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Well, it isn't all bad. Some reefs are going to die, while others expand. And perhaps a few of the reefs will even evolve to live in warmer waters. If worst comes to worst we could always genetically engineer them to do that ;)

If you drop enough iron salts into the ocean then lots of algea will form to fix the carbon as it gets into the water cycle.

Check it out.

since we started measuring (~100 years)

last thousand years (p.4)

On geological timescales

420,000 years BP
Particularly interesting is perhaps this bit:

The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles. The succession of changes through each climate cycle and termination was similar, and atmospheric and climate properties oscillated between stable bounds. Interglacial periods differed in temporal evolution and duration. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.

Nature has published a lot of interesting reports on the subject over the years and they have an excellent search engine. Give it a shot.

Bonus info on the recession of the world's glaciers. Just because you asked nicely. :-)

And I leave you with this:

These ice cores show a 20th century isotopic enrichment that suggests a large scale warming is underway at low latitudes. The rate of this isotopically inferred warming is amplified at higher elevations over the Tibetan Plateau while amplification in the Andes is latitude dependent with enrichment (warming) increasing equatorward. In concert with this apparent warming, in situ observations reveal that tropical glaciers are currently disappearing.
Tropical glacier and ice core evidence of climate change on annual to millennial time scales..

since we started measuring (~100 years)

last thousand years (p.4)

On geological timescales

420,000 years BP
Particularly interesting is perhaps this bit:

The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles. The succession of changes through each climate cycle and termination was similar, and atmospheric and climate properties oscillated between stable bounds. Interglacial periods differed in temporal evolution and duration. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.

Nature has published a lot of interesting reports on the subject over the years and they have an excellent search engine. Give it a shot.

Bonus info on the recession of the world's glaciers. Just because you asked nicely. :-)

And I leave you with this:

These ice cores show a 20th century isotopic enrichment that suggests a large scale warming is underway at low latitudes. The rate of this isotopically inferred warming is amplified at higher elevations over the Tibetan Plateau while amplification in the Andes is latitude dependent with enrichment (warming) increasing equatorward. In concert with this apparent warming, in situ observations reveal that tropical glaciers are currently disappearing.
Tropical glacier and ice core evidence of climate change on annual to millennial time scales..

since we started measuring (~100 years)

last thousand years (p.4)

On geological timescales

420,000 years BP
Particularly interesting is perhaps this bit:

The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles. The succession of changes through each climate cycle and termination was similar, and atmospheric and climate properties oscillated between stable bounds. Interglacial periods differed in temporal evolution and duration. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.

Nature has published a lot of interesting reports on the subject over the years and they have an excellent search engine. Give it a shot.

Bonus info on the recession of the world's glaciers. Just because you asked nicely. :-)

And I leave you with this:

These ice cores show a 20th century isotopic enrichment that suggests a large scale warming is underway at low latitudes. The rate of this isotopically inferred warming is amplified at higher elevations over the Tibetan Plateau while amplification in the Andes is latitude dependent with enrichment (warming) increasing equatorward. In concert with this apparent warming, in situ observations reveal that tropical glaciers are currently disappearing.
Tropical glacier and ice core evidence of climate change on annual to millennial time scales..

since we started measuring (~100 years)

last thousand years (p.4)

On geological timescales

420,000 years BP
Particularly interesting is perhaps this bit:

The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles. The succession of changes through each climate cycle and termination was similar, and atmospheric and climate properties oscillated between stable bounds. Interglacial periods differed in temporal evolution and duration. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.

Nature has published a lot of interesting reports on the subject over the years and they have an excellent search engine. Give it a shot.

