Well, here it is, one quarter of a lunar rotation later, and time for more awesome science.

First off, my own personal science : Last night, I took my first dose of Quetiapine, and let me tell ya, that stuff packs a wallop. Just one teeny tiny pill, and I slept all day. Here it is, over 14 hours after my initial dose, and I am still pretty sleepy. That is likely the result of burning off a backlog of sleep debt, but still. Potent mojo!

If you would like to read my slightly scientific notes taken after initial dose, they can be found here.

Faster Than A Bolt

Meanwhile, in the world of somewhat creepy yet highly impressive robotics, we have this video of Boston Dynamics’ Cheetah robot running a stunning 28.3 miles per hour.

This robot was already the fastest robot ever to run on four legs, but now that it has run over 28 MPH, it is also slightly faster than the fastest human alive, Usain Bolt.

I am sure that will be of great use when the Great Robot Uprising occurs and Skynet needs robots to run us down and drag us back to the slave pits.

Seriously though, the video is a little creepy. For one, the sound. Something about the robot’s footfalls are creepily in between the biological and robotic. They sort of sound like someone moving on metal crutches, or maybe some sort of evil doll.

But even creepier is just much like a cheetah it is. Very Uncanny Valley. It runs just like the big cat it is named after, and that is pretty creepy, seeing as it is so clearly just a robot. The biomimickry is uncanny, and hence, very Uncanny Valley.

Still, at least the thing has to be plugged into the wall, right? So it is not like it can run you down if you are far from a wall socket… right?

Absolutely true. The Cheetah still has to be plugged in to work.

But The Wildcat, Boston Dynamics’ next generation Cheetah, does not.

Thanks a lot guys! I am sure Skynet will kill you last for your contribution!

Pigtails… in… SPAAAAACE!

Moving on, we have a pretty nifty contribution to our Cool Stuff In Space file, we have this recent discovery of what it is being called The Pigtail Molecular Cloud in deep deep space.

How deep? Thirty thousand light years away. So, not exactly in our cosmic neighborhood. But still, the discovery of such a strange object (namely two helical clouds of molecular gas 60 light-years in length, one nested in the other) has given scientists something to study in order to unlock some of the secrets of just what is going on 600 light-years from the galactic core.

That is a region that is nothing like our boring and stable suburb of the galaxy, far out on one of the Spiral Arms of the Milky Way. That close to the action, the stars are far closer to one another. Their interactions are therefore that much stronger and more complex. And they are that much closer to the ultra massive black hole that in all probability lies at the very core of our humble galaxy.

So we really have no idea what is going on at the Core, and what is possible there that would not be possible in our relatively spare and distant neighborhood, and so the discovery of this wonderfully weird formation might well lead to a number of key insights as to just what goes on there at the crazy, constantly changing Core.

Certainly, it will make an excellent example of just how strange things are way in there, and an excellent spur for the imagination of astronomers, astrophysicists, and dreamers on the sidelines like me.

I mean, seriously. It is a massive double helix in space. It is like it is an enormous DNA molecule made of molecular gas, the very stuff from which stars are born.

It is almost like it is mocking us with a picture of what might be.

DNA as functional information

Finally, as always, I have saved what I consider to be the most awesome and exciting science news for the last : scientists have completed a functional analysis of the entire humane genome.

That’s right, all 3 billion base-pairs have been analyzed as to function, and so we now have a rough idea of what every single one of those base-pairs does.

That is staggeringly amazing right there. This is clearly the next big step up from simply decoding the genome in the first place, and is bound to be, as the article says, the foundation of all biological science from this point onward.

The world now has a complete encyclopedia of the human genome to consult when trying to create future genetic therapies and while examining existing ones.

And that is just the short term medical angle. In the long term, this sort of fundamental and categorical increase in our understanding of our own DNA as information could be key to unlocking all sorts of mysteries about life as a human being, like why we get cancer, why we age, and why we have to die.

And in the further future, could even be what leads us to being able to change our DNA however we like. No more crippling genetic defects, no more genetic predilections towards certain diseases. Perhaps we will even discover how to strengthen our tolumere repair function and hence expand our lifespans indefinitely.

And all because someone provided the right scientists with the resources they needed to do this extraordinary work, which took nine years to complete and who knows how many hours of labour.

This just blows my mind. And already it has produced a major result : the human genome is eighty percent functional, not only twenty percent like we thought it was before.

This means the percentage of “junk” (in other words, nonfunctional) DNA is a lot less than we imagined before, and a lot of pretty theories as to why “so much” of our genome was apparently useless have now turned out to be entirely unnecessary.

Oh well, that’s science for you. Nothing is sacred, not even graduate theses.

Seeya next week, folks!