Weekly Science Headlines

[Abbot Mythos]

Taken at face value, this announcement didn't appear to me to be all that interesting:

Research News Brief: sketching E.T. with the fundamental logic of life

And, the long, formal paper being announced is likely going to attract the attention of only the hardcore life sciences types:

Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems

But, this research paper did catch the attention of Sabine Hossenfelder, and I found her insights to be quite interesting, as follows:

"New Study Finds Alien Life Must Be Similar To Us"

Still, I have to admit that learning alien life must be similar to us is a bit depressing. After all, I have met "Us."

[Abbot Mythos]

A neutrino mass mismatch could shake cosmology's foundations

As per this article:

"Recent cosmological data collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, favors masses that are unexpectedly small and creeping close to conflict with those of particle physics experiments. In fact, some interpretations of the DESI data suggest that neutrinos have no mass or even negative mass, normally a forbidden concept in physics (SN: 11/21/14)."

Now, that sentence caught my attention, as the words "negative mass" usually only appear in the technobabble of science fiction. So, those already mysterious neutrinos are becoming curiouser and curiouser!

[Doktor Howl]

I was involved installing that beast.

[Abbot Mythos]

Being left-handed, and having tried both hands at fencing while, as the British say, "at uni," I can attest to the fact that the fencing part of the following article's title is true:

Left-handers rank high in fencing and table tennis

For a lefty fencing a right-handed person having little experience facing lefties, it's like fighting an unarmed person. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's true.

On the other hand, two lefties fencing each other, both of whom have little experience facing our fellow lefties, is like a Keystone Kops movie scene. Most of the time, the two lefties barely touch blades, and end up trying to pummel each other with the guards of their swords. It's hilarious.

[Abbot Mythos]

Geez, it's called the dark side of the moon for a reason. So, plan your vacation trip accordingly, and pack some warmer clothes.

Far side of the moon may be colder than the near side, lunar rocks suggest

And, as the dark side of the moon has been giving Mother Earth the cold shoulder for eons, this really shouldn't be that much of a surprise.

[Abbot Mythos]

Astronomers detect lowest mass dark object ever measured using gravitational lensing

As per this article:

""Hunting for dark objects that do not seem to emit any light is clearly challenging," said Devon Powell at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and lead author of the study. "Since we can't see them directly, we instead use very distant galaxies as a backlight to look for their gravitational imprints.""

Now, these astronomers are not claiming that what they've found is definitively a "dark matter clump." But, it might be, and that's a big deal.

Here's the link to the original research paper:     A million-solar-mass object detected at a cosmological distance using gravitational imaging