Home Artists Posts Import Register

Content

A New Source of Water On The Moon

A group of Chinese researchers studied the samples brought back from the moon by the Chang'e-5 mission and found that beads of glass produced by impacts on the surface contain water – it could be as much as 300 billion tons. Good news for our moon base! Press release here. Paper here.

______________________________________________________________________

Trouble at Fermilab Not Over

In 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy evaluated the performance of Fermilab and found it to be unsatisfactory in several areas, including the management of their science and technology program. The major problem is that Fermilab currently builds a neutrino experiment – DUNE that is becoming more costly by the day.

DUNE’s major purpose is to quantify the amount of CP violation in the early universe, a number that is often claimed to “explain” why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. Alas, it would explain nothing of the sort, as CP violation is only a contributor to something which doesn’t need explaining in the first place. The DOE is now looking for a new contractor to run the lab, but the damage has already been done. More details here.

______________________________________________________________________

How To Tell If Someone Is Lying

They sweating? They fidget? They avoid eye contact? Forget all that. A new study from the University of Amsterdam’s Lie Lab has found that the most reliable way to tell whether someone is lying is the amount of detail in their story. If that doesn’t impress you, the authors have summarized their findings in a cartoon that sets completely new standards for science communication. Press release here, Paper here.

Comments

Anonymous

I remember learning about Enrico Fermi during 4 semesters of physics while earning my EE degree many years ago (One a physics lab, and that was awesome). Sounds like Fermilab, like many big companies (IBM), are living off the name they built for themselves. Thought for sure I was going to go on to be a scientist. Then I started programming in Matlab and programming 8051 controllers. And the rest (as they say) is history. P.S: Lying and detail is spot on. I try to remember that if you don't lie you don't have to remember the truth.

Anonymous

In his book 'The Gift of Fear' Gavin De Becker describes one tactic people who have evil intentions who want to convince someone to trust them add in extraneous details to their stories. I'm not saying that to rebut that liars can't supply authentic details, but it's an interesting flipside that liars need to add in embellishments to feign honest intentions.

Anonymous

Before I got to the word "embellishments" I was thinking "embellishment". It may be in such cases that the lair does not know when their story becomes believable, and so they feel the need to add to it (i.e., embellishment). Although a different take on the issue, a recent US president comes to mind. "Smartest one in the room", "the most excellent phone call", "the biggest brain". Here, to me it seemed he felt his name would allow him to not be challenged. A quick search has the WaPo stating "30573 [lies] over 4 years", which brings to mind the phrase, "you can tell he was lying because his lips were moving".

Anonymous

Ow, ow, ow, my eyes hurt..... now it's moving up to my brain... oh the stinging pain..... At least he "had the best words."

Anonymous

I just learned it was calculated that "that president" told more lies than all US presidents combined. No news here. Kirk out.

Anonymous

I have also heard that liars provide far too much detail, such as in they have to make up information to fill out a false narrative, such as from real police detectives. I think that the study should be redone to use people who have done something truly wrong rather than in a fabricated 'wrong' for which there are no consequences.

Sabine

Yes... Like with all psychological things it becomes very difficult once people know what they have to do to raise a certain impression.