A question you've never asked, but now...

...that it's been asked, you know you want to know the answer.

What happens when you pump 10 tons of concrete into a giant ant colony?

Cool Science - "Once in a Civilization" Comet to swing by Earth next year.

Scientific American writes:

As it flares out of the distant Oort Cloud, the newly discovered comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) appears to be heading on a trajectory that could make for one of the most spectacular night-sky events in living memory. Why is this comet expected to be so unique? Two reasons:

Astronomers predict that the comet will pass just 1.16 million miles from the Sun as it swings around its perihelion, or closest approach. (This may seem like a lot, but remember—the Sun is big. If we were to scale the Sun down to the size of Earth, the comet would pass well within the orbits of dozens of satellites.) The close approach will melt enormous amounts of the comet’s ice, releasing dust and gas and forming what should be a magnificent tail.

After it loops around the Sun and forms this tail, the comet should then pass relatively close to Earth—not near enough to cause any worry, but close enough to put on a great show. Viewers in the Northern Hemisphere will get the best view as the comet blooms in the weeks approaching Christmas 2013. The comet could grow as bright as the full moon.

Of course, comets have a habit of not living up to expectations. This one could be sucked into the Sun during its close approach, or not grow as much of a tail as astronomers hope.

But that hasn’t dampened enthusiasm for what Astronomy Now is awkwardly calling “a once-in-a-civilisation’s-lifetime” event. The comet expert John E. Bortle is already comparing ISON with the Great Comet of 1680, which, according to contemporary

Cool Science.

Prehistoric arthropod had "complex" brain:

Rusty red stains on the head of a fossilized segmented creature found in southwestern China are a paleontological record-breaker: They are the remains of the oldest arthropod brain ever found. The imprint of the 520-million-year-old critter’s three-part brain indicates that complex nervous systems evolved fairly early in animal evolution, among the ancestors of insects, centipedes and crustaceans.

The roughly 7-centimeter-long specimen includes the entire body of Fuxianhuia protensa. The species lived during the Cambrian period, before modern arthropod lineages evolved. The fossil shows F. protensa had a brain composed of three sections that sat in front of the animal’s gut. That’s the same setup seen today in insects, crabs, lobsters and many other arthropods, researchers report in the Oct. 11 Nature.

“It was very fascinating and very exciting,” says study coauthor Nicholas Strausfeld, a neuroscientist at the University of Arizona. “It suggests that the organization we see in the modern [arthropod] brains is very ancient.”

Scientists had thought early arthropods had simpler brains like those of modern water fleas, fairy shrimp and other tiny freshwater crustaceans called branchiopods. The branchiopod brain consists of two connected parts with a third mass of nervous tissue sitting behind the stomach. Sometime after the branchiopod lineage split from the other arthropods, scientists had assumed, the nervous tissue behind the gut migrated up and connected with the other parts of the brain, Strausfeld says.

Mysterious explosion on Jupiter...

...as it fulfills its minesweeper of the solar system role.

Time runs in one direction...

...that's the law.

Curiosity landed safely on Mars.

Check here for status updates.

Stegosauri didn't have two brains?

Apparently not.

Science is a bummer.

You just know that some environmentalist is going to find a way to pin this on human activity.


Mysterious objects poking holes in Saturn's rings.

Goshwow! Science!

6 most mind-blowing things discovered in space.

Wow! Science - with all these theories explaining all the mass extinction event, it is hard to conclude anything other than that the Universe is trying to kill us.

A new theory for the Permian extinction - massive release of methane from the oceans may have killed half of all life on earth:

Researchers at the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution at the University of Copenhagen claim to have discovered the cause of the extinction of over half the Earth's marine life 200 million years ago, reports Fox News. The cause, it seems, was a giant "Earth burp."


That is, a huge quantity of methane being released into the atmosphere.

The methane release likely originated from the sea floor, according to the study, and added a huge amount of carbon to the atmosphere, killing many species. LiveScience reports that the find suggests this event killed a number of species, paving the way for the rise of the dinosaurs.

The gas was releases over a period of 600,000 years, according to the report.

Scientists came to this conclusion by analyzing the chemical content of plant leaves preserved in the sediment at the bottom of the Tethys Ocean. By studying the different carbon isotopes in the sediment, scientists were able to draw these conclusions, reports LiveScience.

The researchers found a peak in favor of the lighter isotope, carbon 12, for a stint lasting about 20,000 to 40,000 years.

A strong shift in the ratio indicated that methane, not carbon dioxide, was responsible, Ruhl said.

Here is the Wiki article on the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event.

Wow! Science.

3 ton wombat terrorized Australia 2.5 million years ago.

Ok, I'm not sure if "terrorized" is the right word.  It is a wombat, after all.

