18 Jun

Posted at 12:29h in Scoop.it

Thirty-three years have passed after the melt-down of reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine. It has resulted in the permanent evacuation of entire towns, killing thousands and creating a massive Exclusion Zone. The disaster is now back in the news thanks to HBO’s hit miniseries, “Chernobyl” and its accompanying podcast.

 

With a cumulative series viewership of 8 million and counting, the buzz has even caused controversy, spurring tourists to visit the overgrown corner of Ukraine, posing for selfies in front of the now-dormant shuttered nuclear plant, and at the ruins of Pripyat. There is debate as to whether the Exclusion Zone is becoming too commercialized.

 
 
 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.123rf.com

11 Jun

Posted at 18:35h in Scoop.it

The intuitive idea that objects influence each other because they’re in physical proximity is soon to become another of those beliefs that turn out to be wrong when we look deeper.

 

One persistent illusion is that physical objects only interact with other objects they are close to. This is called the principle of locality. We can express this more precisely by the law that the strengths of forces between any two objects falls off quickly—at least by some power of the distance between them. This can be explained by positing that the bodies do not interact directly, but only through the mediation of a field, such as an electromagnetic field, which propagates from one body to the other. Fields spread out as they propagate, with the field lines covering a constantly greater area—providing a natural explanation for the laws that say the forces between charges and masses fall off like the square of the distance between them.

 

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: blogs.scientificamerican.com

10 Jun

Posted at 16:18h in Scoop.it

The story behind the sound that rules our lives.

 

The electronic beep is everywhere. When you don’t fasten your seatbelt, your car beeps. When your microwave has finished reheating your leftover Chinese takeout, it beeps. The dishwasher beeps; the smoke detector beeps; when the coffee maker turns itself off automatically, it beeps. If you misplace your iPhone, you can make it beep, by remote control.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.fastcompany.com

10 Jun

Posted at 16:13h in Scoop.it

A rover scanning the surface of Mars for evidence of life might want to check for rocks that look like pasta, researchers report in the journal Astrobiology.

 

The bacterium that controls the formation of such rocks on Earth is ancient and thrives in harsh environments that are similar to conditions on Mars, said University of Illinois geology professor Bruce Fouke, who led the new, NASA-funded study.

 

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: news.illinois.edu

05 Jun

Posted at 19:03h in Scoop.it

There are several components, but the real shocker is that more of us aren’t embracing the current age of access to mastery of any topic. But that may not be so surprising—most of us were taught to be passive learners, to just "get through" school. It’s easy to be lazy. The rewards of becoming an autodidact, though, include igniting inner fires, making new connections to knowledge and skills you already have, advancing in your career, meeting kindred spirits, and cultivating an overall zest for life and its riches.

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.psychologytoday.com

05 Jun

Posted at 19:01h in Scoop.it

Elon Musk’s new project Neuralink has been making headlines recently, but very little is known about this mysterious company so far. So, what is Neuralink?

 

Back in 2015, Professor Pedram Mohseni and Rudolph J. Nudo created a startup called ‘NeuraLink’. These pair of neurotech researchers had developed a device that could potentially help people suffering from brain injuries. Investors didn’t show a great deal of interest, but in 2016 a mysterious unknown investor came along with an offer to purchase the rights to the name, Neuralink, for tens of thousands of dollars. They sold, and that investor later turned out to be multi-billionaire, Elon Musk.

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.youtube.com

05 Jun

Posted at 18:59h in Scoop.it

Distant water exoplanets might have oceans thousands of miles deep. That’s in contrast to Earth’s ocean, which is about 6.8 miles (about 11 km) deep at its deepest point.

 

Water worlds – planets or moons with global oceans – used to be considered part of science fiction, but we are starting to learn now that, not only do they exist, they might actually be fairly common.

 

In our own solar system, the moons Europa, Enceladus, Titan and Ganymede are known or suspected to have such oceans beneath their outer ice crust. Even Pluto is now thought to have one!

Sourced through Scoop.it from: earthsky.org