Tag: science

Scientist admits the ‘overwhelming consensus’ on the climate change crisis is ‘manufactured’

We are told climate change is a crisis, and that there is an “overwhelming scientific consensus.”

“It’s a manufactured consensus,” climate scientist Judith Curry tells me.

She says scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk to pursue “fame and fortune.”

She knows about that because she once spread alarm about climate change.

The media loved her when she published a study that seemed to show a dramatic increase in hurricane intensity.

“We found that the percent of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes had doubled,” says Curry.

“This was picked up by the media,” and then climate alarmists realized, “Oh, here is the way to do it. Tie extreme weather events to global warming!”

“So, this hysteria is your fault!” I tell her.

“Not really,” she smiles.

“They would have picked up on it anyways.”

But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research — years with low levels of hurricanes.

“Like a good scientist, I investigated,” says Curry.

She realized that the critics were right.

“Part of it was bad data. Part of it is natural climate variability.”

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Hopes Dashed: LK-99 Falls Short Of Room-Temperature Superconductor Glory

Less than a week after South Korean researchers claimed in two new papers that they had developed a superconductor that operates at room temperature under standard atmospheric pressure,which would have mind-blowing implications for transmitting electricity with zero resistance at normal temperatures, all hopes have been dashed by an already-skeptical scientific community.

In response to the alleged discovery, several labs got to work recreating the superconductor, known as LK-99. Alas, none of them were a success, IFLScience reports.

“When we are measuring superconductors, the most obvious property of a superconductor is zero resistance,” said Professor Susie Speller of the Oxford Centre for Applied Superconductivity, in comments to IFLScience in a previous deep-dive on LK-99. “What you look for is for the material to have some resistance. You cool it down, and suddenly it should lose that resistance, and it should be absolutely zero when it’s in the superconducting state. You should see a very clear change in resistance at the temperature where it starts to superconduct.”

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Scientist Suggests Feasibility of Faster-Than-Light Travel within the Boundaries of Einstein’s Physics

The idea of faster-than-light (FTL) travel has captivated human imagination for decades, fueled by science fiction’s portrayal of interstellar journeys that traverse the vast cosmos in the blink of an eye. While the concept has long been considered implausible due to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, recent claims by a daring scientist suggest that FTL travel might not be as far-fetched as previously thought. This potential breakthrough could revolutionize our understanding of the universe and reshape the boundaries of human exploration.

Einstein’s Relativity and the Cosmic Speed Limit

Albert Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity are pillars of modern physics, setting forth the framework for understanding the fundamental behavior of space, time, and gravity. One of the most renowned consequences of these theories is the assertion that the speed of light is the ultimate cosmic speed limit – nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum. This assertion has not only been supported by countless experiments but has also been instrumental in shaping our understanding of the universe.

The Challenge of Faster-Than-Light Travel

The idea of FTL travel, while popular in science fiction, has been met with skepticism by the scientific community. The energy required to propel an object to or beyond the speed of light using conventional methods seems insurmountable, and the associated implications, including time dilation and causality violations, challenge the very fabric of reality as we know it.

However, recent developments in theoretical physics have sparked new discussions about the feasibility of FTL travel within the framework of Einstein’s theories. Dr. Amelia Rodriguez, a theoretical physicist at the forefront of this debate, claims that there might be loopholes in Einstein’s equations that could potentially allow for FTL travel without violating the laws of physics.

Warp Drives and Alcubierre’s Theory

Dr. Rodriguez’s work draws inspiration from Miguel Alcubierre’s “warp drive” concept proposed in the 1990s. Alcubierre’s theory involves the creation of a “warp bubble” around a spacecraft, effectively contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it. This manipulation of spacetime would allow the spacecraft to “ride” on the wave created by the bubble, potentially enabling speeds faster than light without the spacecraft itself exceeding the speed of light within its local frame of reference.

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‘Identity and Justice’ scholar explores ‘structural racism in chemistry’

Critical race theory can be applied to the teaching of chemistry, according to a University of Illinois-Chicago professor.

Professor Terrell Morton is an “Identity and Justice in STEM Education” scholar who “draws from critical race theory, phenomenology, and human development to ascertain Black students’ consciousness and how it manifests in their various embodiments and actions that facilitate their STEM postsecondary engagements,” according to his faculty bio.

He held a similar job at the University of Missouri where he was brought on as a diversity hire. He was in the “inaugural cohort of Preparing Future Faculty Postdoctoral Fellows for Diversity at MU,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

He wrote in Nature that CRT can “identify tangible strategies for redressing and mitigating structural racism in chemistry.”

Professor Morton (pictured) wrote that chemistry and the science field at large “has maintained a culture that typically favours white, cisgender, middle-to-high socioeconomic status, heterosexual, non-disabled men.”

Minority students, he wrote, “must alter their presentation of themselves to be seen as someone capable of succeeding — including abandoning aspects of their home and cultural identities, having to go above and beyond to demonstrate their intellectual capabilities.”

Morton says that “is not divisive, it is not designed to shame, demonize or encourage hate, and it does not inherently produce feelings of guilt or blame” and is not taught in schools, despite the claims of conservative politicians. In fact, it is “rarely taught” even in undergraduate, according to the UIC “scholar-activist.”

There are several ways the scholar found racism embedded in chemistry. “Racial realism applied to chemistry acknowledges that the field, and science generally, exists as a microcosm of the broader society and thereby perpetuates structural racism or gendered racism,” he wrote.

“Whiteness as property,” according to Morton, explains why the contributions of black scientists are not respected. “The erasure of Black perspectives and experiences in science, historical and contemporary, normalize science as white property, perpetuating feelings of invisibility and hypervisibility for Black students.”

Morton previously gave a presentation in 2021 on “deprogramming whiteness” which made similar points as his 2023 essay.