But, still, it is the biggest marsupial known to science!

From the "Whisky Tango Foxtrot" File....

Italian Seismologists Charged With Manslaughter for Not Predicting 2009 Quake.

Italian government officials have accused the country's top seismologist of manslaughter, after failing to predict a natural disaster that struck Italy in 2009, a massive devastating earthquake that killed 308 people.


A shocked spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) likened the accusations to a witch hunt.

"It has a medieval flavor to it -- like witches are being put on trial," the stunned spokesman told FoxNews.com.

Enzo Boschi, the president of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), will face trial along with six other scientists and technicians, after failing to predict the future and the impending disaster.

Earthquakes are, of course, nearly impossible to predict, seismologists say. In fact, according to the website for the USGS, no major quake has ever been predicted successfully.

And:

The seven scientists were placed under investigation almost a year ago, according to a news story on the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) -- the world's largest general-science society and a leading voice for the interests of scientists worldwide.


Alan Leschner, chief executive of AAAS, said his group wrote a letter to the Italian government last year -- clearly, to no avail.

"Whoever made these accusations misunderstands the nature of science, the nature of the discipline and how difficult it is to predict anything with the surety they expect," Leschner told FoxNews.com.

The case could have a "chilling effect" on scientists, he noted.

"It reflects a lack of understanding about what science can and can't do," he said. "And frankly, it will have an effect of intimidating scientists ... This just feels like either scapegoating or an attempt to intimidate a community. This really seems inappropriate."

Judge Giuseppe Romano Gargarella said that the seven defendants had supplied "imprecise, incomplete and contradictory information," in a press conference following a meeting held by the committee 6 days before the quake, reported the Italian daily Corriere della Sera

In doing so, they "thwarted the activities designed to protect the public," the judge said.

Boschi's lawyer, Marcello Melandri, has been taking the news badly, reported the AAAS story. He was particularly stunned because -- despite of the near impossibility of predicting earthquakes Boshi had been indicating that a large earthquake would be coming, though he did not say when.

Melandri told the AAAS that Boschi never sought to reassure the population of L'Aquila that there was no threat. On the contrary, the INGV head made it clear that "at some point it is probable that there will be a big earthquake."

In addition to Boschi, those facing trial are:

* Franco Barberi, committee vice president;

* Bernardo De Bernardinis, at the time vice president of Italy's Civil Protection Department and now president of the country's Institute for Environmental Protection and Research;

* Giulio Selvaggi, director of the National Earthquake Center;

* Gian Michele Calvi, director of the European Center for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering;

* Claudio Eva, an earth scientist at the University of Genoa; and

* Mauro Dolce, director of the office of seismic risk at the Civil Protection Department

Hah! That will teach those know-it-all geologists with their know-it-all geologist smirks and their condescending geologist attitude, all full of "I'm a geologist so fall down and worship me," to make better predictions.

Seriously, WTF?

Unless this is blow-back from the New Atheist agitprop and people are starting to believe that "Science can tell us everything."

Science news you can use...

...or, actually, this explains quite a lot.

At least concerning drinking and eye color, because I am taking "the 5th" on the other items, although the part about being able to distinguish between liberals and conservatives by watching their eyes might be useful in jury selection.

According to this Cracked post on "6 intimate details you can totally tell by looking at them," you don't want to get into a drinking contest with a blue eyed man.

There comes a time in every man's life when it will be necessary to drink another guy under the table. Maybe you're trying to win a bet, or prove your manliness, or maybe you're in a terrible rom-com and the only thing that stands between you and the woman you love is the varsity liquor drinking team that challenged you to a duel. We don't know ... we don't write the rules.


So naturally you'll pick out some blond-haired, blue-eyed pretty boy who looks like two Bud Lights would have him over a toilet. An hour later, you are praying for death. And to think this all could have been avoided if you had known how to pick out a lightweight drinker.

Picking the blue-eyed guy was a bad move. It turns out, eye color is an amazing indicator of how much alcohol a person can drink before it affects them.

A study of thousands of white men (all of them prisoners) found that for some reason, those with light eye colors like blue, green, gray or hazel, can handle more alcohol than men with dark eyes. And a totally different study of almost 2,000 women found that the same held true for them.

Even more interesting is the fact that this result was predicted before the study. Because apparently brown-eyed folks are more sensitive to medication and other stimuli, and that sensitivity is what prompts them to stop when they've had enough. Blue-eyed people, on the other hand, require more alcohol to get buzzed, so they develop a greater tolerance for the stuff. And according to the study, the blue-eyed people are also more likely to be alcohol abusers.

