Genetically-Engineered Human Have Already Been Born
Here is another chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
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The earthshaking news appeared in the medical journal Human Reproduction under the impenetrable headline: “Mitochondria in Human Offspring Derived From Ooplasmic Transplantation.”
The media put the story in heavy rotation for one day, then forgot about it. We all forgot about it.
But the fact remains that the world is now populated by dozens of children who were genetically
engineered. It still sounds like science fiction, yet it’s true.
Woman’s Growth of a 6 centimeter Horn on Forehead Baffles Village
MSN reports:
A woman has alarmed her small village in China after growing a 6cm horn on her forehead in less than a year.
Zhang Ruifang, 101, says she is also concerned about the appearance of a second mark on the other side of her forehead.
“We didn’t pay too much attention to it [at first] … but as time went on a horn grew out of her head,” said Mrs Zhang’s son Zhang Guozheng.
Check Out Antarctica’s ‘Blood Falls’
Creepy and cool. Annalee Newitz writes on io9.com:
From a crack in the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica flows an iron-rich water the color of blood. Scientists believe it comes from a lake frozen beneath the glacier 2 million years ago. And it’s packed with microbes.
First discovered in 1911, the so-called Blood Falls also contain extremophile microbes from the trapped lake, which have evolved for millions of years without light or any outside food source. They have survived by learning to eat sulfur and iron.
China Looks to Master Its Control Over the Weather
Aileen McCabe writes in the National Post:
China plans to step up its use of the weather modification techniques that brought sunny skies for both the Beijing Olympics and last year’s giant military parade on National Day.
The official China Daily newspaper reported Thursday that China is even going to try to regulate the weather during the five-month long Shanghai Expo that begins on May 1.
“The Shanghai event will be a challenge as it lasts 184 days and may be affected by monsoons and high temperatures,” the paper said.
Zheng Guoguang, head of China’s Meteorological Administration, told the paper that manipulating the weather is a developing science that needed more research and study. “It is still at a research-and-use stage and there are still a lot of problems to be resolved.”
Still, Zheng said…
Australian Town Hit by Raining Fish
Now this is biblical, but it does happen from time to time. Check out the video below from the BBC documentary series Supernatural which explains the phenomenon. Simon Crisp writes on Asylum:
For residents of a small Australian town, their usually mundane conversations about the weather have just become a whole lot more interesting.
That’s because in the outback town of Lajamanu it’s started raining fish. Yes, fish. Hundreds of them, falling from the sky. Over the past two days the town’s 660 residents have been bombarded with small white fish which have been falling like rain.
Locals say the fish, mostly spangled perch, have even been alive as they hit the floor. Lucky it wasn’t crocodiles then. Meteorologists believe the fish where sucked up by a tornado — which passed over a river some 300 miles away — before being carried through the sky at 40,000 to 50,000 feet.
Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis, NASA Scientist Says
Alex Morales writes on Bloomberg:
The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.
Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.
“The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).”
The changes can be modeled, though…
The First Test That Proves General Theory of Relativity Wrong
Vlad Tarko writes on Softpedia:
According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a moving mass should create another field, called gravitomagnetic field, besides its static gravitational field. This field has now been measured for the first time and to the scientists’ astonishment, it proved to be no less than one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein’s General Relativity predicts.
This gravitomagnetic field is similar to the magnetic field produced by a moving electric charge (hence the name “gravitomagnetic” analogous to “electromagnetic”). For example, the electric charges moving in a coil produce a magnetic field — such a coil behaves like a magnet. Similarly, the gravitomagnetic field can be produced to be a mass moving in a circle. What the electric charge is for electromagnetism, mass is for gravitation theory (the general…
Plants Are Actively Intelligent: What Does This Mean for Vegetarians?
Ethan A. Huff writes in Natural News:
Most vegetarians believe that by not eating animals, they are preserving life. Everyone knows that plants are alive but they are not viewed with the same level of intelligence as animals are. As science continues to uncover the complex nature of plants, it is becoming more apparent that plants are actively intelligent life that pursue their continued existence in similar ways as do animals.
Research on the subject naturally flies in the face of strict vegetarianism which often insists that eating animals is murder but eating plants is just fine. Yet the facts illustrate that the characteristics of animals used to argue that eating them is murder also apply to plants. In other words, in order for strict vegetarians to be consistent in their beliefs,…
Beware the ‘Flying Toblerones’: Reports of Scottish UFOs Released
The BBC reports:
Reports of “flying Toblerones” and objects travelling at 1,100 mph across the Scottish sky have been released by the Ministry of Defence. The files detail how unidentified objects have been witnessed flying over a range of locations across Scotland.Among them were one from a senior air traffic controller at Prestwick Airport who reported seeing a fast-moving UFO on the airport radar.
