Latest news with #CalTech
MTV Lebanon
18-02-2025
- Science
- MTV Lebanon
Groundbreaking Discovery on Mars Could Be Proof of Life
New evidence of rippling water on Mars could change our understanding of the planet's history. Planetary astronomers and geologists studying Mars have known for decades that water was once present on the planet. The Red Planet is now known as a dusty and cold world, but billions of years ago water flowed on the planet's surface. Its atmosphere thinned over time, causing water to evaporate. Scientists believe this was likely due to the planet losing its magnetic field which left it vulnerable to solar radiation, causing the planet's water to evaporate into space. The new discovery adds further context to the ongoing debate about the form Martian water took and how long it lasted. Some models suggest that any liquid water on the Martian surface would have been covered by sheets of ice before it vanished into the atmosphere. However, the new findings suggest a different scenario that is very exciting as the search for alien life continues. Pictures taken by NASA's Curiosity rover show patterns known as wave ripples. They're small structures that resemble ridges that form along the shores of lakebeds, suggesting that liquid water must have flowed across the planet's surface at some point in its history. The ripples were found in two separate lakebeds in Gale Crater, which Curiosity has been exploring since August 2012. Both dry lakebeds likely formed around 3.7 billion years ago, suggesting that the Martian atmosphere was both dense and warm enough to support liquid water for much longer than previously thought. Why is this so exciting? Because life as we know it needs water to thrive and evolve and its therefore a key component in searching for evidence of ancient life on Mars. If living organisms were ever present on Mars, the new findings indicate they had a longer window in which they could have evolved. The study's first author, sedimentologist at CalTech, Claire Mondro, said: "Extending the length of time that liquid water was present extends the possibilities for microbial habitability later into Mars's history.' Mondro added: 'The shape of the ripples could only have been formed under water that was open to the atmosphere and acted upon by wind.' The study was published in the journal Science Advances. Scientists recently discovered more about the origins of Marsquakes and NASA's Curiosity rover snapped pictures of iridescent twilight clouds in the Martian sky.
The Guardian
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sidelined: The QB and Me review – hot cheerleader meets star quarterback movie is streaming-age bubblegum
Dallas (Siena Agudong) is a hot cheerleader with dreams of auditioning for CalTech. Drayton (Noah Beck) is a cute star quarterback whose dad is adamant he follow in his footsteps and attend his alma mater with a football scholarship. Surely this very well-matched chalk and chalk couple will never overcome their complete lack of differences and get together? Only time will tell. A slickly made, nicely shot high-school movie adapted from a Wattpad story with an Instagram-ready cast, the biggest surprise here is James Van Der Beek popping up in a thankless role as the humourless dad. We know from The Rules of Attraction and Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 that Van Der Beek's tastes are on the edgier side, but don't tune in if you're expecting any subversive humour; this is a straightforward and edge-free romance for younger teens. The script is laden with examples of what execs will be hoping is authentic Gen Z argot, though lines such as 'I am sick and tired of your main character energy' sound like they've been plucked from A Handy Guide to Understanding Your Teen. Visually the film has a bit more to offer, effortlessly adopting the onscreen grammar of countless high-school movies before it, so we get all the slow-motion corridor walks and flawlessly executed cheer-squad routines we could hope for. It's all pleasant enough, in a glossy, wallpapery kind of way, but it's hard to get caught up in a plot with so few surprises and dialogue so relentlessly sincere. Frank Lloyd Wright famously described television as chewing gum for the eyes, but what's less discussed is that Henri Peyre, professor of French at Yale University, coined a similar phrase a little earlier in 1944, in relation to cinema: 'They dutifully chew their gum to keep from yawning, while absorbing the chewing gum for the eyes of the movies.' This applies here: in the era of streaming, there's a vast amount of ocular movie gum being pumped out, including this little piece. That's not even necessarily a bad thing: who doesn't love a stick of bubblegum every now and then? Still, we cannot live on gum alone – it's hard not to long for the bonafide hits of the high school genre, which manage to be be both bubblegumesque and have a flavour that lasts. Sidelined: The QB and Me is on digital platforms from 17 February.
