Meadow337
Former Moderator
Ok lol how's this lot for 'weird' science:
Eight things you didn’t know you could do with human sperm
Eight things you didn’t know you could do with human sperm
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Fascinating scientific stuff
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Good news for men everywhere, methinks.
Apparently Natural Harvest has a sequel: Semenology - The Semen Bartender's Handbook
Sneezy
Well-Known Member
Jade Rabbit? What an interesting name for a rover.
Cosimah2o
Active Member
I have noticed how crows dining on roadkill wait until the last moment before flying or hopping away.
Sneezy
Well-Known Member
Imperialism on a Galactic scale:
The Milky Way’s near neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), has accreted a smattering of stars from its smaller neighbor, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). In this image, the LMC is shown as it appears in observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope at 3.6, 8.0, and 24 microns. Overlaid in red and blue, with colors representing the light of sight velocities (red = away, blue = towards) are the locations of stars whose origin has been traced to the SMC. These stars were discovered by a team led by NOAO astronomer Knut Olsen, through analysis of spectra obtained at the CTIO 4-m Blanco telescope. Spitzer image credit: Karl Gordon and Margaret Meixner (Space Telescope Science Institute/AURA/NASA). Compilation by K. Olsen (NOAO/AURA/NSF))
Read more at: Neighbor galaxy caught stealing stars
The Milky Way’s near neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), has accreted a smattering of stars from its smaller neighbor, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). In this image, the LMC is shown as it appears in observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope at 3.6, 8.0, and 24 microns. Overlaid in red and blue, with colors representing the light of sight velocities (red = away, blue = towards) are the locations of stars whose origin has been traced to the SMC. These stars were discovered by a team led by NOAO astronomer Knut Olsen, through analysis of spectra obtained at the CTIO 4-m Blanco telescope. Spitzer image credit: Karl Gordon and Margaret Meixner (Space Telescope Science Institute/AURA/NASA). Compilation by K. Olsen (NOAO/AURA/NSF))
Read more at: Neighbor galaxy caught stealing stars
Sneezy
Well-Known Member
Hubble has been very busy interrogating the Megellanics of late.
Using the sharp-eyed NASA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have for the first time precisely measured the rotation rate of a galaxy based on the clock-like movement of its stars. According to their analysis, the central part of the neighboring galaxy, called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), completes a rotation every 250 million years.
Full story here.
Using the sharp-eyed NASA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have for the first time precisely measured the rotation rate of a galaxy based on the clock-like movement of its stars. According to their analysis, the central part of the neighboring galaxy, called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), completes a rotation every 250 million years.
Full story here.
Sneezy
Well-Known Member
Cool. Giant, Aussie made, space-junk-blasting death rays!
Scientists in Australia say they have begun work on a project that will see lasers fired from Earth to blast away the thousands of tonnes of space debris orbiting our planet.
Though it sounds like a plan taken straight from science fiction, researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) have been given a very real grant of $20 million (£10.8 million).
Alongside $40 million (£21.6 million) of private investment, it will allow the team to set up as the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), a state-of-the-art observatory building lasers which will initially track tiny piece of debris.
The ultimate goal of actually destroying some of the estimated 300,000 pieces of orbital rubbish could be working within the next 10 years, said Matthew Colless, director of ANU’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
“It's important that it's possible on that scale because there's so much space junk up there,” he said.
“We're perhaps only a couple of decades away from a catastrophic cascade of collisions ... that takes out all the satellites in low orbit.”
Scientists say the debris around the Earth is made up of everything from tiny screws and bolts to large parts of rockets, mostly moving in low orbits at tremendous speeds.
The growing mass of rubbish accumulating around the planet has led to calls from Nasa for urgent action, and public concerns around events like those depicted in the 2013 Hollywood movie Gravity.
Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in Alfonso Cuaron's GravityAustralia now has a contract with Nasa to track and map this junk with a telescope and laser at the Mount Stromlo observatory near Canberra.
Speaking about the risks involved in plans to zap chunks of debris so they burn up harmlessly in the upper atmosphere, Colless said: “There's no risk of missing and hitting a working satellite. We can target them precisely. We really don't miss.”
