General Electric : 5 Coolest Things On Earth This Week

This week we learned about a subsea dig into the massive crater left behind by the asteroid that helped wipe out the dinosaurs, mice that took a two-week vacation aboard a space shuttle and returned to Earth with damaged livers, and a cell that breaks one of the most basic laws of biology. Take a look.

This Robotic Hand Can Learn New Tricks On Its Own

A team of engineers and computer scientists at University of Washington in Seattle built a robotic hand with five fingers that can learn to grab and lift objects without instructions from humans. The hand uses custom algorithms that allow it to perform different tasks and learn from success and failure. 'As the robot hand performs different tasks, the system collects data from various sensors and motion capture cameras and employs machine learning algorithms to continually refine and develop more realistic models,' according to UW Today.

'It's like sitting through a lesson, going home and doing your homework to understand things better and then coming back to school a little more intelligent the next day,' said Vikash Kumar, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering. The team will present the hand on May 17 at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

Scientists Start Drilling In The Subsea Crater Left Behind By Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid

Australian scientists started drilling in the giant crater at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico left behind by an asteroid that smashed into Earth 66 million years ago and helped wipe out the dinosaurs. The crater is 180 kilometers in diameter and 30 kilometers deep - 3.5 times the height of Mount Everest. The explosion that caused it released energy equivalent to 100 million nuclear bombs. 'We hope to find information about species such as plankton that do not leave behind fossils that can be studied by eye or under a microscope, and can only be identified via molecular fossils left behind such as DNA and lipid biomarkers,' the team reported. 'This way we can make connections between past ecosystems and environments and identify reasons for why certain species adapted or disappeared,' molecular fossil expert Kliti Grice told the Science Network.

This Cell Is Breaking The Law Of Biology

Scientists at the University of British Columbia have discovered a eukaryotic cell that somehow survives without mitochondria, the cellular generators that supply them with energy. Humans, other animals, plants, trees and mushrooms are all built from eukaryotes. The new finding could rewrite biology textbooks. 'We've been working under the unwritten rule that every eukaryote had mitochondria of some form, even if highly reduced, but this paper suggests the idea is flexible,' researcher Anna Karnkowska told the journal PNAS. Mark Van Der Giezen, an evolutionary biochemist at the University of Exeter in the UK, told NPR the discovery 'shows you that life is extremely creative in finding a way to eke out an existence.' The team published the findings in the journal Cell Biology.

Mysterious Dwarf Galaxy Could Shed New Light On Big Bang

Astronomers at Indiana University, Bloomington, discovered a faint 'small blue galaxy' some 30 million light years away - essentially in our cosmic neighborhood - idling in space for eons. It could shed new light on the big bang - the idea that our universe started in a titanic explosion some 13.7 billion years ago. The dwarf galaxy, called Leoncino - 'little lion' - contains the lowest level of heavier chemical elements past hydrogen and helium in the periodic table 'ever observed in a gravitationally bound system of stars,' the team wrote. Since the early universe was largely made of those two lightest elements, the galaxy could offer a close-up picture of what the first stars looked like. 'Low metal abundance is essentially a sign that very little stellar activity has taken place compared to most galaxies,' said Alec S. Hirschauer, the lead author of a paper the team published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Mice Astronauts Return To Earth With Liver Damage

Mice that spent two weeks orbiting planet Earth aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2011 landed with 'nascent liver disease,' according to Karen Jonscher, a physicist and associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. 'We saw the beginning of nascent liver damage in just 13.5 days,' Dr. Jonscher said. 'The mice also lost lean muscle mass. We have seen this same phenomenon in humans on bedrest - muscles atrophy and proteins break down into amino acids. The question is, how does that affect your liver?' The findings, which could have implications on human space travel, appeared this week in the journal PLOS ONE.