Sunday, December 16, 2012

Secret Vimana 5000 Year Old Flying Machine Discovered in Afghanistan

Source
by Steve Quayle

Ancient India Puranas and their history are NOT Mythology. it comes from ancient Vedic civilization .What caused the sudden rush of these most powerful leaders of the Western World to go to Afghanistan, this report continues, was to directly view the discovery by US Military scientists of what is described as a "Vimana" entrapped in a "Time Well"
that has already caused the "disappearance" of at least 8 American Soldiers trying to remove it from the cave it has been hidden in for the past estimated 5,000 years.

Vimana

Vimāna is a word with several meanings ranging from temple or palace to mythological flying machines described in Sanskrit epics.

Reference to ancient Indian flying vehicles comes from ancient Indian sources, many are the well known ancient Indian Epics, and there are literally hundreds of them. Most of them have not even been translated into English yet from the old sanskrit.

It is claimed that a few years ago, the Chinese discovered some sanskrit documents in Lhasa, Tibet and sent them to the University of Chandrigarh to be translated. Dr. Ruth Reyna of the University said recently that the documents contain directions for building interstellar spaceships!

Their method of propulsion, she said, was "anti-gravitational" and was based upon a system analogous to that of "laghima," the unknown power of the ego existing in man's physiological makeup, "a centrifugal force strong enough to counteract all gravitational pull."

According to Hindu Yogis, it is this "laghima" which enables a person to levitate. Dr. Reyna said that on board these machines, which were called "Astras" by the text, the ancient Indians could have sent a detachment of men onto any planet, according to
the document, which is thought to be thousands of years old. The manuscripts were also said to reveal the secret of "antima", "the cap of invisibility" and "garima", "how to become as heavy as a mountain of lead."


Steve Quayle
Stephen Quayle is the author of five books. For over thirty years, he has been investigating ancient civilizations, giants, UFOs and biological warfare as they relate to the future of mankind. Stephen discusses the coming worst-case scenarios approaching this world and how they interrelate to each other. Earthquakes, volcanoes, nuclear and biological terrorism, coupled with the planned financial meltdown of the U.S. dollar will thrust us into unimagined tribulations. Stephen Quayle is on record as stating that we have moved from the realm of natural threats into the arena of supernaturally guided events of the unseen hand of evil orchestrating world events of unfathomable proportions.






It's interesting to me just how similar the virmana looks to the flying bell that the Nazis built after the scientific expedition to india.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Space Agency: Phobos Is Artificial

Wednesday, December 5, 2012 20:36

The prestigious European Space Agency has declared Phobos, the mysterious Martian moon, to be artifical. At least one-third of it is hollow and it’s origin is not natural, but alien in nature. The ESA is Europe’s counterpart to NASA. Could this revelation motivate NASA to release the secrets it’s harboring? Don’t count on it…



Proven right: Dr. Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky
Phobos first believed artificial by famous astrophysicist

Astrophysicist Dr. Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky first calculated the orbital motion of the Martian satellite Phobos. He came to the inescapable conclusion that the moon is artificial and hollow–basically a titanic spaceship.

The Russian astronomer, Dr. Cherman Struve, spent months calculating the two Martian moons’ orbits with extreme accuracy during the early 20th Century. Studying the astronomer’s notes, Shklovsky realized as the years progressed into decades Phobos’s orbital velocity and position no longer matched Struve’s mathematically predicted position.

After lengthy study of the tidal, gravitic, and magnetic forces, Shklovsky came to the firm conclusion that no natural causes could account for the origins of the two odd moons or their bizarre behavior, particularly that exhibited by Phobos.

The moons were artificial. Someone or something built them.



How Mars appeared many millions of years ago

During an interview about the mysterious Martian moon Shklovsky explained: “There’s only one way in which the requirements of coherence, constancy of shape of Phobos, and its extremely small average density can be reconciled. We must assume that Phobos is a hollow, empty body, resembling an empty tin can.”

For decades most of mainstream science ignored Shklovsky’s breakthrough work, until the ESA began to take a closer look at the odd little moon.




ESA study declares Phobos not natural


The ESA study abstract that appeared in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters reveals that Phobos is not what many astrophysicists and astronomers believed for generations: a captured asteroid.


“We report independent results from two subgroups of the Mars Express Radio Science (MaRS) team who independently analyzed Mars Express (MEX) radio tracking data for the purpose of determining consistently the gravitational attraction of the moon Phobos on the MEX spacecraft, and hence the mass of Phobos. New values for the gravitational parameter (GM=0.7127 ± 0.0021 x 10-³ km³/s²) and density of Phobos (1876 ± 20 kg/m³) provide meaningful new constraints on the corresponding range of the body’s porosity (30% ± 5%), provide a basis for improved interpretation of the internal structure. We conclude that the interior of Phobos likely contains large voids. When applied to various hypotheses bearing on the origin of Phobos, these results are inconsistent with the proposition that Phobos is a captured asteroid.”




Casey Kazan writes in ESA: Mars Moon Phobos ‘Artificial,’ that “…the official ESA Phobos website contained explicit scientific data, from multiple perspectives, which strongly ‘supported the idea that this is what radar echoes would look like, coming back from inside ‘a huge…geometric… hollow spaceship’. In fact, they were the primary source of the decidedly ‘internal, 3-D geometric-looking’ radar signature. The concurrence of all three of these independent Mars Express experiments- ‘imaging,’ ‘internal mass distribution,’ (tracking) and ‘internal radar imaging’ now agreed that ‘the interior of Phobos’ is partially hollow with internal, geometric ‘voids’ inside it.’ Meaning that Phobos is artificial.”

In other words, phobos is not a natural satellite, is not a “captured asteroid,” and is hollow. This is exactly what Dr. Shklovsky found back in the 1960s.

Phobos was artificially constructed and placed into Martian orbit by…what?



Phobos: what is it?

Data reveals Phobos is not natural. As of now there isn’t enough information to discover exactly what the Martian moon is, but there are several intriguing possibilities.

1. It’s a gigantic spaceship possibly built as an orbiting station or space observatory.

2. It’s a generation starship that arrived from another star system and was placed in parking orbit around Mars.

3. It was being built in Mars orbit for insterstellar travel but was never completed.

A fourth possibility is more ominous and deeply disturbing.

4. It is a functional (or non-functional) gargantuan planet-killing space bomb, perhaps left over from some interplanetary space conflict millions of years in the past. (Some researchers are actually proposing this hypothesis.)

