Weird & Interesting science

[Norgarth]

Oldest human fossils found outside Africa push back our timeline again
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-...xnLGXjl47U

EDIT:
First Ever Exoplanet with a powerful magnetic field

[Norgarth]

new type of weather  phenomenon called an Atmospheric Lake

[Norgarth]

Remains of a 90 million year old rainforest discovered under Antarctic ice
https://deshinewspost.com/remains-of-90-...xxOZTXmS_M

[Norgarth]

Antron Petrov - First Ever Observation of a Type 2 Supernova in Real Time



Antron Petrov - Ancient Bacteria makes oxygen in never before seen way without photosynthesis

[robkelk]

They didn't mean to, but... SpaceX attacks the Moon on March 4.

As for whether the collision could be viewed from Earth, Gray says it will probably go unobserved.

“The bulk of the moon is in the way, and even if it were on the near side, the impact occurs a couple of days after New Moon.”

[Norgarth]

Atlas Pro - Earth's REAL Lost Continents

[Norgarth]

Anton Petrov - 9200 years ago our sun produced a powerful super storm when it wasn't supposed to

[robkelk]

Koalas declared endangered in eastern Australia

"Koalas have gone from no-listing to vulnerable to endangered within a decade. That is a shockingly fast decline," said Stuart Blanch, a conservation scientist with the World Wildlife Fund-Australia.

[classicdrogn]

From the BBC:


Satellite image of a lighting flash (as in a single continuous strike across the clouds) running from Texas almost to Florida, from 2020. Lightning strikes have been increasing in severity in the last decade or so as well as all the other weird weather destabilization, apparently. (I suspect the purple was added for contrast against the clouds)

[Norgarth]

Beau of the Fifth Column - Let's talk about the Carrington Event...

[Bob Schroeck]

[robkelk]

NASA's 'mega moon rocket' is heading to the launch pad. Here's what you need to know

[Norgarth]

Anton Petrov - Major updates about 31km crater found in Greenland in 2018

[RMH999]

Europeans evolved to have higher alcohol tolerance

Evidence of strong selection on ALDH2 gene (involved in alcohol breakdown) at 3000-3700 years ago.

[robkelk]

Pluto might have ice volcanoes.

(The dwarf planet, not the Senshi.)

[robkelk]

Empire State Building on track to be carbon neutral by 2030

[robkelk]

Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be nominated for an Ig Nobel?

It's impossible to split Oreo cream filling evenly between both wafers, MIT study finds

"I thought there must be some perfect method of twisting to make this happen, because it works for other fluids," Owens, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering at MIT, told As It Happens guest host Dave Seglins.

"But what we found out is essentially that Oreo cream is stronger than it is sticky. So when we twist it perfectly, instead of splitting in the middle, it just delaminates from one of the wafers, and so you end up with one wafer with no cream and one wafer with all the cream."

The findings were published in the journal Kitchen Flows, a special issue of the journal Physics of Fluids.

[classicdrogn]

It is a fundamental assumption of the Sticky Cookie ruling in the landmark case of Mommy vs. Oreo Cookie Company (1982) that despite being two wafers stuck together with frosting an Oreo is one cookie, and separating them still results in a single, broken cookie; therefore any cookie-component wafers stuck together is a single cookie. As anyone knows, breaking a cookie evenly is practically impossible, but then all the best discoveries happen when someone sets out to prove what everyone knows is wrong so clearly this was critically important research even if it only confirmed the common knowledge.

[Norgarth]

Anton Petrov - Discovery of several mid-sized black holes destroying 1000s of stars

[Labster]

Here's a journal article, but it's pretty readable:

Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant

A vine likes to grow near other plants and hide in their leaves, by making leaves seem like other plants.  Was it sensing the plant by volatile chemicals (smelling)?  Or getting genes from the host plant?  Well, it turns out it can do the same trick imitating plastic leaves, so there has to be some mechanism for plant vision.

[classicdrogn]

I knew those shifty green fuckers were watching.

[Norgarth]

Anton Petrov - extreme black widow pulsar found 3000 lightyears away

[Norgarth]

What if the Galactic Habitable Zone limits Intelligent life?

[robkelk]

Nothing peer-reviewed yet - heck, there hasn't been an official announcement yet. So maybe you didn't hear it here first.

Dust that Japan's Hayabusa2 probe returned to Earth from asteroid Ryugu reportedly contain 20 amino acids, according to Japanese media.

Note that this is amino acids, not DNA... but amino acids are basic building-blocks of life as we know it.

[Norgarth]