Science

First, we teach them to fly fighter planes. Then we enable them to assemble small robotic parts. I, for one, do not welcome our future rat cell overlords. Link courtesy of Boing Boing

Ah, someone has taught rat brain cells to fly a simulated F-22 fighter jet. Rats with weapons…I can’t foresee anything that could go wrong with that, can you? (They were originally going to use cat brain cells, but the planes would lose interest and stare off into the distance.) ;) Update: William Gibson recalls author Cordwainer Smith using laminated rat brains in his 1950s SF stories performing the functions for which we would later use computers. ...

…and right in the middle of the famed Cyprus Triangle, too. I’ll have to admit, the evidence of the three-kilometer wall sounds pretty good, but I won’t believe it until someone finds the mystical crystal power source, or just asks Aquaman about it. :) Courtesy of Reuters, via Yahoo! News

Yesterday was the 35th anniversary of one of humankind’s defining achievements. Amazing how far away it seems now.

Space probe Cassini is going into orbit around Saturn this evening. It has been travelling for close to seven years to get there. In December, the Huygens space probe it has been carrying along for the ride will take off for a landing on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which appears to have an atmosphere and oceans of some sort. Cassini is one of the last relics of NASA from before the “Faster, Better, Cheaper” era, and as a result is a big, nuclear-powered – through radioisotope decay – Cadillac of space probes. Wonder if future missions will start looking like that, now that we have the “Moon, then Mars” agenda? :) ...