Goo analysis! Fetal sex! Science mistakes! Alien search! Lamprey death! NASA crafts! Undersea volcanoes! Solar flare! And the brutal ennui of the Mars Rover! It's your Wednesday Science Watch, where we watch science—down to its gooey center!

  • Remember that mysterious orange goo that washed up on an Alaskan beach and nobody knew what it was except maybe it was some dark horrible force that signaled the beginning of nature's revenge against mankind's wretched environmental excesses? Well, scientists have now identified the goo as "millions of microscopic eggs filled with fatty droplets." Just your mom out for a swim.
  • Yeah, so there's a new blood test that can tell the gender of your fetus when it's only seven weeks old. You used to have to wait until it was 15 weeks old. At which point it would still be the same gender. Or if you just wait until it comes out—still the same gender. No difference at all. Big advance here.
  • There's a big rise recently in the number of mistakes in scientific studies. Because scientists are just sitting around watching "Mad Men" and talking about "Mad Men" and thinking about "Mad Men," instead of science accuracy? I don't know, I guess.
  • Watch out, aliens: Jodie Foster gave a bunch of money to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute and now they're back to pointing their big telescopes at the sky, looking for aliens. True story bro.
  • Lampreys are often called "vampire fish," but unlike real vampires, lampreys dislike the stench of death. Lamprey Fail, haha. Have you guys seen that show "True Blood?"
  • NASA has finally picked the seven new types of commercial spaceships that will doubtless blow up and kill passengers horrifically until they work all the kinks out.
  • Another day, another undersea volcano eruption. That and a buck twenty five will get you a cup of shitty bodega coffee water, my friend.
  • Did you know that just yesterday, the mighty sun unleashed its most powerful solar flare in five years? No, you were just laid back and daydreaming about Jeanine, instead. "Jeanine Jeanine Jeanine" you daydreamed, as the equivalent of millions of atomic bombs streamed off of the star's impossibly violent surface. Meanwhile Jeanine was making out with an astronomer.
  • Space: the final frontier. So the Mars rover is up there like" hey, I'm sitting on the edge of a god damn crater." Space is boring.

[Photo: AP]