A strange thing happened to the universe five billion years ago. As if God had turned on an antigravity machine, the expansion of the cosmos speeded up, and galaxies began moving away from one another at an ever faster pace. Now a group of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that billions of years before this mysterious antigravity overcame cosmic gravity and sent the galaxies scooting apart like muscle cars departing a tollbooth, it was already present in space, affecting the evolution of the cosmos. ‘We see it doing its thing, starting to fight against ordinary gravity,’ said Adam Reiss of the Space Telescope Science Institute about the antigravity force, known as dark energy. He is the leader of a team of ‘dark energy prospectors,’ as he calls them, who peered back nine billion years with the Hubble and were able to discern the nascent effects of antigravity. The group reported their observations at a news conference today and in a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal. The new results, Dr. Reiss and others said, provide new clues and place new limits on the nature of dark energy, a mystery that has thrown […]
AMSTERDAM — The Dutch government agreed on Friday a total ban on the wearing of burqas and other Muslim face veils in public, justifying the move on security grounds. Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk will now draw up legislation which will result in the Netherlands, once one of Europe’s most easy-going nations, imposing some of the continent’s toughest laws against concealing the face. ‘The cabinet finds it undesirable that garments covering the face — including the burqa — should be worn in public in view of public order, (and) the security and protection of fellow citizens,’ the Dutch Justice Ministry said in a statement. The video game industry’s own clash of the titans reboots this week with the midnight launch of Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Sunday’s debut of Nintendo’s Wii. Full coverage The debate on face veils and whether they stymie Muslim integration has gathered momentum across Europe. The Netherlands would be the first European state to impose a countrywide ban on Islamic face coverings, though other countries have already outlawed them in specific places. The move by the center-right government comes just five days before a general election. The campaign has focused so far […]
NAIROBI, Kenya — The 168 members of the United Nations’ pact for cutting greenhouse gases will launch negotiations in 2008 over the next round of pledges for tackling global warming, a worldwide conference on climate change decided overnight. The negotiations will determine action for curbing carbon pollution from 2013 to 2017, after Kyoto’s present commitment period expires in 2012. But no date is set for concluding the negotiation process, nor are there any pre-conditions for the talks. Experts say Kyoto’s so-called second commitment period must deliver swingeing reductions in emissions to avoid potentially crippling damage to the world’s climate system by fossil-fuel gases. The 2008 negotiations are officially a ‘review’ of the Kyoto Protocol — a broad assessment of what changes should be made for the treaty’s next commitment period. Any changes will then have to be negotiated in full and subsequently ratified. Agreement came after the 12-day marathon talks in Nairobi under the 189-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) went hours into overtime. Developing countries had feared that any preconditions for the review meant they would be forced into accepting binding curbs on their pollution — a requirement that would […]
Just the mere thought of money can turn a person selfish, so that he helps others less often and prefers to play alone, a new study shows. In a series of nine experiments, researchers found that money enhanced people’s motivation to achieve their own goals and degraded their behavior toward others. The concept of money, they suggest, makes a person feel more self-sufficient and thus more apt to stand alone. The scientists said the study had nothing to do with making a person feel wealthy. When real or fake money, or even a photo of cash, was placed in sight of participants, they became selfish. The results could explain why the topic of money can be so detrimental to a couple’s lasting bond. ‘In our experiments, the people who are reminded of money really worked hard toward their own goals. But that might not be conducive to a good interpersonal relationship,’ said study leader Kathleen Vohs of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, Staged scenes The scientists split 50 undergraduate students into two groups. One was primed with the concept of money; other served as a control and was not […]
Given that some athletes will take almost anything to gain a one percent edge in performance, what might they do for a 100 percent improvement? That temptation is made somewhat more real by a report today in a leading journal about a drug that doubles the physical endurance of mice running on treadmills. And it could only be more tempting, because the drug in question has also been reported to extend the lifespan of mice. An ordinary lab mouse will run about one kilometer - five-eights of a mile - on a treadmill before collapsing from exhaustion. But mice given resveratrol, a minor component of red wine and other foods, run twice as far. They also have a reduced heart rate and energy-charged muscles, just as trained athletes do, according to an article published online in Cell by Johan Auwerx and his colleagues at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France. ‘Resveratrol makes you look like a trained athlete without the training,’ Dr. Auwerx (pronounced OH-wer-ix’) said in an interview. He and his colleagues said the same mechanism seems likely to operate in humans, based on their analysis, in a group […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
