A team of American and European researchers have confirmed that the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction — the event that wiped out roughly 75% of the planet’s species, including almost every dinosaur — was caused by an asteroid impact in Mexico 66 million years ago. The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction was the last great extinction event to occur on Earth, and is most notable for causing the diversification of mammals that eventually resulted in Homo sapiens</ … Read More → "Scientists finally confirm the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs"

TorrentFreak used the ScanEye BitTorrent monitoring service to check what was being downloaded by IP addresses associated with the FBI. There’s a lot.

via Boing Boing 

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… Read More → "The flaw in the Enigma Code"

Some people use the left, some the right, but which side of the brain do you primarily use for language? It may seem like a trivial question, but for one thing, if you ever have to undergo any type of brain surgery, the answer can help avoid damage to speech areas.

While lab tests can provide the answer, an app that involves a few minutes of concentrationworks just as well, according to a study in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Furthermore, a version of the app for patients with schizophrenia trains them to … Read More → "Your smartphone knows which side of the brain you’re using"

NASA’s Curiosity rover currently roaming the surface of Mars is developing a bit of a reputation for discovering groundbreaking false alarms.

There have been been unverified hints of organic matter; mysterious methane that turned out to be some stowaway molecules from Earth; and strange shiny objects of unknown origin.
via cnet</ … Read More → "Wait, did Curiosity just spot a hunk of metal on Mars?"

If you want to fly more than a hobbyist’s drone in the United States, you have to get permission from the Federal Aviation Administration. We’ve know for a while about some drones–the ones keeping an eye on the U.S.-Mexico border, for example–but this list of applications through October 2012, obtained and mapped by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is the most up-to-date look at domestic-drone permissions we’ve got.
… Read More → "A map of where drones are allowed in the U.S."

“Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real,” Jules Verne, born on this day in 1828 and often regarded as the father of science fiction, wrote in his masterpiece Around the World in Eighty Days. And, indeed, many of the seemingly fanciful concepts Verne imagined were made real in the decades that followed.
via Brain Pickings</ … Read More → "Happy Birthday, Jules Verne: prophet of science fiction"

In what will be the first-ever Google+ Hangout to beam to the ISS, NASA will be hosting such an eventon February 22, where astronauts Kevin Ford, Tom Marshburn, and Chris Hadfield will be answering your questions from 11 am ET to noon ET. The team will answer questions that are both pre-recorded, as well as live questions from social media sites.
via Read More → "NASA to host first ISS Google+ Hangout on February 22"

Entergy New Orleans, the utility that provides power to the Mercedes SuperDome in New Orleans, announced today that its technicians had determined the cause of the partial blackout during the Super Bowl last Sunday: an electrical relay the company had installed to prevent blackouts.
via ars technica

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“Seeing totally unrelated objects perfectly nestle inside of each other provides a certain kind of peace in an otherwise chaotic world.”
-digg.com

More here

via Coudal