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Another Candidate for the Origin of Atlantis
A project to study volcanic activity off the Canary Islands has found three sunken volcanos in the Atlantic that once formed a group of islands. These now-underwater mountains exist at a depth between 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) and only 300 feet below the surface. This seamount was named Mount Los Atlantes, after Plato's fictional Atlantis. Mount Los Atlantes was above the surface during the Eocene epoch. Some some tens of millions of years ago, they stopped erupting and sank under the weight of their own cooling lava. The project has identified beaches, sand dunes, and cliffs among the features of the volcanos. How could these islands possibly have anything to do with the legend of Atlantis, since they sank so long ago? The peaks aren't that deep, so they would have been exposed during the last ice age, which ran from 115,000 to 11,700 years ago. Sea level was much lower then, and the islands may have developed a flourishing ecosystem during that time, before glacial ice melted, seas rose, and the islands were submerged once again. Read what we know so far about these newly-discovered ancient volcanos at LiveScience.-via Strange Company (Image credit: IGME-CSIC)
There Might Be a Lot More Water on Mars
From what we know now, scientists figure that Mars had plenty of water around three billion years ago. But then as the red planet lost its atmosphere, it also lost its surface water. All that is left is the ice around the poles, too cold and solid to have evaporated or have been flung away into space. But the surface is not the only place a planet can store water. A study of gravity and seismic waves that travel through Mars' crust yielded data that didn't make sense when compared with the rocky crust. But the anomalies would make sense if there was liquid water trapped in the planet's mid-crust, between 11.5-20 kilometers (7-12 miles) below the surface. Dr. Vashan Wright, lead author of the study, says that if we extrapolate the data to the rest of the planet, the amount of water would fill an ocean one to two kilometers deep. If there is water in the mid-crust, and it's been there all this time, it opens up the possibility that that water contains some form of life. Read about the implications of this discovery, both for the search for extraterrestrial life and for the future manned missions to Mars, at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)
The First Dinosaur Fossil Was Wildly Misidentified
Modern-day paleontologists and rockhounds alike know how to recognize dinosaur fossils because we have a couple hundred years of research to rely on. That wasn't the case when Oxford naturalist Robert Plot was presented with a fossilized bone unearthed at a quarry in 1677. No one knew what a dinosaur was then, so the bone was a mystery. Plot recognized it as a femur, but it was too big to be from a horse or an ox, so it must have come from an elephant. When Plot later got to examine an elephant skeleton, he knew that was wrong. So the fossil must have been from a human giant, like those described in the Bible. Almost 100 years later, that fossil got a Latin name based on a drawing Plot had made of a portion of that by-then-lost fossil, Scrotum humanum. The drawing sure looks like a human scrotum, but real scientists never took that seriously. To this day, the public takes delight in the story of that name. The point about these misidentifications is that we have to put ourselves into the mindset of those early scientists who confronted fossils and had no concept of species that had gone extinct. They, like we, were building their theories upon what was already known, and that knowledge had gaps that weren't obvious at the time. It makes you consider what scientists in future generations will think about the knowledge base of the 21st century. Read about that first dinosaur fossil in an excerpt from a new book on the subject by Edward Dolnick at Literary Hub. -via Damn Interesting
Brick Frog Saunas Protect Frogs From Fungus
A fungus called chytrid is responsible for the extinction of 90 frog species once found all over the world. It is a danger to the green and golden bell frog (Ranoidea aurea), which is not only endangered, but sports the colors of Australia's national sports teams. So it may be quite appropriate to know the these frogs took refuge in an area of Sydney that was slated to be developed for the Sydney Olympics in 2000. They were discovered thriving in a closed brickyard, which was then eliminated from development and declared a frog sanctuary. The frogs were drawn to the discarded bricks, which not only retain heat from sunlight, but also contain "frog-sized holes." Studies in the years following the discovery show that keeping the green and gold bell frog warm in winter causes them to be resistant to chytrid fungus infection. Conservationists are building small greenhouses with bricks inside, which they call "frog saunas" to help the species thrive. Read about the frog saunas for the green and golden bell frogs of Sydney at ABC. If you live in eastern Australia and would like to build your own frog sauna, there are instructions for how to do that. -via Metafilter(Image credit: Bernard Spragg)
The Prehistoric Mystery of the Cerutti Mastodon