Alien ship, superbomb, or uncompleted project?


Sunday, November 25, 2012

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Four Stories of Alleged Time Travellers

Source


Is it possible to travel through time? We may never know, but in the meantime we can at least enjoy a good laugh at those who would have us believe they’ve cracked the code.
1.
Andrew D. Basiago
Mr. Basiago is a smart dude: he’s a lawyer, holds five degrees and was a member of MENSA. He’d also like you to believe that he was the first child to teleport through time, so you may want to take the rest of his claims with a grain of salt.
andrew basiago
Above: integrity?
Basiago claims that as a child growing up in the 60s and 70s he was involved in “Project Pegasus,” a project lead by the United States military exploring time-travel and teleportation. One-hundred and forty children total were involved. Basiago’s adventures include being sent back to 1,000,000 BC and watching dinosaurs, being sent to 2045 to pick up microfilm, and meeting Barack Obama while he was still in school. As a reward for his good time-service Basiago was sent to hear Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address, where claims to have been photographed. BOOM! Proof!
andrew basiago1
Since coming forward with his claims Basiago has campaigned for the US government to reveal its time travel secrets. He’s also jumped on the 2012 band wagon, claiming a series of events will leave the Washington D.C. underwater.
If you find it a little difficult to take any of his claims seriously, you’re not alone. His supporters, however, make a valid point: he’s a lawyer. Have you ever known a lawyer to lie?
2.
William Stillings
Every Batman needs his Robin. Andrew Basiago’s old chum is William Stillings, chrononaut and “technical genius.” Stilling and Basiago were both enrolled in the same DARPA program in the 80s and trained to teleport from Earth to Mars through use of a “jump room.” All of this training, by the by, took place at a California community college. The next time someone gives you guff for not attending a “real” university, feel free to drop that bomb on them.
Anyway, the dynamic twosome were part of a ten-man team that regularly traveled to Mars to help establish an American presence (to be used as a legal claim to the territory) and patrol military bases previously constructed on the red planet. By Stillings’ own account America had sent nearly one-hundred thousand people to Mars, but only seven-thousand survived.
william stillings
You are expected to believe this.
Among Stillings more wackier claims (if you can comparatively measure the wackiness of his claims, anyway) are that he and Basiago had gone to Mars on separate trips with none other than Barack Obama, then going by Barry Soetoro, and current DARPA chief Regina Dugan.
This information only came out in September of 2011, around thirty years after it was alleged to have happened. It was only after Stillings and Basiago met again that they shared memories and – surprise, surprise – they were both in the same program. But there’s a good reason why he couldn’t remember: the CIA used drugs to block the memories. But apparently the same people that can send people to Mars couldn’t come up with a more efficient way of erasing someone’s memory.
3.
John Titor
An American soldier from 2036 selected for a time travel mission to the 70s to pick-up an old IBM computer to debug issues with future computers who stopped in the year 2000 to hang out on the Internet.
If you’re not high enough to understand the logic behind John Titor’s origin story, don’t worry; there are several websites dedicated the man that can break it down for you. But as silly as it may sound, the John Titor story gained a lot of traction back in 2000 from paranormal groups, sci-fi nerds and the mainstream media alike.
john titor
Also, this is his time machine.
Titor made several warnings on the Art Bell message board about the future. Most of them focused on “N. Day” when Russia would be launch nuclear strikes against America, China and Europe sometime in 2015, either sparking or concluding World War III. He also claimed that there were an infinite number of universes where all possibilities could occur or, in other words, he was full of shit and he was hoping people didn’t notice.
Titor’s posts stopped in March 2000 and since then a grand total of zero of his predictions have come to pass. The most obvious failure is the predicted American civil war scheduled back in 2008 in response to the presidential election. The country was supposed to be divided into five factions. Even if you ignore that something like that wasn’t even remotely close to happening, Titor’s posts contradicted themselves constantly, saying that the future could be changed (due to the infinite possibilities thing) but that his predictions were inevitable. Though the real identity of John Titor has never been revealed, the contradictions point to the possibility that it was multiple people.
4.
James Burda
So far our time-travelers have used their skill simply to bewilder or confuse, but our last entry, James Burda, is using his power for good. Specifically, he’s a chiropractor and can cure what ails you with the awesome power of time travel.
Burda claims that in 2006 he simply told his body to stop hurting and boom, healed. He founded his practice and named this unique skill “Bahlaqeem,” a word that he openly admits has no meaning but sounds nice and has nine letters… apparently a good sign. Harnessing the power Bahlaqeem, Burda is able to treat people through vibrations regardless of where they are, meaning he can heal anyone from any distance. This amazing service only costs sixty dollars American, though the first one is on the house. In extreme cases Burda can see through time to the moment when the injury occurred.
james burda
He can fix this without even seeing you.
The Ohio board of chiropractors, however, we not impressed by his feats of wonder. Despite his claims that nine out of ten customers were satisfied with his service, Burda’s license was revoked and he himself was deemed mentally unfit to practice. In light of this injustice Burda began campaigning for the right to practice alternative medicine.
Despite no longer having a chiropractic license, Burda’s website is still accessible and reveals quite a bit about his mythical practice. Specifically, despite his miraculous powers Burda claims the system works in the same paragraph that he isn’t making the medical claim that the system works. Indeed, the world of alternative medical practice has its limits, and apparently that line is drawn right around where legal responsibility begins.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

World’s Most Powerful Laser Beams to Zap Nuclear Waste & Cure Cancer?

Source


The European Union will spend about 700 million euros ($900 million) to build the world’s most powerful lasers, technology that could destroy nuclear waste and provide new cancer treatments.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure project has obtained funding for two lasers to be built in the Czech Republic and Romania, Shirin Wheeler, spokeswoman for the European Commission on regional policy, said in a phone interview. A third research center will be in Hungary.

The lasers are 10 times more powerful than any yet built and will be strong enough to create subatomic particles in a vacuum, similar to conditions that may have followed the start of the universe. Eventually, the power of the light beams could be used to deteriorate the radioactivity of nuclear waste in just a few seconds and target cancerous tumors, the projects’s Romanian coordinator Nicolae-Victor Zamfir said in an interview.

“We can’t find in nature any phenomenon with such an intense power like the one that will be generated with this laser,” Zamfir said in a phone interview from Romania. “We expect to see the first results of our research in one or two years after the centre becomes operational.”

