YAY! Discovery's new series, Curiosity The questions of life, last nights episode on youtube. Guests will include Stephen Hawking, Morgan Freeman, Michelle Rodriguez, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Spurlock, Adam Savage, Mike Rowe, Brendan Fraser, Eli Roth, Robin Williams, and many more.
Episode 2
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GENEVA, Aug. 22, 2011 (Reuters) — Scientists chasing a particle they believe may have played a vital role in creation of the universe indicated on Monday they were coming to accept it might not exist after all.
But they stressed that if the so-called Higgs boson turns out to have been a mirage, the way would be open for advances into territory dubbed "new physics" to try to answer one of the great mysteries of the cosmos.
The CERN research center, whose giant Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been the focus of the search, said it had reported to a conference in Mumbai that possible signs of the Higgs noted last month were now seen as less significant.
A number of scientists from the center went on to make comments that raised the possibility that the mystery particle might not exist.
"Whatever the final verdict on Higgs, we are now living in very exciting times for all involved in the quest for new physics," Guido Tonelli, from one of the two LHC detectors chasing the Higgs, said as the new observations were announced.
CERN's statement said new results, which updated findings that caused excitement at another scientific gathering in Grenoble last month, "show that the elusive Higgs particle, if it exists, is running out of places to hide."
I can't remember who said it, but a couple months ago it was said that it would be pretty boring if the Higgs boson was found, because that would mean our theory was correct.
It is mush more interesting if it is found to not exist, because it would force us to rethink what we feel is the truth, and would make us reevaluate our place in the universe and what we understand about it.
I can't remember who said it, but a couple months ago it was said that it would be pretty boring if the Higgs boson was found, because that would mean our theory was correct.
It is mush more interesting if it is found to not exist, because it would force us to rethink what we feel is the truth, and would make us reevaluate our place in the universe and what we understand about it.
If you're referring to CP, I remember photon saying it.
Scientists have found Earth's oldest fossils in Australia and say their microscopic discovery is convincing evidence that cells and bacteria were able to thrive in an oxygen-free world more than 3.4 billion years ago.
The finding suggests early life was sulphur-based -- living off and metabolizing sulphur rather than oxygen for energy -- and supports the idea that similar life forms could exist on other planets where oxygen levels are low or non-existent.
Scientists have identified a yeast that led to the discovery of lager.
The researchers isolated the new species in the frozen forests of Patagonia in South America.
Their discovery suggests that this yeast crossed the Atlantic hundreds of years ago and combined with one traditionally used in Europe to make ale.
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A team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have successfully reengineered an important antibiotic to kill the deadliest antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The compound could one day be used clinically to treat patients with life-threatening and highly resistant bacterial infections.
The results were published in an advanced online issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
"[These results] have true clinical significance and chart a path forward for the development of next generation antibiotics for the treatment of the most serious resistant bacterial infections," said Dale L. Boger, who is Richard and Alice Cramer Professor of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute and senior author of the new study. "The result could not be predicted. It really required the preparation of the molecule and the establishment of its properties."
The compound synthesized is an analogue of the well-known commercial antibiotic
The new analogue was prepared in an elegant total synthesis, a momentous achievement from a synthetic chemistry point of view. "In addition to the elegantly designed synthesis," said Jian Xie, postdoctoral fellow in Boger's group and first author on the publication, "I am exceedingly gratified that our results could have the potential to be a great service to mankind."
I think that this is the first time I've seen someone post something from synthetic organic chemistry in this thread. I'm all giddy. I haven't read the paper yet, but Boger's definition of elegant synthesis is a little different from mine. He and his group have been working on vancomycin for quite some time.
I think it’s really obvious to many if not most planetary scientists that objects of this scale, thousands of kilometers across, are planets. They have all the attributes of planets. They have crusts and cores; they have atmospheres and moons; they have seasons. And we can go on down the list.
To every recognizable attribute that we associate with planethood, Pluto is a planet. And many planetary scientists and, of course, many people in the public just discount the IAU’s wrongheaded vote and still consider it a planet, as I do, because we know that if you were to show up in a spacecraft at Pluto and take a look, you certainly wouldn’t classify it as a rock or anything else. It’s obviously a planet by every comparison. I like to make the analogy that a chihuahua is still a dog.
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Stern said he believes that when New Horizons passes Pluto and the pictures are sent back, everyone who looks at those pictures will agree that Pluto should have retained full planet status. He said he thinks they’ll say, “Wow, what was all the controversy about? That’s obviously a planet.”
There are 7 moons larger than Pluto in our Solar System(some are twice the size), I have no problem calling it a dwarf. And I have a hard time believing any pics that come back from Pluto would look anymore like a planet than Ganymede, Titan or our own moon.
Pluto and it's companions are just a few small moons that managed to escape the gravity of the gas giants a few billion years ago....good for them!
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I have a really hard time caring either way whether Pluto is a planet or not and it somewhat amuses me that people are as passionate about it as they are.
I mean I'm fascinated by space and always have been, but I just can't bring myself to care about whether a large ball of ice on the outer edges of our solar system is considered a planet or a dwarf.
I have a really hard time caring either way whether Pluto is a planet or not and it somewhat amuses me that people are as passionate about it as they are.
I mean I'm fascinated by space and always have been, but I just can't bring myself to care about whether a large ball of ice on the outer edges of our solar system is considered a planet or a dwarf.
If you've dedicated your adult life to its study and are involved in the scientific community like Dr. Stern, I can see why it may be a big deal to you, but to the general public, yeah, it's not really that important. Most of the "protesting" outside scientific circles seems to mostly be half in jest, anyway.
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This is pretty cool. A white dwarf that didn't get absorbed completely by its binary companion moved far enough away for its dead core to be re-classified as a planet. The core, under super high pressure, has likely crystallized as diamond.
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