What happens when you seal a half-empty bottle of water at 6,000 feet, and then drive to 242 feet below sea level?

It gets a little crushed, of course.

And who says physics isn’t fun?

The best thing since aluminum and Teflon, “frozen smoke“. Aerogel will do everything from clean up oil spills to being the key to innovative space suits for Mars.

Speaking of Mars, a new look at the samples collected by Viking 30 years ago suggest that there may be microbes in the soil, possibly based on hydrogen peroxide.

What of life in space? Physicists have discovered inorganic space dust can organize and interact in ways that mimic biological molecules.

Scientists have extracted 8-million-year-old bacterium from the oldest known ice on earth and have succeeded in making it grow in the laboratory. [Just what I need, yet another reason to need to wash my hands every two hours.]

Frictionless nano-machines by reversing the Casmir force.

Four large galaxies have been spotted colliding, which will yield a single galaxy up to 10 times larger than our own.

Two German scientists claim they have made light travel, well . . . faster than the speed of light by using quantum tunneling. Not so fast, says ars technic, because in their analysis the claim is “silly”.

Speaking of growing things, we may be on a path to regenerate brain cells.

Want to avoid cancer? Get some sun! Researchers say just ten minutes per day of soaking in a few rays would give people enough Vitamin D to stop 30,000 cases of breast and colon cancer in Britain alone. [Makes sense to me. We didn't evolve in a cave, ya know.]

Women are from . . . the Pink Planet. Turns out that girls liking pink and boys liking blue may be genetic.

Brush your teeth with chocolate. Really. The white crystalline powder that is extracted from Cocoa, helps harden teeth enamel, making users less susceptible to tooth decay and may be more effective than fluoride. [Which is great, 'cause I never was comfortable with brushing my teeth with rat poison.]

Speaking of sweets, an Australian scientist has found that adding a plant sugar called inulin to flu vaccine makes them 50 to 100 times more effective. [If true, we can say bye-bye Birdie to the bird flu!]

Running water through windows on those big glass office towers reduces cooling costs up to 70%. [Who knows what vistas this could open up, maybe some green dye on St. Patrick's Day, red dye at Christmas? What happens if a window in one of those massive office towers springs a leak on Easter? The streets would be awash with bright blue water!]

A paper-thin, flexible, bio-degradable battery. Not only can it be wrapped around electronics and stuffed into weirdly-shaped spaces, there are very real medical applications.

Concrete that changes color when an electrical current is applied. [Cool pic of a digital clock embedded in a concrete wall.]

A cardboard bridge has been built in France. [Gee, you wouldn't think the French would be that clever. Oh wait . . . the architect is Shigeru Ban, the Japanese guy that built the paper church.]

At least, a recent study suggests that aspartame (APM), which is the primary ingredient in today’s diet drinks due to the hysteria over saccharine, will do so:

The results of this mega-experiment indicate that APM is a multipotential carcinogenic agent, even at a daily dose of 20 mg/kg body weight, much less than the current acceptable daily intake. On the basis of these results, a reevaluation of the present guidelines on the use and consumption of APM is urgent and cannot be delayed.

… to create human stem cells, according to Japan’s leading genetics researcher:

The potential of Professor Yamanaka’s breakthrough work – in which the skin cells of laboratory mice were genetically manipulated back to their embryonic state – has been hailed as the equivalent of “transforming lead into gold”. If the research develops in the way he hopes, runs the excited logic, the ethical problems that have swirled around embryonic stem-cell research would disappear.

Turns out that the girly embrace-your-emotions-through-therapy claptrap that liberals have been shoving down our throats since the 60s is bad for you:

… girls who talk very extensively about their problems with friends are likely to become more anxious and depressed. …

“When girls co-ruminate, they’re spending such a high percentage of their time dwelling on problems and concerns that it probably makes them feel sad and more hopeless about the problems because those problems are in the forefront of their minds. Those are symptoms of depression,” Rose said. “In terms of anxiety, co-ruminating likely makes them feel more worried about the problems, including about their consequences. Co-rumination also may lead to depression and anxiety because it takes so much time – time that could be used to engage in other, more positive activities that could help distract youth from their problems. This is especially true for problems that girls can’t control, such as whether a particular boy likes them, or whether they get invited to a party that all of the popular kids are attending.”

