Science Megathread

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There's also a thread for the telescope now on USGD.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=476492

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It makes you wonder how differently life would have evolved on a Super Earth, and what it would be like as a human being to live on it.  With a larger planet, gravity would probably be much stronger:

The Sun Used to Have Saturn-Like Rings That Stopped Earth From Being a 'Super-Earth'

A planet that is twice the size of Earth and 10 times more massive, as posited in the article, would have 2.5 times stronger gravity. So someone who weighs 150 lbs on Earth would weigh 375 pounds on the super Earth.

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And to think, many galaxies have a black hole 1000 times bigger than that.

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https://youtu.be/lu4mH3Hmw2o

Apologies if posted before, but any thoughts on this short video on what’s been going wrong with the science (and scientists) of particle physics? I don’t like all of her videos, but this one articulates a frustration I’ve had for a while but couldn’t quite explain.

The huge breakthrough of the past decade was gravitational waves.

That doesn't have anything to do with what I posted?

Gravitation waves had been predicted according to current models for decades, I think since Einstein. Same with the Higgs boson.

Many physicists think the laws of physics need to be more elegant/prettier, and coming up with all these complex theories far outside of addressing any real problem with the Standard Model and them constantly being proven wrong, instead of focusing on the real problems and questions in the Standard Model... and how sucking up all those resources and not producing results for these theories based on nothing more than making it "prettier" instead of addressing the real problems could close down funding for physics as a whole. The video helps me articulate what's been one of my own problems with how some physicists seem to approach the work, especially when I've read interviews from some supposed leading physicists in big magazines talking about theories to make it all more beautiful/elegant. The universe isn't of perfect symmetry and beauty, so not sure why so many physicists keep looking for that.

There's no better way though at the moment. The standard model is what we've got to work with. We know it's not the whole story (can't incorporate gravity), but even with whatever modifications it needs it may still be largely correct, even if inelegant. It could be that we're missing something profound and there's a much better theory that's accessible if anyone finds it. There's nothing data wise that suggest that though.

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A blind mole that swims through sand has been rediscovered after nearly 100 years

A blind golden mole that glides through sand has been rediscovered in South Africa, 87 years after wildlife experts feared it had gone extinct.

After a two-year search relying on DNA samples and a sniffer dog, a team of conservationists and geneticists from the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and the University of Pretoria have successfully located what’s known as De Winton’s golden mole among sand dunes in the northwest of the country.

The elusive species hadn’t been officially sighted since 1936, and prior to that was only ever found in the small region of Port Nolloth in the northern Cape. About the size of a mouse or hamster and with a shimmering coat that mimics the sand, they are difficult to spot at the best of times. On top of this, they live in largely inaccessible burrows, rarely leave tunnels behind them, and have acutely sensitive hearing that detects movements from above ground.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/01/world/de-winton-golden-mole-rediscovered-c2e-scn-spc-intl/index.html

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Hyper-sexual "zombie cicadas" that are infected with sexually transmitted fungus expected to emerge this year

Trillions of cicadas will emerge across several U.S. states this spring in an event one expert dubbed "cicada-geddon." Not only are more cicadas than usual expected this year, but some of them will be "zombie cicadas" that are infected by a sexually transmitted fungus that makes them hyper-sexual.

Periodical cicadas spend most of their lives underground and only emerge after 13 or 17 years. This year, two broods of cicadas will emerge: Brood XIX, which comes out every 13 years, will emerge in the Georgia and Southeast, and Brood XIII, which emerges every 17 years, will appear in Illinois.

With this convergence, the bugs will arrive in numbers that have not been seen in generations.

Matthew Kasson, an associate professor of Mycology and Forest Pathology at West Virginia University, says both of these broods can be infected by a fungal pathogen called Massospora cicadina.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cicadas-zombies-hyper-sexual-sexually-transmitted-fungus-expected-to-emerge-this-year-massospora-cicadina/

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Along those lines, there was an article in Scientific American a few months back about the "voids" in the universe (the dark spots in the above map) where there is almost nothing at all (except dark energy, which is mostly constant) for truly vast distances. They are understudied but may be extremely important to understanding the evolution of the universe.

[emailking]

Along those lines, there was an article in Scientific American a few months back about the "voids" in the universe (the dark spots in the above map) where there is almost nothing at all (except dark energy, which is mostly constant) for truly vast distances. They are understudied but may be extremely important to understanding the evolution of the universe.

Do you think you could find it?

How Analyzing Cosmic Nothing Might Explain Everything
Huge empty areas of the universe called voids could help solve the greatest mysteries in the cosmos

Computational astrophysicist Alice Pisani put on a virtual-reality headset and stared out into the void—or rather a void, one of many large, empty spaces that pepper the cosmos. “It was absolutely amazing,” Pisani recalls. At first, hovering in the air in front of her was a jumble of shining dots, each representing a galaxy. When Pisani walked into the jumble, she found herself inside a large swath of nothing with a shell of galaxies surrounding it. The image wasn't just a guess at what a cosmic void might look like; it was Pisani's own data made manifest. “I was completely surprised,” she says. “It was just so cool.”

The visualization, made in 2022, was a special project by Bonny Yue Wang, then a computer science undergraduate at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. Pisani teaches a course there in cosmology—the structure and evolution of the universe. Wang had been aiming to use Pisani's data on voids, which can stretch from tens to hundreds of millions of light-years across, to create an augmented-reality view of these surprising features of the cosmos.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-analyzing-cosmic-nothing-might-explain-everything/