The Magurele research center, where the Romanian laser will be located, will consume about 10 megawatts of energy, enough to supply about 2,500 average U.S. households. Most of it will come from geothermal pumps installed at the site, where the laser is expected to become operational in 2017.

Largest Site
“It is probably one of the largest such sites in Europe using unconventional energy,” Zamfir said.

Zamfir said companies from the computer industry have shown interest in the project, but none from the nuclear sector. “We haven’t advertised the project yet properly, possibly also because we didn’t have the EU’s approval.”

The research may replicate the same principles used in a new type of cancer radiotherapy called hadrontherapy, Zamfir said. It directly targets deep-rooted tumors, reducing the risk of recurrence or new tumors. The first results of the experiments are expected for 2018-2019.

“This treatment already exists, but requires expensive and big accelerators,” Zamfir said. “If it becomes possible by using this type of laser, it can be implemented at lower costs as technology advances and the lasers get cheaper.”

The laser technology might also be used to reduce the time it take for atomic waste to lose its radioactivity from thousands of years to a few seconds. That could remove the need to build underground stores to keep waste secure for centuries.

No Solution
“It’s going to take almost 20 years until we would be able to do it, but right now many countries don’t see any solution in the near future,” Zamfir said.

The EU is basing the broject in eastern European countries to support science in former communist countries, where a tradition of research hasn’t prevented academics seeking better- paid posts outside the region.

“The hope is to create a virtuous circle that by having the infrastructure there you also attract more funds and research ,” the European Commission’s Wheeler said.

The city of Magurele is home to Romania’s National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, established in 1949 and one of the biggest nuclear physics research centers in eastern Europe during the communist era.

Although research is still being carried at the institute, Romania, it’s losing scientsits because it invests only 0.5 percent of its gross domestic product in research, compared with a European average of 2 percent.

Old Road
The research center is less than 10 kilometers away from Bucharest, but the journey can take around 20 minutes on an old road that is now being enlarged.

“There’s no direct public transportation from the center of Bucharest -- you need to change the bus and then hitchhike for those private minibuses,” Zamfir said. “We now hope it will change.”

In Romania, 200 researchers will work at the project full time, with around 1,000 more expected to visit the center for experiments each year once it starts working, according to Zamfir.

The project will be followed by the construction of an even more powerful laser and any of the three countries already involved in the project, plus the U.K., might host the laser. The ELI-Ultra High Field Facility will reach 200 petawatts of power, or 100,000 times the power of the world electric grid.

“The proposal for the fourth site should have been made in 2012, but we haven’t reached maturity with the ongoing three projects to draw enough conclusions,” Zamfir said.

The EU expects to spend 550 million euros in the first phase of the project ending December 2013, Wheeler said. Further applications from Romania and Hungary for the second part of the project should raise the total funding from the organization to 700 million euro, more than 80 percent of the entire cost of the project. About 180 million will come from other sources.

New Footage of Bigfoot

Monday, October 29, 2012

Space and Time into a single Continuum



Eleven dimensions, parallel universes, and a world made out of strings? It's not science fiction, it's string theory. Bestselling author and physicist Brian Greene offers a tour of this seemingly strange world in "The Elegant Universe," a three-hour Peabody Award-winning miniseries.

Part 1, "Einstein's Dream," introduces string theory and shows how modern physics—composed of two theories that are ferociously incompatible—reached its schizophrenic impasse: One theory, general relativity, successfully describes big things like stars and galaxies, while another, quantum mechanics, is equally successful at explaining small things like atoms and subatomic particles. Albert Einstein, the inventor of general relativity, dreamed of finding a single theory that would embrace all of nature's laws. But in this quest for the so-called unified theory, Einstein came up empty-handed, and the conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics has stymied all who've followed. That is, until the discovery of string theory.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/elegant-universe-einstein.html

Moon & Tidal Power

Monday, October 1, 2012

Super Wifi

Source
image


By this time next year, thousands of people will be using a new longer-range kind of Wi-Fi commonly called "super Wi-Fi."
Super Wi-Fi isn't really Wi-Fi, a form of wireless networking which uses unlicensed spectrum. Instead, it's a new kind of wireless network running on unused or underused spectrum known as "white spaces." It's championed by the likes of Google and Microsoft.
After a long, protracted battle  with broadcasters, who first opposed the new tech, it got the official okay from the FCC last December. Since then there's only been a few pilot networks where people can use it.
But progress is being made. A key company in the Super Wi-Fi industry is Spectrum Bridge. It just announced a new program to help equipment makers get white-spaces radios approved to be sold. That means that Super Wi-Fi is on track to be more widely available in 2013.
This follows news from June, when the Advanced Internet Regions University, (AIR.U) said that it will deploy Super Wi-Fi on university campuses across the country starting next year, too.
Super Wi-Fi is exciting because it is stronger and more powerful than existing Wi-Fi. It will be especially important for rural areas and other dead spots where broadband wireless isn't available. If it can get a TV signal, the area can have high-speed Internet access.
This is expected to become a $1 billion market, similar to the Wi-Fi industry.

Progressive Field Wind Turbines

Source
csu-wind-turbine.JPGThomas Ondrey, The Plain DealerThe spiral wind turbine system perched above the southeast corner of Progressive Field is performing better than expected and also attracts attention from fans, especially when it is lit at night.



The wind turbines attached to that distinctive plastic corkscrew atop Progressive Field are overachievers.

The four mounted turbines are generating more than 4.5 times as much energy than if the turbines were standing alone, according to data collected by Cleveland State University.

"In terms of the fluid mechanics aspects of the device, it is doing exactly what we predicted," said Majid Rashidi, the chairman of CSU's department of engineering technology who developed the system. "Usually theory and practice don't match."

A 3,000-pound aluminum frame, covered with white plastic pieces to form a helix, was mounted atop the ballpark's southeast corner, near East Ninth Street and Carnegie Avenue, on March 28. Four turbines, each seven feet across, with five blades in each disc, are attached to the sides of the spiral, which rises 40 feet above the upper concourse.

Rashidi's theory was that the structure would deflect wind into the turbine, creating more energy. CSU received a $1.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2008 to design and install two structures based on Rashidi's patented system. 

It involves a wind-deflecting structure with small-scale turbines able to generate power at low wind speeds.

