
(via ipostepicshit)
A new vending machine has been released which can print any book within minutes.
The Espresso Book Machine has access to 500,000 different books - the same as 23.6 miles of shelf space - and can even churn out a fresh copy of Crime and Punishment in just nine minutes.
Pages are printed at a rate of over 100 per minute and are then pressed, glued and cut to produce a pristine book.
Users simply pick the book they would like on a screen and wait for it to be printed … it certainly is a novel way of getting a new book.i especially enjoyed the pun.
The gods old and new have listened.
(via quote-book)
(via narcissablack)
Asteroid’s Make Life’s Raw Materials
Were asteroids the factories that created life’s building blocks? For the first time, rocks from an asteroid have been shown to power the synthesis of life’s essential chemicals.
The asteroid in question fell to Earth on 28 September 1969, landing on the outskirts of the village of Murchison in Victoria, Australia. Tests showed it was laced with amino acids and some of the chemicals found in our genetic material.
The discovery suggested that space was not the chemically sterile place it was once thought to be, and that organic chemistry was widespread. It hinted that the molecules life needed to get started could have been produced in space, before dropping to Earth.
But how did those molecules form? Raffaele Saladino of the University of Tuscia in Viterbo, Italy, and colleagues wondered if they could have been made deep inside the asteroids from which some meteorites break off. The team knew that a simple chemical present in space, called formamide, can be transformed into many biomolecules, so they used that as their starting point.
They obtained 1 gram of the Murchison meteorite, ground it to powder and removed all the organic molecules, leaving just the mineral. They mixed this with formamide and heated it to 140°C for 48 hours. The reaction produced nucleic acids - essential building blocks of DNA and RNA - as well as the amino acid glycine, carboxylic acids and a precursor to sugar (Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, DOI: 10.1007/s11084-011-9239-0). This suggests the meteorite’s parent asteroid was a chemical factory, Saladino says.
Research on asteroids have been going on for quite some time. We all know there are organic molecules on them.
(via galaxyclusters)
Don’t you hate it when your planet is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
You shouldn’t. The plans have been available at the office on Alpha Centuri for 50 of your Earth years.
(via picture-perfect-world)