Category Archives: Science/Medicine

This is one of the strangest and most disturbing things I've seen on the Internet: KIDDofSPEED – GHOST TOWN – Chernobyl Images. The daughter of a scientist who does testing in the devastated Chernobyl area has wangled a permit that allows her to ride her motorcycle through dangerous radioactive areas. Despite the attention she pays to her geiger counter, I can't help but think this is a really stupid thing to be doing.

The pictures she publishes of what the land and buildings and remains look like in the contaminated area are simply horrific.

Sedna Mystery Deepens With Hubble Images Of Farthest Planetoid: Sedna's existence was announced on March 15. Its discoverer, Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., was so convinced it had a satellite, that an artist's concept of Sedna released to the media included a hypothetical moon.

Brown's prediction was based on the fact, Sedna appears to have a very slow rotation that could best be explained by the gravitational tug of a companion object. Almost all other solitary bodies in the solar system complete a spin in a matter of hours.

“I'm completely baffled at the absence of a moon,” Brown said.

As you can see from this Hubble telescope photo, there is no sign of Sedna's moon at all. Nope. Can't see a thing.

The NYT has a fascinating article on Baboon mores, No Time for Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture. When a freak illness killed off the most dominant and aggressive males, the tone of the whole troop became, well, kindler and gentler. Amazingly as new males joined the troop they got socialized into the dominant culture. Two generations after the die-off, the troop was still operating on a lower stress, higher happiness level.

The implications for faculty politics are left as an exercise for the reader.

I never, ever, was able to suspend disbelief about subvocalization when reading science fiction. I could swallow warp drives, nanotech, even telephathy on a good day, but this silent speaking stuff seemed far too good to be true.

Well, NASA says it's true.

The Australian: It's another world … but is it our 10th planet?. Think of all those maps and models of the solar system that will be obsolete…

The BBC reports an Italian (naturally) scientist's conclusion that Coffee is a 'health drink'. I would have said 'necessity'… (Spotted via Slashdot.)