Last week, the Event Horizon Telescope released their first images ever taken of a black hole, specifically the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy M87. I thought this would be a good time to look back at how we’ve visualized Black Holes over the years and what we can learn from them.
If we’re going to become a space-faring civilization and travel to Mars and beyond, we need to know how to live and work in space. So while space stations aren’t the most headline-grabbing aspect of the space race, they are vitally important.
In March, my Tesla Model 3 passed the 6-month mark, and I thought it would be a good time to update my experience with the car and give you my thoughts now that some time has passed.
Last year, a YouTube video announced the birth of the first genetically engineered babies from a secret lab in China, and the event set off a firestorm of controversy in the medical field.
Humans and dogs go way back, and share a connection unlike any other animal. So much that we may not have survived without them.
David Hahn was a Boy Scout in Michigan in the late 80s with a particular interest in radioactivity. An interest that led him to build a working – and dangerous – breeder reactor in his parent’s shed.
Try Brilliant’s Daily Problems and get 20% off if you go to http://www.brilliant.org/answerswithjoe
Nuclear Fusion is the holy grail of energy, and getting closer to reality every year. Here are some of the biggest breakthroughs in fusion power over the last year.
Some of this year’s breakthroughs include:
China’s EAST tokamak reactor achieved a 100 million degree plasma for 10 seconds, a record for that temperature.
RF beams used to stabilize plasma by reducing magnetic bubbles that can cause plasma to destabilize.
TAE announces their Copernicus reactor – a scaled-up version of their Norman reactor that has proven successful enough to raise $500 million from companies like Google and Microsoft.
Physicists attempt a reverse D configuration in a tokamak and achieve more stable plasma
All around the world, insect species are dying at alarming rates. It’e being called the Insect apocalypse, and aA new study looks at why this is happening, what can be done about it, and what would happen if the trend continues.
Get a free month of CuriosityStream if you go to http://www.curiositystream.com/joescott!
In 2005, Robert Lanza introduced the theory of Biocentrism to the world. Using quantum mechanics and tests like the double-slit experiment, he argues that consciousness creates the universe and not the other way around
From sounds that literally damage your vocal cords to a language that’s entirely whistled, these are 5 of the strangest, quirkiest languages in the world.
The Piraha Language – Brazil This one is controversial because the theory is the language doesn’t have recursion. Recursion is a linguistic property where you can add phrases into phrases, also called Nesting. This is controversial because Noam Chomsky popularized the idea that recursions are a part of what he called “universal grammar” that you find in all languages.
And then Dr. Dan Everett studied the Piraha people of the Amazon rain forest in the 1970, first as a missionary and later just to research their language.
And in a paper in 2005, he claimed that the Piraha people do not use recursion, flying in the face of linguistic doctrine and shaking the very foundations of our knowledge to the ground, making international news.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/boo…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDM8G…
The Aymara language isn’t a small, tucked away language in some The reason it’s on this list is due to a little quirk that seems to be unique to the Aymara, which is the way they refer to the past and the future.
Why would they do that? The answer is a simple flip in perception, by saying that events from the past are known, meaning we can see them, they’re in front of us. Whereas the future is unknown, we can’t see it… So it’s behind us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vydhT…
It’s no secret that there are languages in sub-Saharan Africa that use click sounds along with other consonant sounds, there are several of these but this one is the quintessential one.
It features 5 different click sounds and 17 accompanying ones. Also 4 vowel sounds with four varying tones.
This language is not just difficult to learn, it’s physically straining on a non-speaker because some of these clicks are next to impossible to do without a serious amount of training.
http://www.economist.com/node/15108609
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQpLv…
Guugu Yimithirr is an ancient language, spoken by the aboriginal people of Australia for thousands of years, specifically the Guugu Yimithirr people of Far North Queensland, in fact it was actually the first aboriginal language ever written down by James Cook in 1770 and is where the word Kangaroo comes from.
All their directions used cardinal directions. Cardinal directions being North, South, East, West, and the directions in between. They didn’t have words for left, right, front or back.
What this means is that every speaker must always know what geographic direction they are facing at all times. It’s like the language has layered the geographic directions into the fabric of their culture. You literally can’t convey information without it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/mag…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF9RD…
La Gomera is an island, specifically the smallest of the Spanish Canary Islands just northwest of Africa. And on that tiny island is a language that’s not spoken anywhere else called Silbo Gomero, and it holds the top spot on this list for one simple reason. It’s spoken with whistles.
It’s literally like a whistled version of Spanish featuring two whistled vowels and four consonants.
