Could a solar storm destroy the internet?

 Yes and no.

The sun has an 11 year cycle of weather and is approaching so-called "solar maximum," which basically means there are more sunspots, more solar storms, and more coronal mass ejections.

The next solar maximum is actually hitting slightly early...it might peak as early as the end of the year. And it's going to be a high one, too.

Which means there's now talk of the "internet apocalypse" and the "destruction" of the internet.

So, what's the worst case scenario? A months-long blackout...which would impact the supply chain and might make it hard for people to get food and, worse, medication... We're so dependent on global communications people would die.

It wouldn't be the end of the world, but it would be a major disaster. On top of that, we might lose large parts of the power grid...also for months.

How likely is it?

The last event of that magnitude was in 1859, which was called the Carrington Event. It set fire to telegraph lines.

It would be worse now...

...but again, how likely is it?

First of all, the majority of solar storms miss Earth altogether. The sun "burps" in all directions, not just towards our little planet.

Second of all, the majority of solar storms that hit Earth go unnoticed by the majority of people. You might find you can't get normal accuracy when using your cell phone's GPS, for example. Your electronics aren't going to be affected. The vulnerability of the internet is the long (and expensive and time-consuming to replace) cables that run under the Atlantic and Pacific. There IS a tiny, tiny chance that you could get horrendously unlucky and your computer could be fried by one random particle. It would have to be turned on.

The chances of being hit by an apocalypse level flare are actually pretty slim.

And here's the last thing.

Most problems are caused by CMEs. CMEs can take as long as three days to reach the Earth and with the forecasting technologies we're developing, we can see where they will hit.

There is a very, very simple way to protect any kind of electronics from a CME or solar flare:

Turn them off.

As we improve space weather forecasting, we can imagine a situation where we forecast a flare hitting and...turn off the internet for a few hours.

It would suck for those of us who are addicted to social media and video games. But it would prevent a disaster.

Funny rocks on Mars

 With only thin soil, Mars has a wonderful habit of producing odd-shaped rocks. The latest one is this:

Mmm...want a donut? It's a particularly weird rock and some people are theorizing it might actually be, well, alien.

No, not like that. It's possible the "donut" is part of a meteorite, as that would make more sense than it weathering into that shape. Wouldn't that be kind of cool?

Plate Tectonics and Life

 One common piece of wisdom is that for a planet to support life, it must have active plate tectonics. Mars is a good example: It's cooled down and is stagnant, and no longer has a lot of life, if any.

Earth, of course, has active plate tectonics...just ask a Californian or an Icelander.

But it turns out that Earth did not have active plate tectonics when life started. Instead, it was in a stagnant lid phase, with no movement of plates and heat being produced through cracks in the surface. Venus is in this state and doesn't appear to have life.

Of course, it's possible plate tectonics, which result in changes of environment over time, are a key factor in the development of complex life and the ability of organisms to evolve and adapt.

Betting on...us?

 25 years ago neuroscientist Christof Koch and philosopher David Chalmers made a bet.

What was the bet? That the neuroscientist could find the seat of consciousness in the brain. The philosopher, on the other hand, believed that anything with information would be just a tiny bit conscious and that we are conscious because we process so much information.

Koch's theory, on the other hand, is that consciousness is nothing more than brain cells firing in synchrony 40 times per second.

Even without reading further, I know who's side I'm on. Crows show strong signs of being as conscious as we are with a very different brain structure.

And now so does Koch. After studying the matter for 25 years, he's surrendering to Chalmers. Not because he's wrong, but because there's absolutely no way to prove he's right.

In fact, he too is now studying information-based consciousness.

The two have now made another bet. This time, Koch is betting that we will understand consciousness in 25 years. Chalmers is betting that we still won't.

Maybe we never will.

Zot!

 

This is an image of a storm on Jupiter. That little green dot that looks like a laser pointer?

That's a lightning bolt. Directly imaged by Juno. Probably the size of a city...but still. A lightning bolt on another planet.

Underground GPS?

