April 18 2023 - Scientists are worried

 

They are worried that the galaxies they keep finding with the James Webb Space Telescope shouldn't exist.  The scientist warned us.  The galaxies were as mature as our own Milky Way and they come from the beginnings of the universe.   There's billions of celestial objects - sounds like an overwhelming panic. And worse: We may be missing some fundamental information about the universe.  Galaxy formation is under the "microscope". There might be something wrong with the dark energy and cold dark matter paradigm that has been guiding cosmology for decades.  Just how do you go about changing your understanding of the cosmos and how galaxies grow?  That's an exciting proposition. Other headlines?   Why do some James Webb Space Telescope images show warped and repeated galaxies?  Does the sun really belong in its family? Astronomers get to the bottom of stellar identity crisis There's a lot going on in this field.   It's a train day today. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Oct 3 2020 - And they get paid for this

 

Scientists have figured out the funniest jokes ever.  What kind of scientists figure out funny jokes? Oxford University scientists. "Robin Dunbar and colleagues at Oxford University investigated the cognitive mechanism underlying laughter and humour. The research is published in Springer’s journal Human Nature. "   He's a smiling person in the Wikipedia entry - a British anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist and a specialist in primate behaviour.  He is currently head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford.  It sounds impressive to me.  And there's more. He has formulated Dunbar's number, a measurement of the cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships.  What is the number?  it is 150 - based on the ratio between brain sizes and group sizes.  This was done on non-human primates.  It was then applied to humans and found to be consistent.  Subsequent studies have disputed the number and American scientists claim their number is much higher - 290.  The excellent article is HERE. According to the theory, the tightest circle has just five people – loved ones. That’s followed by successive layers of 15 (good friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (people you can recognise). People migrate in and out of these layers, but the idea is that space has to be carved out for any new entrants. So now it seems worthwhile to find out the world's most popular jokes. The study comes from someone who has thought about us carefully. They took the 100 Funniest Jokes of All Time (HERE) as their input data. Their result is the 50 jokes that we think are the funniest.   That seems straightforward.  They must have used more than the 100 funniest jokes because one article identified some of the jokes that the researches determined "just didn’t work" and "you should NEVER say at the pub": ‘If I ever have twins, I’d use one for parts.’  ‘Animals may be our friends. But they won’t pick you up at the airport.’ ‘Contrary to what most people would say, the most dangerous animal in the world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. It’s a shark riding on an elephant’s back, just trampling and eating everything they see.’  ‘I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy.’ Two pretty Passion Flowers today. There are 400 species of this beautiful flower, but only Passiflora edulis is known as passionfruit.

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