Missing planet explains solar system’s structure
All but 10 per cent of the four-planet simulations wound up with only three left, he says. But in half the five-planet simulations, they ended with the four in a solar system that looks remarkably like our own. The best results occurred when the fifth planet started off between Saturn and Uranus and ended up being ejected after an encounter with Jupiter…  [read more]

Quantum mechanics difficult to grasp? Too bad
To those uncomfortable with quantum theory’s picture of wavelike particles that are simultaneously everywhere, their message in The Quantum Universe is clear: tough. Scientists are, they tell us, “not mandated to produce a theory that bears any relation to the way we perceive the world at large” [read more]

A wedding featuring Bastion’s narrator? For one fan, it happened
The story begins simply: after becoming a fan of the game’s soundtrack, Greschner sent an e-mail to Supergiant about helping out with the ceremony itself. After that? Well, I’ll let him tell the story. [read more]

Christian 4th grade school textbook tries to explain electricity, gives up
As Myers points out, “[W]e can use [electricity] to build hair dryers and Large Hadron Colliders; to make the argument that we are mystified by it is lying to the kids.” I’ll go one further, to subject children to this sort of “education” is anti-intellectual child-abuse… [read more]

As a typical late night of internet reading goes, have so many tabs open and thus, another over the place, article compilation post is born.

Ageing stem cells from centenarian rejuvenated
PARIS: Age-degraded cells from elderly patients upwards of 100 years old have been successfully transformed into rejuvenated stem cells “indistinguishable” from those found in their embryonic state. [full article]

Kids are watching too much TV; if they’re under two, any TV is too much
That message isn’t reaching parents, however; 66 percent of children under two have watched TV, even though their brains can’t actually process the information meaningfully. [full article]

How Celebrities Took Over Cartoon Voice Acting
… when it comes to movies, recent years have seen big-screen Hollywood voice acting dominated by A-List actors like Bruce Willis, Angelina Jolie, and Robert DeNiro. The latest celebrity-dominated animated film comes now in the Shrek-inspired Puss in Boots, which represents the unholy trinity of Hollywood’s recent favorite trends: 3D, prequels, and spinoffs. [full article]

Lung regeneration closer to reality with new discovery
the research team reports that they have uncovered the biochemical signals in mice that trigger generation of new lung alveoli, the numerous, tiny, grape-like sacs within the lung where oxygen exchange takes place. Specifically, the regenerative signals originate from the specialized endothelial cells that line the interior of blood vessels in the lung. [full article]

She’s Her Own Twin
Lydia Fairchild was a proud mother who faced the most unusual of challenges. She had to fight in court to prove the children born from her body were her own.
The Department of Social Services called Fairchild and told her to come in immediately. What Fairchild thought was a routine meeting with a social worker turned into an interrogation. The proud mother was suddenly a criminal suspect. [full article]

Finally, after the internet got so saturated with ‘platitudes’ from every tom, dick and dickhead to the point it was impossible to distinguish the genuine ones from the fakes… a properly heartfelt tribute to Steve Jobs from his once long lost sister… https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

…but I liked this write up way too much not to post it. Reading it reminded me of my days as a film tutor and that great saying “we are drowning in information and starving for knowledge” (except these days, most aren’t even peckish).

The article is a fantastic overview of how today’s society ‘views’ media, despite the still growing access and availability with technology to old films and information on them, people still don’t know who Bogart is. Seriously.

Anyway, this guy is way more articulate and on point than I at all, so check it out at https://www.soundonsight.org/the-%E2%80%9Cgray-ones%E2%80%9D-fade-to-black/ and I’ll get back to being a digital hermit.

It’s a slow, yet all over the show week this week…

Second experiment hints at seasonal dark matter signal
Feng suggests that the discrepancy among all the experimental results may simply be due to the assumption that WIMPs interact the same way with protons and neutrons. If this is not the case, that could explain differences in the signals from xenon and germanium detectors, which each have a different ratio of protons to neutrons (arxiv.org/abs/1102.4331). “These experiments may look inconsistent, but a small theoretical tweak can bring everything in to line,” he told New Scientist.

Sky survey maps distant universe in 3D
Past surveys have relied on galaxies to map the universe (bright dots in the image’s central region). Now cosmic cartographers have probed even greater distances – to about 11 billion light years away – using intergalactic gas clouds (pictured along the perimeter in blue). The gas clouds are detectable because they absorb light from even more distant objects called quasars, blazing beacons powered by supermassive black holes that are devouring surrounding matter.

Beating the traffic before it even exists
The Smarter Traveler Research Initiative blends real-time traffic data with past traffic patterns to predict congestion up to 40 minutes into the future. Drivers are then automatically sent an email or text message of conditions on their regular commute before their trip begins.

One thing I’m quickly discovering about having this blog again is that I don’t feel so guilty about always closing so many tabs at the end of a web surfing session and I finally have an excuse to clear out my bookmark folders which is so backed up, it’d make the Collyer brothers blush.

Anyway, here’s some articles…

Citizen Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick’s films were landmark events – majestic, memorable and richly researched. But, as the years went by, the time between films grew longer and longer, and less and less was seen of the director. What on earth was he doing? Two years after his death, Jon Ronson was invited to the Kubrick estate and let loose among the fabled archive. He was looking for a solution to the mystery – this is what he found.

