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Anatoly Perminov, the Russian Space Agency chief, announced at a recent news conference that there were plans to develop a space system that could protect the Earth from a potential asteroid impact by 2040. Members of the scientific community are unanimous in that the asteroid danger is real and that some measures should be taken to prevent it. The discovery of Apophis three years ago made them and the general public even more aware of that threat.
Identical twins separated at birth in a social experiment have been reunited after 35 years.
And while the man behind the test has been widely criticised, Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein appear to have answered the question of what is more influential - nature or nurture.
And while the man behind the test has been widely criticised, Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein appear to have answered the question of what is more influential - nature or nurture.
Seven Chinese have applied to become space tourists on a planned commercial flight in the United States in 2009, state media reported Friday.
Six men and one woman have put their names forward in the hope of becoming the first two Chinese tourists to travel to space in "SpaceShipTwo," run by British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic company, said the Beijing Morning Post.
Six men and one woman have put their names forward in the hope of becoming the first two Chinese tourists to travel to space in "SpaceShipTwo," run by British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic company, said the Beijing Morning Post.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma = Rocketplane Global, Inc. has finalized significant changes to their suborbital vehicle the Rocketplane XP. The changes are focused at making the vehicle more responsive to the emerging sub-orbital tourism market and also represent refinements to the engineering design.
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| ©Nicholas Schmerr, Edward Garnero, Arizona State University |
| Surface topography and bathymetry around South America (top) overlays variable topography on Earth's upper mantle phase transition discontinuities at 410 km (middle) and 660 km (bottom) depth (topography is contoured in 2 km increments). Topography on the discontinuities is used to characterize compositional and thermal heterogeneity within the Earth. In this region, the large depressions are related to subduction processes, whereby cold oceanic lithosphere descends into the mantle. |
Seismologists in recent years have recast their understanding of the inner workings of Earth from a relatively benign homogeneous environment to one that is highly dynamic and chemically diverse. This new view of Earth's inner workings depicts the planet as a living organism where events that happen deep inside can affect what happens at its surface, like the rub and slip of tectonic plates and the rumble of the occasional volcano.
Astronomers have unmasked hundreds of black holes hiding deep inside dusty galaxies billions of light-years away. The massive, growing black holes, discovered by NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes, represent a large fraction of a long-sought missing population. Their discovery implies there were hundreds of millions of additional black holes growing in our young universe, more than doubling the total amount known at that distance.
The US shuttle Discovery docked with the International Space Station on Thursday for a complex construction mission to pave the way for the installation of European and Japanese laboratories.
The mission is also making space exploration history as shuttle Commander Pam Melroy, 46, and the station's crew chief, Peggy Whitson, 47, became the first women to hold the reins of the two spacecraft at the same time.
The mission is also making space exploration history as shuttle Commander Pam Melroy, 46, and the station's crew chief, Peggy Whitson, 47, became the first women to hold the reins of the two spacecraft at the same time.
A 16 billion pixel image of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper has been posted on the internet, allowing art lovers close up details of the 15th Century work.
Comment: For a deeper insight into this mysterious painting, see Laura Knight-Jadczyk's article: The True Identity of Fulcanelli and The Da Vinci Code.
The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.
Comment: This is not such a harmless joke as it may seem. Recent social changes and scientific advances certainly corroborate the old prediction that H.G. Wells had made. All over the world inequality is rising, while upward mobility is stagnating, which contributes to the physical and reproductive isolation of classes from one another. Additionally, technologies for genetic enhancement are beginning to be discussed; like plastic surgery, they will be available primarily to the upper class, further separating people.
The author of the current hypothesis, Oliver Curry, has a background in political sciences. His interest is in evolutionary explanation of social, moral and political behavior. He is a member of the interdisciplinary research group called EMPG (the Evolutionary Moral Psychology Group) that hopes to understand human morality using "recent advances in evolutionary biology,game theory, animal behaviour, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience". In other words, they say that we do good unto others because it ultimately serves ourselves or our genes.
Dr. Curry's current work aims to "deepen and extend this evolutionary account of morality by turning some of the predictions that evolutionary theory makes about human moral and political psychology into tractable experiments, and putting them to the test. This includes work on the evolution of patience, on attitudes to abortion, and on moral decision-making in psychopaths."
It is ironic that to explain altruism, Dr. Curry uses a framework that glorifies selfishness (evolutionary or otherwise). Even so, he can't help noting that the current societal trends lead to the rise of psychopathic behavior. An older BBC NEWS story on this same subject quotes him as follows:
Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they [people] could come to resemble domesticated animals. [..] Social skills, such as communicating and interacting with others, could be lost, along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect. People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams.
The problem with Dr. Curry's overall conclusion is that psychopaths have no concept about the long-term effect of their actions. This is precisely why they are 'amoral' in a conventional sense of the word that Dr. Curry and his colleagues are sticking to. Psychopaths view other people and their whole environment as an expendable resource. It doesn't occur to them that when they trash everything around them, they themselves will to be destroyed.
It is obvious to anyone who follows the news that we don't have 100,000 years to split into two morphologically different subspecies, nor do we have a thousand years to get to live for 120 years.
On the other hand, one can say that psychopaths do represent a distinct sub-species of Homo sapiensl. They look the same as the guy next to you, but their evolutionary survival strategy is different: instead of cooperating with others, they feed on them. This is eerily similar to how Morlocks feed on helpless Elois, while the latter are ignorant of danger even though they feel it unconsciously.
The world is burning NOW. It behooves one to descend from the ivory tower and face the grim reality.
When a mountain climber drops a rope, it often forms a series of coils on the ground. Not only thick ropes, but also sewing thread and even cooked spaghetti behave in a similar way. Recently, scientists have carried out the first controlled laboratory experiments on the peculiar phenomenon of coiling ropes, revealing the surprising dynamics behind it.
Researchers Mehdi Habibi, Neil Ribe, and Daniel Bonn, together representing the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences in Iran, the École Normale Supérieure and the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, and the University of Amsterdam, have published their results on the coiling of elastic ropes in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.
Researchers Mehdi Habibi, Neil Ribe, and Daniel Bonn, together representing the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences in Iran, the École Normale Supérieure and the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, and the University of Amsterdam, have published their results on the coiling of elastic ropes in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.
Comment: Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction! is an excellent article discussing just what we are very likely going to be up against in the not-to-distant future.