[NEWS] Five space science links: ocean worlds, M75, wormholes, neutron stars, black holes, LIGO

• Gizmodo notes the remarkable depth of the oceans of water worlds, going hundreds of kilometres down (or more!).
• Motherboard reports on the latest Hubble images of Messier 75, a star cluster that is the vestige of a galaxy absorbed into the Milky Way.
• Matt Williams at Universe Today notes a new study suggesting that, while traversable wormholes might be physically possible without exotic matter, they would not allow for FTL travel.
• Paul Sutter at Universe Today notes that a closer study of kilonovas might allow for a better understanding of the interior structures of neutron stars.
• Ars Technica notes that LIGO may have detected a collision between a black hole and a neutron star.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• In an extended meditation, Antipope’s Charlie Stross considers what the domestic architecture of the future will look like. What different technologies, with different uses of space, will come into play?
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait looks at the new SPECULOOS exoplanet hunting telescope, specializing in the search for planets around the coolest stars.
• The Crux looks at the evolutionary origins of hominins and chimpanzees in an upright walking ape several million years ago.
• D-Brief notes the multiple detections of gravitational waves made by LIGO.
• The Dragon’s Tales looks at the development of laser weapons by China.
• Karen Sternheimer at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the gap between social theory and field research.
• Gizmodo shares an interesting discussion with paleontologists and other dinosaur experts: What would the dinosaurs have become if not for the Chixculub impact?
• Hornet Stories notes the ways in which the policies of the Satanic Temple would be good for queer students.
• io9 notes how the Deep Space 9 documentary What We Leave Behind imagines what a Season 8 would have looked like.
• Joe. My. God. reports that activist Jacob Wohl is apparently behind allegations of a sexual assault by Pete Buttigieg against a subordinate.
• JSTOR Daily takes a look at the uses of the yellow ribbon in American popular culture.
• Language Hat shares an account of the life experiences of an Israeli taxi driver, spread across languages and borders.
• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money makes deserved fun of Bret Easton Ellis for his claims to having been marginalized.
• Marginal Revolution considers, briefly, the idea that artificial intelligence might not be harmful to humans. (Why would it necessarily have to be?)
• The NYR Daily considers a British exhibition of artworks by artists from the former Czechoslovakia.
• Peter Rukavina looks at gender representation in party caucuses in PEI from the early 1990s on, noting the huge surge in female representation in the Greens now.
• The Signal looks at how the Library of Congress is preserving Latin American monographs.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains how Einstein knew that gravity must bend light.
• Window on Eurasia explains the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s.

[NEWS] Five D-Brief links: T-rex, hallucinations, LIGO, bacteria, Magellanic Clouds

• D-Brief notes new evidence that the biggest Tyrannosaurus was the oldest one.
• D-Brief notes a new study suggesting that hallucinations are the responses of the body to a lack of sensory stimulation.
• D-Brief notes that LIGO has resumed its hunt for gravitational wave sources.
• D-Brief notes that antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be found in abundance at wastewater treatment plants.
• D-Brief notes a new effort to enlist human eyes to detect stellar clusters in the Magellanic Clouds.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Centauri Dreams considers what would be needed, and what would be the use, of a SETI search of Earth’s co-orbitals.
• John Quiggin at Crooked Timber considers the idea of nature potentially having legal rights in the context of corporations, likewise, actually having such.
• D-Brief reports that the Mars 2020 probe will bring with it a mini-probe built around a helicopter.
• io9 notes that writer Jonathan Hickman will be coming back to Marvel to write two new X-Men books this summer.
• Joe. My. God. notes that a Trump supporter recently arrested for a Mafia slaying had earlier tried to conduct citizen’s arrests of prominent Democrats.
• Language Hat takes a look at obscenities in Russian that do not quite make it over to English.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money reacts to the massive anti-Brexit protests in the United Kingdom this past weekend.
• Marginal Revolution discusses just how bad a Brexit is likely to be, or not.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains why LIGO and like instruments have not detected gravitational wave sources within our galaxy. (Briefly, they aren’t good enough yet to pick up faint sources.)
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that not much new has come from the release of the Mueller investigation summary.
• Arnold Zwicky builds from a report of a new LGBTQ consumer advocate from Florida, Nik Harris.

[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: Pojang, LIGO, Mars, extraterrestrial life, DM Tauri

