science

Modern-day athletes often nurse their muscles with supplement shakes or chocolate milk after a workout. Similarly, gladiators, the sports stars of the Roman Empire, may have guzzled a drink made from the ashes of charred plants — a rich source of calcium, which is essential for building bones, researchers report this month in the journal PLOS One.

"Plant ashes were evidently consumed to fortify the body after physical exertion, and to promote better bone healing," Fabian Kanz, a forensic anthropologist at the Medical University of Vienna who led the research, said in a statement. "Things were similar then to what we do today."

The genetic material DNA can survive a flight through space and re-entry into Earth's atmosphere -- and still pass on genetic information. A team of scientists from UZH obtained these astonishing results during an experiment on the TEXUS-49 research rocket mission.

On January 28th 1986 the challenger broke apart as it ascended into our atmosphere. Today marks the anniversary of the brave women and men who risked everything to further human knowledge. -JH

Via PBS:

Ever wondered why your cats don't share your appreciation of Johann Sebastian Bach or aren't as enthusiastic to rock out to an old Led Zeppelin record? Turns out, it's not their style.

Cats, in fact, do enjoy music, but they don't enjoy human music — at least according to new research. A study recently published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science believes that in order for our feline friends to enjoy music, it has to be species-specific music.

New atmospheric data for the gas giants indicates that carbon is abundant in its dazzling crystal form, they say.

Lightning storms turn methane into soot (carbon) which as it falls hardens into chunks of graphite and then diamond.

These diamond "hail stones" eventually melt into a liquid sea in the planets' hot cores, they told a conference.

The biggest diamonds would likely be about a centimetre in diameter - "big enough to put on a ring, although of course they would be uncut," says Dr Kevin Baines, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Bill Nye is the 12th Doctor!