Philip Ball: When physicists dismiss as a myth the charge that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will trigger a process that might destroy the world, they are closer to the truth than they realize. In common parlance, a myth has come to denote a story that isn"t true, but in fact it is a story that is "psychologically true". A myth is not a false story but an archetypal one. And the archetype for this current bout of scare stories is obvious: the Faust myth, in which an hubristic individual unleashes forces he or she cannot control. The LHC is due to be switched on this summer at CERN, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva. But some fear that the energies released by colliding subatomic particles will produce miniature black holes that will engulf the world. Walter Wagner, a resident of Hawaii, has even filed a lawsuit to prevent the experiments. As high-energy physicist Joseph Kapusta from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis points out1, such dire forebodings have accompanied the advent of other particle accelerators, including the Bevalac in California and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York. In thelatter case, newspapers seized on the notion of an apocalyptic event" just as the facility went into operation, Britain"s Sunday Times ran a story under the headline The Final Experiment? Swallowing Earth: The Bevalac, an amalgamation of two existing accelerators at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was created in the 1970s to investigate extremely dense states of nuclear matter" stuff made from the compact nuclei of atoms.
In 1974, two physicists proposed that there might be a hitherto unseen and ultra-dense form of nuclear matter more stable than ordinary nuclei, which they rather alarmingly dubbed "abnormal".
. If so, there was a small chance that even the tiniest lump of it could keep growing indefinitely by engulfing ordinary matter. Calculations implied that a speck of this pathological form of abnormal nuclear matter made in the Bevalac would sink to the centre of Earth and then expand to swallow the planet, all in a matter of seconds.
Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged.This would mean ...
Philip Ball: When physicists dismiss as a myth the charge that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will trigger a process that might destroy the world, they are closer to the truth than they realize. In common parlance, a myth has come to denote a story that isn"t true, but in fact it is a story that is "psychologically true". A myth is not a false story but an archetypal one. And the archetype for this current bout of scare stories is obvious: the Faust myth, in which an hubristic individual unleas...
A leading scientist has warned a new species of "humanzee," created from breeding apes with humans, could become a reality unless the government acts to stop scientists experimenting. In an interview with The Scotsman, Dr Calum MacKellar, director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, warned the controversial draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill did not prevent human sperm being inseminated into animals.He said if a female chimpanzee was inseminated with human sperm th...
The supernatural frogs falling from the sky, mysterious airships, spontaneous human combustion... it all fascinated Charles Fort, whose appetite for the paranormal lives on today in sci-fi, conspiracy theories and that quirky chronicle of the unknown, the Fortean Times. By Jim Steinmeyer No one knew what to make of The Book of the Damned, which appeared in bookshops across America in January, 1920. At Brentano's Bookstore on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the cardboard cartons containin...
An international team of researchers may, just may, have made a radical breakthrough that could rewrite physics and chemistry textbooks. They claim to have discovered a naturally occurring element with an atomic number (number of protons) of 122 — 30 notches on the periodic table ahead of uranium, long considered the heaviest naturally occurring element. For decades, physicists have been making artificial elements in supercolliders, only to see most of their creations disintegrate within a short...
People learning through genetic testing that they might be susceptible to devastating diseases wouldn"t also have to worry about losing their jobs or their health insurance under anti-discrimination legislation the Senate passed Thursday. The 95-0 Senate vote sends the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act back to the House, which could approve it early next week. President Bush supports the legislation. The bill, described by Sen. Edward Kennedy as "the first major new civil rights bill of ...
Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: Ancient humans started down the path of evolving into two separate species before merging back into a single population, a genetic study suggests. The genetic split in Africa resulted in distinct populations that lived in isolation for as much as 100,000 years, the scientists say. This could have been caused by arid conditions driving a wedge between humans in eastern and southern Africa. Details have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. It would b...
A recently developed technique that might eventually produce facsimiles of human embryonic stem cells from skin cells was lauded by President Bush and the Catholic Church as an ethical alternative to using human embryos for research. But it “opens a whole new can of worms” - the possibility of creating chimera humans, one researcher says. The idea is that you could borrow skin cells from a living or dead person (Albert Einstein jumped to the mind of the concerned scientist) to give your child a ...
