Cool Science thread

[iceman]

I wondered weather you meant it or not.

[JimmyCarter]

Did that come off hotheaded? My bad.

Don't worry, cooler heads will prevail.

[Dantheman]

Galaxy with almost no dark mater discovered
https://phys.org/news/2018-03-dark-galaxy.html

Paradoxically, this provides confirmatory evidence for dark matter's existence in the rest of the universe.

[PB]

dark matter = climate change ....... deny, deny, deny, etc.

I'm guessing the missing DM is somehow associated with the orange shitgibbon.

[Dantheman]

Center of the galaxy contains upwards of 10,000 black holes
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...of-black-holes

[Dantheman]

There may be microbes in Venus' upper atmosphere
https://www.universetoday.com/138935...tops-of-venus/

Distribution of phosphorus in the galaxy/universe may be highly variable, which doesn't bode well for extraterrestrial life in the low P regions
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0405093310.htm

[Mazderati]

A few years old but first time I'm seeing it.

[Dantheman]

TESS launches next week! Don't fuck this up, Elon.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018...ations-launch/

[Dantheman]

Engineering a plastic-eating enzyme
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-plasti...ng-enzyme.html

[2FUNKY]

Engineering a plastic-eating enzyme
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-plasti...ng-enzyme.html

God I hope so.

[iceman]

Can't see any potential for unexpected disaster there. Nope.

[Supermoon]

Can't see any potential for unexpected disaster there. Nope.

What could possibly go wrong with releasing a flesh-eating enzyme into our oceans?

[Dantheman]

Can't see any potential for unexpected disaster there. Nope.

Enzymes are not self-replicating. This is probably going to be applied in an industrial setting to improve recycling efficiency, not mass dosing of the oceans. It may have to come to that, but it's probably not practical to do so. Of course, the original PETase enzyme they improved upon naturally evolved in a Japanese landfill so some ocean bacteria could already be well underway on a similar evolutionary trajectory.

[Mazderati]

[Mazderati]

What you’re looking at is the surface of the comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is orbited by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe. The photo comes from Rosetta’s OSIRIS, or Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System. The raw data was collected on June 1, 2016, and posted publicly on March 22 of this year.

https://gizmodo.com/incredible-new-g...-of-1825495142

[iceman]

There's pollen on comets?





incredible pic/video

[Supermoon]

Think couloir goes? Probably not enough gravity to get back on the ground if there’s mandatory air at the bottom.

[Norseman]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.or...-galaxyand.amp

[Dantheman]

What you’re looking at is the surface of the comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is orbited by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe. The photo comes from Rosetta’s OSIRIS, or Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System. The raw data was collected on June 1, 2016, and posted publicly on March 22 of this year.

https://gizmodo.com/incredible-new-g...-of-1825495142

That's amazing.

Macroscopic entanglement
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-entang...croscopic.html

OK, not quite macroscopic, but at 15 microns it's MASSIVE compared to photons or single atoms where quantum entanglement is usually studied.

[Harry]

Uranus smells like shit.

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/0...-think-it-does

[Dantheman]

'Reluctant Psychonaut' Michael Pollan Embraces The 'New Science' Of Psychedelics
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...f-psychedelics

Microbiologists Discover New Lineage of Archaea in Yellowstone
http://www.sci-news.com/biology/mars...ota-06007.html

[Meathelmet]

There's pollen on comets?

Dude, its dumping at least an inch per mean solar hour? We´ll get a foot of pow by...dunno...2312?



While waiting for that, I´ll just keep on appreciating this thread.

[SkiCougar]

https://nypost.com/2018/05/21/robots...-human-organs/

"Robots can now grow human organs"

headline is a little misleading, robots can do the task much faster than humans after being set up to do it; but goes to show you that there are more tasks that can be automated/done by robots than you would ever imagine.

[PNWbrit]

Nasa Mars rover finds organic matter in ancient lake bed

[Dantheman]

Good discussion about that^^ from one of the Curiosity SAM team members: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-geobio...mons-mars.html

TL;DR summary: Not evidence of life at this time, but the discovery strongly validates future plans to bring samples back to Earth for more sophisticated analysis.