Science!
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There’s been a few cases of this now , shark virgin birth
Something like this must be genetically encoded. Parthongenesis (spelling?) can't be spontaneous - it must be triggered by certain conditions to allow the female sharks to create offspring when there are no males around. I'd be interested in knowing whether the babies are clones or have any chromosome differences
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@stockcar86 said in Science!:
There’s been a few cases of this now , shark virgin birth
Something like this must be genetically encoded. Parthongenesis (spelling?) can't be spontaneous - it must be triggered by certain conditions to allow the female sharks to create offspring when there are no males around. I'd be interested in knowing whether the babies are clones or have any chromosome differences
It might similar to the way the marbled crayfish reproduces and what it’s offsprings DNA are like
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@stockcar86 said in Science!:
There’s been a few cases of this now , shark virgin birth
Something like this must be genetically encoded. Parthongenesis (spelling?) can't be spontaneous - it must be triggered by certain conditions to allow the female sharks to create offspring when there are no males around. I'd be interested in knowing whether the babies are clones or have any chromosome differences
It might similar to the way the marbled crayfish reproduces and what it’s offsprings DNA are like
I remember that story - all clones. Not a good genetic diversity model, but if it works...
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@stockcar86 said in Science!:
@stockcar86 said in Science!:
There’s been a few cases of this now , shark virgin birth
Something like this must be genetically encoded. Parthongenesis (spelling?) can't be spontaneous - it must be triggered by certain conditions to allow the female sharks to create offspring when there are no males around. I'd be interested in knowing whether the babies are clones or have any chromosome differences
It might similar to the way the marbled crayfish reproduces and what it’s offsprings DNA are like
I remember that story - all clones. Not a good genetic diversity model, but if it works...
New Plymouth still exists
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@stockcar86 said in Science!:
Explains a few people I’ve encountered over the years
I thought Neanderthals and Denisovans were separate species. If they can interbreed and produce offspring, isn't that the definition of the same species?
Horses and donkeys can breed and produce offspring. They are different species......
So can zebras and donkeys, creating the best portmanteau ever: zebronkey
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@stockcar86 said in Science!:
Explains a few people I’ve encountered over the years
I thought Neanderthals and Denisovans were separate species. If they can interbreed and produce offspring, isn't that the definition of the same species?
Horses and donkeys can breed and produce offspring. They are different species......
So can zebras and donkeys, creating the best portmanteau ever: zebronkey
There’s records of a tahr and a goat crossbreeding , not sure what you call them .
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@stockcar86 said in Science!:
Explains a few people I’ve encountered over the years
I thought Neanderthals and Denisovans were separate species. If they can interbreed and produce offspring, isn't that the definition of the same species?
Horses and donkeys can breed and produce offspring. They are different species......
So can zebras and donkeys, creating the best portmanteau ever: zebronkey
There’s records of a tahr and a goat crossbreeding , not sure what you call them .
Ashburtonite
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NASA research shows that Saturns rings will be gone in 100 million years. Pretty small amount of cosmic timescale really
NASA Research Reveals Saturn is Losing Its Rings at “Worst-Case-Scenario” Rate
New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 & 2 observations made decades ago. The
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@stockcar86 I wonder what reincarnation I will be in around that time to witness such an event? Hopefully not living on Saturn by then!
100 million years, right fuckers! Who will be around to go 'see, told you' or 'they were wrong'
What is the margin of error for a time prediction like that? 5-10 million years?
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Using science to brew rum a lot quicker
One Man's Quest to Make 20-Year-Old Rum in Just Six Days
Obsessive distiller Brian Davis invented a contraption for aging booze—fast.
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How ‘magic angle’ graphene is stirring up physics
Misaligned stacks of the wonder material exhibit superconductivity and other curious properties.
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Lets keep this tech out of the hands of civilians, OK.
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I was wondering what happened about this
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the comments are always good value
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Science-adjacent
These people are real - it is not satire
From hyperbaric oxygen chambers to HumanChargers: welcome to the wellness revolution
ALEX BEER38. Photographer and model at Select Model Management5.55-6.45am I wake up and immediately rehydrate. Your body is the most absorbent after you sleep, so the first thing you put in it is the most important. I have a glass of Rebel Kitchen raw coconut water (you should be drinking slightly p
Some excerpts from the article
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@Stockcar86 Bahahahahahaha
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The head of astronomy at Harvard, using some newer calculations, makes an awfully compelling case that Oumuamua was, in fact, an (extremely!) ancient non-human solar sail.
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@Stockcar86 appears you have to subscribe to read that...
