Misleading Viral Claims Show Dangers of Preprint Servers, Researchers Warn

Scientific researchers worry that the capacity for spreading misinformation “goes far beyond the big-name social media sites,” warns the Washington Post. Citing pre-print servers and unvetted “research repositories,” they note that “Any online platform without robust and potentially expensive safeguards is equally vulnerable.” “This is similar to the debate we’re having with Facebook and Twitter. To what degree are we creating…

Why Is America Getting a New $100 Billion Nuclear Weapon?

“America is building a new weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear missile the length of a bowling lane,” writes the contributing editor for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (in an article shared by Slashdot reader DanDrollette): It will be able to travel some 6,000 miles, carrying a warhead more than 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on…

Lancet Study Finds 40% of US COVID-19 Deaths Could Have Been Avoided

phalse phace shares a report from Slate: The British medical journal the Lancet, on Wednesday, published a damning assessment of Donald Trump’s presidency and its impact on Americans’ health, concluding that 40 percent of the nearly 500,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. over the past year were avoidable. The journal came to the conclusion by comparing the U.S. health outcomes on…

Evidence for a hidden ‘Planet Nine’ beyond Neptune has weakened

Strange clustering of objects in the outer solar system once seemed to point to the existence of a huge, mysterious planet out there – but that clustering may not exist after all Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2267788-evidence-for-a-hidden-planet-nine-beyond-neptune-has-weakened/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Most distant object in our solar system spotted. But it’s not Planet Nine.

There’s a dwarf planet in our solar system, far beyond the orbit of Pluto, that swings so far away from the sun that from its perspective Earth and Saturn look like neighbors. Source: https://www.livescience.com/farfarout-planet-distance-record.html

A new way of forming planets

In the last 25 years, scientists have discovered over 4000 planets beyond the borders of our solar system. From relatively small rock and water worlds to blisteringly hot gas giants, the planets display a remarkable variety. This variety is not unexpected. The sophisticated computer models, with which scientists study the formation of planets, also spawn very different planets. What the models…

Next coronavirus vaccines may be drops, pills or printed on demand

The world needs new vaccines to beat novel coronavirus variants, overcome delays and solve global inequality over vaccine access – here’s what’s in the works for 2021 and beyond Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933213-800-next-coronavirus-vaccines-may-be-drops-pills-or-printed-on-demand/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…