Musings of the Great Eric

You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!
Technorati Tags: Funny, Videos, Monkeys, Chimps, Planet of the Apes

New Scientist:
The debate over whether dinosaurs were cold-blooded like modern reptiles, or warm-blooded like us, may finally have been settled. According to some elegant biophysics, they were both – depending on how big they were.

The speed at which certain crucial biochemical reactions common to all life take place depends on temperature. Gillooly’s team found that […]

This is a fascinating article on the decline of the honeybee, the causes for the decline and why it’s a Bad Thing. I don’t have much to add to it, I just think it’s real interesting stuff.
Technorati Tags: Nature, Environment, Bees

Why we’re more scared of gay marriage and terrorism than a much deadlier threat.
NO ONE seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won’t involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that particular block of lower […]

So I’m not going to be sleeping tonight….

Technorati Tags: Nature, Centipede, Bat, Cool, Video, Scary

This is the coolest thing I’ve seen all week: a scale model of a hydrogen atom.
Technorati Tags: Hydrogen, Atoms, Chemistry, Physics, Models

Courtesy NASA.

Technorati Tags: NASA, Stonehenge, Solstice

It’s a Noah’s Ark for plant seeds:
It sounds like something from a science fiction film—a doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside on a secluded Arctic island ready to serve as a Noah’s Ark for seeds in case of a global catastrophe.
But Norway’s ambitious project is on its way to becoming reality Monday when construction […]

NASA Sets Shuttle Launch for July 1:
Despite lingering safety concerns about the shuttle’s fuel tank, NASA managers cleared Discovery for launch on July 1, for what is expected to be the second and final test flight following the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Now, I’m a big fan of NASA. I love astronauts, space travel, all that fun […]

The dean of debunking
String theory, which nowadays dominates the research programmes and main funding of theoretical physics in many western universities (at a recent conference in Cambridge some 440 of them gathered to discuss their subject), was not so much discovered as invented in order to solve a vexing explanatory deficit. In the early 1970s, […]

Finally, science asks something important:
Many people may suppose that the question of the title is a stupid one, given that the answer is so obvious: women have breasts for feeding babies. In fact, the question is a good one, because it is a mystery why the vast majority of women has breasts. Most women are, […]

As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima.
This just serves a reminder that somewhere out there, one of those things is on target to end civilization as we know it. What are we doing to prepare? Nothing.
Technorati Tags: Science, Space, Norway, Meteorite, Asteroids

A peek into the mind of a genius
It was, without doubt, one of the finest minds of all time. Now scientists have proved that Albert Einstein’s brain was not only unique in its ability to process concepts: it was also physically different.
New research comparing the characteristics of Einstein’s brain with that of four men of […]

So cool.
Technorati Tags: Military, Toys, Flying

Jovian Storms Prepare To Duke It Out
Astronomers on Earth will have ringside seats to a face-off between two of the biggest storms in the solar system.
In one corner will be Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a behemoth of a tempest that is twice as large as Earth and whose 350 mph winds have been whirling for […]

Cool.
Technorati Tags: Biology, Nature, Fish, Coelacanth

NYC Mayor Bloomberg at Johns Hopkins University:
But you also share something quite serious.  Two things, in fact.  Each one of you has had two important principles deeply embedded in you through your association with this amazing institution: An unwavering allegiance to the power of science and a profound commitment to use that power to help […]

‘Hogwarts’ Dragon Unveiled
A dragon-like dinosaur named after Harry Potter’s alma mater has performed a bit of black magic on its own family tree, say paleontologists who unveiled the “Dragon King of Hogwarts” on Monday in Albuquerque.
The newly described horny-headed dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia  lived about 66 million years ago in South Dakota, just a million years […]

So says this study, anyway:

People who have suffered life’s hard knocks while growing up tend to be more gullible than those who have been more sheltered, startling new findings from the University of Leicester reveal.
A six-month study in the University’s School of Psychology found that rather than ‘toughening up’ individuals, adverse experiences in childhood and […]

Chicken and egg debate unscrambled:
It’s a question that has baffled scientists, academics and pub bores through the ages: What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg.
Put simply, the reason is down to the fact […]