This is what happens when The Suns warranty runs out

Greetings!

Supernova that may have caused the creation of the solar system left two remnants in some Antarctic sand. H/T MsMolly.

We may have a method of detecting a supernova before it happens.

This should be interesting. Wonder what they’ll find.

A black hole birth may be detectable in advance as well.

This is one of the most energetic Gamma Ray bursts ever detected. Comparatively close (3.6B LY) to us for such things, and probably indicating a rather large supernova.

Fukushima gradually worms it’s way back to the Mainstream. H/T MsMolly.

Meanwhile, it seems clear that either the spent fuel pool or a core exploded. Radiation that high could only come from a fuel rod. This is not news to most here, but it makes the official claims of a hydrogen explosion that much weaker.

I did not know that beekeepers fed high fructose corn syrup to their hives. That may be part of the hive collapse issue. Perhaps we can train cockroaches to pollinate, since they seem to be the only bug we can’t kill.

Map of H7N9 danger areas. 20% mortality, but only about 125 reported cases.

You’re drinking your coffee all wrong. My wife will vouch for the Blue Mountain, it all tastes like bitter dirt to me.

Climate change could bring malaria to UK. Which means it could get to us as well.

Seahorse armor helps design robots. Bean leaves may give us the clue to stopping bedbugs. Nature will help us, if we don’t kill all her hints first.

Hypersonic flight takes one step closer to reality.

Does your calamari taste different recently?

We sent a robot into The Feathered Serpent pyramid. Many WTF moments, including never before seen orbs.

Ten years have passed and the water from SL-9 is still detectable in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Boxturtle (They need to invent an affordable robot that cuts grass)

This is not doing anything but lighting up the Moon

Greetings!

We are now detecting plutonium 20-30km from the Fukushima reactors. They’re calling it “Gross containment failure.” Arnie Gunderson thinks they’re “grossly downplaying“ Cesium releases. They’re admitting contaminated groundwater finally. Not sure about the wall idea discussed there, it would have to go below sea level and underneath the reactors as well. Unh, that’s where the corium is. Fallout level in Tokyo is the highest it’s been since the accident.

Al Gore is fat.

Altruistic punishment in humans called into question.

Even if we stopped burning oil, we’d still have to drill for it for use in lubricants. Well, maybe not. Graphene one layer thick seems to do the job.

Birds navigate by magnetic fields, here’s how they detect them. Pretty cool, eh? Postulate what else could be detected by similar evolution. Gamma rays? Infrasound? Cosmic background radiation?

If you think whales are food, don’t read this.

These guys got the determination of Wile E. Coyote and the patience of Mother Teresa. Waiting almost 100 years for that 9th drop!

One of the few large scale AIDS vaccine trials halted due to abject failure. There was quite a bit of hope for this one.

Of interest to all you gardeners out there. Honestly, I never heard of any of those myths!

Antarctic plankton appears to have started with the ice sheet, not survived in spite of it. Anything about Antarctica and the seas around it interests me. Anybody who wants to help sponsor Boxturtle’s Antarctic cruise, let me know and I’ll give you a paypal ID. And I’ll wear a hat with you logo one during the cruise.

Many people ignore light pollution, but it’s a problem. And it wastes energy. Here’s an LED streetlight that puts more light on the street with less energy by reducing wasted light.

How to sear a squid.

Boxturtle (Confess! How many of you read this? And how many just don’t get it?)

There is more to me than meets the eye

Greetings!

Syracuse University has managed to make and study about a ton of corium. Keeping in mind that conditions in an actual reactor would be much different, it burned through 30cm of concrete an hour.  It only needed to burn through 200cm to leave the containment buildings at Fukushima.

Kepler-62′s solar system looks a lot like ours, with a couple planets in the habitable zone.

Top five discoveries from the Mars Rover Curiosity. Remember that one? Yep, still going.

The gamma rays from Markarian 421 are so bright that they’re saturating the field of view of earth based telescopes. From about 400 million light years away.

34% has always been the maximum theoretical efficiency for a PV type solar cell. Research at MIT has just tossed that limit. In theory, this could boost efficiency to over 70%, I practice it could enable 30% efficient PV cells to be commercially feasible.

Which is good, because the late 20th century was the warmest in 1,400 years. We’re seeing the impact in the permafrost.

Cap and trade is in trouble. The price of carbon emission credts dropped to well below the level to encourage greener tech.  I liked the idea, but it may be the only may to do it is a simple carbon tax. Which would get laughed out of Washington.

New family of Superconductors. Not commercially useful, still strong hygroscopic.

Measles epidemic in Swansea UK has resulted in one death. Here in America, refusal to vaccinate has become so common there is a form for it. Religion will eventually die out as it kills it’s most loyal followers.

Lightning comes in different types. The type that is produced by electron-positron annihilation is called dark lightning and is composed of gamma rays. If you’re in the wrong place (airplane near the center of a storm) at the time of one of these bolts you could receive the equivalent of an intense full body scan.

Giant Squid Bike Rack.

Boxturtle (It’s too wet to cut grass, I’m gonna need a combine to harvest my lawn!)

Greetings!

I hacked your webcam, what the heck ARE you wearing?

Well, I said last week it was unclear is the leaking tanks at Fukushima were isolated cases or a systemic problem. It’s clear now it’s a systemic problem. This is added to the 150,000 sq km of Pacific Ocean already containing a “remarkable amount” of contamination.

Live near the English channel? Nuclear energy has left you a gift, too.

