SCIENCE

[C-Mag]

A thread for everything science, the good, the bad, the ugly

A couple of kickstarter articles
Scientists accidentally create mutant enzyme that eats plastics ......................... Martin worried for his bag of Dicks
Could solve global plastic bottle and bag problem
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... CMP=twt_gu


Half the results published in peer-reviewed scientific journals are probably wrong
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-bad-is ... 1523915765

[Kath]

How many of you subscribe to WSJ? Isn't it like $40/month?

that's the 3rd or 4th WSJ article posted today that I cannot read.

[doc_loliday]

How many of you subscribe to WSJ? Isn't it like $40/month?

that's the 3rd or 4th WSJ article posted today that I cannot read.

Non-techincal solution: Almost all popular articles are picked up by news aggregators, and those don't get paywalled. And even better, googling the headline and clicking the link works a lot of the time. They just don't want to get hotlinked.

[C-Mag]

How many of you subscribe to WSJ? Isn't it like $40/month?

that's the 3rd or 4th WSJ article posted today that I cannot read.

Martin could lose his bag of dicks to scientifically modified plastic eating enzymes and you're worried about the WSJ ?

[Kath]

Now I know youre just fucking with me.

[C-Mag]

Now I know youre just fucking with me.

The plastic eating enzyme appears to be real, the threat to Martins bag of dicks is yet to be determined.

The WSJ article was open content for me, I don't have a subscription.

[Kath]

Yeah, I was actually going to post about the plastic eating enzyme. Fascinating stuff. Nerd says the planet will always take care of itself.

[Speaker to Animals]

The Gaea Hypothesis sort of implies it is doing just that. Humans are sort of like the intellect of the biosphere, or even maybe something like the immune system. Still working the kinks out. But ultimately, Earth biomass will spread across Sol system and ultimately to the stars because it evolved us.

If I were a materialist, I would assume humanity's evolution was for the survival and competition of Earth's biosphere. The biosphere will want to spread and grow. It needs us.

i.e.. Perhaps it's just time for our biosphere to reproduce (humans colonize another -- for now -- non-living planet).

[Penner]

Here is a nice one that I was wondering if anyone else heard about:

NASA shared an image of a "cosmic phenomenon" in an Einstein ring recently discovered by its Hubble Space Telescope on Friday, April 6.

The space agency reports that an Einstein ring are the "graceful arcs" shown in the image at the top of this age. Those golden arcs pictures are created by light from distant objects, such as galaxies, passing by an extremely large mass.

"With the charming name of SDSS J0146-0929, this is a galaxy cluster -- a monstrous collection of hundreds of galaxies all shackled together in the unyielding grip of gravity," NASA explains in a Friday news release.

"The mass of this galaxy cluster is large enough to severely distort the space-time around it, creating the odd, looping curves that almost encircle the center of the cluster."

http://www.mlive.com/news/us-world/inde ... _ring.html

[Kath]

The Gaea Hypothesis sort of implies it is doing just that.

Nerd has a science background, mostly tropical cyclones, but he's well regarded in that specialty. He's not worried about climate change specifically because it has always been happening and the earth always adapts. Humans may (in his opinion) adapt to what the earth brings us as we interact with it, in time to save humanity, but maybe not, but the earth will adapt.

His whole underlying ideology, though, is that the whole point of the universe is to expend energy as quickly as possible. I'd personally prefer it keep going as many human generations as possible, but we can't agree with out partner about everything. This is one of our biggest disconnects.

Note that I didn't personally procreate to help the whole "keep humans going," goal, but I think it was a good decision for humanity, in general, and not because I'd be a bad mother.