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Hawking vs Turok: Betting on the origin of the universe | News | Sci-tech
Ten years ago Stephen Hawking made a bet with the man in the office next door at Cambridge University: South Africa's Neil Turok, the son of ANC MP Ben Turok. The iconic scientist balked at Turok's proposal for a money wager, so they agreed on another kind of stake: bragging rights over which of them had discovered the true story of how both Creation and time began. Their bet – which boils down a complex debate – was supposed to be settled by the Planck science satellite, which released its "spectacular" batch of data last month. Instead, the analysis of the data has left Turok fuming. Hawking champions the stan-dard big bang "inflation" theory, which says space and time began 13.72-billion years ago, and that Albert Einstein's laws did not apply to the first bizarre moments of creation. (Actually, last month, Planck adjusted our cosmic age to 13.8-billion, which means two-thirds of the water in your glass – the hydrogen part – is 80-million years older than you might have thought).
Nations continue haggling over climate change and the burning of fossil fuels goes on. (AFP) And is likely to pass the symbolically important 400ppm level for the first time in the next few days. Readings at the United States government’s Earth Systems Research laboratory in Hawaii are not expected to reach their 2013 peak until mid-May, but were recorded at 399.72ppm on April 25. The weekly mean average stood at 398.5 on Monday. Hourly daily readings above 400ppm have been recorded six times in the past week, and on occasion, at observatories in the high Arctic.
Earth sweats as carbon levels approach threshold | News | Sci-tech
A mighty wind
When a current passes between two electrodes — one thinner than the other — it creates a wind in the air between. If enough voltage is applied, the resulting wind can produce a thrust without the help of motors or fuel. This phenomenon, called electrohydrodynamic thrust — or, more colloquially, “ionic wind” — was first identified in the 1960s. Since then, ionic wind has largely been limited to science-fair projects and basement experiments; hobbyists have posted hundreds of how-to videos on building “ionocrafts” — lightweight vehicles made of balsa wood, aluminum foil and wire — that lift off and hover with increased voltage.
Using magnetism to understand superconductivity
Public release date: 4-Sep-2012 [ Print | E-mail | Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: Henrik Ronnow henrik.ronnow@epfl.ch 41-792-517-302 Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Might it one day be possible to transmit electricity from an offshore wind turbine to land-based users without any loss of current?
As the image above illustrates, my colleagues and I at Griffith University have been able to photograph the shadow of an atom for the first time – the culmination of five years of work by our team. The image, and attendant paper, are published today in the journal Nature Communications. So, in a nutshell, how did we get the image? The following analogy might help. On a sunny day at the beach, your shadow is a constant companion. Holding your hand up will block the bright sun, but a few rays will still penetrate the thinner parts of your fingers.
Snapping an atom's shadow? Now that's a first
Following up on earlier theoretical predictions, MIT researchers have now demonstrated experimentally the existence of a fundamentally new kind of magnetic behavior, adding to the two previously known states of magnetism. Ferromagnetism — the simple magnetism of a bar magnet or compass needle — has been known for centuries. In a second type of magnetism, antiferromagnetism, the magnetic fields of the ions within a metal or alloy cancel each other out. In both cases, the materials become magnetic only when cooled below a certain critical temperature. The prediction and discovery of antiferromagnetism — the basis for the read heads in today’s computer hard disks — won Nobel Prizes in physics for Louis Neel in 1970 and for MIT professor emeritus Clifford Shull in 1994. “We’re showing that there is a third fundamental state for magnetism,” says MIT professor of physics Young Lee.
researchers discover a new kind of magnetism
Posted: 19 November, 2012 by Triple M Watch the moment a water twister is spotted over beaches south of Sydney as storms lashed the East Coast of Australia. Tags: Twister , Waterspout , breaking news Footage of the Water Twister has gone viral, TheGrazla on YouTube You'd be forgiven for thinking you were watching a scene from America but this water twister was captured right here on our Australian shores.
