wetenschap

Er zijn 60 berichten getagd als wetenschap.

Donkerder en donkerder

Rise in sea level from ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica match worst-case scenario: study

Amy Tucker – 9 september 2020 – link artikel

Now, according to a recent study, led by Thomas Slater, a climate researcher at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, those rapidly melting ice sheets in Greenland, along with melting ice sheets in Antarctica are thought to be the main contributor to a rise in sea levels around the world. And the rate of the melt matches the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s worst-case climate warming scenario.

“Ice is being lost and it’s being lost at an accelerating rate. And this is causing sea level rise around the world. I think what we show in our research and what’s supported by other literature as well is that even very incremental gradual sea level rise can have really big impacts on flooding around our coastlines.”

…climate change and the impacts in the Arctic and the world’s high mountain ranges are occurring decades before they were projected. For example, he says that the scale of the record loss of ice melt in August 2019, had not been projected to occur until somewhere around 2070.

Ik zit met mijn denken over klimaatverandering in de pessimistische hoek. Maar het is moeilijk ontkennen dat steeds opnieuw de onderzoeken aantonen dat de gedane prognoses toch te optimistisch waren. De meetingen, onderzoeken, datapunten, algoritmes en super computers worden beter en beter en de uitkomsten donkerder en donkerder.

Ondanks blijft er in mij een stukje hoop gloeien die in wonderen geloofd.

Een kijkje in de toekomst van het universum

Het is een onvoorstelbare reis en in deze 30 minuten wordt je realiteitszin en je gevoel van tijd op tot absurde proporties opgerekt.

Zoals het ultieme kleine (atomen) in contrast staat met de oneindigheid van het (nog in de luiers lopende) universum zo staat ons leven (als het leven) in contrast met de tijdschaal ervan.

We start in 2019 and travel exponentially through time, witnessing the future of Earth, the death of the sun, the end of all stars, proton decay, zombie galaxies, possible future civilizations, exploding black holes, the effects of dark energy, alternate universes, the final fate of the cosmos – to name a few.

This is a picture of the future as painted by modern science – a picture that will surely evolve over time as we dig for more clues to how our story will unfold. Much of the science is very recent – and new puzzle pieces are still waiting to be found.


Link: TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time (4K)

De fysica en filosofie van tijd

From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Carlo Rovelli brings together physics, philosophy and art to unravel the mystery of time.

Dit is zo’n verhaal waar je veel moet fronsen en jezelf moet wakkerschudden. Altijd goed om over wat de realiteit nou is na te denken.

Link: The Physics and Philosophy of Time – with Carlo Rovelli

Dit mysterie van de diepzee veranderd onze ideeën over wat leven is

Een prachtig enthousiasmerend verhaal van Karen Lloyd waar de liefde voor haar vak en het leven dat ze bestudeerd vanaf spat. Alleen daarom is het al de moeite van het kijken waard.

Maar ze gaat ook in op een heel fundamenteel element. Tijd en energie. Ze heeft samen met veel collega’s microben gevonden in de bodem van de diepzee die het minste energie nodig hebben om te leven en daardoor is hun celdeling ook zeer traag.

So why is it that the rest of biology moves so fast? Why does a cell die after a day and a human dies after only a hundred years? These seem like really arbitrarily short limits when you think about the total amount of time in the universe. But these are not arbitrary limits. They’re dictated by one simple thing, and that thing is the Sun. Once life figured out how to harness the energy of the Sun through photosynthesis, we all had to speed up and get on day and night cycles. In that way, the Sun gave us both a reason to be fast and the fuel to do it. You can view most of life on Earth like a circulatory system, and the Sun is our beating heart.

… the deep subsurface is like a circulatory system that’s completely disconnected from the Sun. It’s instead being driven by long, slow geological rhythms. There’s currently no theoretical limit on the lifespan of one single cell. As long as there is at least a tiny energy gradient to exploit, theoretically, a single cell could live for hundreds of thousands of years or more, simply by replacing broken parts over time. To ask a microbe that lives like that to grow in our petri dishes is to ask them to adapt to our frenetic, Sun-centric, fast way of living, and maybe they’ve got better things to do than that.

Link: This deep-sea mystery is changing our understanding of life | Karen Lloyd

We hallucineren onze realiteit aan elkaar

Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience — and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. How does this happen? According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we’re all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it “reality.” Join Seth for a delightfully disorienting talk that may leave you questioning the very nature of your existence.

Anil Seth

We ervaren het als realiteit omdat we het met elkaar hebben afgesproken :)

Link: Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality

The Universe in Verse finale: Amanda Palmer reads “The Mushroom Hunters” by Neil Gaiman

Door: Maria Popova
Source: http://bit.ly/2qsrKz4

Amanda Palmer reads an original poem by Neil Gaiman, written for “The Universe in Verse.” Poem text and further context here: http://bit.ly/2pxurlH

The Universe in Verse (http://bit.ly/2qskzXJ) was an evening of poetry celebrating science and the scientists who have taken us to where we are today, and a kind of protest against the silencing of science and the defunding of the arts, with all proceeds donated to the Academy of American Poets and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Boeiend gesprek tussen wetenschappers over klimaatverandering

Climate change is an issue that will affect all of us, and will require global solutions brought about by the collaboration of scientists, the public and governments across the world to face the challenges it presents.

Professor Brian Cox, Royal Society Professor of Public Engagement, brengt experts bij elkaar om open over klimaatverandering te praten en wat dat betekent voor de toekomst van onze planeet.

Link: Brian Cox presents Science Matters – Climate Change