HughPickens.com writes: Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are studying a mysterious ecosystem at one of the world’s deepest undersea hydrothermal vents to get clues about what life could be like on other planetary bodies, such as Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which has a subsurface ocean. At the vents, tiny shrimp are piled on top of each other, layer upon layer, crawling on rock chimneys that spew hot water. “You go along the ocean bottom and there’s nothing, effectively, ” says Max Coleman. “And then suddenly we get these hydrothermal vents and a massive ecosystem. It’s just literally teeming with life.” Bacteria, inside the shrimps’ mouths and in specially evolved gill covers, produce organic matter that feed the crustaceans. The particular bacteria in the vents are able to survive in extreme environments because of chemosynthesis, a process that works in the absence of sunlight and involves organisms getting energy from chemical reactions. In this case, the bacteria use hydrogen sulfide, a chemical abundant at the vents, to make organic matter. The temperatures at the vents can climb up to a scorching 842 degrees Fahrenheit (450 degrees Celsius), but waters just an inch away are cool enough to support the shrimp. The shrimp are blind, but have thermal receptors in the backs of their heads. According to the exobiologists, these mysterious shrimps and its symbiotic bacterium may hold clues “about what life could be like on other planetary bodies.” It’s life that may be similar—at the basic level—to what could be lurking in the oceans of Europa, deep under the icy crust of the Jupiter moon. According to Emma Versteegh “whether an animal like this could exist on Europa heavily depends on the actual amount of energy that’s released there, through hydrothermal vents.” Nobody is seriously planning a landing mission on Europa yet. But the European Space Agency aims to launch its JUpiter ICy moons Explorer mission (JUICE) to make the first thickness measurements of Europa’s icy crust starting in 2030 and NASA also has begun planning a Europa Clipper mission that would study the icy moon while doing flybys in a Jupiter orbit. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Extreme Shrimp May Hold Clues To Alien Life On Europa
In a random hallway inside the KFC headquarters, inside their legal department, across from a copy machine, next to a shelf that stores three stacks of paper and possibly the saddest Keurig machine in existence is… a broom closet. Or well, that’s what it looks like. It’s actually the vault that hides KFC’s biggest secret: the Colonel’s Original Recipe. Read more… 
This is the interior of an invention that could change civilization as we know it: A compact fusion reactor developed by Skunk Works, the stealthy experimental technology division of Lockheed Martin. It is the size of a jet engine and they say it will be operative in only 10 years. Read more… 
Back in 2006, when controversy over embryonic stem cell funding was still raging, a piece of research came along that would make the debate essentially obsolete: normal adult cells can actually be reprogrammed into stem cells. No embryos necessary. The technique went on to win its inventor the Nobel Prize. And now, after many years in the lab, a Japanese patient will the first person to receive the next-gen treatment, called induced pluripotent stem cells. Read more… 
MojoKid writes Intel took the wraps off its Xeon E5 v3 server line-up today and the chip, based on Intel’s Haswell-EP architecture, is looking impressive. Intel’s previous generation Xeon E5 V2 chips, which were based on Ivy Bridge, topped out at 12 cores per socket. The new Xeon E5 v3 processors, in contrast, are going to push as high as 18 cores per socket — a 50% improvement. The TDP range is pushing slightly outwards in both directions; the E5 V2 family ranged from 50W to 150W, whereas the E5 V3 family will span 55W — 160W in a single workstation configuration. The core technologies Intel is introducing to the E5 V3 family pull from the Haswell architecture, including increased cache bandwidth, improved overall IPC, and new features like AVX2, which offers a theoretical near-doubling of floating point performance over the original AVX instructions. Full support for DDR4 DRAM memory is now included as well. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
The Bad Astronomer writes: Astronomers have found a 5.4 Earth-mass planet orbiting the star Gliese 15A, a red dwarf in a binary system just 11.7 light years away (PDF). Other exoplanets candidates have been found that are closer, but they are as yet unconfirmed. This is more evidence that alien planets are common in the galaxy. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Starbucks is rolling out pumpkin spice lattes, starting with an early access option that starts today. This means it’s the time of year for everyone’s favorite overpriced seasonal beverage. This doesn’t mean we’ll be adding extra pumpkin to our diet, because Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes™, despite the name, contain no pumpkin. Read more… 