2012: Six End-of-the-World Myths Debunked

A city slides into the sea in a scene from the movie 2012, to be released November 13, 2009. The movie's end-of-the-world plot is based on largely discredited prophecies dubiously attributed to the ancient Maya, experts say. Image courtesy Columbia Tristar Marketing Group

From National Geographic:

The end of the world is near—December 21, 2012, to be exact—according to theories based on a purported ancient Maya prediction and fanned by the marketing machine behind the soon-to-be-released 2012 movie.

But could humankind really meet its end in 2012—drowned in apocalyptic floods, walloped by a secret planet, seared by an angry sun, or thrown overboard by speeding continents?

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The Great Climate Change Science Scandal

From Times Online:

Leaked emails have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming.

The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change.

“RC” said nothing more — but included a web link that took anyone who clicked on it to another site, Real Climate.

There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department’s databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been crucial in building the case for global warming.

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First Programmable Quantum Computer Created

From Science News:

Ultracold beryllium ions tackle 160 randomly chosen programs.

Using a few ultracold ions, intense lasers and some electrodes, researchers have built the first programmable quantum computer. The new system, described in a paper to be published in Nature Physics, flexed its versatility by performing 160 randomly chosen processing routines.

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Devils’ Advocates

Dust devils like this one form frequently at Eldorado Valley.
(Planetary Science Institute)

From Air And Space Smithsonian:

Some people go to Las Vegas to gamble, others to learn about Mars.

“Three, two, one, now!” Just seconds ago Asmin “Oz” Pathare was sitting under a beach umbrella in the baking heat, gazing off into the distance—now he has jumped to his feet behind his camera tripod and is on his walkie-talkie with fellow scientist Steve Metzger, who’s a couple hundred yards away. At the count of zero, they both trigger their shutters to get a stereo picture of the devil headed our way.

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NASA Predator Scans California Burn Areas

From U.S. News And World Report/AP:

LOS ANGELES—An unmanned NASA Predator aircraft equipped with an infrared imaging sensor has flown over large areas burned by two California wildfires to help the Forest Service assess damage, the administration said Tuesday.

Operating from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, the Predator flew over the 250 square miles burned by this summer's Station Fire in Angeles National Forest and the 57-square-mile area scorched by the 2008 Piute Fire in Sequoia National Forest and other federal land in Kern County.

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A History Of Music Sales (Graphical Repreentation)

Just 100 Years Apart, The Stark Images Which Point To A Vanishing World

The awe-inspiring McCarty Glacier in Alaska and now (below)
trees grow in an area that was once covered in ice.

Whether the causes of the warming are due to natural rhythms or down to man continues to provide fierce debate. But scientists say they give a face to global warming.

From The Daily Mail:

These revealing photographs show giant glaciers are melting away as the world slowly warms up.

Pictured over the last 106 years, the huge lumps of ice have been slowly melting and creeping back into the mountains.

Where there was ice many metres thick, there is now debris, sediment and stagnation.

In some cases the glaciers have disappeared altogether and the land they once covered has become pasture, lake or woodland.

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15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee

CSN Editor: The following site has a great graphic that describes and explains all that there is to know about coffee. The link is HERE.

With First Neutrino Events, Physicists Closer to Answering Why Only Matter in Universe

Arc-part tunnel for Neutrino Experimental Facility at the J-PARC accelerator laboratory in Tokai, Japan. (Credit: Courtesy of J-PARC.)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 27, 2009) — Physicists from the Japanese-led multi-national T2K neutrino collaboration have just announced that over the weekend they detected the first neutrino events generated by their newly built neutrino beam at the J-PARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex) accelerator laboratory in Tokai, Japan.

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Science Untarnished By 'Climategate,' U.N. Says

From CNET News:

LONDON--The head of the U.N.'s panel of climate experts rejected accusations of bias on Thursday, saying a "Climategate" row in no way undermined evidence that humans are to blame for global warming.

Climate change skeptics have seized on a series of e-mails written by specialists in the field, accusing them of colluding to suppress data which might have undermined their arguments.

The e-mails, some written as long as 13 years ago, were stolen from a British university by unknown hackers and spread rapidly across the Internet.

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Is Cataract Surgery Scary?

From Live Science:

This Week’s Question: I have to have cataract surgery and I’m a little frightened. Should I be?

I don’t know anyone who isn’t a little frightened by surgery of any kind, but cataract removal is one of the safest and most effective types of surgery. It’s also one of the most common operations performed in the United States. About 9 out of 10 people who have the surgery have improved vision.

