Derelict rocket stages that propelled four spacecraft toward the edges of our solar system and beyond are likely carrying Earthly bacteria out into the galaxy. “The upper stages were not required to be sterilized,” said John Rummel, senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA. There was just one big directive:
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg have been investigating how memories might be consolidated. Their new study offers the hitherto strongest proof that new information is transferred between the hippocampus, the short term memory area, and the cerebral cortex during sleep.
In scores of science fiction stories, hapless adventurers find themselves unwittingly introduced to the vacuum of space without proper protection. The ill-fated adventurers rapidly swell like over-inflated balloons, ultimately bursting in a gruesome spray of blood. Neat. But what REALLY happens if the human body is exposed to the vacuum of space?
“Dr. Friedrich Bischinger would have us believe that people who pick their noses with their fingers are healthier, happier, and more in tune with their bodies. He believes that exposing the body to the dried germ corpses helps to reinforce the immune system. The good doctor feels that society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking.”
The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.
A bacterium living in special cells inside an insect has the smallest genome of any known cellular lifeform, a new study finds. With only about 160,000 base pairs of DNA, the genome of Carsonella ruddi is less than half the size thought to be the minimum necessary for life.
10.12How Sleep Works
“Why Sleep? No one really knows why we sleep. But, there are all kinds of theories, including these: Sleep gives the body a chance to repair muscles and other tissues, replace aging or dead cells, etc. Sleep gives the brain a chance to organize and archive memories. Dreams are thought by some to be part of this process.”
Wrap your head around this: As technology gets smaller, faster, more futuristic, imagine yourself connected to a device that doesn’t just lamely hang on your ear but invades your skull. Not yet. Soon.
A region of the human brain that scientists believe is critical to human intellectual abilities surprisingly functions much like a digital computer, according to psychology Professor Randall O’Reilly.
When scientists found a massive Tyrannosaurus Rex thigh bone in a remote region of Montana a few months ago, they were forced to break the bone in two in order to fit it into the transport helicopter. This act of necessity revealed a startling surprise: soft tissue that had seemingly resisted fossilization still existed inside the bone.