Weekly Wakeup

NEWS IN BRIEF:

LONDON, ENGLAND - If you ever think life is being a little tough on you, just be grateful you aren't John Lyne – who could well be Britain's unluckiest man. 'Calamity John' has suffered 16 major accidents in his life, including lightning strikes, a rock-fall in a mine and three car crashes. He is presently laid up again after falling down a manhole at work. The 54-year-old industrial cleaner will be out of action for 32 weeks and is not sure he can return to his job. The accident damaged his back and injured his left leg and both knees – which the grandfather-of-three can add to a lifetime of broken bones. But none of this has left Mr Lyne bitter – he is just glad to be alive. 'Everyone thinks it is just hilarious,' he said. 'My mates, family and wife Susan just laugh about it. 'I don't think there is any reason or explanation. Things could have been much worse and I could have died but it doesn't worry me too much.' Mr Lyne's mishaps cover a lifetime and he has even been known to suffer two accidents at once. As a child, he fell off a horse and cart – only to be run over by a delivery van. When he was a teenager, he broke his arm falling from a tree. On his way back from hospital, his bus crashed, breaking the same arm in another place. The date, of course, was Friday the 13th. A philosophical Mr Lyne, of Stainworth, South Yorkshire, said: 'I have had a lot of lucky escapes and people have compared me with a cat with nine lives. It doesn't get me down. It is just how it is.'

XI’AN, CHINA – Scientists have now levitated small live animals using sounds that are, well, uplifting. In the past, researchers at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, China, used ultrasound fields to successfully levitate globs of the heaviest solid and liquid—iridium and mercury, respectively. The aim of their work is to learn how to manufacture everything from pharmaceuticals to alloys without the aid of containers. At times compounds are too corrosive for containers to hold, or they react with containers in other undesirable ways. “An interesting question is, 'What will happen if a living animal is put into the acoustic field?' Will it also be stably levitated?" researcher Wenjun Xie, a materials physicist at Northwestern Polytechnical University, told LiveScience. Xie and his colleagues employed an ultrasound emitter and reflector that generated a sound pressure field between them. The emitter produced roughly 20-millimeter-wavelength sounds, meaning it could in theory levitate objects half that wavelength or less.

NEW YORK., USA - In a rare interview, Stephen Hawking said that humans must move to another solar system in order to ensure the survival of the species. “Once we spread out into space and establish colonies, our future should be safe,” he said. Hawking made a similar suggestion back in June. He believes that life on Earth could be wiped out by a nuclear disaster or a massive asteroid hitting the planet causing Armageddon with its Deep Impact. He said that, since we have no similar planets on our solar system, we would “have to go to another star” to find a suitable habitat. Before humans could even dream of such a move, we would need to develop a viable means of transportation. Hawking proposed “matter/anti-matter annihilation” propulsion. He explained: “When matter and anti-matter meet up, they disappear in a burst of radiation. If this was beamed out of the back of a spaceship, it could drive it forward … It would take a lot of energy to accelerate to near the speed of light.”

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