Domestication Syndrome Is One Of The Coolest Findings From Recent Genetics

message from pluto 6

yes it’s true i do not like people

Circus Tree: Six individual sycamore trees were shaped, bent, and braided to form this.

The orbit of Jupiter protects the Earth from asteroids.

Scientists just spotted an adorable star that barely even qualifies as one

Sometimes, scientists’ categories for things can be a little demeaning. For example: the “failed star” designation for objects that are larger than planets but smaller than stars.

About 600 light-years away, EBLM J0555-57Ab just barely missed the failed star category. But as will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, it’s just a hair over the boundary, making it one of the smallest stars we know of.

“Failed star” is actually a factual statement — it just means something isn’t large enough to manage to bang hydrogen atoms together to form helium, the basic process at the heart of a burning star.

EBLM J0555-57Ab looks a bit like it shouldn’t have made the cut: It’s only a tiny bit larger than Saturn, or about one-twelfth the size of our sun. Read more (7/12/17)

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This might be my favourite iteration of this meme.

message from pluto 7

when i printed my “poster” the printer freaked out and ink splattered at the top i am crying 😭

This was the crossword puzzle in the New York Times yesterday. 

Tausig’s crossword is a so-called Schrödinger puzzle, named for the physicist’s hypothetical cat that is at once both alive and dead. In a Schrödinger puzzle, select squares have more than one correct letter answer: They exist in two states at once. “Black Halloween animal,” for example, could be both BAT or CAT, yielding two different but perfectly correct puzzles. Only 10 such puzzles have now been published in Times history.

It’s the theme of Tausig’s puzzle, though, that makes it special. Four entries in Thursday’s crossword can include either an “F” or an “M.” Both are correct; neither is wrong. For example, “Part of a house” can be either ROOF or ROOM. The long “revealer” answer, tying those select entries together and spanning 11 squares smack-dab in the middle of the puzzle, is GENDER FLUID.

This puzzle, with “M”s and “F”s that aren’t fixed, is a masterful blend of subject and structure. “It potentially really evokes what gender fluidity is, which is not moving back and forth between two poles, but actually not being committed to either pole, and potentially existing in many states at different times,” Tausig said.

I don’t know why this headline is so hilarious to me