You may remember a recent experiment where neutrinos appeared to travel faster than light.  Well, they did the experiment again, and the neutrinos did it again.  Whatever is going on, it may be the first hint at a new kind of physics.  Or maybe there’s a sci-fi rift in space and time right in the middle of Europe.

Here are this week’s sciency links.

• Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos: OPERA Confirms and Submits Results, But Unease Remains from Science Insider.
• UFO, Aliens, Alien Abduction Cases, Are They Real from Educating Humanity.
• Tech Beat: Museum looks at future of space exploration from Your News Now.
• International Scientists Race to Create the Heaviest Element in the Universe from Popular Science.
• Mars Rover Finds a Turkey Haven for the Holiday from UniGalactic Space Travel Magazine.
• What’s on Leonardo daVinci’s “To-Do” list? from Boing Boing.

How small can animals get?  Researchers have been studying the fairy wasp, one of the smallest animals on Earth, and found that the wasps have made some sacrifices in order to be so small.  The cells that make up their brains and nervous systems are missing some parts (to be specific, they’re missing nuclei).

So shrinking people, like in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, might not be a good idea.  It’s certainly possible to discard parts of your brain cells and remain alive—the fairy wasp proves that—but would you still be the same person?

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov solved this problem by explaining that shrunken people are actually made of tiny, shrunken atoms.  Regularly sized atoms are full of empty space, and since they’re government by quantum mechanics they’re prone to weird behavior anyway, so this weird atom shrinking idea makes some sense.

Obviously the wasps are doing fine with their minimalist brain cells, and once again this proves just how flexible life can be.  You can even make wasps smaller than single celled organisms.

Science fiction fans know a lot about Mars.  Fans of H.G. Wells know there is life there, watching us keenly and closely with far greater intelligence than man’s.  Fans of Doctor Who know not to drink Martian water.  Fans of really bad B-movies know the bad guys of Mars are no match for Santa Claus (if you haven’t heard about this movie before, you need to click here).

Source: Hubblesite.org

Scientists are finally catching up.  Mars, they once said, is too harsh an environment for life to exist.  It doesn’t have liquid water. It doesn’t have any protection from cosmic radiation. It doesn’t have the carbon compounds needed for life as we know it.

Now they aren’t so sure.  They’ve found evidence of liquid water, and maybe that excess radiation from space isn’t so bad after all.  It is possible, they say, for microbial life to exist on Mars (which is why you shouldn’t drink the water).  As for those carbon compounds… a new probe is scheduled to launch this weekend to check on that.

The Mars Science Laboratory, also known as the Curiosity Rover, is the biggest, most sophisticated machine ever sent to Mars.  It’s the size of a car, carries ten different scientific instruments, and NASA says it has enough plutonium fuel to keep it running for at least two years… probably more.  It will land in a place called Gale Crater, where it will examine exposed layers of ancient rock and search for organic compounds in Martian soil.

No doubt Curiosity will find evidence of what we Sci-Fi fans and Santa Claus already know: there is life on Mars… life that apparently doesn’t know the true meaning of Christmas.

Links

• An article about Curiosity from Space.com.
• The 7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars from Space.com.
• A topographical map of Curiosity’s landing site from NASA.

The sad news is that Russia’s mission to Mars is still stuck in Earth orbit.  The good news is that next week, NASA is sending its own rover to Mars.  Hopefully that one will work okay.

Here are this week’s sciency links.

• Angry Bird Rides Soyuz Rocket to the International Space Station from Angry Birds Nest.
• Psychedelic Saturn Storm! from Bad Astronomy Blog.
• Most Popular Skywatching Misconceptions Explained from Space.com.
• Russia Mars Probe Considered Lost: Report from Mars Daily.
• Mars Exploration Program: New NASA Missions to Investigate How Mars Turned Hostile from NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
• NASA Probe Data Show Liquid Water Evidence on Europa from the International Space Fellowship.
• In NASA’s New Budget: Webb Telescope Stays Alive, But Commercial Spaceflight Takes a Hit from Popular Science.

Robots assembling themselves together to make bigger robots: it’s one of the most absurd concepts in science fiction.  You might remember they did it on Power Rangers.  But as absurd as it sounds, it’s actually becoming a reality.

According to an article from Popular Science (click here), soldiers in the US army have been cobbling together various robots they use on the battlefield to make better robots.  For example, if one robot is really fast and another is really good at finding enemy combatants, they simply mount one on top of the other to make a new robot that’s really fast AND really good at finding enemy combatants.

No word yet if Megazord will be deployed to Afghanistan.

In order to travel at warp speed, the starship Enterprise must generate enormous amounts of energy.  It does this using antimatter fuel.  When antimatter touches regular matter, the two explode, releasing 100% of their energy.  By contrast, nuclear fission only releases about 1% of the energy stored in uranium atoms.  To make things even better, antimatter leaves no gas fumes, no nuclear waste, nothing to hurt the environment.

Antimatter could not only propel starships through space, but it could solve our energy crisis.  Unfortunately, any antimatter supplies that may have existed on earth touched some matter long, long ago and exploded.  So we have to make it using particle accelerators, which is an extremely difficult and expensive process.

In recent years, however, scientists have found antimatter in some of the most unlikely places.  Antiprotons, produced by cosmic rays outside our Solar System, are getting caught in Earth’s magnetic field.  Scientists at NASA say they’ve also discovered that positrons, or antielectrons, are sometimes produced by thunderstorms.  These positrons get caught in Earth’s magnetic field too.  They’re just sitting up there, waiting for us to collect them.

Individual particles of antimatter won’t do much by themselves.  When a positron collides with a satellite in orbit, for example, it destroys one electron in that satellite in a microscopic explosion.  It doesn’t damage the satellite, and it doesn’t threaten the safety of astronauts.  But imagine what we could do if we gathered all those particles together, stored them safely, and put them into a power plant.

For more on antiprotons in Earth orbit, click here.  For more on positrons made by thunderstorms, click here.