Month: May 2020

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.

Source: 4-billion-year-old nitrogen-containing organic molecules discovered in Martian meteorites — ScienceDaily

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

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

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…

Source: from Alternet: Trump’s Nazification of the GOP is why there’s serious discussion of killing off the ‘unfit’ – 1848+: The End(s) of History

The landscape is evolving quickly.

Source: Machine Learning Engineers Will Not Exist In 10 Years.

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

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