Laws of Physics being overturned!? "She'll make point five past lightspeed."

In news that should excite sci-fi fans all over the world, scientists at CERN have announced that they have recorded sub-atomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light.

Spokesman for the researchers, Antonio Ereditato, said that measurements taken over the course of three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.

 

"We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," he said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently."

If their work is confirmed, it could shake the foundations of physics as we know it, overturning Einsteins 1905 theory of special relativity, which states that the speed of light is a 'constant,' and that nothing can travel faster.

"I just don't want to think of the implications," said Ereditato. "We are scientists and work with what we know."

60 nanoseconds may not sound like much (and it isn't) but it's the fact that it's possible that is so astonishing.
Many different works of science fiction are based on the possibility of exceeding the speed of light, and acheiving either time-travel or faster-than-light (FTL) travel.
Lets just hope if we do get there, we don't encounter Goa'uld, or Reapers. 

via SMH.com.au

 

IRL: Running from zombies!

Gotta admit, this is one of the most original, and awesome iPhone games in development at the moment. ZOMBIES, RUN! is an indie developed game that is still a WIP over at kickstarter, and merges reality and video games.

The core premise is that you are Runner 5, a survivor of the zombie apocalypse and a scout of sorts, looking for weapons, ammo, med kits and critical supplies to keep your base of hundreds alive.

As it says on the website: "Zombies, Run! is an ultra-immersive game for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android where you help rebuild civilisation after a zombie apocalypse. By going out and running in the real world, you can collect medicine, ammo, batteries, and spare parts that you can use to build up and expand your base - all while getting orders, clues, and story through your headphones."

Essentially, by running in real life, you run in the game, picking up the afore mentioned critical supplies. You don't need to watch the screen while you're running either, the story and instructions are delivered through the headphones; you simply press a button to start and to stop.

"Zombies, Run! is about making the thrill of running even better with a game and a story delivered through your headphones. We’re making running more fun, more exciting, and more addictive for everyone from couch-to-5k newbies to weekend joggers and marathon runners. And Zombies, Run! works anywhere - in a park, along a beach, in the city, even on treadmills!"

The game is still in development, and is expected to be released around February 2012. For those wishing to donate and contribute to the games development, head over here and you can get some sweet goodies for doing so.

via Kickstarter

Terry Pratchett makes a sword out of meteorites

Showing that he's not just awesome at writing books, Terry Pratchett decided to forge himself a sword after being knighted. As you do.

But believing that to be his sword, it had to be different, he found himself a field with iron ore near his home in Wiltshire, dug up 81kg of iron ore, and smelted it himself.

The 62 year-old bestselling author said "most of my life I've been producing stuff which is intangible and so it's amazing the achievement you feel when you have made something which is really real."

After creating a makeshift kiln built from clay and hay and fuelled with damp sheep manure to smelt his iron, he then tossed in "several pieces of meteorites — thunderbolt iron, you see — highly magical, you’ve got to chuck that stuff in whether you believe in it or not."

After spending some days hammering it into bars, he then took it to a blacksmith, who helped him shape it into a blade and finish it with silverwork.

Pratchett has hidden the sword in an unknown location after finishing it last year, fearing that the authorities may not appreciate his remarkable work on account of it being pointy and very sharp.

"It annoys me that knights aren’t allowed to carry their swords. That would be knife crime," he said.

via Evan, via news.com

Gold came from space!

Gold is great for many different reasons. It's pretty, malleable, and great for electronic circuitry. Dwarves love to sing songs about it, pirates love to bury it, and evil dark lords like to make rings out of it. But according to geologists at the University of Bristol, it came from space!

Approximately 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth was a roiling ball of magma. As it cooled, denser materials with greater mass would've sunk deep into the core, creating a core mostly comprised of iron, and leaving the outer layers bereft of any of the precious metals.

And yet, we've been mining these metals for thousands of years; metals that shouldn't have been there in the sort of quantity that we've found. So where did all these precious metals come from?

