Cloud Ships? At Least It's Cheaper

I'm not a believer in global warming, but if you have to spend money, $9 billion a year sounds better than "cap and trade."

Heck, it's only three times as expensive as "Cash for Clunkers."

Check out "Cloud Ships."

Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences. Scientists would probably plunge us into the next Ice Age, or create huge hurricanes.

Let's Hope This Time It's For Real

Scientists in Possible Cold Fusion Breakthrough

Researchers at a US Navy laboratory have unveiled what they say is "significant" evidence of cold fusion, a potential energy source that has many skeptics in the scientific community.

The scientists on Monday described what they called the first clear visual evidence that low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR), or cold fusion devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists say are indicative of nuclear reactions.

"Our finding is very significant," said analytical chemist Pamela Mosier-Boss of the US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego, California.

"To our knowledge, this is the first scientific report of the production of highly energetic neutrons from a LENR device," added the study's co-author in a statement.

The study's results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The city is also the site of an infamous presentation on cold fusion 20 years ago by Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons that sent shockwaves across the world.

The good news: it's the U.S. Navy reporting, not Fleishmann and Pons, although I've always suspected they were on to something, they just couldn't replicate it.

The bad news: since it is the U.S. Navy, and if it pans out, the government will be in control of unlimited safe energy and, at the rate we're morphing into the old U.S.S.R., We the People will probably play hell getting any of it.

Surely Massachusetts is Not Happier than Oklahoma

Results of a "happiness poll" -- more specifically a survey of over 350,000 people nationwide conduced by the Gallup organization for Healthways and America's Health Insurance Plan, show that Utah, Hawaii and Wyoming are the perceived top three spots for personal well-being.

Okay, I got that much from the headline on Drudge.

So how did Oklahoma do? It took a few clicks but the Sooner state ranked 43rd among the 50 states. Not so good.

Of course I had to ask, where did my congressional district stand among the seven? Fifth out of the seven. Apparently some very unhappy people responded to the survey.

It's been my experience that Oklahoma people are generally pretty happy, so there must be some explanation for this poor performance. I think happy Okies have better things to do than sit still for long phone surveys, so the Gallup people were left with all of the cranky people who aren't out and about doing something fun.

Or maybe they caught us on a bad day.

If California and Massachusetts rank ahead of Oklahoma -- and they do -- you know that something is screwy with this.

Coming to a Wilderness Near You: Frankenbugs

I'm sure there's nothing to worry about here.

Transgenic mosquitoes set to beat malaria

Work published in the Public Library of Science, suggests that the spread of malaria can be controlled with the introduction of transgenic mosquitoes into native mosquito population.

The transgenic mosquitoes would contain a gene that codes for a protein thought to block the insects ability to pass malaria into a host

John Marshall and Charles Taylor, both from the University of California, Los Angeles, think the introduction of these transgenic mosquitoes into the wild population would introduce the gene for the blocking protein into the local gene pool, and hopefully a strain of mosquitoes would then develop that are unable to transmit malaria between hosts. This may not eradicate malaria, but would certainly slow down the transmission between humans.

"Hopefully"?

Translation: We have no clue whether this will work at all, or work as it is intended. But hey, back off: we're scientists.

Periodically Awesome

I found this entertaining.

The Periodic Table of Awesoments.

When it includes William Shatner and Christopher Walken, what can you say?

(HT: Jonah Goldberg)

Seeing Something Positive in the Stimulus

Now that we're putting science back into its rightful place, it's good to see progress being made:

MATHEMATICIANS DISCOVER LARGEST NUMBER

Science is Still Fun Because ...

... Sometimes the Universe (God, I insist) throws you a curve ball you can't hit.

Mystery Roar from Far-Away Space Detected

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.

The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.

...

the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected.

There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

...

Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.

Other radio galaxies also can't account for the noise – there just aren't enough of them.

"You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines," said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. "There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next."

The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.

For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.

I doubt that anything "new" is going on; we just discovered it is all. But it is certainly interesting.