The first time travellers from the future could materialise on Earth within a few weeks.
Physicists around the world are excitedly awaiting the start up of the £4.65 billion Large Hadron Collider, LHC - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - which is supposed to shed new light on the particles and forces at work in the cosmos and reproduce conditions that date to near the Big Bang of creation.
Prof Irina Aref'eva and Dr Igor Volovich, mathematical physicists at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow believe that the vast experiment at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, may turn out to be the world's first time machine, reports New Scientist.
The debut in early summer could provide a landmark because travelling into the past is only possible - if it is possible at all - as far back as the point of creation of the first time machine.
That means 2008 could become "Year Zero" for temporal travel, they argue.
Time travel was born when Albert Einstein's colleague, Kurt Gödel, used Einstein's theory of relativity to show that travel into the past was possible.
Ever since he unveiled this idea in 1949, eminent physicists have argued against time travel because it undermines ideas of cause and effect to create paradoxes: a time traveller could go back to kill his grandfather so that he is never born in the first place.
But, sixty years later, there is still no fundamental reason why time travellers cannot put historians out of business.
But the Russians argue that when the energies of the LHC are concentrated into a subatomic particle - a trillionth the size of a mosquito - they can do strange things to the fabric of the universe, which is a blend of space and time that scientists called spacetime.
While Earth's gravity produces gentle distortions in spacetime the LHC energy can distort time so much that it loops back on itself. These loops are known to physicists as "closed timelike curves" and they ought, at least in theory, to allow us to revisit some past moment.
The scheme chimes with one laid out in 1988, when Prof Kip Thorne and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, showed that wormholes, or tunnels through spacetime, would allow time travel, a scheme popularised by Carl Sagan in his novel - made into a film - Contact.
Prof Aref'eva and Dr Volovich believe the LHC could create wormholes and so allow a form of time travel. "We realised that closed timelike curves and wormholes could also be a result of collisions of particles," Prof Aref'eva says.
There are still plenty of obstacles for the likes of Dr Who, however. Not least of them is the fact that these are mini wormholes, so only subatomic particles are small enough to travel through them.
What do you call an absence of darkness? Dark matter is supposed to be spread throughout the universe, but a new study reports a spiral galaxy that seems to be empty of the stuff, and astrophysicists cannot easily explain why.
In the outer regions of most galaxies, stars orbit around the centre so fast that they should fly away. The combined mass of all the observable inner stars and gas does not exert strong enough gravity to hold onto these speeding outliers, suggesting some mass is missing.
Most astronomers believe that the missing mass is made up of some exotic invisible substance, labelled dark matter, which forms vast spherical halos around each galaxy. Another possibility is that the force of gravity behaves in an unexpected way, a theory known as modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND.
In the spiral galaxy NGC 4736, however, the rotation slows down as you move farther out from the crowded inner reaches of the galaxy. At first glance, that declining rotation curve is just what you would expect if there is no extended halo of dark matter, and no modification to gravity. As you move far away from the swarming stars of the inner galaxy, gravity becomes weaker, and so motions become more sedate.
The rotation measurements only stretch 35,000 light years out from the galactic centre, which is not far enough to confirm that first impression. So a team of astronomers in Poland developed a more sophisticated analysis.
Joanna Jalocha, Lukasz Bratek and Marek Kutschera of the Polish Academy of Science in Krakow have found a way to splice the rotation curve together with another measurement: the density of hydrogen gas far from the galactic centre.
According to their combined mathematical model, ordinary luminous stars and gas can indeed account for all the mass in NGC 4736.
Sperm cells have been created from a female human embryo in a remarkable breakthrough that suggests it may be possible for lesbian couples to have their own biological children.
British scientists who had already coaxed male bone marrow cells to develop into primitive sperm cells have now repeated the feat with female embryonic stem cells.
The University of Newcastle team that has achieved the feat is now applying for permission to turn the bone marrow of a woman into sperm which, if successful, would make the method more practical than with embryonic cells.
It raises the possibility of lesbian couples one day having children who share both their genes as sperm created from the bone marrow of one woman could be used to fertilise an egg from her partner.
Men and women differ because of what are called sex chromosomes. Both have an X chromosome. But only men possess a Y chromosome that carries several genes thought to be essential to make sperm, so there has been scepticism that female stem cells could ever be used to make sperm.
Boston (dbTechno) - University of Minnesota researchers made the announcement on Sunday that they have successfully created a beating rat heart in a laboratory.
The dream of being able to create new hearts and other organs is getting more and more a reality than ever before.
How they did it, was they removed all of the cells from a dead rat heart. They then used new heart cells injected from newborn rats, and within a few weeks, the new cells formed a new beating heart. The heart pumped blood as well.
