Science Special News

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Original 'Star Trek' receives a makeover

The United Federation of Planets has never looked so crisp and full of dimension. CBS Paramount gave Trekkers reason to throw their pointy ears in the air Thursday with the announcement that all 79 episodes of the original Star Trek are being digitally remastered and will be heading into syndication next month for the first time in 16 years in honor of the sci-fi classic's 40th anniversary. Many of the series' beloved yet decidedly dated visual staples, from the galaxy glimpsed in the opening title sequence to the myriad otherworldly landscapes seen from the bridge of the starship Enterprise, will receive a CGI makeover to appeal to the sons and daughters of 1960s-era Star Trek fans who actually found someone to mate with. "Star Trek redefined science fiction and constantly pushed the envelope with concepts that were ahead of their time," John Nogawski, president of CBS Paramount Domestic Television, said in a statement.

"By giving the series a digital upgrade using the best technology available today, it will continue to be a leader in cutting-edge television programming as we introduce the series to a new generation of viewers." The hull of the Enterprise, as well as every other spaceship that passes by, will soon be computer generated, so it will no longer resemble a Frisbee with a couple of batteries attached to it. But rest assured, you loyalists out there--the digitally redone Enterprise is based on the original model, which is now docked for posterity at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. What the minds behind the redecorating want you to know, however, is that nothing is being altered too drastically, a la the changes that left Star Wars purists up in arms a few years ago--when Top of Form 1Bottom of Form 1George Lucas peppered the original three films with CGI "upgrades."

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Missing jet from 1953 UFO incident found ?

At 6:22 p.m. on November 23 1953, an F-89 Scorpion jet was scrambled from Kinross Air Force Base near the Michigan Soo to intercept an unidentified object detected in restricted airspace over the Soo Locks. The U.S. fighter was seen on radar over Lake Superior, merging with the craft it was pursuing.Then, it disappeared from radar.Never to be seen again.Ever since, the UFO-theorist circles have been speculating what might have happened.In October 1968, the Sault Star reported that aircraft parts believed to have come from a "high-performance military jet aircraft" had been discovered by prospectors on Lake Superior's Canadian side. Today, the UFO circles have started buzzing again, with speculation that a side-scan sonar image might be the missing F-89 Scorpion. The dive company's website indicates it's currently involved in a forensic investigation of the Canadian wreck site.

A company map shows the search area as being in Ontario waters off the tip of Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula.The dive company also intriguingly indicates that its sonar detected another "interesting" object near the sunken aircraft, that might be part of whatever it was that the jet was pursuing.

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Missing footage on 'Dark side of the Moon' ?

Could a never-completed Pink Floyd video hold the answer to the missing moon tape mystery currently plaguing NASA? NASA workers and their affiliates around theworld have been quietly looking for hi-resolution films from the Apollo moon landings more than 30 years ago. To date, what we'veseen on television were pictures taken by cameras shooting a videomonitor... if you will, pictures of grainy pictures. But the original hi-res videos are still out there... somewhere... lost in the maze of government storage facilities. What's more, time is running out. Those magnetic tapes degrade over time and the playback equipment used to display their images is about to be mothballed. So NASA has launched a formal investigation... and perhaps a key in that probe rests with Australian music video producer Peter Clifton. Here's where the story gets even stranger than it has been so far. Back in 1979, Clifton was working on a Pink Floyd video... to go along with the smash-album "Dark Side of the Moon."

He wanted some footage of Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon... so he sent away $180 and got back a half-hour reel of 16-millimeter film from the Smithsonian. "I had this idea that I could take segments out of Dark Side of the Moon and make them into a TV special," said Mr Clifton to Australia's The Age. "On a visit to Washington, I went to Smithsonian and asked if they had any shots of rocket ships travelling. He said, 'well, we can give you highlights of the moon shot.' Clifton never finished the Pink Floyd video... and the film satin his vault for years.

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Doctor leads time travel research

Experiments aimed at unlocking secrets of time travel are being led by Aberdeen University. Researchers are examining the fabric of space time and what science fiction authors refer to as the fourth dimension. Dr Charles Wang will study the microscopic movement of atoms, which can be affected by the earth spinning. He said: "This is a very interesting possibility which cannot entirely be ruled out by physics." Television's Dr Who and the Back to the Future movies promised the concept of time travel. Albert Einstein said instead of considering space to be a shapeless vacuum it should be looked at as an object. The theory is for something to exist it must have length, breadth and thickness, the three dimensions. It must also have something else. An object exists from the moment it is created to the moment it is destroyed. In between those moments is the duration of time - the so-called fourth dimension.

HG Wells wrote the Time Machine about it - now Dr Wang hopes to make it real. He is a reader in the College of Physical Sciences and a member of the Aberdeen centre for applied dynamics research. Dr Wang said he is waiting for the European Space Agency (ESA) to launch a science satellite to aid his research. He told BBC Scotland: "If you have curved space time, the time circles and you might just travel in time. "If we can slow down the atom and isolate it and guide into the fluctuation then there's a possibility it's there. "The increased sensitivity obtained by a space experiment certainly makes a space mission very worthwhile. "If successful the results will have a profound impact on our understanding of the fundamental nature of space and time in the universe." Dr Wang however has time on his hands, as the ESA satellite is not due for launch until 2015.

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Telephone telepathy - does it exist ?