Bonus info on the recession of the world's glaciers. Just because you asked nicely. :-)

And I leave you with this:

These ice cores show a 20th century isotopic enrichment that suggests a large scale warming is underway at low latitudes. The rate of this isotopically inferred warming is amplified at higher elevations over the Tibetan Plateau while amplification in the Andes is latitude dependent with enrichment (warming) increasing equatorward. In concert with this apparent warming, in situ observations reveal that tropical glaciers are currently disappearing.
Tropical glacier and ice core evidence of climate change on annual to millennial time scales..

since we started measuring (~100 years)

last thousand years (p.4)

On geological timescales

420,000 years BP
Particularly interesting is perhaps this bit:

The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles. The succession of changes through each climate cycle and termination was similar, and atmospheric and climate properties oscillated between stable bounds. Interglacial periods differed in temporal evolution and duration. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.

Nature has published a lot of interesting reports on the subject over the years and they have an excellent search engine. Give it a shot.

Bonus info on the recession of the world's glaciers. Just because you asked nicely. :-)

And I leave you with this:

These ice cores show a 20th century isotopic enrichment that suggests a large scale warming is underway at low latitudes. The rate of this isotopically inferred warming is amplified at higher elevations over the Tibetan Plateau while amplification in the Andes is latitude dependent with enrichment (warming) increasing equatorward. In concert with this apparent warming, in situ observations reveal that tropical glaciers are currently disappearing.
Tropical glacier and ice core evidence of climate change on annual to millennial time scales..

since we started measuring (~100 years)

last thousand years (p.4)

On geological timescales

420,000 years BP
Particularly interesting is perhaps this bit:

The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles. The succession of changes through each climate cycle and termination was similar, and atmospheric and climate properties oscillated between stable bounds. Interglacial periods differed in temporal evolution and duration. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.

Nature has published a lot of interesting reports on the subject over the years and they have an excellent search engine. Give it a shot.

Bonus info on the recession of the world's glaciers. Just because you asked nicely. :-)

And I leave you with this:

These ice cores show a 20th century isotopic enrichment that suggests a large scale warming is underway at low latitudes. The rate of this isotopically inferred warming is amplified at higher elevations over the Tibetan Plateau while amplification in the Andes is latitude dependent with enrichment (warming) increasing equatorward. In concert with this apparent warming, in situ observations reveal that tropical glaciers are currently disappearing.
Tropical glacier and ice core evidence of climate change on annual to millennial time scales..

I don't have access to the paper itself (that requires a subscription), but Nature news has a slightly more informative article.

It looks to me like the computer part is single-stranded DNA that base pairs with the mRNA for certain cancer genes. Presumably when a high enough level of these mRNAs is sensed, another DNA molecule is released. This one is supposed to prevent expression of the cancer genes... I'm guessing it is an antisense molecule, but the news article doesn't say. The news article also has no detail on how the drug is released. My guess is its a cleavage event. DNA enzymes capable of self-cleavage have been created in the past.

To me, it looks like the advance here is the "computer" part, not the drug part. And even that is still very much in the pre-clinical realm. The Nature news article says that it only works under particular salt conditions. Also, they haven't looked at how the immune system would respond to these computers. The immune system does respond to some DNA molecules, so that is definitely a concern.

Its interesting work, though. I may have to head over to my local university library and get my hands on the actual paper.

I'm more worried about catching something else from my shower curtain. I wish someone would make an anti-bacterial shower curtain, but until than I will use this stuff I guess. Damn showering with 3 people plus who they sleep with and who they sleep with, arghhhh. No more showering.

Nature Magazine has an article about Biological Nanocomputers that was linked off of NPR's All Things Considered, which discussed this issue and is worth a listen (RA AND WM9). This story was followed by the audio freezer story previously, all in all a good day for NPR news.

Instead of reading a vague description of their results try the following two links:

Summary from Nature's website
Original Aritcle in Nature

Bill

Instead of reading a vague description of their results try the following two links:

Summary from Nature's website
Original Aritcle in Nature

Bill

Here's an article from nature.com from 2000 that talks about gecko feet, and here's another from 2002 about how scientists have developed prototype adhesives based on what they learned from geckos. One of the articles even talks about experiments from 30 years ago, wherein researchers found that geckos do not stick to Teflon, which does not produce Van der Waals forces.

