Another week of amazing news from our Pale Blue Dot, with stories ranging from Earth Is Tiny Because The Sun Had Saturn-Like Rings Before It Had Planets to How Can Something So Small Live So Long.
“Ten One-Billionths of Cosmic History” –Past Homo Species Could Not Survive Intense Climate Change, reports Andy Johnson for The Daily Galaxy –“The human experience on our pale blue dot “has lasted for less than 10 one-billionths of cosmic history surrounded by a vast lifeless space, yet we humans are congratulating ourselves,” says Peter Brannen author of Ends of the World.
What AI cannot do–AI is poised to displace millions of jobs, both blue-collar and white-collar. However, there are skills that AI cannot master: strategy, creativity, empathy-based social skills, and dexterity. We need a new social contract that emphasizes the importance of proper education and collaboration with AI.
Earth Is Tiny Because The Sun Had Saturn-Like Rings Before It Had Planets Say Scientists, reports Jamie Carter for Forbes. “The Sun had bands of dust and gas similar to Saturn’s rings before it had planets, which influenced how large planet Earth turned out to be.”
How, exactly, does planet Earth move through the Universe? The Solar System isn’t a vortex, but rather the sum of all our great cosmic motions. Here’s how we move through space, reports Big Think.
Twisted cities: 10 places synonymous with psychological disorders –Stockholm Syndrome is the most famous of 10 psychological disorders named after world cities. Most relate to tourism or hostage-taking, reports Big Think audio.
Evidence for String Theory –In a quest to map out a quantum theory of gravity, researchers have used logical rules to calculate how much Einstein’s theory must change. The result matches string theory perfectly, reports Natalie Wolchover for Quanta.
The Boston Globe: 2021 was so weird, that big UFO news totally went over our heads— Is the potential reality of extraterrestrials too overwhelming — or too frightening — for our human brains to absorb? asks Will Dowd.
Billionaires Bankroll Cell Rejuvenation Tech as the Latest Gambit to Slow Aging, reports Michael Eisenstein and Nature Biotechnology for Scientific American.
What is “Dark Academia,” and why is it trending on social media in 2022? –People around the world, mostly Generation Z, are obsessed with the look and feel of gothic, elitist universities. Why? asks Big Think.
How we can reach for a food utopia, reports James Wong for BBC Future –Despite leaps forward in food science, what we eat still has a lot to answer for.
Archeologists Discover Two Huge Sphinxes in Egyptian Ruins –The sphinxes measure 26 feet in length and represent King Amenhotep III, who reigned about 3,300 years ago, reports Becky Becky Ferreira, for Vice Science.
The missing continent it took 375 years to find, reports BBC Future–“It took scientists 375 years to discover the eighth continent of the world, which has been hiding in plain sight all along. But mysteries still remain.”
Alien Octopus Hypothesis (YouTube Video)
This Ancient Crab Had Unusually Huge Eyes –A study of fossils from Colombia suggests that a prehistoric shellfish hunted prey with remarkably sharp vision, reports The New York Times.
The Point of No Return -Scientists Compare Current Climate Change to Geologic Past, reports The Daily Galaxy. “As we put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and temperatures rise, we are quickly rewinding the climate clock to climate states not seen in human history,” wrote acclaimed University of Wisconsin paleo-climatologist Jack Williams in an email to The Daily Galaxy.
Greenland Could Melt for Millennia If Warming Stopped Today –Greenland has a delayed response to changes in the Earth’s climate, and even if the planet stopped warming tomorrow, Greenland may continue losing ice for hundreds or even thousands of years, reports Scientific American.
The Radical Intervention That Might Save the ‘Doomsday’ Glacier, reports James Temple for MIT Technology Review –“Even if the world immediately halted the greenhouse-gas emissions driving climate change and warming the waters beneath the ice shelf, that wouldn’t do anything to thicken and restabilize the Thwaites’s critical buttress, says John Moore, a glaciologist and professor at the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland..
What was sex with a Neanderthal like? reports Zaria Gorvett for BBC Future –“Scientists know a surprising amount about the titillating episode in human history when our species got together, including whether we kissed and the nature of their sexual organs.”
How Can Something So Small Live So Long? Ant queens break the rules of aging, reports Tim Vernimmen for The Atlantic.
Here’s What Scientists Know About the Tonga Volcano Eruption –While residents of Tonga struggle to recover from a devastating volcanic explosion that smothered the Pacific island nation with ash and swamped it with water, scientists are trying to better understand the global effects of the eruption, reports The New York Times.
Warnings from Earth’s ‘Third Pole’ –Climate Change at the Crest of the World, reports The Daily Galaxy. “Acknowledging the blind hubris of our Anthropocene epoch, NASA is keeping a space-based eye on the Himalayas, Karakoram, Hindu Kush –The glaciers and snowpack of Asia’s three highest mountain ranges harbor the largest volume of freshwater outside the polar ice sheets, leading hydrologists to dub this region “The Third Pole”
Why Whales Don’t Choke –Scientists have discovered a new anatomical structure that allows lunge-feeding whales to take in massive amounts of water without choking, reports Sam Jones for The New York Times.
Planet Earth Report–Why are NASA Spaceships Exploring Earth’s Deepest Oceans to Is Reality a Wavefunction?
Planet Earth Report –”Made on Exoplanet X to Space Hurricane Above Earth”
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”
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