In its first six months of operation, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva has yet to find the Higgs boson, solve the mystery of dark matter or discover hidden dimensions of spacetime. It has, however, uncovered a tantalizing puzzle, one that scientists will take up again when the collider restarts in February following a holiday break. Last summer physicists noticed that some of the particles created by their proton collisions appeared to be synchronizing their flight paths, like flocks of birds. The findings were so bizarre that "we've spent all the time since [then] convincing ourselves that what we were see ing was real," says Guido Tonelli, a spokesperson for CMS, one of two general-purpose experiments at the LHC.

The effect is subtle. When proton collisions result in the release of more than 110 new particles, the scientists found, the emerging particles seem to fly in the same direction. The high-energy collisions of protons in the LHC may be uncovering "a new deep internal structure of the initial protons," says Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, winner of a Nobel Prize for his explanation of the action of gluons. Or the particles may have more interconnections than scientists had realized. "At these higher energies [of the LHC], one is taking a snapshot of the proton with higher spatial and time resolution than ever before," Wilczek says.

On January 12, 2005, NASA launched its latest space probe, Deep Impact, named after the recent Hollywood science fiction film. Recall, in the cliffhanger a team of courageous astronauts (led by tough guy, Robert Duvall) sacrifice their lives to deflect a speeding comet from its collision course with earth, thus saving human civilization from catastrophe. NASA's newest mission is also a last-ditch gambit, of sorts: an attempt to save the current comet model.

Open any astronomy book and you will read that comets are dirty snowballs---conglomerates of ancient rock and ice left over from the creation of the solar system. And it must be true, right? After all, it says so in the textbooks, and surely the university professors can't be wrong. The problem is that over the five decades since Fred Whipple first proposed the snowball model in 1950, neither NASA nor anyone has proved that comets are actually made of ice. Every time NASA scientists focus their instruments on the surface of comets, they see only rocky stuff. Comets look like asteroids. So, where's the ice? After failing repeatedly to find it, NASA has concluded that the ice must be hidden by surface dust, or is buried out of sight. Deep Impact will attempt to resolve this question by looking below the surface.

Here's another "Hidden Treasure" from the European Southern Observatory, from the astrophotography competition where amateurs create images from unused ESO data. In this new image of Messier 78, brilliant starlight ricochets off dust particles in the nebula, illuminating it with scattered blue light and creating what is called a reflection nebula. Almost like fog around a street light, a reflection nebula shines only with the light from an embedded source that illuminates the dust. This image was taken with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. Comparing this image with others previously taken of Messier 78 shows that remarkably, this object has changed significantly in the last ten years.

This beautiful image was the overall winner of ESO's Hidden Treasures 2010 astrophotography competition created by Igor Chekalin, who won with his image of this stunning object.

Messier 78 can easily be observed with a small telescope, being one of the brightest reflection nebulae in the sky. It lies about 1350 light-years away in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter) and can be found northeast of the easternmost star of Orion's belt.

For thousands of years people were aware of earth changes. They knew that the Earth was in a constant state of change. They knew that sometimes the rivers would overflow and therefore they did not build their homes in the flood plain. They knew that building at the base of a volcano could be dangerous because sometimes the volcano would erupt and spill lava and spout ash that would devastate their community.

They also knew from stories told by their elders that massive earth changes were a natural occurrence and they lived in close harmony with the land so that they would be prepared for the most traumatic earth changes.

Today we have forgotten much of the history of our planet and depend upon science and scientists to interpret the signs for us. Until the mid 1800's we looked at the Earth changes through the ancient awareness of cycles of catastrophe and relative quietude... Charles Lyell changed that with his Law of Uniformitarianism.

Lyell posited the belief that life on Earth proceeds, to a large degree, with uniform change and the rate of earth changes observed today must have been the rate of change in the past. Thus, knowing how fast water erodes today would give the scientist a way to determine how much time it would take to erode a plain or a mountain. Using currently accepted rates of erosion, we could ascertain how long it would take to dig a Grand Canyon or a Mississippi River Valley. We lost contact with the teachings of our ancestors who knew better.

Child born without cerebellum or pons portion of brainstem


A slow but steady walk down the hallway might seem like no small accomplishment for a 3-year-old.

But for Chase Britton, it is nothing short of a medical miracle.

Chase giggles and cheers for himself as he walks, as his parents, Heather and David look on.

How far they've come.

"We've been told an awful lot, by folks who seem to know, or should know, what he should be able to do, and what he's doing, is not that," said David.

With each measured step, Chase is changing what top doctors and researchers around the world thought they knew about the brain.

"There are some very bright specialized people across the country and in Europe that have put their minds to this dilemma," said Dr. Adre du Plessis, Chief of Fetal and Transitional Medicine at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., "and are continuing to do so, and we haven't come up with an answer. So it is a mystery."

A medical mystery, emerging from within a family that had already seen more than its fair share of heartbreak.

In 2006, the Britton's second child, Trey, died just four weeks after he was born.

Doctors said Trey's condition was not genetic, and the couple was safe to try again.

"We knew this is what we wanted to do," said Heather Britton, "and they said flukes don't happen twice."

Her husband put it even more simply.

"They said lightning doesn't strike twice," said David Britton.

But sometimes, it does.

