Category: Science

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Wormholes Could Exist in the Real World…and They Could Be Safe for Human Beings

With the way scientific research is going, it seems like life in our beloved science fiction stories could end up being a reality one day – even if that one day remains so far off that we’ll probably never get to see it ourselves.

One thing that has fascinated humans for years, whether they’re super smart at science or not –  are wormholes. In fiction, they’re required to allow characters to get quickly from one place to another, even if those two places are separated by many, many light years.

Image Credit: iStock

The idea that we might be able to use them for the same purpose in the real world, though?

That’s kind of blowing my mind.

Two new studies, published in Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D, have done what physicists like Albert Einstein and Kip Thorne could not – prove the physical existence of wormholes.

Not only that, they propose that they could be safe enough for humans to travel through.

One of the biggest issues theoretical physicists have had with explaining wormholes is the concern that their “necks” – the narrowest spot in these portals – would collapse under the weight of its own gravity. The first new paper, though, led by a researcher from the University of Madrid, has proposed a real, workable solution to this issue.

Even though these papers deal with the possibilities of microscopic wormholes, we can extrapolate theories based on the way they suggest tweaking the mass and charge of fermions – the fundamental building blocks of matter – into talking about wormholes large enough for a human being.

Image Credit: iStock

The second paper, written by researchers from the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey and Princeton University, takes on that challenge, working with the theoretical existence of wormholes that are large enough for people to squeeze through out there in spacetime.
They have devised on that forms in five-dimensional spacetime, and that would look like intermediate-mass black holes to the untrained observer, they say in the paper.

Inside a wormhole like this, they posit you would experience around 20g of acceleration – uncomfortable, sure, but survivable. Still, if there were, say, errant particles floating around, the paper acknowledges there could be trouble.

“If particles that fall into the wormhole scatter and lose energy then they would accumulate inside, contributing some positive energy that would eventually make the wormhole collapse back into a black hole.”

Which would probably be bad.

In addition to that trouble, space is really stinking cold (and that’s ignoring the trouble of actually creating the wormhole in the first place.

Image Credit: iStock

We’re still working on figuring that out.

If we (and by we I mean they) can figure out these little problems though, a trip across the galaxy would only take around a second (or less). That said, anyone waiting in regular time for you to come back will definitely be dead by the time you do.

So make sure you pack absolutely everything and everyone you love when you leave.

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A “moment” technically means 90 seconds

Have you ever wondered when people ask if you give them a moment of your time? Or when people say “Yes, just a moment while I…” How long actually is a moment? As it turns out, it’s precisely 90 seconds. The unit of measurement actually dates back to 1398, when John of Trevisa wrote that there are 40 moments in an hour. Of course, meanings of words can change in over six hundred years or so. The Oxford English Dictionary now defines it as “a very brief period of time”, but if we want to go off the origin of

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7 Important Facts to Make your Career in Science & Technology

Science is continually associated with improvement at each stage, and Science happens as science propels. Therefore, science, technology, and modernization are on the whole proportionate to each other. Development is necessary for all facets of every human and every nation, and for development to occur; science and technology must work in tandem. Science is characterized as the investigation of data that have been coordinated into a framework and depends on the examination and understanding of realities. Technology is the down-to-earth utilization of logical information. Science, technology, and engineering are essential necessities for any fruitful economy, especially as today continues looking

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We Have Now Connected the Human Brain to a Computer

If you enjoy science fiction, then you’re probably thinking that you’ve seen this movie before (and you definitely have). People imagining the future, or ways human beings might be able to live forever, have long turned their eyes toward possibly “uploading our consciousness” into a machine as a way to make that happen,

Now, with scientists connecting a human brain wirelessly to a computer, well…maybe it doesn’t sound so farfetched after all.

It happened at Brown University in Rhode Island, where some very smart people established a connection between a human brain and a computer that’s capable of transmitting signals with ‘single-neuron resolution and in full broadband fidelity.”

