I grew up in an evangelical household and went to a Christian school where they only taught creationism (and a little “micro evolution” but not much).

It’s been many years since I left Christianity but I never really re-schooled myself on all the science I missed out on. I started watching some YouTube videos, and while they’re very informative, I realized they’re about 10 years old. I got to thinking there have probably been a lot of scientific discoveries in the last 10 years. So I googled “recent evolutionary discoveries” and the amount of info that came up was overwhelming.

What’s a good source that I could focus on to learn about discoveries over the last decade or two?

(To be clear, I'm more interested in the reach and scaling of gravity.)

If we were to suddenly double earth's mass, but not it's size, would it's field double in size (I assume strength as well), to the extent that if I were to measure this increased gravity at the same place I measured earth's normal gravity, it would simply be double? If so, the least measurable point of both gravitates should also be the same?

Just wondering if there's diminishing returns or if mass and density affects a gravity field the same regardless of whether it's an asteroid or a billion Solar Masses.

Feel free to share any views I'm not taking into account in regards to gravity fields.

Thanks

I was thinking about vaccines and their usefulness, when it occurred to me that, in using vaccines, we've sort of pigeonholed viruses into behaving the way covid does. Haven't we?

If a virus is slow-mutating or distinct enough, then it goes the way of polio or smallpox - that is, nearly or completely eradicated from the world, especially in countries wealthy enough to vaccinate en masse.

So the only kind of viruses that are capable of thriving for very long are those that spread fast, and therefore mutate fast enough that vaccines can "miss" like they do sometimes with the flu. And if a virus maintains lethality above some socially-determined threshold, people take it seriously enough to isolate and kill it off. So it kinda feels like humanity "made" covid, not in a lab, but sort of by default, by killing all the other behaviors of treatable/preventable plagues that could have existed.

Are we setting ourselves up for more fast-moving covid-like viruses in the future, by vaccinating the way that we do?

I guess for this to be any evidence toward changing our practices, it would have to be the case that there's a viral "ecosystem" in which vaccinating against one virus makes more room for others, and I don't know if that's true.

Are covid-like viruses simply an inevitability, or could a change in practice have reduced the likelihood of such a thing happening?

The following mechanism, by continually creating matter in the universe, if self coherent, would solve many unsolved physical problems : this cosmology would do without a big bang.

3d interference pattern of gravitational waves would create rogue waves at specific points in SpaceTime that would create matter and the CMB.

Creation of matter and gravity fields, at net zero energy would increase the expansion of the universe.

The perfect black body curve of the CMB would result from the exponential expansion of the universe.

I've been doing a bit of searching for theories on the origin of baryon matter (including antimatter of course) and some seem to hint at quantum particles spawning from the fabric of space (but doesn't seem to theorize on how this happened) but not many focus on hypothesizing how all forms of baryon matter ether: was the default starting point (that is empty space wasn't the default origin, energy was) or that the fabric of space is the origin of baryon matter (something like: space has the blue print and energy supplies the material).

Thanks for any insight/links that focus on this question

There's a billion quizzes online that say they can help you choose your first pet, and my 45 minutes of googling before posting this did turn up a single blog that suggested that owners of a class of pet share certain personality traits and lifestyles (although they frustratingly seemed to forget that people own things like snakes, ferrets, lizards, rats, frogs, tarantulas, turtles, mice, etc.)

I am certainly willing to buy that people who have the same kind of pet are more likely to have traits in common, but has there been any research into which traits cause people to choose a hamster over a cat, as well as which traits are partially caused/amplified by the ownership of the pet?

If you have access to any psych papers about this subject, please link to a pdf copy of it because I don't know how to pirate research papers

Edit: Specifically I'm curious about "good-faith" personality traits, beliefs, and preferences that could lead to a pet acquisition. I am perfectly aware, for example, that statistically most hamsters are owned by a child whose parents chose it because it is tiny and can be stuffed into a tiny carcinogenic box forever until it dies of stress and malnourisment, as well as that most guinea pigs are bought by parents who want to see if their kid can keep it alive for a while before getting a "real" pet. I dont think those reasons count and am not interested in those.

In digital devices, we have pixels, which represent the smallest unit of size anything can be in a digital program. Something that is a single pixel in size in every dimension cannot get smaller. Depending on the software, though, sometimes their shape is not consistent with one another; a pixel could be square, hexagonal, etc.

Suppose you're envisioning the universe's equivalent of that, the absolute smallest total area that it is possible to envision something as. A pixel of the universe if you will, or a grain of space. If what you're envisioning has absolutely no geometrical features it doesn't need, what shape is it? What shape would an absolute grain of space or a pixel of the universe be?

Intrigued to ask because each shape I envision as the shape of a pixel of the universe comes with what appears to be issues; 1) if pixels are spherical, they don't seem like they'd fit together 2) if pixels are cubes, then the universe has to answer for dimensional/directional bias as the corners would change based on perspective 3) if it's triangular, how would light exuding from a single point work 4) if it's hexagonal, that implies a sixfold dimensional system which seems to run us into geometrical issues again.

