Alien Soup is an alien-themed general chit-chat community where thoughts come to be seen. It is where participating members can manifest their emotions, feelings, problems, questions, or triumphs as visible, digitally tangible entities, which take on their own life as other members add to them, alter them, and cultivate them into powerful monuments to the collaborative human mind.
It it just what it is called - a soup. A mixture of all things which can enhance the broth without denying it its intrinsic goodness and desirability. Its specific flavor is determined entirely by those who are willing to contribute their personality and wisdom to the mixture. There is, within reason, nothing that doesn't fit somewhere in the soup - its ingredients are boundless, its flavor unrestricted, its nutritional value infinite.
Dec 9, 2009 -- A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled.
Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing sight to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor or a shock wave - although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet.
The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate.
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Ministry of Defense has had a close encounter of the credit crunch kind.
After more than 50 years of service, the ministry has shut down its UFO investigation unit, saying it could no longer justify the cost of running the service.
The ministry said it had found no evidence of a threat to Britain or proof of the existence of extra-terrestrials, despite the public sending thousands of reportings of UFOs to a ministry hotline and email address.
It said it held no opinion on the existence or otherwise of alien life, but added it had "no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings."
Hopes, dreams and practical plans to colonize or otherwise exploit the moon as a source of minerals or a launch pad to the cosmos got a boost today with NASA's announcement of significant water ice at the lunar south pole.
The LCROSS probe discovered the equivalent of a dozen 2-gallon buckets of water in the form of ice, in a crater at the lunar south pole. Scientists figure there's more where that came from.
"The presence of significant quantities of ice on the lunar surface catapults the moon from an interesting waypoint to a critical launching pad for humanity's exploration of the cosmos," said Peter Diamandis, CEO and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, which is running a $30 million contest for private moon rovers. "We're entering a new... [Read More]
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding a conference on astrobiology, the study of life beyond Earth, with scientists and religious leaders gathering in Rome this week.
For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church: at least since Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk, was put to death by the Inquisition in 1600 for claiming that other worlds exist.
Among other things, extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God “made man in his own image”.
Furthermore, Jesus Christ’s role as saviour would be confused: would other worlds have their own, tentacled Christ-figures, or would Earth’s Christ be universal?
The latest batch of exoplanets announced today comprises no less than 32 new discoveries. Including these new results, data from HARPS have led to the discovery of more than 75 exoplanets in 30 different planetary systems. In particular, thanks to its amazing precision, the search for small planets, those with a mass of a few times that of the Earth — known as super-Earths and Neptune-like planets — has been given a dramatic boost. HARPS has facilitated the discovery of 24 of the 28 planets known with masses below 20 Earth masses. As with the previously detected super-Earths, most of the new low-mass candidates reside in multi-planet systems, with up to five planets per system.
"HARPS is a unique, extremely high precision instrument that... [Read More]
Men who regularly get high on pot may be robbing themselves of sexual highs, according to a report in New Scientist.
A study of 8,656 Australian men found that those who smoked marijuana daily had more trouble reaching orgasm than nonsmokers.
Researchers led by Marian Pitts of La Trobe University in Melbourne also found that some smokers had the opposite problem — premature ejaculation, according to the study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Although they suffered sexual problems, men who smoked pot reported more sexual partners than nonsmokers and were twice as likely as nonsmokers to have had two or more sex partners in the previous year.
Having sex every day improves sperm quality and could boost the chances of getting pregnant, research suggests.
In a study of men with fertility problems, daily ejaculation for a week cut the amount of DNA damage seen in sperm samples.
Speaking at a fertility conference, the Australian researcher said general advice for couples had been to have sex every two or three days.
Early results from the trial had already shown promising results.
But 118 men have now been tested and the benefits for sperm have become clearer.
Dr David Greening, from Sydney IVF, told delegates at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology meeting that eight in ten men taking part showed a 12% drop in sperm DNA damage... [Read More]
(slashdot) June 14, 2009 -- Swine Flu Vaccine In Production // ravjen writes with news that "Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG said they have successfully produced a swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of their expectations. The vaccine was made in cells, rather than grown in eggs as is usually the case with vaccines." This announcement came just a day after the World Health Organization declared H1N1's spread to be a pandemic. The vaccine has not been tested in humans yet, so the first batch is set to be used in clinical trials and pre-clinical testing. If all goes well, the new production method would allow Novartis to get the drug to market in large quantities by this fall. Other drug companies, such as Baxter International, have confirmed that they're in "full-scale... [Read More]
(bbc) June 13, 2009 -- Ahmadinejad wins Iran presidential election // Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been re-elected as president of Iran in a resounding victory, the interior minister says.
He won some 62.6% of the vote in an election marked by a high turnout of 85%, official figures show.
Supporters of pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi have cried foul and clashed with riot police in Tehran, despite a ban on public protests.
Iran's Supreme Leader congratulated Mr Ahmadinejad on his win, and urged his rivals against "provocations".
In a statement, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the high turnout and described the count as a "real celebration" and called for calm in the aftermath of the result.
(dpa/zdf) Tuesday night (CEST), June 9, 2009 -- North Korea threatens with nuclear attacks for the first time // Pyongyang wants to punish violations of its souvereignty mercilessly // New rocket test?
The next step in escalation of threatening rhetoric: North Korea wants to attack "mercilessly" everyone who even so much as slightly violates the souvereignty of its country -- in the worst case even with nuclear weapons. Additionally, the regime apparently prepares a new rocket test.
In the argument about North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the saber rattling of the communist country against the international community continues. For the first time, they threatened with nuclear weapon attacks on Tuesday.
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