Science

Alien Star Missed Us by Less Than a Light-Year, Scientists Say

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It's been called Nibiru, Nemesis, Planet X, and Heroclubus, all associated with this idea that a large celestial body passes by our solar system periodically to mark the end of the previous age, and the beginning of a new one. Mainstream science generally rejects this idea, but it was recently discovered that a red dwarf star really did pass close by 70,000 years ago.

Astronomers say a red dwarf star and its brown dwarf companion passed within a light-year of our own sun 70,000 years ago, moving through the comets in the outer reaches of the Oort Cloud that surrounds our solar system.

The star is known as WISE J072003.20-084651.2, or Scholz's star. Today, it's 20 light-years away from us in the constellation Monoceros. But in a study published by Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers say it passed right by us at a distance of 5 trillion miles (8 trillion kilometers, or 52,000 astronomical units, or 0.8 light-years). No other star has been known to come that close.

Scholz's star would typically be too faint to be seen with the naked eye from Earth, even during the close encounter. But the research team, led by the University of Rochester's Eric Mamajek, says there's a chance that our ancestors in Africa might have seen a magnetically induced flare-up.

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Scientists Discover That Eyes Are Windows To The Soul

By Steven Bancarz|  The eye is the window to the universe, and some would say they are also windows to the soul..  We have heard this phrase get passed around before: “The eyes are the windows of the soul”.  People usually say this when they can see pain, anger, or some other emotion in somebody else’s eyes.  But recent research gives a whole new meaning to this phrase.  Eyes not only windows to emotions, they are windows to the soul.

How? The answer has to do with the actual eyeball itself.  Everyone has a different structure of lines, dots and colours within the iris of their eye.  Some people may have similar eye colour to each other, but the lines and dots on the iris are as unique as a fingerprint.

Although they vary from person to person, there are certain patterns contained within the iris which are widespread, and scientists at Orebro University in Sweden wanted to see if these patterns correlated with specific personality traits.

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'Cloud' over Mars leaves scientists baffled

Plumes seen reaching high above the surface of Mars are causing a stir among scientists studying the atmosphere on the Red Planet.

On two separate occasions in March and April 2012, amateur astronomers reported definite plume-like features developing on the planet.

The plumes were seen rising to altitudes of over 250 km above the same region of Mars on both occasions. By comparison, similar features seen in the past have not exceeded 100 km.

"At about 250 km, the division between the atmosphere and outer space is very thin, so the reported plumes are extremely unexpected," says Agustin Sanchez-Lavega of the Universidad del País Vasco in Spain, lead author of the paper reporting the results in the journal Nature.

The features developed in less than 10 hours, covering an area of up to 1000 x 500 km, and remained visible for around 10 days, changing their structure from day to day.

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FDA Discovers Fraud In Pharmaceutical Studies, Then Helps Hide It

Agents of the Food and Drug Administration know better than anyone else just how bad scientific misbehavior can get. Reading the FDA’s inspection files feels almost like watching a highlights reel from a Scientists Gone Wild video. It’s a seemingly endless stream of lurid vignettes—each of which catches a medical researcher in an unguarded moment, succumbing to the temptation to do things he knows he really shouldn’t be doing. Faked X-ray reports. Forged retinal scans. Phony lab tests. Secretly amputated limbs. All done in the name of science when researchers thought that nobody was watching.

That misconduct happens isn’t shocking. What is: When the FDA finds scientific fraud or misconduct, the agency doesn’t notify the public, the medical establishment, or even the scientific community that the results of a medical experiment are not to be trusted. On the contrary. For more than a decade, the FDA has shown a pattern of burying the details of misconduct. As a result, nobody ever finds out which data is bogus, which experiments are tainted, and which drugs might be on the market under false pretenses. The FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud not just from the public, but also from its most trusted scientific advisers, even as they were deciding whether or not a new drug should be allowed on the market. Even a congressional panel investigating a case of fraud regarding a dangerous drug couldn't get forthright answers. For an agency devoted to protecting the public from bogus medical science, the FDA seems to be spending an awful lot of effort protecting the perpetrators of bogus science from the public.