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“I don’t care what people say,” asserts Avi Loeb, chairman of Harvard University’s astronomy department and author of one of the most controversial articles in the realm of science last year (and also one of the most popular in the general media). “It doesn’t matter to me,” he continues. “I say what I think, and if the broad public takes an interest in what I say, that’s a welcome result as far as I’m concerned, but an indirect result. Science isn’t like politics: It is not based on popularity polls.” Prof. Abraham Loeb, 56, was born in Beit Hanan, a moshav in central Israel, and studied physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as part of the Israel Defense Forces’ Talpiot program for recruits who demonstrate outstanding academic ability. Freeman Dyson, the theoretical physicist, and the late astrophysicist John Bahcall admitted Loeb to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, whose past faculty members included Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 2012, Time magazine named Loeb one of the 25 most influential people in the field of space. He has won prizes, written books and published 700 articles in the world’s leading scientific journals. Last October, Loeb and his postdoctoral student Shmuel Bialy, also an Israeli, published an article in the scientific outlet “The Astrophysical Journal Letters,” which seriously raised the possibility that an intelligent species of aliens had sent a spaceship to Earth. The “spaceship” in question is called Oumuamua. For those who don’t keep up with space news, Oumuamua is the first object in history to pass through the solar system and be identified as definitely originating outside of it. The first interstellar guest came to us from the direction of Vega, the brightest star in the Lyra constellation, which is 26 light-years from us. In the 1997 film “Contact,” it’s the star from which the radio signal is sent to Jodie Foster.```Oumuamua was actually discovered by a Canadian astronomer, Robert Weryk, using the Pan-STARRS telescope at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. “Oumuamua” is Hawaiian for “first distant messenger” – in a word, “scout.” It was discovered on October 19, 2017, suspiciously close to Earth (relatively speaking, of course: Oumuamua was 33 million kilometers away from us when it was sighted – 85 times farther than the moon is from Earth).
Whereas all the planets, asteroids and meteors that originate within the solar system more or less circle what is called the Ecliptic plane, that of our sun, since they were formed from the same disc of gas and dust that rotated around itself, Oumuamua entered the solar system north of the plane, in an extreme hyperbolic orbit and at a speed of 26.3 kilometers per second faster relative to the motion of the sun.```
A reconstruction of its trajectory shows that Oumuamua traversed the ecliptic plane on September 6, 2017, when the sun’s gravity accelerated the object to a velocity of 87.8 kilometers per second. On September 9, the object passed closer to the sun than the orbit of Mercury. And on October 14, five days before it was discovered in Hawaii, the object passed 24.18 million kilometers away from Earth, or 62 times the distance from here to the moon. What does it feel like to sit next to colleagues in a university lunchroom a day after publishing an article arguing that Oumuamua may actually be a reconnaissance spaceship? Loeb: “The article I published was written, in part, on the basis of conversations I had with colleagues whom I respect scientifically. Scientists of senior status said themselves that this object was peculiar but were apprehensive about making their thoughts public. I don’t understand that. After all, academic tenure is intended to give scientists the freedom to take risks without having to worry about their jobs. Unfortunately, most scientists achieve tenure – and go on tending to their image. As children we ask ourselves about the world, we allow ourselves to err. Ego doesn’t play a part. We learn about the world with innocence and honesty. As a scientist, you’re supposed to enjoy the privilege of being able to continue your childhood. Not to worry about the ego, but about uncovering the truth. Especially after you get tenure.” Without tenure you wouldn’t have published the article? “I suppose not. It’s not just the tenure. I’m head of the astronomy department, and founding director of the Black Hole Initiative [an interdisciplinary center at Harvard dedicated to the study of black holes]. In addition, I’m director of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. So it could be that I’m committing image suicide, if this turns out to be incorrect. On the other hand, if it turns out to be correct, it’s one of the greatest discoveries in human history. For us to make progress in understanding the universe, we need to be credible, and the only way to be credible is to follow what you see, not yourself. Besides, what’s the worst thing that can happen to me? I’ll be relieved of my administrative duties? This will bring the benefit that I’ll have more time for science.”``` **‘Gravitational pushes’** The first friend from another solar system stirred great excitement among scientists, but its form and behavior also raised multiple questions. “It was subjected to observation, but not enough,” Loeb told me with disappointment, when I met with him in Tel Aviv at the end of December. “It was only under consecutive observation for six days, from October 25 to 31 – namely, a week after its discovery. At first they said, Okay, it’s a comet – but no comet tail was visible. Comets are made of ice, which evaporates as the comet approaches the sun. But we didn’t see a trail of gas or dust in Oumuamua. So the thinking was that it must be an asteroid – simply a chunk of stone. But the object rotated on its axis for eight hours, and during that time its brightness changed by a factor of 10, whereas the brightness of all the asteroids that we’re familiar with changes, at most, by a factor of three. If we assume that the light reflection is constant, that means its length is at least 10 times greater than its thickness. “There are two possibilities in regard to this extreme geometry,” Loeb continues. “One is that it’s in the shape of a cigar, the other than it has the shape of a pancake. The truth is that the same observers who examined Oumuamua’s light variation reached the conclusion that if it receives a lot of gravitational pushes during the voyage – which is reasonable, because it spent a lot of time in interstellar space – its shape is pancake-flat. Subsequently additional qualities were discovered, such as its origin.” I wrote above that Oumuamua originated at Vega, but that’s not completely accurate: The universe is a vast place, and even at Oumuamua’s velocity – a velocity that no human spaceship has achieved – a voyage from Vega to the solar system would take 600,000 years. But in the meantime, Vega is orbiting the center of the Milky Way, like the sun and all the other stars, and it wasn’t in that region of the heavens 600,000 years ago. “If you average the velocities of all the stars in the region,” Loeb explains, “you get a system that’s called the ‘local standard of rest.’ Oumuamua was at rest relative to that system. It didn’t come to us. It waited in place, like a buoy on the surface of the ocean, until the ‘ship’ of the solar system ran into it. To make things clear, only one of 500 stars in the system is as much at rest as Oumuamua. The probability of that is very low. After all, if it were a stone that was simply hurled from a different solar system, we would expect it to have the velocity of its star system, not the average velocity of all the thousands of stars in the vicinity.”
If true, this could be one of the greatest discoveries in human history
