Blogs

The earthquake that had a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter Scale has been shown to have tilted the Earth's axis by 8 centimetres and to have sped up the planet's orbit by 1.26 microseconds. This means that days have been imperceptibly shortened and was caused by massive rocks close to the Earth's core moving slightly, moving the entire planet by a few centimetres.

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NASA’s infrared telescope WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) has recently spotted several potentially harmful asteroids which were once hidden. The use of this new infrared telescope which was originally designed to map the entire sky by observing infrared wavelengths, has made this astonishing discovery which does pose a threat to our planet as these asteroids are said to been located near the earth’s orbit. For details on this story, please use this link:

Emily Cummins is coming to Canterbury for the Arkwright Scholarship and we hope to interview her along with some others here is a list

1.       Mike Percival in particular (as you have probably seen) wants to be interviewed promptly at 5:30 since he is making the evening presentation at 6:30pm.  He is interesting for his work on single crystal casting and thermo-forming of Titanium fan blades which keeps RR at the pinnacle of aero-engine technology.

Scientists have recently unearthed a gargantuan set of bones belonging to a prehistoric shark that swam the seas of planet Earth around 89 million years ago.

This new fish has been named the 'Ptychodus Mortoni' was bigger and more feirce than other fossils discovered, although palaeontologists have known about this predator for a while, and have named it the largest shellfish-eating animal to have ever roamed the Earth.

The founder of SETI (Frank Drake) is eager to expand the search for extraterrestrial intelligence to approximately 82 billion kilometres away. As electromagnetic signals are easily detected at the desired location, it would be ideal to have a spacecraft there, which will essentially intercept alien communications. The challenge however, is the distance this location is from the earth. The location is approximately 550 times the distance from Earth to our sun, and even with current technology, it would take hundreds of years to get the shuttle to this location.

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NICD) have led research into whether the 1% of humans who stutter are actually suffering from a genetic disorder, disproving the common belief that the impediment is linked to anxiety. The three genes that are suspected to be linked to stuttering could lead to breakthrough research into developing drugs and other methods of combating the disorder.

Scientist have found a way to talk to all those in a vegetative state, however it is very much a yes or no conversation however it offers new hope to patients, friends and relatives. Although this is not completely new, it uses MRI to see brain activity, the patient is told to imagine playing tennis as yes and not as no. The MRI detects activity in the pre-motor cortex.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8497148.stm

Xavier Claramunt, a space enthusiast and director of the Galactic Suite Limited, has already invested $3 billion USD in building the Galactic Suite- the first ever hotel planned for outer space. The hotel is planned to be finished by 2012, and tickets will be sold at a modest $4 million USD per person, inlcuding an eight-week training programme on a tropical island. Although it has been calculated that only 40,000 people on the planet could afford this, Mr.

An asteroid recently photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, has left scientists baffled as to what has caused the strange X-shaped debris pattern captured. Although scientists believe that the asteroid belt is being ground down due to collisions for a long time, a collision of this magnitude have never been seen before.

To find out more, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/asteroid-20100202.html

This giant salamander is structurally identical to a fossil that was dated back 30 million years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8497330.stm