Today’s stories range from When did genetic variations that make us human emerge to What human-made structures can be seen from space to Tardigrades could teach us how to handle the rigors of space travel, and much more. The Planet Earth Report provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalists about the extraordinary discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species.
Did Nature Heal During the Pandemic ‘Anthropause’? asks New York Times Science. Covid precautions created a global slowdown in human activity — and an opportunity to learn more about the complex ways we affect other species.
Meet the Giant Sequoia, the ‘Super Tree’ Built to Withstand Fire–Mammoth redwood trees have evolved along with fire, but humans are disrupting that delicate balance, reports Scientific American. “When the Grizzly Giant sprouted from the ground in what is now Yosemite National Park, the Roman Republic was nearly two centuries away from forming, Buddhism would not develop for at least more than a century, and the geoglyphs making up the Nazca Lines of southern Peru would not be etched for around 200 years.”
Tardigrades could teach us how to handle the rigors of space travel –These tiny eight-legged creatures are an inspiration, reports Science News. “No beast on Earth is tougher than the tiny tardigrade. It can survive being frozen at -272° Celsius, being exposed to the vacuum of outer space and even being blasted with 500 times the dose of X-rays that would kill a human.”
What Is Marburg? What You Need To Know About The Deadly Virus Detected In Ghana, reports Forbes. “Ghana confirmed the country’s first outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus on Sunday, placing it and neighboring countries on high alert as experts scramble to contain the highly infectious Ebola-like disease for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment.”
Ghana confirms first cases of deadly Marburg virus, reports The BBC. “Ghana has confirmed its first two cases of the deadly Marburg virus, a highly infectious disease in the same family as the virus that causes Ebola. It says both patients died recently in hospital in the southern Ashanti region.”
Signals of Extinct Extraterrestrial Civilizations –“Echo Throughout the Milky Way” reports The Daily Galaxy. “A signal reaching Earth could thus be as old as about 90,000 years, that is the time it takes for electromagnetic waves to cover the distance between us and the opposite edge of our galaxy, and this time span becomes even larger if we take into account signals from other galaxies. It is thus not unreasonable to think that, at the time we receive a signal, the emitting civilization no longer exist.
When Does the Clean-Energy Infinity Loop Start? –Digging up minerals for rechargeable batteries has a high initial cost, but eventually those minerals can be recycled indefinitely, reports The Atlantic Science.
This Pioneering Economist Says Our Obsession With Growth Must End, reports the New York Times. “That possibility — that prioritizing growth is ultimately a losing game — is one that the lauded economist Herman Daly has been exploring for more than 50 years. In so doing, he has developed arguments in favor of a steady-state economy.”
Antarctic bacteria reveal an evolutionary limit to dealing with heat-Some bacteria living in the Southern Ocean can only adapt to temperatures about 2°C above what they usually live in, and other organisms could face similar limits adapting to higher temperatures, reports New Scientist.
Octopus and Human Brains Share the Same “Jumping Genes”, reports SciTechDaily. “According to a new study, the neural and cognitive complexity of the octopus could originate from a molecular analogy with the human brain.”
Connectivity of Language Areas Unique in the Human Brain, reports Neuroscience. Researchers shed new light on how the human brain evolved to be language-ready. Compared to the brains of chimps, the patterns of connections of language areas in the human brain expanded more than was previously thought.
The Human Brain Runs Way Hotter Than We Ever Realized, Scientists Find–“From the engine in your car to the components in your laptop, mechanical systems tend to heat up when they’re working harder. Now new research has revealed that the same can be said of the brain – and it runs hotter than was previously thought,” reports Science Alert.
Why Do Humans Sleep? Scientists Find Clues for Solving This Age-Old Mystery, reports SciTechDaily. ” This issue has been debated by scientists for hundreds of years, but a recent study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers that was carried out in collaboration with experts from Brown University, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and several other institutions adds new clues for solving this mystery.”
The Mind of a Bee: Can a bee have a form of consciousness? –A radical new book argues that a bee may have a mind of its own, awareness of the world, basic emotions and intelligence. It is a bold and brave claim – but is it true? reports New Scientist.
Why the Arctic Is Warming 4 Times as Fast as the Rest of Earth –The loss of sea ice is exposing darker waters, which absorb more of the sun’s energy. It’s a devastating feedback loop with major consequences for the planet, reports Wired.
What human-made structures can be seen from space? reports Joe Phelan for Live Science. Can astronauts see the Great Wall of China? What about the pyramids? “On a clear day, would someone at the Kármán line be able to see the Great Wall of China or the Great Pyramid of Giza, for example? “
Meet the Woman Who Makes the James Webb Space Telescope Work–Jane Rigby, Webb’s operations project scientist, discusses how NASA plans to wring as much science as possible from the $10-billion observatory, reports Lee Billings for Scientific American..
Earth-like planets in dead star ‘cosmic graveyards’ get stranger, reports Robert Lea for Space.com. The first world found orbiting a pulsar is rarer than previously believed, deepening the mystery of how planets survive around violent dead stars.
The Webb telescope: a source of wonder that is both aesthetic and technological, reports Monica Grady for The Guardian.
Saturn’s Titan has more oil than Earth, reports Space.com.”Titan has hundreds of times more natural gas and other liquidhydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, scientists say.
When did genetic variations that make us human emerge, reports Mirage. “Two moments in which mutations accumulated: one around 40,000 years ago, associated with the growth of the Homo sapiens population and its departure from Africa, and an older one, more than 100,000 years ago, related to the time of the greatest diversity of types of Homo sapiens in Africa.”
They Couldn’t Believe Their Eyes: The Ocean Was Glowing. –Satellites previously detected a giant bioluminescent bloom in the Java Sea. Researchers found a boat crew that sailed through it, reports New York Times Science.
These 4 Factors Can Explain Why So Many People Are Rejecting Science, reports Science Alert. Distrust of science is a massive problem. In our current environment, it’s directly leading to people’s deaths. Much of the misinformation we face is intentional and organized, and even worse, research has found lies seem to spread faster online and are often stickier than the truth.
Large Hadron Collider ‘Beauty Experiment’ Discovers 3 New Particles –It’s a boom era for discovering new exotic particles that make up our reality, reports Vice Science.
Antarctica bathed in dazzling colors in afterglow of Tonga eruption–Scientists say aerosols thrown into stratosphere in January responsible for volcanic twilight ‘afterglows.
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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