Even with all the eclipse photos circulating right now, this one made my eyes pop. Great shot of jet contrails breaking up the edge of the eclipsed Sun. Quick calculation: The Sun is about 30,000,000 times wider than the jet.

(Photo by Bobby Goddin, Bloomington, IN) #eclipse #nature #science #photography

I had a couple things come across my timeline that made me think about how far science, especially space science, has come during my lifetime.

For example, when I was younger, Pluto was not much more than a few blurry pixels of a planet, now it is a richly detailed world (and dwarf planet).

When I was a kid, there were 9 planets, now we know thousands, most exoplanets outside the solar system. Wild to think about. 1/3 🧵

#science #space

I am sharing this here because of the title of the article but also everything else in it I guess:

"Scientists studied how cicadas pee. Their insights could shed light on fluid dynamics"

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/20/1239529315/cicadas-pee-urination-jets-new-research-microfluidics-3d-printing-experiments
#insects #science #urine (for your tag filter purposes)

• Scientists are liars (0 votes)
• It still can't explain how magnets work (0 votes)
• It's just nerd shit (0 votes)
• Easier to make shit up (0 votes)
• History is cooler (0 votes)

This is the surface of a comet! Dust is swirling around the surface of Comet 67/P -- captured in 2016 by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, processing by Jacint Roger Perez.

Still one of the most remarkable scenes in space exploration.

#space #science #astronomy #ESA

Centuries old European-centric American history debunked by archaeology and advanced genomics

The Pueblo, Pawnee, Comanche and Lakota traditional owners gain confirmation of what they have always being saying, that they'd been using horses centuries earlier than what the Western narrative have claimed.

This is incredibly exciting. Not just this case, but how there’s the potential for history to be rewritten in many other periods of history, provided science is given the opportunity to explore
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/103526100
#AusPol #AusEdu #Science #Archaeology #Genomics #IndigenousX

How the horse exposed a mistake in the history books but confirmed what First Nations people have known for generations

Authors of an award-winning US study that incorporated First Nations traditional knowledge say there are lessons for Australian researchers.

^{ABC News}

Just finisihed this & it's brilliant: Katalin Kariko's story of her life. She was convinced that mRNA therapies could work decades ago & did the foundation work, all while being ignored, never promoted & struggling for jobs.

Today, millions are vaccinated with mRNA vaccines & she has a Nobel prize.

It's a great story, and leaves a lot for the scientific system to think about. Highly recommended.

#books #mRNA #science #biography

Klára Dán von Neumann died #OTD in 1963.

Hungarian mathematician, self-taught engineer and computer scientist, noted as one of the first computer programmers. She was the first woman to execute modern-style code on a computer. Klára made significant contributions to the world of programming, including work on the Monte Carlo method, ENIAC, and MANIAC I. She was introduced to a lot of her work through her husband, John von Neumann. via @wikipedia

#science #mathematics

We have a new post in our Blog article series illuminating 🪔the #science background 👩🏻‍🔬 👨🏾‍🔬 of ##ESAEuclid 🛰️ and the techniques we'll employ for high-precision #cosmology: "Measuring the Universe with Baryon Acoustic Oscillations?"

👉 https://www.euclid-ec.org/measuring-the-universe-with-baryon-acoustic-oscillations/

#astrodon #astronomy #DarkEnergy #DarkMatter #space

A large group of scientists has collaborated to produce the "2023 State of the Climate" report. And guess what, it's not pretty...
_________________________

Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory.

For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.

In the present report, we display a diverse set of vital signs of the planet and the potential drivers of climate change and climate-related responses. The trends reveal new all-time climate-related records and deeply concerning patterns of climate-related disasters. At the same time, we report minimal progress by humanity in combating climate change.

Given these distressing developments, our goal is to communicate climate facts and policy recommendations to scientists, policymakers, and the public. It is the moral duty of scientists and our institutions to clearly alert humanity of any potential existential threat and to show leadership in taking action.

The effects of global warming are progressively more severe, and possibilities such as a worldwide societal breakdown are feasible and dangerously underexplored. By the end of this century, an estimated 3 to 6 billion individuals — approximately one-third to one-half of the global population — might find themselves confined beyond the livable region, encountering severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates because of the effects of climate change.

Big problems need big solutions. Therefore, we must shift our perspective on the climate emergency from being just an isolated environmental issue to a systemic, existential threat. Although global heating is devastating, it represents only one aspect of the escalating and interconnected environmental crisis that we are facing (e.g., biodiversity loss, fresh water scarcity, pandemics). We need policies that target the underlying issues of ecological overshoot where the human demand on Earth's resources results in overexploitation of our planet and biodiversity decline.

To address the overexploitation of our planet, we challenge the prevailing notion of endless growth and overconsumption by rich countries and individuals as unsustainable and unjust. Instead, we advocate for reducing resource overconsumption; reducing, reusing, and recycling waste in a more circular economy; and prioritizing human flourishing and sustainability. We emphasize climate justice and fair distribution of the costs and benefits of climate action, particularly for vulnerable communities. We call for a transformation of the global economy to prioritize human well-being and to provide for a more equitable distribution of resources.
_________________________

It's wonderful to see these scientists boldly calling for system change in the face of a planetary overshoot emergency. Now if only someone will listen...

FULL REPORT -- https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biad080/7319571

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Degrowth

Be ungovernable, like birds who make nests OUT OF ANTI-BIRD SPIKES. A new study describes resourceful Dutch & Belgian corvids besting evil architecture by stealing metal anti-bird strips and using them like thorny twigs, to construct their homes.

Like thorns, the spikes may protect their nests from predators.

Lead author Auke-Florian Hiemstra wrote an epic 🧵 about his research that's worth a read: https://twitter.com/AukeFlorian/status/1678703433900064773

Paper: https://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/organisatie/publicaties/deinsea/deinsea-21/

#science #SciComm #birds #netherlands

At a meeting in Germany that attracts dozens of Nobel prize winners, one of them objected to its focus on diversity, saying “as a male scientist, I have a feeling of discrimination when I am here, in the climate that this meeting is being held.” Science magazine reports that a visibly nervous early-career researcher stood up to respond….

https://www.science.org/content/article/nobel-laureate-claimed-antimale-discrimination-early-career-researcher-called-it-out

Link to video, her response is at 46:39
https://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/recordings/41064

#stem #science #Nobels #womeninstem #womeninscience #lindaunobel

"The Illusion of Moral Decline"

I'm appreciating this study by Adam Mastroianni today. The next time someone waxes poetic about "the good old days" and how people were so much kinder and more virtuous in the past, I think I'll send them this link. 😁

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-illusion-of-moral-decline

---------
#morality #science #history

The illusion of moral decline

The short version of the paper I just published

^{Adam Mastroianni (Experimental History)}

Explore the extraordinary eons-old details of the moon’s surface in an astounding 1.3-gigapixel composite #photography #science #space

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2023/05/andrew-mccarthy-giga-moon/

Not long ago, the enormous Haast's eagle soared over New Zealand.

Weighing almost 40lbs (18kg) with a wingspan up to ~10ft (3m), they likely feasted on the gigantic moa birds I described in an earlier post. Maori oral tradition also suggests they may have attacked human children.

So what happened to this fierce apex predator? Once the moa disappeared due to excess hunting after the arrival of people, Haast’s eagle followed around 1400. https://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/haasts-eagle. #SharedPlanet #science #nature