In 1992, the fossilized skeleton of a mastodon was unearthed near San Diego. It was studied by paleontologist Richard Cerutti, and became known as the Cerutti Mastodon. The position and condition of the bones, the marks on them, and the rocks found near the bones show evidence that that mastodon was butchered by humans wielding sharpened rocks as knives. This was a shocking claim, since the fossil is dated to 130,000 years ago. The prevailing theory is that humans did not inhabit the Americas until 25,000 years ago at the earliest. Homo sapiens didn't venture out of Africa until less than 100,000 years ago. The research on the Cerutti Mastodon was dismissed or ignored for years. When other scientists studied the find and made the same claim years later, they were also roundly criticized. So how do we explain the Cerutti Mastodon? Clearly, someone is wrong somewhere. Maybe the dating of the fossil is wrong. Maybe there is some other explanation for the cut marks and the shaped stones. Or maybe some species of humans were migrating to the Americas earlier than we previously thought. Read about the conundrum of the Cerutti Mastodon at Atlas Obscura. -via Strange Company (Image credit: Charles Robert Knight)
Robot Dentist: A Good Idea or Just Terrifying?
We've seen enough blooper videos from robotics companies to know that robots can malfunction, and we've seen enough science fiction to know that when robots go wrong, there's no stopping them. That's why the thought of a robot drilling your teeth is quite frightening, as if getting dental work done isn't frightening enough on its own. But a dentistry robot is here, from a company called Perceptive. Their robot offers quite a few advantages over a flash-and-blood dentist, starting with a unique imaging system called optical coherence tomography (OCT) that uses light like a sonar, investigating exactly where that tooth decay is inside a tooth, and therefore being able to plan a procedure to remove precisely enough material to get the job done. By contrast, a dentist is usually drilling in exploration, making procedural decisions as he/she goes. But what if the patient moves during robotic drilling? The Perceptive robot moves with them, because the drill is anchored inside the mouth. Genius. The Perceptive robot has been used on people with good results. The next step will be clinical trials to get FDA approval, so it may be a few years before you have to decide whether to let a robot fill your cavities. Read a more thorough explanation of what this dental robot does at Spectrum IEEE. -via Real Clear Science (Image credit: Perspective)
Cooking Like a Neanderthal ...for Science!
What we know about Neanderthal diet and cooking, we've learned from the trash they left behind, but there are some gaps in rubbish that has been sitting around for hundreds of thousands of years. We know that they hunted and ate any animal they could get hold of, from wolves to mammoths, plus fruit, nuts, shellfish, and mushrooms. We've found little evidence that they ate birds, but that's only because birds have lightweight bones that don't last long, esecially when they've been cooked. How would a Neanderthal eat a bird? A team from the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social in Spain decided to recreate a Neanderthal meal, using only the tools they would have available to them. They procured five wild birds that had died of natural causes and set about preparing them.They compared the methods of skinning the birds before cooking and roasting them first, and found that the most likely method also explained why so few relics survived to be studied. They also found out how dangerously sharp flint cutting tools are. Read about the experiment and what it tells us about studying Neanderthal culture at ZME Science.-via Damn Interesting (Image credit: Mariana Nabais)
The Phenomena of Sharks Ingesting Cocaine
Cocaine Shark sounds like a natural sequel to the movieCocaine Bear, and sadly this one would also be loosely "based on a true story." Between 2021 and 2023, scientists analyzed the tissues of more than a dozen Brazilian sharpnose sharks they bought from fishing boats in Brazil. These small sharks are endangered, but that doesn't stop them from being harvested. All of the sharks tested positive for cocaine in their tissues. The results showed an average of 23 micrograms per fish, which is considered a trace amount. But it shows how cocaine is polluting our waterways and making its way into fish. Also consider that these sharks were alive when caught. We have no idea how much a shark could ingest before it dies. Cocaine is a growing ocean pollutant, since it is shipped by boat and illegal. At signs of pursuit, the cargo can be tossed overboard, leaving large bales of the drug to infiltrate seawater and all that live in it. This kind of research is in its infancy, and further study is needed to see how cocaine will affect endangered species and our food supply. Read more about the cocaine found in sharks at Popular Science. -via Damn Interesting (Image credit: D Ross Robertson)
16-inch-long Hairball Removed from Woman's Stomach
A 24-year-old woman in Ecuador was suffering from weight loss, pain, vomiting, and an inability to eat. She also had a hard stomach. Doctors at Verdi Cevallos Balda General Hospital in Portoviejo could feel the mass inside of her. In a 45-minute operation, they pulled a two-pound bezoar, or hairball, out of her stomach. The mass was 16 inches long, in the shape of her stomach and had protruded into the intestine. The medical report doesn't tell us how the hair was ingested, although it was estimated to be gathering for two years. A psychological condition called trichophagia is an eating disorder in which the patient is compelled to swallow hair. This woman was said to have a "psychoemotional ailment" that wasn't identified to the public. However, she is undergoing followup care. Read more about the case at Gizmodo. Be warned that there is a picture of the hairball. (Unrelated image credit: Bobjgalindo)
But Honestly, How Often Should You Poop?
