Posts Tagged wtf scientists

Scientists Say Triceratops May Not have Existed. Why Make us Cry, Scientists?

Posted by mistergroonk in Dinosaurs, Science on August 3, 2010

First it was Dracorex hogwartsia.

Now it’s the triceratops.

John Scannella and Jack Horner, two researchers at the Museum of the Rockies, have compared the skulls of the triceratops with those of its close relative, the torosaurus, and decided that since dinosaur skulls can change shape during their lifetimes, the triceratops could merely have been a juvenile form of the torosaurus

So you see when they say “not existed” they mean “not existed as a distinct species.”

As the animal aged, its horns changed shape and orientation and its frill became longer, thinner and less jagged. Finally it became fenestrated, producing the classic torosaurus form.

This extreme shape-shifting was possible because the bone tissue in the frill and horns stayed immature, spongy and riddled with blood vessels, never fully hardening into solid bone as happens in most animals during early adulthood. The only modern animal known to do anything similar is the cassowary, descended from the dinosaurs, which develops a large spongy crest when its skull is about 80 per cent fully grown.

Science! You’ll have to take triceratops out of our cold, dead, fossilized, possibly oil-bearing, hands.

via blastr, new scientist

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Stephen Hawking Believes in Alien Planet Jackers, More Doomy Dooms of Doom

Posted by mistergroonk in Science, World on April 28, 2010

We find it curious that when scientist Albert Harrison says a visiting alien race may be as petty as humans back in January 2010, no one bats an eyelash.

Stephen Hawking says the same thing and accompanies the statement with ILM level visual effects and time on the Discovery Channel, everyone won’t shut up about humanity’s doom.
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Exploring the Moon hole… to Live In

Posted by mistergroonk in Science, The Future on January 3, 2010

The international team of scientists have discovered something:


…a protected lunar “lava tube” — a deep, giant hole — that might be well suited for a moon colony or a lunar base.

The vertical hole, in the volcanic Marius Hills region on the moon’s near side, is 213 feet wide and is estimated to be more than 260 feet deep, according to findings published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

More important, the scientists say, the hole is protected from the moon’s harsh temperatures and meteorite strikes by a thin sheet of lava. That makes the tube a good candidate for further exploration or possible inhabitation, …

It took, what, 50,000 years* for humans to crawl out of caves and build deluxe apartments in the sky? Now these world scientists are saying we have to crawl back in a hole to step off this rock and start the Trek/Wars future we all long for?

Scientists love irony.

*We’re pretty sure that’s not the scientific number but you get the point.

(via CNN and someone’s tweet but we can’t recall whose.)

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Bird Plots Against Science, Drops Bread in the LHC

Posted by mistergroonk in LOL, Science, Technology on November 13, 2009

By now you know the story of the bread, the bird and the Large Hadron Collider.

The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.

What you may have missed is The Future Sabotage of the LHC theory where it is proposed that the Higgs Boson does not want to be found.

And long before that the Super-Fear of Hadron Super Collider, Silly, Won’t Die wherein some worry that daring to turn on the LHC will doom this Earth to being a Black Hole’s dinner.

From these meager scraps of super science-y notions we’ve managed to piece together the grander scheme. Here, faithful reader, is the rest of the story*:
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Dino Detritus: Scientists Now Say, ‘Your Favorite Dinosaur May Be a Fiction’

Posted by mistergroonk in Dinosaurs, Science on November 3, 2009

So it has occurred to scientists that “Dracorex hogwartsia” may be as fictional as a Blast-Ended Skrewt.

Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensisThese dinosaurs were not separate species, as some paleontologists claim, but different growth stages of previously named dinosaurs, according to a new study. The confusion is traced to their bizarre head ornaments, ranging from shields and domes to horns and spikes, which changed dramatically with age and sexual maturity, making the heads of youngsters look very different from those of adults.

“Juveniles and adults of these dinosaurs look very, very different from adults, and literally may resemble a different species,” said dinosaur expert Mark B. Goodwin, assistant director of UC Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology. “But some scientists are confusing morphological differences at different growth stages with characteristics that are taxonomically important. The result is an inflated number of dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous.”

As Twiend @MattStaggs says:

First they came for the Pluto, and I said nothing because I wasn’t a planetoid. Then they came for the dinosaurs…

This change in knowledge of the facts seeks to destroy the monsters we once knew.

(via @mattstaggs, Io9, science daily)

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Sietch Nevada Proposed to Battle Coming Water Wars

Posted by mistergroonk in The Future, USA on October 11, 2009

There are plans within plans. They always turn. They’re churning new ideas for old agendas. The horrors of future Water Wars are forever being preached to whomever will listen. Others(see: people we tend to side with) are not convinced. If anything the world will be covered in water. This would make Kevin Costner a prophet and that does not sit well with us either.

But these are the 31 Posts of Halloween and, like it or not, a global battle over water is epic, and scary and completely overdone in every post-apocalypse dystopian future movie.

sietchnevada

Water shortages will affect many areas of the United States and the world, possibly leading to “water wars” between states and countries if global temperatures continue to rise throughout the next century, as predicted in reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

According to a recent study, over the coming century the Southwest will essentially transition into a state of “perpetual drought” due to the effects of global warming. This prediction leads to the questions of whether the worsening arid conditions of the Southwest should be called a drought or whether the regional climate is changing.

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