Well, no. But pretty soon we should have a navigation system that works underground and underwater. It could be used by miners...and also carried by spelunkers so they can be located.

It's called muPS because it uses muons, which go through rock. The only obstacle is it needs to be more accurate...and of course we need to build detectors. Those would be on the ground above the area you're exploring (so they could be put over popular cave systems as well as mines, etc). For underwater exploration, presumably, the detectors would be on boats.

Getting it more accurate requires tying it in to clocks for time synchronization, same as GPS.

It's a long way from practical, but it's an engineering problem at this point! 

Life on...Enceladus?

 Thanks to 2001, we focus on Europa. But Enceladus is a very similar world.

And we know there's potentially water under the ice. There's energy (hydrothermal activity driven by tidal forces).

There's organic compounds.

And there's phosphorus. Substantial amounts of it. Phosphorus is essential for our type of life. It's never before been found off of Earth. It's used to make DNA. Yes, it's probably possible to have life without phosphorus. But it would be exotic indeed.

There's actually more phosphorus than on Earth, however, which might initially seem like good news...except that that may mean there isn't life because all the phosphorus here is in use, as it were.

What it does mean is that phosphorus is out there...

Enceladus is, in fact, habitable in the broadest sense.

To answer the next question will take a new mission.

Is it inhabited?

Do insects grieve?

 We tend to think of grief as human. Maybe, we'll acknowledge, dogs can grieve. Horses can absolutely grieve, I've seen it.

So, higher social mammals?

Birds? Crows show behavior that looks very much like grief.

Insects? Surely not.

Fruit flies?

A study shows that a fruit fly that finds/sees a dead fruit fly...may get depressed. Fruit flies that witness a large number of dead fruit flies can actually live 30% less than ones that didn't.

Does this mean fruit flies grieve?

It's likely that an aversion to large numbers of dead bodies is, in fact, a survival mechanism. So it's possible that grief started as a way to avoid being infected by stuff and led to more complex behaviors...human funeral customs serve, in part, the purpose of properly disposing of corpses so they don't attract disease.

But fruit fly grief being a thing is quite...fascinating.

A disorder that afflicted Neanderthals...

 ...is still occurring in Europe today.

The disorder is Dupuytren's disease, which is also called "viking hand disease" and "Dupuytren's contracture." It affects older people and is aggravated by diabetes. It causes thickening of tissue in the palm of the hand, which results in fingers curling in. Right now, there's no cure, although it can be treated by using various methods to break up the thickened tissue. Unfortunately, it comes back.

It also runs in families.

Including mine.

And now they have identified three major risk factors. Two of the three have been confirmed to be...Neanderthal genes. They aren't sure on the third.

But even after all of these generations, people are still getting a disease inherited from Neanderthal's. How?

Dupuytren's disease almost never affects anyone younger than 50. A lot of cases are mild and never require any kind of treatment. It's essentially cosmetic lumpiness in the palm. Even those that are may not impact the person's ability to live.

So, it doesn't affect reproductive fitness in any way. There's zero selection pressure against it. Which allows it to survive.

It's also possible that it is associated with some kind of beneficial trait, such as an immune system trait that helps protect us from certain diseases. We don't know yet.

But this speaks to just how conserved a deleterious trait can be if it doesn't affect your ability to have kids.

Best Picture of Mars Ever

 Look at it. Not quite as red as we thought...

This beautiful picture of Mars is a mosaic released by ESA, made up from images taken by the Mars Express orbiter using its high resolution stereo camera. Lovely!

Cosmic Diamond?

It sounds like something out of a superhero comic, but "cosmic diamonds" are real...and quite fascinating.

The penultimate phase of the life of a small star is becoming a white dwarf, which start very hot, but cool down quite rapidly (in cosmic terms).

Sometimes this means the entire star can literally crystallize. When this happens they become a black dwarf, a dead crystal that one might argue is the star's corpse. Theoretically, anyway. The universe is not old enough to confirm this observationally.

But researchers are starting to see it happen in white dwarfs. The crystallization starts with lattices of carbon and oxygen atoms. This process slows the cooling of the white dwarf.

