Hints of 'time before Big Bang'

"Their model suggests that new universes could be created spontaneously from apparently empty space. From inside the parent universe, the event would be surprisingly unspectacular."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7440217.stm

Each Grain of Sand a Tiny Work of Art

http://discovermagazine.com/photos/01-each-grain-of-sand-a-tiny-work-of-art

Life after people

"What would happen to planet earth if the human race were to suddenly disappear forever?"

http://www.history.com/minisites/life_after_people

Don't just stand there, think

"New research suggests that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies"

"The brain is often envisioned as something like a computer, and the body as its all-purpose tool. But a growing body of new research suggests that something more collaborative is going on - that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies. A series of studies, the latest published in November, has shown that children can solve math problems better if they are told to use their hands while thinking. Another recent study suggested that stage actors remember their lines better when they are moving. And in one study published last year, subjects asked to move their eyes in a specific pattern while puzzling through a brainteaser were twice as likely to solve it."

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/01/13/dont_just_stand_there_think/

Scientists Scan Striking Nanoscale Images

"This image captured in German labs by Thorsten Dziomba, shows GeSi quantum dots -- a mere 15 nanometers high and 70 nanometers in diameter."

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/02/nano_gallery_jmm

Lectures in Physics

"When you read a mystery novel, you know in advance what structure to expect: a crime, some detective work, and finally the unmasking of the evildoer. Likewise when Charlie Parker plays a blues, your ear expects to hear certain landmarks of the form regardless of how wild some of his notes are. Surveys of physics students usually show that they have worse attitudes about the subject after instruction than before, and their comments often boil down to a complaint that the person who strung the topics together had not learned what Agatha Christie and Charlie Parker knew intuitively about form and structure: students become bored and demoralized because the "march through the topics" lacks a coherent story line. You are reading the first volume of the Light and Matter series of introductory physics textbooks, and as implied by its title, the story line of the series is built around light and matter: how they behave, how they are different from each other, and, at the end of the story, how they turn out to be similar in some very bizarre ways."

http://www.vias.org/physics/

78 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena

"These pages demonstrate visual phenomena, and »optical« or »visual illusions«. The latter is more appropriate, because most effects have their basis in the visual pathway, not in the optics of the eye."

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

Cities at Night - The View from Space

"At night however, city lights present the space observer spectacular evidence of our existence, our distribution, and our ability to change our environment."

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/CitiesAtNight/

The Frog Who Croaked Blue

"As little Edgar Curtis lay on his porch, he remarked to his mother how the noise of the rifle range was black, the chirp of the cricket was red, and the croak of the frog was bluish."

http://www.thefrogwhocroakedblue.com/

10 Futuristic Materials

Aerogel, Carbon nanotubes, Metamaterials, Bulk diamond, Bulk fullerenes, Amorphous metal, Superalloys, Metal foam, Transparent alumina, E-textiles

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=714

Lizards Rapidly Evolve After Introduction to Island

"Italian wall lizards introduced to a tiny island off the coast of Croatia are evolving in ways that would normally take millions of years to play out, new research shows.

In just a few decades the 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) lizards have developed a completely new gut structure, larger heads, and a harder bite, researchers say."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation

"The Casimir force is a consequence of quantum mechanics, the theory that describes the world of atoms and subatomic particles that is not only the most successful theory of physics but also the most baffling.

The force is due to neither electrical charge or gravity, for example, but the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together, also explaining a “dry glue” effect that enables a gecko to walk across a ceiling.

Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir force to repel, rather than attact. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1559579/Physicists-have-'solved'-mystery-of-levitation.html

Pollution 'alters brain function'

"An hour sniffing exhaust fumes may not just give you a headache - it could even alter the way the brain functions, Dutch researchers have suggested."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7288176.stm

The Twenty Science Fiction Novels that Will Change Your Life

"... list of twenty science fiction novels that could change the way you see the world, and maybe even change your life. Whether it's because they've altered the course of science fiction writing, or simply provide a genuinely alien perspective on ordinary life, these are novels that will rearrange how you think."

http://io9.com/361597/the-twenty-science-fiction-novels-that-will-change-your-life

Mapping the Human ‘Diseasome’

"Researchers created a map linking different diseases, represented by circles, to the genes they have in common, represented by squares"

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/05/science/20080506_DISEASE.html

Free Science and Video Lectures Online

"... lectures on: Modern Physics. Quantum Physics. Quantum Mechanics. Quantum Field Theory. Applied Group Theory. General Relativity. Cosmology. Astrophysics. Computational Physics. Thermodynamics. Basic Physics."

http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com/2008/04/physics-video-lectures.html

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY - Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark

"The remorseless drought had lasted now for ten million years,
and would not end for another million. The reign of the ter-
rible lizards had long since passed, but here on the continent
which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for survival
had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not
yet in sight. In this dry and barren land, only the small or
the swift or the fierce could flourish, or even hope to exist."

http://www.scifiscripts.com/scripts/2001.txt

Can you name the Elements of the Periodic Table?