Once upon a time, TV ads made it seem necessary to be "regular," because there were so many products for "irregularity." But even if you have bowel movements at the same frequency over time, what is the proper frequency? Ads don't tell us, but science is working on it. People vary widely in how often they poop, and that may have some effect on our health. A new study published in the journal Cell tracked nearly 4,000 people to compare the frequency of their bowel movements and their health. The frequency ranged from one to two poops a week to diarrhea. The sweet spot for optimum health turns out to be one or two poops a day. So what if don't fit into that sweet spot? You might try more fiber, more water, and regular exercise. Extreme variations can indicate health problems, or even cause health problems. Read what those are and how your pooping schedule can change your body chemistry at BBC Science Focus.(Image credit: Lee Coursey)
How Should We Define a "Planet"?
Back in 2006, the International Astronomical Union laid out the standards for defining what is and what is not a planet, and Pluto didn't make the grade. A hue and cry went up from Pluto fans and those who didn't want to learn a new mnemonic, but Pluto still remains a dwarf planet, excluded from the pantheon of the solar system. The IAU is holding its General Assembly next month, and one of the issues will be a new definition of the word "planet." The new parameters that astronomers want for the definition will not help Pluto. It won't affect any of the planets in our solar system. But it may help define the nearly 6,000 exoplanets that have been discovered so far, and the ones yet to be discovered. Therefore, it will have to cover the definition of a star that a planet is orbiting, and stars come in all kinds. The new definition has a lower and upper limit to a planet's size, too. Those are things that we never had to ponder before, since we only knew nine, er, eight planets. Read about the proposed new definition of "planet" and what it means for interstellar research at Gizmodo.(Image credit: NASA/JPL)
Conquering Olympic Swimming, with Math!
