Here are 10 science news that I find interesting and important to take note.
Daydreaming is good: It means you’re smart – A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that daydreaming during meetings isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It might be a sign that you’re really smart and creative. Science Daily
Transparent solar technology represents ‘wave of the future’ – See-through solar materials that can be applied to windows represent a massive source of untapped energy and could harvest as much power as bigger, bulkier rooftop solar units, scientists report in Nature Energy. Science Daily
Arsenic can cause cancer decades after exposure ends – A new paper published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute shows that arsenic in drinking water may have one of the longest dormancy periods of any carcinogen. By tracking the mortality rates of people exposed to arsenic-contaminated drinking water in a region in Chile, the researchers provide evidence of increases in lung, bladder, and kidney cancer even 40 years after high arsenic exposures ended. Science Daily
What detecting gravitational waves means for the expansion of the universe – Ripples in spacetime travel at the speed of light. That fact, confirmed by the recent detection of a pair of colliding stellar corpses, kills a whole category of theories that mess with the laws of gravity to explain why the universe is expanding as fast as it is. Science News
Nicaragua Joins Paris Agreement Leaving America And Syria Isolated – The world reeled when President Trump announced that America would withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement earlier this year. Despite all the political, environmental, societal, and economic costs of doing so, the White House declared that it would stop all efforts to combat climate change at a federal level. IFLScience
12 Global Cities Unite In Bold Declaration To Make Streets Fossil Fuel-Free By 2030 – The mayors of London, Los Angeles, Paris, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Quito, Vancouver, Mexico City, Milan, Seattle, Auckland, and Cape Town have just committed to a bold plan to clean up their cities’ air and calm the wider threat of climate change. IFLScience
Scientists Have Concluded That The Universe Shouldn’t Really Exist – Scientists just confirmed the problem at the centre of the Universe: it shouldn’t really exist at all. Science Alert
Why haven’t we had alien contact? Blame icy ocean worlds – Might ET be buried under too much ice to phone Earth? That’s what planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has concluded may be delaying our contact with alien civilizations. Most extraterrestrial creatures are likely deep inside their home planets, in subsurface oceans crusted over in frozen water ice, according to a new proposal at this year’s American Astronomy Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Provo, Utah. The hypothesis could explain the lack of signals from other technologically advanced civilizations, a conundrum known as the Fermi paradox. Science
Sun’s light touch explains asteroids flying in formation behind Mars – The power of sunlight appears to be simultaneously creating and destroying families of asteroids, according to a new study of Mars’s Trojans, asteroids that accompany the planet like planes flying in formation. The result, reported yesterday at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Provo, Utah, solves a minor mystery and could explain the creation of asteroid families in other parts of the solar system. Science
Mating with Neandertals reintroduced ‘lost’ DNA into modern humans – Interbreeding with Neandertals restored some genetic heirlooms that modern humans left behind in the ancient exodus from Africa, new research suggests. Science News
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