News

OK, so after a long time let me write about a few things that raised my curiosity.

...In The Beginning

talking about billions of years before of our times, to be exact, 13.2 billion years ago, +/- a "few "million of years probably, a star was formed, now coded as HE 1523-0901. So what is the big deal?
Apart from the obvious and jaw drooping 13.2 BILLion YEARS?????????????OK let's see what I can come up with:
First concentration of metal is low ( I do not know the significant of that one, probably has to do with the age determination), it is located in the Milky Way (which has a diameter of around 100,000 light years, those are the years we are looking back to the past watching the far end of our galaxy), aaaaaand keep in mind that the BIG BANG is located like 13,7 billion years ago, this one is one of the oldest stars founded and still active (I cannot find its distance from earth, so I do not know how much back in time the good fellows looking at). Soooooooo, as physorg calls it, it is a true galactic fossil, alive and kicking.








Our beautifull "milky way" as seen from death valey in U.S.

The next one is just a note of something else I read at physorg.
SKorea's LG Philipps develops first A4 colour e-paper. No more paper, tons of it are going to waste anyway, so why produce more, I would love to have one of that in my pocket, full of newspapers, books, comics, art, anything... but hush my foolish heart, the time for revolution is not here yet!
For more technical data, as we read from engadget.com:

A4-sized rendition of the vivid bendable display has successfully been developed in its labs. The panel reportedly measures just 35.9-centimeters diagonally, is 0.3-millimeter thick, and can display up to 4,096 colors while maintaining the energy efficient qualities that inevitably come with using energy only when the image changes. Unsurprisingly, the company plans on marketing the device as one of convenience and doesn't hesitate to tout its greenness in the process, but unfortunately, it failed to mention when this would find its way out into the general public.

Next on somedayitwillbe...

Another scientific thing, and cosmology again from newscientist.com. It's a vast and unknown universe (but sometimes is better to focus on the one we are standing on)



Those lovable darlings (who never misses a chance to attend a meeting, a scientific one, and get stoned/drunk at the dinner/parties) found out a planet coded GJ 436 with a four times the width of Earth surrounded by "hot ice". An exotic form of water that although it is under 300° C or more the gravity keeps it in "liquid" form.





PARTHENOGENESIS

About another thing I wanted to talk about is the finding of female sharks that are able to fertilize themselves, without the need of a male, a PURE PARTHENOGENESIS. The offsprings are genetically identical to their mother. And I quote:

Mahmood Shivji -- Nova Southeastern's Guy Harvey Research Institute director and one of the paper's authors -- said that he and his colleagues determined that a byproduct formed when sharks produce eggs, known as a sister polar body, had fused with an unfertilized egg to produce the baby shark, whose DNA had only half as much genetic variability as the mother.

"Yes, indeed this is a virgin birth," Shivji said in an interview, adding that this could help explain why other sharks have suddenly been born in captivity, like a bamboo shark that appeared in Detroit's Belle Isle Aquarium in 2002.

"We have now demonstrated that sharks are actually able to use an alternative, previously unknown reproductive pathway, which is parthenogenesis. The problem here is that this alternative reproductive pathway results in offspring that have much lower genetic diversity," he said.

That's all for now folks. It's 00:05 and I need FOOD, and a beer but the fridge is empty. CRAP, pfffffffffffffff