Starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to sign up with MI5 to receive an email notice when the “Threat Level” changes. Right now it’s “severe”, but they have the fine-grained menu of “low”, “moderate”, “substantial”, “severe” and “critical” to choose from — we certainly need that much more detail compared to the meagre green/yellow/red of the US system that everyone checks each and every morning. In a grotesque act of fearmongering, MI5 use a picture from the September 11 wreckage of the World Trade Center on their page outlining “The Threats”.

But maybe we need a new level for “smelly”, like New York?

[Yes, I know there has been big cosmology news today, but in this twenty-four-science-blogging culture everyone else, like Sean, Clifford and Steinn, has already posted the lovely pictures, and fine explanations, of the dark matter distribution.]