Volcanoes and earthquakes are among Earth’s most dynamic and interesting forces, but their origins have remained a bit elusive. Plate tectonics are the result of a cosmic collision about 4.5 billion years ago, when an object about the size of the planet Mars slammed into Earth. The impact left behind some strange blobs within our planet that may have created plate tectonics, according to new computer modeling research. This new hypothesis is described in a study published May 7 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

What are these mystery blobs?

In the 1980s, geophysicists first discovered two continent-sized blobs of an unusual material deep near the center of the Earth. One blob is located beneath the Pacific Ocean and the other is under the African continent. Both are twice the size of our moon. They are so large that if they were placed on Earth’s surface, they would make a layer roughly 60 miles thick around the planet.

Formally known as large low-velocity provinces (LLVPs), they are also likely built of different proportions of elements than the mantle that surrounds them. A 2023 paper published in the journal Nature proposed that they are the remains of an ancient planet called Theia that collided with Earth in the same massive impact that created the moon. The study suggests that most of Theia was absorbed into our young planet, forming the LLVP blobs. The residual debris formed the moon. 

[Related: Earth’s first continent? Probably a giant continental crust.]

“The moon appears to have materials within it representative of both the pre-impact Earth and Theia, but it was thought that any remnants of Theia in the Earth would have been ‘erased’ and homogenized by billions of years of dynamics (e.g., mantle convection) within the Earth,” Arizona State University astrophysicist and co-author of the Nature study Steven Desch said in a statement. “This is the first study to make the case that distinct ‘pieces’ of Theia still reside within the Earth, at its core-mantle boundary.”

The study posits that these blobs themselves then created our planet’s plate tectonics, which allowed life to flourish. 

A new look at some very old minerals

This new paper builds on that study. Using computer modeling, they determined that around 200 million years after the impact with Theia, the submerged LLVP blobs may have helped create the hot plumes inside Earth that disrupted the surface. They breached the flat crust and allowed circular slabs to sink down in a process called subduction.

According to the team, it may explain why the Earth’s oldest minerals are zircon crystals that appear to have undergone subduction over 4 billion years ago and may have contributed to plate tectonics. 

[Related: How old is Earth? It’s a surprisingly tough question to answer.]

“The giant impact is not only the reason for our moon, if that’s the case, it also set the initial conditions of our Earth,” California Institute of Technology geoscientists and study co-author Qian Yuan told The Washington Post. 

The model raised numerous questions for some outside geologists, including whether or not the collision would have resulted in a recycling of Earth’s entire crust instead of plate tectonics. This process potentially occurred on our sister planet Venus billions of years ago. There are also some geochemical inconsistencies that cast doubt on the planet smashing theory as a whole, according to some scientists.

Are plate tectonics really necessary for life?

While they can be destructive to both property and lives, some scientists believe that plate tectonics helps Earth keep up the carbon cycle. This process moves carbon between microbes, plants, minerals, animals, and Earth’s atmosphere. The fourth most abundant element in the universe, carbon can also form the complex molecules on Earth like DNA and proteins. These building blocks of carbon make life on Earth possible. 

However, another study published last year in Nature posits that mobile plate tectonics was not happening on Earth about 3.9 billion years ago when the first traces of life appeared on Earth. 

[Related: Your ancestors might have been Martians.]

“We found there wasn’t plate tectonics when life is first thought to originate and that there wasn’t plate tectonics for hundreds of millions of years after,” University of Rochester paleogeologist John Tarduno said in a statement. “Our data suggests that when we’re looking for exoplanets that harbor life, the planets do not necessarily need to have plate tectonics.”

What is clear is that concrete answers to the question of how, when, and why life first emerged on our planet and what role the shifting plates played or didn’t play will endure. 

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Sperm whales have their own unique cultures, accents, and potentially a phonetic alphabet. A team from MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) may have decoded this phonetic alphabet that reveals sophisticated structures within sperm whale communication that could be similar to human phonetics and other animal linguistic systems. 