I've read that at the center of large celestial bodies there's zero gravity (or close to). While confirmation would be nice, if true, I'm wondering how large that area can actually be and moreover, does it scale up with more mass and/or even size - that is, does the sun have a larger center area of low (zero?) gravity than the earth and so on with evermore mass. Or is that area the same regardless of mass' size?

Thank you

In the famous double slit experiment, setting up a measurement device that watches which slit an electron passes through changes the eventual outcome on the screen, causing the wave function to collapse.

If the measurement device were a light year away and were precise enough to "zoom in" and see which slit the electrons went through, what would happen on the final screen?

Surely, if the measurement device were off, then the electrons would behave like waves and not particles. An interference pattern would appear on the final screen as there is no observer. On the other hand, if someone a light year away turned on the measurement device, this far-away person (and the measurement device) wouldn't know which slit the electrons went through until a year later. And, the electrons going through the slits wouldn't "know" they are being observed because no information (ie the measurement device turning on) can travel faster than the speed of light.

This seems like something that should be true, but I think I remember seeing a Mythbusters episode where they decided it didn't make a difference. That show was more about entertainment than science, so I wondered if there was a more rigorous study done? I've definitely seen splashes of water(?) come out from flushes so that alone seems to argue for closing lids.

Also, would it matter if it was the plain-style mask or n95?

I love the phrase going down a rabbit hole, but it got me thinking, do rabbits even dig that deep to begin with? And what organisms (besides humans) might dig deeper that might be even more fun to tweak that phrase with?

Edit: Specified in title/body that I had meant to ask about non-human organisms. Still, there's some cool info about deep human digs in the comments below for digfolks!

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the scale of the problem of nuclear waste. If we took all the nuclear waste produced in a year and evenly blended it into all gasoline burned in a year would the radiation be deadly? Dangerous? Detectable?

It's easiest to get numbers for the US.

2 000 000 kg of waste per year

510 000 000 000 Liters of gasoline

Obviously this isn't a real proposal, although I think it would reduce carbon emissions...

We know that light and even gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light.

So if something catastrophic happened to the black hole at the center of our galaxy (about 26,000 lightyears away), would there be any way for us to have advance knowledge of it before we could observe it with telescopes or before we could measure the gravitational changes?

Ludicrous example: say the black hole at the center of the galaxy disappeared 25,999 years ago. Is there a way we would have known about it by now, or do we just have to wait out another year to see if we're all screwed?

I saw that people on the dark web would sign their posts with a PGP key to prove that their account has not been compromised. I think I understand the concept of how private and public keys work but I must be missing something because I don't see how it proves anything.

I created a key and ran gpg --export --armor fizz@... and I ran that twice and both blocks were identical. If I posted my public key block couldn't someone copy and paste that under their message and claim to be me?

So I was day dreaming and I caught a thought. What if what we understand about physics is actually all there is to understand? What if you objectively cannot move faster than the speed of light because you can't do the time traveling things necessary. This would mean that the only way to travel amongst the stars would be to extend our lives so that a 5000 year trip at the speed of light would represent like 10% of our lifespans. Travel would be attainable but like the way it was when we were sailing ships to the new world.

That's just one practical solution I could think of to stellar travel. Does anyone else have a practical idea?

cross-post: https://lemmy.world/post/1426387

I stumbled upon this channel long time ago. Since then he claims to have Grown Real Spider Silk Using Yeast or taught rat neurons to play Doom.
The way he presents the content doesn't sound like a complete fantasy but my understanding of the topics is very rudimentary.

What do Lemmy biologists think about this channel?

And what do Lemmy scientists in general think?

https://piped.video/watch?v=simuXjzxlGI&t=380

This video by Scott Manley is about object impact physics. The relevant clip is 6:20~6:50. Scott collides a neutron star with a simulated Earth. He mentions the ejecta should be falling onto the neutron star and emitting hard x-rays.

How would forces balance in real life?

I'm trying to mentally picture how the objects interact as gravity wells and how this might interact with the impact and velocity. Is the gravity well even relevant at high velocity?

Any neutron star is as close as possible to a black hole. Its gravity well should be capable of accelerating material at a significant fraction of the speed of light right? So does the Roche limit really obliterate the planet long before the impact as simulated? What prevents all of the planetary matter from collapsing onto the neutron star? Why were the "hard x-rays" specifically mentioned?

And how old are the oldest bones?

I really enjoy videos about science, but they are getting harder to find on modern platforms. Is there a community out there dedicated to discussing and recommending good content regardless of platform?

There seems to be some really good content out there from various sources and platforms. For example, YouTube has PBS spacetime, Kurtzgesagt, Natural World Facts, and more all of which seem well researched. I even enjoy things that are more speculative as long as they explain clearly where the speculation begins like Alien Worlds on Netflix. I have also found good stuff on various other platforms.

Unfortunately, searching and doing the homework on the reliability of each channel and creator has become a bit of a chore. The channel Natural World Facts in particular is something I could have easily missed just because it's relatively small compared to the others and the name sounds similar to the kind of content I often avoid. I think we all know how bad things can get if you just let "The Algorithm®" choose for you.