I know this will come as a shock to some of you, but before yesterday, I had never tried yoga. EVER. You know how when you put something off for long enough, it becomes a bigger deal than it needs to be? That’s exactly what happened with yoga and me — It had gotten to the point where I had…
Imagine an infection that made you enthusiastically seek out the presence of grizzly bears, essentially offering yourself up as a tasty snack. Sounds ridiculous or even impossible, right? Oddly enough, it is entirely plausible. The parasite Toxoplasma gondii - a mere single-celled organism - is able to manipulate the brain responses of rodents to the odour of cat urine. The usual fear response is replaced by sexual attraction, so causing individuals to actively seek out areas where they are likely to run into their predators. Toxoplasma gondii requires the feline digestive system in order to sexually reproduce, so by modifying the rodent’s behaviour to cause it to spend more time around cats, it increases the likelihood of the individual ending up exactly where they need it to be - in its stomach.
Ref: House, Vyas & Sapolsky (2011) Predator Cat Odors Activate Sexual Arousal Pathways in Brains of Toxoplasma gondii Infected Rats. PLoS ONE 6(8): e23277.
Supernovae
As frequent as almost every 2 seconds, a massive stellar explosion occurs in the cosmos. This is a Supernovae.
One of the most energetic explosive events known is a supernova. These occur at the end of a star’s lifetime, when its nuclear fuel is exhausted and it is no longer supported by the release of nuclear energy. If the star is particularly massive, then its core will collapse and in so doing will release a huge amount of energy. This will cause a blast wave that ejects the star’s envelope into interstellar space. The result of the collapse may be, in some cases, a rapidly rotating neutron star that can be observed many years later as a radio pulsar.
While many supernovae have been seen in nearby galaxies, they are relatively rare events in our own galaxy. The last to be seen was Kepler’s star in 1604. This remnant has been studied by many X-ray astronomy satellites, including ROSAT. There are, however, many remnants of Supernovae explosions in our galaxy, that are seen as X-ray shell like structures caused by the shock wave propagating out into the interstellar medium. Another famous remnant is the Crab Nebula which exploded in 1054. In this case a pulsar is seen which rotates 30 times a second and emits a rotating beam of X-rays (like a lighthouse). Another dramatic supernova remnant is the Cygnus Loop.
it reminds me of Big Bang
