Monthly Archives: May 2022

For those of us worried the world somehow got trapped in the wrong timeline, relax scientists are now saying there might actually be two realities.

Two researchers from the University of Maryland released their findings in a study earlier this month in the journal Physical Review Research. According to a university press release, though, a second reality isnt exactly what they set out to find. While studying layers of graphene, made with hexagons of carbon, the found repeating patterns that changed the way electricity moves.

Based on their research, the pair think they accidentally found a clue that could explain some of our current realitys mysteries. According to the universitys media arm, they realized that experiments on the electrical properties of stacked sheets of graphene produced results that looked like little universes and that the underlying causes could apply to other areas of physics. In stacks of graphene, electricity changes behavior when two sheets interact, so the two hypothesize that unique physics could similarly emerge from interacting layers elsewhereperhaps across the entire universe.

In a sense, its almost suspicious that it works so well by naturally predicting fundamental features of our universe such as inflation, study co-author Victor Galitski said in a statement.

Its not uncommon for physicists to question the way our universe works. Even the best-established theory can be called into question and should be if we hope to better understand the world we live in as well as potential ones we havent been to yet.

We havent explored all the effects thats a hard thing to do, co-author Alireza Parhizkar said in the university release.

Parhizkar also said that the findings could solve many outstanding questions scientists have about conflicting or confusing laws of physics.

No word yet on how we get to the proverbial other side, though.

More on reality: Scientists Say Space is Filled With Invisible Walls

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Physicists Say There May Be Another Reality Right Beyond This One - Futurism

Theres reportedly a minor civil war brewing amongst government officials over just how much of their UFO intelligence they should turn over to Congress and the public and at the heart of it, an alleged cabal of powerful secret-keepers.

In interviews withPolitico, government officials who, unsurprisingly, spoke on condition of anonymity said that there are those within the Pentagon who are protecting very interesting information from being released to the public, even as others within and outside the Defense Department are trying to bring daylight to this subject of increasing interest.

They fetishize their secret society, one intelligence official told Politico in interviews ahead of tomorrows House Intelligence Committee hearings on unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAPs, which is the militarys rebranding of what were previously known as UFOs), the first of its kind since 1966. Its kind of a Skull and Bones-type vibe. They take it seriously but they have no accountability. Zero. There is a whole group of us that know in great detail this subject, a lot of which has not been reported to Congress because of security issues.

Its going to take some sort of forcing mechanism, another Defense Department official said, to get these gatekeepers to reveal even part of their closely-guarded secrets to Congress and, in turn, the public.

While it all sounds very X-Files-ish, theres another, much more mundane concern among some officials who spoke toPolitico.Theyre more worried about the actually-unexplained sightings being grouped together with the thousands of alleged UAP sightings that turn out to be bupkis.

According to one intelligence official, legit UAPs are so rare that they accounted for maybe five things out of 5,000. This same official said their superiors seem to think UAPs are all air trash and, as such, arent taking it seriously enough.

This attitude, it seems, has led to increasing calls during the Trump and Biden administrations to reveal more about UAPs, which started with the strategic leaking of information about these strange occurrences in late 2017 and coalesced into the Defense Department establishing a public-facing office to study UFOs in November 2021.

Whether or not well start to get a fuller picture of what the Pentagon (and this supposed cult of gatekeepers) knows remains to be seen but youd best believe well be reading the liveblogs eagerly.

READ MORE:A Skull and Bones-type vibe: Spy agencies grapple with how much to share at UFO hearing [Politico]

More on UAPs/UFOs: Former Pentagon Officials Say Family of UFO Investigator Reported Creature Peering into Their House

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There's a "Secret Society" in the Pentagon Hiding UFO Secrets, Officials Say - Futurism

Scientists current best theories about the arrangement of the cosmos suggest that small galaxies should be distributed around their host galaxies in seemingly random orbits.

But observations have found that these smaller galaxies arrange themselves in thin disks around their hosts, Vice reports, not unlike Saturns rings. Needless to say, that represents a puzzling gap between knowledge and theory.

