Genetic Evolution

At the mercy of natural selection since the dawn of life, our ancestors adapted, mated and died, passing on tiny genetic mutations that eventually made humans what we are today.

But evolution isn't bound strictly to genes anymore, a new study suggests. Instead, human culture may be driving evolution faster than genetic mutations can work.

In this conception, evolution no longer requires genetic mutations that confer a survival advantage being passed on and becoming widespread. Instead, learned behaviors passed on through culture are the "mutations" that provide survival advantages. 

This so-called cultural evolution may now shape humanity's fate more strongly than natural selection, the researchers argue.

"When a virus attacks a species, it typically becomes immune to that virus through genetic evolution," study co-author Zach Wood, a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine, told Live Science. Such evolution works slowly, as those who are more susceptible die off and only those who survive pass on their genes.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Space TIme

The fabric of space-time is a conceptual model combining the three dimensions of space with the fourth dimension of time. According to the best of current physical theories, space-time explains the unusual relativistic effects that arise from traveling near the speed of light as well as the motion of massive objects in the universe.

WHO DISCOVERED SPACE-TIME?

The famous physicist Albert Einstein helped develop the idea of space-time as part of his theory of relativity. Prior to his pioneering work, scientists had two separate theories to explain physical phenomena: Isaac Newton's laws of physics described the motion of massive objects, while James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic models explained the properties of light, according to NASA.

But experiments conducted at the end of the 19th century suggested that there was something special about light. Measurements showed that light always traveled at the same speed, no matter what. And in 1898, the French physicist and mathematician Henri Poincaré speculated that the velocity of light might be an unsurpassable limit. Around that same time, other researchers were considering the possibility that objects changed in size and mass, depending on their speed.

Einstein pulled all of these ideas together in his 1905 theory of special relativity, which postulated that the speed of light was a constant. For this to be true, space and time had to be combined into a single framework that conspired to keep light's speed the same for all observers.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Only Part Human

Scientists injected dozens of human stem cells into developing monkey embryos, and the resulting hybrids survived for up to 20 days in lab dishes.

These human-monkey embryos could someday serve as helpful models for human disease, embryonic development and aging, the study authors noted in a new report, published April 15 in the journal Cell. By zooming in on the interaction of human and animal cells in the embryos, scientists could also learn how to help human cells survive amongst animal cells, potentially advancing the effort to grow human organs in living animal models.

Such studies would offer a window into human biology that would otherwise require experimenting on humans, making such studies currently impossible. Of course, the development of human-animal chimeras — organisms that contain cells from two or more species — raises its own ethical concerns, especially in regard to how long such embryos should be allowed to develop.

In the past, scientists have attempted to incorporate human stem cells into pig and sheep embryos, with the eventual goal of growing human organs in the livestock for use in transplant surgeries, Science Magazine reported. But very few human cells survived the experiments.   TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Four Forces of Nature

 LIVE SCIENCE REPORTS...

All the forces that we experience every day (and many that we don't realize we experience every day) can be whittled down to just four fundamental forces of nature:

Gravity.
The weak force.
Electromagnetism.
The strong force.

These four fundamental forces of nature govern everything that happens in the universe.

Gravity
Gravity is the attraction between two objects that have mass or energy, whether this is seen in dropping a rock from a bridge, a planet orbiting a star or the moon causing ocean tides. Gravity is probably the most intuitive and familiar of the four fundamental forces of nature, but it's also been one of the most challenging to explain.

The weak force
The weak force, also called the weak nuclear interaction, is responsible for particle decay. This is the literal change of one type of subatomic particle into another. So, for example, a neutrino that strays close to a neutron can turn the neutron into a proton while the neutrino becomes an electron.

Electromagnetic force
The electromagnetic force, also called the Lorentz force, acts between charged particles, like negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons. Opposite charges attract one another, while like charges repel. The greater the charge, the greater the force. And much like gravity, this force can be felt from an infinite distance (albeit the force would be very, very small at that distance).

The strong nuclear force
The strong nuclear force, also called the strong nuclear interaction, is the strongest of the four fundamental forces of nature. It's 6 thousand trillion trillion trillion (that’s 39 zeroes after 6!) times stronger than the force of gravity, according to the HyperPhysics website. And that's because it binds the fundamental particles of matter together to form larger particles. It holds together the quarks that make up protons and neutrons, and part of the strong force also keeps the protons and neutrons of an atom's nucleus together.  READ MORE

Extraterrestrials: More Evidence

Extraterrestrial evidence: 10 incredible findings about aliens from 2020
By Adam Mann - Live Science Contributor 22 days ago

Here on the little space rock we call Earth, humans often wonder whether or not we are alone in this universe. Though that question was not answered in 2020, many discoveries seemed to increase the prospect of extraterrestrial entities existing. Findings on the closest planet to us, in the outer solar system and the far beyond seemed to point to the possibility that other worlds could host organisms ranging from bacteria to technological beings. Perhaps, new results in the coming year will finally reveal who else might be out there.

Article Topics:

1. Is E.T. phoning us from Proxima Centauri?
2. Alien bacteria might live in the clouds of Venus
3. 'Oumuamua could still be an alien artifact
4. Navy declassifies UFO videos but don't believe the hype
5. Milky Way could be teeming with ocean worlds
6. Earth bugs breathe hydrogen, maybe aliens do too
7. Life could live around a black hole
8. 1,000 places ET could be watching us from
9. Most aliens are probably dead
10. We should be open-minded as we search for life elsewhere

TO READ FULL ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...