Each Friday we’ll post a collection of links for you to check out over the weekend — posts from around the web that didn’t quite make the cut for the week. Not saying these aren’t cool, by any means — they’re just older or not as exciting as the links we decided to post.

Enjoy:

• The story of the woman who discovered new species in her garden (io9)
• 6 wild and crazy sci-fi abilities of real-life plants (Blastr)
• Newly Discovered Planet: Hot, Muggy And (Maybe) Liveable (NPR)
• What happens to your brain under the influence of music (io9)
• A massive solar storm could keep us grounded on Earth for a decade (io9)
• Evolution of Narcissism: Why We’re Overconfident, and Why It Works (National Geographic)
• Astronomer: 3 reasons we can’t blow up a planet sci-fi style (Blastr)
• Migrating birds burn up muscles and organs on their long journey (io9)
• ‘Super-Earth,’ 1 of 50 newfound planets, just might support life (MSNBC)
• Hummingbirds dive to sing with their tails (io9)

Have a good weekend!

Researchers at CERN released a statement that an experiment had recorded subatomic particles, known as neutrinos, traveling faster than the speed of light.

The result, if confirmed, would upend the field of physics, as Einstein’s theory of relativity is based on the idea that nothing can travel faster than light.

“This result comes as a complete surprise,” said Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern, a spokesman for the experiment, in a statement on the CERN web site. “After many months of studies and cross checks we have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement.” However, he added, “the potential impact on science is too large to draw immediate conclusions or attempt physics interpretations.”

(via: Particles Found Faster Than Light – WSJ.com.

Each Friday we’ll post a collection of links for you to check out over the weekend — posts from around the web that didn’t quite make the cut for the week. Not saying these aren’t cool, by any means — they’re just older or not as exciting as the links we decided to post.

Enjoy:

• New developments in atomic clock technology beat accuracy records, may inspire Ke$ha’s next hit (Engadget)
• Ornithologists Find First New U.S. Bird in 37 Years (Wired)
• NASA to Test Laser Communications System in Space (Wired)
• Gorgeous machined Stirling engine kits (Boing Boing)
• NASA says comet Elenin poses no threat to Earth (Mother Nature Network)
• Freeman, Feynman, and Hawking, autotuned (Kottke)
• How Scientists Are Predicting the Path of Hurricane Irene–And Why We’re Better At It Than Ever Before (Discover)
• Five Myths About Earthquakes (Washington Post)
• Say hello to a brand new species of monkey (New Scientist)
• Footage of category 3 Hurricane Katia captured from the International Space Station while over the Atlantic Ocean on September 6th (Space.com)

Have a good weekend!

Me and my girls in Rhode Island

A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that when men become fathers, their testosterone levels drop significantly. Not shocking news, if you are already a dad, right?

The study, led by Dr. Lee Gettler of Northwestern University, followed the testosterone levels of 600+ Filipino men from when they were 21 until five years after becoming fathers. The results showed that the testosterone level dipped as much as 34 percent in the men who became fathers, with the biggest change occurring in men who spent a lot of time caring for their children.

A few quotes from the NPR article:

“There’s something about being an active father that’s contributing to these dramatic declines,” said Dr. Gettler, who headed the study.

Anthropologist Peter Gray at the University of Nevada told The New York Times, “A dad with lower testosterone is maybe a little more sensitive to cues from his child, and maybe he’s a little less sensitive to cues from a woman he meets at a bar.”

As a very involved father of three toddle girls, I can’t say I am surprised, but it does explain a lot of things. At least I now have an excuse the next time a non-father buddy catches me playing dress-up with the girls.

(Source: Fatherhood, Not Testosterone, Makes The Man : NPR.)

Researchers have observed the inner parts of a black hole’s active jets for the first time, suggesting “that the energetic spouts are more dynamic than previously suspected, with enormous blasts firing off randomly over timescales as short as 11 seconds.”

The black hole was observed by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft and is located 20,000 light-years away near the center of the galaxy.

From the Wired article:

Researchers were able to determine that the jets are emitted from an area approximately 15,000 miles across, though the size of this region sometimes rapidly increased by an order of magnitude or more. They were also able to make detailed measurements of the black hole’s magnetic field, which is 30,000 times more powerful than the Earth’s. Since the magnetic field is thought to be, in part, responsible for the powerful jets, this data could help astronomers understand the inner workings of these exotic phenomenon.

(via Black Hole Jets Gone Wild | Wired Science | Wired.com.)

Wow. Check this amazing picture of the Milky Way shot in Annapurna, a region of Nepal that reaches elevations of over 8000 meters. The photo was taken by Anton Jankovoy who has quite a collection of amazing photos over on Flickr. Specifically, this one and this one. I highly recommend browsing his photo stream in your free time!

(via: The Milky Way from the top of the world | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine.)

Incredible video footage of a strong storm in Toronto, Canada on August 24th, including the CN Tower as a lighting rod.

Video by Jon Simonassi. (Story via The Next Web)

An amazing photo of the Orion Nebula. Details from NASA:

Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula, an immense stellar nursery some 1,500 light-years away. This stunning false-color view spans about 40 light-years across the region, constructed using infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Compared to its visual wavelength appearance, the brightest portion of the nebula is likewise centered on Orion’s young, massive, hot stars, known as the Trapezium Cluster. But the infrared image also detects the nebula’s many protostars, still in the process of formation, seen here in red hues. In fact, red spots along the dark dusty filament to the left of the bright cluster include the protostar cataloged as HOPS 68, recently found to have crystals of the silicate mineral olivine within its protostellar envelope.

(via APOD: 2011 September 17 – Spitzer’s Orion.)