] A protoplanetary nebula forms when a red giant star
] ejects most of its outer layers, and is observable when
] dust within the nebula reflects light from the central
] star.
]
] Subsequently, as the very hot core (six or more times
] hotter than the Sun) gets further exposed, the cloud of
] ejected material becomes bathed with ionizing ultraviolet
] light, which makes it glow. At this later stage these
] objects are known as planetary nebulas.

RedNova

] We make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes...
] Now available: The Common Cold, The Flu, Sore Throat, and
] Stomach Ache.

Cool!

Welcome to GIANTmicrobes!

"...To the plaaaaanet core!" Boss Nass

] A Hollywood-like proposal to explore the center of the
] Earth calls for exploding a crack in the planet's surface
] and dropping a probe in behind tons of molten iron, which
] would sink and forge a path to the core.
]
] The plan is not ready for primetime, its creator told
] SPACE.com, but neither is it pie-in-the-sky.
]
] Exploring Earth's belly is ambitious in a scientific
] sense and could yield valuable data. The solid inner core
] rotates faster than the outer core, which is fluid and is
] responsible for Earth's magnetic field. But scientists
] don't know exactly why all this is so, nor do they know
] the exact composition or temperature of the core.
]
] A schematic shows how the probe would descend with molten
] iron, all in a crack that closes up behind the mission.
]
] If further research showed the core mission could
] actually work, it would be comparable in dollar terms
] with many space projects, says David Stevenson, a Caltech
] planetary scientist who has worked on several missions
] for NASA. Stevenson explains his idea in an article
] titled "A Modest Proposal" for the May

SNIP

NASA Meets Hollywood: Real Mission Proposed to Earth's Core

..or s it humor. The longest living "headless" chicken.

Mike's True Story

] Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey
] guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light
] Texas crude each year
]
] Gory refuse, from a Butterball Turkey plant in Carthage,
] Missouri, will no longer go to waste. Each day 200 tons
] of turkey offal will be carted to the first
] industrial-scale thermal depolymerization plant, recently
] completed in an adjacent lot, and be transformed into
] various useful products, including 600 barrels of light
] oil.
]
] In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine
] that can change almost anything into oil.
]
] Really.
]
] "This is a solution to three of the biggest problems
] facing mankind," says Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of
] Changing World Technologies, the company that built this
] pilot plant and has just completed its first
] industrial-size installation in Missouri. "This process
] can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our
] dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global
] warming."

Anything into Oil

Experts: "It's kind of a worst-case scenario for L.A." "This is the fault that could eat L.A."

If you're thinking about life extension when you're at the end of your days, you might want to steer clear of the City of Angels.

New Quake Threat Found Under LA

] A colossal squid has been caught in Antarctic waters, the
] first example of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni retrieved
] virtually intact from the surface of the ocean. [...]
]
] "Now we can say that it attains a size larger than the
] giant squid. Giant squid is no longer the largest squid
] that's out there. We've got something that's even larger,
] and not just larger but an order of magnitude meaner."
]
] This squid has one of the largest beaks known of any
] squid and also has unique swivelling hooks on the clubs
] at the ends of its tentacles. This combination allows it
] to attack fish as large as the Patagonian toothfish and
] probably to also attempt to maul sperm whales. [...]
]
] "It's only half to two-thirds grown, so it grows up to
] four metres in mantle length." By comparison, the mantle
] of the giant squid, Architeuthis dux, is not known to
] attain more than 2.25 metres. [...]

Super Squid Surfaces in the Antartic!

"Dmitry Bulatov is one of a small, but growing, number of artists around the world who are using genetic engineering to create a new form of art known as Ars Chimera, or transgenic art, named for a creature from Greek mythology that had a lion's head, a goat's body and a dragon's tail.
Bulatov, the curator of the Kaliningrad branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art, heads the Consciousness on the Alert (Soznaniye Nastorozhe) project, in conjunction with Moscow's Ivanovsky Virology Institute. One of the goals of the project -- which Bulatov said is currently on hold due to lack of funding -- is the creation of a naturally fluorescent cactus, which scientists would create by introducing genetic material from bioluminescent, or naturally glowing, organisms (in this case, a jellyfish and a sea anemone) into a Lophophora Cactus."

Jello: Bad ASS. I want to play... anyone ever actually use the old Nuts n Volts gene splicing kit?

Ars Chimera: Living, Genetically Engineered Art

Delicate threads of spider's silk are about to solve a major problem in photonics: how to make hollow optical fibres narrow enough to carry light beams around the fastest nanoscale optical circuits.

To make the fibres, Yushan Yan and a team of engineers from the University of California at Riverside give the silk thread a glassy coating, and then extract the silk by baking. They soon expect to be able to make hollow fibres with cores just two nanometres wide - or 50,000 times thinner than a human hair.

New Scientist | New Technology

] Three primitive humans who scrambled down a volcano's
] slopes more than 325,000 years ago left their footprints
] fossilised in volcanic ash. If the ages of the trails are
] confirmed, they could be the earliest known footprints of
] our Homo ancestors

New Scientist