Month: September 2016

100 ka Modern Mind?

The combination of the oldest burial with grave goods; the preference for bright-red ochre and the apparent ability to heat-treat pigments to achieve it; and what are likely some of the earliest pieces of personal adornment—all these details make the people from Skhul good candidates for being our cognitive equals. And they appear at least 60 ka before the traditional timing of the “creative explosion.”

Colonizing Mars

this is seminal. the most inspirational thing you’ll watch this year.

we can go to mars in our lifetimes.

For immigrants, who will spend the rest of their lives on Mars, or even explorers who would spend 2.5 years on a round trip, the advantage of reaching Mars one-way in 4 months instead of 6 months is negligible — and if shaving off 2 months would require a reduction in payload, meaning fewer provisions could be brought along, then the faster trip would be downright undesirable.

99.99% dark matter Galaxy

Dragonfly 44 is a dim galaxy, with 1 star for every 100 in our Milky Way. But it spans roughly as much space as the Milky Way. In addition, it’s heavy enough to rival our own galaxy in mass. That odd combination is crucial: Dragonfly 44 is so dark, so fluffy, and so heavy that some astronomers believe it will either force a revision of our theories of galaxy formation or help us understand the properties of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that interacts with normal matter via gravity and not much else. Or both.

Octopus Disaster

Never forget

The disappearance of the Cornelius G. Kolff remains both one of New York’s most horrific maritime tragedies and perhaps its most intriguing mystery. Eye witness accounts describe “large tentacles” which “pulled” the ferry beneath the surface only a short distance from its destination at Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan