Posted on Jun 20, 2022 in Science
Today’s stories range from An ocean below Earth’s crust could be key to a habitable planet to Canada to share UFO info with the US to How animals perceive the World to Moore’s Law– Homo Sapiens may be the Milky Way’s first intelligent civilization, and much more.
Most major US cities are underprepared for rising temperatures, reports the University of California, Los Angeles –“This month, Denver, Las Vegas and Phoenix all posted record high temperatures. And across the nation, Americans are ramping up for a scorching summer. Yet despite more frequent and intense heat waves on the horizon, cities are underprepared to deal with the challenge, according to a UCLA-led research team.”
An ocean below Earth’s crust could be key to a habitable planet –A new model suggests “mantle rain” from inside Earth’s mantle ensures we will always have a surface ocean, reports PopSCi.
‘Factorian Deep,’ the new deepest point in Antarctica’s Southern Ocean, mapped for the first time, reports Brandon Specktor for Space.com. The “Factorian Deep” sits more than 24,000 feet below subzero water.
Moore’s Law– Homo Sapiens May be the Milky Way’s First Intelligent Civilization, reports The Daily Galaxy. “As life has evolved its complexity has increased exponentially, just like Moore’s law, which states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. The regression suggests that if life takes 10 billion years to evolve to the level of complexity associated with homo sapiens, then we may be among the first, if not the first, intelligent civilization in the Milky Way, negating Drake’s Equation”
One shocking fact about each and every planet in the Solar System –Do you think you know the Solar System? Here’s a fact about each planet that might surprise you when you see it! reports Big Think.
Canada’s Going to Share UFO Info With the US, Officials Say –Canadian government officials are asking their U.S. counterparts about UFOs and nuclear security, reports Vice Science.
The Incredible Journey of Three African Wild Dogs –Three sisters braved lions, crocodiles, poachers, raging rivers and other dangers on a 1,300-mile transnational effort to forge a new dynasty, reports Pulitzer-Prize winner, Natalie Angier for The New York Times.
Can we think without using language? asks Joanna Thompson for Live Science. “Science suggests that words aren’t strictly necessary for reasoning. One prominent claim is that language basically came about to allow us to think more complex thoughts,” Evelina Fedorenko, a neuroscientist and researcher at MIT’s McGovern Institute, told Live Science. This idea was championed by legendary linguists like Noam Chomsky and Jerry Fodor in the mid-20th century, but it has begun to fall out of favor in more recent years, Scientific American reported.
Yes, size does matter: Solving the mystery of giraffe neck evolution, reports Big Think. It’s not about leaves in tall trees. “The long necks of giraffes showcase how peculiar adaptive evolution can be. Yet the question remains why they evolved in the first place. The fossil of an ancient relative of the giraffe that was discovered in China, Discokeryx xiezhi, might hold the answer. The ancient giraffe sported headgear suited for fierce head-butting, likely during male-to-male competition. This suggests that early giraffes might have butted heads for the same reason they now strike with necks: to woo mates and establish dominance.”
Chinese fossils show the human middle ear evolved from fish gills, reports the Chinese Academy of Sciences –“Embryonic and fossil evidence proves that the human middle ear evolved from the spiracle of fishes. However, the origin of the vertebrate spiracle has long been an unsolved mystery in vertebrate evolution.”
Why ‘natural’ is not always better. Some ‘natural’ products can contain ethically questionable ingredients, reports BBC Future. “From sharks’ livers to endangered plants – some claims about “natural” products should be interpreted with caution. Anna Turns investigates whether we should be more willing to use synthetic alternatives.”
Artificial intelligence has reached a threshold. And physics can help it break new ground, reports Interesting Engineering.
How Animals Perceive the World –Every creature lives within its own sensory bubble, but only humans have the capacity to appreciate the experiences of other species. What we’ve learned is astounding, reports Ed Yong for The Atlantic.
Yellowstone flooding: Why is it happening now? –Rain falling on snow caused this week’s floods, events that will become more likely as temperatures warm, reports National Geographic.
Why are the world’s heatwaves getting more intense? asks The Guardian. -”Temperatures, which should have been cooling rapidly as the south pole’s brief summer faded, were soaring – at the Vostok station, about 800 miles from the geographic south pole, thermometers recorded a massive 15C hotter than the previous all-time record, while at Terra Nova coastal base the water hovered above freezing, unheard of for the time of year.”
NASA Will Spend $35 Million On A New Mission To Probe The Moon’s Mysterious Volcanoes, reports Jamie Carter for Forbes. “NASA has green-lit a mission to explore a region of the Moon never before visited in an effort to understand a geological mystery—and help future lunar colonists.”
Why you should want to suffer — just a little bit –There are two kinds of suffering. One is pure pain. The other makes life worth living, reports Paul Bloom for Big Think.
When Things Feel Unreal, Is That a Delusion or an Insight? –The psychiatric syndrome called derealization raises profound moral and philosophical questions, reports John Horgan for Scientific American.
North Korea reports ‘epidemic’ of unidentified intestinal disease after Covid wave, CNN reported on Thursday, puts further strain on the isolated country as it battles chronic food shortages and a wave of Covid-19 infections. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/18/asia/intestinal-sickness-covid-north-korea-intl-hnk/index.htmlKorea reports ‘epidemic’ of unidentified intestinal disease after the Covid wave.
Curated by The Daily Galaxy Editorial Staff
Recent Planet Earth Reports:
NASA Zooms in on UFOs to Is Life the Result of Entropy?
James Webb Space Telescope’s Super-Secret Targets to Is Geometry a Language Only Humans Know?
Critics Horrified by World’s First Octopus Farm to Quest for Immortality
China’s One-of-a-Kind Cyber-Espionage to Multiverse of Universes All with Randomly Dialed Higgs Masses Virus from
Age of Dinosaurs Found in Human Genome to Is Earth’s Core a Weird State of Matter?
Why are NASA Spaceships Exploring Earth’s Deepest Oceans to Is Reality a Wavefunction?
The Terrifying Message Lurking in Earth’s Ancient Record to Robots Evolving Autonomously
The Quantum Century to Events That Could Have Ended Humanity
The ‘Douglas Adams Epoch’ to Earth’s Earliest Life May Owe Existence to Viruses
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