Now they have to remake Jurassic Park – it’ll never be the same with a brightly colored, feathered T-Rex. 
Different …
But still AWESOME!
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So they found a single fossil, with ‘dark areas’, and they say that the entire group of that dinosaur had feathers? To me, that is less than convincing. I’m not sure such inductive reasoning is applicable in this situation. But whatever works, I guess.
Well, there are only 2 possible reasons why two different species has a similar feature:
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They had a common ancestor with the feature. For both birds and ornithischians to have feathers, this would require that feathers evolved by the point their ancestral lines parted, about 240 million years ago, and that they were thus present in the genome of all dinosaurs unless natural selection had a very good reason to cull it. For example, this is why gorillas and humans have similar fingerprints.
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Convergent evolution. The idea that pure quantum randomness can produce similar features in otherwise unrelated species, and so a species living in Siberia could have independently evolved a feature useful to a species living in China. This is not as unlikely as it sounds, especially given a hundred million years or so to happen in, as for example this is why koala fingerprints are practically indistinguishable from human and gorilla ones.
I’m not question why they have a similar feature, I’m question if they have a similar feature. I mean, sure, there’s that famous dino-bird thing with the long tail whatchamacallit, but that had fully formed feathers (TTBOMK) and formed scales, no indication of any early feathers or what-not, but just because of some ‘dark areas’, they’re claiming that this particular fossil is evidence of early feathers? I’m assuming that this type of dinosaur has been discovered before, so wouldn’t we have seen more clear evidence of scales to feathers or at least more ‘dark areas’? I think that this might be a jump to a conclusion, more than anything. Maybe people are barking up the wrong tree (pardon the pun) when it comes to birds.
Or maybe I have to stop taking mainstream media outlets so seriously when it comes to science… 
Well, there’s your problem. This type of dinosaur was discovered this year by the people that wrote the paper BBC based their article on, according to wikipedia.
As for “some ‘dark areas’”… with how well-preserved marine life often is, and how some entire dinosaur skeletons has been found (most notably the brontosaurus), it’s easy to forget: the probability of the soft tissue of a land-based animal turning into a fossil is extremely remote.
For there to be any sign left that it had feathers, it has to be buried before they can decay - not so deep that it becomes coal, but deep enough that as it does decay the rock around it is hard enough to not collapse on the resulting cavity, at least before that cavity forms up with a different type of rock.
Then that rock has to remain undisturbed for ten times longer than Iceland has existed as solid rock.
Then it has to be broken in a way that reveals the fossil without destroying it, make it’s way to somewhere close enough to the surface that humans can find it, and if you’re really lucky the rock the fossil is made of is a visibly different colour than the rock around it.
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Dropping in on Turkmenistan’s ‘door to hell’ – in pictures. Keith beat me to it but… “We did find some bacteria living at the bottom that are very comfortable living in those high temperatures, and the most important thing was that they were not found in any of the surrounding soil outside of the crater,”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/-sp-door-to-hell-turkmenistan-in-pictures
Just for the people who haven’t seen how flexible this monitor is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxbHpXE4VM0
“monitor” is not to be confused with a bus monitor, recess monitor, computer monitor monitoring, monitor lizard, any of the gauges monitoring a car engine or any gauges as far as that goes. This monitor is a video display. (To help clear things up for the ESL group. Words need to be defined in the subject matter they are used.)
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About the fuel-less thruster previously discussed. Unfortunately, it seems it’s complete utter rubbish
Are you saying http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/187346-nasa-tests-impossible-no-fuel-quantum-space-engine-and-it-actually-works is crap? and Extreme Tech isn’t a creditabal source of news? I had my doubts.
I don’t really know extremetech, so I can’t say if they are consistent crap or if they simply made a mistake once. Given that many people seem to have reported it as is due to the credits given to NASA’s name, I’d give them the benefit of doubt.
I wonder how long that’ll last at the rate they’ve been going…
All of the tech news sites are reporting this thing as “confirmed working”, which is is an incredible shame. For some people, this is just going to be more proof that A) science is bogus, or that B) NASA is incompetent and should be defunded, when the truth is that it actually shows that tech journalists are lazy and credulous.
NASA is going to get the flak, while the doofuses reporting this thing like it’s totally legit are going to get a clean pass because it doesn’t fuel the ridiculous Apple vs The World culture war.
The simple fact of all of this is that some engineers working for NASA tested this thing, measured a non-zero result, and then said so at a conference. This isn’t peer reviewed stuff. People report things at conferences all of the time that turn out to be nothing in the end.
NASA needs to stop hosting press conferences for unconfirmed findings, and the press needs to stop reporting press releases.
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Mars Rover Opportunity sets new distance record, still finding weird pics http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/space/article/Mars-Rover-Opportunity-sets-new-distance-record-5654540.php
Elon Musk Says Artificial Intelligence Could Be ‘More Dangerous Than Nukes’ http://mashable.com/2014/08/03/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence/?utm_campaign=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss
“Physicists make ‘tractor beam’ in water” Not as cool as it sounds but interesting. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28739368
New Physics Complications Lend Support to Multiverse Hypothesis http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-physics-complications-lend-support-to-multiverse-hypothesis/
I think it was “Particle Fever”–A Thrilling New Documentary About the Search for the Higgs Boson (VIDEO Preview) http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/03/particle-fever-a-thrilling-new-documentary-about-the-search-for-the-higgs-boson-a-discovery-that-mig.html I watched on Netfliks from PBS. Them wacky alternate universes!
Ether here or philosophy. How do you know you exist? - James Zucker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmxlcJFTaYU#t=18
Mass-Manufactured “Kilobots” Self-Assemble in Thousand-Robot Swarm. More interesting then cool.
http://video.techbriefs.com/video/Mass-Manufactured-“Kilobots”;Manufacturing-Prototyping
What can Schrödinger’s cat teach us about quantum mechanics? - Josh Samani https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1GCnycbMeA