funny pictures and bizarre news

At first glance it appears like a giant tennis ball with a speck of dirt.

But this extraordinary image, taken by an amateur astronomer, shows the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Telescope passing in front of the sun.

It is the first time they have been photographed together making a ’solar transit’ and came several minutes before Atlantis made contact with the telescope and attached to it.

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The Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope are seen in silhouette (lower left hand corner). The sun appears ghostly because in order for the picture to be taken a prism attached to the camera filtered out most of the sunlight

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In this close up of the above image, the Space Shuttle can be seen just above the Hubble Space Telescope

The shuttle has been sent up to do repairs on the Hubble for the fifth and final time. Astronauts on board are replacing the Wide Field Camera 2 and NASA hopes to get another five to 10 years of dazzling views of the cosmos from Hubble as a result of the upgrades.

NASA are launching the James Webb Space Telescope in 2014, which will replace Hubble once it becomes defunct.

The stunning images were taken by Thierry Legault, an engineer famed for taking pictures of space from his back garden in Paris.

These images, however, were taken from Florida, 60 miles south of the Kennedy Space Centre from where the Space Shuttle blasted off on Tuesday.

‘I brought the equipment from France with me,’ he told the Mail Online.

‘All calculations had been made by the specialized site www.calsky.com so that I knew weeks before when the transit would be visible from Florida.

‘Once there it only took a few minutes to install the telescope on a big video tripod.’

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In this image only the silhouette of the Space Shuttle can be seen. It launched from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday and was pictured passing across the Sun on Wednesday

To be able to get any kind of picture Mr Legault faced a challenging set of circumstances.

Firstly he was photographing objects only 35m and 13m in length that were travelling at 15,5000mph at a distance of 370miles, as well as being against the full glare of the sun.

‘However, the greatest challenge was to chase a hole in the clouds that were numerous in the area because there are currently many thunderstorms over Florida. I had to take the photo just at the right instant,’ he told the Mail Online.

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Thierry Legault in his back garden in Paris. The astrophotographer has captured impressive pictures of the sun

To achieve his images he only used his £8,000 Takahashi refractor telescope, a £2,000 21MP Canon camera and a Baader solar prism, which acts to reflect away most of the sun’s light.

The sun appears a ghostly yellow because the only about five per cent of the rays are permitted through the prism.

Finally Mr Legault used the lowest light sensitivity setting (ISO 100) and a very high shutter speed on his camera, exposing the sensor for only 1/8000 second.

‘Every time one of my photos works it is very satisfying, especially when it is of a unique event like this one,’ Mr Legault said.

The French engineer has been interested in astronomy ever since he saw Saturn’s rings through a telescope when he was 13.

He has captured spectacular snaps of Mars and Saturn, the craters on the moon and nebulas millions of light years away. His images have been published in books and magazines around the world.

His latest image reveals Atlantis performing a tricky manoeuvre to grapple on to Hubble. The astronaut crew have now been in orbit attached to the telescope for three days.

Astronaut Andrew Feustel works on the Hubble Space Telescope on the first of five STS-125 spacewalks

Yesterday mission specialists John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel overpowered a stubborn bolt and successfully installed a new piano-sized camera in the Hubble Space Telescope, the first step to making the observatory better than ever.

The repair job – all the more dangerous because of the high, debris-ridden orbit – got off to a slow and rocky start.

The pair had trouble removing the old camera from the telescope because a bolt was stuck. They fetched extra tools, but none seemed to work.

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The Hubble Space Telescope has been in orbit 350miles above Earth since 1990

Finally, Mission Control urged the astronauts to use as much force as possible, even though there was a risk the bolt might break. If that had happened, the old camera would be stuck inside, leaving no room for its souped-up replacement.

‘OK, here we go,’ Feustel said. ‘I think I’ve got it. It turned. It definitely turned.’ And then: ‘Woo-hoo, it’s moving out!’

The extra effort paid off but put the astronauts a little behind schedule in their first spacewalk of shuttle Atlantis’ mission. In all, five high-risk spacewalks are planned to fix Hubble’s broken parts and plug in higher-tech science instruments.

