ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 676

“Moonspike” Project Plans To Crash A Spacecraft Into The Lunar Surface

Space





Photo credit:

The tiny spike at the front will carry digital information. Moonspike.

Getting to the Moon is no mean feat – but one company wants to prove it can be done on a budget. Called Moonspike, the organization has today announced its ambition to send a tiny payload to the lunar surface. The company is seeking seeking $1 million (£600,000) of seed funding on Kickstarter and is hoping that it can inspire others to reach for the cosmos.

We’ve Found Liquid Water Flowing On Mars, But We’re Not Allowed To Investigate It

Space





Photo credit:

In 1976, NASA's Viking landers (Viking 2 shown) performed the first and only search for life on Mars to date. NASA.

Of course, we’re all excited about finding liquid salty water on the surface of Mars. But any prospects of sending a rover or even humans to study these mini "rivers" might have to be dampened (sorry), owing to issues of contamination.

Frog Tongues Act Like Sticky Tape

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

Michiel de Wit/shutterstock

Fast-flicking frog tongues are a biological high-speed adhesive system. They stick immediately to different sorts of surfaces and capture quick, distant, and often tiny prey at rapid velocities. Now, using high-speed recordings, researchers reveal that the frog tongue is basically a muscle-powered adhesive tape. The work was published in Royal Society Open Science this week.

Two New Anti-HIV Molecules Identified

Health and Medicine





Photo credit:

HIV infecting a white blood cell. Chris Bjornberg/Shutterstock

Back in the ‘80s, before rigorous screening was implemented, a number of individuals in Australia became infected with HIV following transfusions with contaminated blood. Known as the Sydney Blood Bank cohort, they all received blood from a single HIV-infected donor.

Beaches Are Being Dyed Pink To Study Pollution

Environment





Photo credit:

The scripps institution of oceanography

Oh I do like to be beside the sea side… Wait… Why is this beach pink?

Atheist mom: Death threats from angry Christians helped kill my faith

By David Ferguson

A Texas woman who spoke out in 2013 against prayer in schools says the vicious reaction she received has driven her away from Christianity altogether.

Beaumont’s Channel 12 News reported Thursday on Amber Barnhill, who joined other non-religious demonstrators at Lamar University’s “Ask an Atheist Day” on Thursday.

Channel 12 first met Barnhill when she objected to officially mandated Christian prayers at her son’s public school pre-kindergarten class. In the wake of that news segment, Barnhill said she was the object of an outpouring of rage and abuse, including death threats.

The nastiness of the response, she said, contributed to her loss of faith in religion.

“That’s not why I lost my faith in God,” Barnhill said. “But it did have a huge impact on how quickly that happened.”

Read the full article by clicking the name of the source below.

How Much Would It Cost To Be Batman?

Editor's Blog





Photo credit:

Acrolobato/Wikimedia

Superheroes are made in many different ways. Some through training like the Green Arrow, others through circumstance like Spiderman’s bite, and others by being absolutely and ridiculously wealthy, like Batman.

So if you don’t fancy an extensive training program, didn’t fall to Earth from a different planet and you can’t seem to get a radioactive insect to bite you no matter how hard you try, your only option is to become disgustingly rich and buy a lair full of gadgets in order to become the superhero you know you were born to be.

Fisherman Fends Off Shark With Kayak Paddle

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

NBC News video screenshot / Mark McCracken

A fisherman managed to fend off a feisty hammerhead shark while kayaking near Gaviota State Beach on Saturday. The shark’s curiosity could not be assuaged, even when pummeled with the man’s paddle.

So who is the man the shark was so intrigued by? Mark McCracken is a 33-year-old construction worker from Santa Maria, California.

The Tropical Steam-Engine: How Does El Niño Warm The Entire Globe?

Environment





Photo credit:

PublicDomainPictures/Pixabay

We regularly hear about how El Niño events raise the temperature across much of the planet, contributing to spikes in global average temperature such as the one witnessed in 1998, with severe bush fires, droughts and floods.

Indeed, the extra warmth is typically much more apparent over land than in the oceans, despite El Niño being chiefly thought of as an ocean temperature phenomenon.

How is it that an event predominantly characterised by a warm blob of water in the tropical eastern Pacific can have such a pervasive effect on global land temperatures?

Controversies In Medicine: The Rise And Fall Of The Challenge To Tamiflu

Health and Medicine





Photo credit:

As part of pandemic preparation, in the early 2000s many countries amassed large stockpiles of the influenza neuraminidase inhibitor Tamiflu. Tony Hisgett/Flickr, CC BY-SA

One of the biggest recent controversies in medicine involves the effectiveness – or otherwise – of the antiviral drug Tamiflu. Governments around the world have stockpiled the drug for use in severe influenza pandemics, but many have raised doubts about its effectiveness.

Influenza causes annual “seasonal” epidemics in temperate countries and circulates year-round in the tropics. Pandemics occur when there’s a relatively new flu virus containing components of bird or swine flu viruses, against which the human population has little protection.