Our Times: May 2005

Rocking The Universe

Rock music is set to spread further than ever before when a specially written CD lands on one of Saturn's moons. The CD is aboard the Cassini-Huygens space probe that has landed on the moon Titan. The four instrumental tracks are “Lalala,” “Bald James Dean,” “Hot Time” and “No Love,” and are described as “edgy, punk, music themes.” The European Space Agency asked French musicians Julien Civange and Louis Haeri to write the music to raise awareness of space travel among youngsters.

Faith And Pain?

Volunteers participating in an Oxford University study will undergo torture to discover if faith can ease pain in an endeavour to understand how the brain works during states of consciousness. It will involve followers of both religious and secular faiths being burned to see if they can handle more pain than others. Some volunteers will be shown religious symbols, such as crucifixes and images of the Virgin Mary during the torture.

The Height Of Destruction

The tsunami caused by the Aceh earthquake in the Indian Ocean was only 50 cm high in deep water. Satellites stationed above the Indian Ocean captured the only defined measurements of the tsunami in the open ocean. By comparison, wind-driven waves typically reach 10 metres.

A Waning Sun

Recent scientific measurements of sunlight are showing that the earth's surface receives less sunlight than in the 1950s. The staggering 22 per cent drop in solar energy is a result of thicker clouds, produced by pollution particles in the air, reflecting the sun's radiation back into space. Scientists are worried that this may in turn disrupt the world's rainfall pattern.

Laser Fit

Finding a pair of jeans that fit perfectly is almost impossible, but with a state-of-the-art body-mapping system from Bodymetrics, the search is getting easier. The technology calculates the perfect measurements by scanning a person, and working out how the light is reflected off the body, thus allowing designers to create perfect fitting clothes.