Colless said he envisages the eventual need for a global network of stations set up under international auspices but, that right now the CRC is doing the research to make it possible.
The CRC is made up of universities, space agencies and companies including Lockheed Martin, Optus and EOS Space System Australia.
Source
Scientists in Australia say they have begun work on a project that will see lasers fired from Earth to blast away the thousands of tonnes of space debris orbiting our planet.
Though it sounds like a plan taken straight from science fiction, researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) have been given a very real grant of $20 million (£10.8 million).
Alongside $40 million (£21.6 million) of private investment, it will allow the team to set up as the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), a state-of-the-art observatory building lasers which will initially track tiny piece of debris.
The ultimate goal of actually destroying some of the estimated 300,000 pieces of orbital rubbish could be working within the next 10 years, said Matthew Colless, director of ANU’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
“It's important that it's possible on that scale because there's so much space junk up there,” he said.
“We're perhaps only a couple of decades away from a catastrophic cascade of collisions ... that takes out all the satellites in low orbit.”
Scientists say the debris around the Earth is made up of everything from tiny screws and bolts to large parts of rockets, mostly moving in low orbits at tremendous speeds.
The growing mass of rubbish accumulating around the planet has led to calls from Nasa for urgent action, and public concerns around events like those depicted in the 2013 Hollywood movie Gravity.
Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in Alfonso Cuaron's GravityAustralia now has a contract with Nasa to track and map this junk with a telescope and laser at the Mount Stromlo observatory near Canberra.
Speaking about the risks involved in plans to zap chunks of debris so they burn up harmlessly in the upper atmosphere, Colless said: “There's no risk of missing and hitting a working satellite. We can target them precisely. We really don't miss.”
Colless said he envisages the eventual need for a global network of stations set up under international auspices but, that right now the CRC is doing the research to make it possible.
The CRC is made up of universities, space agencies and companies including Lockheed Martin, Optus and EOS Space System Australia.
Source
Sneezy
Well-Known Member
But, but...Betelgeuse was my favorite star. 
A powerful telescope in Chile has imaged the largest yellow star ever discovered.
The star, called HR 5171 A, shines 12,000 light-years from Earth in the center of a new image released today (March 12). Known as a "yellow hypergiant," The star is more than 1,300 times the diameter of the sun, much larger than scientists expected after earlier observations, European Southern Observatory officials said in a statement. You can see the yellow hypergiant in a new video from ESO as well.
The new measurements place the star as one of the top 10 largest stars ever discovered. Scientists using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer to observe the star got another surprise as well. HR 5171 A is actually part of a double star system, with its companion orbiting extremely close to the hypergiant.
Source.
A powerful telescope in Chile has imaged the largest yellow star ever discovered.
The star, called HR 5171 A, shines 12,000 light-years from Earth in the center of a new image released today (March 12). Known as a "yellow hypergiant," The star is more than 1,300 times the diameter of the sun, much larger than scientists expected after earlier observations, European Southern Observatory officials said in a statement. You can see the yellow hypergiant in a new video from ESO as well.
The new measurements place the star as one of the top 10 largest stars ever discovered. Scientists using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer to observe the star got another surprise as well. HR 5171 A is actually part of a double star system, with its companion orbiting extremely close to the hypergiant.
Source.
Sneezy
Well-Known Member
Way too long to post it all here, but well worth the read:
On July 30, 2003, a team of Spanish and French scientists reversed time. They brought an animal back from extinction, if only to watch it become extinct again. The animal they revived was a kind of wild goat known as a bucardo, or Pyrenean ibex. The bucardo (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) was a large, handsome creature, reaching up to 220 pounds and sporting long, gently curved horns. For thousands of years it lived high in the Pyrenees, the mountain range that divides France from Spain, where it clambered along cliffs, nibbling on leaves and stems and enduring harsh winters.
Then came the guns. Hunters drove down the bucardo population over several centuries. In 1989 Spanish scientists did a survey and concluded that there were only a dozen or so individuals left. Ten years later a single bucardo remained: a female nicknamed Celia. A team from the Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park, led by wildlife veterinarian Alberto Fernández-Arias, caught the animal in a trap, clipped a radio collar around her neck, and released her back into the wild. Nine months later the radio collar let out a long, steady beep: the signal that Celia had died. They found her crushed beneath a fallen tree. With her death, the bucardo became officially extinct.
