Via IFLScience: ‘Today a New York court will decide whether or not Tommy the Chimpanzee qualifies as a legal person. Tommy, a chimpanzee in his 20s, became well-known late last year when lawyer Steven Wise discovered him being held in a small, unclean cage and receiving inadequate care.

It is important to note that even if Tommy is declared a legal person, it does not mean he is human with human rights. Legally speaking, it would just afford him protection beyond existing animal cruelty laws. Personhood would give him rights pertaining to his self interest that would hold up in a court of law, similar to a parent or guardian acting on behalf of a child or disabled adult. Last year, India made headlines when they granted dolphins the status of nonhuman persons.’

Via laughingsquid.com: ‘A simulation by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research ICRAR shows what the collision between our own Milky Way Galaxy and the nearby Andromeda Galaxy will look like in approximately five billion years. The video represents gasses in the galaxies in blue and newly formed stars in red.’

Via alphagalileo.org: ‘The results of a four-year international study of 2060 cardiac arrest cases across 15 hospitals published and available now on ScienceDirect. The study concludes:

· The themes relating to the experience of death appear far broader than what has been understood so far, or what has been described as so called near-death experiences.· In some cases of cardiac arrest, memories of visual awareness compatible with so called out-of-body experiences may correspond with actual events.

· A higher proportion of people may have vivid death experiences, but do not recall them due to the effects of brain injury or sedative drugs on memory circuits.

· Widely used yet scientifically imprecise terms such as near-death and out-of-body experiences may not be sufficient to describe the actual experience of death. Future studies should focus on cardiac arrest, which is biologically synonymous with death, rather than ill-defined medical states sometimes referred to as ‘near-death’.

· The recalled experience surrounding death merits a genuine investigation without prejudice.’