...you know, the poorly designed one that imploded, killing everyone on board.
The same company now wants to create an outpost on Venus. Uh, sign me right up...not! This is a recipe for disaster and I hope they can't get funding.
The upper atmosphere of Venus is, in fact, feasible to settle. But by those clowns? I think not...
(Also, just as everyone stopped adding -gate to every scandal we got the OceanGate scandal? Thanks, I hate it).
It's technically called parthenogenesis. Some species of whiptail lizard (I had the privilege of seeing a whiptail in California, didn't get a photo, but not sure if it was one of those species) do it routinely, but can't ovulate without sexual stimulation. There are no males. So, yes, they're all lesbians ;).
A variety of species have been observed reproducing asexually in the absence of males. It's most often seen in reptiles, who's sex determination system allows a female to produce both male and female offspring, and is generally a temporary occurrence to help overcome a shortage of males.
Mammals, on the other hand, can't pull this trick. If we could, all offspring would be female (that's the source of trans Jesus jokes). We've managed to do it in the lab. So, human virgin births simply don't happen.
But something in species that can turns on when there aren't enough males. We now have a bit of an understanding as to why, and it involves the humble fruit fly...the standard Drosophila melanogaster used in so much lab work.
We managed to give the species the ability of parthenogenesis that it normally lacks, by using genes from a related species that does have the capability. As with the related species, females only resorted to parthenogenesis (which slows genetic change) when males were not available. But we know which genes are needed now, at least in fruit flies.
Why does this matter? Because stress on insect species induces parthenogenesis, and we're putting stress on pests...is there a way we can reduce the chance of this happening and thus control numbers?
So, what is a boomerang meteorite? It's a rock that gets knocked off a planet, hangs out in space for a while, then comes back.
Some experts think a meteorite found in the Sahara might be a boomerang. It appears to be a volcanic rock and may have been belched out by a volcano with so much force it went into orbit.
But other experts think that it's not from Earth at all, or that it's not a meteorite but just volcanic rock. There's more analysis being done to see if we can work out for sure. It's kind of cool.
A Neolithic burial site in France has yielded seven generations of the same family. Many of the 128 individuals buried in the ancient cemetery turned out to be related. Furthermore, they were burying people next to their closest relatives. At least, their closest male relatives.
The men were all related. The women, not so much, indicating that this society was patrilocal (wives moving in with their husbands on marriage).
They also discovered no half siblings (which seems strange, did these people not remarry after the death of a spouse), indicating a high level of monogamy in this group. Other sites, not so much.
We can't tell much more than this, but it shows an extended family occupying the same land for generation after generation. Farmers living their quiet life. That's a human thing, right there.
...*hours* before they happen. Enough time to remove fragile objects from shelves, to get to a better location.
Earthquakes appear to start about two hours before we feel anything...but GPS units can detect that early fault displacement. It wouldn't be enough time to, say, evacuate San Francisco.
But it would be enough time to turn off gas appliances, reducing the risk of fire. Enough time to, as mentioned, secure fragile objects and take pictures off the walls. Enough time to secure your booze (which can also start a fire in certain circumstances).
And more than enough time to get away from windows, heavy objects, etc.
We just need to do a bit more research so we can reliably detect the pattern.
Or not. Scientists have discovered self-healing metal, but it's not nearly on the scale of T-1000. We're talking copper and platinum at the nano scale.
Basically, tiny cracks in metal can heal through natural cold welding, in some conditions. If we can scale it up, it could be used to slow metal fatigue and extend the life of things like airplane and car parts. But no killer robots.
Yet.
...this exoplanet. It's shiny. It's really shiny. It's albedo is 80%...that's the amount of light reflected. For contrast, the Earth's albedo is 31%, and Earth is already kind of shiny.
It shouldn't exist. The reflective nature comes from metallic clouds that rain titanium. Yeah, this is a pretty hot place. Like most really weird exoplanets, it's a gas giant in a tight orbit...19 hours around a sun-like star. It's five times the size of Earth, a small gas giant. And it actually shouldn't have an atmosphere.
Except that with an 80% albedo what's under the clouds is cool enough to hold an atmosphere.
By the way, the second shiniest planet discovered...Venus with its 75% albedo. That's why it's so bright in the sky. It's shiny.
There's this guy at Harvard who really wants to find aliens. So much so that he keeps finding them.
His latest is that tiny half millimeter spherules that came from a meteor...basically tiny tiny balls..are alien technology. Truth is, that's just what happens when a highly metallic object from space burns up in the atmosphere. You get little spherical droplets of material, called "cosmic spherules."
