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Water On Mercury, LHC New Matters, Finding Waves, Vaccines Without Virus, Mantis Shrimp Mess, Life Abounds, This Week in The End Of The World, Horizontal Gene Transfer, And Much More…
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This Week in Science… coming up next!
BLair’s Animal Corner
Don’t Mess with a Mantis Shrimp
Mantis Shrimp, previously mentioned in episode 373 as a critter with some amazing body armor, has another reason to be feared. The shrimp that employ a large club-like smashing mechanism actually have spring-loaded motion like a catapult, performing at a whopping 10-23 m/s, whereas those that spear their prey use shear muscle force at perform at 2-6 m/s. Watch out, little fishes!
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End of the World!
Melting Glaciers
Acid Butterflies
Fish Ear Climate
Who Needs Sex?!
Bdelloid rotifers have reproduced asexually for millions of years. How are they still around? By stealing genes from other organisms. Around 10% of their DNA is acquired through horizontal gene transfer. 39% of the DNA that codes for enzymes are from a foreign source. Who needs sex, indeed?
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I'm the host of this little science show. 
12:00 If you have Hydrogen and Oxygen … there’s a pretty good chance you’re gonna find some water.
I felt this was a very good point, Blair!
As you say, the covalent bond between H and O is very strong, making the water molecules likely to form.
Also important is the Hydrogen bond between water molecules, allowing for the hexagonal lattice structure of ice.
Thanks for this great insight!
15:15 They just didn’t expect to see this at all. They’re calling it this color-glass condensate.
16:15 Gluons are acting in a way that was completely unexpected.
16:30 This new thing that they found wasn’t expected, and it’s cool.
18:00 Actually, these gluons are entangled in some way.
I don’t understand why you, much less the experimentalists are so surprised by this result!!!
Maybe you all haven’t read the 2003 paper by Edmond Iancu and Raju Venugopalan…?
Keep in mind, this isn’t some paper that flew under the radar, it has been cited over 60 times!
It clearly predicts this result would be seen at the LHC (from page 99):
Proton-Nucleus collisions are an important part of
the program at the upcoming LHC collider at CERN. A big difference
between p/D-A collisions and A-A collisions is that final state
interactions are more important in the latter than in the former. Thus
p/D-A collisions provide an important benchmark to disentangle novel
phenomena such as the Quark Gluon Plasma, which arise as a consequence
of strong final state interactions, from initial state phenomena
which may result from the Color Gluon Condensate.
The best news article I’ve seen on this topic is over at PhysicsWorld.
There, the Edmond-Venugopalan paper is mentioned, linked to, and described in adequate detail.
Also, the “entangled in some way” hypothesis is referring to the color-glass condensate.
They are one in the same explanation, not separate hypothesis!
23:40 But 95% in physics is very inaccurate.
Really, you think so? Fine, I’ll take those odds!
I bet you that gravitational waves are detected by the method proposed in the paper.
I wager my $19 to your $1 (a fair bet, assuming 95% odds in my favor).
Willing to put your money where your mouth is, come 2016?
I’ve not forgotten our existing bet with regards to dark matter, which will be up in 2015.