OMG.
A triangle of glowing plasma.
Bigger than the Earth.
Hovering over the surface of the Sun last week.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html #space #science #astronomy #sky
science
Scientists Discover New Evidence That a Magma Ocean Once Covered the Moon
Scientists believe the Moon was created when a protoplanet impacted the early Earth, breaking off a large chunk of matter, and eventually formed a new body. This new body became the Moon we know through a cooling process over millions of years. During that time, scientists have long believed the surface was covered in an ocean of magma.
By Madeleine Muzdakis via @mymodernmet
#OTD in 1803.
British scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.
In his laboratory notebook there is a list in which he set out the relative weights of the atoms of a number of elements, derived from analysis of water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, etc. by chemists of the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalton#Atomic_theory
Books about John Dalton at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56648
So, that thing with Amazon being full of AI-generated books containing tips to eat poisonous mushrooms?
Google Scholar now appears to be increasingly full of GPT-fabricated academic papers too - undermining human society’s hard-amassed evidence base.
Good work, everyone.
‘The Starry Night’ Accurately Depicts a Scientific Theory That Wasn’t Described Until Years After van Gogh’s Death
Researchers say that the iconic painting’s swirling sky lines up with Kolmogorov’s theory of turbulence, suggesting that the artist was a careful observer of the world around him
By Julia Binswanger via @smithsonianmag
#OTD in 1933.
Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction while waiting for a traffic light in Bloomsbury, London. He patented the idea in 1936.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard
American physicist and astronomer Sarah Frances Whiting died #OTD in 1927.
She was one of the founders and the first director of the Whitin Observatory at Wellesley College. Sarah Whiting established the first such program of Astronomy in laboratory instruction for women in the United States at Wellesley College, and devoted her career to innovative teaching of astronomical principles and techniques.
Scottish chemist and physicist James Dewar was born #OTD in 1842.
He is best known for his invention of the vacuum flask, which he used in conjunction with research into the liquefaction of gases. He also studied atomic and molecular spectroscopy, working in these fields for more than 25 years. Dewar was nominated for the Nobel Prize 8 times — 5 times in Physics and 3 times in Chemistry — but he never succeeded in winning it.
Edited 291d ago
Two-way mathematical 'dictionary' could connect quantum physics with number theory
by Institute of Science and Technology Austria via @physorg_com
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-mathematical-dictionary-quantum-physics-theory.html
The most extreme rogue wave occurred in November 2020, lifting a single buoy off of Canada's British Columbia coast some 58 feet high. Since then, dozens more rogue waves have been recorded (some even in lakes). @ScienceAlert has more on this aquatic phenomenon that was once considered a myth. And if buoys could talk, the one that went for a wild ride would tell you how very real rogue waves are: https://flip.it/AILAJv
#Science #Ocean #PacificOcean #Waves #RogueWaves
📣 It's been a while since we've federated a batch of publishers — so to make up for it, here are 250, and they're big ones.
Today, we're bringing names like @abc, @RollingStone, @forbes, @BleacherReport, @NationalGeographic and @newyorktimes to the fediverse. They join the 174 profiles we've already federated, which include everyone from @19thnews to @Vox
Here's a blogpost with more details on this latest batch of publications that cover news, business, cooking, home design, politics, sports, science and more. Follow their Magazine feeds if you're only interested in one topic, or their whole profiles if you want the lot. The spreadsheet below lists out all federated accounts.
https://about.flipboard.com/fediverse/flipboard-federates-250-publishers/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUFTo6rPvhqzCReLaM1c6-xUKRuBVqlZVStZl9Al-EU
#Flipboard #Federation #SpreadMastodon #ActivityPub #Media #Publishers #Journalism #News #Politics #Sports #Entertainment #Food #Lifestyle #Science
Just seen something referring to academics as "unpaid content creators for Elsevier" and I am dead ⚰️.
@academicsunite @academicchatter
#Academia #Macademia #Science
English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday was born #OTD in 1791.
Faraday discovered that a changing magnetic field could induce an electric current in a wire, laying the foundation for the concept of the electromagnetic field. He formulated the fundamental laws of electrolysis; he was the inventor of the Faraday cage and he discovered the Faraday effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday
Books about or by Michael Faraday at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Michael+Faraday&submit_search=Search
Edited 290d ago
What happened to Greta Thunberg?
_________________________________
As Greta’s politics have grown and evolved, they reached a point where they now make billionaire media owners, milquetoast executives of major non-profits, and more than a few politicians a little uncomfortable. All she’s done is follow the science, but over time the science has led her to see that the climate crisis doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are massive monetary incentives to destroy the planet in this capitalist system.
ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP made over $100 billion in profits in 2023 alone. In following the science, Greta had to start examining the capitalist system if she wanted to get down to the root of the climate crisis.
But Greta kept going. When she published The Climate Book in 2022, the then 19-year-old activist had some words for the entire system we live under today:
"We are never going back to normal again because ‘normal’ was already a crisis. What we refer to as normal is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet. It is a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the Global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order.”
That was two years ago, and it’s no surprise she hasn’t been given the spotlight nearly as often since. In fact, in the wake of that book launch, she’s been the subject of countless hit pieces, and her Palestine solidarity activism has been denigrated as well.
