“Earth’s poles are undergoing simultaneous freakish extreme heat with parts of Antarctica more than 70 degrees (40 degrees Celsius) warmer than average and areas of the Arctic more than 50 degrees (30 degrees Celsius) warmer than average,” NBC News reported on Saturday, March 19, 2022 [...]
Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
March 20th, 2022 - 1:26 am § in Environment, Science
Scientists observe extreme warming at both poles
March 17th, 2022 - 10:09 pm § in Science
Are we relatives?
Possibly, but not necessarily, and we’ll probably never know, because most family genealogies go back only a couple of centuries. According to the Bible, we all descended from Adam and Eve, in which case we’re all related to each other. Lending some support to this thesis is the fact tha[...]
March 17th, 2022 - 2:59 am § in Science
You’ve heard of hairy black holes, right?
Of course you have! What would we do without them? They solve the Hawking Paradox. (You already know what that is, so you don’t need to read the explanation here.) Black holes, of course, “are dead stars that have collapsed and have such strong gravity that not even light can escape.R[...]
March 16th, 2022 - 1:53 pm § in Science
Webb image, and how this telescope differs from Hubble
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is working as engineers hoped, but NASA says “a lot of work still lies ahead” to put it in operation, BBC News reported on Wednesday, March 16, 2022 (see story here). The photo at left is an alignment image on a test star used to calibrate the telesc[...]
Here’s GOP candidate’s “proof” evolution isn’t real
“At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not?” No. Science never said “man came from apes.” But that’s what GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker told a congregation on Sunday, March 13, 2022 (story here), adding for good measure, “If that is true” (it i[...]
Where Covid-19 almost certainly came from
There may never be a definitive answer, but genome-tracking scientists have zeroed in on a specific stall at the Wuhan live-animal market (diagram below), and all but ruled out the “lab leak” theory. Read here the complicated story of how they trailed Covid-19 to where it jumped from ani[...]
More coffin nails in “lab leak” theory
Two new studies “offer further evidence that the coronavirus originated in animals and spread to humans in late 2019 at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China,” CNN reported on Saturday, February 26, 2022 (read story here). These are preprint studies, not yet peer-reviewed or publishe[...]
This is what happens when you don’t fact-check
First, some background: “Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, has been a vocal critic of Dr. Anthony Fauci.” (Per CNN story here.) So it’s not surprising he went off half-cocked, but this one is a doozy. (Also relevant to this story, while Massie is an MIT grad in electrical[...]
January 6th, 2022 - 5:28 pm § in Science
Fusion energy progress report
Fusion works. If it didn’t, the sun wouldn’t shine, and H-bombs wouldn’t explode. Harnessing fusion for electricity production is just an engineering problem. ” … [T]he enormous potential of fusion makes it hard to ignore. It’s a technology that could safely provide a[...]
January 2nd, 2022 - 2:31 pm § in Schools & Colleges, Science
Why Pluto should not be a planet
Well, they’re back at it again. Arguing over whether Pluto should be called a planet, a dwarf planet, or a Kuiper object. I guess it gives astronomers something to do around the water cooler. Anyway, the International Astronomical Association Union, which is as official as you can get, adopte[...]