|  How Long Would It Take to Fall Through the Earth?  | How long would it take to fall down a hole in the Earth and reach the other side of the planet? The solution to this problem depends on the strength of Earth's gravitational pull, which in turn is based on its mass.
| Read More » Blood Moon: Shortest Total Lunar Eclipse of the Century Rises Saturday  | Only the speediest of skywatchers will have a chance to see the total lunar eclipse rising Saturday: NASA predicts that the total phase of the lunar eclipse will only last about 5 minutes, making it the shortest lunar eclipse of the century. Early-rising observers all over the United States should be able to see at least the partial phases of the April 4 lunar eclipse just before the sun rises, if weather permits. People on the West Coast will have the chance to see the moon turn an eerie shade of red during totality, which should begin at about 7:58 a.m. EDT (1158 GMT, 4:58 a.m. PDT). NASA this week unveiled a video detailing the total lunar eclipse, and dubbed the event the shortest lunar eclipse of the century in an announcement on Monday (March 30) in detail. Observers in other parts of the world will have an even better chance to see the lunar eclipse.
| Read More » Bizarre Condition Makes Tongue Resemble a Geographic Map  | Known as "geographic tongue," the condition causes red, patchy shapes to appear on the tongue, formed as some areas lose the tiny reddish bumps called papillae that normally cover the tongue's surface. Geographic tongue (GT) affects the tongue's upper layer of tissue, call the epithelium. In people with GT, one type of papillae called filiform papillae becomes inflamed, said study co-author Gabriel Seiden, a physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, who is currently based at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany. In the study, Seiden and his colleagues use math equations to explain what happens in geographic tongue.
| Read More » Little bird's arduous migration reaches 'brink of impossibility'  | Scientists on Tuesday documented how this songbird that weighs half an ounce (12 grams) completes an arduous nonstop flight over the Atlantic Ocean from forests in New England and eastern Canada to Caribbean islands as it migrates each fall toward its South American wintering grounds. It is truly one of the most amazing migratory feats ever recorded," said ecologist Ryan Norris of the University of Guelph in Ontario, describing "a fly-or-die journey." They landed in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, resting for a couple of days to a couple of weeks before flying to Colombia and Venezuela. University of Massachusetts ecologist Bill DeLuca described the migration as "on the brink of impossibility." The spring return flight follows a predominantly overland route through Florida and up the U.S. East Coast. The research resolves a half-century mystery about blackpoll warbler migration.
| Read More » This State Has the Highest Use of Mood-Altering Drugs Among the 50 states, it is people in West Virginia who most commonly report taking mood-altering drugs to help them relax, whereas Alaskans are the least likely to say the same, a new poll finds. "It's no coincidence that drug use was inversely proportionate to the [state] well-being score," said Dan Witters, who led the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index research. The results of an earlier poll, announced in February, showed that people in West Virginia reported the lowest levels of well-being in the country, while Alaskans reported the highest. Read More » Catalog of Earth Microbes Could Help Find Alien Life  | If an alien planet in a distant solar system were home to microscopic life-forms, how might scientists see them and even decipher their identity? Scientists at Cornell University rounded up 137 microorganisms and cataloged how each life-form uniquely reflects sunlight. This database of individual reflection fingerprints, which is available to anyone, might help astronomers identify similar microscopic life-forms on distant alien planets. "This database gives us the first glimpse at what diverse worlds out there could look like," Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy and director of Cornell University's new Institute for Pale Blue Dots, said in a statement.
| Read More » SETI Has New Infrared Telescope Tech in Search for E.T.  | Scientists searching for signs of intelligent extraterrestial life in the unvierse have a new telescope tool to aid them in their hunt for portential alien civilizations. Called NIROSETI, short for Near-Infrared Optical Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, the instrument saw its "first light" this month at the University of California's Lick Observatory atop Mt. Hamilton east of San Jose. For more than five decades, scientists have been on the lookout for radio signals from other starfolk. The NIROSETI instrument is attached to the Lick Observatory's Nickel 1-meter telescope, with months of fine-tuning to follow its first-light observation on March 15.
| Read More » Zombie Cyborg Wood May Lead to Better Night-Vision Cameras  | A new so-called cyberwood that continues to work even after its living components die could lead to technological advances in thermal night-vision cameras and temperature sensors. This "zombie" cyborg wood is a hybrid material made of tobacco laced with teensy carbon tubes, and the whole contraption can act like a heat detector even after the plant cells have perished. The best heat-detecting materials available now change their electrical conductivity just by a few percent per degree temperature change. In contrast, the new cyberwood that the scientists created is hundreds of times more responsive to changes in temperature than the best man-made materials currently used in heat detectors.
