Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Formaldehyde Could Have Set the Stage for the Origins of Life

Interesting piece about how Formaldehyde a known poisonous molecule found in meteorites could have set the stage for the origins of life in space. It was always a wonder how organ or carbon containing material came into existence, and now scientists think they know the answer to that question.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110404151351.htm

Understanding How Vision Works

Interesting video about how vision works. The presentation explores how we see and why we see certain things in different ways. Some of the topics are colours and three dimensional vision. The video did take a while to load, but it is definitely worth it. It is called Mind Lab.

Source: http://jvsc.jst.go.jp/find/mindlab/english/base.html

Black Market Booming with Meteorites from Space

The black market has grown in size quite rapidly, the increase came from the selling of meteorites that fell from space onto the Egyptian soil. Due to the government instability there, it has been difficult to keep control of the excavation sites, which allowed looters to dig in themselves and sell it on the market. Although with no real credibility, user fastparticles from Reddit says that these fragments from space are not that valuable at all since they are iron meteorites, and scientists have a lot of them. The rarest seems to drop in more remote places, such as Antarctica where looters don't have access. Apparently the more valuable pieces are stone meteorites, which most of the related science is done on.


Source: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/science/05meteorite.html?_r=1&ref=science
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gistx/the_black_market_trade_in_meteorites/
http://so-me.coolcats.fr/2009/05/type-iid-meteorite/