Fossils of three new species of dinosaurs have been discovered in Australia
Fossils of three new species of dinosaurs have been discovered in Australia, including a meat-eater larger than Velociraptor from the Jurassic Park movies, suggesting Australia may have a more complex prehistoric past.
 
 

An aerial view of a patch of deforested jungle
More than 800 animal and plant species have gone extinct in the past five centuries with nearly 17,000 now threatened with extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature reported on Thursday.
 
 

Can’t Touch This…
Korean designer Rhea Jeong says she’s been astounded by the amount of interest in her conceptual Void LP record player. One look at the design and you can see why it’s made so much noise without even uttering a sound. Close your eyes and imagine a little red globe spinning around on top [...]

 First litter of Lynx kittens found since 2006
Spring brought a surprise delivery from the stork: A litter of 10 lynx kittens-the first newborns documented in Colorado since 2006, gladdening the hearts of biologists leading the charge to restore the mountain feline, as well as drawing waves of squeals from computer monitors everywhere.  (Pics)

Electronic nose can pinpoint where wine was made
Scientists have developed a way of identifying wine so accurately they can even say which barrel it was produced in.
It uses an electronic nose to make even the most confident sommelier a little nervous.

View this century’s longest solar eclipse aboard the JetLite 737-700 
On Wednesday, July 22, 2009, we are going to witness the greatest eclipse of the 21st century. A total eclipse of the sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth. The path of the Moon’s umbral shadow will begin in India [...]

Image of part of a stellar remnant whose explosion was recorded in 185 A.D.  
Thanks to a unique “ballistic study” that combines data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have now solved a long-standing mystery of the Milky Way’s particle accelerators. They show in a paper published today on Science Express [...]

 
Mississippi dead zone in 2004. This year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” could be one of the largest on record
University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia and his colleagues say this year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” could be one of the largest on record, continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a [...]

 
Space Colony
For more than 50 years, many have taken the so-called Fermi Paradox to indicate that the existence of intelligent alien civilizations is an impossibility. However, a recent re-examination of the paradox points out that, rather than discounting the spread of an intelligent civilization, the Fermi Paradox merely points out that advanced civilizations with exponential [...]

Photo of volcanic eruption taken from space 
A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station allowed the astronauts this striking view of Sarychev Volcano (Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, and it is [...]

Connecting the historical dots

Given away by strange, crop circle-like formations seen from the air, a huge prehistoric ceremonial complex discovered in southern England has taken archaeologists by surprise.
A thousand years older than Stonehenge, the site includes the remains of wooden temples and two massive, 6,000-year-old tombs that are among “Britain’s first architecture,” according to archaeologist Helen [...]

Now THAT’s what I call a book!

What would Wikipedia look like if it were printed out as a traditional encyclopedia? Rob Matthews decided to make it his art project: behold, the 5,000 pages of Wikipedia (featured articles only, mind you) in book form!

Professor Payson Sheets and his team uncovered a manioc field one-third the size of football field
A University of Colorado at Boulder team has uncovered an ancient and previously unknown Maya agricultural system — a large manioc field intensively cultivated as a staple crop that was buried and exquisitely preserved under a blanket of ash [...]

Scientists first discovered psittacosaurs in the Gobi Desert in 1922
Plants or meat: That’s about all that fossils ever tell paleontologists about a dinosaur’s diet. But the skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the animal fed on nuts and/or seeds. These characteristics present the first solid [...]

Humans related to orangutans, not chimps 
New evidence underscores the theory of human origin that suggests humans most likely share a common ancestor with orangutans, according to research from the University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Reporting in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biogeography, the researchers reject as “problematic” the [...]

YourSpace is shrinking.
In May 2009, Facebook became the most popular US social networking site.
But it was close.
According to comScore, Facebook totaled 70,278,000 unique visitors, up 97% from May 2008 to May 2009. MySpace hits shrank 5% over the same timeframe, fading to 70,255,000 unique visitors.

Scientists working to develop wheat varieties resistant to a strain of “stem rust” 
The Ug99 fungus, called stem rust, could wipe out more than 80% of the world’s wheat as it spreads from Africa, scientists fear. The race is on to breed resistant plants before it reaches the U.S.

That’s a LONG way from Hydrogen…

Get ready to revise the text books again, the Periodic Table of Elements is getting a new addition.
Sigurd Hofmann and colleagues at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Germany produced the superheavy 112 back in 1996, and now it’s going to be officially added to the Periodic Table [...]

Gerrit holds the meteorite and on the back of the other the graze it left can be seen  
The odds of it happening are astronomical, but not impossible, as one schoolboy found out when he was struck by a passing meteorite.
The rock flew down from space at speeds of 30,000mph, and grazed past 14-year-old Gerrit Blank [...]

 
 
A Venn diagram showing the psychological forces at work among users of social networking tools – a new shirt from the comedy geniuses at Despair, Inc. I like to use the shirt like a dart board when I start my day to determine how to behave in each networking situation…

 
The tooth fairy payment was astronomical
In the famed Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed near Bakersfield, Calif., shark teeth as big as a hand and weighing a pound each, intermixed with copious bones from extinct seals and whales, seem to tell of a 15-million-year-old killing ground.

GOOD magazine’s infographic reveals that recent bankruptcies dwarf Enron’s collapse. I dunno if that fact is supposed to make us laugh, cry or look for another country to migrate to….

New words are popping up everywhere!

A new English word is created about every 98 minutes, according to the website The Global Language Monitor. Based on that rate, English passed the millionth word mark earlier today.
Here are the 10 latest words in the English language:
1,000,000: Web 2.0 – The next generation of web products and services, [...]

A father unglued.

Fathers used to embarrassing their children with their dance moves are being urged to show off their skills in public – all in the name of art. Gallery bosses at The Lowry Centre, in Salford, are urging families to submit video clips in their search for the “most embarrassing dad dancers”.
The top 10 [...]