Columbia being reassembled at Kennedy Space Center.

From The Onion:

Chimp Study On Human-Evasion Response To Feces-Hurling Nearly Complete

MADISON, WI—Chimpanzees at the University of Wisconsin’s Primate Laboratory are nearing completion of a two-year study on human-evasion response to hurled feces, sources reported Tuesday. “Our research shows that Homo sapiens experience extreme agitation and an urge to flee when pelted with baseball-sized lumps of primate scat,” said Dr. Jingles, speaking from his research cage. “In 10 out of 10 cases, our test subjects retreated to the far corner of the room and screamed, ‘Stop! Stop! AIIIIGH!’” Dr. Jingles first made his mark in science in 1993, when he earned a Nobel Prize for conclusively proving the deliciousness of bananas.

Relieved Space Crew Shrugs Off Their Ordeal
Tue May 6,10:57 AM ET

STAR CITY, Russia (Reuters) – A U.S.-Russian space crew marooned in orbit by the shuttle disaster then lost in the Kazakh steppes on their return, shrugged off the ordeal on Tuesday and told how they cheered as they landed.

U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox, Donald Pettit and Russia’s Nikolai Budarin said it was too soon to say what disabled the automatic settings of their Soyuz capsule and brought them down some 390 miles off target after a violent re-entry.

“All the way, literally up to the moment we entered the atmosphere, we were on an automatic setting, expecting a controlled re-entry,” veteran Budarin told a press conference at Russia’s cosmonaut training center outside Moscow.

“Then one minute before entering the atmosphere the automatic regime stopped functioning…It is not yet clear why.”

The crew lost radio links with mission control minutes before landing and rescuers took two tense hours to spot the crew’s tiny capsule in the steppe.

But the three men said they had been glad to be left to soak in the Central Asian scenery after almost six months in orbit.

…Bowersox, the mission’s commander, said the crew had been trained for the sharper ballistic landing and for its impact on their bodies — almost twice as powerful as normal re-entry.

“There is a lot of pressure on your chest,” he said. “It is hard to breathe and your tongue slips to the back of your head.”

Any hitch with the Soyuz would have spelled the end for the International Space Station (news – web sites), dependent on Russian crafts after the Columbia disaster grounded the U.S. shuttles in February.

It would also have left the two American and Russian astronauts currently on board the station without a lifeboat.

“For a moment, it felt like I was Atlas, and I had the weight of the whole world on my shoulders,” Pettit said.

Ah, the horsepower of cheese…

World’s cheesiest car unveiled

The American Dairy Association unveiled a large scale model car made out of cheese at Richmond International Raceway on Friday in Virginia. It was modeled after race car driver Terry Labonte’s No. 5 Chevrolet and carved from 3,500 pounds of yellow cheddar cheese.

The car, which measures 5 feet high, 12 feet long and 6 feet wide, was made to support the new and cheesy paint scheme on Labonte’s No. 5 Kellogg’s-“Got Milk?” auto.

Anybody feel like grilled cheese?

Look out, Voinovich!

HARDCORE:

Hiker amputates arm to free self
Colorado man was pinned by a boulder for five days

ARON RALSTON, 27, of Aspen, Colo., was in serious condition Friday at a hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., following the ordeal Thursday.

Ralston was climbing Saturday in Blue John Canyon, adjacent to Canyonlands National Park in far southwestern Utah, when a 1,000-pound boulder fell on him, pinning his right arm, authorities said.

Initial reports said the boulder might have weighed 200 pounds, but rescuers who later went to the site said it weighed closer to 1,000 pounds.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Mitch Vetere told NBC’s “Today” show that the team that went to the site concluded “he had no other option” but to cut off his arm because the air-based search team “wouldn’t have seen him from the air.”

Ralson was able to tell rescuers that he ran out of water on Tuesday, and on Thursday morning decided that his survival required drastic action.

Using his pocketknife, he amputated his arm below the elbow and applied a tourniquet and administered first aid. He then rigged anchors, fixed a rope and rappelled 75 feet to the canyon floor.

He hiked downstream and was spotted about 3 p.m. by a Utah Public Safety Helicopter.

OH MY GOD SHOCK TRAUMA

Why is it no other company dealing in personal technology is able to design things the way Apple does? Wow.

British Scientists Seek Missing WIMPs of Universe
Tue Apr 29, 5:58 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) – British scientists equipped with state of the art detectors deep underground in northern England have begun a search for one of the most tantalizing secrets of the universe — known as Dark Matter.

“If we are successful in our quest then we are looking at a place in the history books,” Neil Spooner of Sheffield University said on Tuesday. “This will be one of the great discoveries of our time.”

Teams of scientists around the world are racing to be the first to discover the truth about Dark Matter, which cannot be seen because it does not emit light. They believe it makes up the vast majority of the universe.

Scientists say stars account for less than one percent of the mass of the universe, with gas clouds and other objects accounting for close to another five percent.

No one is quite sure what makes up the missing remainder, which has been dubbed Dark Matter.

…The theory is that although billions of sub-atomic particles called WIMPs are passing through the atmosphere and the earth every second they only rarely encounter the nucleus of an atom, making it judder slightly.

The detectors are designed to be able to detect these tiny collisions which are so rare that scientists calculate that in a 2.2 pound block of material less than one WIMP a day will strike the nucleus of an atom and make it move.

My brain hurts now.