In May 2009, CSU hoisted its first system, which weighed 10 tons, to the rooftop of its Plant Services Building on East 25th Street. Four turbines are affixed to the side of what looks like an old water tower.

Rashidi revised his concept, including reconfiguring the cylinder to look like an ice cream cone with a twist.

The Cleveland Indians agreed to host the new turbine as part of its commitment to sustainability, including adding solar panels to the stadium. The turbine is lighted within by colored LED lights.

In a quarterly technical performance report submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy on July 30, Rashidi reported that at a wind speed of 11 miles per hour the tower's four turbines generated 1,288 watts of energy, compared to a combined 200 watts of energy that would be generated by four stand-alone turbines, as calculated by turbine manufacturer.

A wind speed of 18 miles per hour generated 6,143 watts of energy from CSU's tower structure, compared to 1,412 from four stand-alone turbines. The report said the results, from April 1 through June 30, show the average electrical power generated by the spiral turbine was 4.64 times as much as conventional turbines.

"That is what the spiral does to the wind," Rashidi said. "It funnels more air."

The turbine is expected to generate about 40,000 kilowatt-hours per year, roughly the amount of energy needed to power four homes, Indians officials said. The ballpark uses about 17 million kilowatt-hours a year.

Rashidi plans to test the turbine for a year.

He said he has spoken with a company interested in replicating his turbine on a much smaller scale – a six-foot spiral and 18-inch turbines. It would be mounted on top of telecommunications towers like a weathervane, removing the need for electrical components.

"It would generate electricity for the tower in case of emergency when the power goes out," Rashidi said.

Ancient Aliens Debunked

Friday, September 28, 2012

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (1940)



This shocking film--perhaps most famous for the scene of the severed canine head kept alive by means of artificial circulation--records the successful Soviet experiments in the resuscitation of life to dead animals. Is this science, or is this a hoax? You decide.

Experiments conduced by Dr. S.S. Bryukhonenko at the Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy, Voronezh, U.S.S.R. Narrated by Professor Walter B. Cannon, introduced by Professor J.B.S. Haldane.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

5 Mind-Blowing Ways That Science Has Done the Impossible

Source



We see so many day-to-day advancements in science, from increasingly powerful smartphones to a potential AIDS cure, that we kind of get numb to it. But somewhere out there, scientists are still reaching for stuff that's so far above and beyond that it sounds like black magic. As we speak, there are researchers who are performing such witchery as ...

#5. Recording Your Fantasies and Dreams

See, this is what we're talking about. Having a stranger look directly into your dreams and fantasies isn't science, that's freaking sorcery. Yes, we understand that the images you see in your mind are just electrical signals from your brain, and that theoretically somebody could capture and decode them.
But ... these are our dreams here. A magical other world where we ride dragons with Shaquille O'Neal, and the dragon speaks in the voice of our old gym coach and continually yells at us for not wearing a cup. Are you saying scientists can hook cables up to our brain and watch it happen? Or see our daydream where we win the Super Bowl and play lead guitar at the halftime show?

"Who's ready for a blistering rendition of the first six chords of 'Smoke on the Water'?"
Pretty close, yeah.
How the Hell?
It was scientists at UC Berkeley who developed a way to literally see what your brain sees, and they did it by manipulating the magic of YouTube. They showed the subjects a bunch of movie trailers with electrodes hooked up to their heads, and computers recorded their brain activity. After that, they fed the computer millions of YouTube videos and asked it to compare what it had recorded with the millions of images of cats and people falling off bikes that they were showing to it.
The computer then selected the top 100 videos that best matched what popped out of the subjects' brains, and created a kind of composite image of what it thought it saw. The result, while not exactly Blu-ray quality, is pretty striking:
Now, before you go crazy over the possibility of literally recording your dreams, we clearly have a ways to go. But this at least serves as proof of concept, that we can actually transform mental pictures into video. It's just a matter of refining the process of defining which brain activity equals "I'm somehow competing in a spelling bee wearing only a jockstrap." Then we can put that shit straight up on YouTube!
It doesn't stop there; this process of breaking down how the brain works and building machines to interpret it will open up all kinds of weirdness. For instance, a team in the Netherlands has successfully invented a system that allows the users to type just by thinking the letters -- even if the user is comatoseThey discovered that by asking a vegetative patient to imagine, for instance, herself playing a game of tennis, a certain area of the brain lit up. From there it was just a matter of training the patient to associate letters on a keyboard with certain thoughts, and using a machine to detect that activity. Boom -- you're now mind-typing.

"Sir, you may want to tone down the fantasizing. Our nurses have filed a restraining order."

#4. Slowing Down Light to the Speed of Traffic

"The speed of light" is what's known as a universal constant -- which means it doesn't change, ever. It's literally the speed limit for the universe. The speed at which your flashlight beam illuminates the serial killer on the other side of the room is around 186,282 miles per second, which is the fastest that anything can ever go, according to the laws of physics.
So if light didn't travel that fast -- if we adjusted it to, say, 38 miles per hour -- wouldn't the whole universe collapse or something? Even if not, what would freak you out more than seeing your car outrun your own headlights?

If you slowed down light enough, the world would look like a constant acid trip.
Well, amazingly, scientists have managed to slow light down to the speed of Los Angeles traffic.
How the Hell?
It turns out that describing the universe's top speed as "the speed of light" isn't entirely accurate. Light is just the only thing fast enough to hit that wall, on account of the fact that it has no mass. So that's how fast light ordinarily travels, but light is made of particles, the same as anything else, and so theoretically it can be slowed down, or even frozen in place.
Wait, did we say "theoretically"? Because Danish physicist Lene Hau found that she could slow light to a crawl by firing a whole mess of laser beams through a dense, super-cooled chunk of sodium. In layman's terms, it's like shooting a bullet into water.
So what are the possible applications for slow light? Hau has no idea, but reminds us that the guy who invented lasers had no idea what they could be used for, either. Could they make a novelty flashlight where the light kind of oozes out like ketchup? We'd buy one of those.

"Goddammit, what kind of paper towel even cleans this up?"

#3. Teleporting Information

If we tell you that scientists have discovered a way to "teleport information," the problem is that you may not get what's amazing about it. After all, information is kind of instant already -- we use our cellphones to "teleport" information around the world every day, right?
But of course, in reality you're just shooting radio waves into the air, and they have to make their way from one place to another, which is why there's a delay if you're on the phone in New York trying to talk to someone in Mozambique. And those waves can be blocked by all sorts of things.

