Breaking News from the Who-the-Hell-Cares Department

National Briefing | Space and Technology
Tool Bag Is Lost During Spacewalk

By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: November 19, 2008

Astronauts ventured outside the International Space Station to do repair work, but lost a bag of tools they had taken along. Capt. Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper of the Navy, an astronaut on a mission to the station, was on the first spacewalk of the mission, which involves cleaning and greasing a balky rotary joint, when she discovered that a grease gun had erupted inside its tote bag. While she cleaned up that mess, the bag — containing two grease guns, scrapers and other equipment — floated irretrievably into space. NASA trains spacewalkers to tether and trap all objects they use, but it is not uncommon for the occasional bolt or single tool to be lost.

ANOTHER NEWS FLASH: I LOST MY TEABAG WHILE WALKING TO THE SUBWAY YESTERDAY.

National Briefing | Space and Technology
Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: November 19, 2008

Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this long time staple of science fiction were a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million.

The same technology could be applied to any other extinct species from which one can obtain hair, horn, hooves, fur or feathers, and which went extinct within the last 60,000 years. Though the stuffed animals in natural history museums are not likely to burst into life again, these old collections are full of items that may contain ancient DNA which can be decoded by the new generation of DNA sequencing machines.

If the genome of an extinct species can be reconstructed, biologists can work out the exact DNA differences with the genome of its nearest living relative. There are now discussions of how to modify the DNA in an elephant’s egg so that generation by generation it would progressively resemble the DNA in a mammoth egg. The final stage egg could then be brought to term in an elephant mother, and mammoths might once again roam the Siberian steppes. The same would be technically possible with Neanderthals, whose full genome is expected to be recovered shortly, but ethically more challenging.

HOW THE HELL DID THAT NY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER GET INSIDE SPECIAL K'S BATHTUB?