ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 709
August 21, 2015
July Was The Hottest Month Since Records Began
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July was the hottest month since records began. Saikat Paul/Shutterstock.
Did you feel warm in July? You weren’t the only one. Latest figures show that July was the hottest month on Earth since records began in 1880. Now, 2015 is set to become the warmest year on record, researchers say.
New Study Reveals What The World Would Look Like If Humans Never Existed
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Africa is the last continent to have held onto most of its large mammals. Footage.Pro/Shutterstock
What would the world look like if humans never existed? We have the ability to dramatically change our environment to meet our needs, altering the landscape in ways unlike any other species. But we also impact the animals that call the land their home, as a recent report showed, by the ruthlessness of our hunting practices.
How Long Have HIV’s Ancestors Been Infecting Primates?
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Alexander Mazurkevich/Shutterstock.
While many may be deadly, the aim of the game for viruses is not actually to kill the host. Well, not straight away, anyway. A dead host is a dead end as it can’t keep transmitting the pathogen to new hosts. Obviously, if it’s causing trouble, the host will want to get rid of it, rallying defense mechanisms that have evolved over time. Now the virus has to adapt and fight back, selecting advantageous mutations that thwart the host’s.
Narcolepsy Medication Could Be A Safe “Smart Drug”
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A growing number of students are taking modafinil to improve concentration. Pressmaster/Shutterstuck
Modafinil is a medicine used to treat sleep disorders such as narcolepsy. Dubbed as a “smart drug,” modafinil is becoming increasingly popular among students to improve their concentration before an exam. But is it safe and does it really work? A recent review by researchers suggests modafinil does work for some people and is safe in the short term.
IceCube Observatory Confirms The Discovery Of Cosmic Neutrinos
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The IceCube Observatory and a representation of the detection. IceCube Collaboration.
Millions of light-years away, a star explodes as a supernova and sends a host of subatomic particles called neutrinos in all directions. One of these heads towards our Solar System and, after millions of years, this tiny neutrino enters Earth’s atmosphere and collides with an atom inside a detector below the ice of Antarctica. The detectable signal produced not only confirms the neutrino’s existence, but also indicates where it has come from.
Fossil Friday
This week on Fossil Friday we have a specimen that I think looks super-metal. Check it out. Extremely spiky and dangerous.
Also, no scale bars in the picture, but I will tell you that this fossil is not small. Frankly, it is big enough that lifting it was a bad idea on my part. The first person to identify it wins bragging rights for the week!
The Search For ‘Dark Matter’ And ‘Dark Energy’ Just Got Interesting
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We are a big step closer to tracking down what’s hiding in galaxy clusters like Abell 2218. NASA/ESA via wikipedia
Only about 5% of the universe consists of ordinary matter such as protons and electrons, with the rest being filled with mysterious substances known as dark matter and dark energy. So far, scientists have failed to detect these elusive materials, despite spending decades searching for them. But now, two new studies may be able to turn things around as they have narrowed down the search significantly.
The Chameleon Field: Will We Ever Find This “Fifth Force”?
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And why does it get its name from this animal? Steve Wilson/Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)
The universe isn't just expanding, it's accelerating. And no one knows why. Dark energy was proposed to fill in this knowledge gap: a sort of "repulsive gravity" that pushes matter and space-time away instead of dragging it closer. Rather than gathering around regions of dense matter (such as stars or galaxies), dark energy prefers to hang out in the most isolated neighborhoods of the universe in the vast regions of empty space.
NASA Funds Program To Turn Poop Into Food
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Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti seen taking a drink. There are food packets visible to the right. NASA.
The list of NASA Awards Grants that fund technologies with the intention of transforming future space exploration has been published. And there was one entry that caught the public eye: turning poop back into food.
While this idea might sound like total crap, it's going to be an essential obstacle to overcome if we ever want to send humans as far as Mars.
Here’s Why The Greenwich Prime Meridian Is Actually In The Wrong Place
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Out of line. Sameer Walzade/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND
If you’ve ever been to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, it might come as a shock to learn that the Prime Meridian line located there is in the wrong place. In fact, it’s out by about 100 metres.
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