The Science Lounge

[xianjiro]

A place to talk about things scientific and the state of science in today's world.

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from BBC

[3eyes]

Aw, let's guess first.

Flour tortilla with mustard, mole sauce, artichoke prickles, pirouetting ant, and Cambrian hyolith.

Spoiler: click to toggleShow

well at least the hyolith was on the right track. We've come a long way since I wrote my heretical high school term paper on the (gasp!) evolution of the bird back in 19-aught-52.

[Knaldskalle]

In case you missed it, there's an important poll/discussion about the future of our forum hosting right here:

viewtopic.php?t=3764&1/

Please read and vote, we want to know what you think!

[Nopros]

Stop spamming, Knald.

[maxwelldeux]

Stop spamming, Knald.

I mean, it does answer the question of "how is your post count that high?"

[3eyes]

we're supposed to make a scientific analysis of the poll results with forensics, algorithms and things.

algorithm:Show

memorable quip by a patht vithe prethident

[xianjiro]

In case you missed it, there's an important poll/discussion about the future of our forum hosting right here:

viewtopic.php?t=3764&1/

Please read and vote, we want to know what you think!

thanks for using the Science Lounge to pimp your unscientific poll

[Carmel1379]

[hurluberlu]

1927, so many names that made history... who would we put on the picture today ?

[Carmel1379]

who would we put on the picture today ?

No white men, that's for sure...

...except maybe James Cameron.

[xianjiro]

Rare microbes lead scientists to discover new branch on the tree of life

Based on the genetic analysis they've done so far, the Dalhousie team has determined that hemimastigotes are unique and different enough from other organisms to form their own "supra-kingdom" — a grouping so big that animals and fungi, which have their own kingdoms, are considered similar enough to be part of the same supra-kingdom.

[maxwelldeux]

Rare microbes lead scientists to discover new branch on the tree of life

Based on the genetic analysis they've done so far, the Dalhousie team has determined that hemimastigotes are unique and different enough from other organisms to form their own "supra-kingdom" — a grouping so big that animals and fungi, which have their own kingdoms, are considered similar enough to be part of the same supra-kingdom.

That is the coolest thing I've read in a long time.

[3eyes]

Yes, very interesting. Micropaleontology was in its infancy when I studied geology. (I realize this isn't paleontology yet, but still)

[xianjiro]

you're welcome! I thought it was pretty cool/interesting as well. It's not often we get this kind of breakthrough anymore and a great reminder that as much of this planet as we've explored, there are still things we haven't found/don't understand.

[Lakigigar]

They also found a new huge crater... that crashed on our Earth 3 million years ago to 12.000 years ago, and had a diameter of 19km, and is one of the 20 largest asteroid craters found on Earth, under the Greenland Ice Cap... and the largest one of the last 30 million years. It's so huge and an important discovery that it might completely rewritten human history (esp. before 8000BC). Now it's important to exactly date this asteroid, but i think it's indeed likely to be one that crashed 12.000 to 13000 years ago, causing the Younger Dryas, a small extinction wave, maybe some Biblic flood stories (a possibility) and the Clovis Culture and all humans in North-America might have gone extinct, together with some other North-American megafauna, and it might have drastically reduced the population of mammoths as well (at the end of the Ice Age).

If that theory is correct, i'm almost certain that the last 15.000 years are the deadliest 15.000 years since the K-Pg event (the event that killed the Dinosaurs). It's not like asteroid impacts like these are uncommon or cause mass-extinctions, but it's the combination of several factors that will make this event classify as a mass-extinction event: human activity, human overhunting, a period of rapid climate change (because: the earth usually has glacial and interglacial episodes, but in cold ages, those difference between the climate can vary a lot on a short time interval (because of positive feedback mechanisms like ice albedo).

Younger Dryas impact hypothesis

-> this was a controversial theory, but they might have nailed it.

[Knaldskalle]

They also found a new huge crater... that crashed on our Earth 3 million years ago to 12.000 years ago, and had a diameter of 19km, and is one of the 20 largest asteroid craters found on Earth, under the Greenland Ice Cap... and the largest one of the last 30 million years. It's so huge and an important discovery that it might completely rewritten human history (esp. before 8000BC). Now it's important to exactly date this asteroid, but i think it's indeed likely to be one that crashed 12.000 to 13000 years ago, causing the Younger Dryas, a small extinction wave, maybe some Biblic flood stories (a possibility) and the Clovis Culture and all humans in North-America might have gone extinct, together with some other North-American megafauna, and it might have drastically reduced the population of mammoths as well (at the end of the Ice Age).

If that theory is correct, i'm almost certain that the last 15.000 years are the deadliest 15.000 years since the K-Pg event (the event that killed the Dinosaurs). It's not like asteroid impacts like these are uncommon or cause mass-extinctions, but it's the combination of several factors that will make this event classify as a mass-extinction event: human activity, human overhunting, a period of rapid climate change (because: the earth usually has glacial and interglacial episodes, but in cold ages, those difference between the climate can vary a lot on a short time interval (because of positive feedback mechanisms like ice albedo).

