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The Science Thread

Tigger said:
Water Bear DNA sequence complete, they are even stranger than thought...

the microscopic water creature grows to just over 1 mm on average, and is the only animal that can survive in the harsh environment of space. It can also withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, can cope with ridiculous amounts of pressure and radiation, and can live for more than 10 years without food or water. Basically, it's nearly impossible to kill, and now scientists have shown that its DNA is just as bizarre as it is.
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All tardigrade mentions need to be accompanied by The Gif.
Osos_de_Agua_puede_sobrevivir_sin_comida_ni_agua_durante_m_s_de_una_d_cada3wodo1_400.gif

It is known.
 
It reminds me a lot of the Sea Pig.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y4DbZivHCY[/youtube]
 
As you can see, they are virtually identical.

Speaking of nigh indestructible animals (and zefrank videos):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHi9FvUPSdQ[/youtube]
 
Scientists make first direct detection of gravitational waves

Now for the first time, scientists in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration ? with a prominent role played by researchers at MIT and Caltech ? have directly observed the ripples of gravitational waves in an instrument on Earth. In so doing, they have again dramatically confirmed Einstein?s theory of general relativity and opened up a new way in which to view the universe.

But there?s more: The scientists have also decoded the gravitational wave signal and determined its source. According to their calculations, the gravitational wave is the product of a collision between two massive black holes, 1.3 billion light years away ? a remarkably extreme event that has not been observed until now.
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[youtube]B4XzLDM3Py8[/youtube]

[youtube]Zt8Z_uzG71o[/youtube]
 
That is amazing!  Einstein would have definitely been proud.

One science writer once oommented that he thought that black holes ("the black monoliths") were gateways to anolher dimension.
 
Black hole as massive as 17 billion suns surprises astronomers

"We were surprised that the black hole in NGC 1600 is 10 times more massive than predicted by the mass of the galaxy," said Jens Thomas, an astronomer with the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and the lead author of a new paper in Nature describing the discovery.

The position of the stars surrounding the black hole suggested it was once a pair of black holes that later merged.

The discovery may mean that the mass of extremely massive black holes may not be related to the mass of the stars near the centre of their host galaxy, and there may be far more monster black holes in the universe than astronomers had expected, in other small galaxy clusters.
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The Solar System to scale.

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/417309/our-place-in-the-universe/?utm_source=SFFB
 
Bullfrog said:
The Solar System to scale.

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/417309/our-place-in-the-universe/?utm_source=SFFB
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Obligatory:
0d41808f60af8871fa122b3b0f37ab1b.gif


What a beautifully shot video about a beautiful topic.
 
In space, there's just so much.........space.

My mind can't comprehend the size of the universe. The fact that there's billions of billions of solar systems in our galaxy and there's billions of billions of galaxies. ya, your gif shows how i feel.
 
Bullfrog said:
In space, there's just so much.........space.

My mind can't comprehend the size of the universe. The fact that there's billions of billions of solar systems in our galaxy and there's billions of billions of galaxies. ya, your gif shows how i feel.
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Oh, then you're sure to enjoy this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENyyRwxpHo[/youtube]
 
That's a great vid froggy, I had this map from National Geographic as a kid...

18450_or.jpg


The smallest graphic is of the inside of our solar system, at the bottom of the pic, each triangle 'up' leads to a position showing incredible distance relationships. We are so very small, less than a spec of sand on the beach.
 
I had the good fortune of seeing Neil Degrase Tyson in Toronto earlier this year. He spoke about Ligo and the gravitational wave measurment. It was fascinating.

 
Neanderthals Built Mystery Cave Rings 175,000 Years Ago

They painted magnificent cave paintings. They mastered fire and used tools. And now we know they constructed complex buildings deep within subterranean caves, and they did it more than 175,000 years ago. No, we're not talking about early humans. Neanderthals did all this.

A team of archaeologists led by Jacques Jaubert at the University of Bordeaux in France has just completed an archaeological examination of a mysterious find: the rubble of two ancient Neanderthal-made buildings meticulously crafted from stalagmites. The site is located 1,000 feet into a dark, twisting cave 30 miles outside what is now Toulouse in southwestern France. The discovery is the first of its kind and, the researchers say, radically alters the understanding of Neanderthal culture. Jaubert's team outlines their exploration today in a paper in the journal Nature.
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landscape-1464193985-rings1.jpg


This article has some interesting back story.

Recognizing the site?s value, the caver brought in archaeologist Francois Rouzaud. Using carbon-dating, Rouzaud estimated that a burnt bear bone found within the chamber was 47,600 years old, which meant that the stalagmite rings were older than any known cave painting. It also meant that they couldn?t have been the work of Homo sapiens. Their builders must have been the only early humans in the south of France at the time: Neanderthals.

The discovery suggested that Neanderthals were more sophisticated than anyone had given them credit for. They wielded fire, ventured deep underground, and shaped the subterranean rock into complex constructions. Perhaps they even carried out rituals; after all, there was no evidence that anyone actually lived in the cave, so what else were the rings and mounds for? 

Rouzaud would never know. In April 1999, while guiding colleagues through a different cave, he suffered a fatal heart attack. With his death, work on the Bruniquel Cave ceased, and its incredible contents were neglected. They?ve only now re-entered the limelight because Sophie Verheyden went on holiday.

A life-long caver, Verheyden works at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, where she specializes in stalagmites. She treats them as time capsules, using the chemicals within them to reconstruct the climate of past millennia. So when she learned about Bruniquel Cave, while visiting the region on holiday and seeing a display at a nearby castle, she had only one thought: Why hadn?t anyone dated the broken stalagmites themselves??
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