So while we may not have known that spiders use Van der Waals forces as well, we have known for years that animals have been using the force to stick to things.

Here's an article from nature.com from 2000 that talks about gecko feet, and here's another from 2002 about how scientists have developed prototype adhesives based on what they learned from geckos. One of the articles even talks about experiments from 30 years ago, wherein researchers found that geckos do not stick to Teflon, which does not produce Van der Waals forces.

So while we may not have known that spiders use Van der Waals forces as well, we have known for years that animals have been using the force to stick to things.

GM Crop Gatecrashes Butterfly Ball, Nature

ouch. That's just, COLD, man.

Yes. It does. have something to do with it. Interesting addition of function of ketamine to the whole thing, too.

Given A (we have a mixed batch of flies representing a natural mix)
We apply pressure B (selection)
C results(flies are less mixed).

We observe that some speciation arises from the above mechanism. We deduce that all specie may have arived otu of this very general mechanism.

Thats the resoning, with the lack of any better solution, that is the solution we conclude. Evidence? Phylogenic tree's have support our theory, and so do fossils, biological observation also support the theory. No matter how much you deny fossil evidence, phylogentic trees support evolution like the Atomic clock tests supported Special Relativity. If they did not, if Dogs have a better genetic match with snails then with sheep then mayeb your right. But Phylogenetic trees are exstremely consistant with evolution to the point where different branches of the tree's have more diversity then all of the rest of the trees and thus we can conclude these are the oldest of creatures, ie. Archea bacteria. Their simple life forms that life in extreme conditions, the fact that they represent mroe genetic diversity then the whole of the rest of the tree supports the fact that we all came from that egentic pool at one time. As well humans have a similier pattern. African people have more genetic variation then peoples farther away from africa. The continent of africa has mroe geentic variation then the entirty of the rest of the human race. Thus we can assume we all came out of africa.

PS.
flies did not turn to fish, a vertibrate worm become fish, insects came from another creature. A certain strain of fish became amphibians and dog arose out of the amphibians and sheep are a close relative of dogs. All of this is supported by phylogenic trees. Dogs DNA is much closer in matching sectiosn then Fish DNA which relates more to dogs then insects. If you want proof, look up phylogentic trees on the internet or on www.nature.com

They'll be using sub-pixel imaging.

Read all about it.

The Y chromosome is almost entirely useless; the only gene found on the Y chromosome is TDF, Testes Determining Factor.

Actually the Y chromosome has been found to code for 27 different proteins although, as you say, these all seem to be related to sexual differentiation (unsurprisingly).

The Y chromosome is a mutation of the X chromosome and contains much less information

True but misleading.

Yes, the Y chromosomes contains less genetic data but it's information not found in the X chromosome. So because data is repeated, two X chromosomes contain less information than an X and a Y.

Yes, it's likely that the Y chromosome is a mutation of an X chromosome, but it differentiated so long ago that 95% of the Y chromosome is male specific.

BTW: I'm not suggesting that this is a deliberate attempt to mislead.

"The Greenland ice-sheet would melt faster in a warmer climate and is likely to be eliminated - except for residual glaciers in the mountains - if the annual average temperature in Greenland increases by more than about 3 C. This could raise the global average sea-level by 7 metres over a period of 1,000 years or more. We show here that concentrations of greenhouse gases will probably have reached levels before the year 2100 that are sufficient to raise the temperature past this warming threshold."

All iron seeding studies as of 2003, confirmed the consumption of CO2 but

Other gases are produced (eg DMS), and other limiting nutrients (nitrates and phosphorous) are used up. ...
What has *not* been found is any proof that any additional carbon sinks to the ocean floor and gets buried, thus entering long-term storage.

Fast forward to 2004.

There is an article in nature, published on March 17 2004, whose abstract says iron is not a panacea

Only a small proportion of the mixed-layer POC [particulate organic carbon] was intercepted by the traps. ... The depletion of silicic acid and the inefficient transfer of iron-increased POC below the permanent thermocline have major implications ... for proposed geo-engineering schemes to increase oceanic carbon sequestration.

