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July 03, 2009

Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

Microsoft_surface_touchscreen_table1 Although It has taken homo sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his Life in the Universe lecture,  is about a bit a year.

"By contrast," Hawking says, "there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life. But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA."

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New Discovery Key to Supermassive Black Holes

750px-Supermassiveblackhole_nasajpl A new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered by an international team of astronomers 290 million light years from Earth providing a key clue to the formation of supermassive black holes that exist at the centers of all known galaxies in the universe.

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Augmented Reality On Your Phone? Yes! Soon it Will Be a World of Everyone, Everything, Everywhere

Gpsphone_nokia6110 Your phone might put you in touch with the rest of the world, but you still need to know what part of the world you want to call - and what their number is, and whether they'll want to talk to you.  The latest generation of GPS-enabled phones is fixing that: drawing an invisible layer of data over everything and everywhere, enabling the tech-connected to use the world more effectively than ever before.

It's indestructible information: if a bar sucks, you can't graffiti the walls (at least not for long), but with new geo-tagging services you can leave an indelible message than anyone equipped with the same hardware can access.  And since that hardware is a phone, that's everyone.  The true power of tagging won't engage until after the usual new-tech shakedown, where one service beats or eats all the others and gets a solid service running, but then it'll be impossible for anywhere to work on the business principle of "the suckers won't be coming back anyway."

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The Highest Point on the Planet (It's Not Mount Everest)

140035main_image_feature_479_ys_4 We all know that Mount Everest, at 29,035 feet above sea level, is the highest spot on our planet. Sir Edmound Hillary taught us that, right? Well, yes… that is unless we think about the word "highest" in a different way.

Think instead of that point on the planet closest to the moon and the stars, in other words to "out there."

According to Issac Newton, the centrifugal force of the Earth's spin will result in a slight flattening at the poles and bulging at the equator, which would make the planet slightly oblate. Mathematicians call this an "oblate spheroid," which means that anyone on the equator is already standing "higher," or closer to outer space, than people who aren't on the bulge.

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The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Tech (7/3)

504x_Warhol_headphones Take the Walkman 30th Birthday Quiz

How much do you know about the most celebrated personal stereo of all time, one that is today turning the big Three Oh? A lot? OK, hell, let's see what you got...

NASA's Fermi Telescope Probes Dozens of Pulsars

With NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, astronomers now are getting their best look at those whirling stellar cinders known as pulsars. In two studies published in the July 2 edition of Science Express, international teams have analyzed gamma-rays from two dozen pulsars, including 16 discovered by Fermi. Fermi is the first spacecraft able to identify pulsars by their gamma-ray emission alone

Future of the Web: I Want My WebTV

WiFi in Space Coming Soon?

Scientists Find 'Master' Cells For Human Heart



Have a Great 4th! (Be Careful Out There)

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Galaxy Fans- Unleash the Force!

Ipod ad Our major brand advertisers at the top of the page and on the right pay the bills that let us deliver great daily news on the discoveries, people and events changing the planet.

Please give our advertisers your support -click on the ads, and enjoy the site.

We donate 10% of our ad revenue to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for their efforts to help save the planet's endangered species.

With thanks...The Editorial Team


July 02, 2009

"The Great Filter": Science Fact or Fiction? -A Galaxy Classic

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The Great Filter is the idea that there is some single, almost insurmountably improbable barrier on the path to the stars that explains why we've never seen any sign of alien life.  It combines aspects of astronomy, biology and history to arrive at one inescapable conclusion: university professors dream of book deals.

Robin Hanson of George Mason University posits a "Great Filter" that prevents the rise of intelligent, self-aware, technologically advanced, space-colonizing civilizations. The "filter" would be one or more improbable steps along the path that starts with the creation of a planet and ends with a race capable of colonizing the galaxy.

Continue reading ""The Great Filter": Science Fact or Fiction? -A Galaxy Classic" »


Blazars -New Clues to the Most Violently Energetic Objects in the Universe

Lsw05b00normal_sb An international team of researchers have stared down the barrel of one of the most violently energetic objects in the universe - and they didn't blink.  Instead, they've figured out the physics behind one of the most impressive astrophysical events in existence.

BL Lacertae is a blazar, a supermassive galactic-core black hole emitting vast and variable beams of energy.  Please understand that giving this thing a name like "blazar" is like calling a speeding sixteen wheeler truck full of professional wrestlers, grizzly bears and dynamite a "gentle prodder." The English language simply lacks the ability to get across the staggering scale of these events - because it doesn't have a case above upper or letters bigger than capital.  You can try writing down the values as numbers, but they end up being so stupidly huge that our monkey brains, programmed to deal with "one two three lots", just don't comprehend them.

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Mystery of the 1918 "Spanish Flu" Pandemic: Solved!

