Ancient Star Found, DNA Research Off Ground

As regular readers will know, the Greenygrey awoke on the north-west of North America coast in 2008, not knowing its origins. It thought it’d been around for quite a while, but a new discovery suggests it could have been around since the beginning of the universe.

Earliest Star Universe Image

Hi, it’s Stephen Wolfing, satirical comedy science correspondent at the Greenygrey inspired by renowned astronomer Stephen Hawking.

Yes, there’s an exciting new discovery for greenygreyologists searching for the origins of the greenygrey.

The sparkonit blog reports that astronomers think they’ve found the earliest star after the Big Bang yet: ‘The star, designated SMSS J031300.36−670839.3, is believed to have formed some hundred million years after the Big-Bang.’

Moreover, the accompanying image suggests the building blocks of the Greenygrey were already active then:

DNA Gene Research

In another exciting development for Greenygreyology sparkonit reports that  ‘research at the University of California – Davis has proved that the new genes come from the non-coding regions of the DNA.’

Up until now, geneticists had been unaware of the mechanism by which new genes appear in a species.

This could lead to the Greenygrey
finally learning its complete DNA:

New Science, Space and Nature Documentaries

Hi, it’s Harry Silhouetteof-Wolfhowlingonhill, with a round-up of the best  documentaries we’ve seen this week, and that are available on the BBCiplayer to whoever can access it.

 Forming, Diving, Mixing, Copying

• Seven Ages of Starlight provided a good overview of stars from start to finish, with the best explanation of how hydrogen forms into helium to power stars like our sun we’ve seen. It’s available until this Saturday night.
• Space Dive told the story of the work that went into Felix Baumgartner’s amazing freefall dive over two years, and lots of coverage of the historic day that showed it was not as straightforward as it looked. It’s available until November 14th.
• Dara O’ Briain’s Science Club has a wonderful greenygrey collage to advertise it (see above), and an interesting study into how much Neanderthal DNA humans have, with the average about 3-4%. So humans are not so different to us werewolves. Maybe we’ll call you humanderthals from now on! It’s available until November 16th.
• Richard Hammond’s Miracles of Nature had lots of nice images and some interesting information about how we’ve copied what animals do naturally. We most liked it because it had a long feature about G-force. It showed the effects of G-9, which looked pretty powerful. It’s available until November 26th.

Although we enjoy working at the Greenygrey, we think 2-G is enough thanks!

Mechanic Balloon (Photo credit: Blazej Mrozinski)