Giant Freakin Robot

There are a thousand little things that we all take for granted on a daily basis that suddenly become a whole different challenge once you decide to relocate to a microgravity environment. Say, for instance, on the International Space Station. Even if you’re a space junkie like us, I’m betting there are still lots of stories astronauts could share that would make you go, “Well of course that would be tricky in zero-g!” Most of us won’t ever be lucky enough to make it into space, but thankfully we’ve got ISS Commander Chris Hadfield up there for us, answering submitted questions and beaming back one fascinating video after another. For instance, how the hell do you make a sandwich up there?

Well, first thing’s first. You need to wash those filthy hands of yours, you disgusting pig. Didn’t your mother teach you anything? So go over there and flip on that faucet and — Ack! Water everywhere! Things with blinky lights are shorting out! You’re having flashbacks to The Abyss! I hope you’re happy, because now the ISS is filled with runaway water balls and everybody has wet socks. Wet socks are the worst.

Fear not: Commander Hadfield is here to show you how it’s done.

Did you ever have one of those days when everything was going just perfectly? Woke up after a perfect night’s rest, had an exquisite breakfast — mostly just bacon wrapped bacon — and had nothing but good news fall into your lap as you jubilantly frolicked through your day? These days are rare, but are indeed the ones that we should cherish the most. Because for some people, their best days consist of creating amazing videos that just suck the personalized optimism right out of the room.

“Reconnaissance of the HR 8799 Exosolar System: A Digital Universe Journey” doesn’t come rolling off of the tongue very easily, but this awe-inspiring video will probably leave your tongue hanging out of your mouth. Directed by Brian P. Abbott, in cooperation with the American Museum of Natural History, the short film will complement a study that AMNH astrophysicist Ben R. Oppenheimer and colleagues will publish in Astrophysical Journal.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/Sub Millimeter Array (ALMA) is a group of 66 massive antennae standing in a Chilean desert, 16,500 feet above sea level, that collectively make up the world’s most powerful telescope. At $1.5 billion, it’s also one of the priciest. But money is only sometimes an object when it comes to peeking in on the furthest reaches of outer space, and on ALMA’s first official day of being online, that investment is already paying off.

Using the gravitation lensing technique — when faraway galaxies are magnified and distorted by other galaxies in the foreground — ALMA’s international team of astronomers got a detailed look at 26 starburst galaxies, which served as major breeders in the early stages of the universe. While the starburst group was first discovered by National Science Foundation astronomers using the South Pole Telescope, the ALMA research is far beyond, able to increase the galaxies’ luminosity by a factor of 10, and has thus doubled the previously known number of starburst galaxies that exist.

Not only do we now know that these galaxies could theoretically have pumped out 10,000 stars a year, but the research shows that the starburst galaxies are way further out than first thought. They’re a whopping 12 billion light years away, which puts their formative period around two billion years after the Big Bang, which means all this happened a full billion years before astronomers thought it did. Rarely do I mess with measurements that allow for the phrase, “Give or take one hundred thousand years.” One of the galaxies was actually found to be around just one billion years after the universe began. In its day, it had to send light 15 miles across the universe barefoot in the piled snow.

If all of that wasn’t enough, that same galaxy also proved to have water molecules, making it the earliest form of water ever observed. You could ask me how they found water molecules, and I could tell you. But then I’d have to kill you, and I don’t want somebody in another galaxy with their own big honking telescope peering down on me while I do it.

NBC public service announcements nailed it on the head. “The more you know,” the more you can do about something. And while knowing the entire process behind whole-genome sequencing is probably an unachievable task for the average person, it doesn’t take higher education to understand that it can be a life-changing option for everyone on Earth.

Since she was around 18 months old, Lilly Grossman has suffered from debilitating muscle tremors attributed to a rare muscle disease that fooled doctors into misdiagnosing her time and time again. But thanks to IDIOM (Idiopathic Diseases of Man), a father-daughter run study out of the Scripps Translational Science Institute at La Jolla, California, Lilla and her parents, Steve and Gay, all had their genomes sequenced. After over 13 years of not knowing, the Grossmans finally had an answer, though still not a permanent solution.

The researchers found three mutations in two of Lilly’s genes, one that would cause the tremors and another that would cause muscle weakness and a lack of balance, which are the likely causes for her condition. Ceasing a laundry list of medications, Lilly was soon switched to a small variety of supplements and the drug Diamox, which helped another family with a similar gene mutation. For almost three weeks, Lilly’s tremors were completely absent, and the family experienced the best sleep they’ve had in many many years.