Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/robot-to-explore-mysterious-tunnels-in-great-pyramid-2046506.html

If you've seen any documentary of the great pyramid you've seen these tunnels that will soon reveal their mysteries... (hopefully)

In the Queen's Chamber, there are two further shafts, discovered in 1872. Unlike those in the King's Chamber, these do not lead to the outer face of the pyramid

No one knows what the shafts are for. In 1992, a camera sent up the shaft leading from the south wall of the Queen's Chamber discovered it was blocked after 60 metres by a limestone door with two copper handles. In 2002, a further expedition drilled through this door and revealed, 20 centimetres behind it, a second door.

"The second door is unlike the first. It looks as if it is screening or covering something," said Dr Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council who is in charge of the expedition. The north shaft bends by 45 degrees after 18 metres but, after 60 metres, is also blocked by a limestone door.

What do you think is back there ? This sure will make for good TV.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/7888012/Higgs-boson-discovery-rumours-false-say-Tevatron-scientists.html

About the worst possible scenario for the Large Hadron facility - after years of construction and millions overspent, accidents and fixes - and then another lab discovers the god particle.

Today the Tevatron team makes a statement that basically says - nope, we didnt.

The rumours had been flying around the internet since a physicist and blogger, Tommaso Dorigo of the University of Padua, said that in a blog post that he had heard "two different, possibly independent sources" claiming that an experiment at the Tevatron had found convincing evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson.

However, Stefan Söldner-Rembold, a spokesman for the Dzero experiment at Tevatron and a professor of physics at Manchester University, said: "Tommaso Dorigo's blog is not a reliable source and is in no way supported by us.

Link: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-coming-shortage-of-helium-2010-06-30

Or you might not be getting that lifesaving MRI - or than new 52 inch LCD.....

What do MRI machines, rockets, fiber optics, LCDs, food production and welding have in common?

They all require the inert, or noble, gas helium for their use or at some stage of their production. And that helium essentially could be gone in less than three decades, Robert C. Richardson, winner, along with Douglas Osheroff and David Lee, of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics, said at the 60th annual Nobel Laureate Lectures at Lindau today. “Once it is released into the atmosphere, say, in the form of party balloons, it is lost to the Earth forever—it is lost to the Earth forever ,” he added.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10385675.stm

Some very cool sounds of what these particles energy signatures would sound like if converted to audio. The harmonics one reminds me of the Star Trek Transporter.

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/15/ozzy-osbournes-blood-to-b_n_612758.html

I just read his autobiography "I am Ozzy" - awesome read. After finishing though I was left to wonder the same thing. Maybe science can decode this mystery.

Link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/10/dark_pulse_laser/

Holy cow, how sci-fi does this sound? Thankfully the DP laser does not destroy entire worlds... it's use is somewhat more scientific.

The new laser depends on the qdots' unusual energy dynamics, which have the effect of stabilizing dark pulses. After emitting light, qdots recover energy from within rapidly (in about 1 picosecond) but more slowly (in about 200 picoseconds) from energy inputs originating outside the qdots in the laser cavity. This creates a progression of overall energy gains gradually giving way to overall energy losses. Eventually, the laser reaches a steady state of repeated brief intensity dips—a drop of about 70 percent—from the continuous light background.

Link: http://technology.globalthoughtz.com/index.php/brain-scanners-to-replace-lie-detectors-in-court-rooms-pose-threat-to-privacy/

Brain scans that earlier formed a part of only doctor’s analysis of his patient’s brain conditions are now prone to being exploited to be used as lie detectors. However the analysts fear that such a measure would indeed be a threat to the privacy of the individuals and could be misused by courts, employers, insurers and others.

On the bright side if you have anything medically wrong with your brain I guess you also get a free checkup.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65138U20100602

A new study shows that us coffee chuggers don't get a supercharge from our coffee - rather it just brings us up to normal awake levels. Apparently we're extra tired in the morning from the hangover like effects of caffeine addiction.

Bristol University researchers found that drinkers develop a tolerance to both the anxiety-producing and the stimulating effects of caffeine, meaning that it only brings them back to baseline levels of alertness, not above them.

"Although frequent consumers feel alerted by caffeine, especially by their morning tea, coffee, or other caffeine-containing drink, evidence suggests that this is actually merely the reversal of the fatiguing effects of acute caffeine withdrawal," wrote the scientists, led by Peter Rogers of Bristol's department of experimental psychology.

I know how to fix this, - drink more coffee!

