"Big Becky" finally returns from her underground adventure

Canada has stepped up its clean power offerings by completing a significant expansion [press release] of its Niagara River hydroelectric power capacity. Stretching 6.3 miles (10.2 km), the tunnel bumps Canada's already substantial 4.4 GW generating capacity upwards by 182.65 MW (~4.2%). And all of that wouldn't have been possible without "Big Becky".

I. Big Becky

Big Becky is a massive tunnel-boring machine (TBM). She gets her name from Sir Adam Beck, a prominent Canadian politician who served in Ontario's Legislative Assembly. Sir Beck was an outspoken advocate of power grids and hydroelectric power and helped oversee the creation of the Queenston Chippawa power station, which was later renamed the Sir Adam Beck Station in his honor. The first station went online in 1922, three years before Sir Beck's death from Anemia (at age 68); a second station, named Sir Adam Beck Station II, went live in 1954.

The Sir Beck plants carried water in a tunnel a mere 1.24 miles (2 km), before depositing it in an open cut, above ground. The new tunnel aimed to be over five times as long. To accomplish that, state of the art excavation techniques would be needed.

Flare five times more powerful than those previously seen.

An enormous flare which erupted from the remnants of an exploded star in a faraway constellation has left Nasa scientists baffled.

Last month, the famous Crab Nebula supernova, first observed in 1731, gave off a flare five times more powerful than any previously seen from the object.

On April 12, Nasa's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope first detected the outburst, which lasted six days.

In spite of being located no less than 93 million miles away from Earth, the Sun appears to be influencing the decay of radioactive elements inside research labs on the planet.

The conclusion belongs to a new investigation, which was carried out by experts at the Purdue University and the Stanford University.

The problem with the result is that the answer the team provides for this unexpected mystery appears to be raising other questions in return.

According to the physicists in the new research, it could even be that the Sun is exerting its influence on radioactive matter through an elementary particle that has never been detected before.

"That would be truly remarkable," explains Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics and solar expert Peter Sturrock. He was a part of the group that conducted the work..

According to established theories, the decay of a specific radioactive material is a constant. This idea is used to determine what radiation doses to give to cancer patients, as well as to calculate the age of samples using carbon-14.

Getting lost in the wilderness can be terrifying, even tragic. It can also be perplexing, as with a recent case in a remote area of Nevada.

A little over a week ago, a woman was rescued on the verge of death after being stranded for nearly two months on muddy back roads in the northeastern part of the state. Her husband, who walked off looking for help, is still missing. The most baffling part of the story: The couple had a GPS device. And they were following its directions when they got lost.

It's not the first time that blind faith in a GPS has led people astray and into big trouble. And given the growing influence of computer technology on our lives, experts say, it's not that surprising. As we become ever more reliant on digital devices, the relationship between humankind and the wilderness is rapidly shifting.

Armed with a GPS, in particular, many people ignore notice ridgelines, stream routes and landscape contours, said Bill Borrie, a wilderness researcher at the University of Montana, Missoula. Most also fail to learn critical wilderness survival skills in the first place.

How's this for spooky action at a distance? The sun, at 93 million miles away, appears to be influencing the decay of radioactive elements inside the Earth, researchers say.

Given what we know about radioactivity and solar neutrinos, this should not happen. It's so bizarre that a couple scientists at Stanford and Purdue universities believe there's a chance that a previously unknown solar particle is behind it all.

The big news, according to Stanford's news service, is that the core of the sun -- where nuclear reactions produce neutrinos -- spins more slowly than the surface. This phenomenon might explain changing rates of radioactive decay scientists observed at two separate labs. But it does not explain why the decay-change happens. That violates the laws of physics as we know them.

While examining data on radioactive isotopes, Purdue researchers found disagreement in measured decay rates, which goes against the long-accepted belief that these rates are constant. While searching for an explanation, the scientists came across other research that noted seasonal variation in these decay rates. Apparently radioactivity is stronger in winter than in summer.

A rocky world orbiting a nearby star has been confirmed as the first planet outside our solar system to meet key requirements for sustaining life, scientists said on Monday.

Modelling of planet Gliese 581d shows it has the potential to be warm and wet enough to nurture Earth-like life, they said.

It orbits a red dwarf star called Gliese 581, located around 20 light years from Earth, which makes it one of our closest neighbours.

Gliese 581d orbits on the outer fringes of the star's "Goldilocks zone", where it is not so hot that water boils away, nor so cold that water is perpetually frozen. Instead, the temperature is just right for water to exist in liquid form.

"With a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere -- a likely scenario on such a large planet -- the climate of Gliese 581d is not only stable against collapse but warm enough to have oceans, clouds and rainfall," France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said in a press release.

More than 500 planets orbiting other stars have been recorded since 1995, detected mostly by a tiny wobble in stellar light.