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Astronaut Mike Massimino, who is sharing his space experience on Twitter, is pictured on the flight deck of space shuttle Atlantis

Atlantis and its crew are traveling in an especially high orbit, 350 miles above Earth, that is littered with pieces of smashed satellites. A 4-inch piece of space junk passed within a couple miles of the shuttle Wednesday night, just hours after the shuttle grabbed Hubble. Even something that small could cause big damage.

For the first time, the shuttle Endeavour is on standby in case it needs to rush to the rescue.

Once the sticky bolt was freed, Feustel pulled out the old camera, the size of a baby grand piano.

‘This has been in there for 16 years, Drew,’ said Grunsfeld. ‘It didn’t want to come out,’ Feustel replied.

The spacewalkers followed up with the installation of the replacement camera. ‘Let there be light,’ Grunsfeld said as ground controllers checked the power hookups. Everything tested fine.

The Hubble Space Telescope will be replaced in 2014 by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

From inside Atlantis, spacewalk overseer Michael Massimino congratulated Grunsfeld and Feustel for ‘adjusting to the curve ball that was thrown at you.’

With the spacewalk approaching the four-hour mark, the two quickly got started on their next chore, replacing a computer data unit that broke down last fall. Also on their to-do list: hooking up a docking ring so a robotic craft can guide the telescope into the Pacific years from now.

The newly inserted wide-field and planetary camera – worth $132 million – will allow astronomers to peer deeper into the universe, to within 500 million to 600 million years of creation.

Another two-man team will venture out today for the second spacewalk.

President Barack Obama waded into an impassioned outcry from anti-abortion campaigners as he prepared to speak Sunday at one of America’s most prestigious Catholic universities.Obama was to deliver the commencement address for graduating students and receive a honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame, pitting him headlong into the nation’s culture wars on an issue that he has tried hard to finesse.

Hours before the president’s scheduled speech here at 1800 GMT, a few hundred activists lined the streets leading to the campus entrance holding signs denouncing Obama’s visit.

“This nation’s got blood on its hands and we’re going to pay the price for it,” said David McWilliams, 51, who drove 100 miles to stand with a pair of red gloves and a t-shirt with the words “Mr. Obama tear down this law: Roe v. Wade” spelled out with black and red tape.

A plane dragging a banner with a graphic photo of an aborted fetus flew circles over South Bend, Indiana as the protestors sang Amazing Grace to drown out the sound of a handful of counter-protestors chanting: “Not the church. Not the state. We will decide our fate.”

AFP Photo: A pro-life protestor demonstrates outside the campus of Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana….

“There are millions of women whose right to abortion is being compromised by these Christian fascists,” said Sunsara Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Local media reported the arrests of at least 10 trespassers by university police but the campus appeared largely free of disturbances as well-dressed families held picnics ahead of the ceremony.

Father Richard McBrien, a theology professor at the 167-year-old university, said the invitation did not imply approval of the Democratic president’s stances on abortion or stem-cell research.

“There are other positions he has taken, whether it’s on immigration or poverty or whatever, which are entirely consistent with Catholic social teaching,” he said on Fox News Sunday.

“If we required 100 percent agreement with the Catholic Church’s official teaching from everyone who speaks at or gets an honorary degree from a Catholic university, we would then not have any politicians of either party.”

But Priests for Life national director Frank Pavone, who was leading an alternative service for Notre Dame graduates boycotting Obama, said the university and Obama were “trivializing abortion.”

“We’re tired of looking at abortion as on an equal level with other issues. It’s not,” Father Pavone told the same Fox program, while noting that Obama’s honorary degree was in law.

“Law is for the protection of human rights. The president admitted on the campaign trail he doesn’t know when the child (fetus) gets human rights. How can you defend human rights if you don’t know who has them?” he said.

Pavone highlighted a new Gallup poll that said for the first time since the organization began surveying the question in 1995, most Americans identify themselves as “pro-life” rather than “pro-choice.”