It came from a distant constellation 50,000 light years away - but its impact could be seen with the human eye.

Earth has been zapped by a 'giant flare' which was the equivalent of half a million years of sunlight in just a fraction of a second.

So powerful was the energy pulse that it bounced off the Moon and lit up the Earth's atmosphere, Nasa said.

It came from a neutron star known as a magnetar with an enormous magnetic field which was located on the other side of the Milky Way.

The stars, also known as Soft Gamma Ray Repeaters, usually emit flashes of low energy gamma rays, but sometimes when their magnetic fields re-align they can unleash immense bursts.

As it travelled through space the energy burst jolted thousands of orbiting satellites and ionized the entire upper atmosphere of the Earth, causing it to light up.

The flash was brighter than a full Moon and 'brighter than anything ever detected from beyond our Solar System,' according to NASA.

Scientists have found their first evidence of gene transfer from humans to bacteria - and, guess what, it's gonorrhea that's the lucky recipient.

Gonorrhea, transmitted through sexual contact, is one of the oldest recorded diseases and one of a few exclusive to humans. Something that sounds very much like it is described in the Bible.

Now, Northwestern Medicine researchers have discovered a human DNA fragment in Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and say the gene transfer appears to be relatively recent.

"This has evolutionary significance because it shows you can take broad evolutionary steps when you're able to acquire these pieces of DNA," said study senior author Hank Seifert.

"The bacterium is getting a genetic sequence from the very host it's infecting. That could have far-reaching implications as far as how the bacteria can adapt to the host."

It's known that gene transfer occurs between different bacteria and even between bacteria and yeast cells - but never between two species so very different.

London: Mathematicians have embarked on a three-year project to create their own version of the periodic table that will provide a vast directory of all the possible shapes in the universe across three, four and five dimensions.

Linking shapes together in the same way as the periodic table links groups of chemical elements, the new table should provide a resource that mathematicians, physicists and other scientists can use for calculations and research in a range of areas, including computer vision, number theory, and theoretical physics.

"The periodic table is one of the most important tools in chemistry. Our work aims to create a directory that lists all the geometric building blocks and breaks down each one's properties using relatively simple equations," said project leader Alessio Corti, from the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London.

Abstract

This paper provides an alternate theory for comet behavior and shows comets to be planetary, lunar, and asteroidal bodies in their formative stages. It demonstrates that tail matter is attracted towards an asteroidal comet nucleus by strong electrical forces. Additionally, two charging mechanisms are identified, both of which produce a net negative charge on the comet nucleus. This is supported by data from recent space probes.

Comet wandering, sunward spikes, a shrinkage of the coma as the comet approaches the Sun, curved tails, the gathering and maintenance of meteoroid streams, spiraling of tail material, and the rapid orbital circularization of large newly captured comets are also discussed.

Earlier papers used similar concepts to predict the existence of strong electrical fields in the vicinity of Saturn, showing Saturn and its ring system to be analogous to the Sun and its zodiacal disk. The realization of the proton wind-supported capacitors of Saturn and the Sun led to a number of unexpected theoretical considerations that included,

1. the recognition of the charging process used by comets
2. the postulation of an ion and dust cloud held back by solar wind pressure near the orbit of Jupiter - which is one source of comet tail matte
3. a postulated electric dipole red-shift in photons leaving the central star

Still another theoretical result was the possibility of an electrically induced magnetic dynamo powered by a planet spinning inside the orbit of a slightly charged moon. Empirical correlation between moons and magnetic fields has been known for some time, though the wandering of our Moon has remained an unsolved mystery.

An attempt is made to explain solar system formation from the time a newly formed twin star system leaves the galactic center to when it develops its solar system by the capture of comets. The reader's knowledge of planetary encounter and N-body literature is assumed since it is basic to the paper but unreferenced.

However, the text by T. J. J. See, which develops the first capture theory for the origin of the solar system (OSS), is indispensable. A major result of this paper is also the quantization of' Newtonian space. Finally, the link between planetary formation, geomagnetic reversals, and biological evolution is examined.

I have recently received a handful of uninformed responses from people who have read my series of essays on the possible influence of electricity in the solar system - including the electric nature of comets.

Several have written to me claiming that I was not giving proper credit to astrophysicist James McCanney, even asserting that McCanney "originated" the electric comet theory. Some have further stated that "electric universe" theorist Wallace Thornhill has "borrowed" from McCanney's theories without acknowledging a debt to McCanney.

Both of these assertions are false.

McCanney did not "originate" the electric comet theory, because:

1. the theory has roots in many 19th century speculations about comets
2. the catalytic work on the electric sun and electric comets was that of the twentieth century pioneer Ralph Juergens, whose published papers on the subject pre-date those of McCanney by several years
3. Thornhill's thesis was directly inspired by Juergens', whose work Thornhill diligently followed from the beginning
4. the hypothesis was favored by Thornhill, to which he has added many nuances, and differs significantly from McCanney's
5. the core of McCanney's thesis is thrown into doubt by space age discovery, while Thornhill's is not

Nevertheless, McCanney must be given credit for having explored cometary phenomena from a unique electrical vantage point and having added to scientific discussion of the "electric comet."

A brief historical outline of the evolution of the electric comet theory may be helpful.