Brain friends! Comet comparisons! DNA crime laws! Energy drink deceptions! Monster phalanges! Space sex! It's your Monday Science Watch, where we watch science—friendlessly, endlessly, relentlessly!

  • How many friends can your brain hold? It can hold 147.8 friends, according to science. On your 148th friend, your brain pops. (Thanks a lot, Charles! You weren't worth it.)
  • But the good news is that on the entire earth we have the capacity to store 295 exabytes of data, which is more friends than you'll ever have, trust me.
  • Scientists took photos of a comet in 2005. Now they've taken new photos. They'll compare those photos to see how the comet has changed. Meanwhile the comet is like "I'm still the same as ever, just flying out here in space."
  • The Supreme Court is finally taking on the question of laws about DNA testing after someone has already been convicted of a crime. I don't know what the law is now or what the position of the court is, as that would necessitate reading the article, but I'm for it, and ready to argue.
  • A shocking new study says that energy drinks may not actually "have beneficial effects in improving energy, weight loss, stamina, athletic performance and concentration." Okay, not weight loss, or stamina, or athletic performance, or concentration. We'll give them that. But energy, fuck yes.
  • Mummy toesssssssssssssssss!
  • Turns out the core of the moon is a lot like the core of the earth. Lotta good that does us.
  • Bad news, space fuckers: a real live research paper from NASA says that the future people who go out and live on space ships and space bases will be "unable to procreate," thanks to all the radiation in space that would render everyone sterile, OR cause birth defects, OR cause your baby to be sterile. Well how did Star Trek deal with this? The scientific literature is mum.
  • Some aspiring astronauts are "simulating" a 520-day trip to Mars and today, at the halfway point, they took their first footsteps onto a "simulated" Mars landscape, to simulate them actually getting to the planet and, like, walking on it. Only 260 days of simulated isolation left! Then at the end they still will not have really been to Mars. Also their children will be sterilized, for simulation purposes.

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