Helen Sventitsky
Singer/Songwriter/Other

Was Newton right and Einstein wrong? It seems that unzipping the fabric of spacetime and harking back to 19th-century notions of time could lead to a theory of quantum gravity.

Physicists have struggled to marry quantum mechanics with gravity for decades. In contrast, the other forces of nature have obediently fallen into line. For instance, the electromagnetic force can be described quantum-mechanically by the motion of photons. Try and work out the gravitational force between two objects in terms of a quantum graviton, however, and you quickly run into trouble—the answer to every calculation is infinity. But now Petr Hořava, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks he understands the problem. It’s all, he says, a matter of time.

Pretty, isn’t it? My first glance at this image made me think, “Oooh, sweet.” My second glance made me think “Hey, wait a sec…” and my third, after reading the scientific paper, made me smile. Terzan 5 is a pretty interesting place.

It’s just over 19,000 light years away, toward the galactic center. That area is lousy with thick patches of dust, making it very difficult to see anything, like trying to see a forest through a thick fog. These images were taken with the Very Large Telescope (srsly), an 8-meter goliath in Chile. The observations were done in the infrared, which can travel more easily through the thick dust — specifically at 1.2 and 2.2 microns (our eyes can see out to about 0.8 microns; anything longer than that is infrared). Amazingly, this image is a total of only four minutes of observations, two minutes in each filter! And while the size of the image is comfortably larger than the full Moon on the sky, the resolution is about 0.1 arcseconds, about that of Hubble! That’s why the second time I glanced at the image I was amazed; the star images are sharp and clear.

Harald Wolf of the University of Ulm and his assistant Matthias Whittlinger proposed that ants have “pedometer-like” cells in their brains that count the steps they take.

Can you say entitled sociopath in training?

He believed he was in a temp-to-hire position, and after three months of extra hours and butt-kissing, turns out it’s just a temp position. He was a good worker too. I’d have recommended him. Too bad he burned his bridges… Obviously he had contemplated quitting long enough to make this thing, but still refused to speak to anyone about his feelings. Ironically, he complained about the ‘divas’ at his last job.

Yeah, it’s the Sun. Sue me…

THESE adorable baby meerkats snuggle up to a cuddly teddy after their mother tragically died.

Owner Steve Rowlands was worried about leaving the five orphans alone when they lost mum Anika just two days after their birth.

So the 28-year-old gave the cute critters a ten inch meerkat toy and a hot water bottle to recreate the motherly experience.

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2747323/Meerkats-are-bear-ing-up-well.html#ixzz0Y74gPUNR

NASA didn’t plan any traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner for the astronauts at the International Space Station, but they had it anyway: Someone sneaked the real thing into the space shuttle Atlantis without anyone from ground control noticing it.

I’ve been a fan of this band since their first album dropped 25 years ago. The children’s album genre suits them to a T, as is evidenced from
this NPR interview back in September.

The CD is also pretty popular on Amazon.com. Of course, the one one-star review on it brings up religious points. I’m not sure what he’s going on about, but would a song “My Brother The Ape” be viewed as a religious, or anti-religious, diatribe, but I thought the ensuing conversation as a result of that one star review was rather interesting. To me, evolution is a fact. YMMV.

Because I don’t mind certain aspects of my childhood coming back to haunt me.

(PEOPLE.com) — The dining table at the Osmond family Thanksgiving feast will have all the fixings - turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and a mirrored disco ball trophy.

“It will be a nice little centerpiece,” Donny Osmond, 51, joked Wednesday, just 24 hours after he and partner Kym Johnson won season nine of “Dancing with the Stars.”

Because you can get anything you want…at Alice’s Restaurant (especially the one in La Honda, CA, near the corner of Hwy 35 and Hwy 84, deep in the heart of the woods, across the road from a righteous biker bar….)