Mysterious Runaway Star Stymies Scientist

"Astronomers have stumbled onto a runaway star inbound to our galaxy that might have been kicked out of our nearest galactic neighbor by a supermassive black hole.



The star, HE 0437-5439, was found on a star survey and initially led its discoverers to suspect their instruments were out of whack.

'We first thought our wavelength calibration was off,' said astronomer Ralf Napiwotzki of the University of Hertfordshire's Center for Astrophysics Research in the U.K.

The light from the star was both the wrong color (wavelength) for where the star is located and showed spectral signs that it is traveling inbound to the Milky Way at an unusually high speed -- about 1.6 million miles per hour (2.6 million kilometers per hour). "

Enormous nuclear bunker for sale

"A nuclear bunker made to house the government and civil servants in the event of nuclear attack is for sale.



The existence of the underground complex at Corsham, Wiltshire, was kept secret until recently, but the Ministry of Defence is now inviting buyers.

Built in the late 1950s, the bunker covers many acres and was decommissioned in the 1980s.

It is underground - more than 100ft (30m) down - and includes a kitchen and BBC studio. "

Israelite Alphabet May Have Been Found

"Two lines of an alphabet have been found inscribed in a stone in Israel, offering what some scholars say is the most solid evidence yet that the ancient Israelites were literate as early as the 10th century B.C.

'This is very rare. This stone will be written about for many years to come,' archaeologist Ron E. Tappy, a professor at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary who made the discovery, said Wednesday. 'This makes it very historically probable there were people in the 10th century (B.C.) who could write.'

Christopher Rollston, a professor of Semitic studies at Emmanuel School of Religion in Johnson City, Tenn., who was not involved in the find, said the writing is probably Phoenician or a transitional language between Phoenician and Hebrew.

"We have little epigraphic material from the 10th century in Israel, and so this substantially augments the material we have," he said.

The stone was found in July, on the final day of a five-week dig at Tel Zayit, about 30 miles south of Tel Aviv."

Bird Flu

cartoon by Bruce Pritchard 

Grand Canyon to Get Glass Bridge

"Fear of heights? This is definitely no place for you.



The all-glass, balcony-like 'Skywalk'--shown in an illustration released this week--will extend over the edge of the Grand Canyon, 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) above the Colorado River.

'The Skywalk will be an attraction unlike any other in the world,' said Sheri Yellowhawk, CEO of the Grand Canyon Resort Corporation. The company is building the bridge in the Hualapai Indian Reservation on the south rim of the canyon.

The Skywalk is scheduled to open to the public in January 2006 as part of a new resort on the reservation. The resort, known as Grand Canyon West, is to include a re-created Indian village and a restaurant perched on the edge of the canyon. Tourism is the reservation's biggest source of income.

Grand Canyon West will be on the western edge of Grand Canyon National Park, about 120 miles (about 200 kilometers) from Las Vegas. But perhaps not even the Las Vegas Strip's over-the-top attractions will be a match for this glass-bottom walkway over the world's biggest gorge."

Shave Your Yeti

For those of you who have always wanted to shave an Abominable Snowman, or Yeti (and really, who hasn't), now's your chance. Just click on the title link above if you already have Macromedia Flash installed on your computer. If not, it's a free download here.

Make sure you shave him completely!

New bird flu outbreaks hit Asia

"China and Vietnam have reported major new bird flu outbreaks, as Japan moved to cull 180,000 chickens at a farm where signs of the virus were found.

The lethal H5N1 virus killed nearly 9,000 chickens in China's Liaoning province and 3,000 birds in Bac Giang province in Vietnam, officials said.

Japanese officials said tests showed 80 chickens in Ibaraki had been exposed in the past to a virus from the H5 family. But the chickens had survived, and no active virus was found.
Further tests are needed to identify its exact strain.

The H5N1 virus has killed millions of birds across Asia, and millions more have been culled in an effort to stem the spread of the virus. At least 60 people have also died of the disease, since its resurgence at the end of 2003. There are fears the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily between people.



China's new outbreak - the fourth in three weeks - occurred on 26 October, the agriculture ministry said in a report posted on the website of the World Organisation for Animal Health."

Pluto found to have two more moons

"Two small moons have been discovered orbiting Pluto, bringing the planet's retinue of known satellites to three and leaving scientists to wonder how it could be.



The newfound moons orbit about 27,000 miles (44,000 kilometers) from Pluto, more than twice as far as Charon, Pluto's other satellite. They are 5,000 times dimmer than Charon."

On Gravity, Oreos and a Theory of Everything - New York Times

"The portal to the fifth dimension, sadly, is closed.
There used to be an ice cream parlor in the student center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And it was there, in the summer of 1998, that Lisa Randall, now a professor of physics at Harvard and a bit of a chocoholic, and Raman Sundrum, a professor at Johns Hopkins, took an imaginary trip right out of this earthly plane into a science fiction realm of parallel universes, warped space and otherworldly laws of physics.

They came back with a possible answer to a question that has tormented scientists for decades, namely why gravity is so weak compared with the other forces of nature: in effect, we are borrowing it from another universe. In so doing, Dr. Randall and Dr. Sundrum helped foment a revolution in the way scientists think about string theory - the vaunted 'theory of everything' - raising a glimmer of hope that coming experiments may actually test some of its ineffable sounding concepts.

Their work undermined well-worn concepts like the idea that we can even know how many dimensions of space we live in, or the reality of gravity, space and time.



The work has also made a star and an icon of Dr. Randall. The attention has been increased by the recent publication to laudatory reviews of her new book, 'Warped Passages, Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions,' A debate broke out on the physics blog Cosmic Variance a few weeks ago about whether it was appropriate, as a commentator on NPR had said, to say looked like Jodie Foster."

Study: Mice Sing in the Presence of Mates

"Songbirds may be the Sinatras of the animal world, but male mice can carry a tune too, say Washington University researchers who were surprised by what they heard.

Scientists have known for decades that male lab mice produce high-frequency sounds - undetectable by human ears - when they pick up the scent of a female mouse. This high-pitched babble is presumably for courtship, although scientists are not certain.

But it turns out those sounds are more complex and interesting than previously thought.

'It soon became ... apparent that these vocalizations were not random twitterings but songs,' said researcher Timothy Holy. 'There was a pattern to them. They sounded a lot like bird songs.'"