Talk about your problems, get depressed. Be a man and repress your emotions, push them deep down inside where they can’t hurt anybody, and you get on with your life.

This is supported by the findings that boys who talked to friends about their problems did not exhibit anxiety or depression. Why? I suspect that it’s because boys don’t get on the phone for hours and obsess about their problems. We’d rather go play football.

Liberals. Bah!

It must be Junk Science Thursday: a study shows that black women who feel that they regularly encounter racial discrimination are more likely to develop breast cancer than their peers, especially in those under 50.

In other words, if Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton hadn’t been making the entire black population feel like victims, then there wouldn’t be as many black women with breast cancer. But because they have been, black women are victims — of cancer.

In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “42″ was the answer to the ultimate question, of Life, the Universe and Everything. The answer was calculated by hypercomputer Deep Thought, after thinking about it for a mere 7.5 million years.

In a somewhat bizarre coincidence, an international group of astronomers have determined that the universe weighs three times 10 to the power of 42 kilograms — a number written as 3 followed by 42 zeroes.

Cool Invention: We just bought a Dyson vacuum, and it is indeed a superior product. Now Dyson has come up with a better way to dry your hands. Cool.

Cloaking: Lenses that bend light “the wrong way” could lead to an invisibility shield — or maybe just better glasses.

Now that’s black! How about a surface that reflects no light.

Self-healing plastic skin: next stop, robots that bleed.

Synthetic Life: Scientists have created a new life by transferring genetic material from one bacterium into another. Once perfected, it is hoped that they can create custom microbes designed to produce fuel or eat up oil spills.

Ancient Rome — digitally restored.

Faster Ocean Waves: Global warming is making “planetary waves” move faster. Sounds like a good source of energy, to me.

Fast Matter: Scientists have clocked matter shooting out of a dying star at 99.999% the speed of light.

No Black Holes? The event horizon of black holes contradicts quantum mechanics, and two researchers think they can explain what really happens: black holes are really just black stars.

3 Petaflops: IBM’s Blue Gene/P supercomputer can do 3 quadrillion operations a second, or 3 petaflops. It can do 1 petaflop continuously in real-world operations.

Air Muscles: Japanese robot maker Squse unveiled a robotic hand weighing only 14 ounces with five human-sized fingers and artificial fibres that can be controlled by air pressure delicately enough to pick up an egg without breaking it.

DARPA Arms: But DARPA is overseeing the development of prosthetics that give feedback for pressure and eventually even temperature.

Tetrachromat: Some women may have four colour receptors rather than the usual three.

Blood Pressure Vaccine: A Swiss company claims to have a vaccine that combats high blood pressure. Just a shot every six months.

Marijuana Works: A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial indicates that pot helps HIV-positive patients gain weight, is well tolerated and does not impair cognitive performance. Think anyone stubbornly fighting medical marijuana is listening? Me either.

HIV Hope: Two advances in the multi-billion dollar War on AIDS. First, scientists have engineered an enzyme that appears to attack and remove the HIV virus from an infected cell. Second, there are prostitutes in Nairobi that are immune to HIV. Research indicates the women have unique protein molecules that help cells identify foreign invaders.

Fantastic Voyage: Israeli scientists have created a tiny robot that can navigate through tubes the width of human veins and arteries. It crawls along with tiny arms, and could even go upstream. A nice idea, but it’s a long way from medical deployment.

Nuclear Rockets: A scientist says using nuclear rockets will mean building the moonbase in 9 trips instead of 12 and will save $4.5 billion. A few modifications on the 40-year-old technology would mean not “spewing radioactivity” on Earth.

Opportunity Descending: Mars rover Opportunity is about to crawl into Victoria crater. It has been investigating from the rim since last September. Watch a cool NASA animation about the crater.

Smart Cooking: A new theory says cooking meat made our ancestor’s brains bigger. Way to go Homo erectus!

