Written by David Grossman
Written by Elizabeth Howell
Credit: Sarah Stewart/UC Davis based on NASA rendering
Earth’s moon formed inside a cloud of molten rock, and may have done so before our planet itself formed, a new theory suggests.
Scientists call such a cloud a synestia, a doughnut-shaped ring of debris full of molten rock that forms in the aftermath of a protoplanet collision. In this case, it would have been a massive collision early in our solar system’s history. According to the new theory, the moon formed within a few dozen years after the crash, as the synestia shrank and cooled. The Earth subsequently emerged about 1,000 years after the moon.
Written by Robert F Kennedy Jr
Bill Gates is fond of using his bully pulpit to talk about “miracles” and “magic.” Gates has featured one or both words in nearly all of his annual wrap-up letters for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017), most often in reference to the Gates Foundation’s outsized financial and ideological support for global vaccine programs. As Gates says, “In the same way that during my Microsoft career I talked about the magic of software, I now spend my time talking about the magic of vaccines.”
Written by Dr Susan J Crockford
Here’s a polar bear habitat update for early March: some folks are wringing their hands over the relative extent of ice this season but ice maps show that as far as polar bear habitat is concerned, conditions are not materially different this year from what they were in 2006 or 2017.
Written by Raymond HV Gallucci, PhD, PE
Literature on the galactic rotational anomaly seems to be divided between whether this implies spiral arm stability, necessitating constant angular rotation speed, or something else, namely constant tangential rotational speed (as rotation curves are often shown).
The latter, as shown here, would “unwind” the spiral arms over time, so mainstream physics postuiates “density waves” as an explanation for galactic spiral arm stability. This paper hypothesizes that, if exhibiting constant tangential rotational speed so as to imply spiral arm unwinding (unless one accepts the density wave theory), possibly an optical illusion is at play.
Written by Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD
JUST two generations back, in the 1960s, mainstream Australian society shunned both unmarried pregnant women and also homosexuals. They were loathed, and it would have been considered reasonable for the local police to turn-a-blind eye should misfortune befall members of either group – should they be killed.
Written by Pierre R Gosselin
Tropical storms have plagued humans since the start. Today we will shed some light on the activity pattern of the Pacific region.
Toomey et al. 2016 examined tropical storm activity in the South Pacific for the past 3000 years. Conclusion: During the period from 2600 to 1500 years B.P., storms were at their worst.
Written by Dr Klaus L E Kaiser
Canada exports a variety of goods to the world market. A good chunk of that is semi-processed materials like metal ores, zinc ingots, coils of rolled steel, sheets of aluminum, lumber and plywood, crude oil and “syncrude” (a liquefied form of bitumen), natural gas, agricultural livestock and its products, grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, processed products from the seafood industry, and so forth.
Written by Anthony Bright-Paul
There is a lot of mystique connected to science, indeed mystery. And scientists themselves foster this mystery as it gives them a sort of invulnerability and unaccountability. When I was at school I was interested in literature and poetry and in science not at all.
Written by Mike Wall
Some hardy Earth microbes could likely survive in the Saturn moon Enceladus’ buried ocean, gobbling up hydrogen produced by interactions between seawater and rock, a new study suggests.
And the microbes tested in the study churn out methane as a metabolic byproduct. That’s intriguing, because NASA’s Cassini spacecraft detected methane in the plume of particles blasted out into space by Enceladus’ powerful south-pole geysers.
Written by Robert F Kennedy Jr
When historians write about the Vaccine Decades (1976–2020), there are two names that will live in infamy: Dr. Frank DeStefano, and Dr. Coleen Boyle.
Why Are the Same People Who Failed at Science on Agent Orange in Charge of Vaccine Safety and Developmental Disorders at the CDC?
Written by Richard F. Cronin
The large Larsen C ice floe (size of Delaware) is stuck along the Antarctic Peninsula due to the Coriolis effect. Antarctic scientists from the British Antarctic Research group and the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) aren’t impressed. It happens every one or two decades.
Written by Jennifer Lui
University of Texas scientists aren’t loafing around: Chemically engineered yeast are rising to the occasion and producing chemicals for sustainable plastics.
By rewiring the metabolism of Yarrowia lipolytica, a yeast, researchers are able to produce triacetic acid lactone, TAL. TAL is a polyketide, a naturally occurring molecule commonly found in plants and bacteria, chemical engineering professor Hal Alper said. The chemical can then be used to synthesize new chemicals and create plastics and other materials.
Written by Ron Clutz
The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:
Written by Alan Burdick
Written by PSI contributor
