Kate Rauner's Blog, page 2

Woolly Mice – Step Toward De-Extincting Woolly Mammoth? #extinction #environment

Scientists at Colossal Biosciences have an interesting take on returning extinct animals to their previous ecosystems. Take a similar living creature and genetically engineer traits that made the lost species uniquely adapted. The company is working on dodo birds and Tasmanian tigers, but the big headlines go to the woolly mammoth. This approach is aimed […]

Tomb Ancient Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty Discovered & Identified #Egypt

A tomb of an ancient Egyptian king, discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 2022, has now been identified. Thutmose II, the last of the lost tombs of the kings of ancient Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty, which reigned for over two centuries between about 1550 BC and 1292 BC. It’s the first royal Egyptian tomb […]

What is Science Fiction Today? #scifibooks #science fiction

I ran across this piece recently. Are plot driven scifi stories obsolete? And, do readers no longer want to contemplate grand ideas? Where does that leave works like Wells’ War of the Worlds & The Time Machine? Asimov’s Foundation or The Last Question? Clark’s 9 Billion Names of God or, need I even say it, […]

Citizen Archivists Unlock History #history

I’m a fan of citizen scientists, and I see other fields benefit from volunteers too. The National Archives is loaded with old documents, but even AI can’t read some of them. Not well enough. History may be lost, even as we hold the documents in our hands. That’s where human volunteers come in. By transcribing […]

Let’s Build a Star in a Bottle #physics #fusion

Consider the Sun. No, don’t stare at it, you’ll damage your eyes (not not only during an eclipse – never stare at the Sun.) Just… think. The Sun burns via fusion. Atomic nuclei in an immensely strong gravitational field combine to produce a new element, and release subatomic particles and energy. Lots of energy. Why […]

Time to Remember #merrychristmas #merryXmas

European-art-Jesus, when shown preaching, looks like a rich Roman. But he was a poor Judean. Do people today know much about the true-life Jesus? Does it matter? Some years ago I read a book by Bart D. Ehrman, a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity. He wrote about the historical Jesus, someone believers […]

Black Pod Disease is Coming for Your Chocolate #chocolate #biology

Is chocolate an endangered species? Cocoa trees are vulnerable to black pod disease, a fungus found in tropical areas that spreads during heavy rainfalls. It can cause a third of the crop to be lost, and kills a good number of trees. Farmers are fighting the disease with chemicals, biological controls, and better sanitation. So […]

What If We Could Hear the Voice of a 15th Century King? #science #archeology #RichardIII

Suppose you had the skeleton of a famous, ancient king? We do! “Remains found under what’s now a parking lot in the English city of Leicester have been confirmed to be those of King Richard III.” NPR A known modern relative provided a DNA sample, and historians are confident they have the identification correct. Richard […]

Has Physics Cracked the Stability Barrier?

The matter you see and touch is composed of atoms documented on the Periodic Table of Elements. While radioactive versions of common materials, like carbon or potassium, are part of the story, as atoms get heavier and heavier, at some point, stable isotopes (atoms with different numbers of neutrons in their nucleus) become rare. The […]

Will Alien Life Look Like These Earthly Discoveries?

Two tectonic plates diverge at the East Pacific Rise, where the ocean crust is spreading at the fastest rate on the planet, creating massive sulfide ore deposits on the ocean floor. But that’s not what’s most surprising. There’s a whole living ecosystem down there in the dark, far below the depths that sunlight penetrates. A […]