Weird & Interesting science, take 2

[robkelk]

Caffeine makes fuel cells more efficient

The Register
Communications Chemistry (Nature)

[classicdrogn]

How the world sounds (and in some cases looks) to animals


non-embedded

Of course, it's just playing with playback speed adjusted to account for speed of perception as determined by brain activity in response to the speed of flashing lights, because how would you even demonstrate hearing outside the human range to a human audience, but it's still pretty nifty, especially the bit with bird calls.

[RMH999]

Evidence of bacterium evolving to become nitrogen fixing organelle

inside a marine algae.

[Bob Schroeck]

Researchers discover the first fractal molecule occurring in nature.

[Norgarth]

Anton Petrov - Never Before Seen Object Collided with a Neutron Star and Nobody Knows What

[Norgarth]

NASA seems to have managed to fix the communication problem with Voyager 1
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...e=facebook

[Norgarth]

Anton Petrov - Bizarre form of water ice solves a magnetic mystery on Neptune and Uranus

[Norgarth]

Anton Petrov - New strong evidence for the existence of Planet 9, Here's what we know

[robkelk]

To See The Northern Lights Aurora Tonight, Use Your Phone’s Camera

Forbes is providing news that's actually useful. CBC is scaremongering, mentioning that current solar activity is comparable to the Carrington Event. Well, yeah, everything is comparable to everything else, even apples and oranges. (But just in case the Internet's not working tomorrow, it was nice knowing you all.)

[Bob Schroeck]

Of course it's raining here. Just like every other time in the last few years they've promised big auroras.

[classicdrogn]

There's a "new" (as in a month ago) Ze Frank nature video, this time about bees.

I always knew those little bastards were conspiring about something!

edit: and two more since then, as well:

Pidgeons and Possums

Sounds like some kind of urban fantasy RPG to me...

[classicdrogn]

One more -- a PBS short on how it's not zombie sharks with frikken lasers or giant mutant cockroaches we should be looking out for after an apocalypse, but the terrifying global domination of sponges as they floomph and willomy, looming in the billowing unending rain of debris falling out from above like misshapen fibrous harbingers of a new and eldritch order fit to shatter all sanity and consume the ruin of what came before!


Well, maybe not exactly, but I'm pretty sure Lovecraft would be horrified anyway.

[Bob Schroeck]

New theory suggests time is an illusion created by quantum entanglement.

[robkelk]

New theory suggests time is an illusion created by quantum entanglement.

"New"?

"Time is basically an illusion created by the mind to aid in our sense of temporal presence in the vast ocean of space."
-- Abhijit Naskar, Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost (2016)

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
-- Ford Prefect, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, the illusion part isn't new -- and I was remembering the HHGTTG quote the whole time I was posting that -- but a proposed mechanism by which the illusion is formed, that's new.

[Mamorien]

New theory suggests time is an illusion created by quantum entanglement.

"New"?

"Time is basically an illusion created by the mind to aid in our sense of temporal presence in the vast ocean of space."
-- Abhijit Naskar, Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost (2016)

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
-- Ford Prefect, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

"The Wave Harmonic Theory of Historical Perception, in its simplest form, states that history is an illusion caused by the passage of time, and that time is an illusion caused by the passage of history. It also states that one's perception of these illusions is conditioned by three important facts:

• Who you are;
  
• Where you are;
  
• And when you last had lunch with Zaphod Beeblebrox."
  

-- HHGTTG Fit the Eighth (second of the Secondary Phase), originally broadcast 21 January 1980

[classicdrogn]

SpaceX Starship makes a successful flight from launch to soft water landing, despite reentry plasma partially melting away the control surfaces


Whoosh!

[classicdrogn]

Researchers identify a new natural cycle (we already broke it)


shocked pikachu face

[robkelk]

Voyager 1 makes stellar comeback to science operations

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is back in action and conducting normal science operations for the first time since the veteran probe began spouting gibberish at the end of 2023.

All four of the spacecraft's remaining operational instruments are now returning usable data to Earth, according to NASA.

[robkelk]

(190±70)km diameter asteroid discovered last week is making a close approach to Earth on Saturday.

"Close" as in "just within the Moon's orbit". Nowhere near our cloud of orbiting satellites, let alone Earth itself.

According to Alan Fitzsimmons, a planetary scientist at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland, at its closest, 2024 MK will be visible from the southern hemisphere. The following night it will be in the constellation Scorpius, which is low in the south in Canada.

However, don't expect to see it. It won't be visible to the unaided eye, and, Fitzsimmons added to those who may have telescopes, "you've got to have to know exactly where to look. It's motoring."

[classicdrogn]

Damn, that's one hell of a near miss in astronomical terms.

[hazard]

So it's between 260 and 120 kilometers in diameter.

Slight margin of error there.

Not that it'd matter if it hit, but it won't, so hey, good thing.

[classicdrogn]

Kinda puts those "we'll launch a KKV rocket to give it a nudge while it's still far ouy" plans a on the spot when it's only noticed a week aead of time, eh?


link

(bet you were expecting Don't Look Up, eh?)

[robkelk]

"When hippos fly!" Well, actually...

A new study from the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) into the movement and gaits of hippopotamuses on land has found that while they almost exclusively trot, the fastest-moving hippos become airborne for substantial periods of time.

If this one isn't nominated for an Ig Nobel, I'll be very surprised.

[Bob Schroeck]