In 2014, an Emory student majoring in physics and math was also a walk-on member of the school's swim team. Andrew Wilson got interested in using math to improve his swimming, and won the national collegiate swimming championship in 2016, and went on to earn a gold medal at the 2021 Olympics. His math professor who collaborated on Wilson's project, Ken Ono, is a technical consultant for the 2024 US Olympic swimming team. Ono is now with the University of Virginia, which sent a record number of swimmers to the US women's swimming team in both 2021 and 2024. Ono studies the data on talented swimmers, and applies Newton’s laws of motion to calculate acceleration, deceleration, and drag, and designs ways to improve all three to optimize a swimmer's speed through the water. Ono talked with Quanta magazine to explain how this project began, what data they analyze, and how physics can be used to improve a swimmer's performance. Read it, and then when the Paris Olympics swimming competitions begin on July 27, we'll see how UVA swimmers fare against the rest of the world. -via Real Clear Science(Image credit: Jorge mello ej)
New Species of Pterosaur Decribed as "Demon Pelican"
A recently discovered species of prehistoric pterosaur had a 24-inch jaw full of sharp teeth and a wingspan of up to 40 feet. The fossils of this pterosaur were found in the outback of western Queensland, Australia. It is the most complete set of pterosaur bones ever found in Australia, and the species has been dubbed Haliskia peterseni. PhD candidate Adele Pentland and her team from Curtin University described H. peterseni as a sort of "demonic pelican" in the paper published in the journal Scientific Reports/Springer Nature. You can imagine the prey this reptile could hold in those jaws. Pterosaurs are the first vertebrates to fly, before birds ever existed. The specimen of H. peterseni under study lived around 100 million years ago. Read more about this new discovery at ABC.-via Strange Company (Image credit: Gabriel Ugueto)
Fireworks Require Quantum Physics to Work
The fireworks we set off on the Fourth of July are, yes, dangerous, but they are highly engineered pyrotechnic displays that have quite a bit of science behind them. The big bursts you see in the night sky are engineered in several stages. The lift charge, main fuse, and launch tube together are a rocket that gets the firework up in the sky. The largest displays can have shells three feet wide and fly as high as 1000 feet! Once it get up there, the fuse is crucial, for the timing of the explosion. The burst charge stage then explodes at the specified height, and throw stars. These stars can be any color, depending on the chemicals used. But they may actually burn in a color different from what the human eye sees! There's more going on inside a fireworks shell than meets the eye, and you can read the science behind our Fourth of July fireworks at Big Think.(Imagecredit: Jeffrey Pang)
Egg-Laying vs. Live Birth ...or Maybe Both
Mammals gestate their babies until they are ready, and then give birth. Birds lay eggs. Fish and reptiles can do either, depending on the species. But one animal has been found that can do both! An Australian three-toed skink laid eggs and then pretty quickly produced another offspring by live birth! But when you take a close look at a lot of species, you'll find that egg-laying and live births exist on a spectrum instead of a binary divide. Some creatures keep the babies inside until birth, but use a yolk to feed them. Some even have a shell and keep them inside until they're ready. Others use a combination of a yolk and a system that may remind you of a placenta for some materials exchange. Nature has developed a lot of different ways to produce offspring, and SciShow is here to give us a glimpse of that variety. This video has a one-minute skippable ad at 2:40. -via Damn Interesting
How the Island of Teonimenu Slid Into the Sea
Among the people of the Solomon Islands, some trace their heritage to the island of Teonimenu. But there is no island there, just a spot in the Pacific called Lark Shoal. The people tell of how Teonimenu disappeared into the ocean sometime between 1568 and 1768, due to a curse purchased by a betrayed husband, who sent eight waves to destroy the island and the hundreds of people who lived there. Some survived the sinking, and were blown by ocean currents to other nearby islands where their families have lived for hundreds of years. The story, handed down by oral tradition, was discounted by scientists as a myth until fairly recently. But there is evidence that Teonimenu once existed, and the geological state of the land under the ocean makes it quite plausible that the island indeed slid into the ocean suddenly. The explanation they lay out is terrifying, and there is no wonder that the tale has been retold for generations. Read about the disappearance of Teonimenu at ABC. -via Metafilter(Image credit: Patrick Nunn)
The Volcanic Effect That Makes Mount Rainier Frightening