Especially by your nagging, bitchy friends who want you to "just hang up and find a real man."
So the idea that scientists can relay information between two places instantaneously, without anything passing between them, is every bit as weird as zapping a person from one side of a wall to the other, without them ever passing through the wall, or around it, or under it. Not only is it possible, but scientists have done it.
How the Hell?
In 2009, scientists at the University of Maryland teleported information from one atom to another one meter away. Not to be outdone, Chinese researchers in 2012 did the same thing -- over a distance of 60 miles. Instant teleportation. We don't mean it traveled really fast -- we mean it didn't travel at all. The "signal" was instantly just there.

The consequences were unfathomable.
The phenomenon is called quantum entanglement. It means that two atoms that are "linked together" can then be separated, one taken miles away from the other, but (here's the kicker) whatever you do to affect one immediately affects the other. They're not communicating in any way, they're just "entangled" across space and time by forces that we're pretty sure are impossible for the human mind to grasp. Hell, even Einstein had a difficult time wrapping his head around this stuff.

And that's why he'll forever be known as "the stupidest man to ever live."
If it sounds like the sort of thing that could accidentally create a black hole, you don't need to worry. Scientists have already found another way to do that ...


#2. Creating Black Holes

You probably have some idea from science class or, at least, Stargate SG-1 about what a black hole is. Basically, when a star gets big enough, it gets so heavy that it collapses on itself, rips a little hole in reality and starts doing some serious Star Trek shit.
From this description, it should be obvious why we can't (and shouldn't) create a black hole on Earth. We can't just pack a bunch of material billions of times larger than our own sun into a beaker and shake it until it destroys the solar system. No matter what science fiction tells you, we'll never be able to collect so much mass into the same spot that the gravity of it can bend light.

Not like this. Stay in school.
Oh, except that they sort of did, in China, in 2009. And you've probably noticed that we're not dead.
How the Hell?
Scientists in China managed to find a way to "mimic" what a black hole does, on a smaller scale, without all the inconvenient problems associated with dragging a supermassive star into a lab.

The original purpose of their research was to design a more effervescent Michelada.
They created their artificial black hole using a bunch of concentric circuit boards made of "meta-materials," which are man-made substances capable of bending radiation like light through means other than massive amounts of gravity. We probably couldn't give you a schematic that wouldn't melt your brain, but the result is the same as if the light was passing close to a black hole -- it gets sucked into the middle and can't get out.
Via Discovery.com
It's a scientific map of how Nickelback still manages to sell tickets.
This has only been accomplished so far with microwave light, because it's easier to manage, but scientists are hoping to figure out how to do it with visible spectrum light. Which, in addition to looking super cool, could completely change the way we gather solar energy. Instead of unwieldy giant mirrors, an artificial black hole could just vacuum up a lot of light from a much smaller area. And, sure, these panels probably wouldn't make the roof of your house look like a huge, swirling mass of cosmic destruction, but that's the way we're picturing it anyway.

#1. Creating Something from Nothing

One of the most fundamental rules of the universe is that you can't create matter out of thin air, unless you're a magician. But, like usual, scientists heard this and simply replied, "Anything is possible, as long as we have enough lasers."
So, in the late '90s, scientists used the Stanford Accelerator (the Large Hadron Collider's older brother) to do what David Copperfield can only pretend to do -- create matter out of nowhere.
Peter Wrona/Thornton Tomasetti
"Science is like magic, except it's real and it's not magical." -Anonymous
How the Hell?
To achieve this, scientists did the same thing they do to solve virtually every problem -- they shot two incredibly powerful lasers at each other until science happened. In this case, the energy created by the experiment "broke down the vacuum" into tiny chunks of matter and antimatter.
Of course, breaking nothing down into something sounds like they're living in opposite world, but the reality is that a vacuum isn't really empty so much as buzzing with energy, so what they were really doing is kind of a reverse explosion -- instead of converting mass into energy, they lasered a bunch of energy until mass popped out.
Of course, before you start trying to make a hamburger with a laser pointer, you should know that this requires a tremendously powerful laser. Just one of the lasers they fired was a trillion watts -- equivalent to around 16 billion light bulbs -- and they still needed to add another laser just to squirt out matter that only amounted to a couple of electrons. Still, some theorists say we might be able to ramp up the process. So maybe someday we'll have, like, a pair of Death Star-sized lasers that can collide and make a cup of mashed potatoes. What would be the point of doing that? We told you: lasers.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Friday, April 27, 2012

'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change

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British environmental guru James Lovelock, seen on March 17, 2009 in Paris, admits he was "alarmist" about climate change in the past.

By Ian Johnston, msnbc.com

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.

He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

However, the professor admitted in a telephone interview with msnbc.com that he now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far."

The new book, due to be published next year, will be the third in a trilogy, following his earlier works,

“Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back – and How We Can Still Save Humanity,” and “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can.”

The new book will discuss how humanity can change the way it acts in order to help regulate the Earth’s natural systems, performing a role similar to the harmonious one played by plants when they absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

Climate's 'usual tricks'

It will also reflect his new opinion that global warming has not occurred as he had expected.

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.

In 2007, Time magazine named Lovelock as one of 13 leaders and visionaries in an article on “Heroes of the Environment,” which also included Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev and Robert Redford.

“Jim Lovelock has no university, no research institute, no students. His almost unparalleled influence in environmental science is based instead on a particular way of seeing things,” Oliver Morton, of the journal Nature wrote in Time. “Humble, stubborn, charming, visionary, proud and generous, his ideas about Gaia have started a change in the conception of biology that may serve as a vital complement to the revolution that brought us the structures of DNA and proteins and the genetic code.”

NYT: Most tie extreme weather to global warming, poll finds

Lovelock also won the U.K.’s Geological Society’s Wollaston Medal in 2006. In a posting on its website, the society said it was “rare to be able to say that the recipient has opened up a whole new field of Earth science study” – referring to the Gaia theory of the planet as single complex system.

However Lovelock, who works alone at his home in Devon, England, has fallen out with the green movement in the past, particularly after saying countries should build nuclear power stations to help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions caused by coal and oil.

'Perfect recipe' for wildfires as season starts early

Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic.
I’m not a denier.”

He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was not well enough understood and could have a key role.

“It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice age,” he said.

He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought.