The study saw two clinical trial participants with paralysis (men with spinal-cord injuries) and used the BrainGate system with a wireless transmitter to point, click, and type on a standard tablet computer.

The researchers involved published their findings in the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, stating that the system works using a small transmitter that weighs more than 40g.

They place the unit atop the user’s head where it “connects to an electrode array within the brain’s motor cortex using the same port used by wired systems.”

Here’s what it looks like…

Image Credit: BrainGate

Yeah… ALL of that on top of somebody’s head. We didn’t say it looked sexy!

John Simeral, an assistant professor of engineering at Brown and the study’s lead author, was pleasantly surprised about how accurate the wireless transmission turned out to be.

“The signals are recorded and transmitted with appropriately similar fidelity, which means we can use the same decoding algorithms we used with wired equipment.”

It’s better, even, because people no longer need to be physically attached to the equipment, which means there are more and more possible applications and uses on the horizon.

Leigh Hochberg, the trial’s leader, sounded equally excited about the achievement.

“With this system, we’re able to look at the brain activity, at home, over long periods in a way that was nearly impossible before.

This will help us to design decoding algorithms that provide for the seamless, intuitive, reliable restoration of communication and mobility for people with paralysis.”

It sounds crazy, but it’s true – and I mean, what amazing breakthrough of the past 20 years didn’t sound crazy and impossible the first time you heard about it? Team Science!

What do you think about this innovation? Should we keep well enough alone?

Let us know in the comments!

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Scientists Make Mistakes…and Sometimes They Create New Fish

Science is a process. It follows a method, but it’s all about learning.

And sometimes the best learning comes from mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, right?

Well last year, scientists at a lab in Hungary had a real OOPS moment.

But after the OOPS comes the learning.

Their hearts were in the right place. At the Research Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture, they just wanted to try to preserve critically endangered species.

Their focus was the Russian sturgeon, also known as the diamond sturgeon.

Image credit: GlobalP via iStock

As Popular Mechanics explains:

The research team tried to breed more Russian sturgeons via gynogenesis, a type of asexual reproduction in which sperm is necessary but leaves no traces of its DNA behind.

As a result, the offspring ends up with 100 percent maternal DNA (and none from the paternal contributor.)

Easy-peasy, right?

The plan was to use sperm from another endangered species, the American paddlefish.

Image credit: tunart via iStock

What came next was completely unexpected.

Instead of merely fertilizing the eggs and then disappearing into the ether, the sperm actually fused with the eggs, creating a hybrid fish, affectionately known as a “sturddlefish.”

SCIENCE, am I right?

This new, uninentional hybrid species had some interesting differences.

Again, Popular Mechanics explains:

Some are close to an even 50/50 genetic split between their two parents, but others appear more sturgeon-like while others have stronger paddlefish traits.

The differences include things like what the fish like to eat.

Sturgeons are carnivores. They feast on smaller sea creatures like mollusks and crustaceans.

Paddlefish, however, prefer plankton, which are not exactly vegetables, but are microscopic organisms quite different from the usual sturgeon diet.

Not all of the hatched hybrids survived, but of those that did, some preferred a sturgeon diet and others preferred the plankton.

According to The New York Times about 100 of this new species survived.

And while the accident has proven an interesting one, the team has no intention of creating any more hybrids.

Sorry little sturddlefish.

What do you think about this wild story? Are you here for creating weird new animal hybrids? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

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This is Why Our Hair Often Gets Darker as We Age

If you look at photos of yourself as a toddler, or even as a kid heading off to elementary school, you might always be a little surprised to see how white-blond your hair used to be. It’s not true for everyone, of course, but there are a good number of people who were towheaded kids who grew up to be teenagers or young adults with medium to dark hair.

Why does this happen? Is it a function of age alone? If you’re curious and looking for answers, keep reading!

Image Credit: Pexels

Scientists believe our hair color shifts due to changes in the way we produce melanin – the natural pigments responsible for the color of our hair, eyes, and skin. There are two types of common melanin, one called eumelanin, which determines how dark our hair is, and pheomelanin, which controls how warm the color is.

