Link About It: This Week’s Picks

The importance of doodles, the smell of old books, the power of Prince and more in our look around the web

1. Scent Detectives Define the Smell of Old Books You know the sensation of pressing your nose into an antique book or walking through a historic library. But we’ve long struggled with the exact adjectives to describe these scents. Thankfully, two University of London researchers have developed guidelines for describing these characteristics through chemical analysis of volatile organic compounds. To translate this academic approach to …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

The sounds of icebergs, "seeing" a black hole, Elon Musk's new endeavor and more in our look around the web

1. Keeping Up With the Machines, Elon Musk’s New Program It’s been a week now since serial entrepreneur (and futurist) Elon Musk announced the launch of Neuralink Corp, and to be honest, it’s still on our minds. With this new venture, Musk proposes developing a technology (known as “neural lace”) that would potentially implant electrodes into human brains, allowing us to keep up with the …

“Seeing” a Black Hole

Every visualization you’ve ever seen of a black hole has been an illustration. As Vox points out, the closest the scientific community has ever come to seeing one was through last year’s observation of “spacetime-warping gravitational waves radiating” from the billion-year-old collision of two black holes. This is because black holes are small, far away, dark and surrounded by bright things. Now, however, a planet-sized …