Is that you, Love Interest in Heteronormative Sci-Fi Romantic Thriller?

Per usual, science is terrifying and we’re all going to die. However, supposedly we’ll find love in the middle of [instert crisis here]? It’s a little unclear. Courtesy of the optimistic(?) Phoebe Newton, this edition of Bunsen Bwog is the apocalyptic version of spending an hour on WebMD (only to discover that you are for sure dying).

Is the science behind the (consumerist) holiday season really a scam? A recent study by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology has uncovered that happiness as a result of a material world is a scientific fact. Note that “material purchases, from sweaters to skateboards, provide more frequent happiness over time.” Additional support for this claim comes from a series of journals by consumers, who experienced “repeated doses of happiness over time in the weeks after [purchases] are bought.” It’s official, your holiday shopping is, at last, validated.

As experienced on Columbia’s Campus, the weather has recently been, well, strange. Unfortunately for this holiday season, AccuWeather reports that this upcoming Christmas Eve is predicted to be one of the warmest in history, specifically up and down the entire Eastern Seaboard. This could prove a threat for the various mythical figureheads of this Holiday season, especially a certain man in a red velvet suit. Don’t make a Facebook event for a snowy “winter” break just yet, because you might be having a backyard barbecue instead. Next step: Apocalypse.

Speaking of Apocalypse, “Love in the time of Ebola: Study reveals factors bolstering altruism in the face of risk” outlines a social experiment involving people’s reaction to various crises. The Society for Risk Analysis discusses “how altruistic behavioral intentions related to the Ebola outbreak were deeply rooted in cultural values and worldviews and emotions, yet also were influenced by the ways in which people dealt with factual risk information related to the outbreak.” Thanks to science, we now officially know that in the face of imminent demise (medical or environmental), your life could actually turn out like a sci-fi romantic thriller.

In other exciting news, General Relativity has been caught in action around a black hole. In a recent Science News article, Andrew Grant reports that Physicists have “detected the signature of a black hole twisting the fabric of spacetime around it,” offering the most supported evidence of this relativity-driven twisting effect (frame dragging). This latest galactic revelation comes just in time for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Mazel Tov to Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity for this discovery, and may the Force be with you.

Generic Space Alien Love Action movie via Shutterstock