Five Swedish scientists race to incorporate the greatest number of references to Bob Dylan songs in their articles before they retire. The winner gets a free lunch.
In my previous post, I discussed Physicist Mersini-Houghton’s mathematical proof that Black Holes could never form. I also expressed my disdain for the possibility that this is even remotely correct. Today I will expand on the idea why I’m so pessimistic and why there’s plenty reasons to believe that black holes are alive and well.
I have a term for people who are incapable or unwilling to account for science, evidence, and logic when making extraordinary claims; reality-challenged. For whatever reason, they ignore the best evidence at hand, they fail to utilize the scientific method, and their arguments are rife with logical fallacies. And as such, the reality-challenged wind up making some of the more ridiculous comments on any given week, just like this past week. Here are the top ones for this past week, courtesy of the reality-challenged among us all.
The results were surprising, probably especially for Shakespearean actors; the king’s skeleton showed no signs of a hunch- he instead had scoliosis, and not a particularly disfiguring case of it.
A physicist has made the extraordinary claim that she’s proven mathematically that black holes cannot exist. If true (don’t get your hopes up) this could have implications for not only spacetime and the big bang itself but more importantly, all future sci-fi movies. Yes, you heard me right; mathematical proof that black holes cannot exist.
Some people who run martial arts studios believe that they can control a nebulous “energy force” which gives them the ability to effect other people, simply by waiving their hands, or shouting really loud, or some other form of minimal-to-no contact with their targets. And when I say “effecting other people”, I mean they are able to get them to physically submit to the martial arts instructor’s claimed powers.
The very oldest bristlecone pine trees are literally the oldest non-clonal things on earth.
Astronomers claim to have found the first clear evidence that the gassy and dusty environment around some young stars are actually quite windy.
Many young stars have long intrigued astronomers because the disk of proto-planetary material surrounding them glow unusually with Infrared light. Many suspected this was due to massive wind-like movements that go beyond the usual orbital motion you’d expect from a contracting flattened disk of ancient dust and gas.
These incipient solar systems are hosted by special class of star called a T-Tauri. A T-Tauri star is simply a very young star with a highly variable light output. When I say young I mean a scant 10 million years at the oldest…a mere baby. They are so young that the star’s retinue of planets whether they be rocky or gaseous or both haven’t even fully coalesced yet.
On the eve of the UN Climate Summit today, the Climate Action Tracker(CAT) released an update with their latest projection: that the earth will warm 3.7 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. The good news is that according to CAT, if we get rid of coal by 2050, that brings down global warming by .5 degrees Celsius.
NASA’s MAVEN satellite has survived its orbital insertion around Mars and will soon be ready to relay back to earth details about how extreme climate change caused its atmosphere to go from a warm wet planet to a very cold and dry one.
MAVEN stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution. The first two words are easy enough to understand (they’d better be) but the last two may be more abstruse. They refer to the changes over time of the compounds in the atmosphere like water and carbon dioxide as they readily convert to forms that easily escape the grip of the planet. MAVEN will be the first Mars mission to specifically examine the Martian upper atmosphere and try to figure out its evolution and how it impacted the evolution of the planet.