It Went By in a Heartbeat
New research suggests that our heartbeats affect how we perceive time. When our heart rate is slower, we tend to overestimate the duration of events, reports Ellen Barry for The New York Times. Our hearts can influence our perception in other ways too. In 2020, Jordana Cepelewicz wrote for Quanta about how the rhythmic phases of our heartbeat sharply change how the brain processes pain and responds to fearful stimuli.
Careful With Those Plates
Researchers believe that when Theia, a Mars-sized planet, collided with the young Earth, the impact kick-started subduction, a hallmark of plate tectonics, writes Nikk Ogasa for Science News. On Earth, plate tectonics was an essential condition for the emergence of life, as Rebecca Boyle reported for Quanta in 2018. The new insight that moon-forming cataclysms can also cause subduction therefore gives astronomers a guidepost for finding other planets with plate tectonics: their moons. | |
