Almost everybody knows the movie The Matrix and know it's all robots and computers. But what if The Matrix runs in Windows? See for yourself.

It might look like a moon and orbit like a moon, but the latest observations of Phobos suggest that it's really just an overgrown rubble pile. High-resolution photos, movies, and gravitational readings from the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Mars Express orbiter suggest that the larger of Mars's two satellites resembles a certain class of asteroids that are loose agglomerations of pebbles rather than solid objects. Soon, ESA scientists say, they'll also be able to tell whether Phobos was once a captured asteroid that was shattered by a collision or whether its present, highly irregular shape coalesced from debris lofted by impacts on the martian surface.

Monday, the 29th of September, started off as just another Monday. Just a few weeks ago, a colleague and I started to work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursday in Diemen and on Tuesdays and Fridays in Amersfoort. But, because there were some issues to be addressed and a meeting or two, we went to Amersfoort. So I took the motorway A1 (E231) to work. There was nothing out of the ordinary that morning and had the usual traffic jam.

It's no wonder some researchers have dubbed this insect the "ant from Mars." With its mucousy color, lack of eyes, and forceps-like mandibles, taxonomists had a hard time classifying this single specimen, captured crawling through the dirt of a Brazilian rainforest in 2003. Now, genetic analysis has given the 3-millimeter-long ant a proper identity--and a place among its brethren. The critter evolved between 180 million and 150 million years ago, researchers report online 15 September in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, meaning that it represents the oldest known lineage of ants on Earth. And as for the name, researchers have chosen Martialis heureka: "Martialis," a reference to Mars, and "heureka" as in "we found it!"

Probing soil for water and life hasn't kept NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander from doing some sightseeing on the red planet. The stationary probe has detected a surprising number of dust devils since touching down near Mars's north pole on 25 May. The dervishes have come so close to the lander that its instruments have been able to record sudden air-pressure drops as they pass by. Mission scientists think the twisters are caused by the 60° C temperature swings between martian days and nights. Still, the alien dust devils are no match for their earthbound cousins; wind-speed instruments aboard Phoenix have clocked their velocity at only about 18 kilometers per hour versus up to 300 kph for terrestrial twisters.

What would you do?

Here's another movie about Simon's Cat.
Previous movies can be found here.

Penn & Teller are two wonderful magicians. In this movie, they explain how to saw someone in half.
See for yourself...

For such a ubiquitous substance, ice remains mysterious. Scientists are still uncovering the secrets of how it forms, for example. Case in point: Two physicists have just figured out that when the thermometer approaches absolute zero, ice can't assume its normal crystalline form. Instead, high-powered microscopy reveals that ice tends to accumulate into extremely small, extremely thin isolated islands, as in this image. Even with a little more warmth, ice collects in very thin layers only 1/50,000th as thick as a human hair. It's not until the temperature rises to a balmy couple of hundred degrees below zero that the ice we are all familiar with materializes--but you still wouldn't want to stand on it.

• Archive

• The Matrix in Windows
  2008-11-12 22:13:36 - 23 views - 0 reactions
  Almost everybody knows the movie The Matrix and know it's all...
• Pebble beach
  2008-10-17 11:46:43 - 54 views - 0 reactions
  It might look like a moon and orbit like a moon, but the latest...
• Just another Monday
  2008-10-02 11:46:51 - 74 views - 0 reactions
  Monday, the 29th of September, started off as just another...
• Alien ant
  2008-09-18 09:15:43 - 86 views - 0 reactions
  It's no wonder some researchers have dubbed this insect the...
• Close encounters
  2008-09-18 09:14:10 - 91 views - 0 reactions
  Probing soil for water and life hasn't kept NASA's Phoenix Mars...

You should also check:
RuudVisser.com (my brother)
PuurElementair.nl (a colleague)