http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0_nuvPKIi8
Related: Physics10 Strange Things About The Universe Space The universe can be a very strange place. While groundbreaking ideas such as quantum theory, relativity and even the Earth going around the Sun might be commonly accepted now, science still continues to show that the universe contains things you might find it difficult to believe, and even more difficult to get your head around. Theoretically, the lowest temperature that can be achieved is absolute zero, exactly ?
Radical Life Extension Is Already Here, But We're Doing it Wrong - Ross Andersen - Health We've already tacked three decades onto the average lifespan of an American, so what's wrong with adding another few decades? A centenarian riding his bike in Long Beach, California (Reuters). So far as we know, the last hundred years have been the most radical period of life extension in all of human history. At the turn of the twentieth century, life expectancy for Americans was just over 49 years; by 2010, that number had risen to 78.5 years, mostly on account of improved sanitation and basic medicine.
Hobby Robot Rides a Bike the Old-Fashioned Way The current generation of bicycle-riding robots (I'm talking about those crazy kids from Murata) are extremely complicated, relying on giant gyroscopes and thick wheels to keep themselves upright even while stationary. This is certainly a neat trick, but it's not something that most humans can pull off. It's not a problem that robots are better at something than we are (by now, we're used to it), but there's something to be said for human emulation, too. It turns out that getting a robot to ride a bicycle doesn't need to involve much more than a hobby level humanoid employing a relatively simple gyroscope that sends steering commands to keep things generally upright. This KHR3HV bipedal robot (which can be yours for about $2200) has a nifty custom bike that it got from I know not where, and can zip around under remote control at up to 10 kph, even making its own starts and stops: Wheee!
Double-Slit Experiment The video below shows scientific proof that there is something NOT quite logical or scientific about this universe. The mere act of observation can completely change the outcome of an event! Before I get too ahead of myself, you need to watch the video below to understand: Tiny genetic variations led to big changes in the evolving human brain Changes to just three genetic letters among billions contributed to the evolution and development of the mammalian motor sensory circuits and laid the groundwork for the defining characteristics of the human brain, Yale University researchers report. In a study published in the May 31 issue of the journal Nature, Yale researchers found that a small, simple change in the mammalian genome was critical to the evolution of the corticospinal neural circuits. This circuitry directly connects the cerebral cortex, the conscious part of the human brain, with the brainstem and the spinal cord to make possible the fine, skilled movements necessary for functions such as tool use and speech.
Bruce Lee’s Lost Interview Email When you hear the name Bruce Lee certain images are probably conjured in your mind. Maybe it's of some bad dubbing in a kung fu classic or maybe you picture Lee beating down Chuck Norris in Way of The Dragon (yes people, it happened ) or perhaps, if you're truly unfortunate, your knowledge of Lee caps out at obscure references or mentions in rap songs. But make no mistake, Bruce Lee was a singular entity in our cultural history and in this interview taken from over thirty years ago we gain some keen insights into the man who died so soon before his time. Canada Missing Gravity For more than 40 years, scientists have tried to figure out what's causing large parts of Canada, particularly the Hudson Bay region, to be "missing" gravity. In other words, gravity in the Hudson Bay area and surrounding regions is lower than it is in other parts of the world, a phenomenon first identified in the 1960s when the Earth's global gravity fields were being charted. Two theories have been proposed to account for this anomaly. But before we go over them, it's important to first consider what creates gravity.
Skin cells reprogrammed into brain cells Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have for the first time transformed skin cells -- with a single genetic factor -- into cells that develop on their own into an interconnected, functional network of brain cells. The research offers new hope in the fight against many neurological conditions because scientists expect that such a transformation -- or reprogramming -- of cells may lead to better models for testing drugs for devastating neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. This research comes at a time of renewed focus on Alzheimer's disease, which currently afflicts 5.4 million people in the United States alone -- a figure expected to nearly triple by 2050. Yet there are no approved medications to prevent or reverse the progression of this debilitating disease.
How to Find a Meteorite Earth is under constant bombardment by space rocks. When they crash and burn through the atmosphere, most of the debris gets lost to the oceans, while some is buried or gradually weathered away. Nonetheless, plenty of chunks of fallen meteors, or meteorites, are strewn across the accessible parts of the planet. So far, more than 40,000 meteorites have been found and catalogued, and countless more are still out there, waiting to be chanced upon. If you need further incentive for finding something that was forged at the birth of our sun and contains secrets about the nature of our solar system, there's this: Space rocks are worth as much as $1,000 per gram.
The wages of pseudoscience I completely missed the disgraceful hokum the Animal Planet channel aired last week, Mermaids: The Body Found, a completely fictional pseudodocumentary dressed up as reality that claims mermaids exist. You can watch it now, though, until Animal Planet takes it down. It’s genuinely awful. Breathtaking impact craters Meteor Crater, sometimes referred to as Barringer Crater, after Daniel Barringer, the geologist who was first to propose the crater was formed by the impact of meteorite, is located 43 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona. Although small compared to other impact craters in the solar system with a diameter of around 1.1km, it is a truly breathtaking site to cast your eyes upon. Situated in the middle of the desert, and produced 40,000 years ago by a nickel-iron meteorite travelling from somewhere between 28,000 and 45,000mph, the impact would have been nothing short of spectacular to have witnessed when it occured. Interestingly, at the time of impact, the surrounding Colorado Plateau was experiencing the end of the Pleistocene epoch, which meant the local ecology was covered in mostly grassland, and paraded by mammoths and camels.
Black Holes are Everywhere Holes are everywhere, if you look... This post is the second in a series that accompanies the upcoming publication of my book ‘Gravity’s Engines: How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos’ (Scientific American/FSG). Black holes, even the really hugely massive ones, are tiny – positively microscopic pinpricks scattered throughout the vastness of spacetime.