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It might sound like a scene out of Avatar 2. But scientists claim it's now possible to have a conversation with a whale, following a 20-minute chat with a humpback whale in Southeast Alaska. A 38-year-old whale named Twain 'spoke' with the researchers from the SETI Institute and UC Davis by responding to a pre-recorded 'contact call'. This marks the first communication between humans and whales in their own language, according to the team. Looking ahead, the researchers say the conversation could pave the way for interactions with aliens in the future. In the study, researchers from SETI studied how...

At 563 carats, the Star of India is the world’s largest gem-quality blue star sapphire, and is approximately 2 billion years old. (Image credit: D. Finnin/Copyright AMNH) ================================================================== What does the legendary Star of India — a 563-carat star sapphire the size of a golf ball — have in common with a 35-million-year-old petrified redwood slab; a massive cluster of sword-like crystals that looks like it came from "Game of Thrones;" and a 5-ton (4.5-metric ton) stone pillar that can "sing?" You can see all of them, along with 5,000 other amazing stones, in the newly renovated Mignone Hall of...

Martha Jones: It's like in those films: if you step on a butterfly, you change the future of the human race. The Doctor: Then don't step on any butterflies. What have butterflies ever done to you? Science fiction writers can't seem to agree on the rules of time travel. Sometimes, as in Doctor Who (above), characters can travel in time and affect small events without appearing to alter the grand course of history. In other stories, such as Back To The Future, even the tiniest of the time travellers' actions in the past produce major ripples that unpredictably change...

For billions of years, the moon has been the Earth's visible companion - and source of intrigue. It is considered to be our planet's only natural satellite and widely accepted to have been created by "The Big Whack" - from debris left over after a huge impact between Earth and an asteroid. But what if the moon is not as natural as we believe and is actually man made? Researchers Christopher Knight and Alan Butler have spent years writing and compiling scientific theories that the moon may have been created by us or even aliens. They claim there are a...

Which came first, the pigs or the pioneers? In Barbados, that has been a historical mystery ever since the first English colonists arrived on the island in 1627 to encounter what they thought was a herd of wild European pigs. A recent discovery by an SFU archaeologist is shedding new light on the matter. Christina Giovas uncovered the jaw bone of a peccary, a South American mammal that resembles a wild pig, while researching a larger project on prehistoric animal introductions in the Caribbean... Giovas and collaborators George Kamenov and John Krigbaum of the University of Florida radiocarbon-dated the bone...

The humpback whale has one of the biggest mouths on the planet—and the appetite to match. The bus-size mammals can eat up to 2500 kilograms of fish a day, and a new study reveals one way they snag these huge numbers: They make the fish come to them. Humpbacks were already known to have a few hunting tricks up their sleeve. They blow bubbles in giant circles around herring to herd them into tightly grouped schools that can be swallowed whole. They also “power thrust” into dense balls of young herring, catching the fish by surprise. Now, biologists have added...

Counting whales has never been easy—boats, even planes, can travel limited distances, and catching site of these giant cetaceans is hit or miss. Now, researchers at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge have demonstrated that they can tally at least four different species using satellite images taken 600 kilometers above the ocean. Previously, satellite cameras were of no use in whale spotting. Their resolution, which maxed out at 46 centimeters, made most whales look like undistinguishable blobs. But the new privately owned WorldView-3 satellite, which has a resolution of 31 centimeters, enabled BAS graduate student Hannah Cubaynes to count...

The crew of an Apollo mission to the moon were so startled when they encountered strange music-like radio transmissions coming through their headsets, they didn't know whether or not to report it to NASA, it's been revealed. It was 1969, two months before Apollo 11's historic first manned landing on the moon, when Apollo 10 entered lunar orbit, which included traversing the far side of the moon when all spacecraft are out of radio contact with Earth for about an hour and nobody on Earth can see or hear them. As far as the public knew, everything about the mission...

One challenge facing researchers was learning how to control crystallization of the polymer. As similar shape-shifting materials are stretched or cooled, atomic strands of polymer molecules re-align, driving the object to stay in the "temporary" alignment. This process makes it more and more difficult to bring the object back to its "relaxed," original form. Individual "linkers" were used to connect the molecules, reducing the effects of crystallization in the new polymer. By carefully controlling the placement of the linking chains, researchers were able to precisely direct the turning point of the material. When the new polymer is removed from the...

Explanation: NGC 4631 is a spiral galaxy found only 25 million light-years away, toward the well-trained northern constellation Canes Venatici. Seen ege-on, the galaxy is similar in size to the Milky Way. Its distorted wedge shape suggests to some a cosmic herring and to others its popular moniker, The Whale Galaxy. The large galaxy's small, remarkably bright elliptical companion NGC 4627 lies just above its dusty yellowish core, but also identifiable are recently discovered, faint dwarf galaxies within the halo of NGC 4631. In fact, the faint extended features below (and above) NGC 4631 are now recognized as tidal star...

ALON® is an amazing new advanced ceramic that is based on a composition of aluminum oxy nitride with a cubic spinel crystal structure. It is hard, durable, and transparent in the near ultra violet, visible and near infrared wavelength of light. ALON® is synthesized and manufactured in tonnage commercial quantities by Surmet Corporation, the global leader in transparent optical ceramics technologies. Surmet is vertically integrated and synthesizes tonnage quantities of high purity ALON® powder for its own use. Surmet is a supplier of ALON® optical windows, domes, plates, rods and tubes for advanced applications. Fabricated ALON® products combine superior mechanical...