Clipmarks | LorisKnight's 'science' clips

Born On The Same Day to the Same Mother - But They're NOT Twins

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 10:53:11 GMT

clipped by: LorisKnight
clipper's remarks: Isn't this just semantics, though? They look alike, so shouldn't they be called twins? Or maybe science needs to update definitions.

Clip Source: spluch.blogspot.com

To everyone who sees them, five-month-old Ame and Lia look like twins. And they were indeed born to the same mother just minutes apart. Amazingly, however, the sisters are not twins. They were conceived three weeks apart thanks to a million-to-one medical rarity.

Doctors had to carry out an emergency caesarean to deliver the babies because they were both lying awkwardly in the womb. Ame was born at 29 weeks and Lia at 32.

Miss Spence became pregnant twice in three weeks while she was taking the contraceptive pill.

An explanation for this unusual case:

process known as superfetation

formation of a foetus whilst another foetus is already present in the uterus.

when eggs from two separate menstrual cycles are released

The girls are technically not twins. Identical twins occur when one egg splits into two and non-identical, or fraternal, twins occur when two eggs are released and fertilised at the same time.

they are not twins as they were conceived three weeks apart.

Tags: science, childbirth, pregnance

Tie-Dye Roses

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:55:16 GMT

clipped by: LorisKnight
clipper's remarks: More man made alterations. Of the gentler kind, perhaps?

Clip Source: www.neatorama.com

Dutch company Happy Colors created these "tie-dyed" roses above and other multi-colored flowers by injecting pigments into the stem using hypodermic needles.

Tags: photos, roses, tie-dye, science

The Quest for the Elusive Chronon

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 20:07:06 GMT

clipped by: LorisKnight

Clip Source: www.brainsturbator.com

In the past century, human science has advanced beyond anyone’s wildest dreams: we’ve put humans into space, eliminated entire cities with a single bomb, industrialized the genocide process, poisoned our entire planet, and figured out how to stick over 5000 albums into a small plastic box. We have peered billions of light years into the cosmos, we have unraveled the atom and discovered quantum weirdness, and even transcribed the human genome. As a direct consequence of all this glittering achievement, scientists are understandably pretty cocky these days. However, I would like to pass anyone reading this the Silver Bullet to instantly deflate the ego of anyone who’s exponentially more intelligent than you are: just ask them to explain what time is.

Time is the single most universally constant of physical constants, and yet we barely know anything at all about it. Here in 2007, we still don’t even have a working definition of what it is.

Tags: science

Seeing the Unseeable

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:54:48 GMT

clipped by: LorisKnight

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

Within the confines of the ordinary, vision is the most reliable tool we have. But some of the most extraordinary parts of nature, those that lie at the frontiers of science, can't be seen at all. Dark matter, for example, the invisible, mysterious material that makes up 22 percent of the stuff in the universe, is one of the great scientific unknowns, a substance nearly six times as abundant as ordinary matter but made up of fundamental particles we haven't yet identified. And dark matter doesn't emit light, it doesn't reflect light, and it doesn't absorb light. It's not dark, as the name suggests—dark matter is completely, inherently unseeable.

While we are unable to see dark matter itself, we are able to create maps of it, pinpointing
its location by observing the effects of its mass on light from distant galaxies.

Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts that a massive object will curve the fabric of space, and light will follow this deformed path.

Tags: science

Researchers Create New Form of Matter

Fri, 18 May 2007 15:08:37 GMT

clipped by: LorisKnight

Clip Source: physorg.com

Physicists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a new form of matter that melds the characteristics of lasers with those of the world's best electrical conductors - superconductors.

The work introduces a new method of moving energy from one point to another as well as a low-energy means of producing a light beam like that from a laser. The Pitt researchers and their collaborators at the Bell Labs of Alcatel-Lucent in New Jersey detail the process in the May 18 issue of the journal Science.

The new state is a solid filled with a collection of energy particles known as polaritons that have been trapped and slowed, explained lead investigator David Snoke, an associate professor in the physics and astronomy department in Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences. Snoke worked with Pitt graduate students Ryan Balili and Vincent Hartwell on the project.

Tags: science, lasers, matter, superconductors