Physical non-equilibria can drive cycles of replication and selection chemistries that play a role in the prebiotic replication of DNA and RNA. This Perspective offers insights from astrophysics, geoscience and microfluidics on how various environments on early Earth could have hosted such reactions.
Miraculously preserved in a tomb, the Derveni Papyrus is the oldest surviving Greek manuscript. What can it tell us about Greek thinking before Socrates?
We’ve got a new kind of ice on the block – medium-density amorphous ice (MDA).
It’s amorphous, which means that the water molecules are in a disorganised form instead of being neatly ordered like they are in the ordinary, crystalline ice you find floating in your Scotch on the rocks…
Amorphous ice is super rare on Earth, but scientists think that it might be the main type found in the frigid environment of outer space – because ice wouldn’t have enough thermal energy there to form crystals.
The michael shermer show # 294
What is time? Does the past still exist? How did the universe begin and how will it end? Do particles think? Was the universe made for us? Why doesn’t anyone ever get younger? Has physics ruled out free will? Will we ever have a theory of everything? According to Sabine Hossenfelder, it is not a coincidence that quantum entanglement and vacuum energy have become the go-to explanations of alternative healers, or that people believe their deceased grandmother is still alive because of quantum mechanics. Science and religion have the same roots, and they still tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know? The area of science that is closest to answering these questions is physics. Over the last century, physicists have learned a lot about which spiritual ideas are still compatible with the laws of nature. Not always, though, have they stayed on the scientific side of the debate.
Continue reading “Free Will and Determinism from a Physicist’s Perspective (Sabine Hossenfelder)” »
The team behind the work suggest that eventually doctors might be able to grow blobs of brain tissue from a patient’s own cells in the lab and use them to repair brain injuries caused by stroke or trauma.
“This is incredibly exciting to me as a physician,” said Isaac Chen, a physician and assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania.
The study is the latest in the rapidly growing and ethically complex field of brain organoids. Scientists have shown that when cultivated in the right conditions, neurons begin to form tiny brain-like structures, allowing scientists to investigate developmental conditions such as autism and a wide range of basic neuroscience questions.
Images and spectra from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that the first galaxies in the universe are too many or too bright compared to what astronomers expected.
Evidence is building that the first galaxies formed earlier than expected, astronomers announced at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington.
As the James Webb Space Telescope views swaths of sky spotted with distant galaxies, multiple teams have found that the earliest stellar metropolises are more mature and more numerous than expected. The results may end up changing what we know about how the first galaxies formed.
After more than a decade of observations, Northwestern University astrophysicist Jason Wang has constructed an amazing time-lapse video of four planets larger than Jupiter as they revolve around their star, giving viewers a one-of-a-kind glimpse into planetary motion.
Wang, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, pointed out that it can be difficult to detect planets in a rotating orbit, which is why this video of planetary motion is so striking.
Continue reading “Remarkable footage shows planets circling a star 133 light-years from Earth” »
It sounds like the start of a Southern gothic horror thriller. Auburn University scientists have been putting alligator DNA in catfish. It’s delicious, but with less chance for infection. Don’t worry, it won’t bite back. MIT Technology Review recently highlighted the work of Rex Dunham, Baofeng Su and their colleagues at Auburn University, who have used genetic modification to reduce problems of disease in catfish farming.
An instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope suffered an interruption on January 15, and the likely culprit was a cosmic ray.
NASA and the Canadian Space Agency suspect that a cosmic ray strike is to blame for an anomaly on the James Webb Space Telescope.
The offshore wind farm is expected to lower China’s carbon dioxide emissions by 1.36 million tonnes and claims to provide more than 1.6 billion kilowatts of power annually.
China claims to have begun the construction of its first extensive offshore wind farm using 16-megawatt turbines on Saturday.
This represents a significant change from the smaller, less effective turbines that China’s offshore wind farms have often employed, claimed a report on Sunday by China Global Television Network (CGTN), a state-run media.
