Giant Worms!

I just read a news story about Idaho's giant Palouse earthworm. Researchers at the University of Idaho have captured two live specimens: the adult is almost a foot long, and the juvenile is around seven inches long. Furthermore, they appear to be translucent, so their internal organs are clearly visible. Wow!

Volcano in Iceland

A friend at work sent around the following link of the volcano that is currently erupting in Iceland. This is truly amazing footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGPD_0SCDp4

How Autistic Artists See the World

I was particularly interested in the following story, because I know Jesse Park, the first artist in the slide-show.

http://discovermagazine.com/photos/15-how-autistic-artists-see-the-world

Language of the Ancient Scots

Last week, I read about a new discovery involving the Picts, an ancient tribe of people who lived in what is now Scotland between 300 and 843 A.D. Apparently, researchers have determined that the engravings on stones -- the Pictish stones -- may be the written language of the Picts, an "Iron-Age society." Cool.

From Discovery News, online here: http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/ancient-scotland-written-language.html

Acme Klein Bottle

Klein bottles are kind of like the three-dimensional equivalents of Moebius strips. Actually, they are three-dimensional representations of four-dimensional objects, which do not have an inside or an outside. Rather, those objects have one continuous surface. And now, a company exists that creates Klein bottles made out of glass! Also, buy a Klein bottle wool hat. Fantastic.

http://www.kleinbottle.com/

Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider -- a huge machine in Switzerland and France that smashes subatomic particles together -- has begun operating. According to an article in the, protons "were whipped to more than 99 percent of the speed of light and to record-high energy levels of 3.5 trillion electron volts apiece raced around a 17-mile underground magnetic track outside Geneva a little after 1 p.m. local time. They crashed together inside apartment-building-size detectors designed to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/science/31collider.html

(The photograph is from the CERN website.)

Poincare Conjecture

Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman has won the Millennium Prize for solving the Poincare Conjecture, but he is not yet sure whether he will accept the $1 million prize. The prize is awarded by the Clay Mathematics Institute, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Poincare Conjecture is the first problem on a list of seven that the Institute thought were noteworthy. This guy already, in 2004, skipped the ceremony in Spain when he was supposed to receive the Fields Medal, one of the highest awards in theoretical mathematics. Fascinating...

(The photograph shows Perelman giving the Simons lectures at MIT, and was taken by Tom Mrowka.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_sci_math_genius;_ylt=AqyMFQEJYuwFXFx5Mqht9Vus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNtbGZicnYwBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMzMwL3VzX3NjaV9tYXRoX2dlbml1cwRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzkEcG9zAzYEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl9oZWFkbGluZV9saXN0BHNsawNueWV0dG8xbWlsbGk-