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How geocachers navigate fear in the urban woods
Because geocaches are always hidden out of sight, players often have to behave in out-of-the-ordinary ways to reach them.

On a drizzly Saturday morning in June 2018, I found myself kneeling on the edge of a wooden boardwalk in Melbourne's northern suburbs.
My right arm was hooked over the side, fingers gathering cobwebs and dust as they probed the rough pine of the planks. I hoped for the smooth sensation of plastic or metal rather than the squish of a creepy-crawly.
I looked over at my partner on this expedition: sharkiefan, as she's known in the geocaching community, a pharmacist from New Zealand. She was sprawled on her stomach across the boardwalk, with her shoulder jammed in for maximum reach. Before I could suggest she move into a less hazardous formation, a man on a bicycle swerved and braked to avoid her outstretched legs. He shuddered to a halt, plastic poncho swirling.
“What are you after there? Flowers?" he asked. His eyes were wide behind his raindrop-covered glasses. “No," said sharkiefan, calmly rolling into a sitting position. “We're looking for geocaches."
“Oh," he said. He continued to watch as sharkiefan made a last-ditch effort for the geocache (which our GPS assured us, unconvincingly, was right there). Then he rode away, poncho flapping. With the rain starting to spatter, sharkiefan hauled herself up and decided it was a DNF (did not find)—for the moment, at least. “Besides, that guy was kinda creepy," she said. “I didn't wanna keep looking for it while he was watching us."
At the time, I was an anthropology student in Melbourne studying geocachers, or people who play geocaching. Geocaching is one of the many location-dependent digital games that have proliferated since smartphones with GPS capabilities became common in the mid-2000s. You can think of it as a kind of multiplayer treasure hunt, where players use GPS and a digital map to hide and search for containers (geocaches) filled with trinkets.
Because geocaches are always hidden out of sight, players often have to behave in out-of-the-ordinary ways to reach them. They might have to climb a tree, crawl through bushes, or flatten themselves on a boardwalk like sharkiefan and I did. The way they use public space departs sharply from social norms, without providing any obvious motives to passers-by.
When onlookers are left to fill in the blanks, they often assume some kind of deviant behavior. For instance, vividrogers, an avid creative writer and stay-at-home mom, recounted the time she had squatted under some pines to sign a cache's logbook. At that moment, a family came past. She told me sheepishly, "The mum said, 'Let's not go this way, kids,' because it looked like I was doing a wee or something."
As I did my field research, I became more and more interested in how this unusual behavior makes some geocachers appear sexually threatening and others feel sexually vulnerable—usually depending on their gender. A man ferreting in the undergrowth might notice suspicious gazes. And a woman sprawled on a boardwalk might feel uneasy when a man takes an interest in her "flower gathering."
People playing mobile locative games—like geocaching or Pokémon GO—are often perceived to inhabit a somewhat trivial world belonging to a subculture all their own. But, as my experiences highlight, they are in fact deeply entangled with the political currents of the everyday world. They, too, are impacted by the social norms and current events that establish gendered assumptions and provoke fear.
The winter sun dipped in the sky as I wrapped up an interview with Peter, a chemistry teacher in his early 40s, at a café in southeast Melbourne. After our chat, we drove our separate cars to the nearby Valley Reserve, a tranquil, densely vegetated park, where we planned to do some geocaching. It was getting dark under the trees, and only a couple of other vehicles were parked on the far side of the lot.
We pulled up next to each other and got out. As we juggled notebooks and GPSs, Peter remarked, "Shouldn't you have a chaperone? Going into a bushy park with a strange man—I don't know, if it was my daughter, I would want her to have a chaperone."
Peter's comment flustered me. I ducked my head to hide my embarrassment and frustration. Not only had he verbalized the irrational fears I'd spent the whole day trying to dismiss from my own mind, I was also more than a little disgruntled at the idea of needing a chaperone.
The previous week, the news and social media had been swamped by stories about Eurydice Dixon, a young woman who was raped and murdered by a man in a Brunswick park in north Melbourne. The statistical likelihood of experiencing such violence from a stranger in Melbourne—one of the safest cities in the world—is miniscule. But the news had piqued everyone's anxieties, and concern about the potential for violence was in the air. It was on my mind. Presumably, it was on Peter's too.
