Contrary to popular belief, Charles Darwin did not have a eureka moment in the Galapagos Islands. Aside from the 25-year gap in between his visit to the archipelago and the publishing of On the Origin of Species, there’s evidence that he didn’t pay much attention during his time there. He’d forgotten to properly label the finches everyone thinks were integral to his theory; he didn’t know which specimens were taken from which islands, and had not even noticed the differences between them until after a zoologist pointed them out. Read full article here
Science
‘Ghostly’ neutrinos provide new path to study protons
In groundbreaking research, an international collaboration of scientists from the University of Rochester have used a beam of neutrinos to measure the size and shape of the protons that make up the nuclei of atoms. This feat, once thought impossible, provides scientists with a new way of looking at the small components of an atom’s nucleus and opens up a wealth of new information about the structure of an atom’s nucleus and the dynamics of the forces that affect neutrino interactions. The researchers solved the challenge of harnessing neutrinos in large numbers by using a neutrino detector containing a target of both hydrogen and carbon atoms, and over nine years of data collection at Fermilab’s accelerator. Read full article here
Merv
March 25, 2023