As for what eye color has to do with alcohol tolerance, scientists are still on the fence. One theory is that the amount of melanin in the eyes is directly related to the amount of melanin insulating neurons in the central nervous system, and that more melanin somehow translates to quicker nerve transmissions. In any case, you might want to think again before challenging someone with baby blues to a drinking contest.

So, there is an "upside" to the redheaded "feel more pain/pain medication not as effective" thing.

On the other hand, that combination makes for some miserable hang-overs.

So, if you are a blue-eyed redhead, your mutant superpowers are "feel more pain" and "drink heavily."

Evil-doers beware!

What an awesome universe!

Scientists discover Jupiter-like exo-planet that rotates the opposite way from the rotation of its sun!

Read the linked story to find out why that is so cool and how it may have happened.

Cool Science.

Vegetarian primate collateral ancestor of human beings ate grass "like a cow."

 It turns out that the strong-jawed, big-toothed human relative colloquially known as “Nutcracker man” may never have tasted a nut. In a finding that questions traditional ideas of early hominid diet, researchers discovered that Paranthropus boisei, a hominid living in east Africa between 2.3 and 1.2 million years ago, mostly fed on grasses and sedges. “Frankly, we didn’t expect to find the primate equivalent of a cow dangling from a remote twig of our family tree,” researcher Matt Sponheimer told MSNBC.

Mars.

A substantial portion of Mars atmosphere is tied up as "dry ice" at its poles.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect...

...or why the principle that "you can choose be stupid or you can be a jerk, but you can't be both at the same time" is so often honored in the breach.

Observation #4 of this Cracked article on "5 Things TV Writers Apparently Believe About Smart People" is "It's Okay To Be A Dick, As Long As You're Smart" - which, lord knows is why I spent all that becoming an expert in the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy...well, that and the fact that it is a "babe magnet -

Yes, the writers always set it up so that the good the character does outweighs the bad. In real life, on the other hand, the people who think they're geniuses overwhelmingly are absolutely not. Seriously -- it's science. The more you learn about a subject, the less likely you are to consider yourself an expert (because you have actual knowledge of how much you don't know). It's the guy who has read two books on the subject and worked in the field for a year who's more likely to decide he's graduated to the league of smug, condescending assholes. We have a feeling that soon the offices of the world will be full of sarcastic douchebags because they came through on one project and now believe they're the indispensible Dr. House of their operation.

Here's the linked Wiki article on the "Dunning - Kruger Effect":

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence. Competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning (1999) conclude, "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others" (p. 1127). [2]


The effect is not specifically limited to the observation that ignorance of a topic is conducive to overconfident assertions about it, and Dunning and Kruger cite a study saying that 94% of college professors rank their work as "above average" (relative to their peers), to underscore that the highly intelligent and informed are hardly exempt.[3] Rather, the effect is about paradoxical defects in perception of skill, in oneself and others, regardless of the particular skill and its intellectual demands, whether it is chess, playing golf[4] or driving a car.[3]

So, apparently, if you don't think you are an expert in something you may be an expert, unless, of course, you really aren't an expert in it.  On the other hand, if you think that you are an expert in something, you most likely probably aren't.

Got that?

Actually, this is surprisingly applicable to me this week.  I had to explain to a person who had spent over a decade in a particular job that, yes, she really was an expert in that job despite her belief that she wasn't.

I've noticed that we all take our own knowledge as the baseline for what everyone knows, which is why "[c]ompetent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding." ["What? Everyone doesn't know about the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy???? How is that possible?"]

Honey, the good news is that you've helped to discover a stunning breakthrough in science...

...the bad news is that it is in the area of sexually transmitted infectious diseases.

A U.S. vector biologist appears to have accidentally written virological history simply by having sex with his wife after returning from a field trip to Senegal. A study just released in Emerging Infectious Diseases suggests that the researcher, Brian Foy of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, passed to his wife the Zika virus, an obscure pathogen that causes joint pains and extreme fatigue. If so, it would be the first documented case of sexual transmission of an insect-borne disease.

There are some stunningly lame strategies that a guy uses to explain how his wife caught an STD - usually prior to being served with divorce papers - publishing one as a scientific paper is certainly novel.

Larry Niven call your office.

Astronomers observe star ripped apart by tidal forces from Black Hole.

This kind of thing was cutting edge speculative fiction forty years ago, and, today, it's a news story.

Cool.

Conclusive arguments for Intelligent Design.

Cracked's list of "10 creepy plants that should not exist."

The Chinese Fleeceflower:

The Chinese use this plant in their traditional medicine for kidney health, strong bones and hair restoration, and as a mild laxative, and it's ... Hey, wait a second ...

OK, weird, it's a root that looks like a little dude. But that's a rare, onetime fluke, right? It's not like that's what this species typically looks like or anything.

It looks fake, but then there are these.

That's just screwy.