Well, maybe not directly, but indirectly? They will affect our environmental preservation measures simply by maybe existing.

These days green is big. The environmental movement has been around for decades, but issues such as global warming, recycling, and saving the planet have never been so much in the spotlight. Though many corporations have arrived late in the game (cynics might suspect they saw another type of green in “green marketing”), many New Agers and believers in the mysterious and paranormal have long incorporated environmentalism into their beliefs.

Among people who claim to have been abducted or contacted by space aliens, messages about world peace and warnings of impending environmental disaster are common.

Read the rest here.

I am intrigued by the design of this stadium. It is presented as being unique compared to the design of newer ballparks.

The Tampa Bay Rays this afternoon revealed a bold plan for a new waterfront baseball stadium at one end of a dramatically transformed St. Petersburg downtown.

The Rays’ plans call for a $450-million, open-air, 34,000-seat stadium to open in 2012 at the current site of Al Lang Field. On the other end of downtown at Tropicana Field, the team proposes a massive retail and residential development.

Read the rest here and view the visionary slide show here.

Yeah this thing is pretty big.

This was a bug you couldn’t swat and definitely couldn’t step on.

British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever.

How big? Bigger than you, and at two metres long as big as some Smart cars.

Read the rest here.

Not sure what the benefit is of a mouse not fearing a cat, I would guess that that type of fearlessness would lead to a lot of mouse deaths. But, here’s the stuff:

A team of University of Tokyo researchers led by professors Hitoshi Sakano and Ko Kobayakawa have announced they have genetically engineered a mouse that does not fear cats, simply by controlling its sense of smell. By tweaking genes to disable certain functions of the olfactory bulb — the area of the brain that receives information about smells directly from olfactory receptors in the nose — the researchers were able to create a “fearless” mouse that does not try to flee when it smells cats, foxes and other predators.

Read the rest here.

I can believe it.

It’s a new Da Vinci code but this time it could be for real.

An Italian musician and computer technician claims to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” raising the possibility that the Renaissance genius might have left behind a sombre composition to accompany the scene depicted in the 15th-century wall painting.

This kinda makes me think of the Aphex Face, but in reverse, and from further in the past.

Read the rest here.

These things (the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, to be more precise) are still running and still exploring Mars. Mars, what a wonderful place. A place where two space rovers can flourish unexpectedly.

NASA announced it was extending for the fifth time the mission of Mars space probes Spirit and Opportunity, in their indefatigable exploration of the Red planet.

The two robots touched down three weeks apart on Mars in January 2004 for an expected 90-day mission that instead could stretch out to 2009, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on its website.

Read the rest here.