The inner workings of bizarre and potentially dangerous earthquakes that break the seismic sound barrier have now for the first time been confirmed in laboratory experiments with real rocks, report scientists in today's issue of the journal Science.

What are called supershear earthquakes are strange events in which the rupturing fault breaks faster than certain seismic waves can travel, creating a sort of seismic mach cone that fires out the end of a fault's rupture zone -- the part of the fault that breaks loose allowing two rock surfaces to jerk past each other. That cone and the waves that follow can cause inordinately severe shaking, out of proportion to the earthquake's magnitude.

"It's like the (seismic) waves are propagating along and all of a sudden it steps on the accelerator," explained Eric Dunham, an assistant professor and seismological researcher at Stanford University who has done modeling work on supershear waves.

Hovering high above the mountains these unusual, saucer-like white masses resemble a creature or vehicle from another world - but they are in fact clouds. The natural phenomenon, known as a lenticular clouds, tend to form at high altitudes, such as above mountains.

The lens-shaped formations are scientifically known as 'altocumulus lenticularis' and are the result of moist air that has condensed at a high altitude. They are formed when the air temperature drops and moisture droplets are pushed up a steep slope by high winds. This unique atmospheric condition creates the interesting lens-shaped form that defines a lenticular cloud.

Mountains act as natural barriers forcing clouds to condense quickly as they are pushed to cooler altitudes. This is why a large or particularly tall mountain range will experience a moist climate on one side but an arid one on the other.
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I've never seen an Arietid meteor and chances are you haven't either. Peaking on June 7-8, the Arietid (AIR-ee-uh-tid) meteor shower is one of the strongest of the year with a maximum rate of 50-80 per hour. But there's a rub. The shower radiant, the point in the sky from which the meteors appear to radiate, is near the sun and best seen during daylight hours. When was the last time you saw meteors in daylight?
If you're wondering how anyone could discover a meteor shower when the sun is out, it's impossible unless your eyes can see radio waves. The Arietids were first "seen" in 1947 by operators of radio equipment at Jodrell Bank Observatory in England. Meteors leave trails of ionized gases when they rip through our upper atmosphere at tens of thousands of miles per hour and briefly make ideal reflectors of radio waves.

Looking for a way to make $1 million? All you need to do is solve a math equation that has been boggling the minds of the world's greatest mathematicians for over 20 years.

Beal's Conjecture, represented by A^x + B^y = C^z, is named after Andrew Beal, the same man who is offering up the seven-figure reward for anyone who can prove that when A, B and C are positive integers, and x, y and z are positive integers greater than 2 - A, B and C must have a common factor.

The conjecture was first proposed in 1993 while Beal was working on Fermat's Last Theorem. He noted that both equations are "easy to say, but extremely difficult to prove."

"Increasing the prize is a good way to draw attention to mathematics generally and the Beal Conjecture specifically," said Beal. "I hope many more young people will find themselves drawn into the wonderful world of mathematics."

Currently working as a banker in Dallas, Beal first offered up a $5,000 prize to anyone who could perform the proof back in 1997. He has increased the reward several times over the years without a solution being found. The $1 million prize is a ten-fold upgrade from Beal's last offer of $100,000.

"I was inspired by the prize offered for proving Fermat," said the self-taught mathematician who professes an affinity for number theory.

A new breakthrough in the strange business of "quantum entanglement" may make measuring eerily connected particles easier than ever, scientists say.

Under the mind-bending rules of quantum mechanics, two particles can become entangled so that they retain a connection even when separated over long distances. The properties between the two are correlated so that an action performed on one will affect the other.

To study entangled particles, physicists have to be able to detect them. In some experiments, researchers measure one of the entangled pair first, and its presence signals, or "heralds," the presence of the second particle. Recently, a team of physicists at the Joint Quantum Institute in College Park, Md., achieved a new record in heralding efficiency, meaning they were able to detect more twin particle pairs than ever before.

In the experiment, the researchers used what's called a pump laser to produce a beam of light that passes through a special type of crystal. Occasionally, the photons of light in the laser beam will split in two, essentially, after passing through the crystal, creating a new pair of correlated photons. These photons will hit a detector screen exactly 180 degrees apart, so if the researchers find one, they know to look directly across the circle pattern formed on the detector, to the point 180 degrees around, to find the other.

Every 6.6 years, the comet Giacobini-Zinner circulates through the inner solar system and passes through the perihelion, the closest point to the Sun of its orbit. Then, the comet sublimates the ices and ejects a large number of particles that are distributed in filaments. The oldest of these particles have formed a swarm that the Earth passes trough every year in early October. The result is a Draconid meteor shower - meteors from this comet come from the northern constellation Draco - , which hits the Earth's atmosphere at about 75,000 km/h, a relatively slow speed in comparison with other meteoric swarms.

Josep Maria Trigo, researcher from the CSIC Institute of Space Sciences (ICE), states: "When a comet approaches the Sun, it sublimates part of its superficial ice and the gas pressure drives a huge number of particles that adopt orbits around the Sun, forming authentic swarms. The study shows that in the evening from October 8th to 9th 2011, the Earth intercepted three dense spindles of particles left behind by the comet when it crossed through the perihelion".

