Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

What I learned today: We didn’t evolve from Neanderthals.

Somewhere between school and now, I lost track of what the academics think about how we, humans, got here. I didn’t even know that I didn’t know until this article from the latest Smithsonian Magazine.

It says that all humans came out of Africa. That I knew. But it also says that as humans migrated out of Africa, those moving into Europe ran into the indigenous peoples already there—the Neanderthals. Then the two groups competed for resources and supremacy. That’s fascinating.

And when humans moved into unpopulated areas, where they automatically became the top life form, innovation would not be that important. For example, the aboriginal peoples in places like Australia would not have had to invent and develop new ways of doing things because they didn’t face overpopulation and scarcity of resources.

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This is the first post in what will be the ongoing series “What I Learned Today” (WILT).

In the April 2008 edition of the Smithsonian Magazine, I learned that it is scientifically accepted that “[e]very major galaxy, [. . .] has a black hole at its core.” This includes our own Milky Way. And my mind is blown.

Black holes are awesome and scary and fascinating. They are like some kind of movie monsters become real–Once they get you, you can’t escape, and nobody knows what happens to anything that disappears into them.

To make matters even more interesting, the researchers predict that in about two billion years, the Milky Way and our closest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, are going to move into each other and merge. Then the two central black holes will collide. Seriously, how cool is that?

I’m glad I’m not going to be around for it though.

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