The solar flare seems to have caused minimal damage. This may change by the time this is published, so be tolerant of me.

An apartment building powered by Algae!

However, algae is killing sea otters and probably hurting everything else. Algae blooms are frequently caused by fertilizer runoff.

The China flu could turn evil, but we knew that. This is H7N9. What do those meaningless letters and numbers mean? Well, here’s the detailed description. Useful generalization: Anytime you get a H number other than 1 that infects humans, you’ve got a problem. Our immune systems are really experienced with H1 Nx, the others not so much. But H1nx can be deadly. And the others don’t have to be. Generalization, remember?

$1.3M for Francis Crick’s DNA Nobel prize medal. These come up for sale very rarely, though Falkner’s Literature prize is going up for auction too.

If you’ve coughed up money to name a planet, you were scammed. Unh, nobody here was silly enough to do that, right?

Some lucky Hawaiian astronomers are getting a cool new telescope to play with. Maybe. They still have some paperwork and the natives are restless. Still, it would be great science. Gotta come up with a better name than Thirty Meter Telescope. How times have changed, this was the largest for the entire time I was in school. We studied how they made that mirror in Engineering.

Remember Louise Brown? Remember how amazing this was back then? IVF is common now.

We are going to live to see ice free arctic summers.  Sucks to be a polar bear.

Al Gore is fat.

A material that mimics squid beak can be used to make better medical devices. It solves a problem I never knew existed!

In the olden days, a ram would be attached to the bow a of a ship to be used as a weapon. Here’s how they cast such a massive object 2000 years ago!.

If you don’t believe in evolution, pass this cool study on the evolution of human eyesight on by.

Are we seeing the birth of a giant planet?

Boxturtle (Get your hummingbird feeders out!)

You need me more than I need you

Greetings!

This is important. Wonder what else is brewing in the antibiotic stew that is our food chain.

This is daring. They insist it’s foolproof, because the rock selected will be small enough to guarantee it burns up in the atmosphere. Assuming, of course, they are correct about it’s composition.

It seems we were incorrect about Io’s volcano. They’re not where theory says they should be.

3-D printers can now make synthetic tissues.  We used them to make guns first, though.

Read about the Green Mile. No, not the movie. This is a street in Chicago with smog eating pavement. Speculate about what might happen if this spread.

Tissue rejection kills. Even when donors are a near perfect match, sometime a transplant failed. Here’s part of the reason why.

Sea lions dying from radiation? Maybe, maybe not. But they’re dying of something.

120 tons of radioactive water leaks from Fukushima tanks. 120 sounds like such a small number. but it’s about 30,000 gallons. Probably a drop in the bucket with what they haven’t admitted has already hit the groundwater.

Did anyone think we were safe from that mess? This is going to require a world wide Manhattan Project level of effort to clean up. Do I need to link to any “austerity” stories to show how unlikely that is?

And run it by me again that it’s cheaper?

Scientists hate it when a movie gets closer to correct then they do.

It is actually easier to design a fusion rocket than a power plant. Long term neutron fatigue is going to be an issue, IMO.

The Russians are planning on sending a robot probe to the bottom of Lake Vostok next Antarctic summer (Dec-Feb). My bet is they’ll have to back off if they haven’t solved the contamination issue. I hope they have.

I love history, especially early maritime history. I think the next big thing will be underwater archeology. The Chinese have built a ship just for this.

The French national assembly has a bee in it’s bonnet.

Bees are still hurting here.

Stories like this make me SO sorry I couldn’t post last week. Be sure to read the updates at the bottom of the story.

Box Turtle (This is a comic every sick mind out there should read daily)

Those idiots did WHAT?!?

Greetings!

We shall begin today by pissing everybody off. If I missed your vocation, write about your gripes in the comments. Or gripe about my forgetting you. But since I pissed you off to the point of griping, you can’t consider yourself forgotten, can you?

Things to piss off teachers:

A pistol packing preacher trains teacher’s in guns. For safety.

We cannot find the money to support education, yet we can find the money to fund guns in schools.

It’s all your fault. A cheating conspiracy involves the entire school system. Mitt articulates the GOP position.

Things to piss off cooks:

Prices of everything is going up. But if you shop, you know that.

They’re producing food of questionable safety. And they don’t want us to know it. And the companies don’t want you to grow your own seed.

Fish quota’s are dropping. Of course, you might not want to eat fish anyway.

Things to piss off retirees:

Obama supports chained CPI for SS. So do a lot of Dems, maybe enough to get it through with Nancy’s backing.

Since the solution to our budget problems is for you to die sooner, we’re not going to need as many doctors.

And we’ll use patent law to make sure drug prices stay high. Here’s the current boogyman from pharma on reimportation.

Things to piss off Scientists:

Your political science will only be funded if you promote the “national security or the economic interests of the United States” as certified by the NSF director.

The dangers of making science political.

Don’t think you’re safe just because you’re in Canada.

So, what pisses you off because of your profession? I hate it when they use computer laws to suppress whistleblowers.

Boxturtle (Required squid link. Recall, the Humboldt is one of the few maneaters)

Greetings!

Or at least I hope so. I had almost no net connectivity over the weekend and thus could put together no post. I HOPE I’m connected now and stay connected.

Connectivity is spotty now. If I had to guess, I’d guess the dogs dug up the wire again.

Please accept my apologies. I guess we’ll have to talk amongst ourselves without the benefit of links.

Boxturtle (I think they killed off the wrong person on Walking Dead last night. And the kid looks DANGEROUS)