Avi revealed that I look for indications of intelligent civilizations in the sky because avi can’t seem to locate any on Earth in a recent Q&A forum about my book Extraterrestrial. “How do you characterize an intelligent civilization?” a member of the crowd joked.In avi’s opinion, an intelligent society is defined by scientific hallmarks, such…
For the first time, scientists have confirmed the existence of not one, but two black hole-neutron star collisions. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo facilities, which detect invisible gravitational waves, saw these two distinct mergers 10 days apart in January 2020. The achievement completes a long-awaited trinity of gravitational-wave interferometer observations: black…
Museums, libraries, and bookstores are reopening across the United States after a year of lockdown. The start of this cultural reawakening coincided with both the Juneteenth celebration and the first anniversary of one of the greatest anti-racial rallies in American history. As bookstores reopen, several are putting together displays of Black history-themed children’s books. The…
The tragic collapse of a 12-story oceanfront condominium last week in a tiny hamlet within the same big island as Miami Beach, Fla., has structural engineers and designers worried about future construction disasters.Experts believe such unexpected failures are uncommon in the contemporary history of structural design. Engineers and planners, on the other hand, are eager…
Mario Krenn, a quantum physicist, recalls sitting at a Vienna café in early 2016 reading through computer printouts, trying to make sense of what MELVIN had discovered. MELVIN was a sort of artificial intelligence created by Krenn using a machine-learning algorithm. Its mission was to mix and match the components of typical quantum experiments to…
Last week, Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas asked a US Forest Service employee if her agency or the Bureau of Land Management could alter the moon’s or Earth’s orbit to reverse the impacts of human-caused climate change during a congressional hearing. Doesn’t that seem like an entirely appropriate plan? Let’s get started. First, we…
It’s easy to romanticize the body’s devotion to equilibrium in the face of extreme stress. As if it were some untrammeled divinity, a dark and gorgeous liver serenely regulates its life-sustaining activities. Nearby, twin cherubs of the torso, plump kidneys, churn out calls for water and salt. Even Claude Bernard, the 19th-century French physiologist who…
As temperatures rise to new highs, not just in the Pacific Northwest but worldwide, you may hear the term “wet bulb globe temperature” used more frequently. This somewhat ridiculous-sounding idea differs from phrases like perceived temperature, humidity index, and dew point in that it’s a little more sophisticated and more significant. WBGT stands for wet-bulb…
There are a plethora of online applications available to assist you with merging PDFs. What’s more, it’s all for free. It appears to be an excellent value, but it’s difficult to tell for sure. Like many other files, PDFs include metadata that you can use to identify you, and if you make poor choices, your…
This year, delta-8 THC, a new marijuana cousin, erupted onto the national scene. It’s advertised as “weed light” or “the superior version of THC” on the cannabis internet. It sold as a vape or an edible, and the high is similar to a moderate form of traditional marijuana. In terms of chemical structure—three carbon rings,…