Two mind-numbingly smart people calculate the number of parallel universes.

That's the answer. The number of all possible universes, and the number it equals is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really big.

From PhysOrg.com: Over the past few decades, the idea that our universe could be one of many alternate universes within a giant multiverse has grown from a sci-fi fantasy into a legitimate theoretical possibility. Several theories of physics and astronomy have hypothesized the existence of a multiverse made of many parallel universes. One obvious question that arises, then, is exactly how many of these parallel universes might there be. In a new study, Stanford physicists Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin have calculated the number of all possible universes, coming up with an answer of 10^10^16. If that number sounds large, the scientists explain that it would have been even more humongous, except that we observers are limited in our ability to distinguish more universes; otherwise, there could be as many as 10^10^10^7 universes.

In other words, it's likely that the actual number is much bigger, but we literally can't wrap our human brains around it. I wonder what David Deutsch thinks about all this. I don't know about you, but I feel very tiny right now.

Discovering Ardi: Darwin could only dream of finding this.

Check out Discovering 'Ardi' this Sunday, October 11, on the Discovery Channel at 9 pm eastern time!

The Hands: Made for Climbing
A digitally rendered composite hand of the "Ardi" partial skeleton. The hand structure suggests "Ardi" could climb trees, using lengthy fingers and big toes for grasping, but it could also walk on the ground in a two-legged manner.

From the Discovery News article:

Myth Busted: Humans Never Evolved From Chimpanzees

Although chimpanzees remain our closest living primate relatives, there is now no evidence that Homo sapiens somehow evolved from chimpanzee-like individuals, losing chimp characteristics over time. Instead, after the chimp/hominid split, the two groups appear to have gone their separate evolutionary ways, developing the unique traits seen in each today.

Will you watch? I'll be traveling, so if you do please post your comments. I'd love to hear what you think!

Come on New York!!! Show us the GREEN!

From Huffington Post:

UPDATE 7:09pm: Despite plans to light the Empire State Building green tonight in honor of the 70th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz, the building is instead basked in red. It is currently unknown what caused the color change, but Iranian activists recently asked for the building to be lit green in support of their protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appearance at the UN, only to be denied. As a substitute, many protesters regarded tonight's green coloring as a show of support despite it not being done directly for them.

Check out the live Web Cam. Maybe NYC will have a change of heart tonight.

My Blog is going GREEN today: Ahmadinejad to speak at the U.N.

My blog is going green again today, in support of the protesters descending upon New York City to voice their opposition to "President" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who will speak at the U.N. General Assembly later this afternoon. Here's the schedule from the Wall Street Journal. Did you notice who follows President Obama? Yup, Moammar Khadafy. It's going to be an interesting day in NYC.

If you're at any of the protests, please post news in the comments section!

Mission Accomplished: New Images from Hubble

Thank you, Atlantis.

From ZDNet:

This image, taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3, shows the Butterfly Nebula (or Bug Nebula, cataloged as NGC 6302), at the center of which is a dying star that once had five times the mass of Earth's sun.

This view of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217, located 6 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.

Can you count all the stars here? NASA says there are 100,000, all squeezed (relatively speaking) into a small portion of the Omega Centauri star cluster. The yellow-white dots are adult stars powered by hydrogen fusion, the orange ones are late-life stars, and the red giants, which are shedding their gaseous envelopes, are older still.

NASA describes Eta Carinae as having a "volatile temperament," and as a doomed star.

For more on Hubble, visit Hubble.org

The Underworld of Giza

British explorer Andrew Collins says he has found a mysterious underworld beneath the Pyramids of Giza. The vast tunnel system, according to Collins, is tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years old and virtually unexplored. He describes the environment as highly dangerous, an entire ecosystem of bat colonies, venomous spiders not to mention treacherous pits, so it remains to be seen just how much Collins was able to report on in his forthcoming, BENEATH THE PYRAMIDS. But the book, due out in September, is already causing a stir amongst archaeologists.

As reported in the Discovery News article, Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, was quick to dismiss the find. "There are no new discoveries to be made at Giza,” said Hawass. “We know everything about the plateau.”

Never mind then. Since Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities already knows everything, case closed, right?

Image from Discovery News: An explorer is photographed inside tunnels that were allegedly found beneath the Pyramids of Giza. Strictly copyright Andrew Collins, 2009.

UK releases more UFO files. CNN headlines Lemonheads and Jazz lovin' ETs

This is interesting. The UK's Ministry of Defense released more secret UFO documents today, but it isn't the information contained within these so called British "X-Files" that I find as interesting as how CNN characterized it.

If you read the CNN.com article, you're left with little else but lemonheads and jazz lovin' ETs. Don't get me wrong, the British press had there fun dragging poor Agents Mulder and Scully into the fray, but at least they took the time to report on the more compelling evidence. See the Daily Mail for a good breakdown.

Perhaps the reason I find this so interesting, is that I've just been reading how Robert Temple was persecuted by government agencies around the world, the worst of which came from the CIA and NASA.