The Long Shot

Two rival scientific teams are locked in a high-stakes race to discover other earth-like worlds—and forever change our own.

Seed met the teams.  

Debra Fischer, a professor at San Francisco State University, is co-discoverer of more than 150 planets. She is using a modest, neglected telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile to search for Earth-like planets in Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to our own. 

Michel Mayor  operates the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), at the European Southern Observatory’s facilities on the peak of La Silla, also in Chile.

Source: http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/the_long_shot/

EU Approves further animal research

It'll be bitterly disputed about whether this is a scientific step forward or an ethical quantum leap back, but this week, research involving non-human primates was given the go-ahead in an initial vote by the European Parliament.

Whilst Seed opines that "it was beginning to seem that Europe was on the fast track to scientific irrelevance [...] the outlook brightened a bit Tuesday when the European Parliament announced the passage of animal research rules that permit research done on non-human primates", the contrary view is voiced by Animal Defenders International (ADI), who are shocked that the MEPs vote will "strip away protection from wild caught primates; remove prior authorisation requirements for over 4million experiments, and reduce significantly proposals to regulate animal experiments across Europe".

Two anti-vivisectionist views are provided here: http://is.gd/yo38 

And here: http://is.gd/yo3P
SEED's opinion piece is here: http://seedmagazine.com/

Source: http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/print/55675/

Trimpin: sound of invention

Take a look at the trailer for this documentary about German sound alchemist, Trimpin.

He designs, builds, programs, and composes outrageous ensembles of musical instruments from the periphery of reality. One of his more ambitious experiments is designing a 'perpetual motion' machine in a glass foundry.

Source: http://www.vimeo.com/3559372

What went wrong at the LHC

Everyone's favourite pop-star physicist, Brian Cox, tells TED, and us, what went wrong at the LHC supercollider.

He covers the repairs now underway and what the future holds for the largest science experiment ever attempted.

Source: http://minurl.org/iAUum

Artists Takeover Over Illegal Billboards

Jordan Seiler's ambitious "New York Street Advertising Takeover" became a reality this month, when over 120 illegal billboards throughout the city were white washed by dozens of volunteers.

Source: http://www.woostercollective.com

Flavour of the giant milkshake in the sky revealed

In another effort to foil the public's attempts to take them seriously, astronomers testing a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have found that it might taste of raspberries. With apologies to UK readers, who probably saw this stories splashed across the media two days ago.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au 

The Cosmos In A Coffee Cup

Instinctively, we always knew the key to the universe was coffee, and now physicists at Duke University have handily proved it for us. 

A professor and his graduate student have discovered a universal principle that unites the curious interplay of light and shadow on the surface of your morning coffee with the way gravity magnifies and distorts light from distant galaxies.

Science Daily reports that, "Light rays naturally reflect off a curve like the inside surface of a coffee cup in a curving, ivy leaf pattern that comes to a point in the center and is brightest along its edge. Mathematicians and physicists call that shape a "cusp curve," and they call the bright edge a "caustic," based on an alternative dictionary definition meaning 'burning bright'..."

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090414160801.htm

The Rise of the Trickster

This weeks the tweets are all about tricksters.  It is interesting to see the trope re-emerging in uncertain times. Lewis Hyde's seminal book on this topic is well worth re-discovering:

"The trickster is anybody who's a bit of an outsider. They're the ones who make change. They're not thinking about making change; they're almost doing it in a selfish way. But because they're working outside the rules, they change the rules. Everything around them is always new, everything is an opportunity. It's important to honor mischief-making, in a constructive and creative way, because that's how we effect change. And it's so important that we figure out our inner mischief maker. That's the creative part of us. And everybody's capable of it." .

There's a lovely TED talk from a self-proclaimed trickster, Emily Levine, well worth checking out.

Source: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/emily_levine_s_theory_of_everything.html

Gravity satellite senses unknown energies

This press release doesn't quite capture the importance of the new gravity-sensing satellite which has launched this week. 

GOCE will feel the subtle variations in Earth's tug as it sweeps around the globe.

GOCE’s highly sensitive gradiometer instrument has been switched on and is producing data. The gradiometer is specifically designed to measure Earth’s gravity field with unprecedented accuracy.

One of several satellites which launch this year focused on gravity, GOCE will help scientists construct high-resolution maps of the geoid - an idealised globe with a surface of constant gravity. Geoid information has many applications but perhaps the biggest knowledge gains will come in the study of ocean behaviour. Understanding better how gravity pulls water - and therefore heat - around the globe will improve computer models that try to forecast climate change.

Source: http://www.esa.int/

Sweet dreams are made

Looking for an explanation for weird dreams? New research suggests you can blame the Earth's magnetic field, not a repressed childhood. The New Scientist reports that Darren Lipnicki, a psychologist formerly at the Center for Space Medicine in Berlin, found a correlation between the bizarreness of his dreams, recorded over eight years, and extremes in local geomagnetic activity. Between 1990 and 1997, he kept meticulous records of his nightly reveries, amassing a total 2387 written accounts during his teenage years. "I always wanted to do science with them," he says. For the study, he devised a five-point scoring system to rate the bizarreness of these dreams.

(With thanks to Fiona Wright for the headline - her words, not ours).

Source: www.newscientist.com