Humans are making large developments toward the realization of their outer space dreams. There is one thing that stands in the way, however: cosmic rays. Created from many elements including hydrogen and uranium, there's a possibility that cosmic rays may pose a great health risk to astronauts. More in the full article.

If you were wondering just why we haven't yet stepped foot onto Mars, here's quite the revelation: it seems that a certain dangerous element that all astronauts are exposed to whenever they reach orbit is stopping NASA from getting there. And no, it's not space gremlins or anything like that. All the perplexing details in the full article.

South Korea's Ko San will be blasting off to the International Space Station bringing with him his country's national dish, kimchi.

Apparently, it took three government research institutes, millions of dollars and years in order to make this thing happen. Find out more after the jump!

The Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays from our galaxy. However, a type of cosmic ray with ultra-high energies was discovered 95 years ago. Scientists didn't know where these cosmic rays came from because particles outside the galaxy can't travel far enough to hit Earth. Now they believe that the cosmic rays come from energy that escaped from a black hole.

Read more in the full article and find out if the Silver Surfer has anything to do with it.

While most of us are worried about the planet getting warmer and the polar caps melting, some are apparently looking at the bright side. Their battle cry? Climate change is natural and worse things have happened before.

According to an article published in Canada.com, the only thing constant with climate, as the case is with all things in the world, is change. The planet runs from hot to cold throughout the eons, and a lot of it depends on solar climate. The bottom line? Everything's fine and can't be helped, so just chill out.

The Canadian website reports that it was warmer by 3 degrees celsius 6,000 years ago and all ended up well leading to today. 10,000 years ago, the planet's temperature rose 100 times faster than it does today, and everything's all dandy when we came around.

It was also explained that even if resources are spent on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, the sun and cosmic rays ultimately determine how hot or cold it gets. The sun, according to the site, does not glow in constant fashion and there are such days when our home star is dimmer or brighter. When it's brighter, there is less rain, while when it dims down, cosmic rays penetrate the atmosphere and cause more cloud formation for more rain.

The article even suggested that as big of a concern as global warming is now, it might only be a matter of time before global cooling becomes an issue. That, of course, may be some millennia away as climate change takes its sweet time when it comes to showing us its different flavors. Will the woolly mammoths make a comeback? Who knows?

Some 300 million light years away from the Earth lurks what scientists think is a group of dark monsters that may hold the keys to some questions that has boggled scientific minds for decades. If you want the less figurative version, researchers at the Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico are looking at distant supermassive black holes as the holders of the clues as to where cosmic rays originate and what the bizarre "noises" scientists hear are.

Supermassive black holes were only recently discovered and have been known to dwell at the center of some galaxies. These bodies are black as space and are nearly invisible if not for the gas, dust and light that they suck in never to be released again. As the gas and light spiral towards the abyss, they become superheated and begin to blaze bright, making it possible for them to be detected.

That's exactly what the Los Alamos team found. In fact, this one had a trail of superheated matter 6 million light years in diameter. To funnel in such mass requires a gravitational pull of godly proportions, leading the study team to theorize that there may be a cluster of black holes involved. What's even more amazing is the fact that this cluster doesn't have a galaxy surrounding it. Research head Philipp Kroonberg wonders:

What kind of mechanism could create a cloud of such enormous dimensions that does not coincide with any single galaxy or galaxy cluster? Is that same mechanism connected to the mysterious source of ultra high energy cosmic rays that come from beyond our galaxy?

Though much still remains unanswered, the researchers say that these black holes may in fact be a catalyst for transforming matter and light into cosmic rays. The noise that was earlier mentioned may in fact be a remnant of the big bang that gave birth to the universe. Whatever the case, the astronomers are digging deep into it using the Arecibo Space Telescope in Puerto Rico. We'll tell you as soon as they find anything new.

There are lots of stuff science can't explain. Supernatural phenomena, the Bermuda Triangle, and aliens have ever since been among the favorite subjects of tinfoil conspiracy theorists everywhere. But what about the things that really turn scientists heads?

We're pretty sure you've heard of the placebo effect unless you've lived under a rock for the last couple of decades. It works like this: for example a person experiencing pain is given a blue painkiller for a few days then on the last day, you fill a blue pill with sugar and the pain still goes away. Does the mind override the body's biochemistry?

Next up is the cosmologists' double jeopardy question. Why is temperature uniform in the entire universe? You see the universe' edges are 28 billion light years apart, and it's approximated to be 14 billion years old. With that said, it's baffling to think that the temperature would equalize on both edges (and the stuff in between) when light - or heat radiation - from both edges haven't even met.

Comic book fans would know cosmic rays since they caused the Fantastic 4's superpowers. Cosmic rays do exist, but that isn't the question. Cosmic rays are superpowered protons (sometimes heavy atomic nuclei) that travel through space at almost the speed of light. According to Einstein, cosmic rays that reach the Earth should have slowed down and lost most of their energy so their maximum possible energy is just at 5 × 1019 electronvolts (Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit). Scientists have detected cosmic rays over that limit but couldn't find any sources within our galaxy.

