2023-10-28 05:00:00
Like many personalities, Elon Musk believes that the universe is actually a simple computer simulation, where the physical world is reduced to bits of information. Like in a computer. This theory is called information physics. Dr Melvin Vopson (University of Portsmouth) supports this extravagant hypothesis by postulating that these bits of information would also have mass, which could be the missing black mass of the Universe.
The thesis is that each elementary particle contains bits of information that characterize it like DNA does for a cell. As a result, if we managed to learn the information contained in the atoms of DNA, we could predict the appearance of mutations. Likewise, the laws of physics and nuclear power should be revised.
According to Vopson, information is the cornerstone of the Universe. Which could compare the latter to a digital game. It remains to be proven by incontestable experiments the validity of these fantasies. (AIP Advances).
Spice up your life
Chili consumers around the world often boast about growing the hottest ones. So let them taste Pepper (photo), newly designed by the American Ed Currie. Lake Geneva would not be enough to calm the fire in their hearts. To measure the potency of a pepper, we use the Scoville scale which evaluates its capsaicin content, the molecule causing the burning sensation. For example, the Espelette pepper has a modest 2,000 Scoville units and the bird’s eye pepper, 50,000 units. As for Pepper X, it’s a real human bomb, with 2.69 million Scoville units. Which makes it, by far, the strongest herb in the world. It comes from the hybridization of several species, a recipe kept secret by Ed Currie (Guinness Book of Records)
New DNA scissors
The discovery of the Crispr molecular scissors capable of cutting DNA like a lump of butter was considered a genetic revolution. There are now thousands of much more effective enzymes. Researchers at MIT have already identified 3,600 of them, which they have grouped under the name Fanzor. Like Crispr, these enzymes use messenger RNA as a guidance system to the gene to be disconnected. It remains to know how to model them to obtain the desired DNA cut. (Science Advances).
Victory by knockout of cells
There are 1,000 billion times more cells on Earth (all organisms combined) than grains of sand (here, cyanobacteria cells) ! Or a million times more than all the stars in the Universe. This is the result of very serious calculations carried out by a geologist from Carleton University (Canada). In total, the Earth today has 10 to the power of 30 living cells (Current Biology).
Nature, I hate you
As warming thaws the lands of the Far North, agriculture takes over. A study carried out by the University of Exeter estimates these potentially exploitable spaces at 10% of the total area of wilderness (excluding Antarctica). To avoid this further decline in nature, the authors recommend increasing agricultural yield on already cultivated land. (Current Biology).
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