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From Business Insider: “They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought,” Dr. Hawking said in a talk last year. “If you feel you are trapped in a black hole, don’t give up. There is a way out.” He posted his paper on arXiv, a pre-peer review site, in January. This month, the paper was finally published in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters. Hawking’s assertion that it is, in fact, possible to escape a black hole will not only transform our definition of them, it will also solve a longstanding riddle about what happens to the information that these mysterious space beasts devour. More. See also: Stephen Hawking on the revised end of all things

Did we miss it? From 2015: Does the universe embody beautiful ideas? Artists as well as scientists throughout human history have pondered this “beautiful question.” With Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek as your guide, embark on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present. Wilczek’s groundbreaking work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature. In fact, every major advance in his career came from this intuition: to assume that the universe embodies beautiful forms, forms whose hallmarks are symmetry—harmony, balance, proportion—and economy. There are other meanings of “beauty,” but this is the deep logic of the universe—and it is no accident that it is also Read More ›

From Pacific Standard magazine: The results revealed that scientists are perceived as more likely than members of other groups to commit certain, but not all, moral transgressions. Specifically, they were viewed as more likely to engage in serial murder, incest, and necrobestiality, but not more likely to cheat or abuse others. This is best understood in the context of the Moral Foundations Theory, which asserts ethical norms can be categorized into two broad classifications: “individualizing” ones, which prohibit harming others and encourage fairness for all; and “binding” ones, which are based on notions of purity, loyalty, and deference to authority. Broadly speaking, the first set guides liberals’ moral thinking, while the second resonates with social conservatives. The transgressions the scientists Read More ›

From Intellectual Takeout: Reasoning aside, Kaku’s conclusion is pretty is clear. “The final solution resolution could be that God is a mathematician,” says Kaku. “The mind of God, we believe, is cosmic music. The music of strings resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace.” More. We’re more familiar with string theory, etc., being used to explain why the universe isn’t designed. Kakio has critiqued Darwinism too in the past. Lives dangerously. See also: Multiverse cosmology: Assuming that evidence still matters, what does it say?

From ScienceDaily: Researchers are resurrecting ancient bacterial protein complexes to determine how 3.5-billion-year-old cells functioned versus cells of today. Surprisingly, they are not that different. Despite a popular hypothesis that primordial organisms had simple enzyme proteins, evidence suggests that bacteria around 500 million years after life began already had the sophisticated cellular machinery that exists today.” More. See also: See also: Michael Denton on the discontinuity of nature: Denton focuses on the many examples of fundamental features of life forms, like the pentadactyl limb of vertebrates, that are uniform, but serve no adaptive purpose in particular, pointing perhaps to discoverable physical patterns in nature, like the patterns in the chemical elements. and Sometimes Denton sounds like a Darwin who got Read More ›

From Daily Caller: A sad, sparse crowd of a few thousand people dotted the expansive National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Saturday to be part of a “Reason Rally,” an event devoted increasing the political power of Americans who reject religion. “There are millions and millions and millions of atheists in America,” Robyn E. Blumner, CEO of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, told the meager flock of believers in nothingness. Blumner also complained that no one listens to atheists. More. Have yourself an atheist-free evening. See you in the morning. See also: 10 reasons why atheists are delusional Follow UD News at Twitter!

From RealClearScience: Grolar bears a result of climate change Climate change is in part responsible for the emergence of these grolar hybrids, as polar bears that live and hunt on the ever-shrinking Arctic sea ice are forced on land during mating season in spring and summer. At the same time, male grizzly bears are expanding their habitats, roaming into polar bear territories, and emerging from hibernation earlier in the year. Inuit hunters have spotted grizzly bears in the Arctic for decades, but numbers are believed to have increased recently, causing males to disperse further in search of a female.The result is that where the two species meet, they mate, says Derocher. More. Some of us think bears have been sinning for Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Enel et al at the INSERM in France investigate one of the most noteworthy properties of primate behavior, its diversity and adaptability. Human and non-human primates can learn an astonishing variety of novel behaviors that could not have been directly anticipated by evolution — we now understand that this ability to cope with new situations is due to the “pre-adapted” nature of the primate brain. … This breakthrough shows that we have taken big step towards understanding the local recurrent connectivity in the brain that prepares primates to face unlimited situations. This research shows that by allowing essentially unlimited combinations of internal representations in the network of the brain, one of them is always on hand for the Read More ›