The amounts and ratios are controlled by your genes, and live in the cells that sit at the bottom of each hair follicle on your head.

It turns out that hormones play a role, too, and they can activate or deactivate certain genes at different times in your life. Puberty is a common time when previously latent genes activate, creating more eumelanin than ever before and darkening your hair.

Image Credit: Pexels

This is also likely the cause of graying hair at other times in our lives when hormones are shifting, like when we’re entering middle or old age. Those melanocytes at the ends of our hair are tired and older, too, and don’t regenerate as quickly or produce as much color.

While we’re on the subject of gray or white hair, does stress really exacerbate the process?

Asking for me, who never had a gray hair until her children were born!

Scientists agree that big stresses can speed up the process, but it’s not due to those melanocytes getting older with natural age. Physical or psychological trauma, extreme illness, hormonal fluctuations, etc can cause our hair to fall out, and if we’re in or past middle age, there’s just a good chance it will grow back gray.

Image Credit: Pexels

So, even though it appears the stress is the actual cause, it’s more of an indirect bad guy.

There you have it! The next time you’re wondering what happened to your blond little boy now that he’s going into middle school and getting darker hair by the week, or yank out another gray gettin ready in the morning, you can at least know which body part to blame.

You’re welcome!

What do you think about this info? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

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Mars Isn’t as Red as You Might Think

Mars is called “The Red Planet” because of the way the surface shows up a rusty color in the images we get from the many NASA probes and expeditions we’ve been lucky to successfully launch.

What if I told you, though, that’s it’s really just the dirt – that the redness of the planet is actually only a few millimeters thick?

The close tie between Mars and the color red is nothing new; in Sanskrit, the word for ‘red’ and ‘Mars’ are literally one and the same. In Egyptian, too, the word for the planet means “red one,” and even with all of the great photographs we have now, all we see is red everywhere we look.

Image Credit: Pexels

The red is likely the result of dust particles in Mars atmosphere, which is much thinner than the one on Earth and allows for greater absorption at short optical wavelengths than at longer ones.

It also allows larger dust particles to scatter longer-wavelength light more efficiently.

The dust on Mars is high in reflectivity, represents bright soil deposits, and is rich in iron – which is to say, it contains large amounts of ferric oxides.

The most common type of dust is made from nano-crystalline red hematite, and is made up of small enough particles that the rapid Martian winds have no trouble sweeping large amounts of it around and even up into the atmosphere.

They also continually sweep over the surface, changing the landscape and features in both color and shape on a regular basis.

Then two scientists, one of whom was Carl Sagan, figured out why – the red layer we see on Mars’ surface is just a thin dusting of, well, dust and sand. It easily travels short distances, moving from higher to lower elevations or staying on like elevations, and is often blown off areas with steeper slopes onto flatter ones, changing the brightness of the color briefly.

The layer of dust that gives Mars its color, then, is only a few millimeters thick – even at its thickest, in the Tharsis region, it’s only around 7 feet deep.

More recent expeditions involving landers and rovers on Mars have proved, of course, that the red of Mars isn’t uniform at all, with much of the planet appearing more orange or even a butterscotch yellow up close and personal, with rocks and other deposits showing up an average brown, tan, or gray upon closer inspection.

Image Credit: iStock

If we could wave a magic wand and calm the planet’s atmosphere for long periods of time that dust would settle, and all of those other colors would be visible across the planet, much the way that blues and greens and whites dominate images of Earth from outer space.

Scientists are still looking to figure out the process by which those red hematite particles form, and in big enough quantities to turn the far away pictures red in the first place.

Which means that Mars will probably forever remain the red planet, because it’s the only color that reaches our eyes.

Until, of course, we have the opportunity to relocate there ourselves. Then, we’ll be able to see all of Mars’ true colors for ourselves.

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A Scientist Thinks the Earth Is Actually Two Planets Fused Together After Colliding

Just when you thought you knew how the world works, science throws something new at you.