The researchers, who published their results in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society magazine, have obtained the orbits of twenty meteors in the solar system. Thus, they have confirmed the origin of the particles that caused the outbreak in that periodic comet. For this, they have count on 25 video-detection stations operated by the Spanish Meteor and Firewall Network (SPMN) and the collaboration of amateur astronomers.

Two of those filaments of meteoroids, which had been theoretically predicted already, have been identified by scientists with those left by the comet in 1874, 1894 and 1900. Nevertheless, researchers have confirmed that there was another dense region intercepted by the Earth which had not been predicted and that involves a new challenge for theoretical models.

In a second article, researchers analyze the chemical composition of six fireballs from that swarm of the comet recorded during the outbreak. José María Madiedo, researcher from the University of Huelva and coordinator of this second study, asserts: "One of them, with an initial mass of 6 kg and nearly half a meter in diameter, named Lebrija in honor of the city it over flew, came to compete with the brightness of the moon that night".

The six analyzed fragments have a possibly similar composition to the carbonaceous chondrites (a type of organic-rich meteorites) but they are much more fragile. Trigo emphasizes: "They don't seem to have suffered any chemical alteration during their brief stay in the interplanetary environment, which turns out to be very interesting to confirm the astrobiological role of these particles in the continuous transportation of water and organic material to the Earth".

The mystery blob that appeared on radars across the Tennessee Valley on Tuesday is still unexplained. The anomaly as it is affectionately being called, started appearing on doppler screens in the early afternoon hours and eventually covered an area nearly the size of Huntsville city limits itself. The blob was accompanied by increased military aircraft activity and numerous reports of strange chemical odors.

Huntsville, Alabama is largely anchored by various military-industrial complex companies, the NASA program and one of the largest US military bases, Redstone Arsenal. Redstone Arsenal is home to new units and personnel as a result of BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) as well as many classified entities.

To see a headline like this raises many possibilities to mild skeptics and the reckless conspiracy theorists alike. Scanning the internet, many blamed the anomaly on HAARP, which is not farfetched for a number of reasons, but unlikely in this case. Others mentioned chemtrails as it is constantly rumored that new, stealthier geoengineering technologies have been developed of late.

What is known is that there were more than the usual number of military helicopters flying around Tuesday afternoon. It is common to see the occasional training happening in Huntsville skies but there was an increased number of helicopters out, including multiple twin rotor Chinooks and an above average number of civilian copters. WTF News editor Baran Hines also noticed the uptick in activity over Huntsville.

You may have had remote controlled airplanes growing up, but they probably weren't as cool as the quadcopter. This tiny helicopter looks a lot like a toy, but it's really a high-tech robot controlled exclusively by human thought.

Developed by a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota, the four-blade helicopter, or quadcopter, can be quickly and accurately controlled for a sustained amount of time using the electrical impulses associated with a subject's thoughts.

The team used a noninvasive technique known as electroencephalography (EEG) to record the electrical brain activity of five different subjects. Each subject was fitted with a cap equipped with 64 electrodes, which sent signals to the quadcopter over a WiFi network.

The subjects were positioned in front of a screen that relayed images of the quadcopter's flight through an on-board camera, allowing them to see the course the way a pilot would. The plane, which was driven with a pre-set forward moving velocity, was then controlled by the subject's thoughts.

By imagining that they were using their right hand, left hand and both hands together, subjects controlled the flight path of the plane. If they imagined raising their left hand, for example, the plane turned left. If they imagined raising their hands together, the plane lifted higher in the air.

The oldest well-preserved skeleton of a primate, a 55-million-year-old specimen found in China, has been discovered, researchers report.

The primate appears to be the most primitive known relative of the group that contains tarsiers, small primates found only in Southeast Asia. The finding suggests this group diverged from anthropoids, the group that contains monkeys, apes and humans, during the Eocene epoch (55.8 million to 33.9 million years ago), a time of widespread warming.

It's not the oldest primate fossil, researchers say, but it is one of the oldest most-complete skeletons of the group known as tarsiiformes.

"This discovery is really exciting," vertebrate paleontologist Jonathan Bloch of the University of Florida's museum of natural history told LiveScience, "because it shows us the first really [well-articulated] skeleton of one branch of the crown primate tree," (the group including all primates alive today and their common ancestor). Bloch was not involved in the study.

The fossil confirms speculation that the earliest primates probably lived in trees, ate insects and were active during the daytime.

The primate, now named Archicebus achilles (roughly translated as "ancient monkey"), would have weighed about 1 ounce (20-30 grams), suggesting the earliest primates were very small.

The skeleton shares some features of tarsiers and some of anthropoids. For instance, the specimen's heel bone strongly resembles those of anthropoids, hence the species name, achilles.

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health, and their colleagues, have discovered that a gene called BACH2 may play a central role in the development of diverse allergic and autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, asthma, Crohn's disease, celiac disease, and type-1 diabetes. In autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks normal cells and tissues in the body that are generally recognized as "self" and do not normally trigger immune responses. Autoimmunity can occur in infectious diseases and cancer.

The results of previous research had shown that people with minor variations in the BACH2 gene often develop allergic or autoimmune diseases, and that a common factor in these diseases is a compromised immune system. In this study in mice, the Bach2 gene was found to be a critical regulator of the immune system's reactivity. The study, headed by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), both part of NIH, and their colleagues appeared online in Nature, June 2, 2013.