This is fucking marvelous. An entire hemisphere of the sun explodes which then ignites another region. According to io9, this was an event previously thought impossible:

In this ultraviolet light video taken by NASA, you can watch a phenomenon that scientists didn’t believe could exist until a few months ago. An entire hemisphere of the sun explodes, one region igniting another. What does this discovery mean?

It turns out that the sun doesn’t just spurt out gouts of gas in isolated spots. In fact, our star’s magnetic field brings many regions of Sol’s surface into direct relationships with each other, so areas separated by millions of miles can literally spark each other up. The results are called “sympathetic flares.”

G’damn amazing. Hit the jump to watch the explosion in action.

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Well, we didn’t find any sort of sweet-ass bacteria on Titan. Son of a bitch. What was found by Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon is life previously thought impossible. It was snagged within Mono Lake in Menlo Park, California.

What exactly do you mean?

Phosphorus, along with hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur, make up the fundamental building blocks of life as we know it.

Okay, if you say so! God, it’s been a long time since my high school science classes. If you can’t psychoanalyze it for imagined tropes, I’m useless. So, go on!

Wolfe-Simon has discovered a bacteria that swaps out phosphorus with arsenic. The discovery that a life form can be comprised of something other than the six fundamental building blocks of life changes everything.

Oh shit! Now that is interesting. What exactly does this mean in the long run? And why is NASA involved?

For Astrobiology, the study of life elsewhere in the universe, the impact of this discovery is tremendous. For years astrobiologists have been basing the potential for alien worlds to support life on the presence of the fundamental building blocks of life. Now that we know they aren’t as fundamental as we first thought, the search will have to change.

Well then! Pretty fucking rockin’, no? It opens up the parameters for our searches for life off-planet! Now go out and find that shit, people! I’m still a little bit disappointed. I was really hoping for the planet that supported life, whose only inhabitants were the other-worldly equivalent of Swedish supermodels. Male and female, of course. Where the lakes were comprised of Diet Mountain Dew.

But this? This is still pretty cool.

Via.

Oh shit! Fresh in time for the holiday season, where we glue bibles to our hearts and proclaim the coming of our Lord, NASA may be about to throw a curve ball into our collective balls. Maybe! It’s always maybe, isn’t it? Fuck me, I know. NASA is gathering an impressive collection of folks to speak at a press conference on Thursday. Who do you ask? Why, none other than an oceanographer, a biologist, and an ecologist! Wait, that doesn’t mean anything to you? Yeah, me neither.

io9 explains:

Blogger Jason Kottke did some inspired sleuthing regarding what Thursday’s press conference might be about. He discovered the expertises of the various people involved include the interaction of geology and life on alien planets (specifically Mars), photosynthesis using arsenic, Saturn’s moon Titan as an early Earth environment, and the chemistry of life, including in places without carbon, water, or oxygen.

Taking that all together and combined with the current blitz of news from NASA’s Cassini probe around Saturn, Kottke guesses the announcement might have something to do with the discovery of arsenic on Titan and, quite possibly, some primitive bacterial form of life using it for photosynthesis.

Well, shit. I thought they were about to inform us of the existence of a species of nine-foot tall blond women with breasts unbothered by gravity, who only want nothing more than to procreate with us. All of us. And give us eternal life. But seriously though, this was be fun as fuck. Some incontrovertible proof of life afar? Even if it’s just some bacteria hanging out? Hey man, we came from fuggin’ muck. This would be dope.

Time to get those Bible Editors out, and talk about the time that God sneezed on Titan!