Today’s stories include Earth’s Crust Grew Faster when Our Planet Passed through the Milky Way’s Spiral Arms, to Death from the Clouds–The Hunt for Big Hail, to Do the Past, Present, and Future Exist All at Once? and much more.
Aliens, SETI, and the legacy of Frank Drake: 1930-2022 –Remembering Frank Drake, who transformed the search for alien life and extraterrestrial intelligence into a full-fledged scientific endeavor, reports Big Think.
How mammals won the dinosaurs’ world, reports BBC Future. “Sixty-six million years ago, our distant ancestors lived through perhaps the most violent event in Earth’s history. How did a band of small, insignificant mammals scuffling in the shadows survive the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs?”
“Death from the Clouds” –The Hunt for Big Hail. Hailstones of record size are falling left and right, and hailstorm damage is growing. But there is surprisingly little research to explain why, reports the New York Times. “The hailstone Mr. Scott collected in 2010, which measured eight inches across and weighed nearly two pounds, was no longer the largest ever recorded. Some people in Canada had found a bigger one, the clerk said. On Wednesday, a hailstorm killed a toddler in the Catalonia region of Spain.”
Our universe has antimatter partner on the other side of the Big Bang, say physicists. “Our universe could be the mirror image of an antimatter universe extending backwards in time before the Big Bang. So claim physicists in Canada, who have devised a new cosmological model positing the existence of an “antiuniverse” which, paired to our own, preserves a fundamental rule of physics called CPT symmetry.”
Time: Do the past, present, and future exist all at once? –The concept is so complex that scientists still argue whether it exists or if it is an illusion, reports Big Think. “In this video, astrophysicist Michelle Thaller, science educator Bill Nye, author James Gleick, and neuroscientist Dean Buonomano discuss how the human brain perceives of the passage of time, the idea in theoretical physics of time as a fourth dimension, and the theory that space and time are interwoven.”
Earth’s crust grew faster when our planet passed through the Milky Way’s spiral arms, study suggests, reports Physics World. “The rate at which Earth’s continental crust builds up goes through cycles, peaking around every 200 million years when the solar system travels through one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms.”
JWST has spotted sandy clouds on a distant alien world –Brown dwarfs are too massive to be a planet but not large enough to be a star, giving them features of both. Now, astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have found clouds on one of these cosmic objects, reports New Scientist.
The messages that survived civilization’s collapse, reports BBC Future. “The Sumerians, Maya and other ancient cultures created texts that have lasted hundreds and even thousands of years. Here’s what they can teach us about crafting an immortal message.”
The Curious Hole in My Head–Born without my left temporal lobe, a brain region thought to be critical for language, I’ve been a research subject for much of my life, writes Helen Santoro for The New York Times.
Fighting flat-Earth theory –Physicists will find it shocking, but there are plenty of people around the world who genuinely believe the Earth is flat. Rachel Brazil explores why such views are increasingly taking hold and how the physics community should best respond, reports Physics World.
A Long-Lost Branch of the Nile Helped in Building Egypt’s Pyramids –“Ancient architects somehow transported 2.3 million limestone and granite blocks, each weighing an average of more than two tons, across miles of desert from the banks of the Nile to the pyramid site on the Giza Plateau.” A new study confirms a long-held theory that builders used the river to transport the heavy blocks that make up the ancient wonders, reports Jack Tamisiea for the New York Times.
The stunning space phenomenon ‘diamond rain’ may be more common than once thought, reports Interesting Engineering. Diamonds are forever, but they might not be that rare. “Scientists have used common plastic to recreate the process that leads to diamond rain on Uranus and Neptune in the lab. They found that it is likely diamonds actually form in these planets’ atmospheres.”
An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy. –“I won, and I didn’t break any rules,” the artwork’s creator says, reports the New York Times. “Jason M. Allen of Pueblo West, Colo., didn’t make his entry with a brush or a lump of clay. He created it with Midjourney, an artificial intelligence program that turns lines of text into hyper-realistic graphics.”
Stressed out about climate change? 4 ways to tackle both the feelings and the issues, reports NPR. “Climate change has caused more intense wildfires, heat waves, floods and hurricanes, lengthened allergy seasons and inflicted other forms of tangible harm. But an oft-overlooked consequence — one that warrants urgent attention and creative problem-solving — is worsening mental health.”
The Amazon rainforest has already reached a crucial tipping point –About 26 per cent of the Amazon rainforest has already been lost or badly degraded and without intervention the rest could transform into savannah, reports New Scientist.
Curated by The Daily Galaxy editorial staff.
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