Apparently the study linked to in the original post has two studies who's results will be published in April 2004

... in the same issue of Science ... [which] indicate that much of the carbon sank to hundreds of meters below the surface.

So what do we know for sure? Adding iron does cause a bloom, and does drawdown CO2 but other nutrients are used up and the CO2's ultimate fate is debatable.

The conflicting results could be regional variation in ocean conditions, but IANAO.

Either way global warming is real, and the film may bring to light the severity of future changes.

Keep in mind, though, that the measurement method he used is going to average the conformational changes of all of the proteins within a cell - averaging a large number of independent random variables gives you an approximately Gaussian distribution, i.e., noise.

That being said, there are cells that use conformational changes to cause motion at audio frequencies. Outer hair cells (OHCs) in your cochlea exhibit length changes in response to changes in transmembrane voltage, with a gain of about 20 nm/mV. They do this using a protein called Prestin - there's still some debate about how it works in detail, but the protein completely covers the lateral walls of the cell membranes. Transfecting other cells with this protein caused them to be motile, and knocking out this protein killed the motility of OHCs.

Without some kind of specialization like that, I find it hard to believe that an entire cell can exhibit a spontaneous oscillation like what's been reported here. I smell the presence of an experimental artefact.

Keep in mind, though, that the measurement method he used is going to average the conformational changes of all of the proteins within a cell - averaging a large number of independent random variables gives you an approximately Gaussian distribution, i.e., noise.

That being said, there are cells that use conformational changes to cause motion at audio frequencies. Outer hair cells (OHCs) in your cochlea exhibit length changes in response to changes in transmembrane voltage, with a gain of about 20 nm/mV. They do this using a protein called Prestin - there's still some debate about how it works in detail, but the protein completely covers the lateral walls of the cell membranes. Transfecting other cells with this protein caused them to be motile, and knocking out this protein killed the motility of OHCs.

Without some kind of specialization like that, I find it hard to believe that an entire cell can exhibit a spontaneous oscillation like what's been reported here. I smell the presence of an experimental artefact.

The good news is that according to the image in the article, this cache thing is in the right side of the brain.
Alcohol acts in the left side of the brain first. So you won't become stupid by drinking without affecting functions in the left side of the brain first.

There was an interesting article in Nature about the 7 +/- 2 memory cache number. Their research indicates that the true number is more like 4 +/- 1. The kind of information also influenced how much can be stored (as you surmised). Which sounds closer to what the "brain cache" researchers found.

In my opinion Cowboy Neal might use very weak analogy here. "In the same way that a larger cache speeds processing time, people with a greater capacity for holding images in their heads are expected to have better reasoning and problem-solving skills." So it means "faster" or "more intelligent"? A short term memory in the human brain causes completely different effects than processor cache, and it supposedly do it somehow "in the same way." It's a question-begging analogy at the very least. I would personally find a somewhat better analogon in the RAM as aw hole. Nevertheless, the article in Nature is very interesting, even if not exactly "news" for anyone who is up to date with all recent neurological studies. Great read. If you are interested in brain and CPU similarities, read also about reset nerves. It's not news, but it's very interesting nonetheless, as well as very on topic.

The 7 +/- 2 number may be spurious. Another line of investigation suggests something closer to 4 +/-?. See this related article.

All that having been said, as much as I love to read such arguments like this one [...] I am afraid I just forgot what was my point... [...] I know it was something unquestionably insightful.

I have recalled what it was. It is a continuation of my previous thought. I wrote, I quote:

As it become obvious that every imaginable philosophy, religion, cult or opinion---no matter how wrong or ridiculous---is represented by lots of otherwise intelligent people, the conclusion is obvious: any further continuation of the argumentum ad verecundiam and ad hominem mixture makes no sense any more, as the simple genetic fallacy alone becomes unsound. At this point we already know there are smart/good (as well as dumb/evil) people representing both (or more) sides (no matter where the line is). What can we do now? Of course, the only possible way is to count how many people there are who represent any given opinion. This is, in turn, argumentum ad populum also known as the "bandwagon fallacy." The most popular opinion wins.