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‘Scientist’ Neil deGrasse Tyson claims biology is ‘insufficient’ during unhinged rant defending radical trans agenda

Astrophysicist and noted science personality Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke out in favor of gender ideology and the ability of a person to actually change their sex. He made the remarks on the Stephen A Smith podcast “K[no]w Mercy.”

“Apparenly the XX/XY chromosomes,” he said with obvious derision, “are insufficient because when we wake up in the morning, we exaggerate whatever feature we want to portray the gender of our choice. Either the one you’re assigned, the one you choose to be—whatever it is!”

“And so now,” he went on as though swapping sex was the most obvious thing in the world, “just to tie a bow on this, I say to you, somewhere I read— somewhere, I think I read— that the United States was a land where we have the pursuit of happiness. Suppose no matter my chromosomes today, I feel 80 percent female, 20 percent male. Now I’m gonna, I’m gonna put on makeup. Tomorrow, I might feel 80 percent male. I’ll remove the makeup and I’ll wear a muscle shirt. Why do you care? What businesses is it of yours to require that I fill your inability to think of gender on a spectrum?”

Detransitioner Chloe Cole took issue with Tyson, noting that in his assessment, he conflates appearance and cosmetics with biology, as though a person’s external presentation has an effect on their biological reality.

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The LK-99 superconductor could be world changing or a total hoax. Here’s why you should care either way

Outside of Sheldon Cooper and The Big Bang Theory, physics generally isn’t part of the day-to-day conversation for most people. But a recent claim from scientists has everyone paying attention. A trio of physicists claims to have created a superconductor, dubbed LK-99, that works at room temperature and ambient pressure. 

In basic terms, that means they might have discovered a material that can conduct electricity with no notable resistance, meaning it loses zero energy. And, if that’s true, it could be world altering.

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“I’ve been here before”: DMT study explores a strange memory phenomenon

If you take a psychedelic drug that can throttle your conscious perception into an otherworldly space where people often report encountering beings that are unlike anything on Earth, the last thing you would expect to feel is the sense that this all seems pretty familiar. But that’s precisely what some people report after taking the world’s strongest psychedelic: DMT. 

“It felt like I had been reunited with everything, like I was complete again,” psychiatrist Dr. Chloe Sakal told Freethink in 2021 while describing a DMT experience she had as a participant in a study that examined the drug’s effects on the brain. “I no longer knew I was in an MRI scanner. My entire reality was very different — really colorful, really vibrant. And I couldn’t even remember that I was in a study. I was in a different dimension.”

Online reports from the r/DMT subreddit convey similarly intense and familiar experiences. “I was beyond time and matter and had no sense of identity whatsoever,” wrote one person. “I definitely felt this common thing like I was ‘at home,’ that I have already been there, and that I will go there again.”

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AI search of Neanderthal proteins resurrects ‘extinct’ antibiotics

Bioengineers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to bring molecules back from the dead1.

To perform this molecular ‘de-extinction’, the researchers applied computational methods to data about proteins from both modern humans (Homo sapiens) and our long-extinct relatives, Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and Denisovans. This allowed the authors to identify molecules that can kill disease-causing bacteria — and that could inspire new drugs to treat human infections.

“We’re motivated by the notion of bringing back molecules from the past to address problems that we have today,” says Cesar de la Fuente, a co-author of the study and a bioengineer at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The study was published on 28 July in Cell Host & Microbe1.

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Swiss Scientists Identify Bronze Age Iron Arrowhead Made from a Meteorite!

A team of scientists recently completed a study of prehistoric metal artifacts collected in Switzerland over the past couple of centuries, with a very clear purpose in mind. They were looking to see if any of these ancient artifacts might have been made from metal salvaged from meteorites, which have been hitting Earth for billions of years . Much to their delight, the Swiss researchers were able to identify one such object: a small, rusted Bronze Age iron arrowhead with a chemical and mineral composition that was undoubtedly not of earthly origin.

As a part of their search process, the team of Swiss scientists led by geologist Beda Hofmann from the National History Museum of Bern concentrated on pre-Iron Age artifacts taken from various sites close to Switzerland’s Lake of Biel region. The one iron arrowhead made from meteoritic metal they did find was excavated from a Late Bronze Age (900 to 700 BC) settlement known as Mörigen, from where it had been unearthed all the way back in the 19th century.

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Have 46,000 Year Ago Nematodes in Suspended Animation Really Been Resuscitated?

For more than two decades scientists have been collecting frozen microbes from deep layers of the Siberian permafrost, to see if they can be thawed and brought back to life. In the most recent revival experiments, a team of genetic researchers from Russia and Germany first reawakened and then identified a previously undiscovered nematode species, which they claim is 46,000 years old. Assuming this is true, this is the most ancient type of microscopic lifeform to have even been recovered from the freeze-dried Siberian soil.

In an article about their research just published in  PLOS Genetics , the genetic researchers describe how they confirmed the existence of this new species of roundworm, which was unearthed near  Siberia’s Kolyma River and has now been named  Panagrolaimus kolymaensis  (or P. kolymaensis ). There are many  nematode species that belong to the  Panagrolaimus line, so this ancient species has living relatives.

Interestingly, P. kolymaensis  was not recognized as a new type of nematode when it was  first revived in 2018 . It was incorrectly identified as belonging to another previously identified species, which lived 42,000 years ago.

But in the latest study, anomalies were detected that threw the initial identification of this variety of microscopic roundworm into doubt. Further analysis revealed it was a different species altogether, and one that had lived in an earlier time period.

 “The radiocarbon dating is absolutely precise, and we now know that they really survived 46,000 years,” study co-author Teymuras Kurzchalia, a cell biologist affiliated with the the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, told  Scientific American.

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