Mount Rainier in Washington State is an active volcano that hasn't erupted in hundreds of years, although volcanic activity has been detected occasionally. Its listed as the third most dangerous volcano in the US, after Kīlauea in Hawaii and Mount St. Helens. Mount Rainier is dangerous because there are highly populated communities nearby: Tacoma, South Seattle, and many various smaller towns. But scientists aren't as concerned with pyroclastic flow or lava or ash as they are with flooding. Flooding from a volcano isn't just water, though. Mount Rainier is very tall (14,411 feet) and is covered with snow and glaciers. In the event of an eruption, lava and hot gasses would melt that ice quickly, causing a flood called a lahar. The water may be hot or cold, and would be filled with mud, rocks, lava, and debris. The amount of water tumbling down from Mount Rainier would be massive and unstoppable. Communities built in valleys and along rivers would be affected faster than they could evacuate. Around Mount Rainier, that's hundreds of thousands of people. In the Nisqually River Valley, a lahar could wreck the Alder Dam, causing further sudden flooding in a wider area. Read about the potential for a lahar disaster at Mount Rainier at CNN. -via Real Clear Science(Image credit: Mount Rainier National Park)
The Effect of Age on One's Sense of Humor
A compilation of studies on humor shows that what we find funny, and what jokes we understand, changes throughout our lives. In a study of what young children find funny, they first learn to laugh, then seek humor, then produce their own humor. Nonsense words are funny very early, but language skills have to be in place before they can find puns funny. Duh. But as we age, our ability to find humor in the world rises until middle age, then declines in older adults, then levels off at about 80. Do old folks really have less of a sense of humor? Losing humor with age depends on several factors, including loss of cognitive and verbal function. But it is mitigated by other factors, like education level and sex. As an educated old woman, I don't have much to worry about. But none of the studies addressed the fact that the older you get, the more likely it is that you've heard that joke before. There are a lot of factors involved in our changing sense of humor; read them at Stat Significant. There are a lot of links involved, which may send you don't an internet rabbit hole. I hope you find something to laugh at along the way. -via Digg(Image credit: Emanuele Spies)
The Wonders and Limits of Petri Dishes
Petri dishes are a great tool for microbiologists. A Petri dish is a small self-contained laboratory for growing bacteria, isolated from contamination, and providing a nutrient-rich, climate-controlled environment. Familiar bacteria like E. coli grow amazingly well in a Petri dish. A lot of bacteria species do, but those that grow well in a Petri dish are only a drop in the bucket considering how many species of bacteria we have, and there are many more we haven't even discovered yet. So why can't we design a Petri dish for those other bacteria we want to study? Lizah van der Aart explains why growing other bacterias is so confounding in this video from Minute Earth. You can tell van der Aart is a microbiologist because she pronounces minute as my-noot, which only makes sense. Or maybe it's because she's Dutch. This video is only four minutes; the rest is promotional.
Blaze Star Expected to Appear as a Nova This Summer
A binary star system named T Coronae Borealis, or T CrB to astronomers (also called the Blaze Star), is predicted to produce a nova visible to the naked eye sometime this summer. T CrB is composed of a white dwarf star and a red giant that are relatively near to each other, and 3,000 light years from earth. The nova has been called a "once in a lifetime event." This is not a supernova, which is when a dying star explodes. A nova occurs when the white dwarf star, a star that has exhausted its nuclear fuel, builds up material it collects from the red giant. At a critical point, the white dwarf suddenly ejects that excess material with a huge burst of light. There's probably a lot of noise involved, too, but we won't get that. The nova does not destroy either star, and this ejection has been occurring every 80 years on average. It was first recorded in 1217, and the last burst was in 1946. Astronomers predict the nova this summer because their observations of the stars' behavior resembles the data that accompanied the beginning of the last nova. The T CrB nova will be visible for less than a week.
Viral Memes vs. Real Viruses: How They Spread Virally
Studying viruses is called virology, a branch of microbiology. Studying memes that spread on the internet is more like sociology. But what they have in common is mathematics. Well, there are other similarities, which is how we came up with the term "viral" for content that spreads wildly on the internet in the first place. When your sister shoves a phone in front of you and insists that you look at a goofy picture or watch a certain video, that's analogous to sneezing in your presence and sharing her flu germs. Whether you catch the disease depends on how susceptible you are. Epidemiologists have noticed similarities in the way both memes and viruses take over the world and then die back. Knowing that, I guess I've been some kind of superspreader for the past twenty years. But only of memes, not viruses.
