Written by Professor Sir Venki Ramakrishnan
As Neils Bohr allegedly said, “It is hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” Indeed, Lord Kelvin’s 1895 declaration that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible” tends to loom in scientists’ minds when we are tempted to speculate about what technology might deliver.
Written by Paul Dorian
Overview: The sun is blank today for the 10th straight day and it has been without sunspots this year more than half the time as the current solar cycle heads towards the next solar minimum. Solar cycle 24 is currently on pace to be the weakest sunspot cycle with the fewest sunspots since cycle 14 peaked in February 1906. Solar cycle 24 continues a recent trend of weakening solar cycles which began with solar cycle 21 that peaked around 1980.
The last time the sun was this blank in a given year on a percentage basis was 2009 during the last solar minimum when 71{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the time was spotless. That last solar minimum actually reached a nadir in 2008 when an astounding 73{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the year featured a spotless sun – the most spotless days in a given year since 1913.
Written by Andrew Orlowski
Elon Musk’s audacious plans are usually met with acclaim, and sometimes even awe – but not this time. Fresh details of The Boring Company’s urban transport plans have been lambasted on social media.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder (pictured above) gushed about “1000s of small stations the size of a single parking space that take you very close to your destination & blend seamlessly into the fabric of a city, rather than a small number of big stations like a subway”.
Written by Gary Norman
The energy market is undoubtedly in a state of flux. The current power play between the U.S., OPEC and Russia is symptomatic of the changing geopolitical and economic dynamics of the entire market, U.S. tight oil seems set to completely upset the apple cart, and rapid technological advances are putting hitherto unattainable reserves within our reach.
Written by Lori Dajose Caltech
Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics governing the sometimes-strange behavior of the tiny particles that make up our universe. Equations describing the quantum world are generally confined to the subatomic realm—the mathematics relevant at very small scales is not relevant at larger scales, and vice versa.
However, a surprising new discovery from a Caltech researcher suggests that the Schrödinger Equation—the fundamental equation of quantum mechanics—is remarkably useful in describing the long-term evolution of certain astronomical structures.
Written by Lee Bell
Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast believe they have uncovered some mysteries in how the sun is able to heat its atmosphere.
Published in a study in Nature Physics, the scientists found that magnetic waves crashing through the sun are one of the key ingredients in the heating process and thus propelling the solar wind. The findings come after scientists suggesting for years that these waves may play an important role in maintaining the sun’s super high temperatures, but only now have they been able to prove it.
Written by Dr Jerry L Krause
A cycle has two extremes and two middles. The motion of a pendulum has two high points and one low point, which it passes through twice. The phases of the moon are a new moon, a full moon, and two quarter moons.
Newton’s great feat, which maybe is not commonly acknowledged, is he explained how there were two diurnal ocean tidal cycles each day which were obviously influenced by the moon’s cycle as it revolved (orbited) about the earth once about every 25 hours as the earth rotated about its axis with a period of 24 hours. Clearly these cycles have a period of time associated with them.
Written by Paul Homewood
It is worth returning to that letter in last week’s Sunday Telegraph, criticising Booker’s global warming groupthink article:
SIR – I agree with Christopher Booker that people tend to adopt the views of their “group” without checking facts or using critical thinking.
Nevertheless, his article contains inaccuracies. A big one: that climate change theory was immediately hailed as a scientific consensus.
Written by Ron Clutz
Click to see animation
The alarms are sounding about lack of ice extent in the Bering Sea, studiously ignoring what else is happening in the Arctic.
For instance, the above image shows the last 10 days on the European side, with the Barents Sea on the right growing steadily to a new maximum. On the left, Gulf of St. Lawrence ice is retreating as usual while the Baffin Bay holds steady.
Written by James Delingpole
A group of U.S. scientists has had to be rescued by helicopter from Antarctica after being trapped by encroaching ice.
Good Morning America reports:
A group of American scientists was rescued from an island off Antarctica’s coast after ice prevented a U.S. Antarctic Program research vessel from reaching them.
Written by dailymail.co.uk
A huge solar storm is heading for Earth, and it’s likely to hit tomorrow. Nasa spotted the solar flare releasing a coronal mass ejection earlier this week. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a ‘G1’ storm watch. It coincides with the formation of ‘equinox cracks’ in the sun, which form around the equinoxes on March 20 and September 23 and weaken the magnetic field.
Written by PSI contributors
What would happen if it were proven that “fossil fuels” weren’t the result of decaying plant and animal matter, were actually created within the Earth due to simple chemistry and you could not be scared into believing that we were “running out” of oil and natural gas?
Written by Kevin Dural
Learning can result in the increase of how much information our brains can hold, researchers have found.
Researchers at UT-Austin, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of Otago in New Zealand discovered that the capacity of a synapse, the junctions between brain cells, expand in response to learning.
“Our most recent finding found that the range of a synapse is not fixed,” said Kristen Harris, a UT neuroscience professor. “On the other hand, if you buy a flash drive, the factory determined how much info you could store; it’s at a fixed level. Our brains are not like that.”
Written by Deborah Netburn
Trapped in the rigid structure of diamonds formed deep in the Earth’s crust, scientists have discovered a form of water ice that was not previously known to occur naturally on our planet.
The finding, published Thursday in Science, represents the first detection of naturally occurring ice-VII ever found on Earth. And as sometimes happens in the scientific process, it was discovered entirely by accident.
Written by John Horgan
I work hard to maintain my optimistic outlook. Wishful thinking works. The first step toward building a more healthy, peaceful, just world is to believe we can do it. So how do I deal with all the bad news about climate change? U.S. officials are rolling back regulations designed to curb global warming even as reports flood in about its scale and potential consequences.
Written by John Staddon
Editor’s Note: This is part II; part I can be found here.
Professor Brian Wansink is head of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University. The lab has had problems, some described in an article called “Spoiled Science” in the Chronicle of Higher Education early in 2017:
Four papers on which he is a co-author were found to contain statistical discrepancies. Not one or two, but roughly 150. That revelation led to further scrutiny of Wansink’s work and to the discovery of other eyebrow-raising results, questionable research practices, and apparent recycling of data in at least a dozen other papers. All of which has put the usually ebullient researcher and his influential lab on the defensive.