Recent content by Torbjorn Larsson

Nothing is "specified" (specification) in evolution, but there is speciation (species divergencies). Hominins (Panina, Homonina) started to speciate 6 million years ago. We don't know much about chimp evolution, but chimps and bonobos split later at 2 million years ago. On the Hominina side...

Apparently the paper was. The association is spurious. From one paper that address viral radiation and clearly ties it to the diversification of the host, they talk about double stranded DNA breaks. But the viral paper found 13 RNA and 4 DNA virus groups - where RNA viruses has no problem to...

Their series of references dips back to the original plane discovery paper to point out a recent upset as a potential culprit, specifically a collision with the nearby and seemingly collision stripped M32 galaxy: From the article of Cooper: And it points back to an earlier Cooper article with...

Still going. The magnetic field and plasma wave instruments are still collecting useful trans-heliosphere interstellar space data. They embiggened the RTGs (and RHUs heaters) by having several - 3 RGTs and 9 RHUs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_systems_in_space The main...

I very much agree with the general comment. Solar radiation has order of magnitude more free energy potential fluxes, which is why land plants dominate the ecological energy budget. But to nitpick, it is not H2S that biologists find at the root of the ToL after the split between geology and...

The results are not based on fluid dynamics of e.g. general relativistic simplified models or classical physics models of viscous systems, but newtonian gravity of astronomical bodies. Modeling the simple elliptical orbits of planets and comets as helixes to account for the solar system orbit...

Interesting outcome of the solar system orbital ecliptic plane being so tilted against the galactic plane, it sets up Kosai cycles that defines the arms, as well as the spiral disk tilt at the edges. But the spiral illustration here may be misleading, the two spiral arms are not as long...

It seems this refers to Odin: https://www.astroforge.com/updates/mission-2-preview First, let me note (why this was unclear and) that there are two IM-2 missions in trouble, the second one developed on a shared commercial bus (Lunar Trailblazer, bus provided by Lockheed Martin)...

Interesting, as they see individual extended periods of waves in about 100 m of wind deposited strata, suggesting a long period of ice free water and they note that while this is seen they don't see evidence of glacial processes. According to "THE SEDIMENTARY HISTORY OF MARS AS OBSERVED BY...

This looks an unexplained fact although spurious: ""We found that about 60% of the molecular clouds we observed had a filamentary structure with a width of about 0.3 light-years,". But it seems it may be a problematic formulation, as that is the resolution of the survey:

This could be one type of cosmic ray source. Another proposed source could dominate the cosmic rays, at least at high energies, fulfilling observed spectral and flux conditions: https://www.science.org/content/article/do-mysterious-ultra-energetic-cosmic-rays-come-colliding-neutron-stars

An earlier paper said [in 2012]: https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/421/1/L24/989131

The main takeaway IMHO is that they extend observed AGNs downwards in mass and that their data then indicate that Pop III seeds could fit the growth trend. I don’t grok the press release claim, repeated here: “However, only 70 of the newly discovered IMBH candidates overlap with dwarf AGN...

Good to see that New Horizons made it this far and may continue to deepen our knowledge of the termination shock. The shoutout for an interstellar probe is also nice to see. That said, I hope this science survives the 20 % budget cuts that the above-and-beyond performer the Webb telescope now...

Nice to see the new telescope and one of its new type of events. Hopefully we will learn more on the latter soon!