Новости за 21.08.2017

Rebecca Helm, DS News
On July 20th, 1963, three scientists sat on a research ship 200 miles south of Woods Hole, MA, waiting for something remarkable. They were nearly 4000m above the seafloor, and using sonar, they could see' a line of creatures resting in the deep. By this time, biologists were beginning to unravel the mystery of this false bottom'a layer in the ocean that looks the the sea floor on sonar but isn'twhich covered much of the ocean.

Ryan Mandelbaum, Gizmodo
Tomorrow, 7.5 million people will crowd a 70-mile-wide, 2800-mile-long strip of land as the moon blocks the sun's light for somewhere around two minutes. The sky will turn dark, several million-degree solar corona will become visible, and the stars will appear in the middle of the day.All that is, of course, if it's clear out. It might get cloudy, even in the driest place, Angela Speck, Director of Astronomy at the University of Missouri told Gizmodo. But have no fear. Читать дальше...

Frayer & Saracoglu, NPR
When children in Turkey head back to school this fall, something will be missing from their textbooks: any mention of evolution.The Turkish government is phasing in what it calls a values-based curriculum. Critics accuse Turkey's president of pushing a more conservative, religious ideology at the expense of young people's education.At a playground in an upscale, secular area of Istanbul, parents and grandparents express concern over the new policy.

Daniel Engber, Slate
Two years ago this month, news of the replication crisis reached the front page of the New York Times. Psychology's Fears Confirmed: Rechecked Studies Don't Hold Up, read the A1 headline on the morning of Aug. 28, 2015. The journal Science had just published a landmark effort to reproduce the findings of 100 recent peer-reviewed psychology experiments, and just 39 of those replications succeeded. This dispiriting result, the Times reported, confirmed the worst fears of scientists... Читать дальше...

Jeff Tollefson, Nature News
US president Donald Trump's administration has disbanded a government advisory committee that was intended to help the country prepare for a changing climate.The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration established the committee in 2015 to help businesses and state and local governments make use of the next national climate assessment. The legally mandated report, due in 2018, will lay out the latest climate-change science and describe how global warming is likely to affect the United States... Читать дальше...

Annie Dillard, The Atlantic
Ever since it was first published in 1982, readersincluding this onehave thrilled to Total Eclipse, Annie Dillard's masterpiece of literary nonfiction, which describes her personal experience of a solar eclipse in Washington State. It first appeared in Dillard's landmark collection, Teaching a Stone to Talk, and was recently republished in The Abundance, a new anthology of her work. The Atlantic is pleased to offer the essay in full, here, until the day after the Great American Eclipse' on August 21.

Kyree Leary, Futurism
One of the most well known quotes regarding life in the universe aside from our own is from Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who once said: Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.We know next to nothing about intelligent alien life, including the probability of their existence. Yet, even the smartest people among us believe we'll make contact, and sooner rather than later.

Helen MacDonald, New York Times
In March 2006, I stood on a crowded beach in Turkey and waited until, at the allotted time, with a chorus of screams and cheers and whistles and applause, the sun slid away, and impossibly, impossibly, we saw above us a stretch of black sky and in the middle of it a hole, blacker than anything I'd ever seen, fringed with a ring of soft white fire. My heart jumped up to my throat, and my eyes grew hot with tears. I fell to my knees, feeling tiny and huge, and as lonely as I've ever been... Читать дальше...