| Read More » Superhealing Drug Travels in Nanoparticles to Wounds A new topical medicine suspended in nanoparticles could dramatically quicken the time it takes wounds to heal, researchers say. The medicine was tested on mice, which have a wound-healing process very similar to that of humans, according to study co-leader David Sharp, a professor of physiology and biophysics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Wound healing is a complex process that involves moving a diverse group of cells and molecules to the source of injury. Read More » First Total Lunar Eclipse of 2015 on Saturday: A Skywatching Guide  | A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes through Earth's shadow. We had a total solar eclipse on March 20 and will have a partial solar eclipse on Sept. 13 and another total lunar eclipse on Sept. 28. The area from which the September lunar eclipse will be visible is almost the exact inverse of this week's eclipse, so if you live in a part of the world where you can't see the April eclipse, you will have better luck six months from now.
| Read More » 6 of the Best Science-Themed April Fools' Day Jokes Many poor souls have been victims of April Fools' Day jokes, and science — with it's reputation for achieving stunning and sometimes fantastic feats — makes for some of the best fodder. From harnessing the energy of thunderstorms to rounding off the number pi, here are some of history's greatest science April Fools' Day pranks to wow your nerdy friends. Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), home of the particle smasher used to discover the Higgs boson particle and other groundbreaking insights into the four fundamental forces (the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force and gravity), reported today (April 1) that they had confirmed the existence of the Force — the supernatural power in the fictional "Star Wars" universe. The statement goes on to say that researchers are unsure of what causes the Force but its practical applications include long-distance communication, influencing minds and lifting heavy objects out of swamps. Read More » Scientists say polar bears won't thrive on land food ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A paper published Wednesday says polar bears forced onto land because of melting ice are unlikely to find enough food to replace their diet of seals. Read More » Famed Human Ancestor Lucy Wasn't Alone: Meet 'Little Foot'  | A mysterious ancient relative of humanity known as Little Foot apparently roamed the Earth at about the same time as the famed Lucy, suggesting the ancestors of humans may have existed with significant diversity across a good part of Africa, researchers say. Among the earliest known relatives of the human lineage definitely known to walk upright was Australopithecus afarensis, the species that included the famed 3.2-million-year-old Lucy. While Australopithecus afarensis dwelled in eastern Africa, another australopithecine nicknamed Little Foot, due to the diminutive nature of the bones, lived in southern Africa. Discovered about 20 years ago by paleoanthropologist Ronald Clarke from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Little Foot apparently fell down a narrow shaft in the Sterkfontein Caves.
| Read More » 'Little Foot' fossil sheds light on early human forerunners  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "Lucy," meet "Little Foot." Scientists said on Wednesday a sophisticated new dating technique shows that Little Foot, an important fossil of an early human forerunner unearthed in the 1990s in South Africa, is roughly 3.7 million years old. "The age of Little Foot has been highly debated," said geologist Darryl Granger of Purdue University in Indiana, whose research appears in the journal Nature. The study found Little Foot, a member of the species Australopithecus prometheus, lived at roughly the same time as Australopithecus afarensis, the species whose most famous fossil, known as Lucy, comes from Ethiopia. The researchers analyzed 11 rock samples from around the nearly complete Little Foot fossil skeleton from the Sterkfontein Caves to gauge its age.
| Read More » Wound-healing laser soon to be a reality: Israeli scientist Closing wounds and surgical incisions with a laser is a step closer to reality, Israeli scientists say. The futuristic technique is better than current methods which damage tissue and can cause scarring, researchers from Tel Aviv University believe. Head of the Applied Physics Department Abraham Katzir was behind the research. Read More » Voice-controlled GPS helmet to help bikers By Jim Drury MOSCOW, RUSSIA - Motorcyclists will no longer have to rely on maps or GPS systems, both of which require riders to take their eyes off the road, once a new Russian smart helmet goes on sale this summer. So Russian engineers have invented LiveMap - a GPS helmet which displays simple navigation tips on the visor. CEO Andrew Artshchev got the idea from fighter pilot technology. "I learnt about the concept of aviation helmets and decided to create a civil motorcycling helmet on that model, which would show not target detection for pilots, but navigational information - to turn right or left and so on." The android-based lightweight helmet contains GPS and voice control. Read More » Egyptian Artifacts Salvaged from Robbed Tomb in Israel  | In an underground cave in Israel, archaeologists have unearthed 3,000-year-old Egyptian artifacts that had been spared by tomb robbers. Inspectors with the Israel Antiquities Authority's (IAA) Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery say they found pickaxes and other signs of looting in a cave near Kibbutz Lahav in southern Israel. "During this period, Canaan was ruled by Egypt," Daphna Ben-Tor, curator of Egyptian archaeology at the Israel Museum, explained in a statement from the IAA.
| Read More » Tiny Songbird Is a Champion Long-Distance Flier  | The blackpoll warbler, a songbird that weighs no more than an AA battery, flies nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean during its southerly fall migration, covering more than 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) in two or three days, a new study confirms. The warbler's longest nonstop flight was recorded as being more than 1,700 miles (2,730 km) in three days, the scientists reported today (March 31) in the journal Biology Letters. Only the northern wheatear has a longer nonstop flight among songbirds, but it is twice as large as a blackpoll warbler, said study co-author Chris Rimmer, an ornithologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies in Norwich, Vermont. "If you account for body scale and size, the blackpoll warbler is the hands-down winner," Rimmer said.
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