The opposite might be true - or might not be ;-). Since usually the rate of evolution increases after major extinction events the chance is higher to produce 'intelligent' organisms if these events happen quite frequently. Usually the time of rapid evolution is only a few million years - so Earth is going quite slow. Certainly extinction events don't reset the evolutionary clock - if they would never have happened Earth gene pool would probably be quite primitive. By the way: dinosaurs were a quite diverse group and large dinosaurs might well have had cognitive abilities that come close to whales or primates - the difference to us might be that we have hands to manipulate our environment and vocal cords to communicate in very diverse ways. Modern dinosaur (descendents), i.e. birds, contain some very intelligent species - especially with respect to their body size and weight.

It actually does make a very weird sound...

Indicators found in 3 billion year old rocks

In a feat never before observed, a newly discovered pulsar shifts back and forth between emitting X-rays and radio waves. The discovery represents a long-sought "middle" phase in the life of these powerful objects.

Java is hot again(?) - gotta dig up my old lecture notes.

Found this on Twitter ;-) This is also a test to see if Diigo titles get processed correctly as re-tweets...

Yes. Worked.

As discussed during lunch

Reminds me of psychohistory in Asimov's Foundation trilogy

Get well, Tom! We urgently need you back.

Turns out even ants can profit from a siesta on a hot day and they use network security and repair mechanisms. Maybe there is still something undiscovered that we can apply for our own networks.

Wired magazine has a special focus today on Plutonium-238 the fuel for RTG power sources. The history of the material plus the challenges due to the shortage of it - potentially ending deep space exploration as we practice it today (?)...

Video shows how surface gravity and rotation rate of a star can be characterized from variations in its light

Apparently the core does not only produce a magnetic field - it is also an electric motor!

Big Bang was mirage from collapsing higher-dimensional star, theorists propose.

Amazing what evolution can lead to!

NASA JPL presentation on how and when Voyager exited the Heliosphere about a year ago - fascinating!

Wired article giving an opinion on the future trends for mobile computing (e.g. SLAM, 3D vision, ...)

Video shows how easy the process is and how cool the results look. Does anybody know a potential scientific application for such image processing?