Voyagers 1 and 2 reach the edge of the solar system

To me, the Voyager program symbolizes the greatest of human accomplishments....



Designed to last just 5 years, both craft are still going strong after 30 years and have reached the edge of our solar system. That men successfully engineered such complex machines and from them, have learned about our universe, things we would never have known, is a testament to the natural yearning of humans to explore, learn, and expand our boundaries.

Something new from Charlie Tokyo

Scientists have taken steps toward actually creating a beating human heart in the lab....

This is pretty impressive. If they can take a donor heart and replace the functional cells with recipient cells so rejection is less of a problem, they may have gone a long way to solving the heart replacement problem and we can all live to be 150.

A bonus cookie to the reader who can, without cheating, name the song and/or artist referenced in the title of this post.

NASA teases us about life on distant planets

I'm getting a little tired of hearing NASA toadies chirp excitedly about the discovery of more planets that "could sustain life" out there around other stars. I think they are just keeping the alien question in every body's minds so congress doesn't cut their budget. Well, it's time they gave us more than probabilities. I want to see an alien retrieval mission. We should go to one of these planets, kill a few of the indigenous species or maybe capture a few of them and bring them back to be gawked at in booths at the state fair. I mean seriously, if there's life out there, why are we going and getting it?

Standing on the shoulders of giants

The Chinese are advancing technologically faster than any other nation, but there's a simple explanation and it's not that they're better at math.....

From CNBC -- A Chinese scientific research center has built the fastest supercomputer ever made, replacing the United States as maker of the swiftest machine, and giving China bragging rights as a technology superpower.

The computer, known as Tianhe-1A, has 1.4 times the horsepower of the current top computer, which is at a national laboratory in Tennessee, as measured by the standard test used to gauge how well the systems handle mathematical calculations, said Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who maintains the official supercomputer rankings.

The Chinese machine is nothing more than a larger copy of the Roadrunner at IBM, the current fastest computer(pictured above). Pirating, cheating, and stealing is how the Chinese have gained so much ground on the US in the areas of science and technology. They simply steal our inventions and innovations, pour billions of dollars, most of it ironically is ours, into copying it, then they improve it slightly in scale, then claim they've "invented" something better than ours.

They steal our communication technology, our DVD movie and CD technology, our military technology and then pat themselves on the back and brag what great innovators their scientists are when they are little more than clever thieves.

Obama's science advisor is loony tunes

Obama's radical leftist science advisor has said some stupid things to earn him a spot on team-Obama. Among them are that forced abortions and mass sterilization of undesirables is needed to control Earth's population, new born babies aren't fully human, and that anthropomorphic climate change is real. Now he's advising the white house that it needs to prepare for a killer asteroid to hit Earth....

From AOLNews -- (Oct. 25) -- If an asteroid were on a collision course with Earth, would we be ready to defend against its destructive impact or would we be helpless and defenseless?

NASA, America's space agency, is being charged with leading the way to protect not only the U.S. but the entire world in the event of such a horrifying scenario. And a top White House science adviser says we have to be prepared.

As if there aren't more pressing issues at hand, such as the systematic dismantling of the republic, the intentional destruction of America's economy, and the single greatest expansion of government tyranny over the citizenry in American history. No, we should be worrying about a stupid asteroid that may or may not be in our future.

Here's a helpful artist's impression of what an asteroid striking Earth might look like. I doubt there's anything the Christ-child Obama could do to prevent it.

Autumnal Equinox

So you people proved that you are well-read in the classics, with three of you successfully identifying an obscure Macbeth reference in one of Monday's posts. Now let's test your scientific acumen.

Today marks the autumnal equinox for 2010. Without Googling it or otherwise cheating, what is the significance of this point? What does it mean? If you are a dumb-hippie pagan, it's time to celebrate the Chakraladytree's bountiful harvest and grace or some such crap. That's not what I mean.

Unpronouncable volcano replaced by bigger, easier to say volcano

Now this is more like it...

Since the start of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, which caused cancellations of thousands of flights in Europe because of a giant ash cloud, there has been much speculation about neighboring Katla.

When Katla erupts and creates a much larger ash problem across Europe, I wonder if the world media will be more eager to report on it since they can pronounce it? Seriously, I don't know how Icelanders can say that word.

The Large Hadron Collider finally gets going

To me, the specs on this machine are more impressive than any data about the universe it might reveal...

From FoxNews -- GENEVA -- The world's largest atom smasher set a record for high-energy collisions on Tuesday by crashing proton beams into each other at three times more force than ever before.

In a milestone in the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider's ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, collided the beams and took measurements at a combined energy level of 7 trillion electron volts.

