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Author: 一毫秒的永恒   A British study found that the additional cancer risk associated with drinking one bottle of wine per week was roughly equivalent to smoking 5 cigarettes per week for men and 10 for women. The study used data from nonsmokers and converted the risks through an epidemiological model.   Published in the British journal BMC Public Health on March 28, 2019, it was one of the first studies to estimate the relationship between alcohol and cigarettes in terms of cancer risk. Credit: Shutterstock   The study aimed to communicate the cancer risks of moderate drinking more effectively. Moderate alcohol consumption is widely believed to be less harmful than smoking, but research in the United States and the United Kingdom has found that many people are unaware of the relationship b ...

Author: A Millisecond of Eternity At Earth's spring equinox, the illuminated and dark hemispheres are almost equal in area. | Credit: NOAA; NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory   On March 20, 2019, a GOES satellite photographed Earth at the spring equinox. In the image, half the planet is illuminated while the other half lies in darkness, like a black-and-white cookie.   This beautiful symmetry will not surprise anyone familiar with astronomy and geography. A real photograph—especially an astronomical one—can nevertheless be more powerful than the theories we learn, inspiring wonder at the universe’s extraordinary beauty. In Latin, “equinox” means “equal night.” Geography teachers tell us that the spring and autumn equinoxes occur in March and September each year, when day and ni ...

Author: Guanfu · Juntian   At the opening of The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus declares that suicide is the only serious philosophical problem, because judging whether life is worth living is itself an answer to a philosophical question. This shows that Camus’s philosophy centers on individual life rather than merely discussing the external world.   A clarification is necessary here: when Camus says that “suicide is the only serious philosophical problem,” he is absolutely not encouraging anyone to take their own life. He once wrote: “The absence of hope is not the same as despair; lucidity does not lead to submission. A person should recognize that life is their only wealth: it must inevitably pass away, yet it can also be developed to the fullest possible extent. A person should, and can, f ...

Author: 一毫秒的永恒   Physics is full of particles such as neutrons and photons, but it also contains particles stranger than most people imagine. They have different properties and sizes, and many bear evocative names, from supersymmetric particles to the “God particle.” Today, let us meet some of the coolest members of this almost indescribable family. Higgs Boson   The Higgs boson is enormously important to physics. Often nicknamed the “God particle,” it is associated with the origin of mass for many elementary particles. In 1964, physicists were trying to understand why some particles were more massive than others and where that mass came from. Peter Higgs proposed what became known as the Higgs mechanism. The Higgs boson is associated with the Higgs field, which the mechanism assumes pe ...

Author: A Millisecond of Eternity “The Moon That Should Not Exist” Artist's concept of Hippocamp, the tiny moon discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2013. This is the first evidence that a moon may be an offshoot of a comet's collision with a larger parent body. | Credit: NASA, ESA and J. Olmsted (STScI)   After several years of analysis, a team of planetary scientists has finally explained the mysterious moon orbiting Neptune that they discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2013.   The small moon, named Hippocamp, lies unusually close to a much larger Neptunian moon, Proteus. Under normal circumstances, a moon like Proteus should use its gravity to sweep smaller moons aside or swallow them as it orbits.   Why, then, does such a small moon still exist? Hippocamp is probab ...

Author: A Millisecond of Eternity   At 9:45 a.m. Beijing time on February 22, 2019, just as the Moon rose above the horizon, a Falcon 9 rocket began its journey toward it.   On the evening of February 21, 2019, a previously flown SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched an Israeli lunar lander and an Indonesian communications satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in the United States. After placing both payloads into orbit, Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth and landed successfully on the uncrewed vessel Of Course I Still Love You in the Atlantic Ocean.   Although the mission’s primary payload was Indonesia’s Nusantara Satu satellite, the small lunar lander traveling as a secondary payload stole the spotlight. It became not only Israel’s first spacecraft to venture be ...

Author: A Millisecond of Eternity The Naval Battle   Archaeologists have explored the site of a naval battle fought between Rome and Carthage 2,200 years ago. They found clues to how the battle may have unfolded, along with several unsolved mysteries. Archaeologists found numerous helmets while surveying the Roman–Carthaginian battlefield. This 3D model of one helmet was created by William M. Murray. | Credit: Courtesy of RPM Nautical Foundation   The discoveries suggest that Carthage reused captured Roman warships in the battle, and that Carthaginian sailors may have made a desperate attempt to escape Roman pursuit by throwing their cargo into the sea.   According to historical records, the naval battle took place on March 10, 241 BCE, near the Aegadian Islands off Sicily in the Medit ...

Author: 一毫秒的永恒   A record-setting NASA mission on Mars has come to an end. One of the longest-running and most successful achievements in interplanetary exploration, NASA’s Opportunity rover mission concluded after nearly fifteen years on the Martian surface. The mission laid a foundation for NASA’s return to Mars.   In June 2018, a severe planet-wide dust storm covered Opportunity’s location on Mars. The rover then stopped communicating with Earth. Engineers at the Space Flight Operations Facility at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) sent more than 1,000 recovery commands in an effort to reestablish contact, but none succeeded. The solar-powered rover’s final communication arrived on June 10, 2018.   NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said, “It is because of trailblazing missions such ...

Author: A Millisecond of Eternity Concept art of an asteroid impact | Credit: Don Davis/NASA   For years, certain mad scientists have dreamed of threatening government officials with doomsday schemes to obtain wealth, power, fame, and the fearful respect of the public. In the film The Wandering Earth, meanwhile, humanity chooses to wander through the universe with the entire planet—and its hopes—in tow. Today, however, we will not discuss how to make Earth wander. We will do the opposite and consider how to destroy it simply and elegantly.   Destroying Earth is no easy task. You could, of course, destroy human civilization, wipe out every higher life form with a super-plague, or invent nanomachines with extreme instructions that eliminate the entire biosphere. In every one of those case ...

Author: 观复·钧天   I am someone who usually prefers peace and quiet, so even sitting in a cinema for a pulse-pounding science-fiction film is a rare experience for me. Big-budget science fiction has long seemed to belong to Hollywood, and saving the Earth is one of its familiar themes. I never expected China’s first homegrown science-fiction blockbuster to be this good: its logic holds together, and the story feels reasonably complete. Much of the credit must first go to the excellent framework provided by Liu Cixin’s novel.   Once humanity begins to think of itself as the master of this planet, one problem follows another. People killing one another is only the most immediate problem. Species extinction and humanity’s domination of the biosphere run deeper. Only when the planet on which w ...