Are we prepared to reckon with how much of the world came to a stop when Facebook went down yesterday? Plus, thanks to a new discovery, you may soon be able to find out if you had an identical twin in the womb using just a simple cheek swab. And it’s Nobel Prize week! The winners announced thus far produced groundbreaking work using everything from spin glass to chili peppers.

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Links:

• ​​Why Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp All Went Down Today (Wired)
• Millions of people rely on Facebook to get online. The outage left them stranded. (MIT Tech Review)
• Facebook’s Apps Went Down. The World Saw How Much It Runs on Them. (NY Times)
• Why Facebook and Instagram went down for hours on Monday (NPR)
• All identical twins may share a common set of chemical markers on their DNA (Science News)
• DNA markers reveal if you shared a womb with twin that didn't survive (New Scientist)
• Identical twins carry genetic modifications no one else has (Science)
• Medicine Nobel goes to scientists who discovered biology of senses (Nature)
• Scientists Studied Spicy Chili Peppers and Cool Menthol for Their Nobel Prize–Winning Research on Heat and Touch (Smithsonian Mag)
• Nobel Prize in Physics Honors Work on Climate Change (NY Times)
• Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann win half of Nobel prize for modeling Earth's climate, Giorgio Parisi wins other half for describing fluctuating physical systems (Washington Post)
• Netflix establishes scholarship in Chadwick Boseman's name (A/V Club)
• Denzel Washington Paid for Chadwick Boseman to Study at Oxford (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, YouTube)
• Kottke.Org
• Jackson Bird on Twitter

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