VIDEO: Epic Water Tornado Spotted Near Sydney | Southern Cross
Toward a New Model of the Cell
Date: December 17, 2012 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Genes Turning vast amounts of genomic data into meaningful information about the cell is the great challenge of bioinformatics, with major implications for human biology and medicine.Science correspondent Ian Sample uses a visual aid to explain the implications of the new research. Video: Guardian Link to video: What the Encode project tells us about the human genome and 'junk DNA' Long stretches of DNA previously dismissed as "junk" are in fact crucial to the way our genome works, an international team of researchers said on Wednesday.
Breakthrough study overturns theory of 'junk DNA' in genome | Science
I’d like to talk about cold thermogenesis and its effects on telomere length in DNA and the resultant anti-aging. What is it? Neatly summed up as regularly freezing your butt of it can entail things like ice baths, cold showers, freezing buckets of water over the head, basically extreme exposure to cold. Cold thermogenesis not for the fainthearted. Recently experiencing a revival from its previous incarnation as cold water dousing due partly to the new research done by Dr Jack Kruse. Dr Kruse found that cold thermogenesis combined with a fat based paleo diet caused a lengthening of the telomeres thought to be responsible for aging.
Cold thermogenesis, anti-aging, and how to repair your DNA
A decade ago, a British philosopher put forth the notion that the universe we live in might in fact be a computer simulation run by our descendants. While that seems far-fetched, perhaps even incomprehensible, a team of physicists at the University of Washington has come up with a potential test to see if the idea holds water. The concept that current humanity could possibly be living in a computer simulation comes from a 2003 paper published in Philosophical Quarterly by Nick Bostrom , a philosophy professor at the University of Oxford. In the paper, he argued that at least one of three possibilities is true:
Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested | UW Today
Scientists Prove DNA Can Be Reprogrammed by Words and Frequencies — the Power of Hyper-Communication | SupremeBoundlessWay
by Grazyna Fosar and Franz Bludorf Compiled, summarized and translated by Bärbel Mohr THE HUMAN DNA IS A BIOLOGICAL INTERNET and superior in many aspects to the artificial one. Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self-healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), mind’s influence on weather patterns and much more. In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies without cutting out and replacing single genes. Only 10% of our DNA is being used for building proteins.For the last ten years, theoretical physicists have shown that the intense connections generated between particles as established in the quantum law of ‘entanglement’ may hold the key to eventual teleportation of information. Now, for the first time, researchers have worked out how entanglement could be ‘recycled’ to increase the efficiency of these connections. Published in the journal Physical Review Letters , the result could conceivably take us a step closer to sci-fi style teleportation in the future, although this research is purely theoretical in nature. The team have also devised a generalised form of teleportation, which allows for a wide variety of potential applications in quantum physics.
Mathematical breakthrough sets out rules for more effective teleportation
Bigfoot is real. At least that's what veterinarian Melba S. Ketchum claims after a five-year study of more than 100 DNA samples that she believes comes from the elusive hairy beast. Under Ketchum's direction at DNA Diagnostics in Nacogdoches, Texas, a team of researchers has concluded that the creature may be a human relative that somehow developed around 15,000 years ago as a result of a hybrid cross between Homo sapiens with an unknown primate. Ketchum's research has yet to stand the scrutiny of independent researchers. While many people have claimed to have seen the creature, its existence has never been confirmed, despite a plethora of photos and footprints.
Bigfoot DNA Tests Prove Hairy Creature Exists, Genetic Researcher Says
Scientist seeks surrogate mother for Neanderthal baby
A Harvard scientist is reportedly looking for an "adventurous woman" to give birth to the first Neanderthal baby in 30,000 years. US geneticist George Church told German newspaper Der Spiegel he was close to being able to clone a Neanderthal but would need a human woman to lend her womb to the project. But the birth may not be quite what a human woman was used to, Gawker reported. While Neanderthal children didn't need to rotate to get to the birth canal, their mothers generally had a wider birth canal than human women.Fractals
Transhumanism