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Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

Would you like to live for ever? One of the hardest things to accept for those who don’t trust God or the Bible is the idea of eternal life, they say that it is impossible for the human body to live eternally, that we are not designed like that, however often times when presented with that reasoning the ones who do believe in creation realize the fact that even our cells constantly rejuvenate in our body, what scientists cannot comprehend or explain though is why at some point in our lives that process of constant cell rejuvenation suddenly stops leading us to our irreversible and eventual death.

Recently another discovery has proven that for a small sea creature the jellyfish that possibility is a reality; The jellyfish known as the Turritopsis Nutricula has the remarkable ability of ‘growing young’ after it mates…And it is able, at least theoretically, to mate  and then revert to its juvenile state an unlimited number of times, as a matter of fact scientists are actively studying this tiny creature to determine how exactly it goes around this.

They have come to the conclusion that the Jellyfish does this through a process called “transdifferentiation” in other words, when older cells are replaced with new ones, scientists believe this creature only dies when it is eaten or killed in the tropical waters off Florida where it is native.

So there you have it, God gave the Jellyfish eternal life, maybe we did also had it at some point but lost it, just as the bible says? you decide.

According to a press release by the news agency Reuters, Nasa scientists on Thursday said they have found what appears
to be definitive proof that water exists on Mars once they completed extensive tests on previously found ice last
June by the Phoenix Mars Lander.

Samples of ice were also seen melting away in pictures  taken by the lander’s instruments when Phoenix touched down in June.

According to the news report lead scientist William Boyton stated that: (and I quote) “We’ve seen evidence for this
water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month,
but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted,” he said, referring to the craft’s instruments.

Besides being quite interesting, this type of news makes me wonder about how little we know about the universe we live in. Could at some point life be found beyond the boundaries of our planet? what implications will this bring to religion and Christianity as we know it? Will suddenly discovered E.T. Life deny the existence of God itself?

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LONDON (AFP) – Scientists have discovered a ground-breaking way of levitating ultra small objects, which may revolutionize the design of micro-machines, a new report says.  Physicists said they can create “incredible levitation effects” by manipulating so-called Casimir force, which normally causes objects to stick together by quantum force.

The phenomenon could be used to improve the performances of everyday devices ranging from car airbags to computer chips, say Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin from Saint Andrews University.

Casimir force — discovered in 1948 and first measured in 1997 — can be seen in a gecko’s ability to stick to a surface with just one toe.  Now the British scientists say they can reverse the Casimir force to cause an object to repel rather than attract another in a vacuum.

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Astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, an exoplanet with a radius only 50% larger than the Earth and capable of having liquid water. Using the ESO 3.6-m telescope, a team of Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists discovered a super-Earth about 5 times the mass of the Earth that orbits a red dwarf, already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet. The astronomers have also strong evidence for the presence of a third planet with a mass about 8 Earth masses.

This exoplanet – as astronomers call planets around a star other than the Sun – is the smallest ever found up to now and it completes a full orbit in 13 days. It is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun. However, given that its host star, the red dwarf Gliese 581, is smaller and colder than the Sun – and thus less luminous – the planet nevertheless lies in the habitable zone, the region around a star where water could be liquid! The planet’s name is Gliese 581 c.

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A 3-D X-ray crystallographic image showing the broadly neutralizing antibody b12 (green ribbon) in contact with a critical target (yellow) for vaccine developers on HIV-1 gp120. Scientists have captured an image of the AIDS virus in a biological handshake with the immune cells it attacks, and said on Wednesday they hope this can help lead to a better vaccine against the incurable disease.

They pinpointed a place on the outside of the human immunodeficiency virus that could be vulnerable to antibodies that could block it from infecting human cells.

U.S. National Institutes of Health researcher Peter Kwong said the study, published in the journal Nature, may reveal HIV’s long-sought “site of vulnerability” that can be targeted with a vaccine aimed at preventing initial infection. (NIAID/Handout/Reuters)

Source

A camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows this exquisite colour image of the Martian surface giving a tantalising glimpse into the Red Planet’s watery past.

Shots of the deep valley Candor Chasma show light coloured areas of rock where water could have flowed.

This image provided by Science shows light-toned layered rock in Becquerel Crater on Mars as photographed by the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The orbiter images show alternating layers of dark- and light-toned rock within which are a series of fractures, surrounded by what researchers call ‘halos’ of light-toned bedrock. These halos are believed to indicate where fluids, probably water, passed through the bedrock. The layers show cyclic changes in thickness, which may be due to annual climate cycles, a cyclic variability in the source of the sediment, or both. The blue areas are extensive fields of sand dunes.

An orbiting spacecraft has sent back new evidence for the presence of water on Mars. Scientists long have debated whether water flowed on the red planet, with evidence increasing in recent years. The presence of water would raise the possibility of at least primitive life forms existing there.

WASHINGTON – Just a little more than a year ago, the small spot on Jupiter was a pale white; now it matches the reddish hue of its bigger sibling, the Great Red Spot, and boasts 400 mph winds, according to new data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Both spots are actually fierce storms in Jupiter’s atmosphere. While the red spot at three times the size of Earth is much more noticeable, strange things are happening to the smaller spot.Scientists aren’t quite sure what’s happening to the smaller storm, nicknamed the Little Red Spot or Red Spot Jr. but officially called “Oval BA.” It probably gained strength as it shrunk slightly, the same way spinning ice skaters go faster when they move their arms closer, said NASA planetary scientist Amy Simon-Miller. Her findings from the Hubble data were published in the astronomical journal Icarus.As the storm has grown stronger it’s probably picked up red material from lower in the Jupiter atmosphere, most likely some form of sulfur which turns red as part of a chemical reaction, she said.News Source

 An artist’s conception created at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and released on January 3, 2006 shows Pluto and its moon Charon as seen from the surface of one of Pluto’s newly discovered candidate satellites. Pluto was stripped of its status as a planet August 24, 2006 when astronomers from around the world redefined it as a “dwarf planet”.

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