Thursday, Jan 08th
Last update08:51:27 AM GMT
Science Glance
According to two research scientists the mystery of vanished ships and airplanes in the region dubbed "The Bermuda Triangle" has been solved.
The methane—normally frozen at great pressure as gas hydrates embedded within subterranean rock—can become dislodged and transform into gaseous bubbles expanding geometrically as they explode upwards. When these bubbles reach the surface of the water they soar into the air, still expanding upwards and outwards.
Scientists have detected the largest molecules ever seen in space, in a cloud of cosmic dust surrounding a distant star. The football-shaped carbon molecules are known as buckyballs, and were only discovered on Earth 25 years ago when they were made in a laboratory.
These molecules are the "third type of carbon" - with the first two types being graphite and diamond.
The heaviest known star – with a mass 320 times greater than the Sun's – has been discovered at the edge of our galaxy by British astronomers. Scientists at the University of Sheffield found the stellar giant – named R136a1 – using the European southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile and data from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The star is located in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small "satellite" galaxy which orbits the Milky Way. Previously, the heaviest known stars were around 150 times the mass of the Sun, and this was believed to be close to the cosmic size limit.
The pictures of the Carina constellation were taken by the Hubble and were described by experts as looking like a "July 4 fireworks display". It shows a new star being born from within an existing star cluster.
The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust - called a nebula. This makes up the raw material needed to make a new star. The nebula, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, contains a central cluster of huge, hot stars, called NGC 3603.
Primatologist Ymke Warren, 40, had her throat slit after she was bound and gagged when she confronted an intruder at the home she shared with her boyfriend Aaron Nicholas in the coastal town of Limbe.
Dr, Warren escaped the genocide in Rwanda in the early 90s, and then ran the Dian Fossey project studying Cross River gorillas, one of west Africa's most threatened primate populations.
Disease-carrying honeybees imported from Australia may be responsible for a mysterious disorder that's decimated bee hives around the country, and federal regulators say they'd consider import restrictions if necessary.
By some estimates, beekeepers in the past several years have lost from a third to half their hives to what's called colony collapse disorder. Each hive, or colony, can contain as many as 100,000 bees. The bees are disappearing from the hives never to be seen again.
As the scientist who helped eradicate smallpox he certainly know a thing or two about extinction.
And now Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.
He has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and 'unbridled consumption.’
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