ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• New molecule found in space connotes life origins
• Football-size robot can skim discreetly along a ship's hull to seek hollow compartments concealing contraband
• Neuroscientists use morphed images of Hollywood celebrities to reveal how neurons make up your mind
• Can cartoons be used to teach machines to understand the visual world?
• Turning the Moon into a cosmic ray detector
• Skin pigment renders sun's UV radiation harmless using projectiles
• How plankton gets jet lagged: Hormone that govern sleep and jet lag in humans also drives mass migration of plankton

New molecule found in space connotes life origins Posted: 26 Sep 2014 06:36 PM PDT Hunting from a distance of 27,000 light years, astronomers have discovered an unusual carbon-based molecule contained within a giant gas cloud in interstellar space. The discovery suggests that the complex molecules needed for life may have their origins in interstellar space.

Football-size robot can skim discreetly along a ship's hull to seek hollow compartments concealing contraband Posted: 26 Sep 2014 08:21 AM PDT Football-size robot can skim discreetly along a ship's hull to seek hollow compartments concealing contraband.

Neuroscientists use morphed images of Hollywood celebrities to reveal how neurons make up your mind Posted: 26 Sep 2014 08:21 AM PDT Morphed images of celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Bob Marley, Sylvester Stallone, Uma Thurman, Nicole Kidman, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Clinton and George Bush, and others were shown to participants in a recent study. The study found that neurons fire in line with conscious recognition of images rather than the actual images seen, thereby leading scientists to believe that neurons play a key role in the formation of memory.

Can cartoons be used to teach machines to understand the visual world? Posted: 26 Sep 2014 07:09 AM PDT An enormous gap exists between human abilities and machine performance when it comes to understanding the visual world from images and videos. Humans are still way out in front.

Turning the Moon into a cosmic ray detector Posted: 26 Sep 2014 05:58 AM PDT Scientists are to turn the Moon into a giant particle detector to help understand the origin of Ultra-High-Energy (UHE) cosmic rays -- the most energetic particles in the Universe. The origin of UHE cosmic rays is one of the great mysteries in astrophysics. Nobody knows where these extremely rare cosmic rays come from or how they get their enormous energies. Physicists detect them on Earth at a rate of less than one particle per square kilometer per century.

Skin pigment renders sun's UV radiation harmless using projectiles Posted: 26 Sep 2014 05:58 AM PDT The pigment of the skin protects the body from the sun's dangerous UV rays, but researchers have not until recently known how this works. Now they report that skin pigment converts the UV radiation into heat through a rapid chemical reaction that shoots protons from the molecules of the pigment.

How plankton gets jet lagged: Hormone that govern sleep and jet lag in humans also drives mass migration of plankton Posted: 26 Sep 2014 05:56 AM PDT A hormone that governs sleep and jet lag in humans may also drive the mass migration of plankton in the ocean, scientists have found. The molecule in question, melatonin, is essential to maintain our daily rhythm, and scientists have now discovered that it governs the nightly migration of a plankton species from the surface to deeper waters. The findings indicate that melatonin's role in controlling daily rhythms probably evolved early in the history of animals, and hold hints to how our sleep patterns may have evolved.

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