And yes, this might one day happen to the sun, but by then we will long be gone one way or another.

Uh oh...

 ...for people in southern Italy. Looks like there might be a volcano about to pop. Specifically the Campi Flegrei volcano, which has been making noises for about 70 years, but last erupted in 1538.

Good news, it doesn't appear to be about to blow tomorrow.

Bad news, it's a 13-km-wide nested caldera containing 24 craters. And because it's a caldera, not a mountain, there are people living there. As many as 500,000 people could have to be evacuated if it does show signs of erupting, 360,000 of them living in the caldera itself. It's one of the most populated active volcanos on the planet. The town of Pozzuoli is 4 meters higher than it was in 1950...which happened in four stages.

A future eruption is also likely to blanket Naples and surrounding regions in ash.

Of course, now I want to go look at this thing...

The Highest Mountain on Earth...

 ...is Everest.

The highest mountain under the Earth doesn't have a name. Maybe a better correlation with be Denali, the tallest mountain on Earth.

They're called ultra-low velocity zones and they're basically folds in the Earth's mantle that can reach more than 24 miles in height, 4.5 times the height of Everest.

And we don't know what causes them at all.

Solarpunk Solutions May Become Real...

 ...because there isn't much more solarpunk than living in a mushroom.

Okay, not quite, but mycelium biocomposites could become an extremely useful building material and yes, we mean mycelium as in fungus.

The substance starts with 3D printed wood and then you let the fungus colonize it. Then you dry it once it's finished growing, killing the fungus and bonding it. This emits a lot less carbon than concrete and steal, it's completely fire resistant, it's a good insulator. Right now it's being used to make furniture and partitions. (Imagine a restaurant that specializes in mushroom-based dishes where you sit at fungus tables? Somebody's gonna do it).

Mycelium is already being used to fill cracks in concrete and for insulation, especially of very small buildings.

And it draws down carbon as it grows.

Wanna live in a mushroom?

https://newatlas.com/materials/mycelium-based-building-material-renewable-biodegradable/

New Frog Dropped

 ...and it's adorable. Frog species can inhabit very small niches. This one lives only on Wei-Assipu-tepui, a small mountain at the border between Guyana and Brazil. It's been named Stefania macculochi. Probably isolated by geographical upheaval.

It's nocturnal, various shades of brown, and the females carry their babies on their backs.

Check out the cuteness here.

The Galactic Black Hole has Tendrils

 Or tentacles? Or...

Five to ten light year long filaments that give off thermal radiation (that is, they're hot) that point towards the black hole.

And no, we have no idea what causes them, but it might have been caused by Sagittarius A* "burping" a few million years ago.

They're one dimensional. They're literally just strings of...something...hot. So I guess tendrils is better than tentacles?

Either way, I love that we keep discovering more about the universe.

Why do we have arched feet?

We used to think it was so we could walk faster, helping lift the next step.

In fact, the spring like arch in our feet stabilizes our ankle. It does allow us to run more efficiently, but without an arch we wouldn't be able to be full-time bipeds in the first place.

(SF writers designing aliens take note! You need some mechanism to stabilize the lower leg. And furry digitigrades don't work, alas).

If there's no recoil then you walk like a chimpanzee, and they aren't nearly as good at walking upright as we are.

Could this be useful? It could be because some people might have an injury or illness that stiffens up their arches, which then impacts the ability to walk and puts strain on other joints. We might be able to work out some therapy, or even special shoes, that help make the arch more flexible.

Tesla was right...

 ...you can pull electricity out of the air. Of course, he was wrong as to how.

So, apparently, you can actually use certain materials to generate clouds. And clouds can produce large amounts of electricity. We've all seen that. It's called lightning.

A thin layer of material designed with very tiny micropores would create a charge imbalance, like that in a cloud, creating a battery that operates as long as there's humidity in the air.

It wouldn't work everywhere. Las Vegas would have problems. Florida would, though, do just fine.

As would many parts of the global south where this would be particularly valuable...

Of course, it's on paper right now. It hasn't been demonstrated in the real world yet.