The Daily Galaxy: News from Planet Earth & Beyond

Best of The Daily Galaxy –June 22-29

The “Two-Commander” Brain

  Antarctic Iceberg's "Web of Life"

  A Cosmic Eye: Liquid Observatory on the Moon

"Sea Stallion" -Ancient Viking Warship Resurrected

The Worldwide UFO Phenomena -“Religion or Science”?

Brain Technology: We Can Now Move Objects with Our Minds

Colossus: Great Science-Fiction Story Gets a Film Revival

Birth of Star Wars: George Lucas in Love

A Look Inside Twitter, and the Addiction Many Have Come to Know

The Flight of the Conchords "The Humans are Dead"—Daily Comedy Classic

Time Travel to a Mysterious Underwater World: Scientists Expect Bizarre Adaptations

Einstein Right (Again): Earth Proven to Bend the Space-Time Fabric

Cetacea: Mind-Bending Theories About the Planet's “Other” Intelligent Life

"On Two Planets" & "War of the Worlds" -The Origins of Modern Science Fiction

"Dawn Mission" -NASA's Journey to the Beginning of the Solar System

A Future "K/T" Asteroid Impact -Would the Human Species Survive?

TypePad Gives The Daily Galaxy a 4-Star Review

"The Ilulissat Manifesto" -Creating Artifical Life

Was there an Ancient Language of Universal Symbols?

New, Revised Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Ocean -Our Power Future

Twitter+Facebook+Pownce = Social Network Fatigue

BlueNote has added you as a Friend on Facebook!

You are Socrates' newest friend!

If you're someone connected in the, well, connected world online, then undoubtedly you've seen more than a few of these email alerts. What they are, for those who have not yet delved, are "friend" invite alerts one receives via email, into the worlds of various social networks.

In the beginning, it's actually quite exciting. It's fun. And it's social value.

But now, after MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, and many others have emerged - as if we needed it - Pownce (another Twitter competitor) surfaces from the hand of Digg founder Kevin Rose. Another space online in which we need to add more friends and friend more friends? Accept invites and scour the network to find friends?

Maybe. And then again, maybe not.

Astro-Engineering Artifacts as Evidence of

The world-renowned physicist, Freeman Dyson of Princeton's Advanced Institute of Study (Einstein's former home), wrote that "Life may succeed against all odds in molding the Universe to its own purposes. And the design of the inanimate Universe may not be as detached from the potentialities of life and intelligence as scientists of the 20th century have tended to suppose."

The underlying assumption of Dyson's statement is his belief that in a universe some 14 billion years old that their are advanced technological civilizations in existence far more ancient than our 4.5 billion year-old Earth who are capable of feats of "macro-engineering" that we can hardly imagine.

10 Random & Odd Facts -June 29 '07

1. A new study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that Americans who rely on Comedy Central fare—The Daily Show and Colbert Report, know much more about current events than those who watch Fox “News”.

Cosmic "X" or God? -Religion vs Science

Science vs. Religion seems to be a running theme for the 21st century. Yet, the two sides of the debate have much in common. Not being willing to consider other's perspective is a common occurrence in both worlds.

Why does the universe seem so fine-tuned for the emergence of life, including intelligent life capable of asking that "why" question? "Believers," says theoretical physicist and astrobiologist, Paul Davies, in a recent interview with Cosmic Log, "simply say that God did it, while scientists are trying to come up with complicated extradimensional multiverse theories to explain our lucky break."

The Emerging "Geoweb" -The World Map as Living Organism

Unlike NASA's map of the Universe, there are no more "white spaces" on the map of our planet.

What there is, however, is an intricate new human-created strata of annotation and personal discovery that's changing the very nature of cartography and personal terrestrial vision with the new tools created over the past two years by map providers like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

A Science Moment...

   

Ha!

 

Egyptian Mummy Identified as Egypt’s Most Powerful Female Ruler

Egyptologists have declared that they have confirmed the identity of Egypt's most powerful female ruler. We’re not talking about Nefertiti nor Cleopatra, but Hatshepsut, a powerful ruler from the 18th Dynasty of Egyptian royalty. She reigned from 1479 BC to 1458 BC, and usurped control of the throne from her stepson, Thutmosis III. It turns out though that, after her death, Thutmosis took steps to avenge the rise she made to power, and obliterated her from all records.

What Lies Beneath -A Mystery at the Earth's Center

Surprisingly, we know very little about what lies beneath the Earth's surface. The scientific community is in generaly agreement that the world beneath our feet is made up of four layers: a rocky outer crust, a mantle of hot viscous rock, a liquid outer core, the seat of magnetism, and a solid, spinning inner core.

The liquid core, creates the Earth's magnetic field in concert with the spinning solid core, which acts like an electrical motor, reverses itself about 200 times in the last 100 million years. But we don't have the slightest idea why; it's one of the great unsolved mysteries of science.

