Sex that lasts 1 to 2 minutes is "too short," say therapists
Yeah, but if it lasted longer, they'd be out of a job.Who’s smarter than the Smithsonian? Well if you’re a fifth-grader, it seems you may have a shot.
5th-Grader Finds Mistake at Smithsonian
ALLEGAN, Mich. (AP) - Is fifth-grader Kenton Stufflebeam smarter than the Smithsonian? The 11-year-old boy, who lives in Allegan but attends Alamo Elementary School near Kalamazoo, went with his family during winter break to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
Since it opened in 1981, millions of people have paraded past the museum's Tower of Time, a display involving prehistoric time. Not one visitor had reported anything amiss with the exhibit until Kenton noticed that a notation, in bold lettering, identified the Precambrian as an era.
Kenton knew that was wrong. His fifth-grade teacher, John Chapman, had nearly made the same mistake in a classroom earth-science lesson before catching himself.
"I knew Mr. Chapman wouldn't tell all these students" bad information, the boy told the Kalamazoo Gazette for a story published Wednesday.
So Kevin Stufflebeam took his son to the museum's information desk to report Kenton's concern on a comment form. Last week, the boy received a letter from the museum acknowledging that his observation was "spot on."
"The Precambrian is a dimensionless unit of time, which embraces all the time between the origin of Earth and the beginning of the Cambrian Period of geologic time," the letter says.
The solution to the problem would not involve advanced science but rather simply painting over the word "era," the note says.
"We did forward a copy of the comment and our paleobiology department's response to the head of the exhibits department," said Lorraine Ramsdell, educational technician for the museum.
While no previous visitors to the museum had brought up the error, it has long rankled the paleobiology department's staff, who noticed it even before the Tower of Time was erected 27 years ago, she said.
"The question is, why was it put up with that on it in the first place?" Ramsdell said.
Excited as he was to receive the correspondence from museum officials, he couldn't help but point out that it was addressed to Kenton Slufflebeam.
We thought that was the Mezo-whatsis. And just how “pale” is their paleobiology department? Is that a code word.
Is covered with pink gas or blue gas. They grow up so fast.
Scots scientists help to discover 'youngest planet'
By Jamie Beatson
SCOTS astronomers have discovered a baby planet believed to be the youngest yet.
The planet - still in the process of forming and encased in a "womb" of gas and dust - was found by scientists from St Andrews University, who were working with colleagues from England and the US.
It is thought the planet - named HL Taub - could be as little as 1600 years old.
The Earth, by comparison, formed more than 4.6billion years ago.
The planet is located in the constellation of Taurus and is 520 light years away.
Using telescopes located across the US, the researchers spotted it as they monitored the formation of young star HL Tau, which the planet orbits.
Dr Jane Greaves, of the St Andrews University school of physics and astronomy, said the discovery was "amazing" as they weren't even looking for it.
She said: "We caught this planet at its very, very earliest stages of forming - it is an embryo of a planet more than anything else."
Describing the new planet as a "really large ball of gas and dust", she said that it would crunch down over millions of years to the same size as Jupiter.
She added: "We took an image with a group of radio telescopes with much higher detail than anyone has ever managed before.
"The planet is not more than 100,000 years old - that's the equivalent of a day in a human life - but could be as little as 1600 years old.
"We had an inkling that by looking for dust grains - which are rocks the size of your fist - we could see if rocks were coming together around the star to form a planet."
She said it showed that astronomers should be open-minded in the search for an Earth-like planet.
No comments:
Post a Comment