Courtesy of EurekAlert:
physicists Lawrence Krauss from Case Western Reserve University and Robert J. Scherrer from Vanderbilt University predict that trillions of years into the future, the information that currently allows us to understand how the universe expands will have disappeared over the visible horizon. What remains will be "an island universe" made from the Milky Way and its nearby galactic Local Group neighbors in an overwhelmingly dark void.
You can always count on astrophysics to brighten your day.
Or, if you'd prefer something actually amusing for your Friday blog-reading, you could go see the ultimate LOLcat.
More like this
For some reason I have this irrational love of statistics. It could be due to the fact that as a microscopist I am very weary of qualitative data ... it's easy to see what you want to see. Quantification is the attempt to provide a more objective assessment of the world.
Science has published a letter with 250 signatories protesting the recent and extreme attacks on scientists, climate scientists in particular.
The New Frontiers in Astronomy and Cosmology program included 20 awards for 2 year research projects on Big Questions.
I know that one is the ultimate, but I am oddly fond of this one.
I think it's the conehead in the background that does it.
Or, the obvious physics/lolcat mashup.
(fyi, promoting my own content)
Nick:
I yoinked your lolquarks for my ongoing collection of science-themed lolcats.
Funniest sentence:
"We live in a special time in the evolution of the universe," stated the researchers, somewhat humorously: "The only time at which we can observationally verify that we live in a very special time in the evolution of the universe."
The Anthropic Principal as it would have pitched on Johnny Carson (an ardent amateur astronomer, which is why he kept having Carl Sgan as guest).