Thirty seconds to spare

A picture of the guys I work with at Aerva.

From left to right: me, Rafael, Nick, John, and David.

I missed my 9:40pm train by 2 minutes because for some reason the subway took extra time at each of its stops. So I had to wait around for an hour until the 10:40pm train came in. While I was waiting, I decided to take a few pictures using my water bottle and a twig as a tripod to hold the camera still (low light required a slower shutter speed, 1-2 seconds).

I then almost missed my 10:40pm train! Since I had walked so far down the walkway to take those pictures, I didn't realize how long it would take me to get back. I stepped on the train with 30 seconds to spare, literally.

I subscribe to a magazine called NewScientist, which is published on a weekly basis. You can imagine how quickly they pile up if I don't read them regularly. While on the ride into work today (on the train), I managed to read half of this week's issue and on the ride back, I read the second half. NewScientist writes about tons of interesting information, on everything from biology to astronomy to computers!

From this week's NewScientist magazine, a few subjects I'll comment on:

Using a new tool called Africa@home, people can use their computer's processing power to help calculate ways to find a cure for malaria. Although Africa@home isn't currently accepting anymore PC volunteers, you can check out this site for more cool projects that allow you to use your computer's processing power for more than browsin' the web.

While sleeping, sharing the bed with a partner actually makes men more stupid. Women, on the other hand, sleep more deeply and feel more refreshed. Studies showed that men who shared the night with someone (regardless of whether or not they had sex) actually woke up and scored worse in simple cognitive tests. Lack of sleep also effects men more than it effects women. Hmmmm. Married men = sharing bed 7 days a week, 365 days a year......

Global warming is melting huge ice sheets, which no doubt will create new, shorter routes for ships. This also means that as ships start traveling closer and closer to the poles, their effect on global warming will increase. The atmosphere is more fragile near the poles, and changes there are felt globally. New pathways will probably be open by the year 2050 and studies show the new routes would cause ozone levels to triple.

The damn pharmaceutical companies are using their power and money to "create" new conditions and syndromes that don't even exist. They use the media and brainwash unsuspecting people everywhere. ADD? Fake. High cholesterol? Way over played. Aging male syndrome? Fake. Sisi syndrome, an alleged form of depression? Created by SmithKline Beecham (which is now GlaxoSmithKline) in attempt to market and sell a "cure" for it. Five years later, skeptical researchers published their findings: no proof the condition ever existed. People are constantly hammered with drug commercials, doctors suggesting possible conditions they may have, friends and coworkers passing information about diagnosis of a particular problem. The bottom line is: we're all actually a lot healthier than we may think. Of course, exercise and eating right can go a long way to extending our life and overall living condition.

And lastly, scientist have found what they call a hypervelocity star. It's a star traveling at a much higher speed than any other star, usually 3 - 6 times as fast. How does a star begin moving so quickly? Well, the direction the stars seem to be coming from is the center of the milky way galaxy. Scientist are already theorizing that there's a big black hole at the center of our galaxy and the stars, instead of being sucked into the black hole, are slingshot around the edge of the black hole and out into space. The extreme gravity of the black hole causes the star to pickup enormous speed. But now here's the puzzling part: they found stars that were a mere 25 million years old, an infant in the life of a star. They already know that star's cannot form close to a black hole because the intense gravitational pull would tear apart any star beginning to form. My theory? The hypervelocity stars are actually being flung out from inside the black hole. And where are they coming from? Another black hole, somewhere else in the universe, that swallowed the star. Maybe black holes are portals or gateway's to other areas of the universe, or maybe even other dimensions. Maybe what gets sucked into one black hole comes out the other end of another black hole, on the opposite side of the universe.