Paleontology is a very interesting area of natural science. As a naturalist, I love to think about the plants and animals that were alive on the planet thousands and millions of years ago, and it's interesting to me to think about how different (or similar!) our current natural world is.
I thought I'd point to this article about a very cool new discovery in Germany: a new genus of [extinct but fossilized] primate believed to be at some point in the evolutionary scale between early primates and early humans. It's named after Darwin (her species name is Darwinius masillae) and the discovery is published in what is known as an "open access" scientific journal -- that is, it's free to anyone who wants to read it and learn about this very cool discovery. I haven't linked directly to the article, but you can find it from the page I've linked to. It's pretty long and very dense, so I kind of like the condensed version myself!
I like this story in particular because it's both about a nifty new paleontological discovery as well as being from a group of scientists who want to share their discoveries freely with the world. Awesome.
Showing posts with label science news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science news. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
a little Big Bang
A quick update on the state of the world: we have not been sucked into an artificially created black hole. Hooray!
In other news, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started today. I mention this on a website dedicated to nature because it's the world's biggest experimental facility for physics, and the "natural history" that we study is all here, and so are we, thanks to the sorts of things physicists study. The scientists using the LHC are hoping to figure out fundamental physics questions like what happened during the Big Bang, and what kinds of other dimensions are out there.
I'll admit, I'm not a physicist and I know very little about physics. But even I think an experimental particle accelerator that is long enough to span the entire border between France and Switzerland, 100 m underground, is pretty cool. I don't understand what a hadron is, but I know they're now colliding them at high speeds, like a sub-atomic demolition derby. This is a great opportunity for physicists, and all of us, to learn about the forces that created our universe.
Pretty nifty, I think.
In other news, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started today. I mention this on a website dedicated to nature because it's the world's biggest experimental facility for physics, and the "natural history" that we study is all here, and so are we, thanks to the sorts of things physicists study. The scientists using the LHC are hoping to figure out fundamental physics questions like what happened during the Big Bang, and what kinds of other dimensions are out there.
I'll admit, I'm not a physicist and I know very little about physics. But even I think an experimental particle accelerator that is long enough to span the entire border between France and Switzerland, 100 m underground, is pretty cool. I don't understand what a hadron is, but I know they're now colliding them at high speeds, like a sub-atomic demolition derby. This is a great opportunity for physicists, and all of us, to learn about the forces that created our universe.
Pretty nifty, I think.
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