Scientists exploring Mars and analysing Martian meteorite samples have found organic compounds essential for life: nitrogen-bearing organics in a 4-billion-year-old Martian meteorite. With a new high-spatial resolution in-situ N-chemical speciation technique, they found organic materials — either synthesized locally or delivered during the Noachian — preserved intact in carbonate minerals over a long geological period. Their presence requires abiotic or biotic N-fixation and ammonia storage, suggesting early Mars had a less oxidizing environment than today.
Month: May 2020
Murder hornets: The Asian giant hornet has arrived. Bees beware.
The arrival of the invasive species is yet another threat to beleaguered bees in the United States
Source: Murder hornets: The Asian giant hornet has arrived. Bees beware. – Vox
Tools and voyages suggest that Homo erectus invented language
Early hominins who sailed across oceans left indirect evidence that they might have been the first to use language
Source: Tools and voyages suggest that Homo erectus invented language | Aeon Essays
Alternet: on the question of social darwinism…
We have often discussed the way the theory of natural selection persists, but given the hidden fascist range of thought and its relation to class, economy and ideology clearly one aspect is just this rightwing core of the capitalist social darwinist distortion. And Ayn Rand’s popularity shows another aspect.
Among a host of issues is the fact that social darwinism does, could or would be reverse selectionism and the way that ‘evolution’ in this form eliminates the higher potential of a given population. Social darwinism tends to appeal to the less intelligent…
Trump’s Nazification of the GOP is why there’s serious discussion of killing off the ‘unfit’ President Donald J. Trump arrives in the House chamber and is greeted by members of Congress prior to de…
Machine Learning Engineers Will Not Exist In 10 Years.
The landscape is evolving quickly.
Source: Machine Learning Engineers Will Not Exist In 10 Years.
Scientists Want to Hunt for Life on Long-Dead Worlds
Astronomers say they may be able to search for signs of life on distant exoplanets that are orbiting collapsed, dead stars.
Source: Scientists Want to Hunt for Life on Long-Dead Worlds
A Disappointing Decade for the Study of Human Evolution
Perhaps in ten years we’ll be having this conversation again – and perhaps at that time the Smithsonian Institution will give us all a more objective analysis of the evidence.
Source: A Disappointing Decade for the Study of Human Evolution | Evolution News