On the morning of October 25, 1999, captain Michael Kling and his first officer, Stephanie Bellegarrigue, piloted a Learjet Model 35 out of Orlando and set a heading for Dallas, where their passengers - the professional golfer Payne Stewart, Stewart's agents Robert Fraley and Van Ardan, and golf-course architect Bruce Borland - were planning to build a new course. The Learjet, a plane often used for such trips, was a marvel of engineering: It could climb 4,340 feet in a minute and cruise at up to 530 mph. In 1976 a similar Lear, the Model 36, set a round-the-world speed record.

As the crew headed north, they received instructions from a Jacksonville controller, first to climb to 26,000 feet, then 39,000. "Three nine zero bravo alpha," the first officer acknowledged. It was her last transmission. A few minutes later, the Learjet leveled out and the controller issued another routine instruction. No one radioed back. The controller tried to reach the crew five more times in the next four and a half minutes.

When a flight crew is unresponsive, the FAA asks that the nearest military jet make a visual assessment - in this case, it was an F-16 pilot on a test run out of nearby Eglin Air Force Base. Coming even with the Learjet, the test pilot reported that both of the plane's engines were running. By all indications, the Learjet was in perfect working order. But the test pilot also reported a disturbing detail: The Learjet's windows were opaque, as if covered from the inside with condensation or ice.

It was becoming clear that in the minutes after Bellegarrigue's last transmission, the cabin had lost pressure and all its oxygen began to escape. Within as little as eight seconds, the crew and their passengers most likely began to experience hypoxia - lack of oxygen in the bloodstream - that impaired their most basic motor and cognitive functions. They may not have even been aware that there was a problem, but within a few minutes of the breach, they were probably dead.

Yet the plane continued on, because a plane does not need its occupants to be comfortable in order to operate. It does not even need them to be breathing.

"You can create a system to do whatever you need it to do. But can you keep a person conscious and alive inside it?"

An elegant archaeological theory, under fire for results that can't be replicated, may ultimately come undone.

It seemed like such an elegant answer to an age-old mystery: the disappearance of what are arguably North America's first people. A speeding comet nearly 13,000 years ago was the culprit, the theory goes, spraying ice and rocks across the continent, killing the Clovis people and the mammoths they fed on, and plunging the region into a deep chill. The idea so captivated the public that three movies describing the catastrophe were produced.

But now, four years after the purportedly supportive evidence was reported, a host of scientific authorities systematically have made the case that the comet theory is "bogus." Researchers from multiple scientific fields are calling the theory one of the most misguided ideas in the history of modern archaeology, which begs for an independent review so an accurate record is reflected in the literature.

"It is an impossible scenario," says Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., where he taps the world's fastest computers for nuclear bomb experiments to study such impacts. His computations show the debris from such a comet couldn't cover the proposed impact field. In March, a "requiem" for the theory even was published by a group that included leading specialists from archaeology to botany.

Troves of early Cretaceous and Jurassic relics in country where palaeontology is just taking off has ignited evolutionary debate

It must have been an awe-inspiring sight: four metres tall and weighing 11 tonnes. Its sharp teeth delivered a bone-crushing bite. Yet even "the tyrant from Zhucheng" reached its inevitable, ignominious end. Over time, half its skull was torn from its skeleton and jumbled with the bones of less imposing creatures at this site in what is now China's eastern Shandong province.

Last month - tens of millions of years later - researchers resurrected Zhuchengtyrannus magnus. Impressive though the reconstruction was, it was just one of a succession of fossil discoveries that have put this "dinosaur city" on the map.

Zhucheng's early Cretaceous relics, Liaoning's feathered dinosaurs and Xinjiang's wealth of Jurassic material are among the Chinese treasure troves reshaping our understanding of ancient life on Earth, and the processes that have created the world around us. "Some of the new material from China is breathtaking," said Dr Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum. "Firstly, the sheer number of new species is impressive. Secondly, some of the dinosaurs that have been discovered have had major impacts on evolutionary debates."

Cellphone transmissions may be responsible for a mysterious, worldwide die off in bees that has mystified scientists.

Dr. Daniel Favre, a former biologist with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, carefully placed a mobile phone underneath a beehive and then monitored the reaction of the workers.

According to a story in The Daily Mail, the bees were able to tell when the handsets were making and receiving calls. They responded by making the high pitched squeaks that usually signal the start of swarming.

"This study shows that the presence of an active mobile phone disturbs bees -- and has a dramatic effect," Favre told the Daily Mail.

Favre believes this to be evidence of something other scientists have suggested: Signals from mobile phones are contributing to the decline of honeybees. Favre thinks more research could help confirm the link between cell signals and "colony collapse disorder" -- the sudden disappearance of entire colonies over winter -- which has halved the bee population, according to some estimates.