5/19/12
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Missing link found? Scientists unveil fossil of 47 million-year-old primate, Darwinius masillae
Feast your eyes on what a group of scientists call the Holy Grail of human evolution. A team of researchers Tuesday unveiled an almost perfectly intact fossil of a 47 million-year-old primate they say represents the long-sought missing link between humans and apes. Officially known as Darwinius masillae, the fossil of the lemur-like creature dubbed Ida shows it had opposable thumbs like humans and fingernails instead of claws. Scientists say the cat-sized animal's hind legs offer evidence of evolutionary changes that led to primates standing upright - a breakthrough that could finally confirm Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution.
When given the task of destroying itself, the human race can be pretty ingenious. The centuries have produced dozens of deadly efficient weapons: Greek fire, the long bow, the Gatling gun, mustard gas, and — of course — the atomic bomb. In order to produce these high-tech killing machines, there were a lot of prototypes that never made it past the drafting board or off the ground.
12 Secret Weapons That Failed Photo Gallery - All Photos - Conspiracies on truTV
6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain
We like to feel superior to the people who lived centuries ago, what with their shitty mud huts and curing colds by drilling a hole in their skulls. But we have to give them credit: They left behind some artifacts that have left the smartest of modern scientists scratching their heads. For instance, you have the following enigmas that we believe were created for no other purpose than to fuck with future generations. The Voynich Manuscript The Mystery: The Voynich manuscript is an ancient book that has thwarted all attempts at deciphering its contents.Solar eclipse of May 20, 2012
An annular solar eclipse took place on May 20, 2012 (May 21, 2012 in local time in the Eastern Hemisphere ), with a magnitude of 0.9439. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun , thereby totally or partially obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun, causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring), blocking most of the Sun's light. An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region thousands of kilometres wide. [ edit ] Visibility North America
Biology Tutorials - Biology-Online.org - Biology Online
Plant Biology Plant life can be studied at a variety of levels, from the molecular, genetic and biochemical level through organelles, cells, tissues, organs, individuals, plant populations, and communities of plants. Date: 16 May 2005 , Rating: 4.51 , 14 pages The Origins of Life Digging into the past and investigating the origins of life. Find out how life arrived on Earth, why, and how it evolved into its current diversity today.
5 Creepy Forms of Mind Control You're Exposed to Daily
One of our favorite subjects is the way marketers can use psychology to manipulate you into doing what they want (we don't think "brainwashing" is too strong a word ). We know what you're thinking: You're far too cynical to fall for the ads you fast forward through on your DVR or the little tricks employed by marketers and politicians to push your subconscious buttons. But are you sure ? Because science has found ...
Explaining the explosion: rate of white dwarf mergers matches frequency of type Ia supernova
Measuring vast distances in the Universe requires standard candles, objects with a known intrinsic brightness. Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) are the brightest standard candles we know of, so they are useful for measuring the accelerating expansion of the Universe, as honored by the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics. Most astronomers agree that type Ia supernovae have something to do with white dwarfs—compact remnants of stars similar to our Sun.May 18, 2012 — Researchers at MIT, NASA and elsewhere have detected a possible planet, some 1,500 light years away, that appears to be evaporating under the blistering heat of its parent star. The scientists infer that a long tail of debris -- much like the tail of a comet -- is following the planet, and that this tail may tell the story of the planet's disintegration. According to the team's calculations, the tiny exoplanet, not much larger than Mercury, will completely disintegrate within 100 million years. The team found that the dusty planet circles its parent star every 15 hours -- one of the shortest planet orbits ever observed. Such a short orbit must be very tight and implies that the planet must be heated by its orange-hot parent star to a temperature of about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers hypothesize that rocky material at the surface of the planet melts and evaporates at such high temperatures, forming a wind that carries both gas and dust into space.
