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What makes ants so fascinating today is their effectiveness at preventing epidemics within their colonies, despite their close living quarters and massive communities. In fact, epidemics and sick colonies are rarely, if ever, found in the wild. Thanks in part to this, ants are one of the most successful species on Earth. According to some estimates, they make up almost a quarter of all terrestrial animal biomass. And because of the social measures they’ve evolved to use, ant behavior often seems distinctly intelligent. As human communities are warding off this generation’s biggest pandemic to date, we should take a closer look at how our fellow inhabitants deal with infectious outbreaks. Scientists have observed many species of ants disease-curbing social practices, including separating groups by role within their nest, sanitizing themselves and their living quarters, and mixing tree resin with their poison to kill pathogenic spores.
#ants #antspandemic #socialdistancingants
In 2007, astronomers digging through data from six years prior found a very strong, very brief burst of radio emission coming from an unidentified source in space. It introduced us to a new class of objects dubbed fast radio bursts or FRBs for short. “Fast” because these blips are very short—less than five milliseconds in duration. The “radio” portion of the nickname is because the emission is detected by radio telescopes surveying the sky at radio wavelengths. They are called “bursts” because the signals disappear as quickly as they appeared, without warning and, so far, without explanation. Since 2007, astronomers have added 17 more bursts to the list of known FRBs. However, their origins are still a bit of a mystery because of their defining characteristics, the very reasons they are so interesting, also make them challenging to study.
#fastradioburts #fbr #fbrs
Last month engineers started construction of the world’s largest nuclear fusion project in southern France, with operations planned to begin in late 2025. The project, called ITER, is an international collaborative effort between 35 countries with enormous ambitions: prove the feasibility of fusion energy with a gigantic magnetic device called a “tokamak,” as per the project’s official website. Enabling the exclusive use of clean energy will be a miracle for our planet. Fusion power, in theory, works by harnessing the energy released by two lighter atomic nuclei fusing to form a heavier nucleus, and turning it into electricity.
#fusionreactor #worldslargestfusionreactor