INCREDIBLE images from China's Chang’e 6 lander, which landed on the far side of the moon late on June 1 and lifted off in an ascent vehicle with the first lunar samples from the far side of the moon yesterday.
Groundwater is heating up, threatening life below and above the surface.
Under your feet lies the world’s biggest reservoir. Groundwater makes up a whopping 97% of all usable freshwater. Where is it? In the voids between grains and cracks within rocks. We see it when it rises to the surface in springs, in caves, or when we pump it up for use. #ClimateChange#Science
Some planets are born alone, live alone, and die alone. The ESA's Euclid space telescope just found a nest of these loners in the constellation Orion.
At least the rogue planets have chosen a gorgeous spot to go about their business: This is where the newfound worlds are hanging out (toward the top of the image).
I’ve been blogging recently, mostly writing about papers I published before because I realised I’ve not really blogged about them. But also funders seem to like blogs and websites as a way to disseminate research.
In any case, here’s my website and blog: https://manabusakamoto.uk/ #blogging#science#Palaeontology
My partner pointed out that I have a case of schrodinger’s good/bad dog. I have an English Cocker Spaniel named Miles. He loves walks in the forest. Loves chasing things (rabbits, birds) off into the undergrowth and also loves rolling in dead birds.
Now if he rolls in a dead bird while in the undergrowth and I don't see him is he a good dog or a bad dog? We don't know unless I go into the undergrowth to find out.
"In his first public testimony since stepping down from [U.S.] government office at the end of 2022, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday fended off a variety of attacks from Republican politicians at a fiery hearing called to discuss lessons learned during the pandemic."
NBC News reports: "Fauci has emerged as one of the people most vilified by supporters of former President Donald Trump, with many blaming him for the pandemic based on a wide array of false or misleading claims. Calls to prosecute Fauci for unspecified crimes have become common on the right."
In 2018, a biologist wrote a paper based on the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Threshold" (one of the silliest episodes in Star Trek history) and submitted it to 10 open-access journals to expose their predatory practices:
"charging authors publication fees without providing the editorial services associated with legitimate journals, such as careful peer review and vetting of the paper's claims."
1/4 "All those protoplanetary discs will be lost, like tears in a rain of ultraviolet photons."
Ok, it doesn't sound as cool as the actual quote, but still 😉
This tear-shaped object is a protoplanetary disc –the birthplace of planets around another star– observed with ESO's Very Large Telescope. Material from the disc is being stripped away by a bright star beyond the upper-right corner, outside of the field of view, hence this cometary shape.
Le rover Curiosity a brisé une roche en roulant dessus, dévoilant des cristaux clairs et laiteux. La zone étant riche en sulfates, il est très probable que ce soit des cristaux de gypse, parmi les plus beaux que je vois depuis le début de la mission ! 1/3
Social media allow you to find thousands of friends, many more than evolution has equipped us for. What are the consequences of being in touch with more people than you can hope to meet? It’s “Post Social Media” on Big Picture Science.
Cicadas are back, but climate change is messing with their body clocks.
CBS News reports: "Cicada watchers used to be able to predict their emergence as easily as astronomers could predict the recent solar eclipse. But that has become more challenging as the cicadas' patterns are changing as warm spring days happen more often."
Plate Tectonics Has a Surprise Silver Lining - Without this restless geologic process, which triggers destructive earthquakes, Earth would not be habitable, by Robin George Andrews May 29, 2024
"...on geologic timescales, plate tectonics ensures that Earth won’t grow so catastrophically hot that its surface becomes unlivable. Without plate tectonics, Earth would turn into Venus. And no planet aspires to be more like Venus.
...And, had it not been for—among other things—our world’s endlessly shifting tectonic plates, Earth could have shared the same grim fate as Venus.
Yes, those tectonic plates buckle and stretch, slip and slide, creating faults that jolt and snap, which generate earthquakes—sometimes devastatingly so. But these tremors are the vital sign of a planet with a beating geologic heart, an orb with a transmogrifying face..."
[I immediately thought of Calvin and Hobbes here, lol.]
#PPOD: This scene is a mosaic of two Right Mastcam-Z camera images taken by NASA's Perseverance rover on 27 May 2024 at a local time of 3:15 pm. The color approximates natural human vision. Most boulders are largely basaltic, with evidence of being rounded by wind. We can't wait to learn the composition of the lighter-toned one in the middle of the scene, though, as it appears to be something different. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/Paul Byrne