Ongoing important Science news thread

[Thor]

Originally Posted by T@T

Slow moving for Tyson's standards but it's hard not to listen to the guy.

Yeah very much not for us big fans of his, more for newbies.

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Originally Posted by Tyler

True - but we haven't put a man on the moon in more than 30 years. I think if anything, space travel is at a bit of a standstill.

What's new is the innovations in the 'business model' of space travel...turning much of it over to the private sector...and the rise of the Chinese.

I'm optimistic there will be expensive but accessible recreational space travel in the next 30 years.

[FlamesAddiction]

Not sure if this belongs here, but I think the same people watching this thread might get a kick out of it.

The Russian MP has asked the president for an investigation on aliens because a leader of one of Russia's republics claims to have been abducted and says he has witnesses.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8662822.stm

[photon]

A nice clip on something I've been following for years:

http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/dai...10/#clip298008

These guys built a wind powered cart that can go down wind faster than the wind.. so if the wind is 15km/h the cart can go 30 or 40 or whatever.

Pretty cool and completely counter-intuitive, as usual they even get the basic description wrong. The wind doesn't turn the prop to turn the wheels, the wheels power the prop which turns against the wind ("blows" against the wind).

One thread with lots of info for those interested:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=173124

[FlamesAddiction]

Researchers discover that Neanderthal genes are in the genomes of 1-4% of modern Euroasian humans (absent from Africans).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8660940.stm

It's been speculated that perhaps Neanderthals became extinct from Europe and Asia due to genetic mixing with Homo sapiens, but previous research could not find evidence.

For what it's worth, Neanderthals were not unintelligent thugs like pop cultures portrays them.

[Thor]

New evidence for quantum Darwinism found in quantum dots




These images show a recurring scar found in simulations that bears a strong resemblance to experimental images. Scars were found to replicate and produce offspring states in agreement with quantum Darwinism. Image credit: A.M. Burke, et al. ©2010 APS.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists have found new evidence that supports the theory of quantum Darwinism, the idea that the transition from the quantum to the classical world occurs due to a quantum form of natural selection. By explaining how the classical world emerges from the quantum world, quantum Darwinism could shed light on one of the most challenging questions in physics of the past century.

The basis of almost any theoretical quantum-to-classical transition lies in the concept of decoherence. In the quantum world, many possible quantum states “collapse” into a single state due to interactions with the environment. To quantum Darwinists, decoherence is a selection process, and the final, stable state is called a “pointer state.” Although pointer states are quantum states, they are “fit enough” to be transmitted through the environment without collapsing and can then make copies of themselves that can be observed on the macroscopic scale. Although everything in our world is quantum at its core, our classical view of the universe is ultimately determined by these pointer states.
Since quantum Darwinism was first proposed in 2003 by Wojciech Zurek of Los Alamos National Laboratory, several studies have found evidence to support the idea. Most recently, a team of physicists and engineers from Arizona State University and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., has performed experiments using scanning gate microscopy to image scar structures in an open quantum dot. Their results have revealed the existence of periodic scar offspring states that evolve and eventually contribute to a robust state, much in the way that the derivation of pointer states is predicted by quantum Darwinism.

http://www.physorg.com/news192693808.html

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by Thor

New evidence for quantum Darwinism found in quantum dots




These images show a recurring scar found in simulations that bears a strong resemblance to experimental images. Scars were found to replicate and produce offspring states in agreement with quantum Darwinism. Image credit: A.M. Burke, et al. ©2010 APS.



http://www.physorg.com/news192693808.html

Awesome article.

[photon]

Not news, but an interesting bit on cognitive biases.

http://www.scribd.com/documents/3054...count-Planning

[SeeBass]

Originally Posted by Cheese

Animal-human clones don't work


Mixing human and animal cells does not appear to program the egg properly, said Dr. Robert Lanza of Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology.

So what you are saying here is that I don't need to wear protection?

[Thor]

Originally Posted by photon

Not news, but an interesting bit on cognitive biases.

http://www.scribd.com/documents/3054...count-Planning

Thats excellent stuff!

[photon]

http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/148012.html

[Thor]

This is really awesome!


he synthetic cell looks identical to the "wild type"

'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists


Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell.
The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell.
The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA.

The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms.
The team hopes eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_a...t/10132762.stm

[photon]

Blue nipples!

Mars rover Opportunity sets a NASA record!

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010...0681274356870/

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by Thor

This is really awesome!


he synthetic cell looks identical to the "wild type"


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_a...t/10132762.stm

I think this conclusively proves intelligent design and once and for all disproves all that elitist science mumbo jumbo.

[T@T]

Scientist Creates Life?

http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...00.html?hpt=T2

[Jetsfan]

Nicholas Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, died as a little-known astronomer working in what is now Poland, far from Europe's centers of learning. He had spent years laboring in his free time developing his theory, which was later condemned as heretical by the church because it removed Earth and humanity from their central position in the universe.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100522/...nicus_reburied

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Jetsfan

Nicholas Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, died as a little-known astronomer working in what is now Poland, far from Europe's centers of learning. He had spent years laboring in his free time developing his theory, which was later condemned as heretical by the church because it removed Earth and humanity from their central position in the universe.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100522/...nicus_reburied

It should also be noted that he was also criticized by many in the scientific community at the time too.

[Mike F]

Chinese scientists quantum teleport (socialist) information over 16km

Scientists in China have succeeded in teleporting information between photons further than ever before. They transported quantum information over a free space distance of 16 km (10 miles), much further than the few hundred meters previously achieved, which brings us closer to transmitting information over long distances without the need for a traditional signal.

[photon]

That's a terrible summary psyorg.. quantum information is NOT classical information. You cannot use this to communicate 1's and 0's to transmit a conversation (for example), that would violate causality.

This has implications for quantum encryption (where the teleportation is used to encrypt but the data is still sent over a classical channel), or quantum computing (where the qbit would be teleported, but to get the final result the information would still have to be sent over a classical channel), or other stuff we haven't thought of yet, but not for instant communication across the solar system or getting an answer to your phone call before you placed the call.

[Thor]

So the fish found with 'hands' have been given new species status.



High fives all around

Using its fins to walk, rather than swim, along the ocean floor in an undated picture, the pink handfish is one of nine newly named species described in a recent scientific review of the handfish family.

Only four specimens of the elusive four-inch (ten-centimeter) pink handfish have ever been found, and all of those were collected from areas around the city of Hobart (map), on the Australian island of Tasmania.
Though no one has spotted a living pink handfish since 1999, it's taken till now for scientists to formally identify it as a unique species.


The new-species determinations were made based on a number of factors, including number of vertebrae and fin rays, coloration, the presence of scales and spines, and proportional body measurements, according to review author Daniel Gledhill of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, or CSIRO.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...81_600x450.jpg