There’s a ton of great research coming out of PhD programs these days–new discoveries and new ideas.

One such researcher is Qian Yuan from the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.

His research suggests that parts of the Earth are not actually Earth at all.

His team’s research was presented at the 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference this past March.

For years it has been widely believed that a proto-planet called Theia helped to form life as we know it.

According to Popular Mechanics:

In 2016, UCLA researchers proposed that Earth could actually be two planets that fused together after colliding: itself and Theia. At the time, scientists said they believe the two planetary masses mixed together uniformly. Now, Qian Yuan of Arizona State University and his colleagues suggest the mysterious dense spots in Earth’s interior are the specific pieces of Theia that are still intact.

Theia is thought to be very similar in size and structure to Mars.

Scientists also believe that the Earth’s Moon may have formed during this impact.

You might remember from science class that the Earth is made up of 3 layers: the crust, the mantle, and the core.

The mantle itself is also made up of layers of varying density, and is at the center of Yuan’s research.

In some cases, there are massive pockets that are more dense, called “Large Low Shear Velocity Provinces” or (LLSVPs).

I honestly don’t understand most of Yuan’s science-related tweets, but he compares the Earth to chocolate, which is always a language I can understand:

The team did a lot of math, and they have been able to compare the objects of their study with the mantle on Mars, which can be examined in the form of meteorites that have landed on Earth–over 100 of them.

What the researchers found is that:

“The total mass of the moon, together with the LLSVPs, is almost perfectly matched with [Mars’s] mantle.”

Unlike the original supposition that the two planets fused completely, Yuan’s team believe that the heavier Theia material sank into the deepest part of the Earth’s mantle, closest to the core, and there it stayed, like the gritty dregs at the bottom of a cup of coffee.

Popular Mechanics explains it this way:

How have the dense Theia materials stayed intact for billions of years?

It’s a function of the way Earth’s mantle works, where convection circulates materials that are a certain temperature and density.

The Theia materials are so dense that they sank and never floated back into the convection zone.

Think of this like the stuff that accumulates in a sharp corner that’s hard to reach with the vacuum cleaner.

So now you know. The Earth is like an Easter candy egg with a vacuum cleaner hidden deep inside.

And even though Mars feels very far away, we are all technically walking on a foreign world.

Did Yuan’s research completely blow your mind like it did mine? ? Tell us in the comments.

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People Discuss What They’d Look Up If They Could Go to the Future

As someone who’s super interested in science and what it means for society, I look to the future with a combination of awe and dread.

Awe because of all the incredible possibilities technological advancements might bring to humanity, dread because the same scientific process that brings us those advancements is also warning us constantly that broadly speaking, we’re on a path to destruction.

So, given the opportunity to peek into the future, what might I do?

For five minutes you get transported 30 years into the future, you sit in front of a computer, what information to you look up? from AskReddit

Let’s see what the big brains at Reddit think.

1. Year by year.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021.

If possible, I’d try to save that file and send it to my phone.

Probably do that for 2022 all the way to 2051.

– petrichorInk

2. The list.

Biggest companies founded in the 2020s

List of presidents

And major world events

Three tabs, three google searches and hopefully a pen to write them on my hand and hope it transfers back

– MovingOnward2089

3. Taking stock.

Google 4-5 stocks that went to the moon, and etch that sh*t into your arms along with 5-10 duds. Who cares if you come home with 2nd-grade Pencil War Day injuries, you’re about to theoretically live forever.

Snap a few photos of the injuries, and go to the police to report being jumped by a homeless guy that held you down and etched some weird sh*t into you under threat of death while reciting latin. Now you have a cover story for then the SEC wants to know how you knew BCRX and four other stocks were going to the moon. “A homeless guy carved it into me, and honestly, I took it as a sign.”

