This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.
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Originally Posted by ThaVirus:
That penis vid makes me wonder.. What were sexual relations like in the beginning that led us to this point?
Was it straight up caveman style where dudes were bonking chicks on the head and having their way with them?
Did the men jockey for the female's attention and then approval?
If so, were the women just letting every Tom, Dick and Harry empty their nuts in her snatch like the vid suggests?
I haven't watched the vid, but the fact that our sperm attacks sperm from another person when presented, suggests some serious fucking was going on one way or the other. [Reply]
Approximately 3.3 million years ago someone began chipping away at a rock by the side of a river. Eventually, this chipping formed the rock into a tool used, perhaps, to prepare meat or crack nuts. And this technological feat occurred before humans even showed up on the evolutionary scene. That's the conclusion of an analysis published today in Nature of the oldest stone tools yet discovered. Unearthed in a dried-up riverbed in Kenya, the shards of scarred rock, including what appear to be early hammers and cutting instruments, predate the previous record holder by around 700,000 years. Though it’s unclear who made the tools, the find is the latest and most convincing in a string of evidence that toolmaking began before any members of the Homo genus walked the Earth.
Archaeology has long associated advanced blade production with the Upper Palaeolithic period, about 30,000-40,000 years ago, linked with the emergence of Homo Sapiens and cultural features such as cave art. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University have uncovered evidence which shows that "modern" blade production was also an element of Amudian industry during the late Lower Paleolithic period, 200,000-400,000 years ago as part of the Acheulo-Yabrudian cultural complex, a geographically limited group of hominins who lived in modern-day Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
An interesting article overall, but the first part is the most interesting. It appears that we can fly by Pluto, but it would be extremely difficult to actually land on it or go into orbit around it. You have to go really fast to get there in under a decade, and Pluto's gravity is so low that you can't use it to capture the spacecraft or even slow it down much. You'd have to take an enormous amount of fuel to slow down, which isn't currently feasible.
Well, if the schedule's right, New Horizons just did that Pluto drive-by. We won't see pics until tomorrow, I guess.
I'm thinking, though: What if I were out there in my spacesuit just hanging around with Pluto and Charon, minding my own business, and this half ton thing blows past me at 30,000 mph? There's no shock wave or wake, I would imagine. But would I feel anything? Could I even see it? [Reply]
Originally Posted by Rain Man:
An interesting article overall, but the first part is the most interesting. It appears that we can fly by Pluto, but it would be extremely difficult to actually land on it or go into orbit around it. You have to go really fast to get there in under a decade, and Pluto's gravity is so low that you can't use it to capture the spacecraft or even slow it down much. You'd have to take an enormous amount of fuel to slow down, which isn't currently feasible.
The Hyperloop is a concept for a transportation system whereby a capsule inside a near-vacuum tube can accelerate up to around 1,220 kilometers (760 miles) per hour, providing a rapid transport system for passengers. It’s estimated that a trip from Washington D.C. to New York City would take just 30 minutes.
It sounds like the stuff of science fiction – and at the moment, it is. But the company that is aiming to develop this technology has announced they are making significant progress, and will start building a test track next year in Quay Valley, California.
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk first proposed the idea of the Hyperloop in 2013. At the time, he said he wasn’t looking to develop the idea himself, but was instead releasing the idea for others to develop. Thus sprung up Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), founded by JumpStartFund, who decided to push ahead with Hyperloop’s development.
The company has been looking for volunteers across a range of disciplines – from engineers to technicians – to help make the dream a reality. The company has now revealed they have more than 400 professionals on board, while companies including Oerlikon, Aecom and Hodgetts & Fung were involved to provide support. And they also confirmed 2016 as the year they would start building the first test track. [Reply]
An international collaboration and a newly published paper may have just settled a century old physics debate.
Quantum mechanics is spooky. Entanglement – a component of quantum mechanics – tells us that two particles can be directly connected even across vast distances. If you measure the spin of one particle, you immediately know the spin of its counterpart. Physicists have labeled this behavior as “spooky” as it doesn’t follow everyday logic. Common sense tells us that objects across the universe cannot possibly be connected, yet in the quantum realm, they are. Quantum mechanics also says that properties of particles are only fixed when the particle is observed.
