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Comment Re:kids are worried ... (Score 0) 491

Nothing happened? We came very, very close to a nuclear war with the Russians, and atomic proliferation is in such a state that rogue nations and terrorists are increasingly likely to use a nuke. We are already in the midst of the greatest extinction of life since the end of the Cretaceous, when the dinosaurs went extinct. That is a measurable fact, and it's also human caused.

Comment A few thoughts (Score 1) 408

1) This is all part of the process, and shouldn't be too much cause for concern. Interesting results will be re-tested for confirmation. If these results can't be replicated, it casts doubt on the original study and the reputation of the authors. Negative results are rarely published except when they challenge a prior paper with a positive result. 2) The citation index is another way that bad data gets ignored. The average citation for a paper is less than 1. This means that most papers are never cited and a few good ones are cited heavily. It is true that if wrong ideas become generally accepted, they may remain in the literature unchallenged for some time and can be hard to root out. 3) I suspect that research in biomedical and other highly profitable fields bias these results, since whenever there is huge money to be made, there is pressure for a positive finding. Many of these studies are even bankrolled by the drug companies who want to show that they have the next promising cure or, better yet, treatment--since if you cure someone, you lose your market ;) It's always good to look at who's funding the work.

Comment Re:Push them further away (Score 1) 242

We need the Matlock guy to get up there with Salvage 1 (remember that awful tv show?) and clean this mess up. But seriously, we should probably send up some unmanned garbage collection ship(s) to boost the stuff back into the atmosphere where it will *mostly* burn up on re-entry.

Space Junk Getting Worse 242

HockeyPuck writes "According to Space.com the amount of space junk is getting worse. 'A head-on collision was averted between a spent upper stage from a Chinese rocket and the European Space Agency's (ESA) huge Envisat Earth remote-sensing spacecraft. [...] But what if the two objects had tangled? Such a space collision would have caused mayhem in the heavens, adding clutter to an orbit altitude where there are big problems already, said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the European Space Agency's Space Debris Office in Darmstadt, Germany."

Comment Time Travel forward is already possible (Score 1) 903

Time travel forward at 1 second per second is a no brainer. Time travel faster than 1 sec/sec is theoretically possible. All you have to do is get in a spaceship and go very fast for a while (sublight speed is ok). When you return to Earth, you will have aged less than everyone back home. And World Peace will happen after the next World War, when everyone is dead.

Comment We'll never live in zero g (Score 2, Insightful) 534

Humans don't adapt to their environment. They modify their environment to suit their physiology. That's why we use fire for warmth, started wearing clothes, built shelter, etc. Why do we think we can adapt to zero gravity? We didn't evolve lungs to explore underwater. We didn't evolve fur to explore the poles. As in those examples, we won't colonize space until we develop artificial gravity by spinning large objects and living inside them. Sure, a short foray into zero g is no big deal, much like a dip in the pool, but we won't live there.
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Researchers Test Whether Sharks Enjoy Christmas Songs 142

Scientists plan to test whether sharks enjoy listening to Christmas pop songs, after US research showed fish could recognize melody. Chris Brown, senior marine biologist at the Loch Lomond aquarium, said seasonal music would be played through walkthrough underwater tunnels where they can be heard by dozens of nurse sharks, black-tip reef sharks, and ray species. Experts will then monitor the sharks' reactions to different songs. We'll play everything from Kim Wilde and Mel Smith's Rocking Around the Christmas Tree and Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade to Wham's Last Christmas. We may find they prefer something softer like White Christmas by Bing Crosby," Brown said. Thank you for answering this question science.

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