The lonely science post thread

[farmerbarleymow]

This is promising.

Blind man has sight partly restored after pioneering treatment

Man regains ability to recognise objects in first example of successful optogenetic therapy in humans

www.theguardian.com

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Tiger sharks are as hard as nails.

Tiger sharks are not scared of hurricanes, US researchers say

‘It was as if they didn’t even flinch,’ researcher says as study finds tiger sharks’ presence consistent before and during storm

www.theguardian.com

 

[yield]

Enormous strands of galaxies in the cosmic web appear to be spinning
14 June 2021

Some of the largest structures in the universe appear to be rotating. The filaments of galaxies forming the cosmic web that stretches between galaxy clusters seem to be spinning, which could help us figure out why galaxies themselves – and everything else in space – rotate.

How rotation is generated in space is a long-standing problem in astrophysics. “Not only are the galaxies spinning, but also the stars within the galaxies, and the Earth is spinning, and the Earth around the sun and the moon around the Earth. Pretty much the whole universe is spinning,” says Noam Libeskind at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany. “We don’t really know why, and one way to try to answer that is to figure out where the spinning stops.”

Previous research has suggested that clusters of galaxies may be the end of the road for spinning, but Libeskind and his colleagues have found that isn’t the case. They used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to examine the colossal filaments of galaxies that make up the cosmic web, which stretch across hundreds of millions of light years, and found that they are rotating.

Possible observational evidence for cosmic filament spin - Nature Astronomy

By stacking thousands of cosmic filaments and examining the velocity of galaxies perpendicular to the filament’s axis, it is shown that they display vortical motion consistent with rotation, signifying that angular momentum can be generated on unexpectedly large scales.

www.nature.com

"where the spinning stops" in relation to what? Intergalactic lagrange points?

 

[farmerbarleymow]

This is interesting - which planets have aliens that are spying on us.

Scientists identify 29 planets where aliens could observe Earth

Astronomers estimate 29 habitable planets are positioned to see Earth transit and intercept human broadcasts

www.theguardian.com

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Sunset from space

 

[yield]

Long-term gene–culture coevolution and the human evolutionary transition
royalsocietypublishing.org 02 June 2021

It has been suggested that the human species may be undergoing an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI). But there is disagreement about how to apply the ETI framework to our species, and whether culture is implicated as either cause or consequence. Long-term gene–culture coevolution (GCC) is also poorly understood. Some have argued that culture steers human evolution, while others proposed that genes hold culture on a leash.

We review the literature and evidence on long-term GCC in humans and find a set of common themes. First, culture appears to hold greater adaptive potential than genetic inheritance and is probably driving human evolution. The evolutionary impact of culture occurs mainly through culturally organized groups, which have come to dominate human affairs in recent millennia. Second, the role of culture appears to be growing, increasingly bypassing genetic evolution and weakening genetic adaptive potential.

Taken together, these findings suggest that human long-term GCC is characterized by an evolutionary transition in inheritance (from genes to culture) which entails a transition in individuality (from genetic individual to cultural group). Thus, research on GCC should focus on the possibility of an ongoing transition in the human inheritance system.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Long-term gene–culture coevolution and the human evolutionary transition
royalsocietypublishing.org 02 June 2021

This sort of thing is right up my alley, will take a proper look tomorrow.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Blue supergiant compared to the solar system

 

[farmerbarleymow]

 

[farmerbarleymow]

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Some sponges might be the oldest form of animal life on the planet

‘Wiggly’ fossils found in Canada may be oldest known sign of animal life

Scientists believe the unusual tubular structures may be the remnants of prehistoric sponges

www.theguardian.com

 

[T & P]

Can someone post a link to an authoritative article on dowsing, aka water divining whether for or against ? I have a zero tolerance to any and all nutjobbery beliefs, but over the years I have seen various non-nutjob programmes that seem to show the technique is actually used by serious companies or surveyors as a reliable method to locate water underground.

