Robotic Exoskeleton Turns Soldiers Into Space Marines

From AMC

Sci-fi has trained us to expect military personnel to be walking around in mech suits. From Starship Troopers to Robocop, our expectations have been set: if you're not walking around in a flying skeleton of titanium alloy, you're just a flaccid water balloon full of meat slurry in a shooting range.

here is some video of very up to date "super suit"

amc/scifiscanner/2007/11/robotic-exoskel.html

Shatner doing WOW

Ok, you know me, every now and then I just have to put up a vid that I think is really well just plain damn funny. So here goes, Bill Shatner pluggin WOW and lampooning himself and fans alike

Scientists Melt Million-year-old Ice In Search Of Ancient Microbes

From Sciencedaily.com

Researchers from the University of Delaware and the University of California at Riverside have thawed ice estimated to be at least a million years old from above Lake Vostok, an ancient lake that lies hidden more than two miles beneath the frozen surface of Antarctica. The scientists will now examine the eons-old water for microorganisms, and try to figure out how they survived the ages in total darkness, in freezing cold and without food and energy from the sun. segments of ice were cut from an 11,866-foot ice core, 656 feet above the surface of Lake Vostok. This ice was once water in lake Vostok itself and froze to the bottom of the existing Antarctic ice sheet. No samples have been taken directly from lake Vostok as of yet due to fears of contaminating the area. Since the lake has not had direct contact with the surface world for at least 15 million years, this would be a contamination of one of the most pristine environments on Earth.

amputees can now "feel" with new limbs

From AFP via Boing Boing

I have often said and felt that a subset of science fiction is stories about people with damage due to accident, disease or defect who by one mode or another are "enhanced" to live a normal or above normal lives. like, say Cyborg (better known to tv views as the six million dollar man) Flowers for Algernon, The Ship Who Sang, Mars, The Demolished Man, Kiln People and so on. These stories ring a bit truer for me than others maybe but I really think a blending of the human body with augmentations of one type or another has a very real future. One very real subset of this is advancements in bio augmentation hardware and prosthetics. The closer they get to true "bionics" the hard its going to be to tell where the "original" ends and the "repair" begins.

In the article listed here, advancements in the field of sensing are discussed. Some researchers have developed a technique of rerouting nerves from amputated limbs to regain some sense of touch etc. The scientists doing the research suggest their success in reviving such specific sensation identified with missing limbs could lead to establishing nervous system feedback in prosthetic devices like artificial hands, arms, feet and legs. In a very real sense, this research could lead to people having normal sensations through their replacement limbs. Very science ficiony if I do say so myself.

Universe being destroyed by mistake

Humanity may be accidentally hastening the end of the entire universe. Oops. To any and all other lifeforms out there in cosmos, sorry! Our bad!

It all comes down to quantum mechanics and the bizarre fact that subatomic thingamabobs behave differently if someone is watching them. Especially those peeking at dark matter...

One can imagine physicists Laurel and Hardy: "Stanley?...Now look what you made me do!"

Image courtesy Cinema Fantastique gallery