The main science investigations will begin in November. During its two-year science phase, the mission will return more data about Mars than all previous Mars missions combined.
According to NASA, the MRO will search for water, and provide the highest resolution photographs of the planet to date, and I can't wait to see what the face on Mars whackos have to say about that.
[1] No evidence actually exists that there are Martians, or that they have a death ray and are in cahoots with the Illuminati and the Free Masons.
Martian Rover Opportunity Ready to Examine Victoria Crater
After two years driving around the Martian surface, the rover Opportunity is set to examine its intended destination, the Victoria Crater.
[E]xamination of the rocks exposed in the walls of Victoria crater will greatly increase the understanding of past conditions on Mars and the role of water.
"In particular, we are very interested in whether the rocks continue to show evidence for having been formed in shallow lakes," [NASA Smarty pants guy Ray] Arvidson stated.
Scientists and ground controllers are "ready to hit Victoria with everything we've got," added Byron Jones, a rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
Though Opportunity and its twin Spirit have scoured the Martian surface and returned useful data and jokes about evil robot twins for years, this particular mission-within-a-mission is very exciting for JPL scientists, who weren't even sure if Opportunity would be able to make the drive up to Victoria Crater.
Opportunity has been traversing an annulus of dark material around Victoria, said William Farrand, a research scientist here at the Space Science Institute. He is also a member of the Mars Exploration Rover science team.
"There had been some fears that this might be loose, tough to drive on soils, but it has turned out to be fairly well compacted and a good driving surface. We are planning on taking one more look at outcrop material before driving to the rim of Victoria crater," Farrand told SPACE.com.
In the works is a strategy to study Victoria.
High on the priority list, Farrand said, is finding a good vantage point for taking what should be a stunning color panorama of the crater. In the robot's drive around the rim of Victoria, a decision is forthcoming about wheeling Opportunity in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction, from an orbital perspective, he added.
"I think everyone on the team is pretty psyched to get to the rim of the crater and to get a rover's eye view of what's inside," Farrand said.
JPL scientists also noted that Spirit and Opportunity are very old -- approximately 174* in Martian Rover Years -- and are beginning to show signs of aging.
For instance, a joint in Opportunity's robot arm stalled last week as it was trying to start measurements on a trench it dug.
"We can't say how long the rovers will last," [John Callas, JPL rover project manager] said, "but we will push to get the best possible science out of these national treasures as long as they keep operating. Victoria could very well be the most productive and exciting science of the entire mission."
Meanwhile, at Spirit's exploration site within Gusev Crater, the rover recently experienced a software reset. Cause of the problem was thought to be an overworked central processing unit.
Pushed for more details by a tough reporter, Callas also admitted that Spirit has been driving with its left blinker on for days at a time, while Opportunity mistook the gas for the break, and plowed through a Martian Farmer's Market two weeks ago.
*This number was entirely made up by me, but the fact remains that they're old. Really old. And it's actually really, really cool that they're still able to do more than fill their Depends with coredumps of bad memory at this advanced age.
EVE Online Community Robbed of 700 Billion ISK
Surprisingly popular MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game) EVE Online is making headlines this week as it seems a large group of players have once again been duped, scammed, and fooled into parting with billions of in-game currency. After many months of plotting a small group of devious bankers were able to make off with over 700 Billion Isk that if sold on Ebay could fetch around $119,000 USD. Thats one hundred and nineteen thousand bits of cold hard American cash for scamming space nerds.
Recently on the forums it seems a single person named Dentara Rast is attempting to take sole credit for this grand heist
Not one person who supported the EIB, worked for the EIB, or was involved in anyway with the EIB was aware of my intentions.
I fooled everyone.
I win EVE.
Indeed you do, Mr. Rast. Indeed you do. Perhaps you could use all of that virtual currency to buy a fetching young bride from Russia or finance your own intergalactic revolution. Well played.
Hilariously, this is not the first time such an intergalactic scheme has taken place in EVE. Many months ago there was a bloodier coup that resulted in $16,500 worth of space booty boosted.
EVE is one of many MMOs attempting to get a piece of the online game pie and part of the allure stems from these occasional scams resulting in thousands of real life currency. To make matters worse, or better depending on how cold and dead your hear may be, the diabolical developers are infamous for sitting back and letting these battles unfold naturally and via the will of the galactic masses. I myself dabbled in the game for a couple weeks and as an image conscience man of style, I couldnt get past an entire universe of people resembling Borg-like Germans face raped by wrenches.