Now produce tapes of the therapy where you rationalize it to your therapist as a coping mechanism and the therapist tells you that you’re absolutely not handling the trauma well. “I also dropped all this money into these stocks that were meh, so I guess I just got lucky.” Don’t finger any of the guys they bring into a lineup because 1, that’s gross, and 2, that’s mean, but let it slide as an unsolved case.

– HotHamWaterBath

4. Sports ball?

I’ve always wondered if “If you could go into the future, what would you look up blah blah” questions were answered with “sports scores” prior to BttF 2. It is the WRONG answer. So were people always wrong, or did the movie start that trend?

Even extremely rare horse bets pay out like what, 50:1?

With a single winning lottery ticket you can turn $1 into $300million.

– utspg1980

5. Finally!

See if GTA VI came out yet.

– szmatt0628

6. Rumors of wars.

Who won WW3 and to see if top sites like Reddit and Youtube survived

– redditorseth

7. The opportunist.

Look up the biggest financial fiasco in the last thirty years.

You now know how to get on the ground floor of something that’s going to make a bunch of people really rich and the exact knowledge of when you can get out without getting wrapped up in the aftermath.

– Joss_Card

8. My fate.

I’d check to see when/if I died.

I’m 59, now, and the oldest men in my family history last to about 85. My son-in-law works pretty hard on our family tree so I’m pretty sure he’d update it if me or my wife died.

It’d be a pretty quick check.

– 1tacoshort

9. Live in the moment, in the future.

I think I might look at social media et al to see what people are nostalgic about and miss from 30 years ago and try to enjoy it more when I go back.

– Waffuly

10. Take it all.

B*tch. I’d steal the computer.

Who wouldn’t want a computer 30 years more advanced than anything we have right now.

A library computer would probably be more powerful than any gaming laptop we have now

– Nauticalfish200

11. Why limit yourself?

I’ll just take my 8 TB drive and copy the entire content of Wikipedia to it, return to my timeline and spend the next 20 hours reading it and making a fortune by the second

– keima99

12. Yeah, except…

You need, at minimum:

• A compatible port (my guess is the average computer will have 0 ports by then)
• An OS that has driver support for a 30 year old drive
• An OS that has a file system that works with your drive
• An OS that has has support for physical external drives at all
• Data Bloat to have not rendered 8TB unhelpful.
• Wikipedia to have avoided, for three decades, the sh*tty trend of of making internet content sh*tty java nonsense that can’t easily by indexed.

This plan is not going to work.

– TheGlennDavid

13. Out of order.

not in any order:

stocks, US Presidents, sport events, bitcoin, which area has been nuked, danger zones to not live in and figure a way to transport it when i get back to the past.

beat the sh*t out of bully Biff and marry my his gf, Lorraine Baines, give her implants, own a hotel / casino and live the life.

maybe run for president or something along the way

– [deleted user]

14. Science!

Scientific achievements in the past 30 years, and keeping track of the science behind the best ones. Jump start our progress toward the most efficient or just coolest technology.

Even if I can’t get everything about them, I could tell scientists which technology to look into more closely.

– NachoElDaltonico

15. …science.

What areas are most livable due to climate change.

– I_wear_foxgloves

Yeah, see, that kind of bummer dichotomy is exactly what I’m talking about.

What would YOU do?

Tell us in the comments.

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People Share the Scariest Facts They Know

Whenever I really want to creep myself out, I start to read about the nuclear arsenals that different countries around the world have and how many of them could easily fall into the hands of the wrong folks out there…

That’s the scary stuff for me.

But everyone is different.

What’s the scariest fact you know?

Here’s what folks on AskReddit had to say.

1. Don’t get rabies.

“A lot of people don’t realize rabies is extremely fatal. It’s one of the deadliest diseases to ever be seen on planet earth, deadlier than any plague.

Only a handful of people have ever survived rabies untreated, I believe the number is around 5. And most of them were completely crippled for the rest of their short lives.

Even treatment isn’t very effective.

Don’t ever get rabies.”

2. Not Hollywood.

“That a large number of asteroids and comets that could potentially hit Earth directly have not even been discovered as of yet.

