It's that part of Nature where the formerly solid line between Science and Spirituality starts to blur.

If proof of the Existence of the God/Goddess (or whatever you perceive He/She to Be) is ever to be found, it will be at the subatomic level - arguing in favor of what philosophers from Buddha and Aristotle to the present have been saying all along, that the Divine is present in all things.

The topic, of course is quantum physics, the science of the tiniest particles known. These particles, known as "quarks," exhibit what we mortals would consider very odd behavior. 

Six different types of quarks are held together by "gluons" to from protons.  The oddest of these is the recently identified "strange" quark. It literally "boils up" inside a proton and then "simmers back out of existence".

"Technically the strange quark contribution to the proton's charge distribution has proven elusive," said Dr. Derek Leinweber of the the University of Adelaide in Australia.  Working with researchers in Scotland and the U.S., the Australian team has come up with way of more precisely calculate  the properties of these subatomic particles. They used a method called "Lattice Simulations" on high-powered "supercomputers" and combined this with a separate field of physics known as Effective Field Theory. Combining these in a new an novel way has revealed many new clues to the behavior of the elusive "strange" quark.

"There is a huge industry in particle physics with groups of researchers around the world making new measurements that could reveal physics beyond the standard model of the universe," adds Leinweber. "Our result presents a huge challenge to experimental physicists in planning the next generation of experiments."

Scientists added two new members to the catalog of dinosaur species: Umoonasaurus and Opallionectes. The new species belonged to  the plesiosaur group and were described as the equivalent of today's killer whales. Umoonasaurus and Opallionectes lived 115 million years ago in the waters off Australia.

The new species were identified by a team from the University of Adelaide and the South Australian museum from fossils coming from 30 individuals who collected them from an opal mine over the past three decades.

Umoonasaurus was a Rhomaleosaurid - an ancient version of a killer whale -  and was relatively small at about 2.4 meters and had three crest-like ridges on its skull. "Imagine a compact body with four flippers, a reasonably long neck, small head and short tail much like a reptilian seal," said the researchers.