When antimatter and matter meet, it's explosive. Literally, they annihilate each other. However, scientists have recently discovered that the two could indeed form together to make a stable molecule. Only for a few nanoseconds though: after that, they explode. It's a love-hate thing.

The new molecule is called a "dipositronium." Unlike a normal molecule, (aside from being part antimatter of course), dipositronium has no nucleus and contains only a pair of electrons and a pair of its antimatter equivalent, the positron. The two pairs bind together like a hydrogen molecule.

Dipositronium has been predicted to exist since 1946 but only now has it been demonstrated long enough in a lab to study. Scientists created the molecule by bombarding porous silica (a kind of quartz) with positron molecules. The positrons combine with electrons, some annihilated on the spot and some combining to make dipositrons. And then exploding.

Although the stable molecule lasts only a quarter of a nanosecond (which is a billionth of a second), that short time is enough for scientists to clue in on the chemistry of matter-antimatter interaction. Eventually, they hope to create an annihilation gamma-ray laser with the new discovery.

Eventually someone will be bombarded with the new gamma-ray technology and get big and green with a penchant for the word "smash."

While most people can no longer imagine going through a day without the convenience of 21st century technology, like the microwave or cellphones, Debbie Bird of UK needs to go through her day without them.

It's not a matter of choice for Debbie. The thing is, she is extra-sensitive to electromagnetic field (emf). Just how sensitive is she? She gets a rather painful skin rash everytime she gets near any object that emits emf, and also gets her eyelids swollen to three times their normal size. Highly inconvenient, if you ask me.

I can no longer do the things that I used to take for granted. My day-to-day life has been seriously affected by EMF. I don't own a microwave. I don't use mobile phones at all. I can't even use a cordless phone. We have a plasma screen TV because the old style one gave out gamma rays, which brought on my reaction.

And as with any afflictions, this allergic reaction ran up their bill, too. Although for this one, it goes beyond just medical bills, but has invaded even their home. To ensure that she will not be exposed to these rays, which have been proven to be harmful to her, they had to redo their house from top to bottom. The paint used for their house is black carbon, ringing up to £ 250 per tin to keep the rays from coming in. And then they had to install clear protective films on every window. Their curtains are silver-plated, and they have to sleep under a mosquito net that is silver-plated as well. All these steps were taken to ensure that Debbie gets protection against radiation.

What seems to be disturbing, though, is how doctors dismiss these symptoms as mere attributes of flu or viruses, and are generally psychosomatic. In fact, they go as far as saying that there really is no strong connection between EMF and poor health.

However, those who understand the plight of Debbie vehemently disagrees. According to them, there are already around 500 people already undergoing treatment for the same affliction, and that there could be about five percent of the population living with it.

After an earlier analysis of gamma ray emission from the black hole located in the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, scientists have come to conclude that the emissions may be the product of dark matter decaying. But other scientists believe the constantly moving magnetic fields around the black hole can become a giant particle accelerator. And when particles collide in extreme speeds, it produces gamma rays.

Gamma-ray observatories have detected energetic gamma rays in the tens of Tera-electron volts (TeV) streaming from the center of the Milky Way outward. David Ballantyne from the University of Arizona led the study investigating on the possible particle acceleration scenario.

Results helped scientists conclude that protons could reach energies of 1000 TeV as they travel outward from the black hole, constantly gaining more and more velocity. This number is 100 times higher than the energies protons will be able to reach in the Large Hadron Collider (to be the world's largest particle accelerator) under construction in Geneva, Switzerland.

Now how about that? Our galaxy's biggest vacuum doubles as a super weapon. Sure beats the ring world Master Chief blew up, eh?

Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered the effects of penicillin in 1928 and now it is used to combat a variety of diseases. Now, a lab disaster may lead to a new cancer drug. Could history repeat itself this time?

Apparently, Katherine Schaefer of the University of Rochester Medical Center was quite irked when her cultured cancer cells died because she made a calculation error. Then she realized that her boo-boo could lead to a drug that could combat one of the world's most dreaded disease.

She and her colleagues were testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator - something that was never expected to do anything with cancer. After the lab error, the team ran several tests and found out that it killed "pretty much every epithelial tumor cell lines we have seen". The compound also killed colon tumors in mice without making them sick.

