As the world's oceans have spiked a record-setting fever in recent weeks, scientists are trying to work out the precise causes. You can see the dramatic rise in global sea surface temperature in this unsettling graph: Since early March, the global average sea surface temperature has increased to a record high, jumping above those seen during the strong El Niño year of 2016. Also shown in this graph are SSTs from the warm El Niño years of 2002/2003, 2009/2019 and 2015, along with 2022, a relati ...read more
Researchers have dosed microscopic hydra with cannabinoids to observe their feeding habits, and in 2000, a study at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh injected THC into the spinal fluid of rats and set them loose on some chocolate cake batter. The conclusion? The active ingredient in marijuana had effectively given munchies to the THC-injected rats, which ate more greedily.Now a new study has extended the investigation to one of the best-studied organisms on the planet, Caenorhabditis elegans, ...read more
Human evolution is tightly connected to the environment and landscape of Africa, where our ancestors first emerged.According to the traditional scientific narrative, Africa was once a verdant idyll of vast forests stretching from coast to coast. In these lush habitats, around 21 million years ago, the earliest ancestors of apes and humans first evolved traits – including upright posture – that distinguished them from their monkey cousins.But then, the story went, global climates cooled and ...read more
Anyone who has tossed a log on a campfire has witnessed energy changing forms, from dead organic matter to heat.Ironically, whether you’re using a beam of light through a magnifying glass, tree branches or a splash of gasoline, your campfire’s fuel technically originated with the sun.The key difference, however, is that all these energy sources came to be through vastly different geological paths, which attaches different consequences to their use.What Are Fossil Fuels?In the case of a fossi ...read more
Researching intelligence is an extremely difficult task, even in animals alive today. In part that’s because much of the scientific jury is still out on what intelligence even is. So, estimating the smarts of any creature that is now extinct is an especially tall order. In the case of dinosaurs, combine the fact that they have been gone for tens of millions of years, and this task requires … even more brains, and speculation.Nevertheless, scholars have pursued several different methods to t ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