Greta went from a cute kid saying that climate change is bad to a young adult rightly charging global systems with not only fueling the climate crisis but also being oppressive and grossly harmful to life in numerous other ways. And, perhaps most importantly, she sees these systems as interconnected and knows that radical change is necessary for the future of life on this planet.
_________________________________
FULL ESSAY -- https://www.jphilll.com/p/gretas-growth
#Politics #Economics #Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange
Edited 291d ago
Every day we get a reminder how strange and surprising the universe is.
Today: WASP-107b, a planet that's the size of Jupiter but less than half as dense as a wine cork. And it's inexplicably lopsided, with one side 150 degrees hotter and cloudier than the other.
https://astrobiology.com/2024/06/evidence-for-morning-to-evening-limb-asymmetry-on-the-cool-low-density-exoplanet-wasp-107b.html #space #science #astronomy #NASA
You've been throwing a frisbee all wrong, new study finds.
From @sciencefocus: "Researchers at Berry College, Georgia, investigated professional and amateur disc golf players (yes… that’s a real sport) to explore the effect different thumb positions had on disc throwing."
The World’s Oldest Glaciers Are Buried Under South African Gold
2.9-billion-year-old evidence could be proof of a lost ice age—the first “Snowball Earth.”
by Gemma Tarlach via @atlasobscura
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/oldest-glaciers-lost-ice-age
#OTD in 1905.
Albert Einstein publishes the third of his Annus Mirabilis papers, introducing the special theory of relativity, which used the universal constant speed of light c to derive the Lorentz transformations.
There are some controversies on the question of the extent to which Mileva Marić contributed to the insights of Einstein's annus mirabilis publications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_mirabilis_papers#
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66944
![Einstein, Albert (30 June 1905). "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper" [On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies] (PDF). Annalen der Physik (in German). 17 (10): 891–921.](/proxy/post_attachment/390325/9da374cdab.png "Einstein, Albert (30 June 1905). \"Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper\" [On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies] (PDF). Annalen der Physik (in German). 17 (10): 891–921.")
#OTD in 1846.
Astronomers Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams and Johann Gottfried Galle collaborate on the discovery of Neptune.
There is evidence that Neptune was seen and recorded by Galileo Galilei in 1613, Jérôme Lalande in 1795, and John Herschel in 1830, but none are known to have recognized it as a planet at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune
Neptune at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=neptune&submit_search=Search
Meet the Forgotten Woman Who Revolutionized Microbiology With a Simple Kitchen Staple
Fanny Angelina Hesse introduced agar to the life sciences in 1881. A trove of unpublished family papers sheds new light on her many accomplishments.
By Corrado Nai via @smithsonianmag
#science #BlackHole #simulation #JeanPierreLuminet #c1960 #c1978
The first simulated image of a black hole was calculated with an IBM 7040 computer using 1960 punch cards and hand-plotted by French astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet in 1978.
I’ve heard it said that if you don’t vote with whichever party then you are a coward. I think that’s exactly backwards, and even reflects poorly all the person making that argument. It doesn’t take much courage to go with the group.
Instead I go the other way: no matter which party you might prefer in general, it takes courage to say they nominated a moron, and fortunately the other party also nominated a loser, so no matter what the US is going to slog through these next few years.
In my opinion the courageous position is to say no, you nominated a moron, and I’m not going to give you my vote. We’re going to be okay I guess, whether you win or not, but I’m not going to let you assume that you have my vote if you insist on nominating a moron. You should have nominated someone better. You should have nominated someone worthy of my vote. Do better next time.
That’s the state of #USPolitics . As South Park said, big douche versus turd sandwich. So screw both #Democrats and #Republicans. Neither of you managed to nominate someone worth voting for, so I’m voting for my dog.
To give either party our votes is to sign on to their nomination of garbage people. Let’s not. Let’s say that they need to actually nominate worthwhile administrators.
But more practically, let’s focus on #Congress. No matter who wins this election, they’re going to suck, but we can still express ourselves through our representation in Congress, and that’s honestly how it should be anyway.
Check out your representatives. See how they have actually been voting, and vote them out if they have been letting you down. That’s really where our focus should be anyway.
Not on which jerk ends up in the Oval Office.
(But thank God #Biden is on his way out, as he has been terrible for #science in the US, which has not gotten nearly enough attention from the press.)
#OTD in 1906.
Leonardo Torres Quevedo demonstrates the Telekino in the Bilbao Abra (Spain), guiding an electric boat from the shore with people on board, which was controlled at a distance over 2 km, in what is considered to be the origin of modern wireless remote-control operation principles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Torres_Quevedo#Radio_control:_the_Telekino
Will the toughest problem in maths ever be solved?
For many, not just mathematicians, the Riemann hypothesis is the very definition of a supremely difficult problem that might be forever beyond our intellect. Most mathematicians had given up on it, being pessimistic about making any headway. But recently, the first progress – although not a solution – in more than 50 years has been made.
By David Whitehouse via @spectator
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/will-the-toughest-problem-in-maths-ever-be-solved/
Edited 296d ago
#OTD in 1822.
French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a "note" read to the Academy of Sciences, reports a direct refraction experiment verifying David Brewster's hypothesis that photoelasticity (as it is now known) is stress-induced birefringence.