The collisions herald a new era for researchers working on the machine in a 17-mile tunnel below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

"That's it! They've had a collision," said Oliver Buchmueller from Imperial College in London as people closely watched monitors.

In order to get the proton beams close to the speed of light, they have to create an environment that is the coldest place in the universe...a couple of degrees above absolute zero(-273.15 on the Celsius scale) or nearing the absence of all thermal energy.

The fear is that if they mimic artificially, the beginning of the universe, they'll create micro black holes that could swallow up in a pico-second that part of Europe. I say to that......COOL!

Pop Quiz hot shots: without cheating, what is the log base 10 notation of the prefix "pico".

Your well-spent tax dollars at work

Psych professors at the University of Rochester have just finished a hard-hitting, in-depth study of moods of working people. Here are the earth-shattering findings....

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Jan. 12 (UPI) -- People experience better moods, greater vitality, and fewer aches and pains from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, U.S. researchers found.

In other groundbreaking medical news, smoking cessation is good for your lungs and the more fit you are, the longer you'll live..

It's finally come to this

I always suspected that scientists would at some point render the male half of our species redundant but, I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime.....

From the Telegraph: British scientists have created human sperm using stem cells in a medical first that could revolutionise fertility treatment, they claim.

So, if women can literally manufacture their own sperm for fertilization, what is the inevitable end result for men as a co-species? Are we men destined to be anything but a sub-species, relegated to domestic roles like takers out of trash, walkers of dogs, and openers of jars? Let's face it, collectively, women would rather hang out with each other and tolerate men because we are their only source of sperm....and because we'll wash their car. Now, we're not even that useful.

Boys, this doesn't look good for us.

The Holy Grail for evolutionists

One single fossil does not the missing link make...

Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution.

The search for a direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years - but it was presented to the world today at a special news conference in New York.

The discovery of the 95%-complete 'lemur monkey' - dubbed Ida - is described by experts as the "eighth wonder of the world".

These guys naming this fossil the eighth wonder and breathlessly revealing it to the world in a silly news conference is as stupid as Al Gore showing the famous "hockey stick", CO2/global warming graph and exclaiming, "The science is in and the debate is over".

A 50 million year old fossil that shares a couple of bones with humans, while interesting, doesn't exactly "prove" Darwin's theory of the evolution of species, and certainly not the origin of man. Certainly the process of evolution exists and I believe it accounts for much diversity on Earth. But we share gill slits with fish, embryologically, we have a vestigal tailbone, and share countless traits with thousands of species. If this discovery "proves" the evolution of man from ape, why don't our embryonic gill slits prove that we're closely related to the carp?

On the other hand, this guy does sort of remind me of regular reader David.

Picture of the day

Stuff like this is why I'm part geek...

The pic — the first ever image taken of a solar transit of a space shuttle and Hubble Space Telescope — was taken by an amateur astronomer from his back garden.

"From his back garden." That ain't nothing but cool!

Do we really need to know more about homosexual bahavior?

I'm all for government funding of medical research. It falls under the umbrella of "promoting the general welfare" part of the preamble to the Constitution but, this is ridiculous....

Government researchers are spending more than $400,000 in taxpayer money to hit the bars in Argentina.

The National Institutes of Health are paying researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk -- and just what can be done about it.

Any college frat boy in pursuit of hot coeds can tell you why people engage in risky behavior when drunk. Alcohol depresses the natural inhibitions humans have. Why would gay men be any different than heteros, I mean besides the definitional obvious? Plus, risky sexual behavior is part of the gay lifestyle. It doesn't take almost a half million taxpayer dollars to figure that out.

The question here is, does studying gays in Argentina promote the general welfare of the American taxpayer? Or is it just some NIH bureaucrat doling out free money to his buddies who can't write worthwhile, fund-worthy grants? My bet's on the latter.

Oh, and the answer to the second question, "what can be done about gays' risky behavior"?......Nothing. Gay men engaging in risky sexual behavior is the same as what straight men would do with women, if only women wouldn't be so stubbornly uncooperative. In other words, it's a man thing, not a gay thing.

There, question asked and answered. Can somebody give me $400,000?

Highly qualified scientist predicts the inevitable

File this story under "No S#%t, Sherlock"...

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — Scientists found evidence of intense volcanic activity — including tremors, pools of lava and plumes of smoke — at two volcanoes near a major city in eastern Congo, and said some residents had fled for fear of an eruption.

The volcanoes in the central African nation could be about to erupt, threatening Goma, which has a population of more than half a million people, scientists said Thursday. They made their observations on visits to the two volcanic peaks of Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira.

