Science Saturday 02/09

Happy weekend everybody, and welcome to Science Saturday. Here’s the scoop for this week.

National Geographic: Milky Way Vs. Andromeda Postponed

We’ve known for a long time (since 1912ish) that the Andromeda Galaxy will eventually collide with the Milky Way Galaxy, but the timetable has been changed since the ESA’s Gaia spacecraft gathered new data regarding the relative speeds of the two galaxies. According to the new data, the collision is expected to happen in about 4.5 billion years. Mark your calendars.

 

ScienceNews: 2018 Was Warm

The data is in, and it looks like 2018 was the 4th warmest year on record worldwide. It was also the 3rd wettest year on record in the U.S. This is another data point in the observed global warming trend. Don’t expect this topic to be going away anytime soon.

 

Science Magazine: Brain Scans Identify Consciousness

Inferring the presence or absence of human consciousness is a problem when treating patients with severe brain injury. Demertzi et al. recorded functional magnetic resonance imaging data in 159 patients to assess the alterations in brain connectivity caused by severe brain injury. Dynamic patterns of brain activity in patients in a vegetative state could be distinguished from patients in conscious or minimally conscious states. Furthermore, patterns associated with conscious states sporadically appeared in unresponsive patients, suggesting a potential path toward noninvasive restoration of consciousness.

 

CNN: Bees are Nerds

A new study has determined that honey bees are capable of doing addition and subtraction if trained. The researchers theorize that the cognitive skills demonstrated by successfully completing simple math problems may help them in foraging. Perhaps we should test them for multi variable calculus next.

 

Space.com: Huge Storms on the Ice Giants

The Hubble telescope has been monitoring the weather on Neptune and Uranus. Neptune, which is currently in its winter season, has developed an enormous dark colored storm in its northern hemisphere, which if placed on Earth would envelop 20% of the planet’s surface.. If you think winter here is bad, be grateful that it’s not as long as Neptune’s, which lasts about 41 Earth years.

 

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.