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‘Science’ Stories

Google makes £550,000 donation to Bletchley Park restoration

Shane McGlaun, Dec 15th 2011 Discuss [2]

If you aren’t familiar with Bletchley Park, this is the place in England where during the war the allies worked on breaking the codes that the Germans and their allies were using to send coded messages. The codebreakers at Bletchley Park worked on breaking the codes of several enigma machines. Bletchley Park is also considered the birthplace of the modern computer. Read The Full Story

Robots make sandwiches and popcorn using voice command and Kinect

Shane McGlaun, Dec 13th 2011 Discuss [0]

We love our robots around here and when those robots can make lunch or a snack for you, I am even more interested. That is the case with these cool bots that the robotics team form the Technical University of Munich designed named Rosie and James. The bots used to be able to make pancakes and sausage only. Read The Full Story

CERN finds “tantalizing hints” of Higgs boson

Chris Davies, Dec 13th 2011 Discuss [2]

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) believe they may have spotted signs of the Higgs boson, it has been announced this morning, though the recorded evidence “is not large enough to say anything conclusive.” In a comprehensive presentation of the latest results from the particle-smashing Atlas and CMS experiments today, scientists in Geneva suggested that the output “is consistent either with a background fluctuation or the present of the SM Higgs boson.”

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MIT camera photographs light at a trillion frames per second

Shane McGlaun, Dec 13th 2011 Discuss [9]

The speed of the camera sensor is virtually unfathomable to my mind. MIT has created a new imaging solution that is capable of taking photos at a trillion frames per second. That number is mind boggling and very hard to comprehend until MIT puts that enormous speed into perspective. The photographic system shoots so fast that it can actually visualize the propagation of light. Read The Full Story

Researchers discover what makes a twin rainbow

Shane McGlaun, Dec 12th 2011 Discuss [0]

We have all seen what happens when some people run across double rainbows out in the wild. I don’t even what to know what that dude would have done had he happened on a twin rainbow. A double rainbow is when there are two separate rainbows over the top of each other. A twin rainbow is when one splits in to two separate bows. Read The Full Story

LHC may have observed Higgs boson for the first time

Shane McGlaun, Dec 12th 2011 Discuss [7]

One of the things that the Large Hadron Collider or LHC has been trying to observe has been the Higgs boson particle. There have been rumors floating around for a while now that the Higgs boson particle had been observed at the LHC and the CERN folks running the LHC are set to make an announcement tomorrow. There is no official detail on what the announcement will be, but with the rumors, the thought is the announcement will be on the Higgs boson. Read The Full Story

Ancient Anomalocarids had compound eyes with 16k lenses

Shane McGlaun, Dec 9th 2011 Discuss [2]

I can only imagine how violent it was to live in ancient times where the giant dinosaurs and sea creatures roamed the Earth's oceans and landmasses. One of the creepiest of the sea creatures I have seen is this big creature called an Anomalocarids that had gigantic pear shaped eyes. Apparently, scientist could only guess at what the eyes of the animal looked like until recently when a very well preserved fossil of the eyes was found. Read The Full Story

Hundreds of NASA moon rock samples are missing or stolen

Shane McGlaun, Dec 9th 2011 Discuss [34]

With every bit of the moon rock and soil samples on Earth having been brought back by NASA missions to the moon they are all considered government property. Like many things that are government owned the samples have been loaned out over the years from the stash of 842 pounds of materials that the Apollo moon missions brought back to Earth over the Apollo years. Read The Full Story

Newly discovered black holes are billions of times more massive than the sun

Shane McGlaun, Dec 6th 2011 Discuss [22]

Scientists have made some new discoveries in distant galaxies. The new discoveries are of the most massive black holes that have ever been discovered with masses billions of times more than our own sun. The hope is that the discovery of such black holes, called supermassive black holes, will help us to learn how these gigantic catchers of light come to be. Read The Full Story

Voyager plies a new region of space at the edge of our solar system

Shane McGlaun, Dec 6th 2011 Discuss [31]

Way back in 1977 NASA launched the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes and sent them hurtling away from Earth towards the edge of our solar system. It has taken Voyager 1 34 years to reach the edge of our solar system but according to scientists at NASA that is just what the probe has done. NASA has announced that the instruments on the probe are telling the operators at NASA that it has entered into a new region of space. Read The Full Story

Gasoline fuel cell might find its way into Volt-like cars of the future

Shane McGlaun, Dec 2nd 2011 Discuss [0]

The Volt has been having its share of issues of late with fires after crash tests. Still it is one of the only cars of its type on the market today. The car is technically an EV with a gasoline generator that is used to power the batteries when they run out of charge. The problem is that the economy when the generator is operating is much less than when the car is on battery power. Read The Full Story

USAF X-37B space plane stays in orbit past its 9-month mission window

Shane McGlaun, Dec 1st 2011 Discuss [5]

Of all the recent space secrets that the USAF and NASA are keeping one of the most intriguing is the X-37B that is in orbit right now. The space plane looks like a smaller version of the retired space shuttle and was lofted into orbit back in March for a 9-month mission. Exactly what the mission of the X-37B is and what payload is in its cargo bay is unknown. Read The Full Story