While four fishermen spotted a flat, shiny object hovering off the coast. The Scottish accounts are among the thousands of reports made of close encounters with UFOs across the UK which have been released in a joint project between the MoD and the National Archives.
For five years the people both you and I represent have witnessed a phenomenon in the area that has been left unexplained The Prestwick airport…
A Meteorite, Older Than the Sun, Contains ‘Millions of Organic Compounds’
Definitely adding to the ideas for an exogenesis-related explanation for life on Earth. (I won’t go so far to embrace panspermia, although the co-discover of DNA, Francis Crick, did later in life.)
Interesting nonetheless. Doreen Walton writes on BBC News:
Scientists say they have confirmed that a meteorite that crashed into earth 40 years ago contains millions of different organic compounds. It is thought the Murchison meteorite could be even older than the Sun.”Having this information means you can tell what was happening during the birth of the Solar System,” said lead researcher Dr Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin. The results of the meteorite study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We are really excited. When I first studied it and saw the complexity I was so amazed,” said Dr Schmitt-Kopplin, who works at the Institute for Ecological Chemistry in Neuherberg, Germany. Meteorites are like some kind of fossil. When you try to understand them you are looking back in time,” he explained.
The researchers says the identification of many different chemicals shows the primordial Solar System probably had a higher molecular diversity than Earth.
Coast to Coast AM: Time Technology & Research
From the January 31, 2010 show of Coast to Coast AM:
Joining Art Bell for the entire 4-hour program, physicist Dr. David Anderson discussed the state of time technology from his research, as well as other labs around the world. He recapped his work from 2002, when he last appeared with Art on the show. At that juncture, his team had created small time warp fields that he said could accelerate time by 300% within the field, as well as reversing time. He described the initiation of a time warp field as quite spectacular to witness, “between the combinations of different chemical reagents and high energy lasers we use to excite or initiate a time warp field…a lot of light, a lot of energy.”
Since 2002, the effects have increased by “two orders of magnitudes,” both in time acceleration and retardation rates, and living organisms have been successfully tested in the warp fields, he detailed. By regenerating “closed timelike curves” (bending spacetime so time loops back on itself) we’re finding it “just as easy to move backwards in time as well as forward,” Anderson explained.
Giant Monster Crab Found In England
The Daily Mail reports on something scary. This giant crab may kill us all:
With its enormous legs and lethal claws, this monster of the deep is already the biggest crab ever seen in Britain. But astonishingly, the arthropod — which measures a staggering 10ft from claw to claw — is still growing, and could live until it is 100.
Nicknamed ‘Crabzilla’ after the fictional giant monster, the Japanese Spider Crab has legs [that] can straddle a car. They will eventually measure a massive 15 ft. Crabzilla was caught by fishermen in the Pacific Ocean.
Out of the water, the crab looks limp and languid because it cannot support its heavy limbs.
But in its own habitat &mdash up to 2,500 ft down in the cold seas of the ocean — it is a lethal predator.However, it also has predators of its own — humans — as it is considered a delicacy in Japan.
Artificial Stem Cells? Researchers Transform A Skin Cell Into A Nerve Cell
Via h+ magazine:
Stanford researchers just changed a skin cell into a nerve cell. “Only stem cells have been known to do this… The direct conversion of one terminally differentiated cell to another changes the facts, and shakes our understanding – implying that, just maybe, under the right conditions, all cells are pluripotent: with the proper tools, all types of cells may form all types of cells…
“There is much to hope for as we discover this great leap sideways…”
The team bathed skin cells in “delivery viruses” containing proteins to trigger a neuron-specific DNA sequence, and discovered the skin cells changed completely — growing rounder, extending axon-like processes and even forming functional synapses…
This article suggests ultimately research in this field “could lead to revolutionary progress in the fight against Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and neurodegenerative…
What Would You See As You Plummet Into a Black Hole? (Video)
Hazel Muir writes on New Scientist:
A new interactive program reveals the spectacular light show you’d see if you dared to wander close to a black hole. It demonstrates how the extreme gravity of a black hole could appear to shred background constellations of stars, spinning them around as though in a giant black washing machine.
The program’s creators say it could be an excellent tool to familiarise people with the weird ways that black holes warp light. “It’s useful for people to play around with the parameters to study how, for instance, a black hole would distort the constellation Orion,” says Thomas Müller of the University of Stuttgart in Germany.
