Weird & Interesting science

[robkelk]

How did we all miss this one?

Last Saturday, SpaceX launched their first manned mission. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are now aboard the ISS.

So it's one week too late to say Bob and Doug take off, eh?

[Star Ranger4]

*GROAN*  Your going to make me emigrate to Ontario CA just to hit you with a wiffle bad Rob.  *Thhhbbbbpppppptttttttt*

(now how to I add that raspberry emoji again???)

[Norgarth]

How did we all miss this one?

Last Saturday, SpaceX launched their first manned mission. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are now aboard the ISS.

So it's one week too late to say Bob and Doug take off, eh?

[robkelk]

Archeologists use ground-penetrating radar to map an entire ancient Roman city

[Norgarth]

An article talking about the largest soft-shelled egg ever found (which happens to be a fossil)
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/877679868...oQmEPpfyWw

[robkelk]

Remember the WOW Signal? There's been a few other one-off signals like it since then.

Now, one's been discovered that repeats.

[DHBirr]

A new discovery of something old near Stonehenge....

Ancient pits, filled in by time but still distinguishable with remote-sensing equipment, circle the prehistoric settlement now designated Durrington Walls, about three kilometers from Stonehenge.  The circle is about two kilometers in diameter, taking in the Woodhenge site, and each pit, when fully dug, was about ten meters wide and five deep.  Whatever the ancient people's reason for this project, it seems they took it seriously, to do so much digging.

Warning:  At least one of the news articles included writing so sloppy and not-proofread that it'll make you despair of humanity. And don't get me started on the reader comments....

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Considering that one dictionary definition of "carry on" is to "behave or speak in a foolish, excited, or improper manner," the designers of that famous poster, "Keep Calm and Carry On," need to make up their flippin' minds!

[Labster]

This one is more metascience, but someone published a paper entitled Dear Reviewer 2: Go F’ Yourself.

The main motivation for this article is that the broader community has decided that Reviewer 2 is a monster. A Google search for “Reviewer 2” produces the interdisciplinary Facebook group “Reviewer 2 Must Be Stopped!” (which has over 9,000 members), a blog entry entitled “How Not to Be Reviewer #2,” and countless images combining almost every visual meme imaginable. In academia, it is fair to say that Reviewer 2 is the ultimate boogeyman. He is Pennywise the Clown, combined with el chupacabra, wrapped in the Blair Witch.

But based on a statistical analysis of academic journal data, it turns out that the real asshole is Reviewer 3!  What a plot twist!

[Star Ranger4]

Given the few times I have written reviews, I am never the first to turn them in... sounds like I'm right properly buggered.

[robkelk]

Quiet oceans gives scientists chance to study endangered killer whales

[robkelk]

Supergiant star just ... vanishes

[classicdrogn]

Supergiant star just ... vanishes

Well that sounds like trouble...

[Norgarth]

Scientists think they've figured out how certain species of snakes fly.
https://www.abc12.com/2020/06/30/there-a...8_iurfVQFE

[robkelk]

Scientists think they've figured out how certain species of snakes fly.
https://www.abc12.com/2020/06/30/there-a...8_iurfVQFE

"I have had enough of these motherfucking snakes on this ..."

What?

"They're flying, but not on a plane?"

Never mind...

[classicdrogn]

zur hölle? That's not new; I remember watching a BBC or Discovery Channel nature show that explained that in the living room of the house I moved out of in 2008. With computer models of snake aerodynamics, even.

[RMH999]

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/histo...americans/

Long suspected, but now confirmed with DNA evidence that Polynesians and South Americans had contact with one another. DNA evidence tracks back to approximately 1200 AD (slightly before they arrived in New Zealand at 1300 AD), during the tail of the expansions.

[DHBirr]

A "failed" supernova accelerated the star's remnant to unusual speed:  900,000 kilometers per hour.

The lack of iron group elements in SDSSJ1240+6710 suggests that the star only underwent a partial supernova before the nuclear burning died out.

Lead author Professor Boris Gänsicke, from the department of physics at the University of Warwick, UK, said: "This star is unique because it has all the key features of a white dwarf but it has this very high velocity and unusual abundances that make no sense when combined with its low mass.

"It has a chemical composition which is the fingerprint of nuclear burning, a low mass and a very high velocity; all of these facts imply that it must have come from some kind of close binary system and it must have undergone thermonuclear ignition. It would have been a type of supernova, but of a kind that that we haven't seen before."

The Atomic Rocket website, by the way, mentions hypervelocity stars that move even faster:  roughly four times as fast as this supernova remnant.  The theory offered in or about 2011 was that they were accelerated by a close brush with the Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center.

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“We’ve had our differences, but he’s seen the light … and I made sure he moved toward it, instead of coming back.”

[Norgarth]

Homo Naledi - New questions on human evolution

[classicdrogn]

What happens when someone is in a particle accelerator accident? Not superpowers, sadly.

non-embedded

[robkelk]

Mexican cave relics suggest humans were populating the Americas up to 17,000 years earlier than thought

"When Oxford got involved and the first dates from all strata started to come in the summer of 2016, I opened a bottle of Macallan [whisky]," Ardelean said.

He said his team's discoveries complement and confirm the current mix of pre-Clovis sites in North and South America, providing evidence of human presence on the continent as old as 26,500 years ago and possibly even to 30,000 years ago.

The discoveries also suggest a great diversity in culture and technologies, he said. "That is what always happens when we find pre-Clovis sites; their artefacts never look the same. We are adding to the vast cultural diversity and provide new arguments that humans were here at least since the beginning of the last glacial maximum (LGM, between 26,500 and 20,000 years ago)," he said.

[RMH999]

Phophine gas in Venusian atmosphere

Potential sign of life?  Phosphine concentrations are millions of times higher than what geological processes we know of can produce (not saying that Venus can't have something going on), so the current possibility is bacterial life of some type.

[RMH999]

Planet Pi

Planet orbits star every 3.14 days.  Also 175 C at surface, so you can bake a pie as well.

[robkelk]

They promised us driverless cars. What happened?

[Bob Schroeck]

Physicists build circuit that generates clean, limitless power from graphene.

[Jinx999]

Physicists build circuit that generates clean, limitless power from graphene.

If this is for real, they've found a way around the laws of thermodynamics. This is . . . good news if true.