November 02, 2016 at 05:12AM

Today I Learned: 1) The current best theory of the origin of life is neither "RNA world", "lipid world", nor "metabolism world" (or whatever you call the hydrothermal vent hypothesis). It's what you might call "everything world" -- the idea is that a complex but not altogether unlikely mix of organics all came together to produce RNA, amino acids, and micelle-forming lipids, all in a clay microenvironment that could definitely catalyze ribonucleotide production and might be able to support ATPase-like metabolism. See http://ift.tt/2ecU9m2 for details, including a bunch of brief but colorful biographies of some of the crazy scientists behind this field. 2) There are a lot of little tidbits about the Mona Lisa. Here are a couple: The Mona Lisa was originally a painting of someone else. It was painted over in multiple layers, with normal paints and with translucent varnishes. The blue sky in the background of the Mona Lisa was painted with lapis lazul, which at the time of the painting cost more than gold by weight. The Mona Lisa was owned by Napoleon, who hung it in his washroom. It was damaged by water stains while "installed" there. 3) There's a famous sketch of Leonardo da Vinci's of what appears to be a modern bycicle... which is probably a fake. It was done in graphite, which wasn't invented until after Leonardo's death.