And our ability to actually stop a large object travelling stupidly fast is much worse than depicted in films.”

3. Now that is gross.

“Your tastebuds are actually cilia and are constantly being worn down by the movement of your tongue in your mouth.

If you end up in a coma for long enough, your tongue becomes fuzzy.

Maybe it’s just me, but that adds to the very long list of reasons I never want to be in an extended coma.”

4. Not a comforting thought.

“We’ve come very close to nuclear war and had nuclear accidents many times.

Also, we’ve lost a lot of nukes.

Google “broken arrows” some time.”

5. Sleep is good.

“That you really do need 7-9 hours of sleep every day.

Even at 6 hours, the lack of sleep decreases efficiency, productivity, and increases risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s. Furthermore, it weakens the immune system and handicaps the body’s ability to destroy cancer cells, which therefore increases risk of cancers of the breast, colon, ovaries and prostate.

The scary part of it is that you can’t get back all the sleep that you lose out on because “sleep efficiency” decreases, so trying to catch up on the weekends isn’t really making up for what you lost throughout the week. Ironically, those who say “I can sleep when I’m dead” will end up dead quicker because of lack of sleep over time.”

6. Beware of the botfly.

“A botfly can lay an egg in a fraction of a second.

Literally swatting the fly can be enough for it to lay an egg which burrows into your flesh and feeds in there until it hatches and matures enough to fly away and start the cycle again.

It can also happen to an eye. I know this because I’m an eye doctor and I have removed a botfly larva from the INSIDE of an Eyelid (tarsal conjunctival membrane).”

7. Let’s hope not.“

“At any second the whole planet could be completely destroyed by x-ray bursts from quasars.

So many other scary things have practical solutions for protecting the human race, but there is no defense humanity could conceivably develop against such a massive amount of energy.

I subscribe to the Star Trek utopian techno future, massive gamma or x-ray burst.. nothing can stop it.. goodbye planet earth.”

8. We’re due.

“Geologist here.

The earth’s magnetic poles (places your compass point to) are moving at an alarming rate.

While they switch (think north compass arrow will point south) every 10,000 years or so, we are over due for a switch… so like happy 2021 y’all.

Also the supervolcano under Yellowstone does technically have the fire power to wipe out much of life on planet earth, but its NOT over due like many people try to claim it is. That’s just fear mongering.

ALSO there was a point in the past during the ice age (I think) were less then 2000 humans were alive. If it would have been modern humans we would have to put ourselves on the endangered species list.”

9. Freaky.

“Surfer’s myelopathy is a non-traumatic injury most often seen in novice surfers, where they tweak their back while trying to get up on the board.

They initially feel pain and and weakness and then they become fully paraplegic. It doesn’t even have to be surfing. Yoga, pilates, or even getting up from laying down.

You just hyperextend your back a little weird one day and bam, you’re in a wheelchair, completely paralyzed from the waist down.”

10. A world of plastic.

“There is plastic everywhere from the highest mountains to the deepest trench in the ocean.

It’s estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean.

And it is bad for us, likely causing fertility problems and reducing pe**s size.”

11. Truth.

“You die 3 times..

You die

Your grave gets visited the last time

The last person who even knows your name dies

You are completely forgotten and gone.”

12. Wow.

“If you commit a m**der in the United States, the chances that you will be arrested and convicted for it is less than 50%.”

13. Keep your eyes open.

“An average person walks past at least 16 m**derers in their lifetime.

And sometimes the m**derer turns out to be someone you grew up with.

One of the most disturbing phone calls I’ve ever gotten was an old friend calling to tell me a mutual buddy had just been arrested for beating his ex-girlfriend to death with a brick.

It’s been fifteen years since we graduated high school and went our separate ways, and I still can’t reconcile the memories of a goofy skater kid with the facts that came out during his trial. How could we not have seen the anger in him?”

What do you think is the scariest fact you know?

Talk to us in the comments.

Please and thank you!

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