Musk鈥檚 hot wheels
Elon Musk has announced that the first flight of SpaceX鈥檚 Falcon Heavy rocket will carry his car to Mars. The Tesla Roadster 鈥渨ill be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn鈥檛 blow up on ascent,鈥� he said. Falcon Heavy is set to launch in January and will be the most powerful launch vehicle since the Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the moon.
City rats don鈥檛 mix
A study of the DNA in brown rats living on New York鈥檚 Manhattan island found a distinct difference between rodents from uptown and those from downtown (Molecular Ecology, ). The middle of Manhattan doesn鈥檛 have as many habitable spaces for rats, which may be why that is the dividing line between the two populations.
Mirrored vision
The scallops have eyes 鈥� 200, in fact, each the size of a poppy seed. As if that wasn鈥檛 enough, each one has two retinas, one that sees dimmer light from peripheral vision, and the other tuned to bright light (Science, ). A miniature mirror behind the retinas works a bit like a telescope to direct each type of light.
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Cats on the blockchain
More than 15 per cent of the traffic on Ethereum, one of the biggest blockchain platforms, is from people playing CryptoKitties, a game where you collect cartoon cats. Each transaction to breed or trade kittens is completed using Ethereum鈥檚 blockchain. One cat sold for the equivalent of $118,000.
HIV transmission halted
Antigua and Barbuda, Bermuda and four places in the Caribbean have eliminated mother-to-child transmission of syphilis and HIV, the World 午夜福利1000集合 Organization certified last week. They join Cuba, Thailand and Belarus on the list of countries to achieve this so far.