But then again, people around me had expressed similar concerns long before this awful murder had brought the issue to the fore. Before my research had even begun, my university's ethics committee had made me resubmit my application with better risk-management strategies. "As a young female student … Is it safe for the researcher to travel alone with the unknown geocacher in a park or other abandoned areas?" they wrote. Each time I left for an interview with a male participant, my parents made me text them the name of the interviewee and our meeting place. While I took reasonable precautions, I wanted to put these worries in their place. Statistically, violence was so unlikely, it seemed unfair that the fear of it could exert so much control over my life.
What surprised me about Peter's comment was that the person who appeared as the "threat" in this narrative had voiced misgivings himself. Perhaps he had been trying to diffuse any tension, as if a perpetrator wouldn't be so frank about such things. To fully disperse that tension, I should've laughed it off, saying something like, "Oh, but I'm sure you'd never do something like that!" Unfortunately, I tend to strive for accuracy more often than I strive for social harmony. What I actually said was, "Well, I suppose you have to take risks."
On that somewhat dark note, we set off.
The day after Eurydice Dixon was murdered, I was cycling to Brunswick for an interview with vividrogers. Losing my bearings, I turned up alongside an expansive park and paused to check Google Maps. Then I saw the police cordon stretched across the grass of the soccer pitch. I realized, with a visceral jolt, that I knew exactly where I was.
Vividrogers, like many of the female geocachers I spoke to, said she was unlikely to go geocaching by herself at night: "It definitely occurs to you. As a female in today's society, I probably wouldn't wander around in a dark park in the middle of the night on my own."
Rod, a truck driver and respected member of the geocaching community, often takes women on nighttime geocaching expeditions. He acts as a kind of "chaperone," to use Peter's term. He does know female geocachers who go out at night alone, but just like my parents and the ethics committee, he worries about them. "And there are grounds to worry," he said, "based on recent happenings in Melbourne."
Sharkiefan, though, isn't afraid of the dark. Rod has invited her on his night expeditions before, but she wouldn't limit herself to night-caching with a male companion. "I feel safe in the city," she said. "It doesn't mean I'd go down an alley, but you just have to be sensible."
The assumptions that make women feel vulnerable at times can, in other contexts, act in their favor. One of the things that sharkiefan loves about geocaching is that she can sneak through a park full of children and parents, rummaging under benches and peering into foliage, without anyone taking much notice. At a glance, she isn't assumed to be threatening. "Being a white girl, and being middle-aged, well, you can kinda just do what you like," she told me once over brunch. "No mums and dads give me a second look because I'm not a guy and I'm not gonna be some child molester or something." Without a partner or children beside them, lone male geocachers in parks are sometimes interpreted as gay men wanting casual sex in the toilet block, or as potential pedophiles, she explained.
Race plays into these assumptions too. But this is less noticeable in geocaching, because most players are white—in fact, a study conducted in the U.S. found that 96 percent of geocachers identified as white, a statistic that matched my own experience in Melbourne. You could even speculate that geocaching is so white precisely because prejudices like these keep people of color away from the game.
In any case, the result is that it's the men who bear the burden of suspicion. "If I was a man … men are always more …" she said. Sharkiefan couldn't find the word, so she started again. "If you were a woman and there was a man lurking around acting a little bit weird, you'd be a bit creeped out. If it's a girl, people are just like, 'Oh well, whatever.'"
I didn't start my research with such heavy topics in mind. I was more interested in how people interact with digital technology and how that technology affects the way they experience their environments. But the topic of suspicion, and the possibility of violence, kept coming up. Both for me as a researcher and for my subjects—male and female—there was a marked intersection between geocaching and gendered assumptions about threat and vulnerability in urban public spaces.
Geocachers and non-geocachers size each other up from the other side of the street, using the tools they have available to judge whether the other might be innocent or predatory. Unfortunately, these tools are incredibly blunt. Poor Peter—he is a lovely guy. I'm sure the cyclist on the boardwalk is too. Some might say we'd dressed lambs up as wolves.
This work first appeared on SAPIENS under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license. Read the original here.
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‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>There are 5 eras in the universe's lifecycle. Right now, we're in the second era.
Astronomers find these five chapters to be a handy way of conceiving the universe's incredibly long lifespan.
Image based on logarithmic maps of the Universe put together by Princeton University researchers, and images produced by NASA based on observations made by their telescopes and roving spacecraft
- We're in the middle, or thereabouts, of the universe's Stelliferous era.
- If you think there's a lot going on out there now, the first era's drama makes things these days look pretty calm.
