Is There Ice on the Moon?

December 18, 2008

Could there be ice on the moon?

A team of British researchers thinks so, and theorizes that the water could be put to use by residents of a future permanent lunar base.

Poring over data from NASA’s 1998 Lunar Prospector probe, the Durham University scientists found that hydrogen on the moon tends to be concentrated in dark craters near the lunar poles — exactly where you’d expect water, permanently shielded from the sun’s rays by the crater walls, to stay frozen.

[From Fox News]

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The commercial Christmas card as we know it originated in London in 1843. That winter, Sir Henry Cole, a civil servant who helped organize the Great Exhibition and develop the Victoria and Albert Museum, decided he was too busy to write individual Christmas greetings to his family, friends and business colleagues. He asked his friend, the painter John Callcott Horsley, to design a card with an image and brief greeting that he could mail instead.

Horsley designed a triptych, with the two side panels depicting good deeds (clothing the naked and feeding the hungry) and the center panel showing a family Christmas party. The inclusion of booze at this party got Cole and Horsley an earful from the British Temperance Movement. At the bottom of the center panel was the inscription “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.

[mental_floss]

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A 2,000 Year Old Brain

December 13, 2008

Archaeologists have found what they say is the oldest brain ever discovered in Britain, or at least the shriveled remnant of one, in a decapitated skull that dates back more than 2,000 years.

Inside the skull, the scientists found “a yellow substance which scans showed to be shrunken, but brain-shaped,” according to a University of York statement.

“I’m amazed and excited that scanning has shown structures which appear to be unequivocally of brain origin,” said Philip Duffey, a neurologist at York Hospital who scanned the skull.

The researchers do not claim the brain is the oldest in the world, as some news reports suggested.

[from Fox News]

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Despite containing modern electronics and circuits, most pinball machines today still contain at least a half mile of wiring! Older ones could have one or two miles of wire inside!

[source]

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The Smallest Bird in the World

December 13, 2008

Hummingbirds can fly backwards, and are the only group of birds able to do so. They flap their wings rapidly 15-80 times per second. The bee hummingbird is the smallest bird in the world, weighing in between 3 grams and 24 grams.

[wikipedia]

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