I’ve not done one of these in a long time, but a handful of cool items have crossed my desk recently, so I thought it only polite to share.  It’s possible I’ll start doing them on an infrequent basis as I continue stumbling upon things I want to share but simply haven’t the time to process.  We’ll see. . .

Another “human trait” exposed as a product of evolution: “A person who excitedly approaches infants and speaks to them in a high-pitched, musical voice has a behavior in common with female monkeys, suggests a new study, which found that female rhesus macaques use ‘baby talk’ when they see another monkey’s offspring. Since ‘baby talk,’also known as ‘motherese,’ may be an evolved trait in certain primates, the finding indicates this gentle way of vocalizing could play a key role in promoting positive relationships between parents and babies, as well as between adults and other grown-ups.”

Orphaned hedgehogs adopt cleaning brush as their mother.  You have to see the photo and read the article.  Too cute!

We’ve been discovering water outside our own solar system at an increasing rate, and now we find an entire solar system deluged with cosmic showers.  “NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed a dusty star system being soaked with a ‘steamy rain’ of water vapor. The water, pulled from gassy stellar leftovers into a dusty disk, provides what astronomers think is the first direct look at how the life-giving liquid makes its way into planets. The disk is the same sort of thing that forms around many stars and, in the case of our sun, was the seedbed for planet formation. The amount of water in the newly observed disk is thought to equal more than five times that of all oceans on Earth.”

This video is too much fun.  It’s quite simple: a handful of kittens playing with an empty box.  Need I say more?

Cosmic Blank Spot Puzzles Astronomers: “Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That’s got them scratching their heads about what’s just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That’s an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday. Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody’s home. In fact, one such place is practically a neighbor, a mere 2 million light years away. But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, is a void that’s far bigger than scientists ever imagined.”  [via xocobra]