• The 2017 Pojang earthquake in South Korea was caused by an experimental geothermal power plant, water injected into the ground creating new instabilities. VICE reports.
• Universe Today notes that, newly upgraded, LIGO will begin searching for gravitational waves anew on 1 April.
• Universe Today examines the factors which making landing large masses on Mars so technically challenging.
• Universe Today considers which sorts of circumstellar habitable zone are the best to search for seekers of extraterrestrial life.
• Motherboard notes astronomers’ study of the relatively Sun-like pre-main sequence star of DM Tauri, which may now be forming a solar system like our own.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait reports on the black hole collisions recently identified in a retrospective analysis of data from gravitational-wave detector LIGO, while Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel also writes about the LIGO black hole collision discoveries.
• Centauri Dreams suggests that a slowing rate of star formation might be necessary for a galaxy to support life like ours.
• Crooked Timber reports on the outcome of a sort of live-action philosophy experiment, recruiting people to decide on what would be a utopia.
• The Crux reports on the challenges facing developers of a HIV vaccine.
• D-Brief notes the circumstances in which men can pass on mitochondrial DNA to their children.
• Far Outliers notes the fates of some well-placed Korean-Japanese POWs in India.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing wonders if the existential questions about human life raised by genetic engineering can even be addressed by the liberal-democratic order.
• Joe. My. God. reports on the worrying possibility of a Bernie Sanders presidential run in 2020.
• JSTOR Daily reports on the art and the politics of Chinese provocateur Ai Weiwei.
• Language Hat looks at the smart ways in which the film adaptation of My Brilliant Friend has made use of Neapolitan dialect, as a marker of identity and more.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at what a new Chinese blockbuster film, Operation Red Sea, does and does not say about how Chinese think they could manage the international order.
• Geoffrey Pullum at Lingua Franca considers the logical paradox behind the idea of a webpage that has links to all other webpages which do not link to themselves.
• Anna Badhken at the NYR Daily uses Olga Tokarczuk’s new novel Flights and her own experience as an airline passenger to consider the perspectives offered and lost by lofty flight.
• The Planetary Society Blog’s Jason Davis notes the successful launch of a Soyuz spacecraft two months after October’s abort, carrying with it (among others) Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques.
• Strange Company notes the 1736 Porteous riot in Edinburgh, an event that began with a hanging of a smuggler and ended with a lynching.
• Towleroad notes that André Aciman is working on a sequel to his novel Call Me By Your Name.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society takes a look at the organizational issues involved with governments exercising their will.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy makes a good case as to why a second referendum on Brexit would be perfectly legitimate.
• Window on Eurasia suggests expanding Russian-language instruction in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan has more to deal with the needs of labour migrants.
• Yorkshire Ranter Alex Harrowell responds to Feng Jicai’s book on the Cultural Revolution, Ten Years of Madness.
• Arnold Zwicky reports on Swiss food, starting with the McRaclette.

[NEWS] Five science links: cocoliztli in Mexico, English forest, geothermal and tidal, space science

• National Geographic notes a new study suggesting that a salmonella variant was substantially responsible for a mysterious plague, cocoliztli, that depopulated 16th century Mexico.
• Wired reports on a worthy attempt at environmental engineering in the United Kingdom, an attempt to build a coast-to-coast forest in northern England.
• National Observer notes that the government of Canada is preparing funding for higher-risk clean power technologies including geothermal and tidal energy.
• Universe Today’s Matt Williams notes a new study, drawing from LIGO data, determining that at their most massive non-rotating neutron stars can only have 2.16 solar masses.
• Matt Williams at Universe Today observes the detection of a stellar-mass black hole candidate in the heart of globular cluster NGC 3201. It’s not an intermediate-mass black hole, but it’s something!

[NEWS] Four science and technology links: LIGO, Neanderthal genes, Kazuo Ishiguro, AI gods

• I bet that, as numerous reports have indicated, LIGO picked up a neutron star collision, with EM traces. D-Brief reports.
• Neanderthal genes seem to have had a big influence on modern human health. I would be surprised not to have some. National Geographic describes.
• Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go may evoke crises of bioethics, but I’m not sure it relates to genetic engineering. VICE reports.
• These apocalyptic visions of technophiles who want to create an artificial intelligence to become god are notable. The Guardian takes a look.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Antipope Charlie Stross takes a look at the parlous state of the world, and imagines what if the US and UK went differently.
• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at Sirius, including white dwarf Sirius B.
• Centauri Dreams considers Cassini’s final function, as a probe of Saturn’s atmosphere.
• D-Brief notes the discovery that diamonds rain deep in Neptune (and Uranus).
• Bruce Dorminey reports on a NASA scientist’s argument that we need new interstellar probes, not unlike Voyager 1.
• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the way a course syllabus is like a Van Halen contract rider.
• Language Hat takes a look at the palimpsests of St. Catherine’s Monastery, deep in the Sinai.
• Language Log looks at the etymology, and the history, of chow mein.
• The LRB Blog recounts a visit to Mount Rushmore in the era of Trump.
• Marginal Revolution takes a look at the question of why Mexico isn’t enjoying higher rates of economic growth.
• Personal Reflections’ Jim Belshaw considers the extent to which politics these days is just sound and fury, meaning nothing.
• Mark Simpson links to an essay of his explaining why we should be glad the Smiths broke up in 1987.
• Speed River Journal’s Van Waffle considers the import, to him and the environment, of a spring near his cottage.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the abundance of black holes in our galaxy, more than one hundred million.
• Unicorn Booty notes that smoking marijuana might–might–have sexual benefits.
• Window on Eurasia shares an argument that ethnic Russians in Russia share issue in common with whites in America, and reports on an argument made by one man that ethnic Russians in republics need not learn local languages.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Citizen Science Salon links to some ongoing crowdsourced experiments that non-scientists can take part in.
• The LRB Blog reports on the return of Newt Gingrich to the American political scene.
• The NYR Daily compares Donald Trump to a 19th century counterpart, Andrew Jackson.
• Roads and Kingdoms reports on the now rather different cocaine problem of Medellín, Colombia.
• Starts with a Bang’s Ethan Siegel reports on a paper suggesting potential problems with gravitational observatory LIGO.
• Towleroad notes a recent sharp drop in new HIV diagnoses in the United Kingdom, thanks to treatment and PrEP.
• Window on Eurasia reports on projected long-run economic decline in Russia, argues about the potential for instability in Tatarstan, and reports on Belarusianization.
• Arnold Zwicky describes Silver Age Rainbow Batman and his later pride appearances.