Schaefer also mentioned that the compound is not prone to resistance - which refers to the ability of cancer cells to evolve mechanisms to pump out the drugs that affects it. Apparently, this is the problem being faced by the U.S. National Cancer Institute developed drug, Taxol.

What exactly is Mindball? As the name suggests, you use your mind power to move the ball. It's quite simple in concept, as two players try to push a small, white ball over to the other player's goal line. And all you need to do is relax. However, there are only two rules: one, players can only use brainwaves to move the ball, and two, a game is won only when you get the ball into the opponent's goal.

Mindball is originally a Swedish game and developed from an earlier prototype called Brainball. To play, players are hooked up to a electroencephalogram (EEG), a machine that records brain activity. Once the headband-like contraption is strapped to the player's head, they will need to exude alpha waves and theta waves, which are attributed to different mental activities. Gamma waves, for example, are at 26 Hz and associated with problem-solving, while alpha waves are at eight to 12 Hz and associated with being relaxed. Lastly, theta waves are at four to eight Hz and mostly associated with drowsiness.

The Mindball Championships would be held at the Science Museum in London, and according to the museum, the winner will proudly bear the title of "Britain's Most Relaxed Mind."

Did you know that there are more than 200 supermassive black holes called Active Galactic Nuclei, or AGN in the local universe? Yup, that's right. And they provide a definitive census of black hole activity, allowing the team of NASA scientists to take into full account many new blackholes that were previously missed, and along the way, they discovered a whole lot of other surprises.

With this census, scientists are excited at the prospect of probing deeper into the universe, and hopefully with the new information that they have gathered, we could gain more understanding and knowledge of this vast blanket of mystery we are relegated in.

Using Swift's Burst Alert Telescope, which is sensitive to the highest-energy X-rays, a scan of the sky is made in between bursts of gamma-rays. Although many AGNs are hidden behind dust and gas which block lower-energy light, such as visible light, they still find no escape from Swift's penetrating gaze, thanks to its highest-energy X-rays. Says the census team leader Richar Mushotzky, "You can't understand the universe without understanding black holes." It is believed that blackhole activity plays a rather pivotal role in star formation. If this was the case, then we just might be looking at the answer to the question of how the universe was made really soon.

The answer to life, the universe and everything... could this be found in blackholes? Or was Douglas Adams right and the answer is actually 42?

Supernovae are a rare phenomenon indeed. Major ones tend to be seen only about once every 10 or 20 years. The most recent supernova, observed by scientists on Earth (before February 2006), occurred in 1998. The supernova (or death of a star) that was seen in 1998 was considered minor by celestial standards.

That explosion didn't even give rise to a black hole, as is common in the case of large exploding stars. A neutron star, common after smaller supernovae, was the final result of the 1998 explosion. The supernova that was observed this February was similar in size to the one in 1998; it was small, if you can call any supernova small.

NASA has a system in place that utilizes available technology to alert scientists as quickly as possible to instances of supernova in the vicinity and quickly pan their instruments and telescopes to gather data about the event. This particular supernova lasted an unusually long time (some 40 minutes); giving NASA's Swift satellite plenty of time to pan over to bring the supernova into view and gather as much data as possible.

"Usually these gamma ray bursts last fractions of a second to a couple hundred seconds," said Alex Filippenko, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. "This lasted many thousands of seconds. "The Swift satellite finds these things as soon as they go off, but the longer they last the more we can watch in real time, and others can turn their telescopes to it in real time."

Scientists continue to speculate about why this supernova lasted so long and what made it so unique. By getting such a detailed view of this most recent supernova event scientists will be better able to answer questions about supernovae from concerned policy makers and even possibly create technologies or methods to mitigate any possible hazards the Earth may face from gamma ray bursts in the future.

Engineers will soon install the first piece of  the GLAST Burst Monitor into the  Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), bringing the project another step closer to launch. Currently, it is scheduled to lift-off in little over a year.

GLAST will study the gamma ray bursts (GRBs) resulting when two neutron stars merger or a large star collapses. "GLAST will...open up a new window in the high energy range," says Charles Meegan, principal investigator of the GLAST Burst Monitor at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

GRBs are just about the most distant phenomena scientists are able to observe. GLAST will need to meet some challenging goals that could rewrite the rules of physics. It will be able to study whether all light travels at the same speed in a vacuum. GLAST team members also hope to study how GRBs occur. "There hasn't really been a satisfactory explanation of the physics that goes on to get all this high energy radiation out in such a short amount of time," says Meegan. "We're hoping that measurements over a wider spectrum will contribute to the solution."

