Some physicists and university researchers say it's possible to test the theory that our entire universe exists inside a computer simulation, like in the 1999 film "The Matrix."
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Seven Milky Way worlds could harbour life, say astronomers
(after just a year of hunting)
(after just a year of hunting)
- Habitable Exoplanets Catalog says first year has exceeded expectations
- It was launched in December 2011 with just two entries in its database
- Finds expected to accelerate as methods become more sophisticated
Seven planets in the Milky Way outside our solar system could potentially harbour life, researchers from an ambitious project to catalogue all habitable worlds have announced.
The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog (HEC) celebrated its first anniversary with the announcement that it had exceeded expectations in its search for possible new Earths.
Lead researcher Abel Mendez, director of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo's Planetary Habitability Laboratory, said the team had hoped to add perhaps one or two planets in the project's first year.
Scroll down for video

'Xmas Planets': A collage of computer generated images of possibly habitable worlds made to celebrate the first year of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory's Habitable Exoplanets Catalog. Earth is at the top right
Everybody DOES have a twin: Photographer creates amazing portraits of STRANGERS who look the double of each other
At first glance, it's an elegant set of portraits of twins - but look more closely and the secret is revealed.

None of the individuals captured by photographer Francois Brunelle are related by blood, their faces just have strikingly similar characteristics.
Mr Brunelle, who lives in Québec, has studied the human face since he started out as a photographer at the age of 18 in 1968.

The same...but different: Nathaniel (who did not give his last name) and Edward Toledo, pictured in Montreal in 2003, are remarkably similar but not twins
Thursday, November 29, 2012
South Korea's Insane Plan To Build A $290 Billion Resort To Rival Macau
South Korean media has been abuzz for the last few weeks with the tales of 8City, a proposed $290 billion leisure and gaming destination.
AFP reports that the building is planned for Yongyu-Muui island near the nation's main Incheon international airport, and is being funded by luxury hotel operator Kempinski, South Korea's flag carrier Korean Air and Daewoo Engineering and Construction.
The first photos of the project appeared recently:

Saturday, September 22, 2012
Oldest dental filling is found in a Stone Age tooth

You may not want to try this at home. A simple wax cap that was applied to a broken tooth 6500 years ago is the oldest dental filling on record. It adds to evidence that Neolithic communities had a surprisingly sophisticated knowledge of dentistry.
The recipient of the treatment was most likely a 24 to 30-year-old man, living in what is now Slovenia. His fossilised jawbone was found early last century near the village of Lonche. At the time, the find – one of the oldest human bones ever found in the region – was described, catalogued and filed away in a museum in nearby Trieste, Italy.
'We are speaking about trillions of carats': Russia reveals vast diamond source under 62-MILE-WIDE asteroid crater which could supply world markets for next 3,000 years
- Supply under 35million-year-old impact zone is ten times bigger than global reserves
- Kremlin discovered the site in the 1970s but kept it a secret until now to exploit tightly controlled market
- Diamonds at Popigai Astroblem in Siberia are 'twice as hard' as normal, making them ideal for high-precision scientific instruments and industry
Scientists estimate there are 'trillions of carats' lying beneath a 35million-year-old asteroid crater in Siberia - more than ten times the global stockpile.
The Kremlin has known about the reserves under the 62-mile-wide impact zone since the 1970s.
But it has kept it a secret until now because it was already reaping big profits in what back then was a heavily controlled market.

In the money: An aerial view of the 35-mile-wide Popigai Astroblem crater in eastern
Siberia which contains 'trillions of carats of diamonds'
Siberia which contains 'trillions of carats of diamonds'
The Soviets had also been producing various artificial diamonds for industry which proved a lucrative enterprise.
Government officials finally gave scientists from the nearby Novosibirsk Institute of Geology and Mineralogy permission to lift the lid on the crater's hidden gems in a meeting with journalists over the weekend.
'Proof' Jesus was married found on ancient papyrus that mentions how son of God spoke of his wife and Mary Magdalene
A recently uncovered fragment of ancient papyrus makes the explosive suggestion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were man and wife, researchers say.
The 8cm by 4cm fragment supports an undercurrent in Christian thought that undermines centuries of Church dogma by suggesting the Christian Messiah was not celibate.
The centre of the fragment contains the bombshell phrase where Jesus, speaking to his disciples, says 'my wife', which researchers believe refers to Magdalene.

