Last month, a neuroscience paper appeared that triggered a maelstrom of media hype:
The Human Brain Can Create Structures in Up to 11 Dimensions
The human brain sees the world as an 11-dimensional multiverse
Scientists find mysterious shapes and structures in the brain with up to ELEVEN dimensions
The paper, published in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, comes from the lab of Henry Markram, one of the world’s most powerful neuroscientists. As well as being head of the Blue Brain ...read more
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The first exoplanet was spotted in 1988. Since then more than 3,000 planets have been found outside our solar system, and it’s thought that around 20 percent of Sun-like stars have an Earth-like planet in their habitable zones. We don’t yet know if any of these host life – and we don’t know how life begins. But even if life does begin, would it survive?
Earth has undergone at least five mass extinctions in its history. It’s long been thought ...read more
A common triplefin, one of the fish species that may dominate temperate habitats in the near, acidic future. Photo c/o Wikimedia
Scientists predict that in the next twenty years, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere will rise from the roughly 404 ppm it is now to over 450 ppm—and as a result, ecosystems worldwide will change. Many impacts will be particularly felt in our planet’s oceans. As atmospheric CO2 levels rise, more of the gas dissolves in ...read more
It’s a good thing field sobriety tests don’t exist for bugs, because the jumping spider Myrmarachne formicaria would fail for doing what keeps it alive: walking in a wobbly line. The spider fools predators by imitating an ant. The act is so thorough that it includes how the spider looks, stands and even moves.
Many, many types of jumping spiders have evolved to look like ants. Imitating another animal with better defenses is a tried-and-true strategy for avoiding predators ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
