It works by entangling two objects, like photons or ions. The first teleportation experiments involved beams of light. Once the objects are entangled, they’re connected by an invisible wave, like a thread or umbilical cord. That means when something is done to one object, it immediately happens to the other object, too. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.”

Until now, this has only been achieved with particles that are at most a couple hundred feet apart. And those distances have been accomplished with fiber channels, which help preserve the photons’ state.

In the latest experiment, researchers entangled two photons and zapped the higher-energy one through a special 10-mile-long free-space tunnel, instead of a fiber one. The distant photon was still able to respond to the changes in state of the photon left behind, an unprecedented achievement.

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For hundreds of years people have reported seeing mysterious balls of lightning during heavy thunderstorms, balls of lightning that supposedly roam around, enter through windows and look like something out of the mid-80s Steven Spielberg movie. Well, it turns out these sightings were probably nothing more than hallucinations; illusions prompted by huge amounts of magnetism:

Ball lightning is often reported during thunderstorms, and it’s known that multiple consecutive lightning strikes can create strong magnetic fields. So Joseph Peer and Alexander Kendl at the University of Innsbruck in Austria wondered whether ball lightning is really a hallucination induced by magnetic stimulation of the brain’s visual cortex or the eye’s retina.

In previous experiments, other scientists had exposed humans to strong, rapidly changing magnetic fields using a medical machine called a transcranial magnetic stimulator, or TMS. The machine’s magnetic fields are powerful enough to induce electric currents in human brain cells without being harmful.

Focusing magnetic fields on the visual cortex of the brain caused the subjects to see luminous discs and lines. When the focus was moved around within the visual cortex, the subjects reported seeing the lights move.

In their paper, which appeared online May 7 on the physics research website arXiv.org, Peer and Kendl argue that magnetic fields made by lightning could have the same effect as TMS machines on nearby humans.

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From Discovery:

Cancer of the oesophagus is linked especially to smoking and alcohol abuse but hot beverages have also been considered a risk factor, possibly because of damage to throat tissue.

Interested in finding out more, Iranian researchers went to Golestan province, which has one of the highest rates of oesophageal cancer in the world.

Those who drank hot tea (between 65-69 degrees Celsius, 149-156 degrees Fahrenheit) were twice as likely to develop throat cancer compared with those who drank warm or lukewarm tea, whose temperature was 65 C (149 F) or less.

Drinking very hot tea (at least 70 C, 158 F) was associated with an eightfold increased risk compared with warm or lukewarm tea.

In an editorial, The Lancet said the study backed evidence that scorching fluids may cause damage to the throat’s epithelial lining and lead to cancer, although exactly how this happens remains unclear.

From Science Daily:

In a study published March 30, 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports that the restoration in cats of myelin — a fatty insulator of nerve fibers that degrades in a host of human central nervous system disorders, the most common of which is multiple sclerosis — can lead to functional recovery.

“The fundamental point of the study is that it proves unequivocally that extensive remyelination can lead to recovery from a severe neurological disorder,” says Ian Duncan, the UW-Madison neuroscientist who led the research. “It indicates the profound ability of the central nervous system to repair itself.”

Nine Lives: Cats Central Nervous System Can Repair Itself and Restore Function

I’m going to venture a guess and say no, but others apparently disagree. The Voyager 2 space probe was launched 33 years ago and is now, quite literally, out in the middle of nowhere. Despite its age and distance from Earth, Voyager continues to communicate with our home planet. However, recent communications have been unreadable and this has led to some pretty wild speculation.

Alien expert Hartwig Hausdorf said:”It seems almost as if someone had reprogrammed or hijacked the probe – thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth”

Alien expert? I like that title. He’s an expert on something he has zero reference of, something he has never seen, never met, never studied.

Engineers are working to solve the data transmissions from the Voyager 2 spacecraft near the edge of the solar system, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said today.

The spacecraft late last month began sending science data 8.6 billion miles to Earth in a changed format that mission managers could not decode.

Engineers have since instructed Voyager 2 to only transmit data on its own health and status while they work on the problem.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, explored the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and kept on going. Nearly 33 years later, they are the most distant human-made objects.

Voyager 1 is 10.5 billion miles from Earth and in about five years is expected to pass through the heliosphere, a bubble the sun creates around the solar system, and enter interstellar space.

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According to a recent survey, 54% of women polled indicated they would be more likely to have a relationship with an iPhone owner as opposed to some other brand. The same survey said the general consensus is that iPhone owners are better groomed, communicate more effectively and have a good sense of humor. Now let’s say you don’t own an iPhone but you want the edge with women. What are your options for improving your odds? Probably not an Android phone. No, your best bet, according to new research, is good old Celery, the vegetable that is only palatable with a dollop of peanut-butter.

CELERY has been labelled “vegetable Viagra” after research shows it increases the pheromone levels in men’s sweat, making them more attractive to women.

Judy Gaman, Dr Walter Gaman and Dr Mark Anderson, authors of the new book Stay Young: Ten Proven Steps to Ultimate Health, said celery contains androstenone – a naturally occurring steroid – and upping your concentration of it should increase pheromone secretion.

They said the effects of eating it are immediate, but warned men not to go overboard, men’s lifestyle website asylum.com reported today.

“We recommend that a guy work out, have a nice warm shower, chomp on a few sticks of celery, brush his teeth and then head out the door smelling good,” said Dr Gaman.

Another reason why men should be keen to eat their vegetables is that celery also increases sex drive and ups the amount of ejaculatory fluids, making climax stronger.

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Sugihara’s illusion was inspired by a computer program he wrote that turns two-dimensional line drawings into renderings of three-dimensional solids. The program worked beautifully for everyday solids, but Sugihara wondered what would happen if he fed his program some drawings of ‘impossible figures’, of the kind that might appear in an artwork by M. C. Escher.

“Most of the time, the software rejected the input,” Sugihara says. “But once in a while it found a solution.” The result was a number of figures that appeared to move in unnatural ways, including the gravity-defying balls that took the prize.

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