Mind Soup

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran announced Wednesday it has successfully launched a 10-foot-long research rocket carrying a mouse, two turtles and worms into space — a feat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said showed Iran could defeat the West in the battle of technology. The launch of the Kavoshgar-3, which means Explorer-3 in Farsi, was announced by Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi as part of Iran's ambitious space program. It comes a year after Iran sent its first domestically made telecommunications satellite into orbit. The program has worried Western powers who fear the same technology used to launch satellites and research capsules could also deliver warheads. Iranian state television broadcast images Wednesday of officials putting a mouse, two turtles and about a dozen creatures that looked like worms inside a capsule in the rocket before it blasted off. Vahidi gave no details on the research and the report did not disclose when or where the launch took place. The rocket is...

You’ve heard jokes like these all your life:  What do you get if you cross an octopus with a cow? An animal that can milk itself.  I didn’t find such an animal, but the world has plenty of strange species that at first glance appear to be hybrids of unrelated species because they have attributes that surprise us. However, we are only surprised because our personal experiences don’t encompass all that nature offers. 1. Turtle + Hedgehog = Armadillo Rudyard Kipling wrote the story  The Beginning of the Armadillos , in which the animal came from a tortoise and a hedgehog. They didn’t join to give birth to armadillos; instead, they taught each other their talents. The hedgehog helped the tortoise learn to curl into a ball, and the tortoise taught the hedgehog to swim, which toughened up his spines into armor. Before they knew it, both had turned into armadillos. Here in the real world,  armadillos  are related to both sloths and anteaters and are native to Latin ...

These are just a few of the most beautiful places in the world, most interesting and captivating aquariums, where you can easily break into the mesmerizing secrets of the underwater world. World’s Largest Aquarium - Georgia Aquarium, Atlanta, a wonderful home for more than 100,000 animals of 500 different species (notable specimens: whale sharks, beluga whales, manta ray) and with a capacity of 8.1 million US gallons (31,000 m³) of marine fresh water. Source: Wikipedia World’s Second Largest Aquarium - Churaumi Aquarium,part of the Ocean Expo Commemorative National Government Park located in Motobu, Okinawa, Japan; capacity: 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water; one of the few places where visitors can see a great variety of sea creatures including sharks and manta rays. Copyright © ozymiles Sources: Green Expander , mattw Largest Aquarium in Europe - Acquario di Genova – [10,000m2 area, 70 water tanks] a spectacular structure and an emotional trip acro...