Links!
Sorry, got behind in the link postage this week. You guys have been sending me excellent links, as always.First off, here's something I saw myself this morning. From MSNBC:
A new technique allowing virtual dissections of half-billion-year-old fossil embryos is producing the first three-dimensional images of the dawn of life.
...The Chinese, Swedish, Swiss and British researchers on Donoghue's team used a 1,640-foot-wide (500-meter-wide) particle accelerator in Switzerland to scan the minute fossils, and then fed the information into a computer that generated complete 3-D images of the internal structures in fine detail.
"The best analogy is with a medical CT scan ... but at two to three thousand times the resolution," Donoghue said. "We can see details less than 1,000th of a millimeter in dimension. We can look at any and every part of the fossil — inside and out — without harming it and then virtually dissect it however we like."
Totally amazing.
Next, from Cliff Eyler (who sends fascinating e-mail), a link to The Museum of Jurassic Technology. It's a "museum" that's actually a fantastic send-up, mixing real exhibits with outrageous fakes. The hook is that it's almost impossible to tell which is which.
It's not an online museum, by the way. It's located on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. And if you can't make it to Los Angeles, there's a book: Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. Here's an Amazon link.
From Sirius, a link to an article at Wired titled "Pinch My Ride." Here's the article description: Ignition keys equipped with signal-emitting chips were supposed to put car thieves out of business. No such luck – but try telling that to your insurance company.
It's an excellent read, and here's the link.
From just about everyone, a link to an article on "planemos"--twin worlds that circle each other instead of orbiting around a star. Here's an excerpt:
The pair belongs to what some astronomers believe is a new class of planet-like objects floating through space; so-called planetary mass objects, or "planemos", which are not bound to stars.
They appear to have been forged from a contracting gas cloud, in a similar way to stars, but are much too cool to be true stars.
And while they have similar masses to many of the giant planets discovered beyond our Solar System (the larger weighs in at 14 times the mass of Jupiter and the other is about seven times more massive), they are not thought to be true planets either.
Full story here.
Finally, from DQ reader and Future Nobel Prize Winner Brian Pilnick, a link to photos of a "carpet caterpillar" infestation in Sweden. Here's his comment:
Don't go to this link if you're planning on eating soon. Seriously. That being said, wow.
I did, and lunch has been moved back a few hours. But the pictures are freaking amazing. See them here, and don't say I didn't warn you.
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