Obligatory:
A new method for adding precise amounts of reactive gases to a chemical experience is being worked on. It involves bonding the gases to a metal-organic framework, and then wrapping weighed pellets in wax. This will hopefully prove much easier than juggling small pressurised bottles of highly corrosive gases, and then guestimating how much “a squirt” should be.
Sperm Whales live in tribes of 20 000 individuals
Sperm whales appear to use collective consensus to make decisions instead of having group leaders, which is interesting. And their version of democracy is no more efficient than our own, admittedly, including hour-long debates about whether they should be turning left or turning right. But that does suggest they might be closer to a “society of consent” than we humans are.
There’s been some interesting new work on tauonium, an “atom” that doesn’t involve an neutrons.
While there is a lot of neanderthal DNA in modern humans, there’s no trace of their Y chromosome. This article presents some theories about why, including that they were evolving variations on their sex-determining chromosome that were incompatible with humans’.
This raises an interesting theory: that the female offspring of neanderthal/sapiens crossings were fertile, but male offspring were not. This is something that appears in a lot of mammalian hybrids, so it’s quite plausible, but it’s not something I’ve seen suggested before.
I’m not sure how realistic or practical this would have been, but the study authors don’t seem to be presenting it as “this is definitely what we think happened”, more “huh, we think this could have been possible” and it’s an interesting theory that combines their area of expertise (hydrology) with the historical climate shifts and archeology.
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Cargo airships!
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/me laughs in aerostat.
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Interesting question: Seeing as they’re a natural analog to marine vessels, did the advent of aerostat shipping on Eliera significantly impact geopolitics?