Explosive: The ancient papyrus that apparently proves that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene
In the text, Jesus appears to be defending her against some criticism, saying 'she will be my disciple'. Two lines later he then tells the disciples: 'I dwell with her.'
If genuine, the document casts doubt on a centuries old official representation of Magdalene as a repentant whore and overturns the Christian ideal of sexual abstinence.
It elaborates an ancient and persistent undercurrent in Christian thought that Jesus and Magdalene were in fact a couple, as picked up by Dan Brown in the plot of his best-selling thriller The Da Vinci Code.
Saturday, September 01, 2012
11 billion miles from home: Incredible images taken from Voyager 1
show Earth as tiny dot as the spacecraft prepares to cross solar system's final frontier into interstellar space
show Earth as tiny dot as the spacecraft prepares to cross solar system's final frontier into interstellar space
- Voyager 1 beams back images of our planet as it explores the furthest fringes of the solar system
It has clocked up an astonishing 11billion miles in its 35-year journey.
And now, as the spacecraft Voyager 1 explores the furthest fringes of our solar system, incredible images of the Earth have been beamed back from a camera on board the probe.
This tiny dot, amid a band of coloured rays, is our planet, as seen from staggering distance of 11,100,000,000 miles away.

This latest image taken by Voyager and released by Nasa shows the Earth as a dot in the solar system as the twin spacecraft explore the edge of our solar system
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Image Gallery: NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover

PET and MRI show differences in cerebral asymmetry
and functional connectivity between homo- and heterosexual subjects
and functional connectivity between homo- and heterosexual subjects
+Author Affiliations
- Stockholm Brain Institute, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, 171 76 Stockholm, Sweden
- Edited by Jan-Åke Gustafsson, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and approved April 30, 2008 (received for review February 27, 2008)
Abstract
Cerebral responses to putative pheromones and objects of sexual attraction were recently found to differ between homo- and heterosexual subjects. Although this observation may merely mirror perceptional differences, it raises the intriguing question as to whether certain sexually dimorphic features in the brain may differ between individuals of the same sex but different sexual orientation. We addressed this issue by studying hemispheric asymmetry and functional connectivity, two parameters that in previous publications have shown specific sex differences. Ninety subjects [25 heterosexual men (HeM) and women (HeW), and 20 homosexual men (HoM) and women (HoW)] were investigated with magnetic resonance volumetry of cerebral and cerebellar hemispheres.
What Vikings really looked like
Were Vikings really dirty savages who wore horned helmets, or did they look like we do today? Here’s what the experts say.

The fine decoration of the Oseberg ship in Norway, which was buried in the year 834, provides clues to what Vikings looked like. Inside the ship were two women and the archaeologists believe the ship has served as a sarcophagus. (Photo: Annie Dalbéra)
There’s no shortage of myths about the appearance of our notorious Viking ancestors.
To find out more about these myths, ScienceNordic’s Danish partner site, videnskab.dk, asked its Facebook readers to list their favourite myths about what the Vikings looked like.
We have picked out five myths from the resulting debate and asked researchers to help us confirm or bust these myths.
Armed with this information, our graphic designer then took a shot at drawing some examples of our infamous forefathers, which you can see in our picture gallery.
Forget the Big Bang: The Universe 'froze' it's way
into existence in a Big Chill, say physicists
into existence in a Big Chill, say physicists
- University of Melbourne suggest theory could 'revolutionise' our understanding of the universe
- Theory suggests the universe moved from a 'fluid' state to a fixed state of three spatial directions
- Investigating ice crystals could lead to understanding of 'cracks' in time and space
The traditional image of the birth of the universe suggests that all matter sparked into existence in a cataclysmic Big Bang more than 13 billion years ago.
But this model is now being challenged by a theory which suggests the universe froze its way into existence in what has been deemed a 'Big Chill'.
Theoretical physicists at the University of Melbourne said the best metaphor for the start of the universe should be considered as water freezing into ice.
In this theory, the three spatial dimensions and the one dimension of time 'froze' into place - and the physicists suggest we could learn about the 'cracks in time and space' by investigating the natural cracks in ice particles.