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MIT researchers have explained why two mutations in the H1N1 avian flu virus were critical for viral transmission in humans during the 1918 pandemic outbreak that killed at least 50 million people -believed more than that taken by the Black Death, and higher than the number killed in World War I.

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Admissions to Singularity U -The World's Most Difficult?

Post-02-04-09-su2 Chris Harwick at wired.com just published a hilarious spoof admissions letter  (posted below) to the new Singularity University founded by Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Near) and Peter Diamandis (X Prize). This new Google and NASA backed venture offers an interdisciplinary "graduate studies program" combining genetics, artificial intelligence, and engineering.

Anyone who complains about science not delivering it's promises simply doesn't comprehend how incredible this information age truly is: you can go to the mall RIGHT NOW and buy devices which would have reshaped the world ten years ago, are reshaping it today, and technology isn't slowing down - it's accelerating exponentially.  There are incredible innovations just around the corner and that's the thinking behind the creation of Singularity University.. 

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Adios Google Maps: The World's Most Detailed 3-D Map -A Japan/NASA Project

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The world's most detailed 3-D map has been published NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and it's a work of beauty!

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The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Tech (7/2)

Kragl_s2 Salamander Discovery Could Lead to Human Limb Regeneration

By tracking individual cells in genetically modified salamanders, researchers have found an unexpected explanation for their seemingly magical ability to regrow lost limbs. Rather than having their cellular clocks fully reset and reverting to an embryonic state, cells in the salamanders’ stumps became slightly less mature versions of the cells they’d been before. The findings could inspire research into human tissue regeneration.

Bubbles The Great American Bubble Machine

In the opening paragraph of The Great American Bubble Machine, Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi writes: "The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.


Mg20227141.200-1_300 Disorderly Genius-How Chaos Drives the Brain

In reality, your brain operates on the edge of chaos. Though much of the time it runs in an orderly and stable way, every now and again it suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise. Neuroscientists have long suspected as much. Only recently, however, have they come up with proof that brains work this way. Now they are trying to work out why. Some believe that near-chaotic states may be crucial to memory, and could explain why some people are smarter than others.



Mumbai_deluge_TPE_20060109 India Will Reject Curbs on Its CO2 Emissions

India will not accept limits on its greenhouse gas emissions at climate talks later this year and instead will focus on economic growth and lifting its people out of poverty, according to Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. He said that a legally binding emissions target would endanger India’s food security and transport, adding, “India cannot and will not take emission reduction targets because poverty eradication and social and economic development are first and overriding priorities.” India has low per capita greenhouse gas emissions, but its population of 1 billion and the country’s rapid economic development now make it the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

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July 01, 2009

NASA Launches Solar & Earth Storm-Sensing Satellite (Also Detects Irony)

GOES-O_VOS_2-25-2009-1882 NASA's latest super-sophisticated storm-sensor, the GOES-O, succeeded before it ever left Earth - detecting thunderstorms before being launched.  Technically it "detected" them by being delayed, as wimpy non-Michael-Bay NASA scientists don't believe in firing massive Delta IV rockets through lightning bolts, but now it's in orbit and keeping an electronic eye out for storms - both surface and solar.

The Geostationary Operational Environment Satellites is a network of weather-watchers with the GOES-O being the fourteenth.  Construction and launch of the latest satellite cost a cool half-billion (including the half-million kilogram launch vehicle), but the payback is priceless: up to the minute environmental information on Earth.

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Super-Stellar Accelerators!

Keplers_supernova Earth is under constant bombardment by energetic rays from ACROSS SPACE, but it's not time to thaw Buck Rogers just yet - the constant cosmic ray bombardment has always been going on, and now scientists have established where they're coming from.  The answer makes the Large Hadron Collider look like a scuba diver forgot to take a match out of his back pocket.

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14-Million-Year-Old Antarctica "Lab": A Snapshot of Ancient Climate Change

Dry Valley, Antarctica A team working in an ice-free region of dry valleys in the western Olympus Range in Antarctica last summer discovered a rare trove of plants and animals high in the mountains, with perfectly preserved fossils of mosses, diatoms and minute crustacea called ostracods  -a rare snapshot of ancient life in what must have been the last traces of tundra on the interior of the southernmost continent before temperatures began to drop relentlessly, which saw it change from a climate like that of South Georgia to one similar to that seen today on Mars.

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1st AI-Powered RoboScientist Created -A Galaxy Classic

Artificial_intelligence The rise of the robots hasn't resulted in a murderous rampage quite yet, but it has reaped an enormous toll on low-level jobs.  Assembly lines, farms, factories - the machines have taken over millions of man-hours, but now the scientists have surpassed those systems and begun to make themselves obsolete.  Because Adam is online - and he's a scientist.