The final straw being Jeremy Clarkson, who let’s face it is the last person on Earth likely to be sympathetic to pseudoscience hippie beliefs, ecstatically claiming in Clarkson’s Farm that the two sticks he was holding in his hands were really moving on their own accord as he walked on a field where a water pipe ran under.

I still think it must be bullshit, but after seeing so many reports from unlikely sources claiming it really works, I have to wonder. Wikipedia still describes it as pseudoscience. Is there actually anything to it?

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Is there any scientific evidence for dowsing?

There is evidence that dowsing can work but this is neither spooky nor supernatural. It comes down to the dowser, not their tools.

www.sciencefocus.com

A sceptical site

dowsing (a.k.a. water witching) - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

www.skepdic.com

Been discussed here a couple of years back

Dowsing

Carried over from another thread. It’s bullshit, obviously. Tested more than almost any other woo, it always fails. Cue “Oh but my uncles mate did it for the council” stories in 3... 2... 1...

www.urban75.net

You should do a diploma with the people below and tell us if it works.

Dowsing Diploma Course - Centre of Excellence

Learn how dowsing works, the tools used in its practice, and receive guidance on how to use divining techniques, with the Dowsing Diploma Course.

www.centreofexcellence.com

 

[farmerbarleymow]

 

[NoXion]

A stupid article written by someone who is ignorant of modern taxonomy.

Plants Feel Pain and Might Even See

It’s time to retire the hierarchical classification of living things.

nautil.us

"The German title of Coccia’s book translates as “The Roots of the World,” and the book really does cover this. It upends our view of the living world, putting plants at the top of the hierarchy with humans down at the bottom. I had been giving a great deal of thought to this myself. Ranking the natural world and scoring species according to their importance or their superiority seemed to me outdated. It distorts our view of nature and makes all the other species around us seem more primitive and somehow unfinished. For some time now, I have not been comfortable with viewing humans as the crown of creation, separating animals into higher and lower life-forms, and treating plants as something on the side, definitively banished to a lower level."

Well good news, dear author, because modern biological science does not rank organisms according to any kind of arbitrary hierarchy. Taxonomy is based on cladistics, which represent real familial relations within Earthly biology, rather than recycling the old medieval notion of a "Great Chain of Being".


"After our first cup of coffee, we were soon deep into our main topic: trees and plants in general. Coccia argued that our biological classifications are not grounded in science. They are strongly influenced by theology and are dominated by two ideas: the supremacy of the human race and the world as a place humans must bend to their will. And then there is our centuries-old compulsion to categorize everything. When you combine these concepts, you get a ranking system that puts humankind at the top, animals in the middle, and plants way down at the bottom."

It seems that Coccia is confusing the public's perception of "evolutionary levels" with taxonomic classification, and has managed to pass on this misconception to the article author.


"I listened, fascinated by what he had to say. Here was a man of my own heart. I would prefer it, I told Coccia, if science categorized species one beside the other. That would still allow an order, a system of sorting, without imposing any kind of a hierarchy."

This already exists. It's called cladistics. Where the fuck are these ignoramuses coming from?


"František Baluška is also very good at making inconceivable connections. Baluška, a plant cell biologist at University of Bonn, has for some time now been of the opinion that plants are intelligent—after all, they can process information and make decisions. But do plants have consciousness? That takes the discussion to a whole different level. If we could prove that plants have consciousness, we would have to radically change the way we interact with them, because we’d find ourselves facing the same kinds of issues that we face with factory farming in conventional agriculture"

Didn't this kind of thing used to be the subject of satirical pisstaking? cf. Neil from The Young Ones and "vegetable rights".

Look, it's one thing to enthuse about how we're discovering more interesting things about how plants interact with the rest of the world. The south American vine that can seemingly imitate other things based on visual cue alone is certainly intriguing. But this article is shit, it's a massive leap to go from there to wittering about plant consciousness and assuming that modern biologists still use pre-scientific models of classifying organisms.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Sadly it's probably fake.