Homeopathy is basically treating an illness with an ultra diluted solution of something that would produce the same symptoms as the illness itself. Practitioners of this sort of alternative medicine use natural stuff like charcoal, spider venom and the like to produce healing results. Scientists argue that the solutions have been diluted with water so much that there probably aren't any molecules of the original cure left. During a Belfast study, they had positive results but still couldn't explain how.

These are just four of the things that science couldn't (at least for now) explain. For the rest of the unexplainables like dark matter and tetraneutrons, click the Read link below.

One of the challenges engineers face in designing a Mars Expedition craft is how to shield astronauts from radiation during the long voyage. The obvious solution - heavy metal protective panels - would add substantial mass to the spacecraft, requiring far more fuel and reducing the amount of resources that could be taken along.

Astronauts in the vacuum of outer space are constantly exposed to cosmic rays. Some of these come from the Sun; others from outside our solar system. In low orbit, the Earth's magnetic field provides protection, but on a journey to Mars, the astronauts would suffer full exposure. These cosmic rays could result in a number of illnesses, including cancer.

John Slough of the University of Washington in Seattle believes the answer lies in a few grams of hydrogen in the form of a plasma surrounding the spacecraft. NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) has awarded Slough's team $75,000 to explore the idea's feasibility. Basically, a high voltage device on the spacecraft's surface would tear the hydrogen into its constituent protons and electrons. The resulting plasma would then be ejected into space, creating a protective cloud around the spacecraft. A wire mesh outside the spacecraft would enclose the plasma cloud. Electricity supplied to the mesh would keep an electrical current running in the plasma cloud, confining it near the spacecraft.

According to Slough the plasma's magnetic field would deflect harmful cosmic rays, as effectively as several inches of aluminium shielding.

Researchers are currently trying to determine  the optimum size of the plasma bubble.  Slough believes the cloud should be about 100 metres across. At that size, the mesh would have to be stowed for launch and deployed once the craft reached in space. The wire mesh would made of superconducting material that could operate at  high temperatures, since it would be exposed to naked sunlight.

Future spacecraft may be powered by advanced engines that use plasma as a propellant. In that case, the discarded plasma could be recycled. According to Slough, "You're protected by your own exhaust."

We have long been caught in the mystery of parallel universes and other dimensions. Just look at the slew of movies running on this theme (i.e The One, Sliding Doors, Space Odyssey, etc.) Even with the most powerful and sensitive instruments, scientists have only uncovered a meager 4% of the Universe. The other 96% is unchartered territory made up of dark matter and equally dark energy.

But new theories beg to disagree with this previously believed notions. What other scientists are saying that it may not be unknown after all. That it could just be familiar gravity acting strangely over large distances. As shown by Pioneer 10 and 11 in the 1980s when astronomers noticed that some unseen force was slowing the down.

Physicists Varun Sahnia and Yuri Shtanov, to shed some light to this situation, proposed APSIS - an Artificial Planetary System in Space. This spacecraft will launch a miniature solar system in L2 Lagrange Point, where the forces of gravity from the Earth and the Sun cancels out, to probe extra-dimensional gravity and MOND.

This artificial solar system would be enclosed within the larger spacecraft that would protect it from cosmic rays, dust, solar wind, and anything else that could interact with the orbiting “planets”. Even the spacecraft’s fuel tank, which will decrease in mass over time would need to be positioned as far away from the mini-planets as possible so they don’t experience changing gravity over time.

Other applications of this proposed project is for cosmologists to test other theories of gravity, extra dimensions, dark energy and dark matter.

This news makes me glad that I am driving a banged-up Toyota. Apparently, newer car models are more prone to the possibility of being damaged by cosmic rays (radiation consisting of energetic particles originating beyond the Earth that impinge on the its atmosphere). The reason for this is that cars of today have evolved from purely mechanical machines to highly integrated drive-by-wire electronics system.

This poses a dilemma to car manufacturers, desginers and engineers. They must continually add complex electronics to each successive model year while still maintaining high standards for quality and reliability, all while meeting the stringent demands of low-cost, high-volume production.

To solve these problems, many designers are turning to FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array) as a flexible, low-cost solution for their next-generation automotive electronics designs.

But cars which boast of the latest technologies are in trouble because of "Neutron- induced Firm Errors" which is basically the bombardment of neutrons from space. This might sound too Star Trekkish to most (it does to me!) but it could actually happened.

When it does, it may cause the host system (your car's intricate electrical set-up) to malfunction. Looking into the future, this problem will only worsen as future deep submicron manufacturing processes will continue to create substantial challenges for designers of FPGA-based automotive electronics.

The consequences of a neutron-induced error could be severe. If a configuration bit upsets and changes state, it could change the entire functionality of the device, resulting in significant data corruption or the forwarding of spurious signals into other circuits in the system.

In extreme cases, the undetected existence for a prolonged period of a firm error can become a "hard error" and cause the destruction of the device itself or the system containing the device - a neutron-induced firm error that misroutes a signal creating an internal short is one common example of this type of problem.