Sunny side of life

Following an official request by the Government of Nunavut, the Canadian Armed Forces conducted an aerial investigation into mysterious pinging sound, also described as a "hum" and "beep," coming from the seafloor in Fury and  Hecla  Strait, a remote Arctic region of northern Canada. The source of the  sound reported by sailors and hunters since June , however, remains a mystery. This passage is known for the presence of various types of seals and bowhead whales, marine species usually abundant in the well-known hunting region during winter and summer, but according to Paul Quassa, a member of the legislative assembly, the sound seems to be chasing away the animals. "That passage is a migratory route for bowhead whales, and also bearded seals and ringed seals. There would be so many in that particular area. This summer there are none" said George Qulaut, another area expert.  According to the Department of National Defence senior c...

Planet Nine — the undiscovered planet at the edge of the solar system — may be responsible for the unusual tilt of the Sun, according to a new study. The large and distant planet that was predicted to exist in January this year may be adding a wobble to the solar system, giving the appearance that the Sun is tilted slightly, researchers said. “Because Planet Nine is so massive and has an orbit tilted compared to the other planets, the solar system has no choice but to slowly twist out of alignment,” said Elizabeth Bailey, a graduate student at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US. All of the planets orbit in a flat plane with respect to the Sun, roughly within a couple degrees of each other. That plane, however, rotates at a six-degree tilt with respect to the Sun — giving the appearance that the Sun itself is cocked off at an angle. Until now, no one had found a compelling explanation to produce such an effect. “It’s such a deep-rooted mystery and so diff...

I am not an enthusiast. There are several different theories of multi-universes. The one I am proposing is sequential. It’s a different scheme. You have multi universes from people who believe that the interpretation of quantum mechanics leads you to what is called the ‘many worlds’ theory, the Everett interpretation. There are many people who like that point of view because it seems to avoid having to contradict unitarity or the Schrodinger’s Equation, or whatever you like to say. I personally don’t think it’s a solution and I think it is not explaining the world that we see, which is what we are trying to explain. It is explaining a sort of hypothetical world in which things branch and we go off in different branches. I have trouble with that.  But that’s one multi-universe scheme. Another multi-universe scheme comes from certain discussions of inflationary cosmology. I should say that inflation is not part of my scheme, its an alternative to inflation. So I don’t accept that ...

A book titled “ Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the Nature of the Universe “, published in the USA, has stirred up the Internet because of the notion that  life does not end when the body dies and can last forever.  The author of this publication, scientist  Robert Lanza , has no doubts that this may be possible. Beyond time and space Lanza is an expert in  regenerative medicine  and scientific director at  Advanced Cell Technology Company . While he is known for his extensive research on  stem cells,  he was also famous for several successful experiments on  cloning endangered animal species. But not so long ago, the scientist turned his attention to  physics, quantum mechanics and astrophysics.  This explosive mixture has given birth to the new theory of  biocentrism , which the professor has been preaching ever since. The theory implies that  death simply does not exist....

The world's first baby has been born using a new "three person" fertility technique, New Scientist reveals. The five-month-old boy has the usual DNA from his mum and dad, plus a tiny bit of genetic code from a donor. US doctors took the unprecedented step to ensure the baby boy would be free of a genetic condition that his Jordanian mother carries in her genes. Experts say the move heralds a new era in medicine and could help other families with rare genetic conditions. But they warn that rigorous checks of this new and controversial technology, called mitochondrial donation, are needed. It's not the first time scientists have created babies that have  DNA from three people  - that breakthrough began in the late 1990s - but it is an entirely new and significant method. Three person babies Mitochondria are tiny structures inside nearly every cell of the body that convert food into usable energy. Some women carry genetic defects in mito...