Many people have experienced the phenomenon of receiving a telephone call from someone shortly after thinking about them -- now a scientist says he has proof of what he calls telephone telepathy. Rupert Sheldrake, whose research is funded by the respected Trinity College, Cambridge, said on Tuesday he had conducted experiments that proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even e-mails.Each person in the trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers of four relatives or friends. These were then called at random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone."The hit rate was 45 percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected," he told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

"The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one."He said he found the same result with people being asked to name one of four people sending them an e-mail before it had landed.However, his sample was small on both trials -- just 63 people for the controlled telephone experiment and 50 for the email -- and only four subjects were actually filmed in the phone study and five in the email, prompting some scepticism.

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Golden age of dinosaur discovery ahead

The next several decades could prove a golden age for dinosaur hunters looking to discover new species of the ancient reptiles. A new statistical analysis predicts that more than 1,300 unique dinosaur genera await discovery by paleontologists. In biology, a genus is an organizational group made up of one or more separate species; the plural of genus is genera."It's a safe bet that a child born today could expect a very fruitful career in dinosaur paleontology," said study co-author Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania.But that child's grandchildren might not be so lucky, Dodson said, as new discoveries will decline sharply in the early 22nd century, according to his new analysis.Since dinosaur research began in earnest in the 19th century, 527 genera have been found; that number is increasing by about 15 percent each year. The majority of dinosaur species are known based on a single fossil specimen.

The researchers predict that 75 percent of all discoverable genera will be found within the next 100 years, and 90 percent within the next 140 years. Dodson predicts that 1,850 dinosaur genera will eventually be known.The new study, which Dodson co-authored with statistician Steve Wang of Swarthmore College, is detailed online in the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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70 years since last Tasmanian Tiger

Thylacine researcher Col Bailey was not even born when the last captive Tasmanian tiger died in 1936. But that hasn't stopped him devoting his life to proving their continued existence.The 69-year-old has spent 40 years investigating thylacine sightings and has no plans to retire until he has conclusive proof that the elusive Tasmanian tiger has survived."I believe strongly that it's still here," he says."I'm so convinced it's here that you never lose hope. You've got to be in the right place at the right time."Thursday marks the 70th anniversary of the last captive Tasmanian tiger's death at the now defunct Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart.Hobart City Council minutes from 1936 note the tiger's death and order "attempts should be made to get another one".But it was already too late.A one-pound government bounty encouraged the killing of more than 2,000 thylacines between 1888 and 1909.

Strong demand from zoos overseas further reduced the wild population.Two months before the captive tiger's death, thylacines were added to Tasmania's list of protected species.Fifty years later, they were officially declared extinct.But many refuse to accept the thylacine is gone.More than 1,000 sightings have been reported since 1936, providing hope the world's largest marsupial carnivore may still exist.

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Khaterat-e- Kodaki

ایرنا:مطالعه در زمينه بررسي فراموشي در كودكي نشان ميدهد زماني كه كودك به ۱۰سالگي ميرسد خاطرات مربوط به زمان پيش از شروع مدرسه را به تدريج فراموش ميكند.
به نوشته نشريه '' ''memoryدر اين مطالعه كه ۱۳۶كودك ۶تا ۹ساله بررسي شدند، كودكان رخدادهايي را كه پيش از چهار سالگي رخ داده بود فراموش كرده بودند، اين در حاليست كه كودكان ۳تا ۴ساله به راحتي ميتوانند حوادث مربوط به ۲سالگي خود را بخاطر بياورند.


با گذشت زمان كودكان ۱۰ساله نميتوانند خاطرات اوليه خود را به خاطر آورند.
دانشمندان هنوز به دليل اين فراموشي دست نيافته اند

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Mars rover nears 'treasure trove'

Nasa's robotic Mars rover Opportunity is closing in on what could be the richest scientific "treasure trove" of its mission so far. Within the next two weeks, Opportunity should reach the rim of a crater wider and deeper than any it has visited in more than two-and-a-half years on Mars. Rocks exposed in the walls of Victoria Crater could open a new window into the geological history of the Red Planet. Opportunity has been exploring Mars' Meridiani Plains since January 2004. Its "twin", the Spirit rover, continues to explore Gusev Crater on the other side of the Red Planet. Images from Nasa's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show a stack of layered bedrock about 30-40m (100-130ft) thick in the walls of Victoria. "We have a fully functional vehicle with all the instruments working. We're ready to hit Victoria with everything we've got," said Byron Jones, a rover mission manager at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Ray Arvidson, deputy principal investigator for the rovers, said that exploring the rocks in Victoria Crater would greatly increase understanding of past conditions on Mars, including the role of water. "In particular, we are very interested in whether the rocks continue to show evidence for having been formed in shallow lakes," said the scientist, who is based at Washington University in St Louis, US.

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Is a shadow government at Mount Weather ?

Mount Weather is a top-security underground installation an hour's drive from Washington DC. It has its own leaders, police, fire department - and laws. A cold war relic, it has been given a new lease of life since 9/11. And no one who's been inside has ever talked.Mount Weather is officially the Emergency Operations Centre of the Federal Emergency Management Authority (Fema); and, less officially, a massive underground complex originally built to house governmental officials in the event of a full-scale nuclear exchange. Today, as the Bush administration wages its war on terror, Mount Weather is believed to house a "shadow government" made up of senior Washington officials on temporary assignment. Following the collapse of the USSR, Mount Weather seemed like an expensive cold-war relic.

Then came September 11. News reports noted that "top leaders of Congress were taken to the safety of a secure government facility 75 miles west of Washington"; another reported "a traffic jam of limos carrying Washington and government license plates." As the phrase "undisclosed location" entered the vernacular, Mount Weather, and a handful of similar installations, flickered back to life. Just two months ago, a disaster-simulation exercise called Forward Challenge '06 sent thousands of federal workers to Mount Weather and other sites.