"You have 15 minutes to guess"

http://www.sporcle.com/games/elements.php

The woman who can remember everything

"Jill Price, 42, can remember every part of her life since she was 14 but considers her ability a curse as she cannot switch off.

She described her life as like a split-screen television, with one side showing what she is doing in the present, and the other showing the memories which she cannot hold back.

Every detail about every day since 1980 - what time she got up, who she met, what she did, even what she ate - is locked in her brain and can be released to come flooding back by common triggers like songs, smells or place names. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1940420/The-woman-who-can-remember-everything.html

Antidepressants are not significantly better than a placebo

"Meta-analyses of antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits over placebo treatment, and when unpublished trial data are included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance."

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045&ct=1

The Autumn of the Multitaskers

"Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on."

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/multitasking

The Amazing Story behind the 256 Year-Old Man

“Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon and sleep like a dog.” These were the words of advice Li gave to Wu Pei-fu, the warlord, who took Li into his house to learn the secret of extremely long life.

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/offbeat-news/bodyshock-the-amazing-story-behind-the-256-year-old-man/1130

Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered

"Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. It's nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur."

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080602-foresee-future.html

Star Trek : Phase II

"The new show will be the continuing voyages of Captain Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC-1701 as seen in the 1966-69 television series, Star Trek. The series was cancelled after its third season. We are presenting the series as if it were in its fourth year. We acknowledge that the visual effects are contemporary, but we work hard within out capabilities to keep the effects familiar to fans of the original series."

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

An appreciation of Arthur C. Clarke

"How do you summarize a man like Arthur C. Clarke? The 90-year-old futurist and science fiction writer, who described himself as a "serial processor", died yesterday (18/3/2008) in Sri Lanka, his long-time home. Among the authors of the Golden Age of the genre in the 1950s, Clarke is a giant whose creative ideas have found purchase in the real world -- most notably the notion of a synchronous communication satellite, which he envisioned in 1945, but which did not become a reality for 20 more years."

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/appreciation-of-arthur-c-clarke.html

Space elevators face wobble problem

"If an elevator stretching from Earth into space could ever be built, it could slash the cost of space travel. But a controversial new study suggests that building and maintaining one would be an even bigger challenge than previously thought, because it would need to include built-in thrusters to stabilise itself against dangerous vibrations."

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13552-space-elevators-face-wobble-problem.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

E=Mc2 Explained

"One of Einstein's great insights was to realize that matter and energy are really different forms of the same thing. Matter can be turned into energy, and energy into matter.
For example, consider a simple hydrogen atom, basically composed of a single proton. This subatomic particle has a mass of
0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 672 kg
This is a tiny mass indeed. But in everyday quantities of matter there are a lot of atoms! For instance, in one kilogram of pure water, the mass of hydrogen atoms amounts to just slightly more than 111 grams, or 0.111 kg. "

http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/emc2/emc2.html

Daylight Saving Wastes Energy, Study Says

"For decades, conventional wisdom has held that daylight-saving time, which begins March 9, reduces energy use. But a unique situation in Indiana provides evidence challenging that view: Springing forward may actually waste energy."

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120406767043794825-UOLcfJA8x9Gw9ozbCz77MiLmtaE_20080327.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

Photo: Crater From 1908 Russian Space Impact Found, Team Says

"Trees lay strewn across the Siberian countryside in 1953, 45 years after a mysterious aerial explosion called the Tunguska event leveled a huge swath of forest there."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/96848274.html

Electronic tattoo display runs on blood

"Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin"

http://www.physorg.com/news122819670.html

Tales of Future Past

" A few years ago, people talked about building a bridge to the 21st century. Now that we're there, the phrase seems as odd as building a causeway to five o'clock. As Midnight brought in the year 2000 (or 2001 if you prefer), something odd began to sink in. For people of my generation, who had lived through the tarnished promises of the Atomic Age, the Space Age, the Computer Age, and the This That and Another Age, the year 2001 was a gateway. We waited twenty, thirty, forty years and some longer to pass though that gate into a time when spaceships the size of ocean liners plied between colonised planets, where cities were colourful collections of brand new towers without a single old building or blade of grass, where people wore jumpsuits like they were the togas of a technocratic Rome, where robots were our powerful and obedient servants, and where jetpacks were as common as galoshes. "

http://davidszondy.com/future/futurepast.htm

Directory of Open Access Journals

"... the Directory of Open Access Journals. This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals."

http://www.doaj.org/

Useless Body Parts

"SUBCLAVIUS MUSCLE: A small muscle that goes from under the shoulder to the first rib to the collarbone that would be used if we walked on all fours. Some people have one, others don't and some people have two."