Unearthing the Hidden Death Camps of Poland
During World War II, the three Nazi death camps called the Operation Reinhard camps did not have to be big, like Auschwitz, because they had few barracks. Train loads of Jews arrived at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, and the vast majority were taken straight to the gas chambers- 1.7 million of them. There were hardly any survivors after the war, just a few escapees. Before the Red Army arrived at these camps, the Nazis destroyed their records, bulldozed the facilities, and planted pine trees on top of the mass graves. The sites became forests, with some memorials built later. You could hardly tell there was any history at all in those sites. In the 21st century, we have forensic archaeology tools to explore these sites and better document what happened there. Investigators use aerial photography, aerial laser scanning technology lidar, and ground-penetrating radar to see what is underground. They have also excavated small areas. Forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls expected to find the foundations of the camp buildings, but her research has also unearthed personal items like jewelry, fences, and even recognizable floor tiles that were traced to their manufacturer. But the work has met with resistance, both from Holocaust deniers, and from Jewish authorities who are torn between wanting to document the sites and the prohibition against disturbing grave sites. Complicating matters, one site is completely covered with an asphalt memorial. But what happened at these sites deserved to be preserved. The discovery of a metal identification tag bearing the name Lea Judith de la Penha led to a Dutch documentary about the de la Penha family. Who knows what other secrets will be revealed by these excavations? Read about the project to unearth the truth of the Operation Reinhard camps at Sapiens. -via Damn Interesting(Image credit: Tajchman Maria)
What's Going On When Babies Learn to Say "Hi"
One of the great joys of raising children is watching them learn what the world is about with no context to begin with. The acquisition of language is a very complex task for which they must integrate observation and experience, experimentation and feedback, with some assumptions and leaps of faith thrown in as well. One of the first words a child learns is "hi" and it's a delight to hear and know that he understands its meaning. When you look under the hood, the process of learning this one word entails more than you might think. Babies learn the proper context for "hi," in that it is used when you first see someone you know. It is a greeting, which is a specific kind of action. While adults only use it for people, children will often greet inanimate objects, possibly as practice, or possibly because of a funny quirk in our language in which we greet a chair- you know, the high chair. The ways that children get language wrong tells us about their learning process, because if you look hard enough, you can see that they are using language rules; they just haven't got them down yet. Read about the magic that goes on behind learning the word "hi" at MIT Press. -via Real Clear Science (Image credit: Andrew Bardwell)
The Nuts and Bolts of How Birth Control Works
There are lots of different ways to prevent pregnancy, and the variety of methods are rarely covered in school, from what I hear. When I attended school, there was no sex education whatsoever. Later on, schools were caught up in "abstinence only" education, and today it varies from place to place at the whims of state and local politics. So I should not be surprised at how many people do not know the mechanics of how birth controls methods work, even if they use those methods. Minute Earth takes an overview of the most common modern birth controlmethods and explains what they do to interrupt the process of beginning a pregnancy. Here's the chart from the video.
Science Journals Shuttering from the Flood of Fake Papers
Once upon a time, scientists built their reputation by publishing papers on their research. These papers were submitted to prestigious science journals, where they underwent scrutiny by other scientists, known as peer review. Once a paper was published, other scientists would cite the author in their own research, which also boosted the author's prestige. That was then.As scientists fell under the pressure of "publish or perish" and new technology and the sheer number of journals made it more tempting to cut corners, science papers with lower standards started getting published. Real scientists saw a shortcut to getting more citations, which added to their reputation and job security. Then non-scientists found the value of getting published. Then even non-people. You can buy a citation to be included in a paper, and your company can publish findings in favor of whatever you are selling. Now the flood of fake science and AI-generated papers is causing publishers to rethink their entire business model. The 217-year-old publisher Wiley announced this week they are shutting down 19 of their journals. They aren't the first, and certainly won't be the last.There are scientists investigating the massive numbers of papers for fraudulent research and fake citations, rooting out the worst of the worst and exposing paper mills who submit science papers for profit. One of the ways they do this is by scanning for "tortured phrases."Cabanac and his colleagues realized that researchers who wanted to avoid plagiarism detectors had swapped out key scientific terms for synonyms from automatic text generators, leading to comically misfit phrases. “Breast cancer” became “bosom peril”; “fluid dynamics” became “gooey stream”; “artificial intelligence” became “counterfeit consciousness.” The tool is publicly available.But scammers are constantly finding new ways to work around the system. Read about the never-ending war against fake science. -via Metafilter(Image credit: Vmenkov)
