Assorted tech posts and images

Our snow is imported from the South - Much of the snow we have accumulated here in Ontario entered the atmosphere in the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, what fell is heavily laden with moisture so it will, unfortunately, take longer to melt. On the other hand, slow melting means less flooding a more gradual release of toxins currently hidden in our snowbanks.

Boomerangs in space - One of the more unusual experiments recently conducted on the ISS was to determine whether a boomerang would loop back around. Turns out that it does because the effect depends entirely on air resistance, not gravity, as predicted by scientists.

Using lasers to talk to nerves - US researchers are working on an alternative to stimulating nerves using electricity. The have discovered that they can use a solid-state pulsed laser focused on individual nerves to cause them to generate a neural pulse. This result could be used to build better and more precise prosthetics, patches to combat chronic pain, or to stimulate auditory nerves to improve the fidelity dynamic range of cochlear implants.

Save the Earth: stop the LHC - Two men have initiated a lawsuit in the US to stop Europe's Large Hadron Collider from starting up this summer. They are afraid that if the LHC is allowed to operate it will create a black hole that will eventually devour the Earth. CERN responded to the suit by wondering why the men thought a court in Hawaii would have jurisdiction over a project in Switzerland. Found on Scott Adam's blog.

One-way trip to the moon - A US company has announced that they will carry people's cremated remains to the moon for burial.

( 10 bonus images under the cut )

More tech stories and images

Turning radiation directly into energy - Researchers at Los Alamos are testing the use of carbon nanotubes packed with gold to convert radioactive particle emission directly into electricity, potentially making them 20 times as effective as current thermo-electric approaches. The materials could be used to augment nuclear power plants to increase their operating efficiency. The first commercially-available materials are not expected for another decade.

Earliest known voice recording found - and, no, it wasn't Thomas Edison. Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville generated at 10-second recording of a woman singing "Au Clare de la Lune" in 1860, more than 17 years before Edison.

Muslims outnumber Catholics - According to the Vatican, Muslims now account for 19.2 percent of the world population, overtaking Catholics that account for 17.2 percent of the population. Christians in general make up 33 percent of the world's population.

Piracy funding terrorism - at least according to US Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Apparently counterfeiting and identity theft are new sources of funding for terrorist groups so he would like to see wiretapping used during piracy investigations and the criminalization of copyright infringement.

Hackers attack epileptics - An epilepsy support site was closed down while they attempted to clean up Javascript  applications designed to trigger migraines and seizures in users. Certain types of rapidly flashing patterns are known to trigger people who have what is referred to as pattern-sensitive epilepsy.

( 10 tech images under the cut )