Now, please let me continue this thought. Of course such a reasoning might not be stricte what we all usually understand as a pure argumentum ad populum per se, for it is a very specific populum of the greatest scientists we are examining, as we started from argumentum ad verecundiam and this is just a quantitative examination of both sides popularity and the strenght thereof, so the "bandwagon" metaphor might be highly misleading, if not wrong.

It might not be a fallacious reasoning to examine the results of our "scientific popularity contest," so to speak, (at least not more than the democracy itself is) and actually might be considered to form a premiss of a perfectly valid inductive argument, however it is very unfavorable for anyone who tries to use it as a basis for a sound pro-God argument, because the percentage of God believers (and those who believe in any form of immortality, for that matter) in the scientific community is not only low, but also quickly decreasing:

God:
||||||||||||| _____________________________________ 1914
||||||| ___________________________________________ 1933
||| _______________________________________________ 1998

Immortality:
||||||||||||||||| _________________________________ 1914
||||||||| _________________________________________ 1933
||| _______________________________________________ 1998

(Source: Nature Journal: table, article)

If that trend continues, the percentage of God believers among scientists might sadly become statistically insignificant and thus irrelevant before the end of the 21st century, or during the first decades of the 22nd century.

Now, the original point I was trying to make is as follows. The most popular interpretation of your signature forms an argumentum ad verecundiam which can only result (and indeed often results, as we have seen in numerous discussions it had started) in people providing counter-arguments of the same form, showing examples of great scientists who do not believe in God. At this point we can only use statistics as a mean to examine those examples as inductive arguments, and those very statistics are strongly against God, who exists only in the minds of less than 7% of scientists, decreasing every year. One might explain it with the fact that science was very successful in explaining the world effectively rende

All that having been said, as much as I love to read such arguments like this one [...] I am afraid I just forgot what was my point... [...] I know it was something unquestionably insightful.

I have recalled what it was. It is a continuation of my previous thought. I wrote, I quote:

As it become obvious that every imaginable philosophy, religion, cult or opinion---no matter how wrong or ridiculous---is represented by lots of otherwise intelligent people, the conclusion is obvious: any further continuation of the argumentum ad verecundiam and ad hominem mixture makes no sense any more, as the simple genetic fallacy alone becomes unsound. At this point we already know there are smart/good (as well as dumb/evil) people representing both (or more) sides (no matter where the line is). What can we do now? Of course, the only possible way is to count how many people there are who represent any given opinion. This is, in turn, argumentum ad populum also known as the "bandwagon fallacy." The most popular opinion wins.

Now, please let me continue this thought. Of course such a reasoning might not be stricte what we all usually understand as a pure argumentum ad populum per se, for it is a very specific populum of the greatest scientists we are examining, as we started from argumentum ad verecundiam and this is just a quantitative examination of both sides popularity and the strenght thereof, so the "bandwagon" metaphor might be highly misleading, if not wrong.

It might not be a fallacious reasoning to examine the results of our "scientific popularity contest," so to speak, (at least not more than the democracy itself is) and actually might be considered to form a premiss of a perfectly valid inductive argument, however it is very unfavorable for anyone who tries to use it as a basis for a sound pro-God argument, because the percentage of God believers (and those who believe in any form of immortality, for that matter) in the scientific community is not only low, but also quickly decreasing:

God:
||||||||||||| _____________________________________ 1914
||||||| ___________________________________________ 1933
||| _______________________________________________ 1998

Immortality:
||||||||||||||||| _________________________________ 1914
||||||||| _________________________________________ 1933
||| _______________________________________________ 1998

(Source: Nature Journal: table, article)

If that trend continues, the percentage of God believers among scientists might sadly become statistically insignificant and thus irrelevant before the end of the 21st century, or during the first decades of the 22nd century.