But Celia’s cells lived on, preserved in labs in Zaragoza and Madrid. Over the next few years a team of reproductive physiologists led by José Folch injected nuclei from those cells into goat eggs emptied of their own DNA, then implanted the eggs in surrogate mothers. After 57 implantations, only seven animals had become pregnant. And of those seven pregnancies, six ended in miscarriages. But one mother—a hybrid between a Spanish ibex and a goat—carried a clone of Celia to term. Folch and his colleagues performed a cesarean section and delivered the 4.5-pound clone. As Fernández-Arias held the newborn bucardo in his arms, he could see that she was struggling to take in air, her tongue jutting grotesquely out of her mouth. Despite the efforts to help her breathe, after a mere ten minutes Celia’s clone died. A necropsy later revealed that one of her lungs had grown a gigantic extra lobe as solid as a piece of liver. There was nothing anyone could have done.
Full story here.
The last line of the article troubles me.
On July 30, 2003, a team of Spanish and French scientists reversed time. They brought an animal back from extinction, if only to watch it become extinct again. The animal they revived was a kind of wild goat known as a bucardo, or Pyrenean ibex. The bucardo (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) was a large, handsome creature, reaching up to 220 pounds and sporting long, gently curved horns. For thousands of years it lived high in the Pyrenees, the mountain range that divides France from Spain, where it clambered along cliffs, nibbling on leaves and stems and enduring harsh winters.
Then came the guns. Hunters drove down the bucardo population over several centuries. In 1989 Spanish scientists did a survey and concluded that there were only a dozen or so individuals left. Ten years later a single bucardo remained: a female nicknamed Celia. A team from the Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park, led by wildlife veterinarian Alberto Fernández-Arias, caught the animal in a trap, clipped a radio collar around her neck, and released her back into the wild. Nine months later the radio collar let out a long, steady beep: the signal that Celia had died. They found her crushed beneath a fallen tree. With her death, the bucardo became officially extinct.
But Celia’s cells lived on, preserved in labs in Zaragoza and Madrid. Over the next few years a team of reproductive physiologists led by José Folch injected nuclei from those cells into goat eggs emptied of their own DNA, then implanted the eggs in surrogate mothers. After 57 implantations, only seven animals had become pregnant. And of those seven pregnancies, six ended in miscarriages. But one mother—a hybrid between a Spanish ibex and a goat—carried a clone of Celia to term. Folch and his colleagues performed a cesarean section and delivered the 4.5-pound clone. As Fernández-Arias held the newborn bucardo in his arms, he could see that she was struggling to take in air, her tongue jutting grotesquely out of her mouth. Despite the efforts to help her breathe, after a mere ten minutes Celia’s clone died. A necropsy later revealed that one of her lungs had grown a gigantic extra lobe as solid as a piece of liver. There was nothing anyone could have done.
Full story here.
The last line of the article troubles me.
Cosimah2o
Active Member
It's a small world ... I already knew about this attempt of hybridization a long time ago . By the way, Celia - the last Bucardo - was stuffed in 2008 and nowadays it<< lives>> in Torla .
Smilodon, I guess... Although in this article, I miss some mention to the Ursus Spelaeus !
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Cosimah2o
Active Member
Sneezy
Well-Known Member
Not the what, the why.
The idea of bringing back apex predators for giggles unnerves me a wee bit. Is all good for the lab, but what if it goes all Crightonesque?
Intellectually I know there is a tiny probability of them becoming something akin to snakes on the Galapagos, but still...
I should never have read Jurassic Park.
The idea of bringing back apex predators for giggles unnerves me a wee bit. Is all good for the lab, but what if it goes all Crightonesque?
Intellectually I know there is a tiny probability of them becoming something akin to snakes on the Galapagos, but still...
I should never have read Jurassic Park.
Conscious Bob
Well-Known Member
The Cave Bear became extinct around twenty seven thousand years ago and the Sabre Tooth Cat around eleven thousand years ago, we humans as in homo sapiens have been around for fifty thousand years which means we've outlasted those big critters and may even have contributed to wiping them out.