Posted on May 21, 2021 in Climate Change, Planet Earth, Science, Technology
Chalk up another amanzing week of new from Planet Earth, ranging from rethinking the fabric of reality to a new global threat capable of destroying life itself.
Time is fundamental, space is emergent – why physicists are rethinking reality, reports Aeon. “From Isaac Newton’s ‘absolute space’ and ‘absolute time’, which envisioned the two phenomena as fundamental and separate, to Albert Einstein’s ‘spacetime’, which condensed them into a single concept, the relationship between space and time has been the mystery driving fundamental physics for more than four centuries. And over the past several decades, some physicists have come to believe that the fabric of reality is perhaps due to be torn into yet again.”
Sleep Evolved Before Brains. Hydras Are Living Proof –Studies of sleep are usually neurological. But some of nature’s simplest animals suggest that sleep evolved for metabolic reasons, long before brains even existed, reports Quanta.
Could humans really destroy all life on Earth? asks BBC Future. “Unknown to many people, a new global threat capable of destroying life itself is brewing in the shadows of our everyday lives. It’s driven by the immense human desire for material consumption. And paradoxically it is a consequence of human life itself.”
Unknowable? –“The Structure of an Extraterrestrial Civilization’s Language” –In December, 2020 ex-CIA Director John Brennan said it was “presumptuous and arrogant” to believe there are no other forms of life than the ones on Earth referring to the recent videos released by the Pentagon of US Navy sightings of UFOs. “I think, some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continues to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life,” he said on the podcast “Conversations with Tyler.”
“Extraterrestrial” –Discovery of Alien Isotope Prompts Rethink of Origins of Elements on Earth, reports The Daily Galaxy. “The “first-ever discovery of an extraterrestrial radioactive isotope on Earth has scientists rethinking the origins of the elements on our planet. The tiny traces of plutonium-244 (Pu-244) were found in ocean crust alongside radioactive iron-60. The two isotopes are evidence of violent cosmic events in the vicinity of Earth millions of years ago.
Iceberg Splits From Antarctica, Becoming World’s Largest –The iceberg broke off from the edge of the Ronne Ice Shelf into the Weddell Sea this week, researchers said, reports The New York Times.
Humans have ‘stressed out’ Earth far longer, and more dramatically, than realized –A study of ancient pollen reveals that millennia of human activities transformed Earth’s ecosystems as quickly as when the Ice Age ended, reports Glenn Hodges for National Geographic.
The race to understand the exhilarating, dangerous world of language AI –Hundreds of scientists around the world are working together to understand one of the most powerful emerging technologies before it’s too late, reports the MIT Technology Review.’
“Globular Cluster Opportunity”–Ideal for Signals from Intelligence Billions of Years Older than Humans, reports The Daily Galaxy. “
Smartphone Is Now ‘the Place Where We Live’, Anthropologists Say, reports Alex Hern | The Guardian –“The smartphone is perhaps the first object to challenge the house itself (and possibly also the workplace) in terms of the amount of time we dwell in it while awake,’ they conclude, coining the term ‘transportal home’ to describe the effect. ‘We are always “at home” in our smartphone. We have become human snails carrying our home in our pockets.”
Can Machines Control Our Brains? –Advances in brain-computer interface technology are impressive, but we’re not close to anything resembling mind control, reports Quanta.
Deadly Fungi Are the Newest Emerging Microbe Threat All Over the World –These pathogens already kill 1.6 million people every year, and we have few defenses against them, reports Scientific American.
First Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Released in U.S. Are Hatching Now –As Aedes aegypti mosquitoes increase their range because of warming climate, genetic manipulation of the disease-carrying species could gain wider appeal, reports Donavyn Coffey for The Daily Galaxy.
Iceberg Splits From Antarctica, Becoming World’s Largest –The iceberg broke off from the edge of the Ronne Ice Shelf into the Weddell Sea this week, researchers said, reports The New York Times.
Wormhole Tunnels in Spacetime May Be Possible, New Research Suggests –There may be realistic ways to create cosmic bridges predicted by general relativity, reports Brendan Z. Foster for Scientific American.
Extraterrestrial Plutonium Atoms Turn Up on Ocean Bottom –The rare form of the element found on the Pacific seabed points to its violent birth in colliding stars, reports The New York Times.
The Daily Galaxy Editorial Staff
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Recent Planet Earth Reports
Planet Earth Report –“Reality of ‘Galactic Empires’ to Quantum Observatories Hundreds of Kilometers Wide”
Planet Earth Report –“If Aliens Exist, Here’s How We’ll Know to Mars is a Hellhole”
Planet Earth Report –“The Terrifying Message Lurking in Earth’s Ancient Record to Robots Evolving Autonomously”
Planet Earth Report –“The Quantum Century to Events That Could Have Ended Humanity”
Planet Earth Report –“The ‘Douglas Adams Epoch’ to Earth’s Earliest Life May Owe Existence to Viruses”
Planet Earth Report –“Man Who Decoded Origins of Life to Is Our Universe an Experiment by an Ancient Civilization”
Planet Earth Report –“Beyond Homo Sapiens to Did Neanderthals Go to War with Our Ancestors?”
Planet Earth Report –“Darwin’s Extraterrestrials to Earth from an Alien Observatory”
Planet Earth Report –“The Supermassive-Milky Way Experiment Nobody Thought Would Work to a Prior Universe”
Read about The Daily Galaxy editorial team here