"The eruption could be tomorrow, or the day after — or at any other time," said Dieudonne Wafula, the head of Goma's Volcanological Observatory.

That's sort of like predicting when Robert Downey Jr. will start drinking again. Uh, no kidding!

Media-driven hysteria over Swine flu

As you might have expected, the media has overblown the swine flu "pandemic"....

A member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.

Vivienne Allan, from WHO's patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths - all in Mexico - and 79 confirmed cases of the disease.

Only 7 dead people, all in Mexico, from the swine flu. Compare that number with the CDC's estimate that on average 36,000 people die each year from garden-variety influenza. It makes all the breathless reporting and hysteria over swine flu kind of silly doesn't it?

Did the ancient Mayans know something?

This is a little unnerving...

For scary speculation about the end of civilization in 2012, people usually turn to followers of cryptic Mayan prophecy, not scientists. But that’s exactly what a group of NASA-assembled researchers described in a chilling report issued earlier this year on the destructive potential of solar storms.

Entitled "Severe Space Weather Events — Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts," it describes the consequences of solar flares unleashing waves of energy that could disrupt Earth’s magnetic field, overwhelming high-voltage transformers with vast electrical currents and short-circuiting energy grids. Such a catastrophe would cost the United States "$1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year," concluded the panel, and "full recovery could take 4 to 10 years." That would, of course, be just a fraction of global damages.

Good-bye, civilization.

I don't generally believe these ancient predictions like those of Nostradamus and of course the Mayans. They are always very vague and can be interpreted in many different ways to fit current events. That said, the Mayans predicted the beginning of a new era, not the destruction of Earth necessarily but, a turning point, the beginning of the fifth age of man, whatever that means, in December of 2012.

Read this article from Wired and see what you think.

All I'm saying is that it's a pretty big coincidence that the Sun's magnetic pole flips over, there is predicted to be unprecedented solar activity, and simultaneously, the Earth experiences a huge hole in it's magnetic shield. And all this is supposed to take place when the Mayans predicted something huge would happen.

Just saying.

Professor Hawk hospitalized

For those of you who didn't know, I'm sort of a science geek, that's why this is a bummer....

CAMBRIDGE, England, April 20 (UPI) -- British physicist Stephen Hawking, who has been "very ill," was hospitalized Monday, a Cambridge University statement said.

A spokesman said Hawking, 67, a wheelchair-bound professor best-known as the author of "A Brief History of Time," was undergoing tests at the school's Addenbrooke's Hospital, the British tabloid The Daily Mail reported.

Not since Einstein has the world of astrophysics had such an iconic figure as Professor Hawk.

Bonus: A virtual cookie to the first reader to name the origin of the moniker, "Professor Hawk".

UK Scientists experience "Eureka!" moment

In the UK, scientists unwittingly descend into outright parody of themselves.....

Scientists find 'pleasure nerves--

Scientists say they understand more about how the body responds to pleasurable touch.

A team, including scientists from the Unilever company, have identified a class of nerve fibres in the skin which specifically send pleasure messages.

Ironically, this "Eureka!" moment will go completely and comically wasted on these guys.

Leave it to scientists to waste tax-payer money "discovering" what normal, well-adjusted people all over the world already knew.

From where else, BBC.

The One thinks he can control the weather

Barack Obama leaves the tag, "clueless community agitator" far behind and plunges headlong toward, "dangerously hysterical lunatic".....

WASHINGTON (AP) - The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.
John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays.

The absurdly inefficient and self-serving federal government will attempt to harness the weather by polluting the upper atmosphere with trillions of tiny mirrors to reflect the solar rays and stop a wholly imaginary phenomenon---- man-made global warming. What could possibly go wrong?

-What will we do when the Earth naturally cools as any reasonable thinking person knows it will?

-How will future shuttle missions get through the gauntlet of tiny mirrors without damage?

-How will we keep the mirrors over the US? And what happens if another country doesn't want our mirrors obstructing the sun from their crops?

-How do you keep a tiny mirror from blowing away or falling back to Earth?

-Won't this pretty much end the solar-energy industry, such as it is?

Seriously, this is the stupidest idea I've ever heard and Obama is making a total mockery of the Presidency by even listening to this sort of nonsense. But then, he made a total mockery of the Presidency just by getting elected.

Comet Lulin approaches Earth

In the next few nights, comet Lulin can be seen in the eastern sky with the naked eye or better with binoculars. This is the comet's first visible pass near Earth. It's tail streaks normally away from the Sun and it's cloud(the size of Jupiter) glows green because it burns off cyanogen gas, diatomic carbon, and 800 gallons of water a second. Go out tonight and check it out with your kids. Here's an easy to figure out chart of when and where to look. Good luck!