Studying exploding stars has its challenges. In particular Type Ia supernovas, where temperatures reach billions of degrees. But someone's got to do it, so Robert Fisher and Cal Jordan at the University of Chicago’s Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes have organized a team of scientists who will

"expend 22 million computational hours during the next year on one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, simulating an event that takes less than five seconds"

That according to a release just out from the University of Chicago News Office.

Imagine...such resources are necessary in our primitive 21st century to engage in what for us seems extreme exploration; but the University of Chicago, a U's U, is hosting and footing a lot of the bill.

Doubtless with some DARPA bucks. For from time to time a nationstate must contemplate the utility of its personal store of mini-nova makers. GreenWarriors may even want to explore whether there might be some way to capture all the useful energy emitted from even a tactical nuclear release, let alone theater- class devices. How many cities could be illuminated by the capture of the energies emitted across the sonic and radio spectra by a single standard-issue atomic fusion or fission? Is it possible to measure? Maybe the su;pernova guys will have an answer. Investors will surely want to know.

The God Shiva would be proud. Oppenheimer of the Los Alamos bomb team boasted to the trident-bearing entity "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds."

Maybe now it's time to amend it by adding "provider of consumer power at competitive prices."

(NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J.Warren & J.Hughes et al.)

Antipodean SF's April-May 2008 Issue

Antipodean SF has posted its April-May 2008 issue, #119 (although the March-April issue was #117). The magazine's focus is Australian science/speculative fiction, and they publish mostly short-short stories.

The current issue has several book reviews, an editorial, and fiction. This issue, the fiction includes:

"Tristesse" by David Such
"Saint" by Rachael Ryan
"Eye-Pod" by Tavis Potts
"A Child's Justice" by Francis Conaty
"Dreaming the Futures to Be" by Shaun A. Saunders
"Something New Under the Sun" by Hannah Steenbock
"A New Arrival" by Alan Delaney
"Bad Manners by João Ventura
"The Bowl of Stew" by Leslie Blake
"Finite Horror, Infinite Hope" by Luke Kepreotis

Thanks to SFScope for the heads up

Chicxulub Impact May Have "Burned" Carbon In Earth's Crust

It's well documented that the Chicxulub impact happened about 65 million years ago. From this impact, it has been determined that material from this impact that laid down a thin layer of iridium -- an element more likely to be found in Solar System asteroids than in the Earth's crust. What isn't well know or for that matter all that well understood is a layer just above the iridium that consists of carbon. And carbon of an unusual structure. Each granule of carbon is a sphere called a cenospheres. What makes these carbon globes unusual is that it is well known that they only are formed when carbon is subjected to intense burning tempratures, such as thoses in power plants etc. Carbon cenospheres are a classic indicator of industrial activity. The first appearance of the carbon cenospheres defines the onset of the industrial revolution. Since there is little chance that there were power plants burning coal 65 million years ago, these cenospheres have proved to be a bit of a mystery. Now scientists from the U.S., U.K., Italy, and New Zealand have released a study that suggests that the Chicxulub impact was so powerful that it pulverized and liquified the carbon in the Earth's crust, subjecting it to such pressure and tempratures that it formed structures identical to those formed by modern day buring of coal.

Read complete article here in Science Daily online

Man regrows finger with miracle powder!

We hear every day of miracle drugs found in the jungles of the Amazon, or the relative merits of ancient herbal remedies from China, however one does not usually expect to find the answer to regeneration of lost limbs in a hobby store in a strip mall. Lee Spievak it seems is a testimony for just such an amazing cure. Spievak lost most of a finger recently while working on a model airplane. An accident in where the plane's propeller removed everything past the last knuckle of his middle finger. The lost section was never found, so Lee resigned himself to not having a complete digit. Today though, you wouldn't know it. Mr Spievak shows off his finger, and it's all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print. How? Well that's the truly remarkable part. It wasn't a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder - provided by his brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine. "The second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger" says Spievak. "It took about four weeks before it was sealed." Now he says he has "complete feeling, complete movement." The powder comes from the University of Pittsburgh, and is composed of all things, Pig's Bladders. As odd as that sounds, there are clinical trials to back up the claim that this material can do the impossible and regrow missing parts of the body...
Click here to read the complete article

Click here for video of Lee Spievak's remarkable recovery

Time Travel- A Possibility or Just the Stuff of Science Fiction?

Michael Watson over at Scifirama has taken up an interest in time travel. He has written an in-depth and thoughtful article examining the question of the whether time travel could be something we will be seeing anytime in the near future.

He prefaces the article with:

It’s been written about in hundreds of books, the subject of fantasy for everyone at one time or another, and the government has actually devoted research at one time or another on the subject. Beginning with H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, the concept of time travel has been one of the main staples of science fiction. So is it really possible to travel in time?

Its a well written piece and well worth checking out. Click here to read Michael's
Time Travel- A Possibility or Just the Stuff of Science Fiction?