Some physicists, including Albert Einstein, opposed this notion as it went against the very nature of the real world. In the 1930s when quantum mechanics was an emerging field, Einstein was a proponent of “local realism,” arguing that only close objects could affect each other. Einstein and other physicists developed the ‘hidden variables theory’ to explain the spooky behavior. They argued that our knowledge of quantum mechanics was incomplete and there could be hidden variables that we didn’t yet understand.
In the 1960s a physicist named John Bell devised a mathematical expression – called an inequality – to test for these so-called hidden variables. He realized that if these hidden variables did indeed exist, there would be a limit to how connected the particles were. If they exceeded the set limit then the hidden variables did not exist. However, the experiment – known as Bell’s Inequality – did not definitively close the door on local realism. The tests involved entangled photons, which can get lost along the way, and experimenters might not detect all photons produced.
In the new experiment, led by Bas Hansen of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, we have two researchers – we will call them Alice and Bob – in two laboratories 1.3 kilometers apart. Each laboratory is set up with a diamond chip containing an electron whose spin was entangled with a photon. The photons were then sent to a third lab in between Alice and Bob, where a detector records the arrival time. If two photons arrived at the same time they would be entangled, resulting in the electrons being entangled as well.
The experiment took place over a span of nine days. In that time, researchers recorded 245 successful entanglements. While other tests over the last few decades have also supported Bell’s limit, this new experiment learns from their shortcomings to overcome experimental pitfalls. Previous test used inefficient detectors, only measuring a small number of the particles passing through them. Recent experiments used near-perfect detectors, but the entangled particles were close enough to potentially communicate. In the new experiment, the team used high-quality detectors and measurements collected before the electrons could possibly exchange signals with each other, making it the first to close both loopholes.
The results of this experiment have big implications for the world of quantum cryptography – meaning entangled photons could potentially create secure encryption keys. Closing the loopholes would ensure that computer systems could detect if anyone tried to intercept the keys, as it would break the entanglement and trigger an alarm. [Reply]
The theory behind the very trendy high-protein/low-carb Paleo diet is that we should mimic the diets of our Paleolithic ancestors, eating mainly meat, fish, and a restricted list of pre-agricultural vegetables and fruit. (There is some debate within the Paleo community about which starchy vegetables and how much of them are Paleo-approved, but most recommend limiting them if not barring them entirely.)
But according to a new study in The Quarterly Review of Biology, the low-carb interpretation of the paleolithic menu is probably all wrong. The researchers posit that our cavemen and cavewoman ancestors loved—and needed—carbs as much as we do, even if they gathered them instead of cultivated them.
Based on a review of archaeological, genetic and physiological evidence, the researchers found that “plant carbohydrates and meat were both necessary and complementary dietary components” in the evolution of humans. Examination of 3-million-year-old teeth and the plant-life in the regions where our ancestors lived also signal that they were eating tubers and other starchy vegetables.
The root vegetables many modern Paleo dieters avoid likely played a key role in the original Paleo diet for a number of reasons. Because these plants grow underground, they were likely a key source of nutrition for our gathering forebears, who could dig them up as needed, the researchers say, and probably hunted much less than once thought.
“Although meat may have been a preferred food, the energy expenditure required to obtain it may have been far greater than that used for collecting tubers from a reliable source,” the researchers write. (Worth noting: The researchers believe the tubers were collected by postmenopausal women, who shared them with the younger female relatives, which in turn, allowed them to have more babies. Men are not mentioned.)
Nutritional requirements and evolutionary evidence also support the idea that cavemen did not live on meat alone. As the brain grew during this period, more energy was needed, and it likely came from carbohydrates, not protein, too much of which can be toxic to the human body and even cause death.
This is further supported by evidence of two other major developments at the time: Saliva was evolving to better break down starch-rich plants, and our forebears were learning to cook. Both of these factors converged to make the vegetables tastier and easier to digest, providing the necessary energy for brain growth. These starchy plants also likely supported “improved reproductive functions,” including fetal growth and extra calories for lactating mothers.
The upshot? Paleo dieters, go eat some potatoes. [Reply]