We can't even be 100% sure these are cosmic spherules as opposed to pollution. These particular spherules don't contain enough nickel to actually be from a meteor. So, uh. They're probably pollution. It's possible they're interstellar.
But that's a zebra.
This guy needs to stop seeing brindle horses.
Space travel often involves explosions. Most of them are unintentional.
This one was actually intentional.
I can't imbed the video, sorry.
Burst testing inflatable things is very important so you know what happens if something goes wrong. Sierra, also building inflatable habitats, has been doing it too.
The inflatable module briefly reached 253 psi.
Inflatable space habitats are an important piece of technology because they can be made very light, reducing the amount of fuel needed to loft them into orbit.
Archaeology is particularly fascinating when dealing with societies that don't have good written records. Determining the phenotypical sex (not gender) of human remains can be a challenge.
Doing it off the pelvis? Not always accurate. Lots of women have "male" type pelvises and vice versa.
Doing it off the grave goods? In some cases we're working out what gender the grave goods indicate based off of...yup. It can get circular.
So more recently we've started using DNA. Now, this can only determine the person's genetic sex. A genetic woman found with male grave goods might be a woman who took on a male role, a trans man, or even a man with no Y chromosome, which can absolutely happen. The first case is typically assumed as most likely. We can't prove trans-ness with no record of the individual, but I do wish researchers would be more open to the possibility. A genetic man found with female grave goods might be a person with AIS.
DNA sexing has two major problems:
1. It's expensive.
2. DNA degrades, so you can't always get a clear read.
Enter proteomics. This means taking a small sample from a bone or a tooth and looking for proteins produced on the sex chromosomes. It's much cheaper.
We can now theoretically determine the genetic sex of every set of human remains we have. And, for example, let's say we are studying a society with very strict gender roles and we find one individual who's sex doesn't match their gender. Or two. A very small number. Particularly if the individuals concerned are buried with female grave goods (men pretending to be women to get ahead is historically rarer than the reverse).
We may actually be able to prove the obvious: Trans people have always existed.
...to our brains. And it's not a constant in the universe either. Turns out that right after the Big Bang, time ran about five times more slowly than it does now. We know this from observing quasars, which are basically cosmic clocks.
Of course, to an observer, time would have been the same as it now. (The reason we observe different speeds of time has to do with our brain making memories, that's why the outgoing trip to a place you have never been to takes longer than the return trip and why time runs slower for children).
It's just another confirmation that Einstein was right.
...of looking at Saturn through the Clark telescope at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. This is a 24" refractor that is no longer used for science (except for high school and undergraduate student projects). For a fee, you can line up for a brief look through it at whatever they decided to train it on that night, which depends on viewing conditions and where everything is.
That particular night, it was Saturn. I could see it as if I could reach out my hand. It was really cool. The telescope might no longer be useful for science (we have far better ones now), but for education? It's a grand old workhorse.
But that little image of Saturn is not as good as this one:
The rings have a much bigger albedo, and you can see three of the moons. This is an image of Saturn taken by the JWST.
It's the same planet I remember seeing through the old telescope, but the shading...and the brilliance of the ephemeral rings...so beautiful.
(The scientific purpose here is to see if Saturn has any more moons we haven't found yet).
This week, the very last Ariane 5 rocket will launch. 116 total launch attempts, including the precise launch of the JWST, saving fuel and doubling the telescope's estimated life.
The retirement of the Ariane 5, which was first launched (and blown up, because that's rocket science) in June 1996 does indeed mark the end of the era. It will be replaced by the more efficient and modern Ariane 6.
(The reason for the retirement is that the older design simply uses more fuel than, say, the Falcon, and thus can no longer compete on launch costs).
It's weird to think that something that has been a staple of space exploitation for so long is now obsolete.
The life cycle of a sun-like star goes through a red giant phase before collapsing into a white dwarf.
The red giant will swallow many of its planets. And it should have swallowed Halla, which orbits Baekdu. Baekdu is already in the helium fusion phase, which happens as the star starts to shrink. Halla is about half as far from Baekdu as the Earth is from the sun.
So, it should have been engulfed. Why wasn't it?
Two possibilities:
1. Baekdu was actually a binary star and the two stars fused, which meant neither was large enough to engulf Halla...the merger caused it to jump straight to the helium phase.
2. Halla is a second generation planet created by...the collision of two stars.
Both theories require that Baekdu was a binary star. (Another obvious theory not mentioned is that Halla is a captured rogue).
I'm totally going to use this in something, by the way.
