Cities in Fact and Fiction: An Interview with William Gibson

Original Story at Scientific American, hat tip to John Robb at Global Guerrillas.

Author of the cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, William Gibson​ talks about the relationship between his fiction and the contemporary urban landscape.

Story after the break....

Did the Large Hadron Collider Just Debunk Superstring Theory? News at Eleven...

HatTip


New data from Europe's Large Hadron Collider may signal the end of one of the most popular theories in physics, superstring theory. If the conclusions are true, scientists would need a new leading candidate for the "theory of everything."

The LHC actually hasn't debunked superstring theory directly. The theory maintains that everything in the universe is actually made up of extremely small vibrating strings. The strings, if they exist, would need to be much smaller than even the smallest particles that are known, and it's impossible for current science to probe such tiny scales.

More after the break....

For Sale: One slightly used space station

Can be used as a groovy aquarium, a big ass amulet to impress the women folk, a doorstop and more!

Astronauts may need to temporarily abandon the International Space Station if last week's Russian launch accident prevents new crews from flying there this fall. Until officials figure out what went wrong with Russia's essential Soyuz rockets, there will be no way to launch any more astronauts before the current residents have to leave in mid-November. The predicament comes just weeks after NASA's final space shuttle flight.

Hat tip to the Daily Galaxy

Dark Matter Is an Illusion, New Antigravity Theory Says

The mysterious substance known as dark mater may actually be an illusion created by gravitational interactions between short lived particles of matter and antimatter, a new study says. 

Mind blown in 4,3,2,1......
Read the entire article at National Geographic

The Bullet Cluster

String theorists suggest space wormholes possible

Reanalyzing the problem using string theory techniques used in the past to analyze black holes reveals a range of wormhole diameter-to-energy ratios that appear stable. String theory, or more properly "superstring theory", broadly envisions subatomic particles as strings or loops of vibrating energy rather than point-like particles described in more standard physics theories.
Introduce the cosmological possibilities opened by this description of reality, add in a few equations, and the study finds that wormholes suddenly acquire stability, even if constructed of normal matter. "The wormholes can be arbitrarily large," concludes the paper.

Read more at ScienceFair

Amazing daylight meteor footage from Peru

For more on the story visit The DailyMail.UK

Texas and Antarctica Were Attached, Rocks Hint

Fascinating....About 1.1 billion years ago, what are now El Paso, Texas, and Antartica appear to have existed side by side, scientists say.

I have also read that the Ft Davis/Davis Mountains area, as well as Big Bend NP were also connect to Antartica as well.  It's crazy to think that when I am hiking in the Chisos that I am actually walking in Antartica!

Read the entire (short) article at National Geographic:
NatGeo

                                                      The lovely Chisos Mountains of West Texas

Galaxies of the Distant Observable Universe - Objects Beyond Human Comprehension

Thousands of galaxies crowd into this Herschel image of the distant Universe. Each dot is an entire galaxy containing billions of stars. For more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over strangely bright galaxies in the distant Universe. These ‘luminous infrared galaxies’ appear to be creating stars at such phenomenal rates that they defy conventional theories of galaxy formation.

ESA’s Herschel infrared space observatory, with its ability for very sensitive mapping over wide areas, has seen thousands of these galaxies and pinpointed their locations, showing for the first time that they are packing themselves closely together, forming large clusters of galaxies by the force of their mutual gravity.   Source: ESA - oshi


Hat tip to one of my favorite sites, the daily galaxy:  http://www.dailygalaxy.com