Saturday quotes. Hope for Golden Retrievers and People! Plus. cosmologists limit the entire universe

This week we reported on the entirety of the universe. We’ve reported on a few other topics as well, but since they’re obviously covered by that first thing, suffice it to say.

The object is blocked

Last Saturday, people in the western US reported that something temporarily blocked the view of something else. A larger and more distant object normally seen in the sky was briefly eclipsed by a smaller and closer object. To better understand this phenomenon, hold an object in your hand at an arm’s length angle that covers a more distant object across the room.

General understood

Researchers at the Australian National University have released what they call the most comprehensive picture of the universe ever created. Their Zillow floor plan is a fairly simple diagram of the whole reality, depicting two plots: the second shows the possible mass and size of all objects in the universe.

The diagram includes forbidden zones, where general relativity prohibits objects from becoming denser than black holes. The other is a zone where matter enters a nebulous state of quantum uncertainty and objects cannot be defined. So basically, it’s just a set of limitations. But I can see how they set the limits the whole universe can make an astronaut feel quite large and swing around like a big shot.

The article discusses the instants of the Planck mass, the smallest mass a black hole can have without entering the quantum uncertainty zone. They write: “Instantaneous Hawking temperature is Planck temperature. So we have assumed that the initial conditions of the universe are instantaneous. Instantons appear to be an important component of quantum cosmology, and their study is active. an area of ​​research that is beyond the scope of this paper.”

Bludgeon became immortal

Five hundred millennia ago, human ancestors developed a tool now called the Acheulean hand ax for cutting meat, chopping wood, and carving. Individual, ovoid stones, they are formed first by hard hammer stones that cut large flakes from the core of the rock, followed by smaller flakes. Variations have been found all over the world, wherever Homo erectus hung and beat things.

Before the Enlightenment, people thought they formed naturally, and the earliest textual references to them date back to the 1500s. But researchers at Dartmouth and Cambridge University have discovered one of these sweet babies in a 1455 oil painting.

The Melon Diptych, painted by Jean Fouquet, consists of two panels: two boys on the left and the Virgin Mary and her child surrounded by angels on the right. A hand ax is depicted in the left panel resting on the New Testament hand of Saint Stephen, representing his death by stoning.

It had never been identified as an Acheulian hand ax before, but in 2021 Stephen Kangas, a senior lecturer in the Department of Art History at Dartmouth, had the opportunity to show two anthropologists the image of the left panel, and they agreed that it was similar to the image. handaxe, ultimately confirming it through three assays.

Good boy

If you classify dog ​​breeds, golden retrievers should be in the top five in terms of sociability, temperament and usefulness, they will help carry groceries from the car and even prefer to hold their leashes while walking. They just love wearing things. When she heard the doorbell ring, my sister’s golden retriever, Hudson, would run to the door and deliver a treat for visitors, usually a dog toy covered in a drum.

Goldens may also contribute to a better understanding of human cancer. Unfortunately, for reasons not fully understood, Golden Retrievers have a 65% chance of dying from cancer. Now, scientists at the University of California, Davis, have published a study in which they are looking for genes associated with longevity.

They found the expression of the HER4 gene in the golden color, with a long life. it is a member of the human epidermal growth factor receptor family, which is important for human cancer and may moderate genetic predisposition to goldfish cancer. Co-author Robert Rebhun said: “If we find that this variant of HER4 is important for either cancer formation or progression in golden retrievers, or if it can actually modify cancer risk in this cancer-prone population, that could be something that could be used in the future of human cancer.” in research”.

Shareholders are horrible

For the past 40-odd years, economists have been pounding our throats with an ideology that emphasizes the infallibility of the market in driving social progress. So it stands to reason that we should use market interventions to reduce oil and gas production, right?

Haha, chess, environmentalists, the divestment of fossil fuel reserves by small investors is almost immediately reversed by buyouts by mega-shareholders, according to a new report by the Center for Climate Crime and Climate Justice at Queen Mary University of London.

Among its findings, it found 25% of investors who made significant short cuts in either BP or Shell increased their holdings in the other company. And it argues that the huge increases in market capitalization and share prices of both companies show that the trade campaigns are generally not having the intended effect.

The report, titled From the Recent Investments, argues that the ineffectiveness of divestments in BP and Shell should prompt governments to pursue other interventions that actually reduce production.

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