Arthur C. Clarke has died in his adopted home of Sri Lanka at the age of 90. Clarke was best known for his work 2001: A Space Odyssey which was written as both a book and a screenplay simultaneously. Clarke also authored hundreds of other books and short stories during his lifetime. The UK Fantastic Fiction site has a lengthy list here. Arthur C. Clarke is also known for his three laws of prediction. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. You can view a photo gallery of Arthur C. Clarke here on Yahoo News. Here are some links to Arthur C. Clarke obits. The Age Associated Press BBC CBC News CNN Cosmos Cryptomundo Entertainment Weekly Guardian Technology Blog Inquirer L.A. Times New Scientist New York Times Paste Magazine PopSci.com Reuters Sciam Sci-Guy Space.com Telegraph Time Times of India Times Online Universe Today USA Today Washington Post Wikipedia One of the many things we should not forget about Arthur C. Clarke is his opinion of how important the space program is: Arthur C. Clarke: The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

New Scientist reports that gadget developers at Ambient Corporation have invented a neckband called the Audeo that allows the wearer to send voiceless phone calls controlled by neurological signals. The wearer can control nerve signals that go to the device and are then transfered by the neckband in the form of a computerized voice. Currently only about 150 words and phrases can be used on the device but New Scientist says Ambient's goal is to make it so complete sentences using any words or phrases can be delivered in silence. With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerised voice. A video (right) shows the system being used to place the first public voiceless phone call on stage at a recent conference held by microchip manufacturer Texas Instruments. Michael Callahan, co-founder of Ambient Corporation, which developed the neckband, demonstrates the device, called the Audeo. Users needn't worry about that the system voicing their inner thoughts though. Callahan says producing signals for the Audeo to decipher requires "a level above thinking". Users must think specifically about voicing words for them to be picked up by the equipment. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

The graph above shows the number of tornadoes for this year compared to recent years and to the ten-year average. The red line shows the number of tornadoes this year. As you can see the number we have had so far this year is way above recent years and the 10-year average. The U.S. gets about 800 tornadoes a year on average according to a LiveScience article. This year there have already been over 400. This month is normally the time of year when we just start to experience the most severe weather and tornadoes. The peak for the Southern states is usually March, April and May. Northern states get more tornadoes in the Summer months. We still have a long ways to go in this year's tornado season but it is off to an unusual start. Large outbreaks like the Super Tuesday Outbreak have helped to spike this year's figure. The graph above is from the SPC's website. You can view a much larger version of it here. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

Lava from Mount Kilauea in Hawaii is flowing into the Pacific ocean. Reuters reports that lava from the Kilauea volcano began flowing into the Pacific ocean on March 6th. It is one of the most active volcanoes in the world continued to erupt. Reuters says Kilauea has erupted 34 times since 1952. The USGS has a special page about Mount Kilauea here. Below is a video from Reuters showing the recent lava flow and an embedded map from Google showing Mount Kilauea's location. View Larger Map Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

The fossils of two meat-eating dinosaurs named Eocarcharia and Kryptops have been discovered in the Sahara Desert. The newly discovered dinosaurs appear in a paper this month in the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. The fossils were discovered in 2000 on an expedition led by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno. Sereno and co-author paleontologist Stephen Brusatte of the University of Bristol say the new fossils provide a glimpse of an earlier stage in the evolution of the bizarre meat-eaters of Gondwana, the southern landmass. "T-rex has become such a fixture of Cretaceous lore, most people don't realize that no tyrannosaur ever set foot on a southern continent," said Sereno. Instead, particularly distinctive meat-eaters arose, some of which bore no resemblance to the "tyrant king," beyond their appetites for fresh meat. The two dinosaurs have distinctive faces. Kryptops probably ate mostly from already dead carcasses (like hyenas) and Eocarcharia dinops ate live prey (like sharks). Short-snouted Kryptops palaios, or "old hidden face," was named for the horny covering that appears to have covered nearly all of its face. "A fast, two-legged hyena gnawing and pulling apart a carcass," remarked even Brusatte, "is how we might best imagine Kryptops' dining habits." Kryptops also had short, armored jaws with small teeth. The scientists say these teeth make Krptops better at eating from a carcass than trying to eat live prey. Eocarcharia dinops - or "fierce-eyed dawn shark" - was named for its blade-shaped teeth and prominent bony eyebrow. Unlike Kryptops, the scientists say its teeth were designed for disabling live prey and severing body parts. Eocarcharia and kin (called carcharodontosaurids) gave rise to the largest predators on southern continents, matching or exceeding Tyrannosaurus in size. Eocarcharia's brow was swollen into a massive band of bone, giving it a menacing glare. Both of the newly discovered dinosaurs were about 25-feet long. Project Exploration has more information about the new dinosaurs, their contemporary species and Cretaceous habitat, and the expedition on which the fossils were discovered. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

