ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 553

Genetic Study Confirms Australian Aborigines Have Been Isolated For 50,000 Years

Editor's Blog





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Australian aborigines have one of the oldest histories of any peoples, dating back 50,000 years. Rusty Stewart/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The indigenous aborigines of Australia have one of the oldest histories of any group of people living outside of Africa. The general consensus is that modern humans reached the continent around 50,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years before humans even managed to populate Europe. There have, however, been questions about just how isolated the aborigines have been during this long history, and whether there were later influxes of people.

Turning Over A New Leaf Drives Forest Productivity

Plants and Animals





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It's the quality, not the quantity, of these leaves that determines how much carbon dioxide they remove. Ammit Jack/Shutterstock

New leaves are much more effective photosynthesizers than old ones. A team of scientists are arguing that our failure to take this into account explains why we have struggled to understand seasonal changes in the productivity of tropical rainforests. By looking at the forests, not the leaves, we've ignored the impact of leaf quality.

Using Pulsars As A Gravitational Wave Observatory

Space





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David Champion

The LIGO detection of gravitational waves has begun a new era in astronomy, and initiatives and projects are being planned across the world to observe as many cosmic events as possible. Now the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) has suggested a way to detect the merging of supermassive black holes using existing radio telescopes.

Google’s New AI Has “Superhuman” Ability To Locate Where Your Image Was Taken

Technology





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Google/Tobias Weyand et al.

If you’ve ever played the game GeoGuessr, you’ll know how hard it is to locate somewhere purely by an image. The online game plonks you in a random location on Google Street View and it’s your job to determine where you are anywhere in the world only using the visible clues. But even as spatial creatures, us humans find it hard to tell our Australian outback from our South African bush.

Shifting Shape Of Van Allen Belts Discovered

Space





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An artistic impression of what the outer Van Allen belt looks like. NASA Goddard

Earth's magnetic field acts as a shield against dangerous cosmic rays and powerful solar winds. Some of the particles hitting the magnetic field become trapped and form large swarms of charged particles, mostly electrons and protons, arranged in radiation belts, known as the Van Allen belts.

Incredible New Map Of The Milky Way Released

Space





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A stunning picture of the dust lane in the Milky Way. ESO/APEX/ATLASGAL consortium/NASA/GLIMPSE consortium/ESA/Planck

One of the largest studies of our galaxy has just been completed. The ATLASGAL survey has mapped a huge swathe of cold dust and gas distribution in the Milky Way in order to understand how and where stars form.

Family Awarded $72 Million Over Claims Talcum Powder Caused Ovarian Cancer

Health and Medicine





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Napat/Shutterstock

Following a three-week-long trial in the U.S., a jury in Missouri has ordered that pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson pay out a staggering $72 million to the family of a woman who died last year of ovarian cancer, a death the family blames on the heath care giant’s talcum powder.

Scott Kelly Gets Into Some Ape Suit Hijinks On The ISS

Space





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Mark Kelly/NASA/Twitter

American astronaut Scott Kelly is in the final days of his year-long mission. What better way to wind down from an intense marathon on the International Space Station than floating around in a gorilla suit, chasing Tim Peake to the Benny Hill soundtrack?

Dogs And Primates May Be Able To Perceive Magnetic Fields

Health and Medicine





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The key protein is hiding in the retinas of a range of mammals, including dogs. marinini/Shutterstock

The ability to naturally perceive Earth’s magnetic field is something humans don’t have. Some animals, on the other hand, do: birds, some bats, turtles, ants, and even sharks are able to detect it.

Dodo Brains Were Surprisingly Big

Plants and Animals





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A model of a dodo that will be on display at the American Museum of Natural History. AMNH/C. Chesek

The famously extinct dodo, Raphus cucullatus, disappeared about a century after humans showed up on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, and the word "dodo" became synonymous with a person that’s old-fashion, obsolete, and stupid. But now, researchers have created the world’s first internal cast of a dodo skull, and as it turns out, they may have been fairly intelligent after all.