1.      The Triceratops IS NOT A REAL DINOSAUR
Okay, so that’s going a little overboard. It existed, but it’s not its own species. MSU Paleontologists John Scannella and Jack Horner have been studying the Triceratops alongside another species, the Torosaurus. At first glance, the differences between the skulls of the two dinosaurs – the Triceratops skull has a large frill and three horns, while the Torosaurus has a smaller frill with two holes in it – led paleontologists to believe that these were two different dinosaurs. However, after a decade of research, Scannella and Horner have found that the Triceratops is actually a juvenile stage of the Torosaurus. In retrospect this finding makes sense, because “juvenile dinosaurs weren’t just miniature versions of adults.” They had to take into account “ontogeny,” which is the growth from a juvenile to an adult. At least Sarah is still a baby in The Land Before Time movies, or her name wouldn’t be nearly as punny.
Read the story here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100714131244.htm
2.      TWO GIANT ASTEROIDS ALMOST HIT THE EARTH AND NEARLY CAUSED A PREMATURE APOCOLYPSE
Sorry, I got a little over dramatic. One was 32-65 feet wide and was, as NASA estimates, “0.6 lunar distances” away (154,000 miles). The second was 49,088 miles away (~0.2 lunar distances) and was estimated to be between 20-46 feet wide. The asteroids were discovered during a routine sweep of the sky by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona.
Since the world as we know it is still intact, you can probably come back to the surface…at least until 2012, that is.
Read the terrifying account HERE: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/sep/HQ_M10-128_Asteroids_Pass_By.html
3.      TWO NEW DINOSAUR SPECIES FOUND IN UTAH (ironic, yes?)
Remember that triceratops I talked about earlier? This September, paleontologists unearthed two new species of dinosaur very similar to a triceratops. They both have elaborate displays of horns covering their heads. One skull, from the Utahceratops gettyi, (it has a horn for each wife,) has a seven-foot long head skull! The other dinosaur they found, named Kosmoceratops Richardson, has at least 15 horns covering its entire face. The bones were found in the 1.9 million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, by a team of paleontologists led by Scott Sampson and Mark Loewen, both from the Utah Museum of Natural History.
Here are two great places to read this awesome story: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/100922-new-species-dinosaurs-horned-utah-fossils-science/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100922121943.htm
4.      THE AURORA BOREALIS: PRETTY, OR DEADLY? YOU DECIDE.
On September 15^th, a heavenly eruption dazzled the Norwegian sky. These beautiful displays of blue and green are the result of solar winds – huge waves of charged particles that erupt from the sun and cause “rips” in the magnetic field around Earth. When the charged particles enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they smash together and glow like neon. Whichever ions happen to be colliding determines the color. For instance, the green streaks are caused by oxygen atoms colliding with each other. These solar flares range from annoying to deadly. On one end of the specturm, they knock out electrical grids through the rips. On the other end, without the Earth’s magnetic field, we’d be roasting from the insides whenever one of these flares cropped up (but that’s a story for another day).
Read more about them, and see the amazing pictures here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/photogalleries/100921-aurora-borealis-northern-lights-norway-new-pictures/#/aurora-borealis-cme-september-northern-lights_26306_600x450.jpg
5.     LYING ROBOTS?
I once read an article in the Oregonian about people who believe that robots are going to become AI and take over the world. And thanks to Ronald Arkin and Alan Wagner, robots may just be a few steps closer to fulfilling that prophesy. They have created algorithms that “allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine,” and to use techniques that will be least likely to expose the deception. According to Arkin and Wagner, giving robots the ability to deceive can be useful in military-related situations, such as hiding from an enemy to keep information safe.
Read the rest of the story here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100909114113.htm