Ever since we managed to put men on the moon, we've been looking for other places for people to go. Then bigger and better telescopes led us to exoplanets, those outside our solar system. Somewhere along the way, we switched from thinking of pure exploration to colonizing other planets. But our bodies were built for Earth. Even if we find an exoplanet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere, liquid water, and tolerable temperatures, would we be able to live with a different level of gravity?

If its gravity is too strong our blood will be pulled down into our legs, our bones might break, and we could even be pinned helplessly to the ground.

Finding the gravitational limit of the human body is something that’s better done before we land on a massive new planet. Now, in a paper published on the pre-print server arXiv, three physicists, claim that the maximum gravitational field humans could survive long-term is four-and-a-half times the gravity on Earth.  

Read how they figured that out at Discover magazine. -via Digg

(Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech)

A hundred years ago, in the autumn of 1918, the Great War was dragging on, so Philadelphia threw a parade to raise morale and sell war bonds called "Liberty Loans." The parade highlighted any available soldiers and sailors, plus the many homefront organizations supporting them. The spectacle would end with a concert conducted by John Philip Souza himself.  

When the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive parade stepped off on September 28, some 200,000 people jammed Broad Street, cheering wildly as the line of marchers stretched for two miles. Floats showcased the latest addition to America’s arsenal – floating biplanes built in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard. Brassy tunes filled the air along a route where spectators were crushed together like sardines in a can. Each time the music stopped, bond salesmen singled out war widows in the crowd, a move designed to evoke sympathy and ensure that Philadelphia met its Liberty Loan quota.

But aggressive Liberty Loan hawkers were far from the greatest threat that day. Lurking among the multitudes was an invisible peril known as influenza—and it loves crowds. Philadelphians were exposed en masse to a lethal contagion widely called “Spanish Flu,” a misnomer created earlier in 1918 when the first published reports of a mysterious epidemic emerged from a wire service in Madrid.

Within a couple of days, the hospitals started filling up and people were dying. The entire city was shut down. Read how Philadelphia (and other American cities) reacted to the Spanish flu at Smithsonian.

According to the neighbors, one woman would get on her motorcycle and go riding late at night, although she had no idea because she was sleepwalking. Others cook meals, preach sermons, and commit murder while sleeping. It's estimated that 30 percent of us sleepwalk at one time or another, but we really don't know because we sleep through it.

Although it’s thought to be triggered by stress, anxiety, and alcohol, it is totally unknown why we do it. Are we simply on auto-pilot? Trying to fulfill our fantasies? Or perhaps something stranger…

Science hasn’t always provided satisfactory answers to the many questions raised around sleepwalking. Throughout history, the mysteries of somnambulance have lead many to come up with their own theories—drawing on spirituality, pseudo-science, and folklore—with sleepwalkers seeming to exist somewhere between this world and another.

Read a short history of sleepwalking that covers famous cases, scientific research, and pop culture, at Vice.

Diane can't ignore anymore the leak coming from the ceiling above the family diner…

A beautiful and strong animation about climate change and human behaviours.

Director : AV-RON Maya, COMINOTTI Mylène, COUDERT Marion, DANO Sixtine

Production year : 2018

Let's find out, neuroscientists Gul Dolen of Johns Hopkins University and Eric Edsinger of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, said.

And find out they did:

The researchers knew from previous tests that an octopus would normally stay far, far away from a second octopus that was confined to a small cage inside the first one's tank. But an octopus on MDMA would get up-close and personal with the new neighbor.

"They spent significantly more time in the side of the tank, the chamber, that had the other octopus in it," says Dolen.

What's more, without the drug, any octopus that approached the stranger at all would remain very reserved, perhaps only reaching out one arm to tentatively touch the other animal's cage.

"After MDMA, they were essentially hugging," says Dolen, who explains that the octopuses were "really just much more relaxed in posture, and using a lot more of their body to interact with the other octopus."

Nell Greenfieldboyce of NPR has the story.

Photo: Tom Kleindinst/Marine Biological Laboratory

Now you can enjoy your breakfast with happy little toasts every morning! Better yet, this Bob Ross Toaster will burn a portrait of the famous painter onto the bread.

Remember Jehv Maravilla and Christian Toledo, the guys who erected a poster of themselves at a local McDonald's outlet? The prank got them a viral story, a guest slot on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and now a job.

The prank was fun, but it also highlighted McDonald’s lack of inclusive representation in their promotional materials. Asian and Asian-American people are heavily underrepresented in all forms of U.S. media. Maravilla said he was heavily inspired by Crazy Rich Asians and seeing so many Asian faces on screen. Toledo joked that they were aspiring to be “crazy middle-class Asians.”

