Earth After Warming to The Inside Story of Quantum Gravity
Planet Earth Edition
Today’s stories include Your DNA Can Now Be Pulled From Thin Air and What Would Aliens Learn if They Observed the Earth?
The Tiny Physics Behind Immense Cosmic Eruptions--A new theory describes how particle interactions fuel fast magnetic reconnection, the process behind solar flares and other astrophysical jets, reports Zack Savitsky for Quanta.
Princeton’s Ed Witten and the Inside Story of Quantum Gravity (“Michio Kaku” video below)
Your DNA Can Now Be Pulled From Thin Air. Privacy Experts Are Worried.--Environmental DNA research has aided conservation, but scientists say its ability to glean information about human populations and individuals poses dangers, reports Elizabeth Anne Brown for New York Times Science.
Mysterious sounds in stratosphere can't be traced to any known source--Solar-powered balloons floating 20 kilometers above ground have recorded inaudible low-frequency signals that have so far not been traced back to any known source, reports New Scientist.
What would aliens learn if they observed the Earth? explores The Conversation. "It might even be possible for aliens to decode the complex modulation of our mobile communication systems. Ultimately, as the Earth becomes artificially brighter at all wavelengths, the chances that they detect us before we detect them, cannot be ruled out."
Sleeping beauties: the evolutionary innovations that wait millions of years to emerge – podcast at The Guardian. "Some organisms truck along slowly for eons before suddenly surging into dominance – and something similar often happens with human inventions, too," But why explores The Guardian.
Alien-like comb jellies have a nervous system like nothing ever seen before, reports Stephanie Pappas for Live Science. "Strange sea creatures called ctenophores have a fused nerve net where scientists expected to see synapses. Did they evolve their nervous system separately from other animals?"
Earth is probably safe from a killer asteroid for 1,000 years--No asteroid larger than a kilometer is likely to hit us in that time frame, says a new study. But smaller ones could still pose a risk, reports Jonathan O'Callaghan for MIT Technology Review. "Of the asteroids modeled by the team, the one with the highest risk of impact was called 1994 PC1. That object, a stony asteroid about a kilometer wide, was found to have a 0.00151% chance of passing within the orbit of the moon in the next 1,000 years."
NASA: We'd Have a 30-Minute Warning Before a Killer Solar Storm Hits Earth, reports Science Alert. "a team at NASA has been busily applying AI models to solar storm data to develop an early warning system that they think could give the planet about 30 minutes' notice before a potentially devastating solar storm hits a particular area."
Curated by The Galaxy Report editorial Staff