[NEWS] Four science links: Venus and Earth, Greenland shark, maple syrup, black hole J1342+0928

[rfmcdonald]

• Does Venus have a much weaker magnetic field than the Earth because Venus, unlike the Earth, did not suffer a massive Moon-creating impact? Universe Today reports.


• M.R. O'Connor tells the story of how scientists managed to figure out how amazingly long the Greenland shark can live. The New Yorker has it.


• Climate Central notes how, thanks to global warming, maple syrup season is starting earlier every year and the heartland of production is moving ever more to the north.


• At Wired, Joshua Sokol reports on the distant and mysteriously massive black hole J1342+0928. How did it become so incredibly massive--780 million solar masses--when the universe was less than a billion years old?