They will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria," the British physicist warned. British physicist Stephen Hawking has warned against announcing our presence to any alien civilisations, especially to those more technologically advanced than humans. Our first contact from an advanced civilisation could be equivalent to when Native Americans first encountered Christopher Columbus and things “didn’t turn out so well”, Hawking said in a new online film. The film,  Stephen Hawking’s Favourite Places , takes viewers to five significant locations across the cosmos, on his spacecraft — the SS Hawking. In the film, Hawking performs a hypothetical flyby of Gliese 832c, a potentially habitable exoplanet located 16 light years away. “One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back,” he said. “They will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valu...

The Drake equation is: {\displaystyle N=R_{\ast }\cdot f_{p}\cdot n_{e}\cdot f_{\ell }\cdot f_{i}\cdot f_{c}\cdot L} where: N  = the number of  civilizations  in our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past  light cone ); and R *  = the average rate of  star formation  in  our galaxy f p  = the fraction of those stars that have  planets n e  = the average number of planets that can potentially support  life  per star that has planets f l  = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point f i  = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop  intelligent  life (civilizations) f c  = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space L  = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into sp...

More than 2700 years back a huge university existed in that ancient India where over 10,500 students from all across the world came for higher studies. This was the TakshaShila university of ancient India (wrongly spelled as Taxila today). During its times this university was the IIT and MIT of the world, where the students from all across the world used to come to attain specialization in over 64 different fields of study like vedas, grammar, philosophy, ayurveda, agriculture, surgery, politics, archery, warfare, astronomy, commerce, futurology, music, dance, etc. There were even curious subjects like the art of discovering hidden treasure, decrypting encrypted messages, etc Students were admitted to this university at the age of 16 after they had completed their basic education in their local institutions. Every single graduate who passed out of this university would become a well sought after scholar all across the subcontinent! Admission into this university was purely base...

the Ganges River dolphin, or susu, inhabits the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Karnaphuli-Sangu river systems of Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. This vast area has been altered by the construction of more than 50 dams and other irrigation-related projects, with dire consequences for the river dolphins. The Ganges River dolphin lives in one of the world's most densely populated areas, and is threatened by removal of riv ts. In addition, alterations to the river due to barrages are also separating populations. A recent survey conducted by WWF-India and its partners in the entire distribution range in the Ganga and er water and siltation arising from deforestation, pollution and entanglement in fisheries ne Brahamaputra river system - around 6,000 km - identified fewer than 2,000 individuals in India. This dolphin is among the four "obligate" freshwater dolphins - the other three are the baiji now likely extinct from the Yangtze river in China, the bhulan of the Indus in P...

BEIJING, CHINA:   The world's largest radio telescope began operating in southwestern China Sunday, a project which Beijing says will help humanity search for alien life.   The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), nestled between hills in the mountainous region of Guizhou, began working around noon, the official Xinhua news agency reported.     Built at a cost of 1.2 billion yuan ($180 million), the telescope dwarfs the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico as the world's largest radio telescope, with a reflector as large as 30 football fields, it said. FAST will explore space and search for signs of intelligent life, it added. China sees its ambitious military-run, multi-billion-dollar space programme as symbolising the country's progress. It plans a permanent orbiting space station by 2020 and eventually a manned mission to the moon. Earlier Xinhua cited Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese As...

The galaxy, Dragonfly 44, is located in the nearby Coma constellation and had been overlooked until last year because of its unusual composition: It is a diffuse "blob" about the size of the Milky Way, but with far fewer stars. "Very soon after its discovery, we realized this galaxy had to be more than meets the eye. It has so few stars that it would quickly be ripped apart unless something was holding it together," said Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum, lead author of a paper in the  Astrophysical Journal Letters . Van Dokkum's team was able to get a good look at Dragonfly 44 thanks to the W.M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini North telescope, both in Hawaii. Astronomers used observations from Keck, taken over six nights, to measure the velocities of stars in the galaxy. They used the 8-meter Gemini North telescope to reveal a halo of spherical clusters of stars around the galaxy's core, similar to the halo that surrounds our Milky Way gala...