Saturday, September 25, 2010

Polywater

Polywater is a theoretical version of water that, through heating to boil and letting to cool in quartz capillaries, could re-structure itself and become more viscous and have a higher boiling point and lower freezing point. It was first brought to the public in a lecture in England by the Soviet scientist Boris Valdimirovich Derjaguin, who claimed that Soviet scientists had already discovered how to create polywater, which is not surprising seeing as this was during the Cold War and was probably meant to strike fear in those who opposed the USSR.
Citations:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/ATG/polywater.html
http://itotd.com/articles/588/polywater/

Monday, September 20, 2010

Amphioxus

"Amphioxi are small marine animals found widely in the coastal waters of the warmer parts of the world and less commonly in temperate waters. Both morphological and molecular evidence show them to be close relatives of the vertebrates." - http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/21580/amphioxus


The Amphioxus is important to scientists because of its possible link to all modern vertebrates. These links are used to support the evolution theory that all organisms are decedents of one common ancestor.

Thursday, September 16, 2010