Of black holes, mercury, NFC, Pandora and evolution

SCIENCE

European Space Agency's Herschel telescope recently found a star spewing water into space. (http://bit.ly/kYhc1h). That is the first time I have heard of anything like this. Imagine the scope of life around the star (once the radiation goes away that is:)). The additional astonishing discovery is that such a process may be common with many (all?) stars and thus water water maybe everywhere.

Continuing on astronomy, a new mystery surfaced about Mercury. (http://reut.rs/jNUlFo). Given the planet is so close to the Sun, we expected that all the volatile light elements (those which vaporize quickly) will not be present either on the surface, or for that matter in the core. (imagine Mercury in its early days, a molten blob of lava circling the sun - whatever could have vaporized, would have). However, the Messenger spacecraft, which is the first to orbit Mercury, found sulphur (sulfur?) on the surface, which challenges the previous supposition. There is no current reasonable explanation. Exciting stuff!

Another astronomy news is the discovery of a black hole shredding a star. The poor star (and any planets?) got too close to a black hole and got sucked in. Imagine the blistering nuclear fusion which got funneled into a dark ominous end. To be noted is that this wasnt "seen" per say but implied from the kind of gamma ray bursts that such an event is expected to radiate. So, in simple terms, there was a weird gamma ray burst, the scientists thought of up various scenarios, the one with a star gobbling black one fit well and voila - BBC news flash!

TECHNOLOGY

Near Field Communications anyone? Swiping your phones at the checkout instead of your credit cards. Protecting your phones like your wallets (guess iPhone users already do that). Sony is readying their Ericsson phone lines for NFC soon. (http://bit.ly/lrZoSQ)

Researchers at Harvard revealed swarm robots. All of us science fiction fans have heard of the nano-disaster, where nanometer sized robots rapidly multiply and take over everything (even your breathing pipe). They are still science fiction and air viscosity effects might just 'blow' them away, so not to worry right now. But read this news (http://bit.ly/ly5jZh). The robot doesnt look ominous, but the poor guy is almost all battery. Power sources are still hard to miniaturize. Dont expect iPhones which dont need recharging for days just yet.

Speaking of power problems, how about a nuclear power plant at your home. British scientists are talking about just that (http://bit.ly/lqsXev). It is very interesting, but as I have found with so many of these 'firsts', all of them claim to wean the world off coal in 5-10 years, and that never happens. Hopefully, this is different. And if it is everywhere, maybe we all will eventually become radiation resistant power hungry mutants.

Pandora plunged back to its IPO price and lower on the second day of trading. 'Bubble' talk anyone? or maybe a overly aggressive correction. (http://reut.rs/lcftko). Already people are suspecting the Groupon model (http://bit.ly/irkjug). Well I think there is more pessimism than that demanded by a bubble.

FUTURE

On the a prescient phenomena. A PhD student from Emory University showed evidence that as people moved from hunter gatherers to farmers (around 10,000 years ago), they became shorter. (http://bit.ly/ilTI91). Which makes sense given the difference in physical requirements of the two professions. What does it say about us sitting in front of computer screens all day :)