Brain cells made from pee, black holes spitting out plasma and UFOs seen around the nation are at the top of our cool stories this week. Check these out.
11. Indiana Jones Skull Hoax
An archaeologist in Belize has filed a lawsuit against the makers of the film "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," alleging that the movie profits off references to an artefact illegally stolen from the country.
But the item in question, a real-life crystal skull, may not be a Belizean artefact carved by the ancient Maya people at all, but rather a hoax perpetrated by a self-styled 20th-century adventurer.
10. Brain Cells Made from Pee
Scientists have made brain cells from human pee.
When a person urinates, skin shells are routinely shed from the lining in the kidney, and it's these cells that the researchers reprogrammed into stem cells, which can turn into any type of cell in the body. In this case, they transformed the cells into neurons, or brain cells. The new research, published Sunday (Dec. 9) in the journal Nature Methods, could one day provide a quicker way to make brain cells that are unique to an individual, Nature News reported.
9. Asteroid's Flyby
A new video captures the giant asteroid 4179 Toutatis tumbling through space on its flyby of Earth earlier this week.
The asteroid Toutatis video, which is about 40 seconds long, combines 64 radar images taken Wednesday and Thursday (Dec. 12 and 13) by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California [USA]. On those days, Toutatis was about 4.3 million miles (7 million kilometres) from Earth, or about 18 times farther away than the moon is.
8. Death Star Petition
The Obama administration will have to respond to a petition to begin construction of a Death Star by 2016, now that the appeal has gathered a critical number of signatures.
The "Star Wars"-inspired petition was posted on the White House's "We the People" site on Nov. 14, and today it passed the 25,000-signature threshold required for an official reply.
7. Black Holes Spew Out Surprise
Black holes come in a variety of sizes, ranging from 10 times the mass of the sun to a billion times as massive. But new research shows that black holes of completely different masses, ages and locations can produce jets of ionized gas that behave similarly.
"As scientists, we are always seeking universal principles," Rodrigo Nemmen, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland [USA], told SPACE.com.
6. Mass Squid 'Suicides' Explained
Credit: mikeledray | Shutterstock.com
Thousands of jumbo squid have beached themselves on central California shores this week, committing mass "suicide." But despite decades of study into the phenomenon in which the squid essentially fling themselves onto shore, the cause of these mass beachings have been a mystery.
But a few intriguing clues suggest poisonous algae that form so-called red tides may be intoxicating the Humboldt squid and causing the disoriented animals to swim ashore in Monterey Bay, said William Gilly, a marine biologist at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California [USA].
5. Mini Quasar Munches on Andromeda
The brightest objects in the universe are called quasars, and now astronomers have found the first miniature version of a quasar beyond the Milky Way.
Quasars are supermassive black holes up to billions of times the mass of the sun that release extraordinarily large amounts of light as they rip apart stars and gobble matter.
4. Porn May Make You Forget
Credit: Headache photo via Shutterstock
Though some people find porn entertaining, they don't necessarily remember what they've seen. That's because viewing Internet pornography may interfere with short-term memory, according to new research.
The study is the first to examine the influence that processing pornographic pictures has on working memory. The part of the brain responsible for keeping information in the mind while using it to complete a task, working memory is critical for understanding, reasoning, problem solving and decision making.
3. Brain Tool Lodged in Mummy Skull
A brain-removal tool used by ancient Egyptian embalmers has been discovered lodged in the skull of a female mummy that dates back around 2,400 years.
Removal of the brain was an Egyptian mummification procedure that became popular around 3,500 years ago and remained in use in later periods.
Identifying the ancient tools embalmers used for brain removal is difficult, and researchers note this is only the second time that such a tool has been reported within a mummy's skull.
2. Christmas Trees Date to Dinosaur Age
If you were to travel back in time 100 million years to look for your Christmas tree, you would find firs nearly identical to the ones sold today.
New research shows that the genome of conifers - a division that includes spruces, pines and firs - has hardly changed since the days of the dinosaurs.
1. UFOs over San Francisco & Brooklyn?
The Mayan apocalypse believed by some to be taking place on Dec. 21, 2012, has apparently been preceded by multiple sightings of alleged UFOs hovering over major U.S. cities. In the past week, San Francisco and Brooklyn were both treated to the sight of mysterious illuminated objects floating in the sky.
And, of course, rather than of alien origin, the lights seem to have come from something commonly mistaken for UFOs: Chinese lanterns.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please adhere to proper blog etiquette when posting your comments. This blog owner will exercise his absolution discretion in allowing or rejecting any comments that are deemed seditious, defamatory, libelous, racist, vulgar, insulting, and other remarks that exhibit similar characteristics. If you insist on using anonymous comments, please write your name or other IDs at the end of your message.