How can we protect our soldiers? Make them invisible! The US military is developing "Quantum Stealth" camouflage uniforms that can make soldiers completely invisible by bending light waves around them. This fabric can even fool night vision goggles.

In the December 10th edition of the Daily Mail, Damien Gayle reports that "its development is apparently so secret the Canadian company behind it says it cannot even show the technology in action and offers only mock ups of its effect on their website."
read more

Using NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, astronomers are beginning to find Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. A new analysis of Kepler data shows that about 17% of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury. Since the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized worlds out there. The odds are that at least ONE of these harbors intelligent life.

Altogether, researchers have found that 50% of stars have a planet of Earth-size or larger in a close orbit. By adding larger planets, which have been detected in wider orbits up to the orbital distance of the Earth, this number reaches 70%. In other words, practically all Sun-like stars have planets.
read more

This year’s flu season has been declared an "epidemic:" with 41 states reporting widespread and severe outbreaks of flu this season, researchers are wondering why less than half of the American population has gotten a flu shot. Due to the way the flu virus mutates, this year’s vaccine is only 62% effective, but that’s better than nothing!

Despite widespread knowledge that a vaccine is the best way to reduce the chances of catching and spreading the flu, even three of the four main anchors on a popular morning TV show recently admitted they had not gotten a flu shot (until they did so live on the air).
read more

In the wake of what is only the LATEST massacre in a US school, the head of the NRA (National Rifle Association) gave a speech that emphasized the violence we tolerate–even enjoy–in our media–movies, TV and video games. He suggested that was the place to start in order to prevent such violence in the future.

While gun control advocates scoffed at this, and I agree it’s somewhat of a cop-out–that restricting the sale of machine guns and high capacity bullet magazines might be more effective–I think there’s something in it that we all need to think about.
read more