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link: It's Coming: New York-Size Iceberg
With a gargantuan crack slowly splitting it apart, Antarctica’s fastest-melting glacier is about to lose a chunk of ice larger than all of New York City, scientists say.
The crevasse stretches 19 miles (30 kilometers) long and up to 260 feet (80 meters) wide, as shown in a picture taken by NASA’s Terra satellite in Octoberand featured this week as a NASA Image of the Day.
Snaking across the floating tongue of the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica, the crack is expected to create an iceberg 350 square miles (907 square kilometers)—versus 303 square miles (785 square kilometers) for Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx combined, according to NASA.
As for when the iceberg might shove off, “that is very difficult to predict,” said oceanographer Eric Rignot of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “but in the coming months for sure.”
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link: Domo Arigato: The Science Behind What Makes A Hit Song

The anatomy of a hit song has remained a mystery to researchers looking to dissect what makes some songs soar to the top of the charts and others land with an embarrassing flop.
Thus far, figuring out what qualities may link very different anthems — say, Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” and LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” — has been more a matter of alchemy than science.
Now European researchers are challenging that notion. Using 50 years’ worth of hit songs on Britain’s top 40 charts, they’ve come up with a computer program that can predict whether a song will catch fire on the airwaves or fizzle out. -
link: Shocker: Mars Surface Inhabitable

But seriously, we all know martians live UNDERGROUND…
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link: Invasion: "Alien" Particles Entering Our Galaxy
For the first time, a NASA spacecraft has directly observed “alien” particles that came from beyond our solar system, astronomers announced today.
The discovery not only gives us a glimpse of what exists in the so-called interstellar medium—the matter between stars—but also offers clues to the anatomy of our local galactic neighborhood.
Orbiting Earth some 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) away, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft was able to snag samples of hydrogen, oxygen, and neon that came from interstellar space. -
link: Burmese Pythons Looking To Colonize The Everglades
A team studied road surveys of mammals in the Everglades National Park before and after pythons became common.

Researchers found a strong link between the spread of pythons and drops in recorded sightings of racoons, rabbits, bobcats and other species.
In PNAS journal, they report that observations of several mammal species have declined by 90% or more.
What mammals are next?… I think you know…