Giant Penguins roamed the earth 40 million years ago in Peru.

Erectus Rising: Speaking of Homo erectus, it is thought that our ancestor starting settling down about 10,000 years ago. But a German professor claims to have evidence that this actually started happening about 400,000 years ago. That changes everything.

Kitty Roots: Research indicates that domestic cats came from wild cats that interbred over 100,000 years ago in the Middle East. All I know is that if I see any of my cats facing east six times a day, I’m going to shoot the little bastard. That’s all I need, a furry terrorist under my own roof. Careful, they’re cunning!

B
ad Burqa: God created us naked for a reason. Turns out that Muslim women who cover themselves completely are deficient in vitamin D, which others get from the sun. In other words, strict Islam makes women sick.

Hatshepsut Found: In the “find of the century”, the 3,000-year-old mummy of Queen Hatshepsut has been found. Hatshepsut was Egypt’s most powerful female ruler, often appearing in a fake beard.

Peanut Butter Diamonds: Yes, it’s possible to squeeze and heat peanut butter until it turns into a diamond. But this isn’t really news — we’ve been doing it for the last 50 years.

Changing Stripes: A tiger may not be able to change its stripes, but Jupiter can. New images from the Hubble and the spacecraft New Horizons. And speaking of stripes, this is the strangest looking zorse, ever.

Which pic is cooler? The very real shot of a White Bengal Tiger going for a swim?

[Click the link to see all the full-sized pics and watch a video.] HT to Digg.

Or this rather fanciful shot of battling squirrels with light sabers?

[Click the link to see the full-sized pic.]

Hurricanes and typhoons distribute the Earth’s heat more than allowed for in current weather models, moderating the warming trend and driving yet another stake into the heart of Gore’s convenient lie.

Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s Passport Found in Argentina after a judge found it in a musty old court file.

Imagine a plant that can be 20 ft wide and 6 ft tall but only has two leaves, each of which can be up to 80 ft long. This guy grows in one particular desert and can live to be 2,000 years old! It’s called a welwitschia and is arguably the ugliest (but most unique) plant on Earth. [via Digg]

Cool, low-mass stars called red dwarfs account for 75% of the stars in the Milky Way, and their planets could be more hospitable to life than previously believed.

Astronomers have determined that a super-massive black hole at the center of the galaxy is spinning at least 98.7% of the maximum spin rate allowable by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Now that’s fast.

The tech blogs are buzzing with the announcement of Microsoft’s Surface computer.

The coffee-table shaped device is exactly that — a table on which you can place objects (cell phones, wireless cameras, PDAs) which the device recognizes and connects with, as well as a 30-inch touch screen that accepts input from multiple points at once.

Six years in the making, it will be priced between $5K and $10K. So you’ll be initially seeing this at hotels, casinos and retail outlets (you’ll be able to use it to help pick out a phone at T-Mobile stores). But as with all technology, prices will drop soon making this the next cool toy for all the guys.

Watch this video from Popular Mechanics to see just how cool (click on the link for a larger version):

This is not only a radical new technology (new to the consumer world, anyway), it is a new approach to product development and marketing by Microsoft.

Microsoft Watch declares that Surface signals a sea change in how Microsoft does business:

Surface, which was developed in part by Microsoft Research, is coming to market from the Entertainment and Devices division—the same folks responsible for the Xbox and Zune. At least in the early years, Microsoft will provide the basic end-to-end hardware and software. There will be plenty of third-party software developer opportunities, as with Xbox and Xbox Live, but much less for hardware. Microsoft has no immediate plans to license Surface to other manufacturers.

In a separate article, Joe Wilcox applauds Microsoft’s marketing of the product:

The blog and broader news media reaction to this announcement will be interesting. If Jobs had made the announcement, it would have been heralded as another breathtaking Apple innovation—that “one more thing”—that sets the company apart from others. Will Microsoft get as much fanfare or credit? Probably not. Should Microsoft deserve big buzz as innovator. Probably yes.

One parting thought: “Home 2.0″ — you heard it here first, folks.