In the poll released Friday, 51 percent of respondents said they were opposed to abortion while 42 percent said they for a woman’s right to choose.

The controversy comes as Obama prepares to name his first nominee to the Supreme Court, a pick sure to be excoriated by some in the Republican Party if he or she is viewed as too liberal on the abortion question.

The president has attempted to defuse one of the most emotive issues in US public life by arguing that while abortion should remain legal, the government should do all it can to limit unwanted pregnancies.

But he has angered the anti-abortion lobby by reversing predecessor George W. Bush’s restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research and for family-planning groups that carry out or facilitate abortions overseas.

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who is a Catholic, said Notre Dame was stamping its “imprimatur” on Obama by giving him an honorary degree.

“The president should speak, but the degree should not be conferred,” he said on NBC.

However, just 28 percent of Catholics surveyed in a recent Pew Center poll thought Notre Dame was wrong to invite Obama, while half said it was the right thing to do.

Obama also managed to carry the Catholic vote in the November 4 election and was the first Democrat since 1964 to win the midwestern state of Indiana, where Notre Dame is located.

Obama may address abortion in his speech but he is not going to “dwell on the things that divide us,” senior White House advisor David Axelrod said on PBS television.

A man lost 23,000 euros ($31,180) to the wind when an envelope with the money he had stuck in the passenger seat pocket of his convertible blew away during a test drive in northern Germany.The cash — in 500, 200, and 100 euro notes — fluttered across the motorway in the midst of speeding traffic near the city of Hanover, police said.

The man, 23, contacted police immediately, who then blocked the motorway in both directions for nearly half an hour. Eight police officers assisted the man in retrieving his notes and were able to recover 20,000 euros.

“The remaining 3,000 euros have not been found,” a police spokeswoman said, but warned treasure hunters of searching for any bills and keeping them, saying that was illegal.

(Reporting by Jacob Comenetz)

Look, people, if we’re going to solve this whole energy crisis thing, we’re going to have to think outside the box. Way the hell outside.

Fortunately, the alternative energy gold rush is full of researchers and companies doing just that. And what they’ve found out is you can get energy from pretty much any damned thing. Such as…

People have been burning feces for fuel probably since some cave man first did it by (hilarious) accident. Animal fecal matter is already used in biogas generators in places like zoos and farms, and San Francisco is starting to collect dog and cat feces to produce methane. Seems like it would take a lot of cat shit to power a city but we’re sure they know what they’re doing.

Collecting human feces these days is a different matter though, as most of us aren’t willing to poop in a bucket and take it out with the recyclables.

And the ones that are are just way too into it.

Thankfully, we have babies. Babies (and seniors!) poop into a handy-dandy little fecal collection unit known as a diaper. Unfortunately, the destination is usually the landfill and about 27 billion of these little turd packs are thrown away every year in the U.S. alone. That’s 3.4 million tons of potential brown gold.

And They get Energy from this… How?

AMEC-PLC, a company in Canada, has begun building a facility to turn billions of poopy diapers into energy through the process of pyrolysis (breaking down molecules through heat). There’s no burning and no emissions. The finished product of all these fecal-filled diapers is a diesel-like oil and probably a lot of refinery employees losing their will to live.

Although other garbage can be used for the process, diapers are perfect for it due to their “consistent stream of plastics, resins, fibres, excrement and urine.” So are you also picturing a Road Warrior-like future where roving gangs battle for precious baby shit?

So, What’s the Problem?

Well, as you can imagine, it’s dirty. The diesel fuel created isn’t any cleaner than the fuel we get from regular ol’ crude oil.

There’s also the problem of getting the diapers, the project linked above can use an existing diaper collection network already in place in Quebec. Otherwise, part of your operation will involve a large room of people whose job it is to pick dirty diapers out of mountains of garbage which, if we remember, Dante described as one of the punishments in Hell.

In case you’re wondering why we included “random” in the title at all, instead of just calling it “6 Ways They’re Turning Crap into Alternative Energy” or “Why Turds Will Fuel the Future,” don’t worry, the whole list isn’t poop.