Submitted by Pendekar Timur: With food prices hitting record highs the jury is still out in Asia as to whether genetically modified crops hold the key to future food security. The Philippine government has openly embraced the commercial growing of genetically modified (GM) corn, but neighbouring countries appear less than enthusiastic. "There has been a lot of talk about developing high-yielding crops and crops that can cope with climate change using GM seeds," said Daniel Ocampo, a genetic engi...
Ever since the first human saw a bird soaring through the clouds, our species has harbored a great envy for the freedom that flying gives. Now a company from Mexico is trying to capitalize on this desire with their design for a strap-on helicopter, which is intended to be worn on the back of an individual and lift them into the air. The idea is not new, but the technology may have some novelty, although details are sparse. Technologia Aeroespacial Mexicana (TAM), the company behind the Libelula ...
The practice of cloud seeding to create rain, mitigate hail or even quell hurricanes is now on the road from science fiction to fact, said scientists at the meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the Weather Modification Association (WMA) in Westminster, Colo. on Tuesday. On the other hand, there is little hope that China's efforts to keep rain from falling on the Olympics will succeed, they said. China has spent $100 million and employed 30,000 people in weather modif...
Submitted by Tiggs: A man who lost the tip of his finger in an accident claims that it has regrown after he sprinkled it with a powder created from a pig"s bladder. Lee Spievak, from Ohio, lost part of his middle finger three years ago after it was hit by the propeller of a model airplane at the toy shop where he worked. He said that doctors told him that it would never grow back. Yet Mr Spievak, 69, once again has all of his finger thanks, he claims, to a magic "pixie dust". The powder was prod...
Submitted by Bbrown88: An intense game of Concentration or other demanding memory task might kick your intelligence up a notch or two, and the more you engage your brain this way, the smarter you might become. Researchers reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences say that brain exercises designed to improve working memory also increase scores in fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the ability to reason and solve new problems. It does not rely on memory and is often t...
Submitted by Stance: It was a very close call. If a devastating drought that gripped Africa had lasted just a little longer, or been a little worse, we would not be here today. There would be no humans, no cities, no art and no science. There would be no wars and no human-induced climate change. The world would belong to the animals. An international genetics project has found that modern humans almost became extinct 70,000 years ago. The Genographic Project, led by American and Israeli research...
Surgeons have carried out the first operations in Britain using a pioneering "bionic eye" that could in future help to restore blind people"s sight. Two successful operations to implant the device into the eyes of two blind patients have been conducted at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. The device — the first of its kind — incorporates a video camera and transmitter mounted on a pair of glasses. This is linked to an artificial retina, which transmits moving images along the optic nerve to the...
Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery. Now unexpected powerful tunes have been discovered in this hum. These new findings could shed light on the source of this enigma. The planet emanates a constant rumble far below the limits of human hearing, even when the ground isn"t shaking from an earthquake. (It does not cause the ringing in the ear linked wi...
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Philip Ball: When physicists dismiss as a myth the charge that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will trigger a process that might destroy the world, they are closer to the truth than they realize. In common parlance, a myth has come to denote a story that isn"t true, but in fact it is a story that is "psychologically true". A myth is not a false story but an archetypal one. And the archetype for this current bout of scare stories is obvious: the Faust myth, in which an hubristic individual unleashes forces he or she cannot control. The LHC is due to be switched on this summer at CERN, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva. But some fear that the energies released by colliding subatomic particles will produce miniature black holes that will engulf the world. Walter Wagner, a resident of Hawaii, has even filed a lawsuit to prevent the experiments. As high-energy physicist Joseph Kapusta from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis points out1, such dire forebodings have accompanied the advent of other particle accelerators, including the Bevalac in California and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York. In thelatter case, newspapers seized on the notion of an apocalyptic event" just as the facility went into operation, Britain"s Sunday Times ran a story under the headline The Final Experiment? Swallowing Earth: The Bevalac, an amalgamation of two existing accelerators at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was created in the 1970s to investigate extremely dense states of nuclear matter" stuff made from the compact nuclei of atoms.
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