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19 Year Old Who Built a $350 Robotic Arm Teaches You How to Build It Free

A 19 year old recent high school graduate who built a $350 robotic arm controlled with thoughts is showing any one how to build it free. His goal is to let anybody who is missing an arm use the robotic arm at a vastly cheaper cost than a prosthetic limb that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

When he was 14, Easton LaChappelle built a robotic hand controlled by a wireless control glove. He used LEGOs to back the device, motors from toy airplanes, fishing line for the tendons, and electrical tubing for the fingers.

Mr. LaChappelle entered the robotic hand into a the 2011 Colorado State science fair where he won third place. He says his inspiration for the hand hit him when he met a 7-year old girl who was born without her right arm. She used a prosthetic limb that cost $80,0000. He immediately began to work on a dramatically cheaper alternative.

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Scientists Find Fractal Patterns in Variable Stars

RR Lyrae variables are at least 10 billion years old and their brightness can vary by 200 percent over half a day, which is hard to study from Earth due to our day-night cycle.

“Unlike our Sun, RR Lyrae stars shrink and swell, causing their temperatures and brightness to rhythmically change like the frequencies or notes in a song,” Dr Lindner explained.

While some of these stars pulsate with a single frequency, observations confirm that others pulsate with multiple frequencies.

Several of these stars, including the RR Lyrae variable star KIC 5520878, pulsate with two principal frequencies, which are nearly in the golden ratio. Astronomers call these stars ‘golden’ RR Lyrae variables.

“We call these stars ‘golden’ because the ratio of two of their frequency components is near the golden mean, which is an irrational number famous in art, architecture, and mathematics,” Dr Lindner said.

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No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

(Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

The widely accepted age of the , as estimated by , is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or . Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin.

Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.

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‘Impossible’ Quantum Space Engine Actually Works – NASA Test Suggests

A couple of years ago, researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center discovered a thruster system which actually generates thrust, despite requiring absolutely zero propellant. The implications of this discovery are far-reaching; applications for space flight and other technologies which require propulsion could one day become far cheaper, allowing space exploration to expand exponentially. The existence of this technology also further validates the fact that energy can be derived from tapping into the quantum vacuum, also known as “zero-point” energy or “free energy.”

This type of technology uses quantum vacuum fluctuations to create thrust.

“A century from now, it will be well known that: the vacuum of space which fills the universe is itself the real substratum of the universe; vacuum in a circulating state becomes matter; the electron is the fundamental particle of matter and is a vortex of vacuum with a vacuum-less void at the center and is dynamically stable; the speed of light relative to vacuum is the maximum speed that nature has provided and is an inherent property of the vacuum; vacuum is a subtle fluid unknown in material media; vacuum is mass-less, continuous, non viscous, and incompressible and is responsible for all the properties of matter...

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NASA's Europa Mission to Hunt Down Life's Niches

Europa is thought to possess a vast sub-surface ocean beneath its thick icy crust, kept in a liquid state via tidal interactions with the gas giant. Possibly containing three times the volume of water held in Earth’s oceans — and because on Earth, where there’s water, there’s life — astrobiologists hypothesize that Europa’s ocean might be quite a cozy place for biology to gain a foothold.

“Europa’s ocean, to the best of our knowledge, isn’t that harsh of an environment,” said astrobiologist Kevin Hand, JPL’s Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration, at a special JPL “Icy Worlds” media event on Monday.

Although Europa’s ocean may be up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) deep, the conditions at the bottom of that monstrous abyss may be akin to the environment at the bottom of Earth’s comparatively shallow Mariana Trench, the deepest region of the Pacific Ocean, which is 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) deep. Complex biology has evolved in Mariana’s cold, dark environment, so it’s not such a stretch to think that if there is life in Europa’s ocean, it may also be thriving, extracting energy not from the sun (via photosynthesis), but from chemosynthesis near hydrothermal vents.

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City birds use cigarette butts to smoke out parasites

I find this amazing, how animals seem to have this inherent understanding of natural remedies. Humans have this ability too, though we've become so out of tune with Nature that few are really connected with that part of themselves.

Stuffing cigarette butts into the lining of nests may seem unwholesome. But a team of ecologists says that far from being unnatural, the use of smoked cigarettes by city birds may be an urban variation of an ancient adaptation.

Birds have long been known to line their nests with vegetation rich in compounds that drive away parasites. Chemicals in tobacco leaves are known to repel arthropods such as parasitic mites, so Monserrat Suárez-Rodríguez, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, and her colleagues wondered whether city birds were using cigarette butts in the same way.

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