The real question is, can it get here fast enough…
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It seems to be a very, very old one…
Man, the 2020 presidential primaries for the Doomsday party are getting crowded…
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12 billion light-years away, so we’re seeing it as it was 12 billion years ago. I wonder if it’s swallowed the entire galaxy (and it’s neighbors) by now.
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I guess we’ll find out in 12 billion years.
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That article actually cites this journal:
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Lead in the atmosphere is a proxy for silver mining. Silver mining is supposed to be a proxy for economic output…
But I’m not convinced it is one.
Silver mining was mostly limited by the discovery and exhaustion of silver mines. I don’t think demand for new coins had much effect, and anyway, they gradually used more lead to debase the coins.
P.S. I think agricultural intensity is a better proxy for economic output. Soil erosion is a rough proxy of agricultural intensity. So if you can date the deposition of silt, core samples from the ocean floor beyond the Tiber, and beyond major rivers of the Roman world, could measure this.
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paywalled, unfortunately
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Plenty of cheese in this particular story, but needs more cheesecake. 
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Possibly untrue. But I want to believe!
The second half is better than the first half.
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hat tip to Allen Hazen here:
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Huh. If they exist, if they exist, sterile neutrinos sound like a possible candidate for dark matter, or, at least some of it.
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If they’re heavy enough they don’t even have to fill much of the cycle of neutrino potentia.
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Really more of a review than science news. But this result is fascinating, at least for me, so I wanted to share it somewhere.
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