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could not agree with you more. as much as i respect their intelligence and creativity and all that ...

but they are still the worst monsters on the planet ... ok, well besides us.

and just because i can't find an article about dolphins raping humans does not mean that it doesn't happen. you have been warned

No kidding. A random article from 2005
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/050217_robotfrm.htm
But researchers at Cornell University in New York State, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Holland’s Delft University of Technology have built robots that seem to more closely mimic the human gait -- and the Cornell robot matches human efficiency, their designers say. The researchers’ inspiration: simple walking toys that fascinated children in the 19th century.
....
Researchers at each of the three universities have built walking robots, differing slightly but based on the same principle. They are an extension of several years of research into “passive-dynamic walkers” that walk down a shallow slope, very much like simple walking toys that have been around since the 1800s and developed more scientifically starting in 1988.

Who else was revolting against their colonial masters at the time?

From whom did America get the idea to replace monarchy with democracy?

And, other than pirate ships, who was doing democracy at the time?

England had a parliament, but an elected house subservient to an unelected house that is ultimately and openly subservient to the crown is no democracy at all. They still make a mockery of it.

People seem to have missed the point: I was trying to make a point about the insane philosophy of apathy that some posters here seem to have, ie that since temperature or CO2 has been high before we should just ignore it and keep making the problem worse completely ignoring the fact that such changes often coincide with major extinction events.

You can find almost any extreme you're looking for if you don't mind going back far enough.

but anyway, not a journal but reasonable:

sulphur dioxide:
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/110401_bombardment.htm

nitrogen dioxide:
Not perfect but major volcanic events can be a significant source of NO and NO2.
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/32/10/905

but then my point was supposed to be that just because something can or has happened "naturally" doesn't stop it from being very bad.

It's not one of my usual sources, but on a first reading it seems decent:
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/100304_antimatter.htm

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/100304_antimatter.htm Mind boggling stuff. I still don't understand why this accounts for where the 'missing' mass of the universe is. Am I right in saying that the likelihood of this 'Anti-stuff' existing in the quark-gluon plasma in the ultra high pressures of quasars etc is as likley as 'normal' matter and thats where the lost mass is?

Next one will be called ReverseUSB. "As if to defy common sense, they say, the backward-moving pulse of light travels faster than light." http://www.world-science.net/othernews/060512_lightfrm.htm

In any language used by creatures living on planets, there will be a word for 'sun.'

It seems there (probably) exist 'ejected' planets which could sustain life.

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/070910_sunless-planets.htm

Apart from that, it is likely to be difficult to make predictions with regard to language (Living without Numbers or Time).

CC.

Having bad memories? We can get rid of those for you, no problem! [link - world-science.net]

We and our fellow apes are related to the other primates; Wikipedia says that there's some disagreement over whether primates are descended from Plesiadapiformes or just related do them.

The BBC and Scientific American have good quotes from Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the results. Others are already calling it "possibly habitable".

Very cool news!

Most animals are preditary, they will kill if threatend, they will not face a court, they will not go to jail if they are found guilty. If Chimps were on the same level as humans they would have established simular laws and higher archys that we have as a sociaty. This isn't Planet of the Apes just yet(or chimps what ever). If you want to put on chimp on the same level you would have to deal with http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050209_war frm.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4938620.stm and this http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/killer-chimps-found -hunting-with-spears-12650.html . Yes we are simular to them, they may even evolve at some point to be like us, or at least the missing link. But the point still remains that they are not us, don't have the same reasoning as us, and it takes 100 chimps to write a play that one man wrote(that was a joke). Chimps deserve chimp rights, if they attack people they should be taken care of, I'm not sure if this should include killing them as it is just instincts that they may have not learned to controle or just the enviroment they live in. They should be protected from unfair treatment. They do posses traits that put them above other species, but I don't think that you could give them the same or even simular rights as humans based on some traits that they show.

Maybe we should watch over them and help them develop their growth, but then again no one did that for us and we turned out okay. Except maybe the war and killing.

OK!

First is WMAP Cosmology 101: Big Bang Concepts. I think this page is reputable, because the domain is map.gsfc.nasa.gov. There are a few things about this link- First, it makes no real commitments to shape. It says it's possible that the universe has a more complex shape than "closed sphere, flat, or open," but it's unwilling to commit to anything. That said, it suggests flat, by pointing out that "If the density just equals the critical density, the universe is flat, but still presumably infinite. ... While the answer is not yet known for certain, [the average density of matter] appears to be tantalizingly close to the critical density."

Another important thing to note there, is that they use the terms "universe" and "visible universe" almost interchangably. (See, for example, the first paragraph under "The Origin of the Cosmic Microwave Background.") This jives with what Wikipedia says about "Observable universe:" "Both popular and professional research articles in cosmology often use the term "universe" to mean "observable universe"." I try not to use Wikipedia, but if it points out something that seems to agree with other websites, I conditionally take it. So: When they talk about the "size" of the universe, they almost always mean the size of the observable universe. (see also...)

Yet another thing to note here, is that it says that the universe doesn't necessarily start at a point. The Big Bang may have occurred everywhere. The "bang" is about the space that is appearing between all galaxies, not that the universe was first bound into a nutshell, and then exploded outwards. A picture I have made in my head, (which may reflect astrophysicists understand, which may not reflect astrophysicists understanding,) is that, plausibly, first there was stuff everywhere, infinitely, in all direction, but, that as time passed, "additional blank space" was put between all the things that exist. The entire observable universe came from just one small tiny dot of the stuff that is everywhere. The space that we see is mostly stuff that was added, since time began. So it's not so much that the universe started out small, and then grew large, as it is that the universe started out infinite, and that infinite universe is scaling outward, like scaling the real numbers out by some multiplier, over and over and over again. (Supporting link: "In this picture the Big Bang occurred everywhere."

Here's another website, on curious.astro.cornell.edu. Cornell "astro" .edu sounds reliable enough, to me. Sadly, this site is dated January, 1999.

Here's a 2006 educational publication, chapter 4 says that the universe is very nearly flat. This is typical of what I've seen on most sites. Note that in 5.1, he notes that the universe may be infinite; This, too, is fairly typical, in sites I see.

There are a number of newspaper articles, that have news of astronomers finding "hints" at one shape, or another shape, but there's nothing conclusive. In my experience, these articles are usually (A) confusing, and very likely (B) confused, and seem to be okay with that: "What will these wacky scientists come up with, next?" A funnel, a soccer ball, a pill, ...

When

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/050606_dolp hinfrm.htm

A group of dolphins has learned to use tools, with mothers teaching their daughters how to do so. That's pretty damn smart.

Just goes to show that you shouldn't take every slashdotted article for its face value.

I recommend Seed as well.

A few more are World Science and EROEI.com and Physorg.

Much more detail about this phenomenon can be found here and here.

That this story isn't already on this site
http://www.world-science.net/

All the wild science you ever needed....