“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.
'I made a mistake'

As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.
Lovelock -- who has previously worked with NASA and discovered the presence of harmful chemicals (CFCs) in the atmosphere but not their effect on the ozone layer -- stressed that humanity should still “do our best to cut back on fossil fuel burning” and try to adapt to the coming changes.

Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the U.K.’s respected Met Office Hadley Centre, agreed Lovelock had been too alarmist with claims about people having to live in the Arctic by 2100.

And he also agreed with Lovelock that the rate of warming in recent years had been less than expected by the climate models.

However, Stott said this was a short-term trend that could be within the natural range of variation and it would need to continue for another 10 years or so before it could be considered evidence that something was missing from climate models.

US sees warmest March, and first quarter, on record

Stott said temperature records and other observations were “broadly speaking continuing to pan out” with what was expected.

He said there did need to be greater understanding of the effect of the oceans on the climate and added that air particles caused by pollution – which cool the Earth by reflecting the sun’s heat -- from rapidly developing countries like China could be having an effect.

On Lovelock, Stott said he had “a lot of respect” for him, saying “he’s had a lot of good ideas and interesting thoughts.”

“I like the fact he’s provocative and provokes people to think about these things,” Stott said.

Keya Chatterjee, international climate policy director of environmental campaign group WWF-US, said in a statement that it was "hard not to get overwhelmed and be defeatist" about the challenges facing the planet, but suggested alarmist talk did not help persuade people to act to reduce climate change.

"While the problem is becoming increasingly urgent, we’ve found that focusing on the most dire predictions does not resonate with the public, governments, or business. People tend to shut off when a problem does not seem solvable," she said.

"And that’s not the case with climate change because we can still avoid its worst impacts. We know that we already have all of the technologies needed to slow climate change down.  We only lack the political will to go up against vested interests," she added.

States where green jobs are going gangbusters

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading body on the subject, the world’s average temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. By 2100, it predicts it will rise by another 2 to 11.5 degrees, depending upon the levels of greenhouse gases emitted.

Asked to give its latest position on climate change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement that observations collected by satellites, sensors on land, in the air and seas “continue to show that the average global surface temperature is rising.”

The statement said “the impacts of a changing climate” were already being felt around the globe, with “more frequent extreme weather events of certain types (heat waves, heavy rain events); changes in precipitation patterns … longer growing seasons; shifts in the ranges of plant and animal species; sea level rise; and decreases in snow, glacier and Arctic sea ice coverage.”

NOAA reports its data in monthly U.S. and global climate reports and annual State of the Climate reports.
Its annual climate summary for 2011 said that the combined land and ocean surface temperature for the world was 0.92 degrees above the 20th century average of 57.0 degrees, making it the 35th consecutive year since 1976 that the yearly global temperature was above average.

“All 11 years of the 21st century so far (2001-2011) rank among the 13 warmest in the 132-year period of record. Only one year during the 20th century, 1998, was warmer than 2011,” it said.

In the interview, Lovelock said he would not take back a word of his seminal work “Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth,” published in 1979.

But of “Revenge of Gaia,” published in 2006, he said he had gone too far in describing what the warming Earth would see over the next century.

“I would be a little more cautious -- but then that would have spoilt the book,” he quipped.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Friday, March 9, 2012

8 Simple Questions You Won't Believe Science Can't Answer



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The field of science is capable of some amazing things, mostly because it's filled with all the Albert Einsteins and Doogie Howsers the world has produced over the centuries. But it may shock you that some of the most mundane, everyday concepts are as big a mystery to scientists as they are to the average toddler.
Things like ...

#8. Why We Sleep

As far as we know, virtually every creature on earth enjoys a good night's rest as much as people do (though the hours we choose to sleep varies greatly). So obviously sleep must serve a key purpose for all living things, right? Well, it turns out science doesn't have a clue.
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That's why science sits outside your room every night, watching.
What we have is a handful of proposed explanations for sleep that not many scientists can agree on. There's the theory that it's helping the brain clean house after a long day of learning. You see, your brain is constantly generating new pathways thanks to all the stuff that you see and do all day, so sleeping is when all the useless info gets tossed out.
Or maybe, instead of ditching the stuff that's not necessary, the brain might be reinforcing the stuff you do need. Scientists have seen that, when rats were asleep, the same neurons fired as when they had run mazes earlier that day. That means that the rats are essentially reliving their day and "practicing" the maze. This has led Harvard sleep researchers to assert thatsleep is crucial for humans to form memories and to learn.
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So really, passing out in the middle of an all-nighter is a valid study tactic.
But there's a problem with both of these theories. Plants and microorganisms, otherwise known as "things without brains," have dormant states that are very similar to sleep, which kind of puts doubt on the whole "sleep is good for the brain" theory. Then there's the fact that scientists have found certain humans who can go without sleep with no ill effects. There's evenone dude who claims he hasn't slept a wink in 33 years.
In fact, all of these theories kind of went out the window when researchers discovered a gene mutation that allows people to sleep two to four hours a night without any adverse effects at all. So, is sleep useless, then? Is it just God's way of making us take a break between masturbation sessions? Your guess is as good as science's.
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"We have found a strong, positive correlation between bong hits and passing out on the field behind the gym."

#7. How Many Planets Are in Our Solar System

Since Pluto was surprisingly kicked out of the solar system treehouse, we've known that the membership of the Planets Club is subject to change at science's whim. What you may not have realized is that the current inventory of eight planets and one sun is pretty much just science's best guess for the time being.

And somewhere out there, Pluto sheds a lonely tear.
It sounds bizarre, considering you all saw the same model of the solar system in elementary school. And every time you hear anything about space in the news, it's always badass telescope this, or new photograph of faraway galaxy that. We're mapping the edge of the freaking known universe over here. There's no way anything in our own cosmic backyard is escaping our notice, right?
Faulkes Telescope Project
We even took a picture of a space cloud that looks like a space pig humping a space turtle. The truth is out there, all right. And it's weird.
But despite what Big Space wants you to believe, the vast majority of our solar system is still uncharted and unknown. The area between Mercury and the sun is too bright to see, and the area beyond Uranus is too dark. Scientists are still finding new objects in theasteroid belt by the hundreds of thousands. Oh yeah, and some of astronomers think there might be a second sun. Seriously.
NASA
They've named it Nemesis because it flings comets at us. Nothing NASA says can convince us this isn't Galactus.
You see, not even our best telescope technology can see things that are far behind Pluto, where sunlight doesn't illuminate things all that well and where we're essentially blind. So astronomers have to combine vague clues and guesswork to figure out what's going on out there, kind of like space CSI.
First off, the fact that there's a huge gap in asteroids after a certain distance behind Pluto tells scientists that there's very likely a planet between the size of Earth and Mars that gobbled up all the space rock out there, so yeah, our solar system is probably back up to nine planets again. They're getting really tired of rewriting those middle school textbooks. And speaking of Pluto, astronomers have also discovered an object named Sedna orbiting the sun, and although no one's a hundred percent certain of its size, they're pretty sure it's carrying at least Pluto's heft.