Researchers are now trying to reconcile this gap by suggesting smaller galaxies may be conforming to invisible walls created by a new class of particles called symmetrons a fascinating proposal that could rewrite the laws of astrophysics.

The standard theory, known as the Lambda cold dark matter (Lambda-CDM) model suggests that the universe is made up of three key elements: the cosmological constant, which is a coefficient added by Einstein to explain his equations of general relativity, cold dark matter which are slow moving theoretical particles that dont emit radiation, and the conventional matter we interact with every day.

That theory suggests that smaller galaxies should be captured by the gravitational pull of larger host galaxies and forced into chaotic orbits, something that has not been reflected in real world observations.

Now, two researchers from the University of Nottingham may have come up with an explanation, as detailed in a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study.

They suggest a fifth force could be arranging the galaxies into disk shapes, while still considering the existence of dark matter, the mysterious substance that appears to make up the vast majority of the universes mass.

According to their theory, speculative particles known as symmetrons, which researchers have used to explain gaps in our knowledge of the cosmos, could generate this force to form domain walls, or boundaries in space.

We know that we need new particles because we have dark matter and dark energy and so we suspect that were going to need to add new particles to our standard model to account for those things, Aneesh Naik, a research fellow at the University of Nottingham, and lead author of the preprint, told Vice.

Thats the context in which people study theories like symmetron theory its a new particle candidate for dark energy and/or dark matter, he added.

These particles could exist in groups of different polar states, forming invisible walls between them. These walls, in turn, could trigger smaller galaxies to form disks around much bigger host galaxies.

But many questions remain, and Naik and his colleague University of Nottingham physicist Clare Burrage have plenty of work ahead of them to solidify the theory.

READ MORE: Space Has Invisible Walls Created by Mysterious Symmetrons, Scientists Propose [Vice]

More on dark matter: Scientist Says Dark Matter Could Likely Be Incredible Fuel for Spacecraft

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Scientists Say Space Is Filled With Invisible Walls - Futurism

They also found an impaled turtle and fish full of debris.Die Hard

Scientists say theyve figured out what happened the day an apocalyptic asteroid crashed into Earth and annihilated the dinosaurs.

Naturalist Sir David Attenborough and paleontologist Robert DePalma filmed a documentary about the 66-million-year old rock fragment they found in North Dakota.The film, Dinosaur Apocalypse, debuts on PBSthis week, but yesterdays CNN report on the pair explains where the fragment was located and how its related to the dino wipeout.

According to CNN, tiny pieces of amber that contain vaporized asteroid dust are from the Hell Creek Formation in the Western United States, which they believe preserved part of the deadly day due its proximity to the impact site. Fossils from the area include fish with gills full of toxic debris, a turtle impaled on a stick, and a dino leg that was possibly blown off its owner.

It gives a moment by moment story of what happens right after impact and you end up getting such a rich resource for scientific investigation, DePalma told the news outlet. In that amber weve located a number of spherules that were basically frozen in time. Theyre perfectly preserved.

The site is 2,000 miles away from the purported asteroid crater located off the coast of Mexico, which means its just far enough that the Hell Creek animals may have died on the day the asteroid struck.

Although the findings have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, CNN reported that Michael Benton, a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Bristol, worked as scientific adviser on the film and thinks the conclusions are accurate.

Its grim thought to imagine the last day for the dinos. But as the work holds up to scrutiny, it would help to understand what happened to untold species, forever changing the course of natural history.

More on sudden changes: Watch an Entire House Suddenly Fall Into the Ocean

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Team Claims to Have Found Chunk of Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs - Futurism

A futurologist, not to be confused with a futurist, refers to an artist of the 1900s artist movement Futurism. There are some crossovers. Both adore tech and love speed. Critically, a futurologist writes, speaks, and studies trends to forecast the future. Richard Watson, Futurist-In-Residence at Cambridge Universitys Judge Business School Entrepreneurship Centre, says that proper futurism sits somewhere between 10 to 20 years out. A prediction about three to five years ahead is basically talking about next Wednesday, and more than 20 years gets into sci-fi, said Watson.

