Wednesday, February 25, 2026
Diamonds in the sky
JWST continues to surprise scientists and, I suppose, the rest of us. The super-telescope has discovered a lemon-shaped planet revolving around a pulsar. Even better, its atmosphere contains soot and diamonds?!
Thank god PSR J2322-2650b (the official name of this planetary body) is 750 light years away. It would take millions of years for a space ship to reach it. So it won´t be busting the diamond markets anytime soon!
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Back to Asgard
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| Credit: pitpony.photography |
I blogged about this before (see second link). This seems to be the sequel! So there is a hypothesis that the evolutionary ancestors of the eukaryotes (a vast group of organisms including animals, plants and fungi) were Archaea. Asgard Archaea, more exactly. Or perhaps some unknown microbe living in symbiosis with a bacterium *inside* an Archaeon? The content linked below isn´t entirely clear on this topic, but some kind of hybridization is the bottom line.
The problem, apparently, is that the bacterium participating in the primordial merger needed oxygen to survive. Asgard Archaea, on the other hand, can´t stand oxygen. However, recent research suggests that some of them actually can do so, making the scenario more plausible.
Personally, I like the fact that our deep evolutionary ancestors might (at least partially) be tentacled micro-organisms named after the abode of the Norse gods, and that some of them have been found in a remote part of the Atlantic Ocean named after Loki. Life looks like a "trickster", somehow...
Off on a comet
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| - Where is that damn comet? |
So is the 3I/ATLAS saga finally over? Can all UFO buffs concentrate on the Trump disclosure instead? I mean, we need our doom porn, right?
Or no?
The Drona weapon
Dude! So I assume Styxie isn´t a libertarian anymore? I mean, you need a fairly powerful federal government to build the kind of trinkets he talks about here. Neutron bombs, space-based nukes, doomsday weapons, maybe the Drona weapon?! Who do you think invented the A-bomb? FDR cough cough New Deal cough cough...
Come right at me
A propos the previous blog post: Buddha protected by Alexander the Great and Herakles! Welcome to ancient Gandhara...
White Boy Summer...again
An interesting video on ancient Greek influence on various aspects of Asian art and culture (including martial arts).
The Greco-Buddhist kingdoms of Bactria and NW India are of course featured, but it turns out that the Hellenic influence survived far longer. Note that the first depictions of the Hindu gods Krishna and Balarama are Greco-Buddhist, and so are the first anthropomorphic depictions of the Buddha. There are even depictions of the Buddha with two dharma-protectors, who on closer inspection turns out to be Alexander the Great and Herakles!
The content-creator argues that some Asian martial arts might be influenced by ancient Greek Pankration (made famous by the games at Olympia). Thai boxing and Bokator in Cambodia are apparently the main suspects. The video also claims that there are descriptions of fighting techniques in the Hindu epic Mahabharata which resembles Pankration.
Interesting. So here we go again: Ex Occidente lux. Or at least mixed martial arts...
Finlands sak är vår
Ja, det är tydligen Sverigefinnarnas dag idag. Alltså den finska/finsktalande minoriteten i Sverige. Deras flagga ovan. En flagga som tydligen nästan aldrig används. Sverigefinnar föredrar nämligen Republiken Finlands flagga. Okej, då vet vi det.
Allmänbildning
Från SVT Nyheter. Det är tydligen Sverigefinnarnas dag idag. I Sverige. Alltså.
Annars är väl "barndomsfinne" bland det dummaste ord jag hört...
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