Scientists Matthias Willbold and Tim Elliott, after studying samples in Greenland, believe that the metals are a result of a 200-million-year long meteor shower, that impacted about 3.9 billion years ago. These meteorites had large quantities of these metals, which were slowly stirred into the Earths mantle by big currents in the molten composition of the ancient Earth, leading to the ore deposits we find today.

The ancient rock samples contained a slightly higher ratio of the tungsten isotope 182W, an isotope produced only in the first 50 million years of the solar system, signifying that the meteor shower had altered the composition of Earth's surface.

"Our work shows that most of the precious metals on which our economies and many key industrial processes are based have been added to our planet by lucky coincidence when the Earth was hit by about 20 billion tons of asteroidal material," said Willbold.

via ibtimes, via Nature

Glowing kittens. Oh Science.

Science is good for many things. Building psychotic robots, flying into space, and bioengineering the perfect tomato for a salad sandwich. And now, its latest innovation: glowing kittens.

The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota implanted genes from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria into the eggs from which the kittens grew, which, helpfully, allows them to produce Green Fluorescent Protein, allowing them to glow under certain light frequencies.

But it's another gene inserted into the kittens that is promising a step towards a cure for AIDS. The antiviral gene, coming from a monkey, produces a protein called TRIMCyp. This protein can make blood cells that fight infections and resist the viruses that cause AIDS, according to Dr Laurence Tiley of the University of Cambridge.

"One of the best things about this biomedical research is that it is aimed at benefiting both human and feline health. If you could show that you confer protection to these animals, it would give us a lot of information about protecting humans."

So far, they've only tested it on cells extracted from the cats, not the cats themselves, which is apparently their next step. And they made the kittens glow so that their cells would be more visible. At least that's their story.


via The Guardian

Want to finish high school in a single year?

It sounds suspiciously like one of those sketchy ads that pop up at the edge of your screen at torrent sites, but it's actually a statement from Atari founder Nolan Bushnell.

Speaking at the Cloud Gaming Conference in the USA, Bushnell said he’s been working for the past decade on a computer education project that takes place in the “cloud” (completely online), and that during a 40,000 student test his system is “currently teaching subjects 10 times faster” than the ordianry curriculum and teaching method.

“We believe that when we roll this up to full curriculum we’ll be able to teach a full career of high school in less than a year”, Bushnell said. “And we think we’ll be able to do that by the end of next year.”

“That’s a lot of time to chase girls and have fun.”

Clearly he's doing it for all the right reasons.

via kotaku

With the powers of a PS3 and XBOX 360 combined....

Modder 'Timofiend' has combined two hated enemies into one sweet and potentially legally explosive package. Presenting... the PSBOX 360!

Okay, I made the name up, but that's pretty much what he's done. He took an 80gb PS3 and an XBOX 360, took out the innards, and then combined them into one PC tower.

In terms of overheating, Timofiend said that he didn't use liquid cooling because it was too expensive, and apparently when both consoles are turned on at the same time, the temperature hovers at around 38-39 degrees celsius for the PS3 and 37-38 degrees celsius for the Xbox 360.

The intrepid modder is also working on revealing documentation for the building process, in case anyone else out there feels like completely voiding their warranty.

via Dvice

Scientists discover Vampirism actually works!?

Seen here in a discovery that will probably have your grandparents donning black velvet cloaks and plastic fangs, scientists testing on mice have found that injecting blood from younger mice into older mice has a rejuvenating effect. And vice versa!

Researchers at Stanford University have found that "when blood from a young mouse was injected into an older mouse, that older mouse enjoyed what could almost be termed a "rejuvenation effect": it began producing more neurons, firing more activity across synapses, and even suffered less inflammation."

"Interestingly, performing the reverse, in which a young mouse was injected with blood (or, more accurately, plasma, which is the parts of blood without blood cells), resulted in young mice with distinctly elderly attributes--increased inflammation, a reduction in the production of new neurons, that kind of thing."

So there you go. The next time grandpa offers to babysit, DON'T LET HIM. Seriously though, I'm cool with this, as long as the mice didn't sparkle.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to Bunnings, they have a sale on wooden stakes.

via Popsci