House Cats Took Over the World Earlier Than We Thought
The origin story of the domestic cat has been pretty straightforward. Some 10,000 years ago, small wild cats were attracted to stores of grain in the Fertile Crescent because there were rodents infesting them. People thought that was a great pest control method, so they fell in love with the cats. The same thing happened later in Egypt, and eventually the two cat strains merged. Then Greek and Roman ships carried them to Europe. The spread of domestic cats has even been mapped globally.But more recent discoveries have thrown a wrench into the story. Remains of domestic cats have been found in Poland dated to between 50 and 230 AD, which is a thousand years earlier than previously thought. More discoveries in southern Poland place domestic cats there as far back as 5990 BC! Could it be that local cats made friends with farmers in many places around Europe, and maybe the world? They might have spread with the concept of agriculture itself. Read more about these findings at Atlas Obscura.(Image credit: debs-eye)
Sex Gets Better with Age
We think of sex as the province of people in their childbearing years. That is indeed a natural drive for the species to procreate, and the underlying goal is to find a suitable mate for procreating with. But that's only part of the story. You'd never know it from today's pop culture, but people don't stop enjoying sex when they get older. In fact, they will enjoy it even more than when they were young; they just don't talk about it nearly as much.There are a lot of reasons for this. Maturity makes you stop worrying about your appearance or performance and start appreciating the emotional side of sex. Also, you naturally get better with practice. There are other factors within these categories, and plenty of other reasons why sex becomes better with age. Psychologist and sex therapist Joel Block lays out the many ways sex can become better when you are in your 40, 50s, 60s, and beyond at Psychology Today. Now, if we could just get men to take better care of themselves so they can live long enough to learn this for themselves, the world would be better off. -via Real Clear Science (Image credit: Ian MacKenzie)
A Blue-Green Meteor Visible Over Spain and Portugal
Saturday night, a fireball shot across the skies, visible in Spain and Portugal as a blue or green light to those on the ground, and seen by us because so many people had their phones out in a flash to record it. The European Space Agency (ESA) said the burning object was a piece of a comet that was traveling around 100, 000 miles an hour. During its most visible phase, the meteor was around 38 miles (60 kilometers) above the ground. It most likely burned out as it headed out over the Atlantic Ocean.
A Planet Bigger Than Jupiter, But Light as Cotton Candy
The further astronomers look into the Milky Way galaxy, the more strange and different planets they find. A newly-discovered exoplanet designated WASP-193b is one of those in the "puffy Jupiter" category. It is 50% larger than Jupiter, but has only about 14% of Jupiter's weight. What's it made of -Aerogel? WASP-193b was discovered by the dip in light coming from the star WASP-193, which it revolves around every 6.25 days. The amount of light it blocked told us how large it is. Scientists tried defining its mass by measuring its gravitational pull on the star, but came up empty because it is so light that it exerts no detectable pull! Four years of data and calculations led them to the conclusion that this massive star is just that fluffy. Its density is estimated to be about 0.059 grams per cubic centimeter, close to that of cotton candy. Astronomers believe it is mostly made of hydrogen and helium. Of 5,400 planets we know about, planet WASP-193b is the second lightest. Kepler 51d displays a lower density, but that planet is also much smaller. Read more about the cotton candy planet at MIT News. -via Real Clear Science(Unrelated image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)
The Toxic Fungus That Became a Culinary Superstar
Thousands of years ago, farmers in the Middle East were domesticating wheat and pigs, South Americans were breeding corn and potatoes to be more useful as food, and Asians were domesticating koji mold, the fungus used in fermenting soy sauce and saki. The moldAspergillus flavus produced deadly toxins that infected grain crops and even milk from animals that ate those grains. Its close cousin Aspergillus oryzae did not, but digested and broke down starches that could then be more easily fermented by yeasts. The two species diverged millions of years ago, and both exist in the wild, but are nearly invisible until they infect grains and can be hard to tell apart. You have to wonder how many people were sickened or even died in the process of developing saki, miso, and soy sauce. That's one thing we'll probably never know. That brings up another question: how does one domesticate a fungus, anyway? When Aspergillus oryzae began to be deliberately grown for fermentation, there were no microscopes or DNA tests, nor clean labs to prevent contamination. Read about koji mold and how it became the foundation of fermented Asian foods at Knowable magazine. -via Strange Company (Image credit: Peachyeung316)
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