The Strangest Liquid: Why Water Is So Weird
With a massive blizzard going on in the Northeastern U.S., water (albeit in a frozen form) is on everyone’s mind in this part of the world. Very interesting article, whether you are snowed in or not. Edwin Cartlidge writes in New Scientist:
We are confronted by many mysteries, from the nature of dark matter and the origin of the universe to the quest for a theory of everything. These are all puzzles on the grand scale, but you can observe another enduring mystery of the physical world — equally perplexing, if not quite so grand — from the comfort of your kitchen. Simply fill a tall glass with chilled water, throw in an ice cube and leave it to stand.
The fact that the ice cube floats is the first oddity. And the mystery deepens if you take a thermometer and measure the temperature of the water at various depths. At the top, near the ice cube, you’ll find it to be around 0 °C, but at the bottom it should be about 4 °C. That’s because water is denser at 4°C than it is at any other temperature — another strange trait that sets it apart from other liquids.
A ‘Nobel Torsion Message’ Over Norway?
Richard C. Hoagland writes on Enterprise Mission:
The scientific evidence behind this growing set of suspicions — that the Spiral somehow caused the Russian missile to fail — lies in the extraordinary geometric structure that Enterprise has discovered within the too-perfect, too-concentric “shell-like rings” … making up the Spiral — A key part of this “impossible” geometry consisted of four, exactly 90-degree darkened “reticle-like” divisions of the Spiral … precisely separating it into four radiating quadrants ….
Geometric behavior simply inconceivable for any “randomly rotating … fuel-spewing third-stage rocket ….” This “too-too-regular-geometry …” can only be explained by the presence of —
Some kind of energy-induced, standing-wave-pattern in the Spiral …. Creating — Narrow, uniform-width concentric striations … ordered in an underlying medium (the leaking third-stage fuel?) by an external “forcing 3-D energy pattern” —
Then, it hit me: “Chladni Figures!”
Let Doctor Who Explain This Supernova…
Choose your favorite doctor for this story … since David Tennant recently left the role (and did a fine job in my opinion) will pay dues in the graphic. Here’s to expressive scientists and thanks to Charlie Jane Anders for writing about this story on the must visit site io9.com:
Astronomers witnessed a supernova in progress, observing jets of material moving at relativistic speeds: up to half the speed of light. Scientist Megan Argo wanted to explain this exciting discovery to the public, so she wrote a Doctor Who story.
As the highly technical press release explains, scientists were able to detect “relativistic outflow” in a supernova for the first time, thanks to unprecedented cooperation between radio telescopes using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). They discovered that one narrow bipolar jet of material was moving at half the speed of light.
But Argo, who works at Curtin University, came up with a much cooler way to explain this discovery to the public, the story called “Doctor Who And The Silver Spiral.” David Tennant’s Doctor, accompanied by Martha, visit this supernova up close and personal, and get caught up in the very same shock wave that astronomers just discovered. Argo does a great job of capturing the Tennant Doctor’s verbal tics.
‘Lost’ Season Six Premiere Has ‘Rock Solid’ Science
Erin McCarthy writes on Popular Mechanics:
Last season, the castaways detonated a hydrogen bomb in an attempt to rewrite history. Popular Mechanics talks to Michio Kaku, host of the Science Channel’s Sci-Fi Science, to find out just how close the science in the season six premiere comes to fact. Beware! Spoilers ahead.
The opening moments of Lost’s season six premiere, “LA X,” look eerily familiar: We’re back on Oceanic Flight 815. But something is off. Yes, reluctant hero Jack Shephard is still flirting with an Australian flight attendant and talking an anxious Rose through a patch of turbulence while her husband is in the bathroom, just as we saw in season one. Suddenly, the turbulence gets worse, and then … it stops. Instead of breaking apart and crashing on a mysterious island,…
Hubble Detects Mysterious Spaceship-Shaped Object Traveling at 11,000 MPH
Jesus Diaz writes a very thought-provoking article on Gizmodo:
Hubble has discovered a mysterious X-shaped object traveling at 11,000mph. NASA says that P/2010-A2 may be a comet, product of the collision between two asteroids. Or a Klingon Bird of Prey. Either way, UCLA investigator David Jewitt is excited:
This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets. The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies.
OK, David, we will believe you until Jerry Bruckheimer finish his next movie, in which a “comet” suddenly stops, turns to Earth, and starts firing anti-matter rays…