Now, the original point I was trying to make is as follows. The most popular interpretation of your signature forms an argumentum ad verecundiam which can only result (and indeed often results, as we have seen in numerous discussions it had started) in people providing counter-arguments of the same form, showing examples of great scientists who do not believe in God. At this point we can only use statistics as a mean to examine those examples as inductive arguments, and those very statistics are strongly against God, who exists only in the minds of less than 7% of scientists, decreasing every year. One might explain it with the fact that science was very successful in explaining the world effectively rende

All that having been said, as much as I love to read such arguments like this one [...] I am afraid I just forgot what was my point... [...] I know it was something unquestionably insightful.

I have recalled what it was. It is a continuation of my previous thought. I wrote, I quote:

As it become obvious that every imaginable philosophy, religion, cult or opinion---no matter how wrong or ridiculous---is represented by lots of otherwise intelligent people, the conclusion is obvious: any further continuation of the argumentum ad verecundiam and ad hominem mixture makes no sense any more, as the simple genetic fallacy alone becomes unsound. At this point we already know there are smart/good (as well as dumb/evil) people representing both (or more) sides (no matter where the line is). What can we do now? Of course, the only possible way is to count how many people there are who represent any given opinion. This is, in turn, argumentum ad populum also known as the "bandwagon fallacy." The most popular opinion wins.

Now, please let me continue this thought. Of course such a reasoning might not be stricte what we all usually understand as a pure argumentum ad populum per se, for it is a very specific populum of the greatest scientists we are examining, as we started from argumentum ad verecundiam and this is just a quantitative examination of both sides popularity and the strenght thereof, so the "bandwagon" metaphor might be highly misleading, if not wrong.

It might not be a fallacious reasoning to examine the results of our "scientific popularity contest," so to speak, (at least not more than the democracy itself is) and actually might be considered to form a premiss of a perfectly valid inductive argument, however it is very unfavorable for anyone who tries to use it as a basis for a sound pro-God argument, because the percentage of God believers (and those who believe in any form of immortality, for that matter) in the scientific community is not only low, but also quickly decreasing:

God:
||||||||||||| _____________________________________ 1914
||||||| ___________________________________________ 1933
||| _______________________________________________ 1998

Immortality:
||||||||||||||||| _________________________________ 1914
||||||||| _________________________________________ 1933
||| _______________________________________________ 1998

(Source: Nature Journal: table, article)

If that trend continues, the percentage of God believers among scientists might sadly become statistically insignificant and thus irrelevant before the end of the 21st century, or during the first decades of the 22nd century.

Now, the original point I was trying to make is as follows. The most popular interpretation of your signature forms an argumentum ad verecundiam which can only result (and indeed often results, as we have seen in numerous discussions it had started) in people providing counter-arguments of the same form, showing examples of great scientists who do not believe in God. At this point we can only use statistics as a mean to examine those examples as inductive arguments, and those very statistics are strongly against God, who exists only in the minds of less than 7% of scientists, decreasing every year. One might explain it with the fact that science was very successful in explaining the world effectively rende

Nature is currently promo'ing a digital version available through "Newsstand". I was extremely disappointed to find out that I was supposed to download a Windows only "viewer" to try out this "digital" subscription

Spying cyborg animals, huh?

Well, they are coming.

...this article about a color e-ink display (!) claims that:

Switching between dark and bright states takes only about ten milliseconds - fast enough to produce sharp video images.

What a disapointment! Mouse pornos just isn't as much fun as ...

Science never proves anything- it works to find the hypothesis that best fits all the observed data. Proofs are for math.

Biogenic assumes that living things die, are deeply buried in the crust, rot, and in so doing create various hydrocarbons. Abiogenic assumes that primordial material from the creation of the planet are cooked and rise into the crust. This theory posits that biological microfossils found in petroleum are leeched from the crust by the flow, rather than being one of the byproducts of biogenic rot.