Video shows paper aeroplane flying circuits using desk fans. Fact Check - ThatsNonsense.com

A video appears to show a paper aeroplane flying perpetually in a circuit, propelled by a...

www.thatsnonsense.com

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Interesting to see the crater in the browser

 

[SpookyFrank]

It's Australia though, so what you're actually seeing is:



...so it's just normal downwards lightning after all.

 

[petee]

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/son-doong-cave-in-vietnam-worlds-largest-cave-is-so-big-it-has-its-own-weather/779176

"Hidden behind treacherous mountains deep in the tropical forests of a national park in Vietnam, the world’s largest cave sat untouched and sealed up for millions of years--until just recently."

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Slime mould knows where it last had a decent dinner.
View attachment 256916

Slime Mold Doesn't Have a Brain, But It Can 'Remember' Where to Find Food

It may be a single-celled organism, but the slime mould Physarum polycephalum has some pretty fascinating tricks up its pretty yellow sleeves.

www.sciencealert.com

An interesting article about slime mould

What Slime Knows - Orion Magazine

There is no hierarchy in the web of life

orionmagazine.org

 

[UKSmartyPants]

The solar system in the corridor is hopelessly out of scale. If the Sun is pitched at 13cm across, then the earth needs to be 147 cm away, and 1/10th of a millmetre across.

 

[T & P]

If it is possible, can anyone explain in layman terms what health implications might arise from very fast space travel regarding acceleration & G forces?

I’m going to ignore science fiction scenarios, like jumping to hyperspace or Warp speed. Let’s say in the near future we come up with a solar wind craft that might eventually reach 10% of the speed of light. Or a craft propelled by successive nuclear detonations fired behind it. Even if we ever made such propulsion technologically viable, could the human body stand the resulting forces in microgravity? Or perhaps because of microgravity it would be survivable?

 

[farmerbarleymow]

This looks like a very useful discovery - plants emit IR light that can be used to judge ecosystem health.

 

[HAL9000]

If it is possible, can anyone explain in layman terms what health implications might arise from very fast space travel regarding acceleration & G forces?

I’m going to ignore science fiction scenarios, like jumping to hyperspace or Warp speed. Let’s say in the near future we come up with a solar wind craft that might eventually reach 10% of the speed of light. Or a craft propelled by successive nuclear detonations fired behind it. Even if we ever made such propulsion technologically viable, could the human body stand the resulting forces in microgravity? Or perhaps because of microgravity it would be survivable?

One of the best chances of getting a probe to Alpha Centauri would be a light sail, so no heavy rockets or fuel to carry. I think humans currently lack the required technology to send a probe to our nearest star, so I suspect the chances of project "Breakthrough Starshot" succeding is zero. But it has calculated the g force acceleration...

Breakthrough Starshot - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

average acceleration on the order of 100 km/s2 (10,000 g)

3g is perhaps a limit humans could cope with
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Nuclear bombs, now assuming a government was happy for 1000's of nuclear bombs to be sent into low earth orbit. You can then explore the solar system...

Project Orion (nuclear propulsion) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Since weight is no limitation, an Orion craft can be extremely robust. An uncrewed craft could tolerate very large accelerations, perhaps 100 g. A human-crewed Orion, however, must use some sort of damping system behind the pusher plate to smooth the near instantaneous acceleration to a level that humans can comfortably withstand – typically about 2 to 4 g.

There's also a calculation for a trip to Alpha Centauri, but its so slow its better to use this machine for trips within the solar system..