The Big Chill: Physicists from the University of Melbourne suggest we view the universe and the four known dimensions as 'freezing' their way into existence
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Suze Orman at Google
Orman was born in Chicago and received her B.A. in social work. She worked as a waitress in Berkeley, California before becoming a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch. In 1983 she became the vice-president of investments at Prudential Bache Securities and in 1987 founded the Suze Orman Financial Group.
"All Marketers are Liars" - Seth Godin speaks at Google
Seth Godin is the author of six bestsellers, including Permission Marketing, an Amazon Top 100 bestseller for a year and a Fortune Best Business Book. His newest book, All Marketers are Liars , has already made the Amazon Top 100 and has inspired its own blog.
Sunday, July 08, 2012
Rapid H.I.V. Home Test Wins Federal Approval
The OraQuick test uses a mouth swab and gives users results at home in 20 to 40 minutes.
After decades of controversy, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new H.I.V. test on Tuesday that for the first time makes it possible for Americans to learn in the privacy of their homes whether they are infected.
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Higgs boson discovery: now the real work begins
Proton-proton collisions as measured by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in its search for the Higgs boson particle. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
The search for the arcane, theoretical particle known as the Higgs boson has drawn on the world's largest scientific instruments and occupied thousands of researchers over more than two decades. The discovery – or probable discovery – at Cern, the particle physics lab near Geneva, will go down as a triumph of science, engineering and collective hard graft. Now the real work begins.
Monday, July 02, 2012
APNewsBreak: Evidence of 'God Particle' Found
Physicists say they have all but proven that the "God particle" exists. They have a footprint and a shadow, and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Mysterious clay pots in China are 20,000 years old -
baked 10,000 years before humans settled down and became farmers
baked 10,000 years before humans settled down and became farmers
- Pots are oldest pottery ever discovered
- Date from 10,000 years before humans 'settled down' and became farmers
- Push invention of pottery back to last ice age
- Archaeologists struggling to work out how and why they were made
- Thought to have been used by roving hunter-gatherers
Earlier theories have held that the invention of pottery happened during the period about 10,000 years ago when humans moved from being hunter-gathers to farmers.
The new find has been carbon dated by a team of Chinese and American researchers and shows scorch marks that indicate it may have been used in cooking.
These pots push the invention of pottery back to the last ice age - and archaeologists are trying to understand how and why they were made.

Pottery fragment from Xianrendong Cave in northern Jiangxi Province, China. Bits of the oldest known pottery, some 2,000 years older than previously found pieces, have been uncovered in China
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
UNEARTHED - A SHORT FILM By Dalang Films
On the edge of space, a mining ship, The Ezekiel, finds an uncharted planet that reveals signs of a possible fuel resource. Two crew members undertake a mission to the desolate rock to take samples for later analysis. The mission goes well until they unearth a dark and terrifying truth.
Source
With physics, you can get universes: There is no need for a God
to cause the Big Bang, says scientist
to cause the Big Bang, says scientist
By EDDIE WRENN
The divine spark? The Big Bang exploded our universe into existence -
but astrophysicists say there is no need for a God to be involved in the process
but astrophysicists say there is no need for a God to be involved in the process
That isn't to say there is no God, simply that the universe is explainable without the need for a divine being to bring something out of nothing, says Alex Flippenko, of the University of California.
Thursday, June 07, 2012
The Internet Changes Wednesday, But Most People Won’t Notice

Without adopting IPv6, people surfing the web will have to go through a transitional gateway before entering a non-updated site using IPv4, making the experience slower. On launch day Wednesday, website owners are encouraged to permanently enable IPv6 — the next generation of Internet protocol.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Forget touch screens ...
Touch everything! Disney (the masters of bringing objects to life)
unveils new technology that can turn ANYTHING into a button
Touch everything! Disney (the masters of bringing objects to life)
unveils new technology that can turn ANYTHING into a button
- Any material - from bedknobs to broomsticks, and even water - can be become gesture-sensitive
- Technology is similar to smartphone screens - but can create 3D 'map' of touch inputs
- Sofas could become TV remotes, clothes could become mp3 controllers, doors could be 'password-protected' by gesture
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Researchers Develop Wireless Heart Pump System