Whitest Kids U Know "The Opposite Day" -Daily Comedy Classic

Here’s another hilarious comedy sketch from Trevor and the gang involving a lawyer’s crooked attempts to win a case using bribery, confusion & trickery. It ends a little weird, but as a whole it’s well worth watching. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

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Right on, Dude!

   

The Great Siberian Impact: Meteorite, Comet, or Micro-Black Hole?

Somewhere between 7 and 8 a.m. on June 30th, 1908, a massive explosion occurred near the Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia. Numerous theories have emerged throughout the last century attempting to describe what it was that caused this mysterious explosion, dubbed the Tunguska Event.

Eyewitnesses described a diffuse bright ball two or three times larger than the sun but not as bright;  the trail was a "fiery-white band."

Neanderthal Man, the Sequel -Scientists Aim to Bring Extinct Species Back to Life

It’s happening again, scientists watch a Sci-Fi movie and then a few years later, they’ve figure out a way to recreate the outlandish ideas in real life. Who ever said Hollywood was good for nothing. Well, a lot of people actually, but they were wrong!

Remember how the fictional billionaire John Hammond resurrected the extinct dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park? Now real paleontologists are piecing together the complete genomes of long-dead species such as the woolly mammoth and the Neanderthals in an effort to bring them back to life.

A Future "K/T" Asteroid Impact -Would the Human Species Survive?

We posted yesterday about NASA's Dawn mission, which will launch from Cape Canaveral July 7th, on a mission to study the "dwarf planets" Ceres and Vesta in the Asteroid Belt between Jupiter and Saturn.

Asteroids are believed to be the building blocks of planets - primordial relics left over from the formation of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago.

We thought it would be a perfect follow up to examine what the scientific world thinks would happen to the human species and life on Earth in general if an asteroid the size of the one that created the famous K/T Event of 65 million years ago at the end of the Mesozoic Era that resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs impacted our planet.

TypePad Gives The Daily Galaxy a 4-Star Review

June 27, 2007

The Daily Galaxy

Is there a better way to catch up on the sometimes odd developments in science, technology, and their fictional representations in pop culture, then by browsing The Daily Galaxy? We think not.  An eclectic digest of “news from planet earth and beyond,” the Galaxy’s got the goods to trip out even the most grounded of web surfers. For example, The Worldwide UFO Phenomena – Religion or Science speculates on ways extraterrestrial travelers might bridge the vast gaps between habitable planets. (Wormholes!) This post on an upcoming expedition to the sea floor beneath the Arctic ice posits potential discovery of life forms as exotic as those imagined on alien planets. A little more down- (or up) to-earth is this entry on Conan O’Brien’s visit to Lucasfilm in San Francisco. Visit "The Daily Galaxy." It's out of this world. 

Is there a better way to catch up on the sometimes odd developments in science, technology, and their fictional representations in pop culture, then by browsing The Daily Galaxy? We think not.  An eclectic digest of “news from planet earth and beyond,” the Galaxy’s got the goods to trip out even the most grounded of web surfers. For example, The Worldwide UFO Phenomena – Religion or Science speculates on ways extraterrestrial travelers might bridge the vast gaps between habitable planets. (Wormholes!) This post on an upcoming expedition to the sea floor beneath the Arctic ice posits potential discovery of life forms as exotic as those imagined on alien planets. A little more down- (or up) to-earth is this entry on Conan O’Brien’s visit to Lucasfilm in San Francisco. Visit "The Daily Galaxy." It's out of this world. 

The Daily Galaxy

Is there a better way to catch up on the sometimes odd developments in science, technology, and their fictional representations in pop culture, then by browsing The Daily Galaxy? We think not.  An eclectic digest of “news from planet earth and beyond,” the Galaxy’s got the goods to trip out even the most grounded of web surfers. For example, The Worldwide UFO Phenomena – Religion or Science speculates on ways extraterrestrial travelers might bridge the vast gaps between habitable planets. (Wormholes!) This post on an upcoming expedition to the sea floor beneath the Arctic ice posits potential discovery of life forms as exotic as those imagined on alien planets. A little more down- (or up) to-earth is this entry on Conan O’Brien’s visit to Lucasfilm in San Francisco. Visit "The Daily Galaxy." It's out of this world. 

Dangerous New Technologies Deserve a Chance -Daily Comedy Classic

With great risks, comes great rewards. Demetri Martin graduated from Yale, won a scholarship to NYU Law School, and had a bright future ahead. He chose to pursue comedy instead. Trust me, his family wasn’t laughing.

Once again, Demetri puts his “instincts” aside and allows his brain to be probed in a science experiment that may make his head catch on fire. Sometimes, you just got to take one for science.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

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Early Twitter Dude