The solar system can potentially support 80 million-trillion humans if we build a Dyson sphere around the sun. A Dyson sphere is a spherical (and possibly habitable) structure built around a star to capture its energy. Were we to build a Dyson sphere — using the whole of Jupiter for materials — with a radius as large as the distance between the surface of the sun and the earth, we would be able to provide energy for the habitats of these 80 million-trillion people. Read full article here
Oddities
The Curious Case of the Ancient Brain
In 2008, archaeologists examining the University of York discovered something strange: the decapitated head of an Iron Age man and his very shrivelled but very much intact brain. How a centuries-old brain was preserved is still unknown, but research suggests that it could have been because of brain diseases like dementia. The Yorkshire man’s brain’s proteins were bunched up together, much like how dementia causes brain proteins to bunch up into plaques. This bunching up, or aggregation, could continue even after death, turning regions of the brain into hard masses. Read full article here
Merv
September 30, 2022