But it probably could have been, thanks to a strain of E. coli bacteria that feed on agricultural waste like wood chips and straw, then crap oil. Not just any old oil, but crude oil. Farting, not wanting to be last to the party, is right on poop’s heels thanks to another single-celled organism called methanobacteria, which can “eat” electricity and then fart methane.

And They Get Energy from this… How?

LS9, a biotech company in California, has created that modified strain of “non-pathogenic” E. coli that excretes crude oil. LS9 plans to have a commercial scale facility open by 2011. Although still untested on a large scale, if the plant goes according to plan, the bugs should be pooping out oil at about $50 a barrel in the next few years.

Meanwhile, researchers at Penn State are currently working on the electricity eating, farting bugs. Now it may not be at all clear to you why we’d want something that eats electricity rather than the other way around, but they would be useful.

The bacteria can basically be used as a way to store electricity. That’s always been the problem with solar and wind power: Storage. The grid needs electricity throughout the day and these only produce it when it’s sunny or windy. The bacteria, therefore, eat the electricity they produce, converting 80 percent of it to methane gas that can be stored and burned whenever.

So, What’s the Problem?

There are all sorts of technical questions on whether this would work better than the next generation of batteries or whatever they intend to use for storage in the future. But more importantly, we’re pretty sure genetically modified microbes are the basis of half of the horror out there, including 28 Days Later and the entire Resident Evil universe.

And while these microbes won’t turn us into zombies, is the prospect of a runaway population of methanobacteria eating all of our electricity that much better?

Ah, finally an entry that doesn’t involve anything coming from something’s asshole.

Thermal conversion is a process developed over the last decade or so that takes a melange of different objects like plastic bottles, car parts, slaughterhouse waste, old syringes you find on the beach and sewer sludge (yes!) and uses heat and pressure to break them down into their basic components–mostly water and oil.

And They Get Energy from this… How?

The oil that is produced is so pure it doesn’t need to be refined to be used to power generators. It can be distilled into gasoline, diesel or even converted to hydrogen. Other by-products from the process are full of nitrogen and amino acids, which can then be sold as liquid fertilizers.

Also, turkeys are delicious.

Changing World Technologies is operating a thermal conversion plant in Carthage, Missouri, where they produce up to 500 barrels of oil per day, using material like turkey viscera that would otherwise go towards, well, feeding other turkeys.

Although the process is extremely complex and expensive, the fuel is now partially subsidized by the government, so the company is even making a small profit.

So, What’s the Problem?

It smells. Within months of opening the plant had received several emissions violations, partly prompted by their decision to build a giant machine that cooks turkey scrota and car tires two blocks from a residential area. Still, they managed to reduce the smell somewhat using millions of dollars worth of ozone scrubbers and biofilters.

There are other problems though. Again, burning this oil is no cleaner than burning fossil fuels. And the source for the fuel isn’t free. The United States, in its rush to out-salmonella China, still permits cannibalism for turkey and chicken farms. Meaning that instead of the chicken farms paying Changing World to take the goopy parts of the birds unfit for even a McDonald’s nugget, they charge them, because they could have sold it as feed.

As a result, Changing World Technologies will probably pack its bags and head to Europe, where the streets are apparently paved with offal.

Let’s talk about poop again for a moment.

E. coli has gotten a pretty bad rap recently. The bacteria is generally associated with some kind of fecal contaminations of food, so the mention of the name may conjure up images of turd-smeared tomatoes and tainted peanut butter. But most strains of E. coli are harmless, and are actually beneficial to humans.

E. coli lives inside your guts where it produces vitamin K and eliminates harmful bacteria. It can also be grown and manipulated easily, making it useful for study. It also turns out E. coli can easily do something that its supposedly evolved host can’t: make hydrogen from Snickers bars.*

And They Get Energy from this… How?