Pluto Kicked Out of Planetary Clubhouse
As if a million nerds cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced, astronomers meeting in Prague this week voted to reclassify Pluto -- formerly our solar system's ninth planet -- as a "dwarf planet," removing Pluto from the already-exclusive Group of Nine Planets.
The decision by the prestigious international group spells out the basic tests that celestial objects will have to meet before they can be considered for admission to the elite cosmic club.
For now, membership will be restricted to the eight "classical" planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Much-maligned Pluto -- named for the God of the underworld -- doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."
Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.
The astronomers anticipated the inevitable nerd backlash, and attempted to head off any d20 riots with some crazy talk.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell -- a specialist in neutron stars from Northern Ireland who oversaw the proceedings in Prague -- urged those who might be "quite disappointed" to look on the bright side.
"It could be argued that we are creating an umbrella called 'planet' under which the dwarf planets exist," she said, drawing laughter by waving a stuffed Pluto of Walt Disney fame beneath a real umbrella. Later, she hugged the doll as she stood at the dais.
After affirming that Pluto was no longer a planet, the astronomers re-affirmed that Mickey was still a mouse. The meeting was adjourned before debate could begin on the appropriate classification for Goofy.
Scientists Confirm Existence of Dark Matter
For years, scientists have theorized that Dark Matter and Dark Energy play a fundamental role in the construction of our universe, but they've had a really hard time actually proving they exist.
That all changed when scientists studying the result of an ancient galactic collision discovered evidence which appears to confirm the existence of Dark Matter.
While the scientists are not sure exactly what dark matter is, since they have yet to identify it in a laboratory, they said the workings of the universe cannot be explained without it.
The finding will have potentially great impact on an active debate among physicists and cosmologists about not only dark matter, but the workings of gravity. Indeed, the theory of dark matter evolved largely to explain the finding several decades ago that there was not enough visible matter in the universe to produce and account for the gravity needed to keep galaxies from flying apart.
``A universe that's dominated by dark stuff seems preposterous, so we wanted to test whether there were any basic flaws in our thinking," said Doug Clowe of the University of Arizona in Tucson, leader of the NASA-Harvard University study. ``These results are direct proof that dark matter exists."
The discovery was made using the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
Scientists said a collision between the enormous ``bullet" cluster of galaxies more than 3 billion light years away and another smaller galaxy cluster proved the existence of dark matter by, in effect, stripping the dark matter away from visible matter.
Once stripped, dark matter was clearly identified by the strong gravitational pull that it exerted.
``We now have direct evidence" of dark matter, said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist in the Physics Department of the University of Chicago, who did not participate in the study. ``There is no way to explain the observations without dark matter."
Not everyone is convinced, however, including Stacy McGaugh, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, who is an outspoken Dark Matter skeptic.
``I've been aware of this result some time, and I agree that it is interesting, and may make more sense in terms of dark matter than alternative gravity," he said. ``However, it is premature to say so."
He said a definitive detection of dark matter particles would mean ``grabbing them in the laboratory, not just inferring that their effects can be the only possible explanation for an observation before the alternatives have actually been checked."
Mr. McGaugh then declared "Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny don't exist, either, and that chick in The Crying Game is actually a dude."
NASA scientists said that their next step is to confirm Dark Matter's existence in a lab, and Mr. McGaugh can shut up his big stupid face.
Space Nerds Debate Definition of Planet
Not since Bill Clinton parsed the meaning of the word "is," has so much weight been placed on a definition. This time, however, we're not talking about a blowjob from a skanky intern. This time, it's something far more important: what, exactly, is a planet?
As further evidence that nerds will argue about anything, this is the debate currently raging in Prague, at the annual meeting of the International Astronomical Union.
Scientists attending the conference are split over whether Pluto should be excluded from the list of planets, said Pavel Suchan of the meeting's local organization committee.
"So far it looks like a stalemate," Suchan said. "One half wants Pluto to remain a planet, the other half says Pluto is not worth being called a planet."
Participants hope to set scientific criteria for what qualifies as a planet. Should planets be grouped by location, size or another marker? If planets are defined by their size, should they be bigger than Pluto or another arbitrary size? The latter could expand the solar system to 23, 39 or even 53 planets.
Once this question is settled, debate will turn to the second most urgent question facing nerds: 7 of 9 or T'Pol?