A cataract is a clouding of the lens, the clear part of the eye that helps focus images like the lens in a camera. Cataracts can blur images and discolor them.

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Climate Change: This Is The Worst Scientific Scandal Of Our Generation

CO2 emissions will be on top of the agenda at the Copenhagen summit in December Photo: Getty

From The Telegraph:

Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.

A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

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FUTURE HUMANS: Four Ways We May, Or May Not, Evolve

Looking backward, evolutionary theory—popularized by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published in 1859—has traced humanity's roots to fossil apes. Now, 150 years later, scientists are looking forward and seeing a range of evolutionary futures for humans. Will our descendants be muscle-bound cyborgs? Electronic immortals? Or is human evolution dead? Photograph by Rebecca Hale, NGS

From National Geographic:

But where is evolution taking us? Will our descendants hurtle through space as relatively unchanged as the humans on the starship Enterprise? Will they be muscle-bound cyborgs? Or will they chose to digitize their consciousnesses—becoming electronic immortals?

And as odd as the possibilities may seem, it's worth remembering that, 150 years ago, the ape-to-human scenario in On the Origin of Species struck many as nothing so much as monkey business.

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Shrink-To-Fit Spacesuit Eases Astronauts' Workload

Made to fit
(Image: Space Systems Laboratory/Department of Aerospace Engineering/University of Maryland)

From New Scientist:

FORGET the complex choreography involved in putting on a spacesuit: astronauts will one day be able to get suited and booted in seconds by stepping through the neck of an overlarge, part-robotic spacesuit.

So say engineers David Akin and Shane Jacobs at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Once you're inside the baggy suit, its upper torso contracts using pneumatic artificial muscles to ensure a perfect fit.

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Cassini Spacecraft Snaps Highest-Res Images of Saturn's Enceladus Moon

'Tiger Stripe' Terrain Cassini/CICLOPS

From Popular Science:

On Saturday, the Cassini spacecraft conducted a flyby of Saturn's sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, snapping some rather breathtaking photos along the way. The flyby, whose purpose was to gather the highest-resolution photos ever of the moon's southern polar region and to thermally map the "tiger stripe" terrain there, gathered some stunning images including some of the geyser-like plumes Cassini discovered on the moon's surface during previous flybys.

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Solar Power Costs 50% Lower Than Last Year

From Scientific American:

New research by leading alternative energy research firm New Energy Finance finds that solar power will cost less by about 50% at the end of 2009 compared to the end of 2008.

The costs are pre-subsidy, so they could be much lower if you take better government subsidies into account.

But it isn’t only solar that’s down in cost. It’s other renewable energy sources, too.
The research company found that equipment costs (in solar, wind, and other sectors) decreased throughout the year but these were offset by increasing financing costs. However, equipment prices are expected to continue falling whereas the financing market is expected to get better.

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Virtopsy: Autopsy Without The Scalpel

A dummy goes into the magnetic resonance scanner Photo: Reuters

From the Telegraph:

A Swiss lab has developed a way of establishing how someone died without damaging the evidence.

A team of Swiss doctors is conducting about 100 autopsies a year without cutting open bodies, instead using devices including an optical 3D scanner that can detect up to 80 per cent of the causes of death.

Michael Thali, a professor at the University of Berne, and his colleagues have developed a system called "virtopsy", which since 2006 has been used to examine all sudden deaths or those of unnatural causes in the Swiss capital.

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Volunteers Wanted for Simulated 520-Day Mars Mission

A special isolation facility hosts the Mars500 study. (Credit: ESA - S. Corvaja)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 28, 2009) — Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.

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Air America

From Discovery News:

This is pretty stunning, and quite beautiful in its own way.

Aaron Koblin, a graphic artist and game designer has produced a remarkable animation, built using real data, of a 24-hour stretch of commercial air travel into, out of, and within the United States. Watch how the lights, and flights, build with the advance of dawn from east to west.

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Pictured: The Moment A Whale Delivers A Deadly 'Karate Chop' Blow To A Killer Shark

Moments before the deadly blow. The raised fin is about to come crashing down like a karate chop on a shark (circled). It has been driven to the surface by the orca before this coup de grace.

From The Daily Mail:

These incredible pictures demonstrate how orca whales use a 'karate chop' to stun and then finish off killer sharks.

In a rare battle of beasts these images show how several populations of skilled killer whales around the world have learned how to overcome huge sharks, that most animals give a wide berth.

Using a combination of superior brain power and brute force, the highly-intelligent orcas are able to catch and eat what many think of as the ocean's top predators.

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