Science News

This paper suggests some very interesting possibilities about life on other planets. Dense hydrogen atmospheres might support life on super Earth type planets! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284464/ Does this suggest that fire could take place? Would this indicate that hydrogen breathing life forms on super earths dominated by hydrogen might be more common than oxygen dominated terrestrial planets? If so what could this indicate for exo life and our search for such life?

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/string-theory-co-founder-sub-atomic-particles-are-evidence-0 Very intriguing stuff.

Elon Musk has a fantastic idea for putting people on Mars, in a ship SpaceX intends to design and build big enough to carry 100 people from Earth and Mars, and back if necessary. The attached video was not produced by SpaceX; rather, by an individual who studied statements by Musk and other SpaceX officials, and came up with the following: The booster for the MCT will be 10-15 meters in diameter and about 200 feet tall. We are living in an era of huge projects: extremely large optical telescopes, a square kilometer of radio telescope antenna, the Mars Colonial Transporter, and super sized cities. Musk has stated the purpose of SpaceX is to colonize Mars wit…

According to this MSN article, the rate of women dying during childbirth has risen from 7.2 per 100,000 birth in 1987 to 15.9 in 2013. This article says this increase is occurring at a rate higher than any other developed nation. The stated primary causes of this increasing mortality rate are cardiovascular and chronic diseases such as diabetes, which are likely the afflictions of an increasingly unhealthy diet among American women.

According to this Washington Post article, Scientific World Journal has uncovered an imposter amongst its reviewers . Posing as French engineering professor Xavier Delorme, the imposter managed to review or edit three papers before the caper was uncovered. This, according to the article, comes on the heels of a 2014 exposure of peer-review fraud involving some 60 papers. Shocking!

While robotic explorers have studied Mars for more than 40 years, NASA’s path for the human exploration of Mars begins in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts on the orbiting laboratory are helping us prove many of the technologies and communications systems needed for human missions to deep space, including Mars. The space station also advances our understanding of how the body changes in space and how to protect astronaut health. video news: url deleted

http://www.nybg.org/exhibitions/2016/corpse-flower.php#diva Live streaming of the opening of the New York Botanical Gardens Corpse flower. First time they have had one bloom for 80 years - takes at least 10 years to bloom and lasts a day or so

The Atlas Collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider has released data of a trillion or so proton proton collisions. You can download/access the 11 gigabytes of information at the CERN open data portal Basically you get the info from this when it was running at 8 terraelectronvolts So all the Speculators we get posting new models in the Speculations Forum can now empirically check their wacky ideas for the Higgs, Dark Matter, or new substructures beneath the Standard Model - and make sure the data back them up

Announced July 20th, researchers have discovered 97 previously unknown cortical regions, which brings our total from 83 to 180 per hemisphere. This CNN article contains an account of the research, its discoveries, and a link to the paper published in the journal Nature. Enjoy!

This is interesting, but I particularly like the "infographic" they used. You know, just in case you are not sure what 1.5m is... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36912700

They studied brains of macaque and mouse and found interconnections statically consistent with EDR. If their hypothesis is true, elephants and toothed whales, including dolphins and orca, must have mental problems often. If so, have these mental problems been reported? I've not heard of it. Can it be true without us knowing? We have minimal contact with whales, but elephants and people have lived and worked together in the East for a very long time; the people who train and work with elephants have not reported such things, AFAIK.

Reduce your carbon footprint and improve your health at the same time.

Last May in Portugal during four days only renewables were used to produce electricity. This is a first in a country that uses 70 percent of renewable sources annually. Sorry source only in portuguese http://shifter.pt/2016/05/durante-4-dias-portugal-so-consumiu-energia-renovavel/

I found a report of this AI chatbot on YouTube. It is a free service for people in New York and London, which advises a person on how to fight traffic tickets. It asks questions about your ticket and if it takes a case has a 64% success rate, and saved people over $4M. The person who developed this service intends to expand its services to other cities. It was launched in 2015 by a 19 year old. This means AI chatbots are relatively easy to develop, and I expect we will see a rapid increase in sophistication and a plethora of chatbot applications.

IDK how sensitive current cameras are in telescopes, but it if this one is better, then images can be captured faster, making more time for other observations, or fainter objects can be captured with long times, making it possible to see things that cannot currently be seen. Since the time photons arrive is captured, will that change the nature of optical interferometry? Will it make arrays of smaller telescopes practical, instead of building massive telescopes like the ELT?

Is this a crack in the wall called The Theory of Everything?

Real live monkeys and a dolly bird. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/36767373

First produced in 2004, graphine production per year is now 205 tons and growing. See also: https://graphene-supermarket.com/new-products http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/first-graphene-light-bulbs-to-go-on-sale-this-year-10142026.html

Ever wonder what the computers less powerful than a TI-83 that guided the Apollo landers looks like? Well, it's now on Github for all to enjoy.

http://futurism.com/the-australian-rat-just-became-the-first-mammal-to-go-extinct-because-of-climate-change/ This is warning of what is to come if we don't change our ways.

Two black holes, 14.2 and 7.5 solar masses. Final BH is 20.8 solar masses. http://news.mit.edu/2016/second-time-ligo-detects-gravitational-waves-0615 https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23030783-800-ligo-sees-new-gravitational-wave-from-more-doomed-black-holes/

I think this is huge.

They don't say if this process is a hypothesis, has been done in a lab, or if it is ready for the big show. I suspect implementation will require significant engineering. With that kind of economic benefit, it seems at least one power company would be ready to sign a contract, and it might save some of the oil market. Some financier of climate deniers should be ready to foot the bill to bring this technology on-line.

Two promising battery improvements, 200,000 charges and 5x energy density would make electric cars lighter, probably less expensive to purchase, and certainly less expensive over a lifetime. We recently replace our Prius battery after eight years operation. Current batteries are limited 7000 charges; although, fewer charges is more common. Two hundred thousand (or more) charges is more than 25 times battery life, 8*25=200 years. That's ten human generations instead of 2/5 of a generation. If this technology scales up for mass production, large battery size, and low cost, it will be important. If the prediction of 1/5 cost and weight can be achieved in mass…

According to this AP article, the US Army Corps of Engineers have determined that the oldest (8,500 years), most complete human remains ever found in North America are Native American. Discovered near the Columbia River in Kennewick, WA., Kennewick Man has been the center of a custody fight since 1996 between researchers and several Native American tribes claiming his repatriation under the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act. According to some researchers, Kennewick's unique skeletal features suggested a non-Native American ancestry; however, a comparative DNA study by the Northwestern Corps has confirmed that Kennewick is most closely related Native A…