Our next goal as a species should be to fashion these dwarf planets into a pair of Truck Balls for Earth.
But wait, that's not all, folks. Another little anomaly that astronomers have noticed is that comets' orbits aren't exactly going along as predicted. The explanation? There must be another planet out there that's affecting the icy rocks' orbits. And according to their hypothesis, this mother of a planet is huge -- like, "four times the size of Jupiter" huge. Named Tyche, this giant gas ball is way too far away for sunlight to reach it, but still, scientists are pretty confident that evidence gathered from a NASA telescope will prove its existence very soon. Who knows, in a few years, naming all the planets may be as hard as naming all 50 states.

#6. Why Ice Is Slippery

Saying that ice is slippery is like saying that water is wet -- it's something we've known for as long as we can be said to have known anything. Presumably, humans as a species knew ice was slippery before we knew fire was hot, or that it existed. But ask anyone why, and they won't be able to give you any better explanation than one of those cave people would have.
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Our intern Thoog suspects that either evil spirits or flash thawing is the culprit.
We just don't know why it is that you can ski on ice but not on boulders. Although at this point, most of you are probably screaming "It's water, stupid!" -- and that's more or less the answer that scientists have always concluded. Even in some modern textbooks you can still read the popular explanation: Unlike most substances, ice expands when it freezes. So when you walk on it, you're actually compacting it back into slippery old water. Sounds simple, right? Too bad then that it's bullshit. Experiments have shown that your puny body doesn't exert nearly enough pressure on ice to squeeze even a tiny bit of it into liquid.
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Science: "We don't know ... ice fairies, maybe?"
There are some competing theories, though none of them are better than the others. One popular theory is that the surface of ice remains liquid because there's nothing but open air on one side to put pressure on it. And some tests have confirmed that -- although they also confirm that the liquid layer is probably too thin to have any effect on friction.
Another theory that scientists have put forward is that ice is not actually slippery at all. Though this sounds like something that science, exasperated, would proclaim while waving a gun in your face to make you stop asking stupid questions, a guy named Dr. Salmeron thinks that the roughness on the surface of ice is actually so high that, ironically, it becomes slippery when you flash-melt it due to the sheer friction you're applying to it. Of course, in the same breath, Dr. Salmeron admits he may be talking out of his ass.
Salmeron Group
"Science has no hard answers, only questions and tasteful sweaters."

#5. How a Bicycle Works

Bicycles have been around since the early 19th century, and its basic design has actually changed relatively little for almost 200 years. You always had two wheels, a frame to connect them and a handlebar for steering, and you required a person completely devoid of shame to ride on it.
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It turns out skintight short-shorts are an improvement in bicycle fashion.
At the very least, you'd think that the guy who invented the damn thing knew what he was doing, but after more than a century of research, science has been forced to conclude that he was probably some kind of sorcerer. The first bicycles were invented, not through any kind of scientific procedure, but by dumb old trial and error. Even modern bike design schoolsadmit that it's not engineering or computer knowledge that make a good bike designer, but instead "intuition and experience."
So, what happens when you ask scientists exactly what makes a bicycle stable? Or what keeps it going? Or how people ride them? Well, odds are they'll either nervously tell you that they have cookies in the oven and run out on you, or if they're honest, they'll give you a pretty big shrug. In fact, top bike researchers admit that, even though some people have come up with equations on how to ride a bike or how they think bikes work, those equations are pretty much fancy icing on top of a cake of cluelessness. One Cornell researcher even says that absolutely nobody has ever come to an intuitive understanding of what makes a bicycle do its thing.
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Science: "We've narrowed it down to either spoke fairies or wheel fairies."
For ages, scientists assumed that the gyroscopic effect (the force that keeps a spinning top from falling over) was the key for a bike's balance. But nope! In the '70s, a scientist disproved that theory.
So then, scientists thought that the principal factor for a bike's stability was something called the caster effect, or trail (something to do with the front wheel's angle away from the frame). But just this year, top bikeologists from Cornell and other universities formed an angry scientific mob, then torched and pitchforked that theory as well. They did this by building a goofy-looking bike that has no gyroscopic effect and no trail, but manages to stay upright nonetheless.
Sam Rentmeester/FMAX
"Look, Ma! No physics!"
So scientists are essentially back at square one, as things such as steering geometry and the physics of stability are all going back to the drawing board. At least you can be secure in the knowledge that the humiliation you feel when you ride a bike is akin to the humiliation science feels when it's asked how a bike stays up.



#4. How to Beat Solitaire

Odds are pretty high that you're reading this article while you're at work. And once you're done wasting time with Cracked, odds are you'll continue to waste time with something else. And conveniently at your fingertips is one of the most played and addictive games of all time, one that you don't even need a partner for: solitaire.
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"Mrs. Jones in the cancer ward can wait. I just got the fourth ace!"
More specifically, Klondike solitaire, which is as familiar to career procrastinators as Minesweeper. All of us at some point, usually around our 10th consecutive loss, have buckled down and tried to figure out the secret. After all, if Rain Man can break Vegas, surely you can beat a goddamn Windows game.
Wrong!
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"I just got the king of diamonds. Engage Protocol Delta."
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that scientists get distracted when "studying" solitaire, or the fact that solitaire may have evolved from freaking black magic, but pretty much every damn thing about the game has remained a mystery since the 1800s. In fact, big-time mathematicians openly admit that it's one of the "embarrassments of applied mathematics" that almost nothing about the standard Klondike solitaire game is currently known.
For example, when the math geeks tried to find the odds of winning, they ran into a problem. They couldn't even get a fixed idea of how many winning hands are possible. The mathematicians came up with an approximate percentage of how many hands are winnable that was somewhere around 80 or 90 percent. But think about it -- when you play solitaire, do you winat least eight out of every 10 hands? Either you have the lamest X-Men superpower ever, or you're lying.
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Sorry, kid. No one in history has ever gotten laid for their ability at solitaire.
Now, there's some wild-ass guesses out there as to what the actual odds of winning Klondike are, but you'll never get an exact answer, even if many computer people agree that you don't have a good chance of winning at the game.
You might think that it's just because scientists are too busy breaking apart neutrons and quarks to bother trying to hack a card game. But consider that science has already cracked the secrets to the seemingly much more complicated game of Monopoly. But solitaire? It's simply beyond our powers of understanding. Then again, if we actually did know how to beat solitaire, we'd have to go back to work faster.
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"Ma'am, I've told you this before. I'll deal with your 'home invasion' when I've won two in a row."

