Rays

"Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties." -James Jeans Here on Earth, every living thing is based around four fundamental, elemental building blocks of life: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and, perhaps most importantly, carbon. Image Credit: Robert Johnson / University of Pennsylvania. From diamonds to nanotubes to DNA, carbon is indispensable for constructing practically all of the most intricate structures we know of. Most of the carbon in our world comes from long-dead stars, in the form of Carbon-12: carbon atoms containing six…
This giant freshwater stingray was caught as a part of a National Geographic expedition in Thailand this week. It weighed in at a whopping 550 to 990 lbs and was as wide as a full grown man is tall. For the record, that would be one huge, painful barb to be stung by. The expedition was searching for "Megafishes" as a part of a documentary on Earth's 20 largest freshwater fish. The gargantuan ray is one of the 200 species of rays and is currently listed as vulnerable by the IUCN red list. Little is known about their ecology since fishing decimated their populations. The National Geographic…
Now that I have survived the frigid north and have returned to the real world where there is electricity, the sun is shining and there's no such thing as ice storms, I can return to providing you the most up-to-date and important science news and such from around the world. I know, you're all so excited! So personally, I've been spending the past day or so getting myself all jolly for the holidays. Of course, we're talking tree decorating, gift wrapping and the lovely sound of holiday pop songs to set the mood. Apparently, some researchers from Loch Lomond Sea Life Centre in Balloch,…
This has been all over my inbox since the press release came out yesterday; it's been on slashdot (thanks Brian), it's been at space.com, and there's a mediocre writeup on Universe Today. What's the big news? Black Holes don't destroy information after all! What is this whole information thing, anyway? Take a look at all the normal stuff in the Universe: photons, protons, neutrons, and electrons, for example. They have lots of different properties each. They move around one another, they get bound and unbound from one another, they exert forces on one another, etc. They're aware of one…