	"Energy Limited" Orion	"Momentum Limited" Orion
Ship diameter (meters)	20,000 m	100 m
Mass of empty ship (tonnes)	10,000,000 t (incl.5,000,000 t copper hemisphere)	100,000 t (incl. 50,000 t structure+payload)
+Number of bombs = total bomb mass (each 1 Mt bomb weighs 1 tonne)	30,000,000	300,000
=Departure mass (tonnes)	40,000,000 t	400,000 t
Maximum velocity (kilometers per second)	1000 km/s (=0.33% of the speed of light)	10,000 km/s (=3.3% of the speed of light)
Mean acceleration (Earth gravities)	0.00003 g (accelerate for 100 years)	1 g (accelerate for 10 days)
Time to Alpha Centauri (one way, no slow down)	1330 years	133 years
Estimated cost	1 year of U.S. GNP (1968), $3.67 Trillion	0.1 year of U.S. GNP $0.367 Trillion

(Alternatively perhaps, manufacture 1000s of nuclear bombs on the moon and extract the raw materials from the moon, then send the finished bombs into earth orbit using a linear accelerator. )

 

[existentialist]

One of the best chances of getting a probe to Alpha Centauri would be a light sail, so no heavy rockets or fuel to carry. I think humans currently lack the required technology to send a probe to our nearest star, so I suspect the chances of project "Breakthrough Starshot" succeding is zero. But it has calculated the g force acceleration...

Breakthrough Starshot - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

3g is perhaps a limit humans could cope with
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nuclear bombs, now assuming a government was happy for 1000's of nuclear bombs to be sent into low earth orbit. You can then explore the solar system...

Project Orion (nuclear propulsion) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There's also a calculation for a trip to Alpha Centauri, but its so slow its better to use this machine for trips within the solar system..

	"Energy Limited" Orion	"Momentum Limited" Orion
Ship diameter (meters)	20,000 m	100 m
Mass of empty ship (tonnes)	10,000,000 t (incl.5,000,000 t copper hemisphere)	100,000 t (incl. 50,000 t structure+payload)
+Number of bombs = total bomb mass (each 1 Mt bomb weighs 1 tonne)	30,000,000	300,000
=Departure mass (tonnes)	40,000,000 t	400,000 t
Maximum velocity (kilometers per second)	1000 km/s (=0.33% of the speed of light)	10,000 km/s (=3.3% of the speed of light)
Mean acceleration (Earth gravities)	0.00003 g (accelerate for 100 years)	1 g (accelerate for 10 days)
Time to Alpha Centauri (one way, no slow down)	1330 years	133 years
Estimated cost	1 year of U.S. GNP (1968), $3.67 Trillion	0.1 year of U.S. GNP $0.367 Trillion

(Alternatively perhaps, manufacture 1000s of nuclear bombs on the moon and extract the raw materials from the moon, then send the finished bombs into earth orbit using a linear accelerator. )

I've always been fascinated by the idea of the Orion drive, though I don't think anyone's going to ever want to actually do it...

 

[petee]

 

[yield]

New mineral davemaoite discovered inside a diamond from Earth's mantle

Trapped inside a tiny diamond, there are tinier crystals of a never-before-seen mineral that makes up 5 per cent of the lower mantle

www.newscientist.com

11 November 2021

The atomic composition of this particular perovskite – which primarily contains calcium, silicon and oxygen – shows it could only have formed under the extreme conditions experienced in the lower mantle, where the pressure is more than 200,000 times that found at Earth’s surface. Under surface conditions, calcium silicate is instead typically found as a white mineral called wollastonite that has needle-like crystals.

Tschauner and his colleagues named the new calcium silicate mineral davemaoite in honour of deep-Earth scientist Ho-Kwang “Dave” Mao at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC.

 

[two sheds]

I thought this was really interesting - saying that it's the field that actually transmits energy in a wire rather than the electrons. And I got the wrong answer to the question because of what I was taught at uni

 

[petee]

oops wrong forum

General aviation/airplane news and chat

Better than nothing. But not good better than I'm a celebrity get me out of here, I would imagine.

www.urban75.net

 

[farmerbarleymow]

The first true millipede has been discovered, lurking underground in Australia. 1,036 legs.

The first true millipede: new species with more than 1,000 legs discovered in Western Australia

Researchers named the subterranean animal Eumillipes persephone after the Greek goddess of the underworld

www.theguardian.com