Stuck in an office, wishing you were on vacation? I know I am! Fortunately the people at BBC Earth have provided this wonderful distraction, a ten hour video of various underwater scenes. No weird music, just underwater greatness. 🙂
Cool experiment – bowling ball versus feathers, falling
Galileo is usually credited with first describing the idea that objects will fall to the Earth at the same rate, regardless of mass (there’s some debate over whether he actually experimented with this at the Tower of Pisa though). So yes, a feather should fall at the same rate as a bowling ball…but air resistance gets in the way of performing this experiment. Unless you remove the air of course, which is exactly what physicist Brian Cox did in the video below, using an enormous vacuum chamber in Ohio. Great video to show your kids!
Poll shows people aren’t eager to accept science
A recent poll by the AP shows that people accept some science, reject other, which probably isn’t a big surprise to anyone who pays attention to such things. The poll queried 1000 people, which the AP says is good for a margin of error of about 3% (ok, so I’m not accepting the science behind that error calculation, but let’s play along for now). 80% are ‘strongly confident’ that smoking causes cancer, yay! Sadly, only about half believe vaccines are safe and effective (though an extra 30% were ‘somewhat confident’ of that statement); 33% accepted mankind’s role in climate change, and 31% accepted that life on Earth evolved. Not surprisingly though, in keeping with the rejecting of science is an acceptance of hypocrisy – while 31% accept that life on Earth evolved to get to where it is now, 65% accept that antibiotic overuse led to drug-resistant bacteria (so, they accept only limited evolution?). 36% reject the idea that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
We live in a society where the media and many politicians help perpetuate scientific ignorance…and until that changes, I don’t see poll numbers like these changing.
You can view the full results in this PDF or read more over at ArsTechnica.
Video: Awesome chemical reactions
This is too cool! Just about every cool chemical reaction I’d heard of, and many I hadn’t. Don’t try this at home, boys and girls!
Century old film negatives found in Antarctica
Almost a century ago, Ernest Shackleton‘s Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917) left some film negatives in Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s former hut (from his failed 1912 expedition to become the first to reach the South Pole). Amazingly, it’s taken until now for these negatives to be (re)discovered by New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust. It’s pretty cool that the negatives are in such relatively good condition, but it also makes you realize how fragile our current archiving of our lives is – we are totally dependent on relatively fragile digital media.
No, that wasn’t a new type of bacteria found in Antarctica
Remember the new type of bacteria Russian scientists found in a sub-glacial lake in Antarctica? Turns out someone jumped the gun on the announcement and they’re now saying it was actually contamination. Whoops. Though I still wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually discover something like this in one of the many sub-glacial lakes currently being explored down there.
Good news for sharks
Good news for sharks! After years of being killed in unsustainable levels, they’ve finally received international recognition of their threatened numbers and a degree of protection in the form of fishing permits to limit catches (manta rays also received some protection). While on the surface this is encouraging news, keep in mind that catch limits have applied to tuna for years, and been routinely ignored by all but the Sea Shepherds who took it upon themselves to document and stop illegal fishing activities. So, forgive me a bit of pessimism about this latest move to protect sharks. It’s a step in the right direction, but in no way can we consider this matter resolved. Note too that this protection applies to only six species of sharks, out of an estimated 450 (of which about one third are endangered).
New type of bacteria discovered in Antarctica
Not surprisingly, when Russian scientists drilled into an isolated subglacial lake in Antarctica that had been sealed off from the rest of the world for thousands, maybe millions, of years, they discovered and entirely new type of bacteria that didn’t resemble anything like what’s been found on this planet so far. Amazing stuff…read more here.
Avoid whales with your ship – there’s an app for that
We’re probably all tired of hearing ‘there’s an app for that’, but it’s just too cool in this case…there’s an iPad app to help ship captains avoid whales in some shipping routes. Ship/whale collisions are a big deal for the whales, especially endangered Right Whales (not such a big deal for the ships). This app only covers areas close to shore where detection buoys have been set up, but still, it’s a start, and a cool one at that.
(via Treehugger)
Using DNA for data storage
Scientists have figured out how to use DNA for data storage, by storing the data in ternary format (zeros, ones, and twos) rather than binary (ones and zeros) like typical computers. This isn’t just theoretical…they stored and retrieved an audio recording of Martin Luther King, and other information as well. This has the potential to store massive amounts of data in a very compact space for long periods of time…it’ll be interesting to see how this technology is applied in the coming years. Read more here.
This does make me wonder though…if we can manipulate DNA to this level…do we then have the potential to create new forms of life? We’re a long ways away from understanding the entire DNA code and being able to ‘program’ a new strand of DNA to do something, but that won’t stop people from trying.