- Scientists attempt to understand the past and present by bringing together the last couple of centuries' major schools of thought.
The 5 eras of the universe
<p>There are many ways to consider and discuss the past, present, and future of the universe, but one in particular has caught the fancy of many astronomers. First published in 1999 in their book <a href="https://amzn.to/2wFQLiL" target="_blank"><em>The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity</em></a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Adams" target="_blank">Fred Adams</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_P._Laughlin" target="_blank">Gregory Laughlin</a> divided the universe's life story into five eras:</p><ul><li>Primordial era</li><li>Stellferous era</li><li>Degenerate era</li><li>Black Hole Era</li><li>Dark era</li></ul><p>The book was last updated according to current scientific understandings in 2013.</p><p>It's worth noting that not everyone is a subscriber to the book's structure. Popular astrophysics writer <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ethansiegel/#30921c93683e" target="_blank">Ethan C. Siegel</a>, for example, published an article on <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/26/we-have-already-entered-the-sixth-and-final-era-of-our-universe/#7072d52d4e5d" target="_blank"><em>Medium</em></a> last June called "We Have Already Entered The Sixth And Final Era Of Our Universe." Nonetheless, many astronomers find the quintet a useful way of discuss such an extraordinarily vast amount of time.</p>The Primordial era
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwMTEyMi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNjEzMjY1OX0.PRpvAoa99qwsDNprDme9tBWDim6mS7Mjx6IwF60fSN8/img.jpg?width=980" id="db4eb" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0e568b0cc12ed624bb8d7e5ff45882bd" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="1049" />Image source: Sagittarius Production/Shutterstock
<p> This is where the universe begins, though what came before it and where it came from are certainly still up for discussion. It begins at the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago. </p><p> For the first little, and we mean <em>very</em> little, bit of time, spacetime and the laws of physics are thought not yet to have existed. That weird, unknowable interval is the <a href="https://www.universeadventure.org/eras/era1-plankepoch.htm" target="_blank">Planck Epoch</a> that lasted for 10<sup>-44</sup> seconds, or 10 million of a trillion of a trillion of a trillionth of a second. Much of what we currently believe about the Planck Epoch eras is theoretical, based largely on a hybrid of general-relativity and quantum theories called quantum gravity. And it's all subject to revision. </p><p> That having been said, within a second after the Big Bang finished Big Banging, inflation began, a sudden ballooning of the universe into 100 trillion trillion times its original size. </p><p> Within minutes, the plasma began cooling, and subatomic particles began to form and stick together. In the 20 minutes after the Big Bang, atoms started forming in the super-hot, fusion-fired universe. Cooling proceeded apace, leaving us with a universe containing mostly 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, similar to that we see in the Sun today. Electrons gobbled up photons, leaving the universe opaque. </p><p> About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe had cooled enough that the first stable atoms capable of surviving began forming. With electrons thus occupied in atoms, photons were released as the background glow that astronomers detect today as cosmic background radiation. </p><p> Inflation is believed to have happened due to the remarkable overall consistency astronomers measure in cosmic background radiation. Astronomer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGCVTSQw7WU" target="_blank">Phil Plait</a> suggests that inflation was like pulling on a bedsheet, suddenly pulling the universe's energy smooth. The smaller irregularities that survived eventually enlarged, pooling in denser areas of energy that served as seeds for star formation—their gravity pulled in dark matter and matter that eventually coalesced into the first stars. </p>The Stelliferous era
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwMTEzNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMjA0OTcwMn0.GVCCFbBSsPdA1kciHivFfWlegOfKfXUfEtFKEF3otQg/img.jpg?width=980" id="bc650" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c8f86bf160ecdea6b330f818447393cd" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="481" data-height="720" />Image source: Casey Horner/unsplash
<p>The era we know, the age of stars, in which most matter existing in the universe takes the form of stars and galaxies during this active period. </p><p>A star is formed when a gas pocket becomes denser and denser until it, and matter nearby, collapse in on itself, producing enough heat to trigger nuclear fusion in its core, the source of most of the universe's energy now. The first stars were immense, eventually exploding as supernovas, forming many more, smaller stars. These coalesced, thanks to gravity, into galaxies.</p><p>One axiom of the Stelliferous era is that the bigger the star, the more quickly it burns through its energy, and then dies, typically in just a couple of million years. Smaller stars that consume energy more slowly stay active longer. In any event, stars — and galaxies — are coming and going all the time in this era, burning out and colliding.</p><p>Scientists predict that our Milky Way galaxy, for example, will crash into and combine with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy in about 4 billion years to form a new one astronomers are calling the Milkomeda galaxy.</p><p>Our solar system may actually survive that merger, amazingly, but don't get too complacent. About a billion years later, the Sun will start running out of hydrogen and begin enlarging into its red giant phase, eventually subsuming Earth and its companions, before shrining down to a white dwarf star.</p>The Degenerate era
