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11 votes
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Memories are made by breaking DNA — and fixing it (in mice)
19 votes -
More exposure to artificial, bright, outdoor night-time light linked to higher stroke risk
16 votes -
Daniel Kahneman, renowned psychologist and Nobel prize winner, dies at 90
19 votes -
Water isn't normal
24 votes -
Researchers show that introduced tardigrade proteins can slow metabolism in human cells
11 votes -
The mystery of spinors
4 votes -
When you make a mathematical knot using elastic material you get jumping loops, and challenging puzzles
8 votes -
Investigating touchscreen ergonomics to improve tablet-based enrichment for parrots
19 votes -
Science will only end once we've licked all the objects in the universe
20 votes -
Scientists studied how cicadas pee. Their insights could shed light on fluid dynamics.
7 votes -
I teach you weird animal mating facts for half an hour
13 votes -
The Dunning-Kruger effect is autocorrelation
30 votes -
Psilocybin therapy alters prefrontal and limbic brain circuitry in alcohol use disorder
17 votes -
Chimp moms play with their offspring through good times and bad
11 votes -
Turning styrofoam into cinnamon candy
24 votes -
When armor met lips
23 votes -
Happy Tau/2 day everyone!
22 votes -
Montana man, 80, pleads guilty to creating giant mutant hybrid bighorns
35 votes -
MH370 and the sea creatures that opened a new mystery
17 votes -
First Light fusion startup breaks pressure record using giant ‘gun’ machine for projectile fusion attempts
13 votes -
Colorado Bureau of Investigation finds DNA scientist manipulated data in hundreds of cases over decades
31 votes -
German man deliberately receives 217 Covid vaccinations over twenty-nine months, with no adverse events or strong effect on immune system
45 votes -
Argentina president Javier Milei’s actions after taking office have research institutions facing shutdown. Scientists protest.
18 votes -
Tests show high-temperature superconducting magnets are ready for fusion
10 votes -
Research sheds light on new strategy to treat infertility
5 votes -
Having self-control leads to power: a new study with 3,500 people finds that showing self-control influences how powerful an individual is perceived to be by their peers
20 votes -
The oldest unsolved problem in math. Do odd perfect numbers exist?
11 votes -
Millions of research papers at risk of disappearing from the Internet: An analysis of DOIs suggests that digital preservation is not keeping up with burgeoning scholarly knowledge
26 votes -
Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America
28 votes -
Wasabi could help preserve ancient Egyptian papyrus artefacts
9 votes -
Why is it so hard to tell the sex of a dinosaur?
9 votes -
Chemistry of Spice Melange (from Dune)
14 votes -
The uncharted world of emerging pathogens – In their quest to detect early outbreaks, virus hunters are sampling environmental DNA in water, dirt, and air
8 votes -
Progress deferred: Lessons from mRNA vaccine development
9 votes -
Tour of Vienna's Natural History Museum in Austria. It houses one of the oldest natural history collections in the world, dating back to the 1700's.
3 votes -
AstraZeneca unveils successes in treatment of lung cancer – best-selling Tagrisso drug slows progression of most common form of the disease at an early stage
22 votes -
What's an obelisk, anyway?
25 votes -
The bizarre patterns that emerge when you heat any fluid
11 votes -
A peer reviewed journal with nonsense AI images was just published
@🔥Kareem Carr | Statistician 🔥: It's finally happened. A peer-reviewed journal article with what appear to be nonsensical AI generated images. This is dangerous. pic.twitter.com/Ez54H6l7iZ
33 votes -
Researchers find response to ketamine depends on opioid pathways, but varies by sex
10 votes -
Are we living in an "ice age"? Clearing up some terminology.
When talking about climate, the ice age is mentioned a lot. Sometimes it is said that "the last ice age" ended roughly 10,000 years ago, and sometimes we are still said to be living in an ice age....
When talking about climate, the ice age is mentioned a lot. Sometimes it is said that "the last ice age" ended roughly 10,000 years ago, and sometimes we are still said to be living in an ice age. So which one is correct? Technically both are correct. This is due to a complexity in terminology.
The broader climate state of Earth is divided into two categories: Icehouse Earth and Greenhouse Earth (Maslin, 2014). The state when there are continental glaciers (those that cover continents, separate from glaciers seen on mountains) at any point on Earth is called the Icehouse Earth, and the state when they do not exist is called the Greenhouse Earth. Approximately 80% of the last 500 million years has been spent as a Greenhouse Earth (Spicer and Corfield, 1992). During the icehouse state of the Earth, there are glacial and interglacial periods. The glacial period occurs when the glaciers at the poles move towards the lower latitudes of Earth, that is, towards the equator. The interglacial period is the time when glaciers remain at the poles.
Both the Icehouse Earth state and the glacial period are called Ice Age, but this is misleading. The last so-called “ice age” occurred 11,700 years ago (Clark et al., 2016). This event refers to the glacial period seen on Earth. However, the Earth is still in an "ice age" because it is still in the Icehouse Earth state. Even though it is currently in the interglacial warming period, this warming is approximately 15 times faster due to climate change (Clark et al., 2016). As the anthropogenic global warming gets stronger, the rate of warming will also increase.
The glacial periods seen in the last 500,000 years can be seen in this picture. Source for the picture is here.
The cycle of glacial and interglacial periods is clearly visible. One of the main factors that caused the emergence of Icehouse Earth states and glacial periods is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It ended and started the ages by greatly changing the conditions on Earth (Maslin, 2014).
In conclusion, we are currently living in an ice age and also not. The reason for this is that the word ice age refers to two different phenomena. Therefore, it would be more useful to use the terms Icehouse Earth and glacial period instead of ice age. However, how this will be translated into everyday language remains a challenge.
Sources
- Clark, P., Shakun, J., Marcott, S. et al. (2016). Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change. Nature Clim Change 6, 360–369.
- Maslin, M. (2014). Climate change: a very short introduction. OUP Oxford.
- Spicer, R. A. & Corfield, R. M. (1992). A review of terrestrial and marine climates in the Cretaceous with implications for modelling the ‘Greenhouse Earth’. Geological Magazine, 129(2), 169-180 pp.
8 votes -
Citation cartels help some mathematicians—and their universities—climb the rankings
8 votes -
Research samples collected over decades at Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet were destroyed when a freezer malfunctioned during the Christmas holidays
30 votes -
Extreme metal guitar skills linked to intrasexual competition, but not mating success
28 votes -
Ultra-rapid MRI while singing and speaking
9 votes -
Did the future already happen? - The paradox of time
16 votes -
Researchers were able to isolate the brain from the rest of the body of a pig, and kept it alive and functioning for five hours
59 votes -
Why flying insects gather at artificial light
24 votes -
Tiny ant species disrupts lion's hunting behavior
11 votes