A Racounter article explains that futurologists tend to be widely read and study trends to understand where the world is going next. Watson says futurologists are not going to get it 100% right, but you hopefully avoid being 100% wrong.

The last few years and the pandemic have brought tremendous changes in our daily lives. Few business leaders, who I am intimately aware of, seem to do anything other than react. That may have to do with the speed of change, says Mark Landini, Creative Director of Landini Associates. Watson poses that the innovative companies dont worry about what is going to happen. Theyre creating their own future, and everyone else can fall in line with it.

Remote work has become the norm and is widely expected. However, the concept isnt as new as we think. Landini referenced an interview with Arthur C. Clarke, in which he predicted the possibility of remote meetings more than fifty years ago. Thanks to the pandemic, weve adapted to remote opportunities. Weve been forced to be less physical, and within a few months, weve decided that we quite like that, said Landini. The Economist reported that before the pandemic, Americans spent 5% of their working time at home. By spring 2020, the figure was 60%.

Watson pointed out that many trends made mainstream by the pandemic were already happening on a smaller scale. Watson explains, I fail to think of a single thing with the pandemic that wasnt happening already. However, the pandemic acted as a global catalyst and sped up the adoption of trends. Challenges in the workplace as things return to normal, including conflicting needs and desires between managers and workers. Were at a stage where we have to find a sweet spot between generations, said Watson. Recreating symbiosis between different work styles is key to progress and success in a business.

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Reinventing the Workplace - MarketScale

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul.

And now, scientists say, it turns out they might also be windows toone of the worlds preeminent parasites.

In an essay for The Conversation, researchers described how they were able to detect infection from the Toxoplasma gondii parasite by studying thousands of retinal photographs, searching for signs of the sometimes eye-attacking disease.

Toxoplasmosis has, in recent years, gained a somewhat memetic reputation because its main carriers are cats and its primary transmission vector is, well, cat poop. Studies conducted over the last few decades have associated toxoplasmosis with everything from changes in sexual proclivities to higher rates of car accidents, and Futurism recently spoke to one of the authors of a study that found a correlation between childhood cat ownership and psychosis in adulthood.

As it turns out, toxoplasmosis is extremely common. The latest research suggests that anywhere between 30 and 50 percent of the global population is infected, and as Justine Smith and Joo Furtado recount in their essay for The Conversation, that percentage may be as high as 66 percent per a recent community-based study.

The parasite which, it should be noted, can also can be spread via undercooked meat often attacks the retina, and ocular toxoplasmosis is one of the most common afflictions associated with Toxoplasma gondii. It can cause floaters that obscure ones vision and result in vision loss, and as Smith and Furtado wrote, it can scar the back of the eyeball, too.

In an analysis of Western Australias Busselton Healthy Ageing Study, which took retinal photographs of more than 5,000 baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964, they found that an alarming one in 150 of the eyeball photos showed signs of scarring from ocular toxoplasmosis.

As they noted, there is currently no drug or vaccine to stop or prevent toxoplasmosis infection, and with its estimated rates of prevalence in the global population, it makesToxoplasma the leader of the parasitic pack.

Toxoplasma gondii is probably the most successful parasite in the world today, the researchers wrote and its hard to argue with that conclusion given the numbers.

Heres hoping the experimental toxoplasmosis vaccines that have been cropping up over recent years gets to pharmacies and veterinarians sooner rather than later, because the last thing we need is a parasite in our eyeballs.

READ MORE: One in three people are infected withToxoplasma parasite and the clue could be in our eyes [The Conversation]

More on toxoplasmosis:Elon Musk Suggests That a Brain Parasite is Forcing Humans to Create Superhuman AI

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It's Surprisingly Likely That You Have a Nasty Parasite in Your Eyeball - Futurism