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwMTE1MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTk3NDQyN30.gy4__ALBQrdbdm-byW5gQoaGNvFTuxP5KLYxEMBImNc/img.jpg?width=980" id="77f72" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="08bb56ea9fde2cee02d63ed472d79ca3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="810" />Image source: Diego Barucco/Shutterstock/Big Think
<p>Next up is the Degenerate era, which will begin about 1 quintillion years after the Big Bang, and last until 1 duodecillion after it. This is the period during which the remains of stars we see today will dominate the universe. Were we to look up — we'll assuredly be outta here long before then — we'd see a much darker sky with just a handful of dim pinpoints of light remaining: <a href="https://earthsky.org/space/evaporating-giant-exoplanet-white-dwarf-star" target="_blank">white dwarfs</a>, <a href="https://earthsky.org/space/new-observations-where-stars-end-and-brown-dwarfs-begin" target="_blank">brown dwarfs</a>, and <a href="https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/definition-what-is-a-neutron-star" target="_blank">neutron stars</a>. These"degenerate stars" are much cooler and less light-emitting than what we see up there now. Occasionally, star corpses will pair off into orbital death spirals that result in a brief flash of energy as they collide, and their combined mass may become low-wattage stars that will last for a little while in cosmic-timescale terms. But mostly the skies will be be bereft of light in the visible spectrum.</p><p>During this era, small brown dwarfs will wind up holding most of the available hydrogen, and black holes will grow and grow and grow, fed on stellar remains. With so little hydrogen around for the formation of new stars, the universe will grow duller and duller, colder and colder.</p><p>And then the protons, having been around since the beginning of the universe will start dying off, dissolving matter, leaving behind a universe of subatomic particles, unclaimed radiation…and black holes.</p>The Black Hole era
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwMTE2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMjE0OTQ2MX0.ifwOQJgU0uItiSRg9z8IxFD9jmfXlfrw6Jc1y-22FuQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="103ea" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f0e6a71dacf95ee780dd7a1eadde288d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1400" data-height="787" />Image source: Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock/Big Think
<p> For a considerable length of time, black holes will dominate the universe, pulling in what mass and energy still remain. </p><p> Eventually, though, black holes evaporate, albeit super-slowly, leaking small bits of their contents as they do. Plait estimates that a small black hole 50 times the mass of the sun would take about 10<sup>68</sup> years to dissipate. A massive one? A 1 followed by 92 zeros. </p><p> When a black hole finally drips to its last drop, a small pop of light occurs letting out some of the only remaining energy in the universe. At that point, at 10<sup>92</sup>, the universe will be pretty much history, containing only low-energy, very weak subatomic particles and photons. </p>The Dark Era
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjkwMTE5NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0Mzg5OTEyMH0.AwiPRGJlGIcQjjSoRLi6V3g5klRYtxQJIpHFgZdZkuo/img.jpg?width=980" id="60c77" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7a857fb7f0d85cf4a248dbb3350a6e1c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="810" />Image source: Big Think
<p>We can sum this up pretty easily. Lights out. Forever.</p>Astrophysicists find unique "hot Jupiter" planet without clouds
A unique exoplanet without clouds or haze was found by astrophysicists from Harvard and Smithsonian.
Illustration of WASP-62b, the Jupiter-like planet without clouds or haze in its atmosphere.
- Astronomers from Harvard and Smithsonian find a very rare "hot Jupiter" exoplanet without clouds or haze.
- Such planets were formed differently from others and offer unique research opportunities.
- Only one other such exoplanet was found previously.
Munazza Alam – a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Credit: Jackie Faherty
Jupiter's Colorful Cloud Bands Studied by Spacecraft
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8a72dfe5b407b584cf867852c36211dc"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GzUzCesfVuw?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
Bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois)
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>FOSTA-SESTA: Have controversial sex trafficking acts done more harm than good?
The idea behind the law was simple: make it more difficult for online sex traffickers to find victims.
