Today’s stories include ‘Pale blue dot’ Planets like Earth May Make Up Only 1% of Potentially Habitable Worlds to All Land on Earth is Merging Into a New Supercontinent to Why Does Time Go Forwards, Not Backwards?, and much more.
‘Pale blue dot’ planets like Earth may make up only 1% of potentially habitable worlds, reports Keith Cooper for Space.com–“We may need to look for “pale yellow dots” instead.”
All Land on Earth is merging into one new supercontinent. “It will only take 300 million years,” reports Futurism about the new land mass, Amasia, closing the Pacific Ocean in the process.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022: Ancient Human Evolution won by discoveries –Svante Pääbo’s work on sequencing the DNA of Neandertals and Denisovans, which won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, revealed surprising interbreeding among human species, reports Scientific American.
Quantum entanglement wins 2022’s Nobel Physics Prize-The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.”
Quantum entanglement: the ‘spooky’ science behind physics Nobel, reports Daniel Lawler for Phys.org. –“Even people with degrees in physics struggle to understand it—and some who do still find parts “hard to swallow,” said Chris Phillips, a physicist at Imperial College London.”
Trio who proved quantum mechanics is really weird—and useful—honoredScience reports. The foundation is being laid for the entire field of quantum information sciences by new laureates.
‘We found a planet that shows us what the Earth will be like in five billion years’–Astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger is searching for biomarkers on worlds beyond our Solar System, reports El Pais. ““It’s fascinating to me that in our galaxy alone – the Milky Way – there may be 40 billion habitable planets. The universe is home to billions upon billions of galaxies. I’m often asked whether there is other life in the universe, and with these kinds of numbers, it would a big surprise if we don’t find it.”
2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a New Way of Building Molecules–Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering an easy way to “click” molecular building blocks together, reports Josh Fischman for Scientific American.
Fireball from Solar System’s edge isn’t what astronomers expectedScience reports. Rocky object may also contain asteroids.
Here’s how life on Earth might have formed out of thin air and water–When droplets of water react with the air, life-starting things may happen, reports PopSci.”The origins of how life on Earth arose remains a deep existential and scientific mystery. It’s long been theorized that our planet’s plentiful oceans could hold key to the secret. A new study from scientists at Purdue University could advance that idea one step further.”
Is the theory of physics flawed? Is it just difficult?–When you don’t have enough clues to bring your detective story to a close, you should expect that your educated guesses will all be wrong, writes Ethan Siegel for Big Think.
New study attempts to explain Mandela Effect – the bizarre phenomenon of shared false memories –Fiona Broome remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s (he didn’t). Big Think reports that the false memory was shared by many people.
Some blue lakes could be turned brown or green by climate change–“In the first global tally of lake color, researchers estimate that roughly one-third of Earth’s lakes are blue. But, should average summer air temperatures rise by a few degrees, some of those crystal waters could turn a murky green or brown, the team reports in the Sept. 28 Geophysical Research Letters.”
Time moves forward and not backwards. BBC Future. “The arrow of time began its journey at the Big Bang, and when the Universe eventually dies there will be no more future and no past. In the meantime, what is it that drives time ever onward?”
