All articles tagged with #science
Thai scientists announce Uragasaurus kalasinensis, a newly identified plant-eating dinosaur thought to have lived about 150 million years ago and about the length of a cricket pitch.
Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, a Chicago-born prodigy who built and solo-flied a plane as a teen, topped MIT physics, earned a Harvard PhD, and contributed to quantum gravity and the spin memory effect (cited by Hawking). She turned down lucrative offers from Blue Origin, Brown University, and NASA, and joined the Perimeter Institute in 2021 as the youngest faculty member, where she founded the Celestial Holography Initiative. In 2023, the Simons Foundation granted $8 million to support her collaborative work linking spacetime with quantum theory.
An international team combined gravitational-wave data from a neutron-star collision with telescope and astrometric observations to measure the Hubble-Lemaitre Constant via the Cosmic Distance Ladder. Their result adds a late-Universe, gravitational-wave–based data point that loosely aligns with early-Universe (CMB) estimates, highlighting GW methods as a valuable but still less precise tool to help resolve the Hubble tension. More neutron-star mergers are needed to confirm the implications for cosmology.
A 2025 arXiv modelling study suggests moons bound to planets ejected by supernovae could remain in interstellar space and heat internal oceans via tidal flexing, potentially keeping subsurface oceans for billions of years without sunlight. In simulations, 12–15% of cases yielded heating within the Europa/Enceladus range; surfaces would stay frozen and oceans would be buried, but the internal heat could sustain liquid water. The work is theoretical and depends on model inputs, and no confirmed rogue-planet moons have been observed yet; still, it widens habitable-setting thinking beyond star warmth.
New analysis using decades of sea-level pressure data shows North Pacific winter storm tracks are migrating north toward the Arctic faster than climate models project, a shift linked to climate change that coincides with Alaska’s glacier ice loss (~60 billion tons per year) and hotter, drier conditions across California and Nevada. The study suggests models may understate the risks of storm-track changes, implying Western North America could face more dramatic impacts than current projections indicate.
A Newcastle University-led study challenges the long-standing inductive effect model used to explain how electron density shifts within organic molecules. Using modern computational analysis, the researchers argue that this traditional shortcut doesn’t always hold and propose explaining molecular behavior by considering the overall electron distribution across the entire molecule, not long-range inductive transmission. The finding could lead to updated chemistry textbooks and teaching, with implications for education, drug discovery, and materials science, though it does not overturn organic chemistry as a field.
Cassini measurements imply Saturn’s rings are relatively young (roughly 10–400 million years old) and are currently draining into the planet, with ring rain alone potentially clearing them in about 100 million years; the exact age and loss rate are still debated, but the data tilt toward a transient, recently formed ring system that may soon disappear, with future JWST and ground observations expected to refine the timeline.
An atomic-level study shows the anesthetic sevoflurane binds a pocket at the edge of the voltage-gated sodium channel pore, stabilizing the channel in an inactive state and dampening neuronal signaling—a finding that explains how inhaled anesthetics induce unconsciousness and could guide the design of safer drugs.
A new study proposes that some of the Milky Way’s coldest objects, currently catalogued as stars, could be Dyson swarm energy collectors built by advanced civilizations around red and white dwarfs. Such systems would absorb visible light and re-emit heat as infrared, altering their position on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram and creating distinctive, cleaner infrared spectra and irregular brightness changes. Astronomers are using JWST and projects like Hephaistos to search for these signatures and distinguish them from natural dust clouds.
New stalagmite-based climate records from Flores show a progression from wetter conditions to a pronounced summer aridification between 61,000 and 47,000 years ago, a shift that coincided with the decline of Homo floresiensis and its pygmy-elephant prey (Stegodon). As freshwater sources dwindled and resources tightened, the hobbits abandoned Liang Bua and possibly encountered expanding Homo sapiens; a volcanic ash layer dating to ~50,000 years ago could have further contributed to their final decline. The study emphasizes freshwater availability and climate stress as key factors in this extinction within the broader context of human evolution.
A large, non‑peer‑reviewed study posted on bioRxiv analyzed 72,644 biomedical preprints (2018–2025) and found that central conclusions remain unchanged in 39.9% and are revised only modestly in about 50%, with major changes in around 10%. Revisions tend to become more cautious after peer review. Major revision rates vary by field (7.2% for bioinformatics vs 17.5% for microbiology) and have declined over time (17% in 2019 to 5.7% in 2024). Preprinted papers are retracted at roughly half the rate of non‑preprinted ones (8.1 vs 18.7 per 10,000), though the study is observational and subject to selection biases. Overall, preprints appear more reliable than some critics claim, but caveats remain regarding interpretation and methodology.
Elon Musk cites the Kardashev scale—the energy-based framework for classifying civilizations—to frame SpaceX’s plan for up to a million satellites as a first step toward a Type II civilization powered by space-based solar energy; the piece explains the scale’s history (Kardashev’s original three types and Carl Sagan’s refinements), notes humanity is currently around Type 0.7, and cautions that achieving Type II would require enormous mass and infrastructure (think Dyson-sphere-like concepts), making it a provocative but speculative goal.
Researchers using the ROV SuBastian uncovered two hydrothermal vent fields in the Doldrums Megatransform and Fracture Zone off Brazil, including a 24‑acre area with 23 vents and 13 active black smokers at about 280°C. The vents host life from anemones to Rimicaris shrimp, powered by chemical energy from vent fluids. The discovery, aided by serpentinisation, shows the Atlantic’s deep ecosystems are more diverse than thought and could offer clues about life on other worlds.
A new analysis of 155 binary black-hole mergers detected by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA finds about 14% could be second-generation black holes formed from prior mergers, suggesting hierarchical mergers occur in dense stellar environments and can create unusually massive BHs in the 40+ solar-mass range, challenging simple stellar-collapse narratives and raising questions about their true origins.
NASA is keeping Voyager 1 alive by cautiously turning off nonessential instruments and heaters to conserve the aging RTG’s power, while keeping it warm enough to prevent fuel lines from freezing and to maintain precise antenna pointing. The 25-billion-kilometre distance makes any misfire fatal, and a 2025 fuel-line clog nearly cut off thruster control—forcing a successful test of the long-dormant primary roll thrusters to extend the mission into the 2030s as communications depend on a 23-hour round trip.