Kooks like J. F. Kenney grasp at old research by a few Soviet geologist to claim that abiogenic reserves are being constantly replenished more quickly than even our current rate of extraction(1).

The vast majority of geologists would say that while research confirms that abiogenic formation of gaseous alkanes can take place in the Earth's crust, a comparison with the isotopic signatures of economically important gas reservoirs around the world suggests that abiogenic production is not a globally significant source of hydrocarbons (2).

I've been writing for wikipedia about TNOs, and so I've checked links to articles at CNN, WashPost, BBC, etc.. The commercial news companies get so much wrong it's scary.

In the article you linked to at Nature.com it says "The Spitzer telescope has spied Sedna." and "The Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes later confirmed the find.". Co-discover Mike Brown however, clearly states that they "used the 30 meter diameter IRAM telscope, and in collaboration with John Stansberry at the University of Arizona and Bill Reach at the Spitzer Science Certer, we used the Spitzer Space Telescope. Sedna was too small to be detected in either."

Avoid the corporate media and go to the source, or lacking that know that the news companies exist to make money - not to report the facts.

I thought it was a misprint in the article, so I went to Nature news. Sure enough at perihelion it is 13 billion km from the Sun an at aphelion it is 130 billion km. Wow, usually you only see orbits that eccentric with comets. Which makes it seem more like a captured object rather than one that formed in orbit. Wonder white kind of perturbing influence it has on comets in the Kuiper Belt, admittedly its small and in a very big volume ... still ...

sorry, broke my link in the last preview.

What the hell is the plasma for?

Plasma? Maybe it's an atmospheric pressure plasma for decontamination of biohazards. But then again maybe not.

Maybe it's a microwave plasma fireball for shooting bad guys.

Nah. Its probably just one of these dumb things from Spencer's Gifts.

Here is a nice Nature article on point.

To summarize: oil can definitely form non-biologically. However, chemical analysis indicates that most oil is formed biologically.

I unfortunately don't have time right now to sift through the UCLA paper linked to in the article, but note that the date of review is in 2002. This is not settled science, so it is very reasonable that schools would still be teaching the more established theory. (Granted, the idea coal or oil comes from animals rather than plants is silly. I hope very few people are actually teaching that.)

Also, if you're going to debunk theories, post links to reputable sites. Otherwise, it's hard to distinguish from the /. noise.

They've been working on creating anti-hydrogen in the lab, with some success, it seems...

50,000 atoms of anti-hydrogen made

It's simply an anti-atom comprised of a single anti-proton nucleus orbited by a single positron (anti-electron). :)

Here's a bit of "misinformation". Damn that Nature propaganda.

So we're flying a large, noisy, semi-empty garage in space, and it is so under-staffed (2 people instead of 2.5 required to maintain it) that we can't even use it for scientific experiments.
Actually, in a recent issue of Nature they spoke of planning experiments to search for Lorentz violation aboard the ISS. They include a Michelson-Morley type experiment and some involving atomic clocks (?!). The experiments are being pushed by Stephan Schiller and Peter Wolf (the men who brought you OPTIS) They state they hope for this to begin around 2005. Unfortunatly, a subscription is required to view the article and it was rather light on detail, yet it shows there is indeed hope for the ISS as a science platform.

The parent is right; the "+5 informative" grandparent is just wrong. We have known for some time that at least the north polar cap was composed mostly of water ice.

References:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/030210/030210-9.html
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/express_water _040123.html

Physicists at may soon be manufacturing copious quantities of black holes. When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, is completed in 2005, it could produce a black hole every second.

These tiny, fleeting phenomena might just give researchers a long-sought glimpse of the hidden dimensions of space.

This development of Black Holes on the planet poses big questions about the dangers and risks involved in handling Black Holes. If one gets out of control, it could potentially "eat" through our planet in no time.

This story has been getting a lot of attention on other time-travel/astronomy related sites, supposedly because people think it was predicted by a time traveller (do a google search). Just some food for thought.