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Brighter Than The Sun: Gamma Ray Moon

Moon_egret_150c If you could see gamma rays - photons with a million or more times the energy of visible light, the Moon would appear brighter than the Sun according to NASA astronomers, as shown by this image of the Moon from the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET) in orbit on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory from April 1991 to June 2000. 

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The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Tech (7/1)

30chaco-600 Scientist Tries to Connect Migration Dots of Ancient Southwest

Steve Lekson offers a kind of unified theory of the Native American population movements that have puzzled Southwest archaeologists for many years. As one site was abandoned, because of drought, violence, environmental degradation — the reasons are obscure — the leaders led an exodus to a new location: sometimes north, sometimes south, but hewing as closely as they could to the 108th meridian.

Marsmap  Mars Was Life-Friendly More Recently than Thought

Warm weather near the Martian equator may have melted the ice in ice-rich soils as recently as 2 million years ago, according to a paper published yesterday in "Earth and Planetary Science
Letters." This indicates that the Red Planet was warmer and more life-friendly much later in its history than previous studies show.

Bottlenose-dolphin-picture-2-480 Make Like a Dolphin: Learn Echolocation

With just a few weeks of training, you can learn to “see” objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do. Ordinary people with no special skills can use tongue clicks to visualize objects by listening to the way sound echoes off their surroundings, according to acoustic experts at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain.










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Galaxy Fans - Let Your Clicks Do Some Good

Gray-whale2 Our major brand advertisers at the top of the page and on the right pay the bills that let us deliver great daily news on the discoveries, people and events changing the planet.

Please give our advertisers your support -click on the ads, and enjoy the site.

We donate 10% of our ad revenue to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for their efforts to save the planet's endangered species, such as the gray whale.

With thanks...The Editorial Team


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June 30, 2009

Are Planets "Living Super-Organisms"? -A Galaxy Insight

6a00d8341bf7f753ef01127908a83428a4-800wi Japan's Maruyama Shigenori, one of the world's leading geophysicists, is working on a global formula for a new field of study that would include dozens of disciplines collaborating to produce an overall picture of the Earth. As he connects the links from astronomy to life sciences, an outline emerges of an all-encompassing image of entire planets which appear as living super-organisms.

Shigenori believes that expanding the study of life sciences to the core of our world and the depths of outer space will help us find distant relatives of our own Earth -- planets that could also sustain life.

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Stanford Team Re-Engineering Brain Cells to be Controlled by Lasers

1174991014healing_quran_secrets_5 Scientists are working on genetically engineered laser-controlled brain cells.  You could take the adjectives from five scifi books, roll them into a ball and shoot them through a hyperbole gun and STILL not come up with something so incredible sounding.  The work could utterly revolutionize neurotherapy, psychology, and the goopy goo of "you" inside that bone basket you carry around on top of your neck.

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Intelligent Robotic Probes to Explore Beyond Mars

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Caltech scientists are working on intelligent exploratory craft which could investigate alien worlds without human instruction.  While missions to MARS can be remotely controlled, as we set our sights further afield the light speed limitation will cause significant problems.  Even within our own solar system interesting targets like Titan and Europa are far enough away that signals would take an hour to get there and back.  Cripplingly slow when you're carefully navigating "left a bit ... wait an hour .... left a bit more"...."

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Beyond H2O -Creating New Types of Water

Hispar Glacier3 Scientists are arguing about two new types of water, and we don't mean Dasani or Perrier - we're talking about entirely new phases like "liquid" and "solid."  Which proves that researchers get to fight about far better things than regular humans.

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Amazon's Kindle: Will It Do to Books What Apple's iPod Did to the Music Industry?

Amazon-kindle-books The Kindle is the logical evolution of a 500-year-old analog technology that terrifies the $24 billion book-publishing industry already faint from Amazon's growing dominance.

On June 12th, Gizmodo announced that the Kindle DX,  just started shipping on Amazon to extend it's e-book reach to include textbooks and periodicals, which it will test-market to college students.The DX was sold out before the end of the week. "Either people really love that DX, the Gizmodo team quipped, "or the Earth only produces enough resources to sustain manufacturing a few units at a time."

Continue reading "Amazon's Kindle: Will It Do to Books What Apple's iPod Did to the Music Industry?" »


The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Tech (6/30)


Ff_facebookwall_f Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out

Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn't just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. In Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this "social graph" to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center.

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Galaxy Fans - Let Your Clicks Do Some Good

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Our major brand advertisers at the top of the page and on the right pay the bills that let us deliver great daily news on the discoveries, people and events changing the planet.

Please give our advertisers your support -click on the ads, and enjoy the site.

We donate 10% of our ad revenue to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for their efforts to save the planet's endangered species, such as the blue whale above.

With thanks...The Editorial Team







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