Younger Dryas impact hypothesis

-> this was a controversial theory, but they might have nailed it.

I actually heard about this a year and a half ago. A friend of mine knows one of the people who discovered the crater.

[Knaldskalle]

you're welcome! I thought it was pretty cool/interesting as well. It's not often we get this kind of breakthrough anymore and a great reminder that as much of this planet as we've explored, there are still things we haven't found/don't understand.

I have no doubt that we'll establish new "kingdoms" as we continue to explore the planet. In the old days it was "plant or animal". Then came fungi and bacteria (prokaryotes) and then came the archaea (aka. archaebacteria, a separate grouping of prokaryotes). It's not unreasonable to assume that descendants of early life are still around and that our understanding of the "tree of life" is fairly limited. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be a many-branched "bush of life" of which we currently only know 6 branches.

[PirateJenny]

https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/TheHairyBallTheorem/

Hairy Ball theorem - "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick" - Splat!

[3eyes]

https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/TheHairyBallTheorem/

Hairy Ball theorem - "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick" - Splat!

Clearly baldness has its advantages.

[PirateJenny]

https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/TheHairyBallTheorem/

Hairy Ball theorem - "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick" - Splat!

Clearly baldness has its advantages.

To answer as a Fermi Question (scientific estimate). How long before the last one falls out?

[Carmel1379]

https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/TheHairyBallTheorem/

Hairy Ball theorem - "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick" - Splat!

[PirateJenny]

Scientists have reversed time using a quantum computer.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl ... 20516.html

I've always thought time is going to be multidirectional at a quantum level, though if you tried it on a human we'd probably explode.

[Carmel1379]

Scientists have reversed time using a quantum computer.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl ... 20516.html

I've always thought time is going to be multidirectional at a quantum level, though if you tried it on a human we'd probably explode.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6131 ... -computer/

[PirateJenny]

Ah damn, It's still interesting. It's thought that in black holes time is still very unpredictable.

[3eyes]

After my husband had been a subscriber to Science (AAAS Journal) for 50 years they gave him a free lifetime subscription. He doesn't read it but I do, sort of (the non-technical parts).

This week it was hypothesized that hunter-gatherers had no overbite and so couldn't pronounce v & f'; with the rise of farming, people ate softer food and developed an overbite, and v & f entered their languages.

cience.sciencemag.org/content/363/6432/eaav3218

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... cs/584950/

[Carmel1379]

Observation of CP violation in charmed D meson decays, which helps explaining matter/anti-matter asymmetry.

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-cern-phys ... atter.html
https://home.cern/news/press-release/ph ... -asymmetry
http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-pub ... l#CPVcharm
http://cds.cern.ch/record/2668357/files ... 19-006.pdf

[Carmel1379]

Ah damn, It's still interesting. It's thought that in black holes time is still very unpredictable.

The problem is semantic/signifier overdoing, and it's not just media sensationalisation and misconstruing, but the physicists themselves who often struggle with interpreting and phrasing experimental results, leading to many inflated ideas. Correct phrasing is a major part of writing papers and if experimental outcomes are phrased in a lurid fashion, the actual signified result is most likely lost in translation, ill-described, dramatically exaggerated, or just plainly misapprehended. And obviously journalists aren't physicists, so they can't proof-read anything even if they wanted to.

[PirateJenny]

Ah damn, It's still interesting. It's thought that in black holes time is still very unpredictable.

The problem is semantic/signifier overdoing, and it's not just media sensationalisation and misconstruing, but the physicists themselves who often struggle with interpreting and phrasing experimental results, leading to many inflated ideas. Correct phrasing is a major part of writing papers and if experimental outcomes are phrased in a lurid fashion, the actual signified result is most likely lost in translation, ill-described, dramatically exaggerated, or just plainly misapprehended. And obviously journalists aren't physicists, so they can't proof-read anything even if they wanted to.

Yeah you're right. That makes sense. Most of the science doesn't really make much sense to me at a deeper lever so it's easier to get misled. From what I've read the quantum level is where it's all kicking off though?

[Carmel1379]

[joachimt]

Is that the first photo of a black hole?

[Carmel1379]

Is that the first photo of a black hole?

Right. Apparently it has about 6,5 billion times the mass of the Sun and is located 55 million light-years from Earth.

https://eventhorizontelescope.org/

[xianjiro]

- cool NEOWISE vid from ISS (the comet doesn't appear until about the 3 minute mark and it emerges from behind the planet)

this should be an official check! lol

[Armoreska]

Nice graphics. But there was a comment on youtube that said the earth was flat.

[xianjiro]

I should have also shared this link earlier - it gives some interesting background as the comet isn't the only celestial phenomena in the vid