A Nothing Trail of Silences

This has been an awesome two weeks for science.

The Large Hadron Collider trapped antimatter atoms (38 anti-hydrogen atoms, to be precise).

Then, scientist announces that there may be more than three times the numbers of stars and solar systems in the universe than was previously thought, potentially adding trillions more Earth-like planets.

Now, NASA has announced that a bacterium capable of replacing phosphorous with arsenic has been found. I'm not sure if I can express how potentially momentous this is: phosphorous is one the four main 'building block' elements held to be required for life. This opens up the possible environments for life not only directly but also indirectly, given opportunities for other such substitutions.

SCIENCE IS AWESOME, GUYS.

My bus is running again! This is most excellent, because the other day I was tricked on my way back from campus by a 'modified' route. In this case, 'modified' was code for 'has the same start and ending points, but travels to them via completely different roads.' I suppose 'modified' was much shorter to say.

The pool is running again! This is most excellent because the roof of the pool suffered spontaneous existence failure. It has taken them until now to remove the ceiling from the pool. Unfortunately, this overlapped with the one time of the year when the second pool on campus was down for a 1.5 month maintenance.

There seems to be some sort of improbability field around that pool, as my swimsuit also suffered spontaneous existence failure during my afternoon swim. I thought I could get a little more life out of that one. I was wrong. Other patrons were saved from potential flashing by the presence of a shelf bra. If not for that, I fear that I would have suffered spontaneous existence failure.

In entirely unrelated (and much more awesome) news:

Darwin's finches learned to swim! Or, two types of killer whales found in UK waters. Their diets have diverged, leading to altered morphology and genetically distinct/non-interbreeding populations.

New Agers rejoice! Rare glimpse of the cave of crystals. A video tour of a crystal cave in Mexico, with crystals more than 10 metres long. It's absolutely breath-taking.

Dinosaurs were gingers. And punks. Dinosaur had ginger feathers. Electron microscope studies of preserved feathers allow study of fossilized pigments.

Photosynthetic seaslug! No, really. Photosynthetic sea slug. Not only does it acquire and scavenge chloroplasts from algae, it has incorporated at least 14-15 algal genes into its own genome.