Ongoing important Science news thread

[Day Tripper]

Penrose discovers possible evidence for a death-rebirth model of the Big Bang?

http://www.economist.com/node/17626874

Dr Penrose, though, predicts another form of irregularity—great circles in the sky where the microwave background is slightly more uniform than it should be. These, if they exist, would be fossil traces of black holes from the pre-Big Bang version of reality. And in a paper just published in arXiv.org, an online database, he claims they do indeed exist.

[photon]

Penrose is a smart guy, but has strayed too far into crank territory a few times.

All's he's done here played with numbers to convince himself that something that's already been known about is something new. Cosmologists aren't impressed and I doubt the paper will actually be published in anything close to its current form, if at all.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/11/wh...dyan-have.html

[photon]

http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/overview/

http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung.html

[Hanni]

An Aspirin a day keeps cancer away?

A small daily dose of aspirin - 75mg - substantially reduces death rates from a range of common cancers, a study suggests.

Research at Oxford University and other centres found that it cut overall cancer deaths by at least a fifth.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11930988

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Hanni

An Aspirin a day keeps cancer away?

A small daily dose of aspirin - 75mg - substantially reduces death rates from a range of common cancers, a study suggests.

Research at Oxford University and other centres found that it cut overall cancer deaths by at least a fifth.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11930988

They used to recommend aspirin for heart health, but not anymore.

For persons without cardiovascular problems, the benefits of aspirin are unclear. In the primary prevention trials aspirin decreased the overall incidence of heart attacks and ischaemic strokes by about a tenth. However, since these events were rare, the absolute reduction of their rate was low: from 0.57% to 0.51% per year. In addition, the risks of hemorrhagic strokes and gastrointestinal bleeding almost completely offset the benefits of aspirin. Thus, in the primary prevention trials aspirin did not change the overall mortality rate.[45] Further trials are in progress[update].[45]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin...ks_and_strokes

[Hanni]

Professor Rothwell said he was not urging healthy middle-aged adults to immediately start taking aspirin, but said the evidence on cancer "tips things towards it being well worth it". The benefit in cancer reduction were found from a low daily dose of 75mg.


Professor Rothwell said the annual risk of major internal bleeding was about 1 in 1,000 and aspirin roughly doubled that risk. But he said the danger of major bleeding was "very low" in middle age but increased dramatically after 75.

I'm not sure they're going to start to telling everyone to take an aspirin every day but it is sure is an interesting correlation and according to the study the benefits seem to outweigh the risks.

[photon]

http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20101208

First commercial launch, orbit, and re-entry of a spacecraft from low earth orbit!

This is about 25 times harder than the original space X-Prize of putting a capsule into space.

[troutman]

Lunar Eclipse:

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/holi...se-101207.html

Parts of four continents will be treated to a view of a total eclipse of the moon during the overnight hours of Dec. 20 to Dec. 21. This spectacle of celestial shadows will be the best of its kind residents of North America will see until the year 2014.

December's total lunar eclipse is the only total eclipse of the moon of this year. For the Western Hemisphere, the eclipse will "officially" begin on Dec. 21 at 12:29 a.m. EST (9:29 p.m. PST on Dec. 20) as the moon begins to enter Earth's outer, or penumbral, shadow.

[SebC]

Calgary-specific info

http://www.astronomycalgary.com/events/info/269

11:32 PM Partial eclipse begins
12:40 AM Totality begins
1:16 AM Middle of eclipse
1:53 AM Totality ends
3:01 AM Partial eclipse ends

[T@T]

A jewel of a planet found.

It's easy to go just a little nuts when you're studying exoplanets. Spend enough time investigating the exotic chemistry, composition and environments of newly discovered worlds orbiting distant stars and you can start to believe anything's possible. Little, however, can match the fairy-tale possibilities of WASP-12b.
For one thing, there's the heavy concentration of carbon in its atmosphere. For another, there's the potential for methane-loving life. Oh, and did we mention that vast stretches of land could be made of diamonds?

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...#ixzz17kLt2MXu

[Cheese]

Lost Civilization May Have Existed Beneath the Persian Gulf


Veiled beneath the Persian Gulf, a once-fertile landmass may have supported some of the earliest humans outside Africa some 75,000 to 100,000 years ago, a new review of research suggests.
At its peak, the floodplain now below the Gulf would have been about the size of Great Britain, and then shrank as water began to flood the area. Then, about 8,000 years ago, the land would have been swallowed up by the Indian Ocean, the review scientist said.

[scotty2hotty]

^^^ Another possible origin of the Noah's Ark tale?

[Cheese]

Originally Posted by scotty2hotty

^^^ Another possible origin of the Noah's Ark tale?

LOL...too long ago...if you are a bible literalist that would have happened ~5000 years ago

[Kjesse]

nm

[T@T]

New bacteria found is eating the Titanic

The strain, dubbed Halomonas titanicae was initially designatedBH1T in honor of the researchers who discovered it, then-graduate student Bhavleen Kaur and Dr. Henrietta Mann at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.

The researchers tested the bacteria to see whether it was "good bacteria" or "bad bacteria," Let's just say the bug has an appetite for destruction.

In 1995, I was predicting that Titanic had another 30 years," said Mann, who still works at the university, "But I think it's deteriorating much faster than that now ... Eventually there will be nothing left but a rust stain," she is quoted as saying.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/11...itanic/?hpt=C2

[Reggie Dunlop]

New York Times looks at The Beautiful Mind

Story

[Mike F]

Time Magazine looks at the Top 20 Green Tech Ideas

[FlameOn]

First four exoplanet systems have been imaged.
http://www.universetoday.com/81640/f...system-imaged/

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Cheese

LOL...too long ago...if you are a bible literalist that would have happened ~5000 years ago

Biblical literalists are not so renowned for their methodological precision when it comes to dating. I expect that the discrepancy will not pose any serious problem for them whatsoever. They'll merely adjust the dates accordingly to whatever best suits their primary source, which in this case is the Table of Nations from Genesis 5.

[John Doe]

Voyager 1 is getting close to leaving the solar system.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...ar-system.html

Not bad for a 33 year old vehicle with around 14 billion kms on the odometer. However, I can't imagine that the trade-in value is very high.