This photo shows the Earth and Moon as seen from Mars. The image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on October 3, 2007. At the time the image was taken, Earth was 142 million kilometers (88 million miles) from Mars, giving the HiRISE image a scale of 142 kilometers (88 miles) per pixel, an Earth diameter of about 90 pixels and a moon diameter of 24 pixels. The phase angle is 98 degrees, which means that less than half of the disk of the Earth and the disk of the moon have direct illumination. We could image Earth and moon at full disk illumination only when they are on the opposite side of the sun from Mars, but then the range would be much greater and the image would show less detail. You can see a larger view of the image here. Source: NASA Posted in Space Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

This Mola Mola or Ocean Sunfish is one of the largest and stangest animals found in the sea. The Mola Mola is the world's largest bony fish. As the National Geographic video below describes it - the Mola Mola looks like a "massive swimming head." The Mola Mola can weigh up to 4,000 pounds. It can gain over sixty million times its birthweight. For more on this strange fish check out the listings on Fishbase.org, OceanLight.com and Wikipedia. The Ocean Sunfish website also has lots of facts, photos and news. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

Scientists have managed to capture an electron in motion on film for the first time. MSNBC reports that scientists used very short pulses of intense laser light called attosecond pulses and a stroboscope to film the electron. Previously it was impossible to photograph electrons because of their extreme speediness, so scientists had to rely on more indirect methods. These methods could only measure the effect of an electron's movement, whereas the new technique can capture the entire event. Extremely short flashes of light are necessary to capture an electron in motion. A technology developed within the last few years can generate short pulses of intense laser light, called attosecond pulses, to get the job done. "It takes about 150 attoseconds for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom. An attosecond is 10-18 seconds long, or, expressed in another way: an attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe," said Johan Mauritsson of Lund University in Sweden. Using another laser, scientists can guide the motion of the electron to capture a collision between an electron and an atom on film. Here's the video. The electron's movements shown in the film correspond to a single wavelength of light so the speed has been slowed down greatly so the human eye can observe the motion. The video can also be found here on the Attosecond Physics and High-Order Harmonic Generation website. See also this post on the Curious Cat blog. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

Researchers collecting specimens off Antarctica have found strange creatures. Creatures like giant sea spiders, tunicates and organisms looking like slender glass were all found. Researchers also described a strange looking fish with "funny dangling bits" around their mouth. They saw thousands of creatures and as many as a quarter them were previously undiscovered. You can see some of them in the video clip below. An article in the Telegraph also has photos of the tunicates and a giant scale worm. Last year a psychedelic octopus was discovered in the in frigid waters off Antarctica. Unfortunately, global warming may allow sharks and crabs to come and eat many of these defenseless ocean lifeforms. "Sharks are going to arrive in Antarctica as long as the warming trend continues, a bit more slowly than crabs - crabs are going to get there first," said Professor Cheryl Wilga of the University of Rhode Island (URI), US. "But once they do get there they are capable of eating the organisms that live there." Professor Wilga said the arrival of sharks and shell-crushing bony fishes would lead to dramatic changes in the number and proportions of species found there. Shrimp, ribbon worms and brittle stars are likely to be the most vulnerable to population declines. Dr Sven Thatje of the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, UK, said animals living in shallow water in Antarctica were unique on Earth today because they evolved in a very cold environment over tens of millions of years. Posted in Oceans Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

A team of researchers from the UK's University College London (UCL) and New York's Stony Brook University have discovered the 70 million-year-old fossil of a massive dinosaur-eating frog in Madagascar. The scientists have named the frog Beelzebufo, meaning "the frog from hell." The frog weighed 4kg and had a body length of up to 40cm. It also had a squat body, huge head and wide mouth. Professor Susan Evans, UCL Anatomy & Developmental Biology, said the frog would have been the size of a squashed beach-ball. Evans said, "This frog, a relative of today's Horned toads, would have been the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball, with short legs and a big mouth. If it shared the aggressive temperament and 'sit-and-wait' ambush tactics of living Horned toads, it would have been a formidable predator on small animals. Its diet would most likely have consisted of insects and small vertebrates like lizards, but it's not impossible that Beelzebufo might even have munched on hatchling or juvenile dinosaurs." The find is also interesting because it sheds new light on a debate about how the earth's land masses used to be arranged. The frog find gives credence to a theory that Madagascar was once linked to India and South America. Professor Evans said, "Our discovery of a frog strikingly different from today's Madagascan frogs, and akin to the Horned toads previously considered endemic to South America, lends weight to the controversial paleobiogeographical model suggesting that Madagascar, the Indian subcontinent and South America were linked well into the Late Cretaceous. It also suggests that the initial spread of such beasts began earlier than that proposed by recent estimates." The BBC and National Geographic also have stories on the ancient frog predator. Photo source: Stony Brook University Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…