NASA Science Balloon Crashes – video

A huge NASA balloon loaded with a telescope painstakingly built to scan the sky at wavelengths invisible to the human eye crashed in the Australian outback Thursday, destroying the astronomy experiment and just missing nearby onlookers, according to Australian media reports.

The balloon was carrying the Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT), a gamma-ray telescope built by astronomer Steven Boggs and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, California to study astrophysical sources in space.

Predators trailer – In theaters: July 9th, 2010

PREDATORS, a bold new chapter in the Predator universe, shot under the creative auspices of Robert Rodriguez, stars Adrien Brody as Royce, a mercenary who reluctantly leads a group of elite warriors who come to realize they’ve been brought together on an alien planet… as prey. With the notable exception of a disgraced physician, they are all cold—blooded killers – mercenaries, Yakuza, convicts, death squad members – human “predators” that are now being systemically hunted and eliminated by a new breed of alien Predators.

Predators trailer – In theaters: July 9th, 2010

Life on Mars

Life on Mars

Is there life on mars?

A slushy cocktail of water-ice and organic materials has been directly detected on the surface of an asteroid for the first time. The finding strengthens the theory that asteroids delivered the ingredients for Earth’s oceans and life, and could make astronomers rethink conventional models for how the Solar System evolved.

A special mission to the Red Planet has revealed the likely presence of a form of pond scum – the building blocks of life as we know it.

Mice produce morphine

Mice may make morphine

Mammals could have opiate factories.  

Mice can synthesize morphine from various intermediate chemicals.N. Grobe & N. Weir
Mammals may possess the biochemical machinery to produce morphine — a painkiller found in the opium poppy, according to a new study.