[...]

http://cbs4.com/slideshows/useless.body.parts.20.314014.html

How Believing Can Be Seeing: Context Dictates What We Believe We See

"Scientists at UCL (University College London) have found the link between what we expect to see, and what our brain tells us we actually saw. The study reveals that the context surrounding what we see is all important -- sometimes overriding the evidence gathered by our eyes and even causing us to imagine things which aren't really there."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080215103210.htm

Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity - In Words of Four Letters or Less

" Say you woke up one day and your bed was gone. Your room, too. Gone. It's all gone. You wake up in an inky void. Not even a star. Okay, yes, it's a dumb idea, but just go with it. Now say you want to know if you move or not. Are you held fast in one spot? Or do you, say, list off to the left some? What I want to ask you is: Can you find out? Hell no. You can see that, sure. You don't need me to tell you. To move, you have to move to or away from ... well, from what? You'd have to say that you don't even get to use a word like "move" when you are the only body in that void. Sure. Okay. ..."

http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html

UFO Files released by the UK Government

"The files contain a wide range of UFO-related documents covering the years 1978–2002. So if you want to find out more about lights in the sky over Waterloo Bridge, near misses by pilots, crop circles - and what the UK government thought of it all - this is the place to start"

http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

Perimiter Institute - View Past Public Lectures

Public lectures on theoretical physics

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/Outreach/Public_Lectures/View_Past_Public_Lectures/

Brain reacts to fairness as it does to money and chocolate, study shows

"The human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money and eating chocolate, UCLA scientists report. Being treated fairly turns on the brain's reward circuitry."

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/brain-reacts-to-fairness-as-it-49042.aspx

Why ET will phone using neutrinos not photons

"The reason is that any civilisation advanced enough to colonise the galaxy would need a reliable way to communicate over intragalactic distances and photons simply don’t pass muster. There is a huge amount of noise in the electromagnetic spectrum, photons are easily scattered and would almost certainly be absorbed if they had to travel from one side of the galaxy to the other."

http://arxivblog.com/?p=426

Electricity Miscoceptions Spread by Textbooks

"In metals, electric current is a flow of electrons. Many books claim that these electrons flow at the speed of light. This is incorrect. Electrons actually flow quite slowly, at speeds on the order of centimeters per minute. And in AC circuits the electrons don't really flow at all, instead they sit in place and vibrate. It's the energy in the circuit which flows fast, not the electrons. "

http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/elect.html

Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

"Fiery explosions, beautiful reactions, and hilarious music videos are great reasons to be excited about chemistry. Here are some of our favorites."

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/top-10-amazing.html

Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison

"The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html

Mysteries of computer from 65BC are solved

"Using modern computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning, a team led by Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth at Cardiff University peered inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism and read the faintest inscriptions that once covered the outer casing of the machine. Detailed imaging of the mechanism suggests it dates back to 150-100 BC and had 37 gear wheels enabling it to follow the movements of the moon and the sun through the zodiac, predict eclipses and even recreate the irregular orbit of the moon. The motion, known as the first lunar anomaly, was developed by the astronomer Hipparcus of Rhodes in the 2nd century BC, and he may have been consulted in the machine's construction, the scientists speculate."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/nov/30/uknews

Orangutan attempts to hunt fish with spear

"A male orangutan, clinging precariously to overhanging branches, flails the water with a pole, trying desperately to spear a passing fish.

It is the first time one has been seen using a tool to hunt.

The extraordinary image, a world exclusive, was taken in Borneo on the island of Kaja, where apes are rehabilitated into the wild after being rescued from zoos, private homes or even butchers' shops."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-562236/Orangutan-attempts-hunt-fish-spear.html

Skip the pretzels: starving may fend off jet lag

"Starving yourself before a long flight may help prevent jet lag, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Normally, the body's natural circadian clock in the brain dictates when to wake, eat and sleep, all in response to light. But it seems a second clock takes over when food is scarce, and manipulating this clock might help travelers adjust to new time zones, they said."

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2252042720080522