When trying to map out your family tree, you may have reached a point where the supposed number of ancestors you have totals more than the world population of the time. In reality, not all of your ancestors are completely random strangers; many of the pairings are likely to have been between blood relatives. This is “pedigree collapse”, explained by the fact that people rarely ventured out of their hometowns for most of human history, which meant having extended family members in the dating pool was rather common. 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
