Science Megathread

[muon2]

As most of you are probably aware, the discoverers of the Higgs boson have rightfully been awarded the Nobel prize in physics.

Actually the prize went to the theoreticians who predicted the particle almost 50 years ago. The discovery last year confirmed what many felt must exist based on all the known properties of subatomic particles to date.

[muon2]

By 'early-Cretaceous', the author probably meant this particular asteroid hit in the late Eocene -the Cretaceous ended 65 million years ago:

Seawater discovered near the Chesapeake Bay is up to 150 million years old

By Darryl Fears, Published: November 16

Not only is the Chesapeake Bay so enormous it can be seen from space, it essentially came from outer space.



An asteroid or huge chunk of ice slammed into Earth about 35 million years ago, splashing into the Early Cretaceous North Atlantic, sending tsunamis as far as the Blue Ridge Mountains and leaving a 56-mile-wide hole at the mouth of what is now the bay.

But a newly published research paper written by U.S. Geological Survey scientists shows that wasn’t the end of it. While drilling holes in southern Virginia to study the impact crater, the scientists discovered “the oldest large body of ancient seawater in the world,” a survivor of that long-gone sea, resting about a half-mile underground near the bay, according to the USGS.

“What we essentially discovered was trapped water that’s twice the salinity of [modern] seawater,” said Ward Sanford, a USGS hydrologist. “In our attempt to find out the origin, we found it was Early Cretaceous seawater. It’s really water that’s from the North Atlantic.”

The findings showing that the water is probably between 100 million and 150 million years old were published Thursday in the journal Nature.

The confusion is understandable since the trapped groundwater is from the early Cretaceous, but the impact that trapped it is from 100 million years later. The scientists probably didn't talk much about the time of the impact since that was established science from 1999, but did talk about the era of the groundwater. For a non-geologist it's easy to place those two events together. The scientists interviewed probably needed to go out of their way to stress that the groundwater was not from the time of the impact.

[muon2]

Here is a recently released night-time image of Earth from Mars, courtesy of our hardy rover, Curiosity:



source

The best part is that the Moon is visible to the naked eye from Mars as well.

[muon2]

Researcher shows that black holes do not exist

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Say what now?  Muon?

I read the link, but not the article. If it's mostly mathematics, then I fear it might be a bit like the aerodynamic calculations that conclude a bumblebee can't fly. There is significant evidence for the existence of mass in such a small volume that it is consistent with the Schwartzchild radius of a black hole. We can detect them by a combination of the velocities of stars nearby pulled by the gravity and the radiation they emit as very intense x-rays. The link suggests that the radiation is consistent with the author's hypothesis, but that leaves the question about how can so much mass be in such a small volume.

The link seems to concentrate on the impossibility of formation from a supernova. That doesn't address the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies, which are supported by a number of observations. It also doesn't address evidence for stellar black holes, such as the Hubble data for Cygnus X-1.

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[muon2]

About half of all the water on Earth is older even than the Sun.  

Since both the planetesimals that bombarded Earth with their water and the Sun formed from the same molecular cloud, then the water from those planetesimals should be older.

[muon2]

If confirmed, it probably would get the name of a Roman god or goddess that hasn't already been used for a minor planet.  How about Libertas?

Proserpina!

And it has the advantage of starting wit a P. All the old mnemonics for the planets would be back unchanged.

[muon2]

New chamber discovered in the Great Pyramid using ... muons!

[muon2]

Shattering my dreams that Meg was killed by muons.

[muon2]

Hasn't string theory been largely discredited....since like 2002?

No, but it hasn't advanced beyond being merely a hypothesis rather than a widely accepted truth.

It hasn't advanced, and from what I've seen it probably never will. When the hypothesis doesn't make any predictions, it cannot possibly be proven or disproven, and it can't really be regarded as science. When a string theory can be shown to make some testable prediction, that would be an advancement. It won't be a widely accepted truth until that prediction can be proven.

The problem starts with Grand Unified Theory - how to reconcile Einstein's gravity and Planck's quanta, both which clearly work in their respective spheres. Most GUTs have hit a clear contradiction with reality and have to be discarded. I think the problem with string theory stems from its ability to fit to a vast number of realities and it is therefore hard to falsify. Theoreticians will work on it as it seems like "the only game in town", since it can be hard to find resources to explore new GUTs not based on string theory.

[muon2]

https://twitter.com/BBCPallab/status/1379883999909326850

I was on the Zoom call of the announcement yesterday. It's important to note that neither of the two experimentalists nor the theorist who jointly made the presentation made any mention, yet alone claims, relating to a fifth force. That appears to come from a quote from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, not the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab.

Here's a Fermilab picture of Muon g-2. It is the answer to the question "Have I ever caused an interstate highway to be blocked for over four hours?" I was responsible for arranging the route to transport the ring from a barge to the laboratory in 2013.