Good news from all over

Haven’t tasted The Speculist‘s yummy roundup of good news? Do so now!

Spooky action at a distance…

…is real, however much Einstein hated the idea. Quantum teleportation has previously been demonstrated with light; now two teams of scientists have demonstrated it using atoms. Beam me down, Scotty, maybe there is intelligent life down there!

"A Rich Boyhood in the Plain Void"

James Lileks writes about Fargo–and nails my feelings about life in a small prairie city perfectly. Read it!

Bacteria on a chip

There’s an old science joke that goes, “If it stinks, it’s chemistry, if it’s green and slimy, it’s biology, and if it doesn’t work, it’s physics.” Now, however, scientists are messing with these once-sacred boundaries, as they attempt to combine living cells and computer chips to create tiny, inexpensive pollution detectors. Many cells contain mechanisms …

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Bacteria on a chip

There’s an old science joke that goes, “If it stinks, it’s chemistry, if it’s green and slimy, it’s biology, and if it doesn’t work, it’s physics.” Now, however, scientists are messing with these once-sacred boundaries, as they attempt to combine living cells and computer chips to create tiny, inexpensive pollution detectors. Many cells contain mechanisms …

Continue reading

Universe started with a hiss, not a bang?

Alas, The Big Hiss just doesn’t have the same ring to it as The Big Bang. And the other option arising from this story, The Big Moan, is even worse!

Ribbet

Richard Branson has set a new record for crossing the English Channel in an amphibious car. There’s a record for this sort of thing?

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Saturn’s moon Phoebe, as seen from the Cassini space probe.

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a href=’http://photos1.blogger.com/img/240/1109/640/phoebe.jpg’img border=’0′ style=’border:1px solid #000000; margin:2px’ src=’http://photos1.blogger.com/img/240/1109/320/phoebe.jpg’/abr /Saturn’s moon Phoebe, as seen from the Cassini space probe.

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Saturn’s moon Phoebe, as seen from the Cassini space probe.

Good news for astrobiologists

“The discovery of millions of ancient, ultratiny microbes 3,000 metres deep in a Greenland glacier suggests that similar hardy species may live in ice elsewhere in the solar system, researchers say.” Cool. Cold, even.

Return of the Zeppelin

Japan’s Nippon Airship Corporation takes delivery of abrand-new Zeppelin, direct descendant of the famous Zeppelins of the ’30s. (And no relation to the even more famous Led Zeppelin of the ’70s.)