mcdspot

Oceans of liquid diamond, filled with solid diamond icebergs, could be floating on Neptune and Uranus, according to a recent article in the journal Nature Physics.

It is always a good thing to be colder than the objects you are observing.

This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. Mary Pat’s cousin Chris Zaseck is going to be working on a graduate project at Purdue University involving the development of a fuel made of “nanoscale aluminum and water ice.” It looks like the tests have been successful so far. Yes, science rocks.

The 10 weirdest physics facts, from relativity to quantum physics.

My favorite: If the Sun were made of bananas, it would be just as hot.

quench.

Oh, and science rocks.

Superconducting magnets in the [Large Hadron Collider] function at a temperature of 2 Kelvin — that’s two degrees above absolute zero. Maintaining this kind of cold requires the use of superfluid helium, which in turn allows the electrical current to pass through without encountering any resistance, Cern’s Christine Darve told PopSci.com. By sending the intense proton beams through what she calls a “moon vacuum,” scientists are able to reap 100 times more energy than through a normal magnet.

via

The first thing I should say, is that I’m not retiring. Under Cambridge University regulations, I will no longer be the Lucasian Professor, but I will have a new post as a Director of Research at Cambridge.
I will carry on with my scientific work, and my efforts to explain it to other people. I’m currently working on the quantum creation of the universe, and the rapid inflation in size that followed.
Despite having been unfortunate enough to get motor neurone disease at the age of 21, I have had a full and satisfying life. I have three wonderful children, and have been able to add to our understanding of the universe.
It has been a glorious time to be alive, and doing research in theoretical physics. Our picture of the universe, has changed a great deal in the last 40 years, and I’m happy if I have made a small contribution.
I want to share my excitement and enthusiasm. There’s nothing like the Eureka moment, of discovering something that no-one knew before. I won’t compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.

– Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking on his change of position

This is why we hold science fairs:

“Two New Zealand schoolgirls humbled one of the world’s biggest food and drugs companies after their school science experiment found that their ready-to-drink Ribena contained almost no trace of vitamin C.”

Scientists have perfected a better method for photographing single carbon nanotubes within a single molecule. Incredible.

Bacteria talk to each other with chemicals. They do so for a host of reasons, some of them hard to understand unless you are another bacterium (or a dedicated bacteriologist), but one of the most straightforward is demonstrated by Bacillus subtilis.

If B. subtilis individuals are growing in a food-poor area, they release chemicals into their surroundings. These essentially tell their neighbours: “There’s not much food here, so clear off or we’ll both starve.”

In response to these chemical messages, the other bacteria set themselves up further away, completely changing the shape of the colony.

– from the New Scientist article ‘Why microbes are smarter than you thought’.

On March 25, 2009, at a hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Illinois, argued that global warming cannot possibly be true because the Bible has decreed that God alone decides when the earth will end. Shimkus is, of course, an elected official.

If this amuses you, then you’ll enjoy Shimkus’s argument made later in the hearing: Reducing CO2 emissions is bad because it will “Take away plant food.”

PZ Myers, the “leading American evolutionary biologist,” has been asked to write a monthly science column for U.K.’s The Guardian.

Let us celebrate the life of this extraordinary man. There is grandeur in his view of life, indeed. Here is the last paragraph of his book, The Origin of Species (1909 version):

“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

“Having stumbled upon the font of eternal youth…”

Scientists plan to ignite tiny man-made star. I love it.

God and Evolution Can Co-exist, Scientist Says

Karl W. Giberson, a physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts, is hardly alone in holding both views . . . but the nation’s current cultural climate allows such a person to easily make a splash.

Teach the controversy!

“There is growing support to teach Intelligent Design as an alternative to the theory of evolution. It is time to correct another outdated theory.

Schools should no longer teach gravity as if it were a fact. Theories explaining gravity are not internally consistent. Therefore, schools should give equal time to the alternative theory of Intelligent Falling. Intelligent Falling proposes that things fall not because of some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence is pushing them down.

Students should be offered both sides of the issue so they can make an informed decision because part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought.”

Sign the petition now!

This 20-inch single-celled creature could rock the world of evolutionary theory.