Dr. Doris A. Taylor, the head of the team that created the beating heart, stated that the principle her laboratory followed was to “give nature the tools and get out of the way.”
She stated “We just took nature’s own building blocks to build a new organ.”
She continued, “The heart is a beautiful organ, and it’s not one that I thought I’d ever be able to build in a dish.”
The hope is that this will lead to the creation of hearts, kidneys, livers, lungs, and other organs for humans in the coming years.
The report has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.
BEIJING - A cloned pig whose genes were altered to make it glow fluorescent green has passed on the trait to its young, a development that could lead to the future breeding of pigs for human transplant organs, a Chinese university reported.
The glowing piglets' birth proves transgenic pigs are fertile and able to pass on their engineered traits to their offspring, according to Liu Zhonghua, a professor overseeing the breeding program at Northeast Agricultural University.
ONGA, Fukuoka -- A lemon tree that bears 11 different kinds of fruit is earning attention for a resident here who has had it growing in his garden for years.
The tree, which is about 30 years old, is growing in the garden of 71-year-old Onga resident Manabu Fukushima. It is loaded with 11 kinds of fruit including dekopon, hassaku orange, iyoyan, amanatsu, and banpeiyu, a variety of pummelo.
Fukushima started receiving citrus tree saplings from neighbors about 15 years ago, and grafted them onto his lemon tree because he wanted to eat the fruit quickly. Since then, the varieties of fruit have gradually increased. Now locals often come too see the unusual tree.
Successful grafting can produce fruit in one to three years.
"The harvesting is really fun," Fukushima says. "Next year I want to increase the varieties."
MADERA, Calif. - It's not makeup or paint that makes Paul Karason's skin a bluish color.
What Karason did was use a substance called colloidal silver, which is made by extracting silver from metal. It goes into water with an electrical current and then you drink it. Colloidal silver is billed as something that will cure just about everything that ails you and Karason swears by it.
ADVERTISEMENTS placed by Google in web pages are being hijacked by trojan software that replaces the intended text with ads from a different provider, Romanian antivirus company BitDefender said in a statement.
The trojan redirects queries meant to be sent to Google servers to a rogue server, which displays ads from a third party instead of ads from Google, BitDefender said.
Google said on Wednesday: "We have cancelled customer accounts that display ads redirecting users to malicious sites or that advertise a product violating our software principles."
"We actively work to detect and remove sites that serve malware in both our ad network and in our search results. We have manual and automated processes in place to detect and enforce these policies."
The trojan, named after the mythic Trojan Horse because of its ability to enter computer systems undetected, attacks Google's AdSense service, which targets advertisements to match web page content.
"This is a serious situation that damages users and webmasters alike," said BitDefender virus analyst Attila Balazs.
"Users are affected because the advertisements and/or the linked sites may contain malicious code," he said.
"Webmasters are affected because the trojan takes away viewers and thus a possible money source from their websites."
BitDefender's website describes the trojan, which it identifies as Trojan.Qhost.WU, as spreading at a "low" level and causing "medium" damage.
Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs.
The 200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new revolutionary technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.
Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to begin marketing the new system in Europe and America in 2009.
Alexander Novgorodov, the reader of the portal R&D.CNews from Moscow Region, has pointed to an object of unusual morphology found on Mars images made by the spacecraft Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
On the images taken from the orbit an unusual mountain formation is depicted, which seems to have resulted from weathering (erosion) and is located amid the frozen ocean. The given formation drop-like shape (in section), its evidently erosion origin and the unusual structure at the base, which might be conventionally called a 'door' for its physical resemblance, are of interest.
The object unusual form and the presence of a 'door' do not mean the mountain formation is of artificial origin. The mentioned peculiarities are of primary interest because of their morphology.
The other images sent by our reader depict another formation of unusual shape resembling a pyramid with a regular polygon at the base.
The Cypriot-born eccentric Stelios Arcadious spent 10 years searching for a surgeon willing to perform the controversial operation.
He got his wish after working as a Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University's Digital Research Unit. The ear was grown in a lab from cells and implanted into the 61-year-olds left forearm in 2006.
Mr Arcadious said he thought art "should be more than simply illustrating ideas." Once the ear has fully developed he hopes to get a microphone implanted as well.
"It is more of a relief at present than an ear but it is still recognisable as an ear," he said.
"The last operation was in September 2006 and its only now that I'm about ready for the next step.
"I hope to have a tiny microphone implanted to it that will connect with a bluetooth transmitter; that way you can listen to what my ear is hearing."
An audience in Newcastle Centre For Life was introduced to Stelarc's latest project, a 'walking head' robot which will be a feature there for a month. The six legged robot with its head on a screen is one of the highlights of the Dott 07 design festival.
It is programmed to respond to someone entering the room, so every visitor will be treated to a little robot dance.
Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.
"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."
"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "
