Nerd News: Green Comets, Super Cows, and Prehistoric Drunks
Every Friday we run down the “Nerd News” from the week…anything cool from space, science, or tech!
SPACE
A green comet zipped past Earth Wednesday night for the first time since the Stone Age, 50,000 years ago. (Here’s a timelapse video of it. It glows green because of a molecule called diatomic carbon, or “C2”.
We found 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing its total to 92 moons. That means it now officially has more than Saturn with 83.
Part of an old Soviet rocket came 20 feet from hitting a satellite. The debris field could have caused a chain reaction and taken down even more satellites.
SCIENCE…ish
Archaeologists found the remains of a nearly 5,000-year-old tavern in Iraq. It had an indoor seating area with benches, and an open-air space to hang out in. The menu probably included things like fish, chicken, bread, and beer.
In animal news: The company that wants to use DNA to bring back woolly mammoths now wants to bring back the dodo bird too . . . China claims they cloned “super cows” that can produce twice as much milk . . .
Researchers at Auburn University put alligator DNA into catfish to help them fight off diseases . . . and a team at the University of Michigan found the fossilized brain of a fish that died 319 million years ago.
TECH
ChatGPT rolled out a tool to help teachers catch students cheating by using it to writer their papers for them. They admit it’s “imperfect” though. It just tells you how likely it was that they used A.I.
A poll this week asked 1,000 Americans if they think A.I.-based chatbots like that will be good or bad for society. Only 13% said good, and a LOT are worried about A.I. stealing their jobs eventually.