McDonald’s apparently agreed with them (or at least wanted to cash in on that positive-PR viral goodwill, a thing they could use right now, to be honest) and is going to use the two of them in an upcoming marketing campaign.

In case you're wondering, yes, they will be paid, $25,000 each. See the video from The Ellen DeGeneres Show in which the offer was announced at The Mary Sue. 

For a minute there, I could believe that the first Star Wars movie was going to be serialized as an anime show in Japan. It's that good. But this is a fan-made trailer from Dmitry Grozov (Ahriman). -via Digg

Galileo Galilei knew that the earth revolved around the sun. But this was Rome at the dawn of 17th century, and the Church didn't see it that way. Galileo argued that scientific study and scripture should be independent of each other, because the Bible was written to be understood by the intended reader of the time. The struggle between Galileo and the Church went on for 20 years. He was ultimately convicted of heresy in 1633, and sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life. The early correspondence between Galileo and Vatican authorities of the time was hand-copied and redistributed, and is suspected to have been edited- how and by who is a matter of controversy. But the earliest evidence has been found. Galileo's original argument is in a 1613 letter to mathematician Benedetto Castelli. It was returned to Galileo for further refinement, and then was lost.   

The letter has been in the Royal Society’s possession for at least 250 years, but escaped the notice of historians. It was rediscovered in the library there by Salvatore Ricciardo, a postdoctoral science historian at the University of Bergamo in Italy, who visited on 2 August for a different purpose, and then browsed the online catalogue.

“I thought, ‘I can’t believe that I have discovered the letter that virtually all Galileo scholars thought to be hopelessly lost,’” says Ricciardo. “It seemed even more incredible because the letter was not in an obscure library, but in the Royal Society library.”

The newly-found letter contains quite a bit of editing by Galileo himself, and shines a light on the struggle between the scientist and the Church that shook the world. Read about the letter at Nature.  -via Metafilter

There's fandom and then there's FANDOM. Some may devote a Facebook page to a personal interest of theirs, or maybe even create a dedicated website, but you've probably never seen the like of what Tolkien scholar Mark Fisher has created concerning the works of J.R.R. Tolkien - The Encyclopedia of Arda.

This site is comprehensive in its coverage of Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-Earth; no topic is too obscure and no detail is too small. It is an immense reference and repository of knowledge that should interest any devotee of Tolkien's works and I find myself referring to it on a regular basis. Go on, name anything concerning Middle-Earth and see if it cannot be found therein - I dare you.

Check out The Encyclopedia of Arda.

The team from EVNautilus are back, watching the bottom of the ocean for interesting creatures. And here they've found one with their remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) in the deep sea at Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. At first, they don't recognize a gulper eel (Eurypharynx pelecanoides) because they are rarely seen alive and gulping. -via reddit

See more weird sea creatures EVNautilus has shown us previously.

Meet the 558-million-year-old fossil of Dickinsonia, a type of Ediacaran organism, that may just be the first animal species on Earth:

The first large complex organisms – known as the Ediacarans – appear in the fossil record about 570 million years ago, just before the Cambrian explosion of modern animal life. Their alien body shapes have created confusion over whether they were primitive animals, other complex lifeforms like lichen or giant amoebas, or failed experiments of evolution.

Now, Jochen Brocks at Australian National University and his colleagues have found fat molecules in 558 million-year-old fossils of Dickinsonia – a type of Ediacaran – that confirms it was an early animal.

The researchers collected the fossils from sandstone cliffs in a remote area of the White Sea region of Russia. The cholesterol-like molecules preserved in them are found in almost all of today’s animals, but have low abundance in other lifeforms like bacteria, lichen and amoebas. “It tells us this creature in fact was our earliest ancestor,” says Brocks.

Read the rest over at NewScientist.

(Photo: Ilya Bobrovskiy / Australian National University)

I'm loving these wonderful geometric art by Vancouver-based artist Laura Bifano. In her series "Altars," Bifano drew local vistas and mountains of British Columbia, Canada.

via Booom

(Artwork: Laura Bifano)

This is "open carry" in the UK. Etsy seller LeatherHeds created a teacup and saucer belt holster for the tea-loving gentleman who's always ready for high noon ... and high tea.

via Boing Boing

Readers have been enjoying the short stories and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe for almost 200 years. What makes his literature so relatable over time? Scott Peeples dives into that question in this TED-Ed animation. -via Boing Boing