One bit in particular I loved…

(In fact, I soon discover, Kubrick did write back to fans, on random, rare occasions. I find two replies in total. Maybe he only ever wrote back twice. One reads, “Your letter of 4th May was overwhelming. What can I say in reply? Sincerely, Stanley Kubrick.” The other reads, “Dear Mr William, Thank you for writing. No comment about A Clockwork Orange. You will have to decide for yourself. Sincerely, Stanley Kubrick.”)

Also…

China unveils rival to International Space Station
The project heralds a shift in the balance of power among spacefaring nations. In June, the US space agency, Nasa, will mothball its whole fleet of space shuttles, in a move that will leave only the Russians capable of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The $100bn (£60.5bn) outpost is itself due to fly only until 2020, but may be granted a reprieve until 2028.

Spaaaaaaaace.  It’s awesome. There’s also a further write up on the facts at bad astronomer here.  And finally…

Zaarly Makes It Possible To Buy Pretty Much Anything
That’s where Zaarly comes in. Zaarly is an almost shockingly simple app that lets you list whatever it is you’re looking for, be it a set of 17th century porcelain shepherdesses, tickets to an Evanescence concert, reservations at a fully booked restaurant or whatever else you can imagine paying for the privilege of having. Zaarly makes it so that anything–object, experience or otherwise–can be for sale.

The US lets go of the internet – will anyone notice?
POLITICAL power is rarely ceded without good reason. So eyebrows were raised last week when the US Department of Commerce decided to relax its grip on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body responsible for the naming system that ensures that when you type a web address, your browser knows where to go.

In future, governments and other international organisations will be able to nominate staff to sit on one of ICANN’s three newly created steering committees, something the DoC had resisted for years. “What it really means,” says ICANN’s chief executive Rod Beckstrom, “is that we’re going global.” [new scientist]

Guardian gagged from reporting parliament
Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret. [guardian.co.uk]

Other points of interest include a great article/site I recommend checking out if your not a prude oppressive supressor is They Shoot Porn Stars Don’t They.

And finally, one of the coolest fun things ever… Dead Fly Art. So twistedly bizzare, I love it.

Naked Man in Wrong Room
The man told police he been brought back to the hotel from town by a woman but at some point wandered out of her room into the hall stark naked.
” He then wandered into another room, occupied by a husband and wife, had curled up and gone to sleep, he said.” [full article]

Spy probe images Apollo landing sites
NASA’s newly launched Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has snapped images of hardware left on the moon by the Apollo astronauts… [full article with gallery]

Giant ‘soap bubble’ found floating in space
It looks like a soap bubble or perhaps even a camera fault, but the image at right is a newly discovered planetary nebula. [full article]

NASA Wants To Move The Earth
Scientists have found an unusual way to prevent our planet overheating: move it to a cooler spot.
“All you have to do is hurtle a few comets at Earth, and its orbit will be altered. Our world will then be sent spinning into a safer, colder part of the solar system.” [full article]

Ryan Adams was great. Though I’m not the biggest fan of his latest album, he still put on a great show and played a lot of personal favourites from previous albums. Well worth it.

I’m not going to Kings of Leon and just to save my sanity for that decision, I’ve convinced myself that they won’t play as many of their awesome songs from Aha Shake Heartbreak (which I still love and play constantly) and will instead perform more from their later albums which are nice, but not as awesome.

Meanwhile what I’m really looking forward to is The Kills in March. I just love this duo and their album Midnight Boom was one of my favourites of last year. Should definitely check it or… fuck, anything of theirs.

So onto the interesting stuff of the internet…

Is the Roman Pantheon a colossal sundial?

During the six months of winter, the light of the noon sun traces a path across the inside of the domed roof. During summer, with the sun higher in the sky, the shaft shines onto the lower walls and floor. At the two equinoxes, in March and September, the sunlight coming in through the hole strikes the junction between the roof and wall, above the Pantheon’s grand northern doorway (see diagram). A grille above the door allows a sliver of light through to the front courtyard – the only moment in the year that it sees sunlight if its main doors are closed (see diagram). [full article]

Alien world is slimmest and fastest known

Astronomers have found an extrasolar planet with the smallest diameter yet measured – it is no more than twice as wide as Earth. The rocky body is also the fastest known, whipping around its star in less than a day. [full article]

Giant Titanoboa snake ruled the earth after the dinosaurs

It weighed 1.25 tonnes and with a length of 45 feet or more it would have been able to take on and eat pretty much any other animal it came across.

The newly discovered type of snake, named Titanoboa in honour of its immense size, was for 10 million years the largest land predator on earth.

At least 28 individual specimens have been uncovered in Colombia and, with all of them being around 40 feet long, researchers said it is likely the species could have reached much further than 45 feet. [full article]

Bill Gates Unleashes Mosquito Swarm

TED, the annual gathering of the most pretentious people from the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, just got punk’d. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd.

Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates’s, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn’t feel like TED attendees were taking the threat seriously. “Not only poor people should experience this,” Gates said as he let the bugs loose on his audience. [full article]