Cool science stuff

[Buck]

I'm kind of geeky about science, and not long ago Chris the biscuit suggested I start a science thread.
Here's the first entry: Prosthetics eye that really see.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-13/blind-mice-given-sight-after-device-cracks-retinal-code.html

 

[Killick]

Rejoice! Actually, was reading that this morning. Pretty amazing shirt.

 

[bigpern23]

It's amazing they could be that close to giving sight to blind humans and, yet, they have not yet gotten funding for clinical trials. I would think that would be a no-brainer for the medical industry.

 

[93Devil]

The seeing eye dog lobby is a bench.

 

[Bradley Guire]

There's more profit to be made in treatments, not cures.

 

[Buck]

New earth expected soon:
http://www.space.com/19044-alien-earth-exoplanets-2013.html

 

[qtlaw]

My wife subscribed to Popular Mechanics for the kids and I love flipping through it every month. Amazing how much is outside the day to day mainstream.

 

[Buck]

I think it's awesome. Imagine confirming the Higgs boson and then finding a confirmed earth-class planet in back-to-back years.

Very cool time to be alive.

 

[turski7]

Yay science! Great stuff.

 

[TrooperBari]

New earth expected soon:
http://www.space.com/19044-alien-earth-exoplanets-2013.html

Plenty of candidates out there.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jan/08/kepler-satellite-461-new-planets

Astronomers have found possible evidence for 461 new planets outside our solar system, using measurements from Nasa's planet-hunting satellite, Kepler.

The data has also been used by scientists to predict that the Milky Way could contain up to 17bn Earth-sized planets orbiting stars.

Several of the new planet candidates are in their star's habitable zone, the region around a planetary system where liquid water and, possibly, life might exist.

The discovery, announced this week at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Long Beach, California, pushes the number of potential exoplanets to 2,740, orbiting 2,036 stars.

And as long as we're keeping our eyes on the skies, you can catch a glimpse of Apophis -- named for the Egyptian god of death and darkness -- tomorrow night.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/across-the-universe/2013/jan/07/apophis-potentially-hazardous-asteroid-earth-wednesday

Although most asteroids are found in the belt of space between Mars and Jupiter, not all of them reside there. Apophis belongs to a group known as the Aten family. These do not belong to the asteroid belt and spend most of their time inside the orbit of the Earth, placing them between our planet and the sun.

That makes them particularly dangerous because they spend the majority of their orbit close to the sun, whose overwhelming glare obscures them to telescopes on Earth – rather like a second world war fighter ace approaching out of the sun.

Having crossed outside Earth's orbit, Apophis will appear briefly in the night-time sky. Wednesday 9 January will afford astronomers the rare opportunity to bring a battery of telescopes to bear: from optical telescopes to radio telescopes to the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory Herschel. Two of the biggest unknowns that remain to be established are the asteroid's mass and the way it is spinning. Both of these affect the asteroid's orbit and without them, precise calculations cannot be made.

 

[TrooperBari]

At the risk of contradicting the thread title, this science is the opposite of cool. It's getting so hot in Australia -- 52 degrees Celsius (129 F) -- that they're having to add new colors to the temperature maps.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2013/jan/08/australia-bush-fires-heatwave-temperature-scale

Global warming is turning the volume of extreme weather up, Spinal-Tap-style, to 11. The temperature forecast for next Monday by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology is so unprecedented - over 52C - that it has had to add a new colour to the top of its scale, a suitably incandescent purple.

Australia's highest recorded temperature is 50.7C, set in January 1960 in South Australia. The record for the hottest average day across the nation was set on Monday, at 40.3C, exceeding a 40-year-old record. "What makes this event quite exceptional is how widespread and intense it's been," said Aaron Coutts-Smith, the weather bureau's climate services manager. "We have been breaking records across all states and territories in Australia over the course of the event so far." Wildfires are raging across New South Wales and Tasmania.

 

[Batman]

Yay science! Great stuff.

Just because ...