The mission may also test a theory that attempts to unify the laws of physics. Known as the "Unified Field Theory," proposes the existence of a fourth spatial dimension.

GLAST be launched aboard a Delta 2 Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air in September 2007. The mission is designed to last five years, but the team hopes they can squeeze up to ten years out of the device.

After almost half a century of intergalactic eavesdropping, Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has yet to report any signs of contact. Does this mean we're truly alone? Or is SETI aiming at a dead spot in the universe? SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak says a 46-year long search is not the same as a thorough one and, no, he doesn't think we're alone.

"The number of star systems we’ve carefully examined is only about a thousand. That’s a trifling sample compared with the several hundred billion suns that stud the Milky Way, and of little statistical significance. It’s comparable to initiating a quest for Americans who play the oboe, but considering the search meaningful after interrogating only two people," is how he described it.

It's no surprise Shostak gets a lot of email from folks with their own ideas on why SETI has turned up empty handed after all these years. He took the top four reasons and added his opinion to each:

1. "You’re counting on the aliens using communication technology (radio, light) that’s oh-so-last century. They will be far beyond this."

In other words, SETI’s technical approach is wrong. Some have suggested looking for gamma rays, gravity waves, or taking advantage of "hyperdimensional physics." Shostak says gamma rays are wasteful since they require enormous amount of energy per bit. Gravity waves are difficult to produce produce ("You need to shake planets or something similar") and hard to detect. In addition gravity waves is not known to move faster than the speed of light.

As for "hyperdimensional physics" Shostak says that might work if they knew what it was. He is not discounting using methods based on undiscovered laws of the universe that will allow sending of bits from one place to another more cheaply than light and radio, or faster. But they're waiting for someone to discover these new laws first before they adjust their experiment accordingly.

2. "If hi-tech societies or thinking machines were out there, they’d have colonized the Galaxy by now. Clearly, we’re alone… lone… lone."

The Fermi Paradox assumes that if sophisticated societies are common, they should also be ubiquitous. But if you look out the window and don't see large animals with long, prehensile noses does that mean elephants don’t exist on this Earth? "To use the Fermi Paradox as a reason for the lack of a SETI signal is to make a very big extrapolation from a very local observation. Seems chancy to me," say Shostak.

3. "The aliens don’t want to communicate with us. Look at what we’re doing to the planet!"

Shostak says this is a self-centered view to think that what we do to our planet would matter to them.

4. "You SETI types are just looking in the wrong places. We know where the extraterrestrials are: on a planet in the Zeta Reticuli system."

According to Shostak he likes this explanation the best, even though it’s the worst. Zeta Reticuli is the star system that was the supposed hometown of aliens who reportedly abducted social worker Betty Hill and her husband in 1961. The system’s identification is based on a "star map" Betty drew after their release. But Shostak clarifies that, as a matter of fact SETI did look at both of Z. Reticuli’s stellar components during SETI's observing run in Australia ten years ago and "the aliens, for their part, remained coy."

China is gearing up for their moon probe! After predicting that their will be a manned lunar landing for China in 2024, China is now gearing to set up radio telescopes to monitor that country’s first lunar orbiter, Chang’e 1, according to Li Yan, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Yunnan Observatory.

This monitoring project just goes to show that China is indeed more than capable of monitoring and tracking their future Moon-orbiting satellites. Spread out in distance from each other, the radio dishes are set up in Beijing, Shanghai, the southwestern Yunnan Province, and the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The testing was conducted in an agreement between the CAS and the European Space Agency. Every four hours, the satellite circled the Moon and the telescopes were able to detect half the orbit, or about two hours. This Moon probe is based upon the country’s Dongfanghong III satellite platform and other technology. Chang’e 1 is on track to be tested at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province in December. If the probe’s readiness is green-lighted it will be launched in April 2007.

Aside from that, Chang'e 1 will also sport a stereo camera system that will chart the lunar surface, an altimeter to measure the distance between the spacecraft and the lunar surface, a gamma/Xray spectrometer to study the overall composition and radioactive components of the Moon, a microwave radiometer to map the thickness of the lunar regolith, and a system of space environment monitors to collect data on the solar wind and near-lunar region. From the looks of that alone, it seems that there is a lot on Chang'e 1's shoulders.