Новости за 21.06.2021

Stacy Kish, Live Science

Even the slightest bump of the funny bone can send pain rippling up and down the arm and a string of bawdy expletives rippling off the tongue. So why does hitting this little region of the elbow cause so much discomfort?

Joe Schwarcz, McGill OSS

Many cosmetics come with promises to make us look "forever young." But there are some suggestions that many contain "forever" chemicals that may actually interfere with our efforts to prevent aging.

Carly Cassella, Science Alert

Our traditional idea of a river, an endlessly flowing stream of water, needs a rethink, scientists argue in a new study.

Theodore Greenbaum, Medium

It's generally assumed that physics provides us with objective truths about reality. The general consensus seems to be that we are slowly but surely figuring things out, getting gradually closer and closer to understanding everything there is to know about the universe, and all of reality may someday be understood through the unbiased lens of a perfect, objectively truthful "Theory of Everything."

Sabine Hossenfelder, Backreaction

Asteroids are the new gold mines. Fly to an asteroid, dig up its minerals, become a billionaire. I used to think this is crazy and will never make financial sense. But after a lot of reading I'm now thinking maybe it will work - by letting bacteria do the digging. How do you dig with bacteria? Is it even legal to mine asteroids? And will it happen in your lifetime? That's what we'll talk about today.

Dieynaba Young, Smithsonian

In 1926, Fritz Kahn completed Man as Industrial Palace, the preeminent lithograph in his five-volume publication The Life of Man. The illustration shows a human body bustling with tiny factory workers. They cheerily operate a brain filled with switchboards, circuits and manometers.

Dan Troy, Stat

Right now, more than 100,000 Americans are waiting for organ transplants. Due to a lack of available kidneys, livers, hearts, and lungs, at least 17 of them die each day.

Maddie Bender, Scientific American

During a congressional hearing last week, Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas asked a U.S. Forest Service official if her organization or the Bureau of Land Management could change the orbit of the moon or Earth to reverse the effects of human-caused climate change.

Charles Q. Choi, Inside Science

Prehistoric artists wandered deep into dark caves to adorn them with paintings, engravings and other art. Now archaeologists have re-created ancient torches, lamps and fireplaces to see how our ancestors navigated these depths.

Kiona Smith, Ars

Roughly a thousand years ago, a young man in his early 20s met a violent end in England. Eight hundred kilometers (500 miles) away, in Denmark, an older man who had survived a lifetime of battles died sometime in his 50s. At first glance, there's nothing to suggest a connection between them over such a distance.

Steven Novella, Neurologica

Magicians, marketers, and politicians all count, to some degree, on the belief that people (at least collectively) behave in fairly predictable patterns. Each has their own subculture and, history, and research as a guide, but the core phenomenon is the same. Magicians are probably the easiest to demonstrate - if you have ever been to a quality magic show you have likely been amazed at what you saw.

Christopher Plain, The Debrief

Ever since Captain James T. Kirk first ordered Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott to jump the Starship Enterprise to warp speed, real world scientists and engineers have looked for ways to bring the concept of faster than light travel into reality. A number of solutions have been proposed, but nearly all require a highly theoretical substance called ‘exotic matter' to operate, or are otherwise limited to sub-luminal travel to avoid having to use exotic matter...

University of Cambridge

In the mid-14th century Europe was devastated by a major pandemic - the Black Death - which killed between 40 and 60 per cent of the population. Later waves of plague then continued to strike regularly over several centuries.

Université de Liège

Located in East Africa, just south of the Equator, Lake Victoria is the source of the Nile and is the largest tropical lake in the world. With a surface area of 68,800 km² (twice the size of Belgium), it is considered to be one of the largest water and fishery resources in East Africa, supporting more than 47 million people in the three neighbor countries (Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya).

Colorado-Boulder

After graduating or leaving college, many students face a difficult choice: Try to pay off their student loans as fast as possible to save on interest, or enroll in an income-based repayment plan, which offers affordable payments based on their income and forgives any balance remaining after 20 or 25 years.

New York University

Geologic activity on Earth appears to follow a 27.5-million-year cycle, giving the planet a "pulse," according to a new study published in the journal Geoscience Frontiers.

Cameron Duke, Live Sci

At the mercy of natural selection since the dawn of life, our ancestors adapted, mated and died, passing on tiny genetic mutations that eventually made humans what we are today.