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7695994/Largest-scientific-instrument-ever-built-to-prove-Einsteins-theory-of-general-relativity.html

This is cool, we get to find out is Einstein was the Stephen Hawking of his day or if he was just guessing - my bets on the Stein. Plus - as an added bonus - there's lasers

Three spacecraft flying three million miles apart are to fire laser beams at each other across the emptiness of space in a bid to at last prove whether a theory proposed by Albert Einstein is correct.

Link: http://news.discovery.com/human/personal-dna-test-walgreens.html

For cheap too - 20 to 30 dollars cheap.

Want to find out what diseases await you in the future, your chances of developing Alzheimer's? Or whether you will pass something on to your child? Then a trip to the pharmacy may reveal all.

Biotech firm Pathway Genomics announced Tuesday that personalized DNA tests to detect the risks of developing certain diseases will soon be available at Walgreens, a large chain of pharmacies.

Another awesome science autotune mashup.

Carl Sagan, Jane Goodall, and David Attenborough jam out about evolution in this 4th installment of the Symphony series.

I'm not sure what this chemical is but it's awesome when heated.

Link: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2357391,00.asp

Did they find it at the super expensive and nerdy LHC? Nope, it was stuck down a well.

The detections were made by cryogenically cooled sensors at the bottom of the Soudan Iron Mine, a location that shields the detectors from more ordinary stray particles. To reach the underground laboratory, a particle would have to pass through half a mile of iron-rich rock. And to be detected, the WIMP would still have to collide with the nucleus of an atom in the sensor's Zip detectors. These employ state-of-the-art thin-film superconducting technology using 250g germanium and 100g silicon crystals, which are capable of recording the extremely low energy generated by such a collision. Such collisions are extraordinarily rare, if indeed the detections are valid.

What's that Lassie? Dark matter is stuck down a well? !? ?

Link: http://scifiwire.com/2009/12/mythbusters-takes-on-star.php

The episode, which takes a scientific look at the original Star Trek episode "Arena," airs Monday, Dec. 28, at 9 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.

Link: http://sciencehack.com/

Oh boy, now you can find all sorts of Sciency stuff from the comfort of your own - um, whatever you're on.

Search for science experiments, science projects, science movies and science news.

Some of the latest searches....

-Vacuum Pressure Photon injection HHo Part 1 of 2
-Venus Flytrap in Action
-Hexapod Dance Competition - Hagenberg/Austria
-Inside Optical Glyph Tracking
-Invasive Fire Ants Lose Heads to Flies
-Tilted Twister - Lego NXT Rubik's Cube solver
-Antarctic species tallied up
-Bionic Hand

Cool huh? Enough to keep you distracted all day if you want.

What we have here is a whole cool science video series - sure to kill off some time while you should be pretending to work on the run up to Christmas.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6724969/Scientists-create-the-worlds-smallest-snowman.html

How small ? How about 1/5th the size of a human hair? Good luck finding a carrot for the nose.

Experts at the National Physical Laboratory in West London made the miniature figure which is just 0.01mm across.

However, far from the thrill of rolling balls of snow around a field to build their masterpiece, it was assembled using tools designed for manipulating nanoparticles.

Bill will set you straight on this topic cus he's Bill Nye the Science Guy

Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,568528,00.html?test=latestnews

Bill points out a reason for the LHC failing so often might be because nature is working to prevent itself....

In a bizarre sci-fi theory, Danish physicist Dr Holger Bech Nielsen and Dr Masao Ninomiya from Japan claim nature is trying to prevent the LHC from finding the elusive Higgs boson. Called the "God particle," the theoretical boson could explain the origins of mass in the universe — if physicists can find the darn thing.

The scientists say their math proves nature will "ripple backward through time" to stop the LHC before it can create the God particle, like a time traveller who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/06/lhc_dimensional_portals/

Holy crap - it's basically word for word the plot of Half Life....

A top scientist at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) says that the titanic machine may possibly create or discover previously unimagined scientific phenomena, or "unknown unknowns" - for instance "an extra dimension".

"Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it," said Sergio Bertolucci, who is Director for Research and Scientific Computing at CERN, briefing reporters including the Reg at CERN HQ earlier this week.

And I seem to remember a certain picture .....

We're doomed.

Woah, that's some hella violent science.... almost feel sorry for the little guy.

Link: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/there-scientific-way-measure-fart-smell

This is so the kinda project I'd have done if in my day we had access to any technology...

I'd have demonstrated it's use more effectively tho.

