Even More Eurekas!
Science headline of the week:
MORALITY ASKEW IN PSYCHOPATHS
From the Neuroscience section of Science News, under “Meeting Notes.â€
Another item there is headlined: “Parasite twists rats’ innate fear.†The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, fools the rat into mistaking the smell of cat urine for the scent of a luscious, lascivious female rat. Talk about star-crossed lovers.
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Scientific article lead of the week:
(Science News again; they never sleep):
“The graves of people who died 12,000 years ago rarely contain a woman’s skeleton pinned down in an unusual position by large stones, accompanied by another person’s foot and a menagerie of animal remains, including tortoise shells and marten skulls.â€
Right. But guess what? That’s exactly what they found!
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Time-Traveling Code Crackers
The ultimate weapon against sneaks and snoops is quantum encryption. If someone steals or intercepts the key and listens in, it’s immediately obvious because, once it’s read, a transmitted unit changes from its fuzzy, indeterminate quantum state to a firmly resolved piece of data. So the sneak’s cover is blown.
But now, a team of physicists from USC report online (arxiv.org/abs/0811.1209) that if there are wormholes present (not the nematode variety; the Stephen Hawking variety), the eavesdroppers could go back in time and intercept the message before their presence is detected.
To paraphrase one of the many Jesus-Moses golf jokes, “Come on guys. Are you gonna do science, or you just gonna fuck around?â€