The wireless mechanical pump system (Source: University of Washington)
The development of a wireless system allows the patient to use mechanical pumps over a long period of time without worrying about infections in the stomach from cords
Joshua Smith, study leader and a University of Washington associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, along with Dr. Pramod Bonde, a heart surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and a team of researchers, have created a wireless mechanical pump that could improve a heart patient's quality of life.
Joshua Smith, study leader and a University of Washington associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, along with Dr. Pramod Bonde, a heart surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and a team of researchers, have created a wireless mechanical pump that could improve a heart patient's quality of life.
Friday, May 11, 2012
The Mayans reveal their darkest mysteries:
New excavation reveals secrets of their calendar - including black-clad figures and symbols never seen before
New excavation reveals secrets of their calendar - including black-clad figures and symbols never seen before
A vast city built by the ancient Mayan civilisation and discovered nearly a century ago in modern day Guatemala is finally starting to yield its secrets.
Excavating for the first time in the sprawling complex of Xultzn in Guatemala's Peten region, archaeologists have uncovered a structure that contains what appears to be a work space for the town's scribe.
Its walls are adorned with unique paintings - one depicting a line-up of men in black uniforms, and hundreds of scrawled numbers - many calculations relating to the Mayan calendar.
Scroll down for video:

The painted figure of a man - possibly a scribe - is illuminated in the doorway of the Mayan dwelling, which holds symbols never seen before
Frozen in the sands of time: Eerie Second World War RAF fighter plane discovered in the Sahara...
70 years after it crashed in the desert
70 years after it crashed in the desert
He was hundreds of miles from civilisation, lost in the burning heat of the desert. Second World War Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping took what little he could from the RAF Kittyhawk he had just crash-landed, then wandered into the emptiness.From that day in June 1942 the mystery of what happened to the dentist’s son from Southend was lost, in every sense, in the sands of time.

Shifting sands: The final resting place of the Kittyhawk P-40 has been discovered in the Sahara 70 years after it crashed there
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Athene's Theory of Everything
Professor of Communication Studies Corey Anton at Grand Valley State University reviews AToE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK9-KQZbnHQ
Rocket Engineer Evie Marom's review:
http://bit.ly/gCvM8e
Labels:
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Consciousness,
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Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Peter Russell - the primacy of consciousness
Source
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Did Nasa satellite capture giant UFO surfing the hellish surface of the sun?
UFO fan site News Gather said: 'An unusually shaped, gigantic UFO was spotted on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and posted in a video on YouTube.'
A strange object flying close to the sun looks unnervingly like a huge, metallic 'mothership' familiar from Hollywood blockbusters.
The picture was released by Nasa's sun-watching Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, known as SOHO - and has become an immediate cult hit on the internet.
UFO fan site Gather News said: ‘An unusually shaped, gigantic UFO was spotted on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and posted in a video on YouTube.
Ohio man's fossil find in Kentucky stumps experts
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) — Experts are trying to figure out what a fossildubbed "Godzillus" used to be.
The 150-pound fossil recovered last year in northern Kentucky is more than 6 feet long and 3 feet wide. To the untrained eye, it looks like a bunch of rocks or a concrete blob. Experts are trying to determine whether it was an animal, mineral or a form of plant life from a time when the Cincinnati region was underwater.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Winners 2012 Skyscraper Competition
Friday, April 06, 2012
Google Gets Transparent With Glass, Its Augmented Reality Project
Larry Page and Sergey Brin have long had the dream of a hands-free, mobile Google, where search was a seamless process as you moved around the world. As the years progressed the vision did, too, expanding beyond search to persistent connections with the people in your lives.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Astronomers: Billions of 'super-Earths' in habitable zone of red dwarf stars
If you're trying to count how many planets could be candidates for harboring life in our galaxy, this might blow your mind: Scientists now say there could be billions of them.
Labels:
Aliens,
Astronomy,
Civilization,
Contact,
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Planets Galaxy,
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Sunday, March 11, 2012
Just like the chocolate bar, the Milky Way galaxy is 'full of bubbles' -
public help Nasa pinpoint strange spheres in our galactic home
public help Nasa pinpoint strange spheres in our galactic home
Just like the fluffy nougat in the chocolate bar, the Milky Way galaxy is full of bubbles, a new survey by 'citizen scientists' has found.
More than 35,000 astronomy fans sifted through data from the Spitzer space telescope, and found bubbles in space - blown out by young, hot stars into the gas and dust around them.

