The Science Thread

If you've never seen it, you might enjoy Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets. It's a two part BBC show, a fictional documentary about a manned mission to the planets, examining some of the real issues involved. I really liked it. You can get it on DVD, too.

Part 1

Part 2

Cool, I'll check it out.

Interesting article, especially for pibbur - http://theconversation.com/hidden-ho…-spiders-55017

Man it must suck being a huntsman spider. Only 3 weeks of maternal attentions…

And you get eaten by a sibling.

Nearby Supernova Explosions May Have Affected Human Evolution

Scientists gear up to drill into 'ground zero' of the impact that killed the dinosaurs

New tree of life revealed based on genomes - NY Times

The researchers found that bacteria make up most of life’s branches.
[…]
It’s a humbling thing to behold. All the eukaryotes, from humans to flowers to amoebae, fit on a slender twig. The new study supported previous findings that eukaryotes and archaea are closely related. But overshadowing those lineages is a sprawling menagerie of bacteria.

More info - Nature.com; Nature Microbiology

In science today, "Ifuckinglovescience" posted this link which they claim is their most important ever:

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and…are-being-lied

Bubbling ocean on Saturn’s moon Titan could explain vanishing island

https://www.newscientist.com/article…ishing-island/

Originally Posted by Eye
New tree of life revealed based on genomes - NY Times


More info - Nature.com; Nature Microbiology

Very interesting.

BTW, I thought the archae were more in a league of their own, since there are significant differences from both bacteria and eukaryotes. The membrane contains ether lipids, in stead of the esters found in the other domains. Their energy sources are much more varied. And some of them have very weird shapes.

Regarding bacteria, they are even more widespread, since, according to the dominant theory, they are the source of mitochondria in eukaryotic cells, as well as the chloroplasts in plants.

One more thing: What about viruses? They are not included. It does make sence, since viruses are not life as we know it. On their own they have no metabolism and they can't reproduce, both very fundamental properties of living organisms. Many consider them not life at all.

pibbur who has named his my ipad after an archae, Haloquadratum walsbyi, to indicate that it's different from all his other computer. In addition, said species has quadratic cells.

PS: Here's a picture of 4 H. walsbyi cells, stolen(?) from Wikipedia:

DS.

Originally Posted by ElderGnome
In science today, "Ifuckinglovescience" posted this link which they claim is their most important ever:

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and…are-being-lied

Also: smallpox, responsible for 300-500 million deaths during the 20th century has been completely eradicated due to vaccination (so we don't need to vaccinate for that one anymore). The last verified case of smallpox from natural causes was diagnosed in Somalia on the 26th of october 1977 (two employees at the University of Birmingham was infected in 1978. One of them died.).

It's one of the most significant achievements ever in medicine.

The reason we could eradicate smallpox is that the only reservoir for the virus is human. Still, the virus isn't all gone, two laboratories, one in the US, one in Russia have viable virus cultures, for research purposes.

pibbur who was vaccinated in the early seventies and has a scar to prove it.

Originally Posted by pibbur who
PS: Here's a picture of 4 H. walsbyi cells, stolen(?) from Wikipedia:

DS.

It somehow reminds me of Windows…

Originally Posted by Eye
It somehow reminds me of Windows…

Hah! No likes for you!!! ()

pibbur who knows this, but tries to ignore it, as it would affect his reasons for naming the pad after the little creature.

A fun, whimsical, little read

Shooting a gun in space.

Including such topics as shooting yourself in the back and trying to hit a star 40,000 light years away

An old set of videos but fascinating nonetheless for me at least.

HubbleSite - NewsCenter - Hubble Data Used to Look 10,000 Years into the Future (10/26/2010) - Release Videos

Omega Centauri

Claude Shannon, the Father of the Information Age, Turns 1100100: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elemen…-turns-1100100

01110000 01101001 01100010 01100010 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101111 00100000 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 01100101 01100100 111101 100 01101101 01101111 01101110 01110100 01101000 01110011 00100000 01100001 01100111 01101111

101

"Only when the last bit of Reality has been tuerned into Information, then you'll learn that you can't satisfy your Emotions with Information.
Or fill your belly with it."

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
"Only when the last bit of Reality has been tuerned into Information, then you'll learn that you can't satisfy your Emotions with Information.
Or fill your belly with it."

And I've suppled 242 bits.

50 69 62 62 75 72 20 77 68 6f 20 6c 69 6b 65 73 20 6e 75 6d 62 33 72 73

4

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