Gain a lover, lose some friends
Your new girlfriend or boyfriend may cause you to lose a few good friends according to a new study at Oxford University. After surveying 540 people ages 18 and over, the study found that as a new lover comes into one’s life, an individual loses, on average, two good friends. One of those friends is usually a family member and the other is often seen once a week. Researchers believe that the relationship takes over the roles that those friends usually held, making them obsolete. What a bummer.
With files from BBC.co.uk
Leak finally plugged
Five months after the initial leak, the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill in the Gulf Coast is finally sealed off. The initial explosion killed 11 workers on the oil rig and spilled approximately 780 million litres of crude oil into the coast. The incident was, in fact, the worst oil disaster to happen on the Gulf coast and many businesses are still suffering. A pressure test on the cement plug that sealed off the leak proved it could withstand seven tons of pressure and marked the definite end of the drama.
With files from CTV.ca
Taking a slice out of pi
That nefarious constant we all learned in high school has been conquered – well, at least a little more than before. Yahoo’s computers have been processing mathematical formulas around the clock for 23 days in order to finally calculate pi to the 2,000,000,000,000,000th digit. Yahoo employed 1,000 of their computers and an algorithm designed for the calculations. To put that in perspective, the computer you use at home would have taken around 500 years to process the same calculation.
With files from BBC.co.uk