Volunteers for the project are shown a small section of Spitzer's huge infrared Milky Way image (left), which they then scan for cosmic bubbles. Using a sophisticated drawing tool, the volunteers trace the shape and thickness of the bubbles. All the user drawings can be overlaid on top of one another to form a so-called 'heat map' (middle). Features that have been identified repeatedly by many different users jump out, revealing the overall pattern of bubbles in this part of the galaxy
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Get rich AND die trying: Ambitious people earn more money - but they die younger and are no happier, says study

Career ladder: The new study found that ambitious people earned more money and had prestigious jobs - but died younger, and were not a great deal happier
Parents who teach their children to value career ambitions over spending time with friends could be setting them up for an early grave, a study has revealed.
It found that go-getters who attend the best universities and secure high-powered jobs suffer poorer health and die younger than those with more modest aspirations.
Over 70 years, the U.S. study tracked 717 high-achievers who attended universities, such as Oxford, Harvard and Yale, as well as those without university degrees, to the end of their lives.
The researchers found that highly ambitious people neglected key areas of their lives that lead to happiness, including building a strong network of friends and maintaining stable relationships.
Professor Timothy Judge, who led the study at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said: ‘Ambitious kids had higher educational attainment, attended highly esteemed universities, worked in more prestigious occupations, and earned more.
‘So, it would seem that they are poised to "have it all." However, we determined that ambition has a much weaker effect on life satisfaction and actually a slightly negative impact on longevity (how long people lived).
'So, yes, ambitious people do achieve more successful careers, but that doesn't seem to translate into leading happier or healthier lives.’
Judge used a complex formula to judge ambition at every stage of life - and to divide high-ability individuals into 'ambitious' and 'less ambitious' groups.
The study didn’t address the underlying reasons for the higher mortality of ambitious people.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
WHAT'S TAKING E.T. SO LONG TO FIND US?
E.T. would have had plenty of time to reach us by now.
Are we just being ignored?
- Alien civilizations starting from the oldest stars in the galaxy would have had more than enough time to reach Earth.
- Calculations show either we are alone in the galaxy, or ET is ignoring us.
- The study did not address life beyond the Milky Way.
Mathematically speaking, ET would have found us by now -- if he exists -- so we’re being consciously avoided for some reason, a new study concludes.
Labels:
Alien Earths,
Alien Engineering,
Alien Technology,
Aliens,
NASA,
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Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Mayan Light Beam Photo: Message from Gods, or iPhone Glitch?
When Hector Siliezar visited the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza with his wife and kids in 2009, he snapped three iPhone photos of El Castillo, a pyramid that once served as a sacred temple to the Mayan god Kukulkan. A thunderstorm was brewing near the temple, and Siliezar was trying to capture lightning crackling dramatically over the ruins.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
My Take: Stop sugarcoating the Bible

By Steven James, Special to CNN
(CNN) – The Bible is a gritty book. Very raw. Very real. It deals with people just like us, just as needy and screwed up as we are, encountering a God who would rather die than spend eternity without them.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
NASA's Hubble Reveals a New Class of Extrasolar Planet
Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and colleagues made the observations of the planet GJ1214b.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Is There a City on Pluto? Before You Answer, Consider: We've Never Looked. Two Scientists Want to Change That
Before Ed Turner and Avi Loeb tell you about their research, they want to make one thing perfectly clear: they do not claim that there's a city on Pluto. But if there were one, they say, we could see it. And as they suggest in a paper they've submitted to the journal Astrobiology, it's worth taking a look, just in case.
The whole thing began a couple of years ago, when Loeb and Turner, astrophysicists at Harvard and Princeton, respectively, were at a conference in Abu Dhabi. The organizers sent them on a tour of nearby Dubai, where the guide bragged that his gleaming, ultramodern city was so brightly lit at night that from space it would outshine London, Paris or New York City.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Eisenhower Met With ETs Says Ex-Government Consultant
It's a story that has circulated in and out of the UFO community for years: Did former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower have three meetings with extraterrestrials?
An ex-government consultant says the story is true that the 34th commander in chief chatted, if you will, with aliens at a New Mexico air base, according to reports.
Labels:
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Did Churchill and Eisenhower cover up UFO encounter?

The MOD has long stated it "knows of no evidence that substantiates the existence of these alleged phenomena".With a civilian population haunted by the Blitz and the Second World War still in the balance, it was one development Winston Churchill could have done without – an incursion into British airspace by an arrow-shaped metallic object feared to contain an invasion force of little green men.
Such was the sensitivity of an alleged UFO sighting by an RAF bomber crew returning to England from a mission over Germany that Churchill ordered it to be covered up with the words: "This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one's belief in the Church."
Saturday, February 11, 2012
2057: The City of the Future

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