After learning in class how breathalyzers work, Robert Clain and Miguel Salas assembled a fart detector from a sensitive hydrogen sulfide monitor, a thermometer and a microphone and wrote the software that would rate the emission. A “slight perturbance in the air” near the detector sets it to work measuring the three pillars of fart quality: stench, temperature and sound. Temperature, Clain explains, is critical. The hotter a fart, the faster it spreads. “It beeps faster if it’s a high ranker, and a voice rates it on a scale of zero to nine,” he says. “If it ranks a nine, a fan comes on to blow it away. It even records the noise so you can play it back later.”

Grins, they really thought of everything!!

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE57H02I20090818?feedType=RSS&feedName=scienceNews&rpc=22&sp=true

It's looking more and more likely that earth was "seeded" from spacefaring comets....

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare," said Carl Pilcher, the director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute in California, which co-funded the research.

Glycine and other amino acids have been found in a number of meteorites before, most notably one that landed near the town of Murchison, Australia in 1969, Elsila said.

That's pretty cool and pretty cray all at the same time.

Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327162.600-apollo-special-welcome-to-lunarville.html?full=true

What if things had been different that summer? Suppose Congress had granted NASA's wish, then fast-forward 40-odd years...

You know, this makes you think - it's entirely feasible.

Link: http://thecrit.com/2009/06/03/company-makes-any-plant-produce-thc-and-the-tomatoes-are-especially-yummy/

Ok, this is indeed a novel approach to the marijuana laws- smoke tomatoes. No, I'm not kidding....

Scientists at Montsaint Genie Tech Inc. announced today that they have successfully transferred the gene segment that produces the psychotropic chemical THC in cannabis plants to many other common garden plants, including tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, and more.

“Well, you can’t make twine out of a tomato plant, but if someone were to dry it and smoke it, all of the medicinal and psychotropic effects of marijuana would be present. And what’s more, we have learned that tomatoes, in particular, actually produce more THC than cannabis itself.”

You just can't make stuff like this up - no word on what other genetic mutations might arise from this down the road... say if cows eat feed from the product....

What you smokin man...

"cow"

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/nsae-crt051809.php

Get ready to throw out all those Lithium Ion batteries - enter Lithium Sulfur.

"This composite material can supply up to nearly 80 percent of the theoretical capacity of sulphur, which is three times the energy density of lithium transition metal oxide cathodes, at reasonable rates with good cycling stability," said Dr. Nazar.

Um, yeah - what he said.

Tell me you and I wouldn't have liked the periodic table so much better if it were done like this.....

Link: http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/04/27/first-plant-ever-grown-on-the-moon-by-2012/

As part of the Google Lunar X Prize, Paragon Space Development Corporation has recently teamed with Odyssey Moon to develop a pressurized mini greenhouse to deploy on the surface of the moon, grow a plant from seed, and hopefully see it flower and seed itself.

The plant they're sending is from the brassica family - a form of mustard. Having seen these grow in the wild.... I'd say there's a plenty good chance of this working.

I call first dibs on moon watermelon!!!!!!!!

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN03361051

Seriously, if you took it - some penguins wearing badges would like to have a word with you.

On a more serious note the whole freakin world is melting... that is all.

Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16842-hungry-shrimp-eat-climate-change-experiment.html

Remember this one? They were sailing a huge ship full of iron powder to seed the oceans, create a plankton bloom - (which would then soak up carbon) and decay - sinking the carbon to the bottom of the ocean.

It worked! - um, right up until the point where millions of tiny shrimp came over and ate it.

Someone go and push that Price is Right fail button for 'em will ya?

Link: http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-03/st_qa

It's already in the works - Dino Chicken park anyone?

My favorite quote from the article....

It would certainly prove the creationists dead wrong.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4296859/Women-have-more-nightmares-than-men-study-finds.html

They carry their worries into their dreams, and continue to process emotional concerns while they are asleep, according to the study.

also it's really hard to have nightmares about bacon, beer, football, or cheerleaders......

or donuts... cars.... tools....

fishing.... steak.... swordfights ....

Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true

Want some science to warp your mind?

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it.

This is going to bend some neurons so be prepared.

Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16390-climate-fix-ship-sets-sail-with-plan-to-dump-iron-.html

I dunno if you remember - but a ways back there was a big argument about an attempt to dump iron powder into the ocean ( plankton feeds on it ) and this would then in turn create a bloom which would then in turn take Carbon out of the atmosphere.

Well, despite it still being a hugely debated idea the ship has set sail. So, I guess we will all get to see how this works out.

Link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=689628960191060384&hl=en

An awesome documentary sure to make you wonder just what the heck they were thinking back in the 60's ... no wonder the kid next door has 4 arms!