Thinkin’bout Stuff

Wow!  What a temptation:

AP  2/5/2008 - …  The process aims to create healthy embryos for couples to avoid passing on genes carrying diseases.

The genes being replaced are the mitochondria, a cell’s energy source, which are contained outside the nucleus in a normal female egg. Mistakes in the mitochondria’s genetic code can result in serious diseases like muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, strokes and mental retardation.

Imagine… the potential to wipe out genetic disorders. This would be to our generation what vaccines and antibiotics were to prior generations.

There it is… right there… take it…

The temptation is incredible; maybe it really is the right thing to do.  But the method just doesn’t seem right:

British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases.

Though the preliminary research has raised concerns about the possibility of genetically modified babies, the scientists say that the embryos are still only primarily the product of one man and one woman.

“We are not trying to alter genes, we’re just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones,” said Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University involved in the research.

This is a tough one.  We are “creating” babies that will be free of inherited diseases.  We are “creating” babies…  creating babies…  should we be creating babies? With DNA from two women mixed in a test tube with DNA from one man? Just don’t seem right… then again… a cure for genetic disorders?

What if the improvement to the genetic make-up of the embryo meant mixing DNA from one woman, one man, and a frog? Would that be OK?  Where’s the line?

Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should… but the temptation is incredible, it really is…

So… the ground at Yellowstone Park has been rising at a rate of about 3 inches per year for the last three years, leading experts to believe that magma is filling a crustal magma chamber:

From AP: That is more than three times faster than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923, the researchers said.

“Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock,” Smith said in a statement. “But we have no idea how long this process goes on before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again.”

It’s not unusual for ancient volcano sites like Yellowstone and Long Valley, Calif., to rise and fall, according to the researchers.

The Yellowstone volcanic field was produced by what the researchers described as a plume of hot and molten rock beginning at least 400 miles beneath Earth’s surface and rising to 30 miles underground, where it widens to about 300 miles across.

Blobs of molten rock sometimes rise to refill the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone.

The volcano at Yellowstone produced massive eruptions 2 million, 1.3 million and 642,000 years ago, all larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

So I’m thinkin’…  2 million years ago… 1.3 million years ago… 642,000 years ago….   that’s just about a major eruption every 700,000 years.  We’re due!  Sometime in the next 50,000 to 100,000 years, we are going to have a major volcano erupting in the middle of the US… and some Democrat in the year 52,007 is gonna try to blame this on George Bush.

For those stargazers among us, here is something you don’t want to miss:

From AP - A comet that has unexpectedly brightened in the past couple of weeks and now is visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest.

The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter. The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper.

“This is truly a celestial surprise,” Lewis said. “Absolutely amazing.”

A similar burst in 1892 led to the comet’s discovery by Edwin Holmes.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994,” Lewis said.

Experts aren’t sure how long the comet’s show will last, but estimate it could be weeks — if not months. Using a telescope or binoculars help bring the comet’s details into view, they said.

Hoping to check this out tonight…