Researchers at the University of Birmingham fed nougat and caramel waste left over from the candy-making process to E. coli. The bacteria fermented the waste, generating organic acid which was then converted to hydrogen. The researchers used the hydrogen collected to power a small fan.

Now obviously the point isn’t to create nationwide power plants that feed on candy bars. The process should work with about any food waste, so the idea is that the E. coli may be used in food production lines, with factories converting their own food waste into electricity that in turn helps run the factory.

So, What’s the Problem?

The technology is still maybe a decade away, and nobody can say if it’ll actually be profitable to buy and use the equipment as opposed to just tossing the waste. Also it involves having a factory full of food next door to trillions upon trillions of E. coli bacteria, but we’re sure they’ve figured that part out.

*Snickers bars also kind of look like turds

So the problem with a whole bunch of these is that environmentally, they put us back where we were with oil: spewing CO2 and warming the planet. So what if there was some kind of generator that could get electricity from CO2? Problem solved, right?

Well, there’s a process that can do just that, by breaking down the bonds of the CO2 molecule in a way that produces fuel using what we’re pretty sure is alchemy.

Science? Magic? Clip Art? You decide!

And They Get Energy from this… How?

Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are building a prototype device called a Counter Rotating Receiver Reactor Recuperator, or CR5. The device breaks the bond of the carbon and oxygen molecules in carbon dioxide, allowing them to create a synthetic liquid fuel. The fuel can then be burned, and theoretically, the carbon dioxide it expells can also be re-captured and processed.

So, What’s the Problem?

As many of you with any kind of decent science education have already noticed, it takes energy to do what they’re doing and in fact it takes more than what you get out of it.

This project seems to be more about developing something that would let us continue to use coal and petroleum, by capturing the CO2 and then turning it into more electricity and offsetting the main problem with using those fuels.

Once more, we don’t know if it would be cost effective and by the time the technology is ready in 20 years or so, we may very well be on an entirely poop-based power grid anyway.

If you don’t think the moon qualifies as random crap, we’ve got a whole shelf full of useless moon rocks that would beg to differ. Or at least they were useless, before we figured out they could produce safe, clean nuclear energy.

Most nuclear power plants run off fission–splitting the nucleus of an atom to “poop” electricity, if you will–but the real technology everybody wants is nuclear fusion. That process of binding atoms together would be safer and cleaner and provide a mind-boggling amount of power.

Right now fusion is usually attained using deuterium, extracted from seawater, and tritium, the stuff from Spider-Man 2. Yes, tritium really exists. And it glows, proving once again that the science we learned from comic book movies is completely accurate.

Fusion doesn’t work all that well right now, as you can probably guess by the fact that we’re not using it yet. Fusion power plants are thought to be at least 40 years away, and even then fusion from these elements produces secondary radiation, which creates waste and significantly shortens the life of the components in the reactor.

A much safer and cleaner option is Helium 3, which creates an incredible amount of energy with no radioactivity. Although there are only a few hundred kilograms of the stuff on the Earth, Helium 3 is found in large quantities in moon rocks. Helium 3 is so potent that experts estimate that one space shuttle load would provide electricity to the entire United States for a year.

And They Get Energy from this… How?

The lab at the Fusion Technology Institute in Wisconsin developed a basketball-sized fusion device which runs on Helium 3. It can produce one milliwatt of power on a continuous basis.

OK, it would take about 5000 of these to run a light bulb, but still. Baby steps. The project has proven that your Mr. Fusion Home Reactor isn’t completely in the realm of fantasy.

So, What’s the Problem?

Well, first of all, the Helium 3 is ON THE MOON. Mining is going to be difficult and expensive, unless you could somehow get a ragtag group of offshore oil workers to complete basic astronaut training and fly out in desperate mission to save humanity. Though they may find they have company once they get there.

In a revamped, There Will Be Blood-y version of the Space Race, China and Russia have both announced plans to build lunar stations and begin mining Helium 3 on the surface of the moon.

Of course, there should be enough Helium 3 on the moon to power humanity for thousands of years. But we’ll probably go to war over it anyway, just for the hell of it.