Fascinating article in the Times yesterday that analyzes Google searches about sex and made me laugh out loud a couple of times.

The author concludes:

Just about every study I have done relying on Google searches made me feel worse about the world. Huge numbers of people are racist and sexist; far too many children suffer from unreported abuse. But after studying the new data on sex, I actually feel better.

This data makes me feel less lonely. In my previous studies of Google data, I had found the viciousness that humans often hide. But this time around, I have seen our hidden insecurities. Men and women are united in this insecurity and confusion.

Google also gives us legitimate reasons to worry less than we do. Many of our deepest fears about how our sexual partners perceive us are unjustified. Alone, at their computers, with no incentive to lie, partners reveal themselves to be fairly nonsuperficial and forgiving. In fact, we are all so busy judging our own bodies that there is little energy left over to judge other people’s.

Maybe if we worried less about sex, we’d have more of it.

Link:

Thanks to some recent recordings courtesy of NASA, we now know that space is actually a musically rich environment, and not the frozen abyss where no one can hear you scream. Saturn’s song is vast and brooding, Neptune has a slightly country twang, and Uranus — wait for it — is a lithe and gorgeous ballad. But what sound does a comet make? How about one of the most awe-inspiring little ditties of the entire year?

As ABC Science reports, the European Space Agency launched a satellite called Rosetta back in 2004 in order to study “the processes which led to the formation of not only comets, but also the planets, our Sun, and the rest of the Solar System.” The satellite recently reached one of its targets, a little rock called Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, where it deployed a relay of instruments to study the layer of plasma surrounding the object. (Plasma is charged gas, and studying it helps researchers understand the comet’s structure and how it moves through space.)

(Listen: NASA releases actual recordings from space — and they’re absolutely breathtaking)

During a series of tests, ESA scientists tuned their instrument to between 40 and 50 millihertz, and it’s there that the comet actually began to “sing.” It’s not exactly humming show tunes, though; the noise may be the result of oscillations created by the “the ionisation of neutral particles from the comet’s jets. They collide with high-energy particles from interplanetary space and become ionised. Because it is electrically charged, the plasma then interacts with the cometary magnetic field, causing oscillations.” See,magnets are miracles.

You watch the Rosetta comet landing live here.

Maybe I can learn how to do this in time for the grandkid!

I do so love this stuff:

EAST DEVON, ENGLAND—Archaeologists and conservators from the British Museum have announced that an amateur metal detectorist has found one of the largest hoards of coins ever discovered in Britain. The hoard is comprised of no less than 22,000 coins dating to between A.D. 260 and 350 that were in very good condition when they emerged from the ground, Devon County Council archaeologist Bill Horner told The Independent. Since the hoard was found ten months ago—its discovery was kept quiet to avoid looting at the site while archaeologists conducted a proper excavation—the coins have been cleaned, identified, and catalogued. Many bear portraits of the family of the emperor Constantine and of the emperor himself. The Seaton Down Hoard, as it is now called, is thought to be the fifth largest find of Roman coins in Britain and one of the largest in the whole of the Roman Empire.