“In about a percent of its entire history, astronomy has quadrupled its ontology. A new field, called multimessenger astronomy, has begun characterizing single cosmic events through multiple signal types. Already, light has been paired with gravitational waves and with neutrinos. It’s a reminder that science advances, not just by seeing better, but by inventing whole new categories of seeing."
- Michael Segal
Meet Maria-Luiza Pedrotti, an oceanographer pioneering the science of the “plastisphere”. She investigates the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the unseen worlds of plastic-eating bacteria that live there.
Biology, Q&A, microbiology, microbiome, ecology, bacteria, Maria-Luiza Pedrotti, Tara Expeditions Foundation, CNRS, National Center for Scientific Research, plastisphere, microbes, Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Pacific Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, Vibrio, cholera, pathogens, Leibniz Institute, biodegradable, North Atlantic Garbage Patch, Romain Trouble, plastics, Portland, Oregon, sea urchins, waste treatment, Mantas, genomic analysis, genomic sequencing, Genoscope, National Sequencing Center, polyethylene, polypropylene, plankton, plastic-plankton ratio, macroplastics, microplastics, cyanobacteria, polymers, marine biology, filter feeders, Germany, antibiotic resistance, Melanie Billaud, Nils Haentjens
“What do we do when confronted with deep, profound, and enigmatic mysteries that defy our common sense? We do art."
- Paul M Sutter writing on the power of contemporary dance to communicate concepts in cosmology.
Fascinating article by Nir Shafir on some unintended consequences of wishing to “integrate Muslims into a global political community through the universal narrative of science.”
https://aeon.co/essays/why-fake-miniatures-depicting-islamic-science-are-everywhere
Jocelyn Bell Burnell is my hero.
Not only did she discover the pulsar - one of the great moments in radio astronomy history - she has also worked tirelessly to support women and minority groups in science.
No one deserves the Breakthrough Prize more than her.
From factory work and revolt, technology and warfare, urbanity and pollution, and a rejection of the old status quo, this is a great article about the cultural history of black, by Mark Peplow.
It ranges from Anubis to Bideford black to industrialization, to an appropriate homage to Malevich, then Pierre Soulages, Rothko & Ad Reinhardt & finally to Frederik de Wilde.
http://nautil.us/issue/63/horizons/the-reinvention-of-black-rp
“Ghosts on the shore” by Chris Harding is a beautifully written essay on Japan’s #ghost stories, which provide deep insights into the fuzzy boundary between life and death.
It reveals “a hidden world more fundamental than the one we deal with on a daily basis, in which there might be more shade than light.”
https://aeon.co/essays/japanese-ghost-stories-dwell-in-the-spirit-of-their-times
“While our fanciful desert scene of robots teaching each other how to defuse bombs lies in the distant future, robots are beginning to learn socially.”
- Matthew Thomas & Djuke Veldhuis discuss how #robots learn from one another:
https://www.sapiens.org/column/machinations/artificial-intelligence-culture/
I’ve been doing quite some research into #ArtificialIntelligence these past weeks. This article on how #AI might supercharge the search for new particles, feels like one of the more practical applications I’ve come across.