From Bob Holmes at New Scientist on unfair animal intelligence tests: Elephants can’t recognise themselves in a mirror? Sure they can – if you give them a mirror big enough to show more than just a leg or two. As researchers learn to design more appropriate IQ tests that meet the animals on their own terms, more and more claims about things only humans can do are proving false. But Byrne’s concern is with one particular part of the intellectual landscape, a skill he calls “insight” – an animal’s ability to form and manipulate ideas in its head. Many apparently sophisticated behaviours need not imply any insight at all, he argues. When a band of chimps cuts off every escape route Read More ›

From Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: String theory continues to make progress. Today the news is from Megan Fox: “Sometimes I just know things,” she explains. “I accidentally tap into stuff sometimes. I used to do it as a kid, and I do it as an adult. I crossed over and saw a future string.” String, as in string theory. Fox is into stuff like that. She’s also spiritual. On her Instagram profile, she describes herself thusly: “Child of the Cherokee Tribe … forest nymph … Lunar Leo mother goddess to 2 bohemian revolutionaries-my kamikaze free spirit & my peaceful warrior.” A few months ago it was Jaden Smith moving the subject forward: More. Do these people have a Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: New research reports that, contrary to popular belief, mammals began their massive diversification 10 to 20 million years before the extinction of the dinosaurs. Elis Newham, PhD student in Engineering and the Environment and co-author of the study, which is published Proceedings of the Royal Society B, said: “The traditional view is that mammals were suppressed during the ‘age of the dinosaurs’ and underwent a rapid diversification immediately following the extinction of the dinosaurs. However, our findings were that therian mammals, the ancestors of most modern mammals, were already diversifying considerably before the extinction event and the event also had a considerably negative impact on mammal diversity.” The old hypothesis hinged upon the fact that many of the Read More ›

Here: Well, I must say I didn’t expect to be honored by a 7500 word broadside by philosopher Dr. Vincent Torley, assisted by Dr. Josh Swamidass, Assistant Professor at Washington University. I guess they must have a lot of spare time. The reason for the post at Uncommon Descent? Both hold common descent to be absolutely, incontrovertibly, obviously true, and they apparently wish I would fall into line and stop embarrassing them by doubting common descent. They wish I would give up my “peculiar kind of intellectual obstinacy.” The argument is in the end all about common descent. (There are a few accusations of poor reasoning, obscuring the issue, and even a little bad faith along the way.) Look, intelligent Read More ›

You don’t know what political correctness prevents you from knowing From the Bulletin: Americans were scandalized by revelations from Flint, Michigan, where citizens have dealt with unsafe, lead-tainted drinking water for two years. When the news broke—of the tainted water itself, the state agencies who initially dismissed the problem, and the bungled federal response—many asked, “How could this happen here?” The fact is, though, that what went wrong in Michigan has happened before and continues to happen in various parts of the United States: Regulators charged with protecting the public interest fail to do so, because they act based on political pressure—real or perceived—rather than science. When this happens, two things can result. First, actual immediate harm can come to Read More ›

Repackaged by PBS as defending “beauty”: From PBS: For example, while the Large Hadron Collider has so far failed to show evidence of supersymmetry, many have essentially said that the collision wasn’t powerful enough or that some small modifications are all that’s needed to fit the theory they love with the data they gathered. “Supersymmetry has been around since 1974, for 42 years, and it doesn’t really have any evidence that it’s there. But people really bet their careers on this,” Gleiser explains. “Many physicists have spent 40 years working on this, which is basically their whole professional life.” That may change in in ten years or so, he says, when further advances to the LHC could force the hangers-on Read More ›

From various sources, we learn about those short people: They are older than thought: “These new findings suggest that Homo floresiensis is indeed a dwarfed form of Homo erectus from Java, a small group of which must have gotten marooned on Flores and evolved in isolation,” van den Bergh says. The fossils also dispel any lingering theories that the hobbits were a form of diseased Homo sapiens, with smaller heads and statures due to developmental conditions such as Down syndrome or microcephaly, the birth defect linked to the modern Zika outbreak. (NatGeo) They are said to have shrunk rapidly: Scientists have discovered the 700,000-year-old ancestor of the tiny primitive human known as “the Hobbit”. Its fossils indicate that the normal-sized Read More ›