Merit-bound Alley

As I said, I have been reading voraciously. As it turns out, the past month has had some huge scientific goings-on that I will summarize:

• Astronomers have discovered a new type of variable white dwarf star. This new type is one that has shed it’s hydrogen and helium shells to expose the carbon shell underneath earning them the name “hot carbon white dwarf”. Only the addition of “carbon” to the name kept that from being a porn title. This is the first new type of variable white dwarf to have been discovered in 25 years. h/t goes to the MacDonald Observatory for the find, and to Tom’s Astronomy Blog for the story.
• You may not know this, but less than 5% (4.6% to be exact) of the universe is normal matter. What is normal matter? The screen you’re looking at, the chair your sitting in, the brain interpreting this post, the stars, galaxies, etc. are normal matter. The other type, dark matter, has only recently been detecetd. Of that 4.6% of normal matter, we have only been able to find half of it up until now, when scientists found evidence of the rest in filaments of super hot, diffuse gas in between galaxy clusters. From this, scientists are able to guess the amount of the rest of the matter out there in this state, but as Phil Plait says, the current data set is exactly one, so stay tuned.
• Now, we all know that the platypus evolved somehow, but this ridiculous-looking animal has been used in the past by creationists as evidence again evolution because of it’s freakish mix of apparently unrelated parts and systems. Well, I guess the creationists that were still foolish enough to use this as evidence against have to abandon it, like their brethren with a better ability to learn did years ago. Study of the monotreme’s gene structure (I always read that as metronome) is starting to paint the picture of how this bizarre venomous, duck-billed, lizard/marsupial, nipple-less lactator came to be the horrid little monster that it is. No offense, platypi. h/t to Pharyngula for reigniting the nightmare
• If the platypus doesn’t disgust you, this will. They finally dissected that giant squid. The pictures are vomitous. Enjoy them before your eyes leap out of your head in self-defense! This also brought to you via Pharyngula, winner of the Gross Science Twofer, a new award from MB-A the trophy for which is a bust of my middle finger.
• Speaking of eyes, the good folks at Expelled Exposed have released a video of how the eye evolved (it’s the bottom video). I think you’ll find it fun and educational! Also, it flies in the face of ID proponents who classify the eye in their list of “irreducibly complex” systems.

I was going to do a politics summary of the same type as this, but I can easily summarize it as “a crop of assholes have acted like children”.