Discover New Ancient Chilean bird had 17 foot wingspan and huge bony teeth

The newly identified ancient bird Pelagornis chilensis is one of the biggest birds ever discovered, with a gigantic 17 foot wingspan and spiny, teeth-like structures along its massive beak that it used to hunt fish and squid.

Bird fossils are some of the most difficult for paleontologists to get their hands on, because bird bones are unusually soft and fragile. This makes them poor candidates for fossilization, and many bird fossils that do survive are badly crushed. In fact, the only other bony-toothed bird skeleton we had before this new discovery was a single, mostly crushed fossil.

That's part of what makes the Pelagornis find so remarkable - it's 70% complete and in pristine condition, giving scientists incontrovertible proof of its immense size and unusual teeth. Discovered in northern Chile, the bird's great wingspan allows scientists to better understand the physics of winged flight, helping them set an upper limit for maximum wing size.

There are, in fact, some birds with even longer wingspans, most notably Argentavis, another ancient South American bird said to have a 19 to 26 foot wingspan. However, the fossil evidence for this bird is much less secure than that of Pelagornis, as we have had to extrapolate this wingspan estimate from very few surviving bones. Pelagornis, on the other hand, is the largest bird yet that paleontologists feel certain really did have the wingspan these measurements suggest.

NASA shoots lasers at the Moon, because science is awesome

On "International Observe the Moon Night", and of the 400 or so Moon-centric gatherings around the world, this one had to be the most spectacular, as NASA shot laser blasts at the Moon...for strictly scientific purposes, honest.

Don't worry, this isn't the opening shots in NASA's long delayed invasion of the Moon. The laser, located at the Goddard Space Flight Center's Laser Ranging Facility in Greenbelt, Maryland, is used to track the location of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter as it moves around the Moon.

The probe is about the size of a small SUV, it's moving at 3,600 miles per hours, and it's located 250,000 miles away, and yet NASA can figure out exactly where it is at any given moment by firing lasers at it 28 times every second and then measuring how the focused light is reflected back to Earth.

Usually, these activities are closed to the public, but NASA allowed tourists into the facility to watch the operation as part of International Observe the Moon Night. Photographer Debbie Mccallum was able to get this awesome photo, which you can see in its full glory below.

Introducing Stringbike: the bike with no chain

Hungarian bicycle designers have unveiled their new Stringbike in Padova, Italy. The design replaces the traditional chain with a symmetrical rope and pulley system, which they say is more efficient, makes for a more comfortable ride, and provides improved maneuverability around winding streets.


The new system is more complex than a chain and gears and consists of a rope and pulley on each side of the bike. The rotation of the pedals forces arms at each side to swing forward and backward on its shaft. When moving forward, the arm pulls the driving wire that is wound around a drum on the rear wheel, forcing the wheel to rotate. The arms at each side alternate so that when one is moving forward the other is moving backward.




The new system has 19 "gear" positions and the transmission ratio can be changed at any time by turning a shifting knob on the right handle grip. This moves the pulley shafts up and down along a traction path on an eccentric disc, which has 19 notches to adjust the height of the pulleys and distance between the center of rotation and the shaft. The gears can be changed even if the bicycle is stationary, but gear change speed increases with the speed of the bicycle.

The new system has 19 "gear" positions and the transmission ratio can be changed at any time by turning a shifting knob on the right handle grip. This moves the pulley shafts up and down along a traction path on an eccentric disc, which has 19 notches to adjust the height of the pulleys and distance between the center of rotation and the shaft. The gears can be changed even if the bicycle is stationary, but gear change speed increases with the speed of the bicycle.

The drive system will be able to be replaced with different size parts and different shaped eccentric discs for specialized purposes such as racing or touring. The rear wheel can be removed in only a few seconds without affecting the drive system. The driving rope is a special high density polyethylene (HDPE) product with high stability over extended periods, and which is resistant to mud, water, dirt, sand, and humidity.

The traditional bicycle has a chain and gears on one side, which the designers from bicycle manufacturer Schwinn Csepel Zrt say has led to a lot of problems, although they do not say exactly what those problems are. They say most are unnoticeable problems until you’ve actually ridden a symmetrical system. One problem that the new design does remove is soiling clothes with the grease or oil on the chain, since the pulley system is dry.

Another advantage of the system is that the ropes can be attached in different positions on the two sides of the bicycle, which means it can compensate if one of the rider’s legs is weaker than the other. The designers also say the lifetime of components will be longer than for conventional bicycles because chains are more susceptible to wear and abrasion, and the number of components is reduced.

More information: http://www.stringbike.com/