#3. How Many Species of Animal Exist

In the 21st century, the days of Marco Polo and Columbus are long behind us. Nobody is exploring new lands and finding exotic new creatures like the platypus for the rest of the world to call bullshit on. So surely, having stomped across every nook and cranny of this blue earth, we should by now have some kind of ballpark figure about how many species we have left to kill, right?
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Gotta catch 'em all!
Actually, not even close. When you ask taxonomists (scientists specially tasked with finding and cataloging animals), they'll tell you they haven't even scratched the surface in their attempts to find all the creatures that live on the planet. However, despite working on this mission for almost 250 years, along with discovering over 15,000 new living beings each year, taxonomists don't even have the faintest idea of how many species live on Earth.
In fact, although scientists have identified almost 2 million of the species we've got, estimates for the amount of species that are actually on the planet range from a measly 5 million up to a daunting 100 million. The reason for this supernova-sized room for error is that, no matter what method the scientists use to make their estimates, there's always some amount of guesswork involved.
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"Anyone have a d10googol we can roll?"
One of the early estimates from 19th century taxonomists said that there were about 400,000 species on Earth, and seeing as how we've already discovered five times that many, it's only logical to conclude there was some faulty sciencing involved there. In fact, the most recent estimate, which claims that that there's less than 10 million species, is being heavily criticized by scientists. Hell, even the people who put out this estimate admitted publicly that they might be way off.
There are a few good reasons why the birds, bees, and bacteria remain woefully uncounted. First off, the research on species takes place mostly in the northern hemisphere, which remains more technologically advanced than the southern, so it's very likely that places like Australia have yet to show us the complete horror of their fauna.
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Somewhere, deep in the outback, the fabled and terrible Murder Koala waits.
But the biggest reason that science is still shrugging its shoulders and making sad trumpet noises is that 99 percent of all living space is under the ocean, and humans have explored less than 10 percent of it (experts say we have better maps of the surface of Mars than of our own oceans). We discover new and horrible types of life there all the time!

#2. The Length of the U.S. Coastline (Or Any Coastline, For That Matter)

Of all the subjects we learned in high school, the one with the least amount of mystery was probably geography. The continents, rivers and mountains aren't going anywhere. At least not very fast, they're not. Sure, the fine points can get more complicated. Maybe the tallest mountain isn't the one you think, and maybe the largest desert will surprise you, but even then, it's all just a matter of committing definitions to memory and spewing them back to your teacher. It's all freaking measurements! Surely the length of the United States coast isn't something "up for debate."
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What do you need besides a ruler?
Yet estimates vary wildly. The Central Intelligence Agency, for example, officially lists the length of the U.S. coast as around 12,380 miles. But another study came up with 29,093 miles. Then this study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (a U.S. government agency) came up with 95,471.
What the hell?
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"Somewhere around that second set of docks we found a pub and blew the whole damn count."
You see, measuring coasts isn't simple and indisputable, like measuring a straight line on a piece of paper. It's complex and prone to wild exaggeration, like measuring your dong in the bathroom. The reason is that, depending on how much detail of a coast you want to measure, you'll always get a different final outcome from someone who chose to take into account a different amount of detail. If you want to just take the rough outline of a coast, you can get a measurement like the CIA has. But when you get into the fine details of every little inlet and estuary, suddenly the numbers get much bigger as you calculate in all of these twists and turns.
Avsa, Wikipedia Commons
Keep zooming in, and this can literally continue for infinity.
And the thing about all those numbers is that they can all be adopted as "official" measurements by government agencies, and nobody would bat an eye. In fact, the disparity between coastline measurements is accepted and is a pretty well-known problem in geography dubbed the "coastline paradox." This coastal conundrum comes from the fact that, no matter how much detail you choose to take into account in your measurement of a coastline, no matter how many of the zigs and zags you measure, there is always more detail to get. This paradoxically makes every single coastline of every single country infinitely long.

#1. How Gravity Works

Come on, it's gravity. Is there any concept in the universe quite so basic? You throw shit up, it comes down again. Despite his textbook reputation, Newton didn't discover gravity. It was discovered by the first fish ancestor who crawled onto land and found it had lost the ability to swim upward. What's to understand?
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One aborted attempt at parkour and the subsequent ER visit can drum the basics into even the thickest skull.
Turns out there are four basic forces that hold the universe together, and out of these four, gravity is the only one that doesn't make any sense. Specifically, how it can be so incredibly weak and incredibly strong at the same time. Gravity holds the entire universe together, and no matter how far out you travel, it never completely disappears. And yet, it is the weakest force in existence. To illustrate, you know when you bring two magnets near each other and they snap together? That force is actually 10^36 times stronger than gravity. Yeah, the technical term for that is "a big-ass order of magnitude" stronger.
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"Using the scale devised by Dr. R. J. Fuckton, of course."
To add to the confusion, because all these other forces are controlled by their own particles, it stands to reason that gravity should have its own particles, too. But this hypothetical critter -- the graviton -- is basically the only one we haven't found yet, unlike the particles that mediate a lot of the other important forces in nature, which have been altogether more cooperative.
But the mother of all baffling gravity mysteries is that, once you get down to the level of atoms and molecules and even smaller stuff, gravity just plain stops working. In fact, gravity is one of the biggest reasons why quantum physicists and real-world physicists have nothing to say to each other. We know more about what's inside an atom than we do about why a ball comes back down when we throw it in the air. For all science knows, it's because of ghosts.
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Ghosts are one of the four fundamental forces, along with poltergeists, unicorns and David Bowie."
You can visit Eddie's website here.

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