your science briefing for 01.27.2015
The geography of wealth in the United States, a mysterious cry from a dying galaxy, surfing lasers to the stars, and more...
Yawning wealth inequality isn’t just destabilizing social order in the United States, it’s also created two nations in one. Wealthy, mostly coastal hubs that keep getting more and more prosperous, and large swaths getting poorer and poorer. The gap between the richest and poorest areas has doubled over the last 60 years, and the disparity is continuing to accelerate… (The Conversation)
Just as we thought that we had fast radio bursts figured out, the universe throws us another curveball. If they’re really coming from magnetically active neutron stars we call magnetars, how does a dying galaxy where new stars are no longer being born, populated by white and red dwarfs that should’t have the mass to create magnetars or any other event we’d register as an FRB… (Earth.com)
Winds on Earth are usually around five miles per hour, or seven and a half kilometers per hour, on average. They do get a lot faster during storms, but no matter how hard tornadoes and hurricanes blow, they’d barely register on a gas giant where gusts can howl at supersonic velocities. And now, scientists found a gas giant which has winds that put every other gas giant we know to shame at 20,000 mph… (ScienceAlert)
Lasers are the closest thing that science has to magic. Need to line things up? Laser. Need to fix your eyes? Laser. Need an accurate 3D map? Laser. Need to cool down a small area to nearly absolute zero? Lasers. Need to warp the fabric of space and time to potentially faster than light itself? Lasers. Need to accelerate the spacecraft of the near future to ends of the solar system and beyond? You got it, lasers… (Space.com)
Okay, so what if the giant spacecraft accelerating laser doesn’t work? Well, we have a backup plan from the atompunk age of science fiction: use nuclear reactors on board spaceships to heat propellant far more effectively, or power ion engines to accelerate them fast enough to get to Mars within a month instead of eight… (IE)