Monday Links from the Bench vol. DXXXIII

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Monday Links from the Bench vol. DXXXIII

While you’re cooped up at home trying to get ClientCo’s VPN to work, here’s some stuff to take your mind of the state of the world

How China’s “Bat Woman” Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus - ”Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves, and she warns there are more out there.” OK, maybe this one won't take your mind off it after all
Digging Up Lee Harvey Oswald - ”Conspiracy theories raged that JFK's killer had been misidentified. I got to exhume Oswald’s decomposing body, detach his skull from his spine, and find out who he really was.” Dr. Vincent Di Maio on what they found when JFK's assassin (YES HE WAS!) was exhumed at the behest (and expense) of conspiracy theorist Michael Eddowes.
How to Make Sense of Quantum Physics - Could looking at quantum physics a different way make it easier to understand? Got to be worth a try, I suppose: ”Quantum mechanics is perfectly comprehensible. It’s just that physicists abandoned the only way to make sense of it half a century ago. Fast forward to today and progress in the foundations of physics has all but stalled… We think it’s about time to revisit a long-forgotten solution, Superdeterminism, the idea that no two places in the universe are truly independent of each other. This solution gives us a physical understanding of quantum measurements, and promises to improve quantum theory.”
Ideal Glass Would Explain Why Glass Exists at All - Natalie Wolchover on the quest to understand glass: ”Glass is anything that’s rigid like a crystal, yet made of disordered molecules like a liquid. To understand why it exists, researchers are attempting to create the perfect, still-hypothetical ‘ideal glass.’”
'Dead Sea Scrolls' at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeries - Michael Greshko at NatGeo reports on new findings that recent additions to the known fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls are all fake: ”On Friday, independent researchers funded by the Museum of the Bible announced that all 16 of the museum’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments are modern forgeries that duped outside collectors, the museum’s founder, and some of the world’s leading biblical scholars.” As somebody commented on Twitter, the Museum of the Bible is funded by the owner of craft store Hobby Lobby, so at least he should admire the forgers’ skills at making stuff
Can We Bring Back Mammoths From Extinction? Probably Not — Here’s Why - Sad news for aficionados of shaggy pachyderms: ”Understanding these creatures, and possibly replicating them, is complicated. Data from mammoth bones and mammoth genes give conflicting definitions of which pachyderm belongs to which species. And the more researchers learn about mammoths, the more it’s clear we require a reintroduction to the beasts before trying to re-create them.”
How big is a neutron star? - ”Everything about neutron stars is terrifying. But for all that, we're still not exactly sure how big they are.” But new findings are giving us a better idea, and they’re not really that big at all.
Treasure Fever - When you find sunken treasure ships, everybody wants a piece of the action: ”The artifacts indicated the divers had likely found the wreck of La Trinité, a 16th-century French vessel that had been at the center of a bloody battle between France and Spain that changed the fate of the United States of America. And then the legal maelstrom began, with GME and Pritchett pitted against Florida and France.”
Finding Mona Lisa in the Game of Life - Kevin Galligan searches for a way to find a Game of Life start point that results in the Mona Lisa. Unsurprisingly, it’s not easy, to the degree of maybe not even being practically possible, but the maths involved is interesting: ”we're going to explore just how difficult this problem is, and how it can be attempted using what are known as ‘SAT solvers’. We'll then look at animations of flowers, Steve Buscemi, and other objects of interest that we can generate with the solution.”
21 Abandoned Ships Around The World You Can ACTUALLY Visit - Well, not now you can’t because you’re self-isolating, but it’s something to look forward to This is the SS Maheno, a former ocean liner and WWI hospital ship lost in a storm in 1935: ”The crew was helpless as the propellers on the Maheno had been removed prior to the towing. After 7 days of searching, aircraft pilot Keith Virtue spotted the wrecked shipped and it’s crew off the coast of Fraser Island.”