According to NASA-funded research on drill-cores from Australia, Earth’s atmosphere contained significant amounts of oxygen nearly 2.5 billion years ago, millions of years earlier than previously assumed. Let’s see the Young Earth Creationists spin that one.
It’s (relatively) common knowledge that black holes consume pretty much anything and everything … and apparently that includes each other, as astronomers speculate that the black hole at the center of our own galaxy may have gobbled up a smaller sibling over 100 million years ago.
While we’re on the subject of astronomy, and just in case you get asked by a curious child and don’t want to get caught on the hop, you may wish to learn why space is dark. [Image by D P Hershman]
It sounds like a crazy idea – but then that’s what they said about penicillin. Scientists from the UK are planning to use a close relative of the E. coli virus as a ‘targeted antibacterial agent’ to combat increasingly drug-resistant bacterial infections like the infamous MRSA. I’m sure they know what they’re doing … but I’m guessing doctors will want to keep fairly quiet on the antibiotic’s origins at first. [Image by Justin Baeder]
A detailed study of a supernova could tell scientists an awful lot of useful things … but there are obvious reasons why, even if we were able to travel the distances involved, we’d not want to just blast on over to check one out up close and personal. So, we do the next best thing – we recreate a some of the phenomena of a supernova under laboratory conditions.
We’ve heard about the street finding its own use for things, but here’s an example of the opposite occurring: epidemiological researchers are in discussion with the makers of World of Warcraft to arrange a for a contagious virtual disease to sweep the multiplayer world, so that they can observe how people react to various social countermeasures like quarantining. Brings a whole new meaning to bugs in the code. [Image by Rance Costa]