There's actually quite a bit of glass on the moon, but the unusual find by China's rover is a little more spectacular.
They found two half inch diameter beads. The glass is created by the intense heat from an impact, causing silicates to splash into the air as liquid. Then they cool down and you get glass.
Volcanos do it too and volcanic glass is probably what gave us the idea of making the stuff.
(Everything we make mimics nature, if you think about it).
...at least if they're Australian magpies.
Despite their name, Australian magpies are not corvids, although they are fairly close on the evolutionary tree. This is obvious from the fact that they pipe instead of cawing.
But it seems that they fall into the same degree of intelligence, as scientists found out when they attempted to fit a bunch of them with tracking harnesses.
Well, they got the harnesses on the birds.
The five birds, unamused, promptly got together and removed the harnesses. This demonstrated, by the way, altruism (which is also demonstrated by rats, so not that unique) as well as intelligence, cooperation, and problem solving.
I have a feeling they may need to pay the next bunch. Maybe with tacos?
Or rather pterosaurs. We just found a beautiful fossil of a pterosaur with a 2.5 meter wingspan...on the Scottish island of Skye.
Like, ya know, exactly where one would expect to find a dragon. This isn't one of the really big ones, those came a little later (this is a Jurassic pterosaur), but it's still a dragon.
I wonder if we mined out all the ones in Wales for slate...
Yes, that's the same star, but before it was all over the place. Now it's a pretty, pretty snowflake.
SCIENCE this summer. Everything is going the way it's supposed to. I can't wait.
Personal update. My broken hand is now better. (Okay, 95% better, but I am out from under medical supervision ;)).
Almost caught up on all the stuff the broken hand interfered with, too. And without OT taking up six hours a week it'll be a lot easier.
...over $200k for a broken doghouse?
What if it was hit by a meteorite (with the dog inside, although the dog survived)? Apparently that's what they expect it to fetch and it's just silly, guys.
I want the actual meteorite!
Time crystals sound amazingly SF, but no, they don't hold time or allow us to travel through time.
What time crystals do is tick. They're basically incredibly sophisticated clocks...that until now required a specialized lab to keep them at near absolute zero.
But just like we now have room temperature superconductors, we now have room temperature time crystals! These are incredibly accurate clocks and are likely to act as server clocks in quantum computers...plus whatever other uses we may find for them.
Science marches on!
Yes, they existed, although they didn't wear all black (that's a tradition from the Japanese stage).
And archaeologists excavating the site of a siege in 1590 have evidence they were there (perhaps trying to sneak in). The evidence? Early throwing stars. And a variety of other lost/discarded ninja weapons.
It's not the only place we've found them, too. Yay ninjas?
...or Singles Day, or Galentine Day, or whatever you choose to celebrate.
Our false spring seems to have gone away again, unsurprising given a groundhog dropped dead. But real spring is on the horizon and I hope everyone has their treat of choice.
So, the most common cause of respiratory illness in birds is aspergillosis...it's a fungal infection that's common in pet birds (humans can get it too, but not nearly as much).
It causes lesions in the bird's air sacs, a part of the respiratory system we don't have. Sometimes, if it's severe, the infection can spread into the bone.
This appears to have happened to an unfortunate...dinosaur. The fossil of a young sauropod shows damage that might indicate a severe...and possibly fatal...case of the disease.
Poor dinosaur. Chickens, remember, are still dinosaurs...
Meet Mambawakale ruhuhu, "Ancient crocodile from the Ruhulu Basin.
Over five meters long. Over two foot long skull. And an apex predator.
Yeah, let's not argue with that guy. Closest living relatives are, of course, crocodiles and alligators. Second closest? Your chickens.
Chickens have not forgotten they are dinosaurs, am I right?
...85 miles wide. Largest Oort Cloud object ever detected, and its coming our way. Don't worry...it's going to come no closer than 11 au, and we won't even get a light show.
But that is one big chunk of interplanetary ice right there...
No, for real. Because what else would you call a giant, mountain-size rock buried under the coast of Japan which alters the course of earthquakes.
Mapping the rock, called the Kumano Pluton, might help the Japanese predict future earthquakes and tsunamis and save numerous lives.
Kaiju jokes aside, how many other "earthquake magnets" are there?
...your entire homeland just catching fire at once. This may have happened to the "Hopewell" culture sometime between 252 and 383 BCE.
A comet grazed the Earth's atmosphere, and debris set 9,200 square miles on fire. (It was observed by the Chinese and there's also matching reports from the Miami and Shawnee tribes). It would have destroyed their land...
...but the interesting thing is that the height of the Hopewell culture was...between 200 BCE and 600 CE.
In other words, it appears that the apocalypse may have, far from destroying their culture and civilization, actually strengthened it.
Interesting thought...
Most of us have a filling or two...or more. Human teeth are amazing, but have their limits.
Because of this, scientists have been trying to duplicate tooth enamel for, oh, a while. The composites we now use to fill teeth are better than when we used toxic mercury, but they're still weaker than the natural enamel. This is why sometimes your dentist has to repair or replace a filling.
They've now succeeded. Sadly, the artificial enamel won't be appearing in your dentists' office any time soon. While it's better than natural enamel, it has to be heated to 300 degrees centigrade, then frozen, then shaped with a diamond saw. It's possible it may be usable for implants if the dentist can send images to a specialist lab.
But it might be useful for protecting chips in laptops and phones...and they're even talking about tooth buildings, as the artificial enamel might be particularly resistant to earthquake damage.
Plus, the fact that enamel is so hard to duplicate just reminds us that biology is cool.
...and again we have a tantalizing hint of possible life on Marsh. Curosity found a carbon signature associated with biological processes.
But, of course, we've been here before and it never seems to quite work out. (And we all know that some people will be happy to destroy it to try and terraform Mars. Sigh).
If you've been following the James Web Space Telescope, then you know it's dang hard to get something the size of a small truck out to L5.
Lagrange stations are a staple of science fiction. It takes very little fuel to keep something at a Lagrange point because gravity is on your side.
But getting to either of the Earth-Sun Lagrange points is a true challenge. Lifting that much material...
...but there's a solution.
You use material that's already there.
And we may have it. 2020 XL is an asteroid that's in a similar orbit to Webb around L4, the other Earth-Sun point.
It's a kilometer long.
And it's stable in the long term by human standards...it's going to be there at least 3,500 years.
So?
We hollow it out and use it to make our Lagrange point base. Significantly reduces what we need to transport.
Of course, it would need a better name at that point.
Just a quick note.
Webb is on station, but we won't get science...or even pretty pictures until summer. Why?
Physics.
The sensitive instruments on the telescope had to be protected during the long flight...which meant they are quite warm. However, they are designed to work in the ultra-low temperatures of space.
And we can only cool them down *so* quickly. We can't even start the final alignment of the mirrors for a while.
So, that's why we all have to be patient a little bit longer for Pretty Pictures Of Deep Space <tm>,
