Category: Science

Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts, marking the first time that mental intentions have been harnessed to move a mechanical object. Has technology really come this far? I guess so.

Scientists again warned that communications on Earth could be disrupted this week by another spectacular eruption on the surface of the Sun and that it might even hamper firefighting efforts in California. “It’s headed straight for us like a freight train,” said John Kohl, a solar astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge,…

LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists said Wednesday the universe could be spherical and patched together like a soccer ball — and it may not be infinite. Jeffrey Weeks, a MacArthur Fellow based in Canton, New York, and researchers from the University of Paris and Observatory of Paris analyzed astronomical data which suggests the universe is finite…

This is something that could prove worrying. I was at the WTC on September 28 2001, on a holiday I had planned before September 11. I was in the vicinity of the WTC, still smouldering, for quite a number of hours. Might be alarmist, but then asbesthos is a dangerous substance. The smell was…hm…plasticy in…

Are teens more prone to getting addicted to nicotine than adults? A study reported in New Scientist seems to suggest so. The team provided teen rats aged about 40 days with nicotine. Others were given nicotine only after they had passed into adulthood, at about 70 days. The rats could help themselves to the drug…

Heres an interesting story. Maybe, just maybe, life existed on the planet Venus. A new study reveals that Venus may have had an atmosphere like our own and liquid water for up to 2 billion years, before a greenhouse effect enveloped the planet. Mars and Venus are the two most likely candidates for life given…

The oxygen-starved aftermath of an immense global belch of methane left land animals gasping for breath and caused the Earth’s largest mass extinction, suggests new research. Greg Retallack, an expert in ancient soils at the University of Oregon in Eugene, says his theory also explains the mysterious survival of a barrel-chested reptile that became the…

A giant laser has cut the lifetime of a speck of radioactive waste from millions of years to just minutes. The feat raises hopes that a solution to nuclear power’s biggest drawback – its waste – might one day be possible. Gosh if this could be implemented it go towards creating an infinite supply of…

China seems the be the only country in the world currently looking ‘up’. China is on course to become only the third nation ever to place a human in space, following press reports that the first crewed flight will take place in 100 days. A government source told the state-controlled news service Wen Wei Po…

I had a story posted on Slashdot yesterday – Gavinsblog writes “New Scientist is reporting that the largest virus yet discovered may have been found in a water tower in the UK. Dubbed the ‘Mimivirus’, it may be related to Smallpox. It is not yet known if it causes disease.” A few folks from Slashdot…