“Sperm whale calls are, in principle, capable of expressing a wider space of meanings than we previously thought!” MIT computer science graduate student Pratyusha Sharma tells PopSci. Sharma is a co-author of a new study published May 7 in the journal Nature Communications that describes these findings. 

Sperm whale ABCs

With some of the largest brains of any species on Earth, sperm whales have complex social behaviors. They travel in pods and have various cultural groups that dive and hunt together and even take turns looking after younger whales. They do this all in almost complete darkness, so they need strong communication to coordinate their lives in the ocean’s deepest depths.

[Related: Science Says Sperm Whales Could Really Wreck Ships.]

Sperm whales use a complex system of codas–short bursts of clicks–to communicate. In this study, the team collected 9,000 codas from sperm whale families in the Eastern Caribbean sperm observed by The Dominica Sperm Whale Project. They used acoustic biologging tags, called D-tags that were deployed on whales. The D-tags captured details of the whales’ vocal patterns. 

The team found that these short groups of clicks vary in structure depending on the conversational context. With this data in hand, they used a mix of algorithms for pattern recognition and classification, and on-body recording equipment. It revealed that the communications were not random or simple, but more structured and complex. 

The sperm whale’s essentially have their own phonetic alphabet. Various auditory elements that the team call rhythm, tempo, rubato, and ornamentation work together to form a large array of distinguishable codas. Depending on the context of the conversation, the whales can systematically modulate certain aspects of their codas. They may smoothly vary the duration of the calls–rubato–or add in some extra ornamental clicks. The team also found that the building blocks of these codas could be combined in various ways. The whales can then build many distinct vocalizations from these combinations. 

“The sperm whale communication system is a combinatorial coding system,” says Sharma. “Looking at a wider communicative context allowed us to discover that there is fine-grained variation in the structure of the calls of sperm whales that are both perceived and imitated in the course of their exchange.”

Using AI

The team developed new visualization and data analysis techniques that found individual sperm whales could emit various coda patterns in long exchanges. Using machine learning is important for pinpointing the specifics of their communications and predicting what they may say next. 

[Related: How bomb detectors discovered a hidden pod of singing blue whales.]

Scientists are interested in determining if these signals vary depending on the ecological context they are given in and how much the signals follow any potential rules similar to grammar that the listeners recognize. 

“The problem is particularly challenging in the case of marine mammals, because scientists usually cannot see their subjects or identify in complete detail the context of communication,” University of Pennsylvania Psychology Professor Emeritus Robert Seyfarth said in a statement. “Nonetheless, this paper offers new, tantalizing details of call combinations and the rules that underlie them in sperm whales.” Seyfarth was not involved in this study.

Alien communication on Earth

In future studies, CETI hopes to figure out whether elements like rhythm, tempo, ornamentation, and rubato carry specific intentions when communicated. This could provide insight into a specific linguistic phenomenon where simple elements are combined to present complex meanings. This “duality of patterning” was previously thought to be unique to human language. 

Research like this also parallels hypothetical scenarios in which humans contact alien species and need to communicate. 

“It’s about understanding a species with a completely different environment and communication protocols, where their interactions are distinctly different from human norms,” says Sharma. “Essentially, our work could lay the groundwork for deciphering how an ‘alien civilization’ might communicate, providing insights into creating algorithms or systems to understand entirely unfamiliar forms of communication.”

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This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

Sourdough is the oldest kind of leavened bread in recorded history, and people have been eating it for thousands of years. The components of creating a sourdough starter are very simple–flour and water. Mixing them produces a live culture where yeast and bacteria ferment the sugars in flour, making byproducts that give sourdough its characteristic taste and smell. They are also what make it rise in the absence of other leavening agents.

My sourdough starter, affectionately deemed the “Fosters” starter, was passed down to me by my grandparents, who received it from my grandmother’s college roommate. It has followed me throughout my academic career across the country, from undergrad in New Mexico to graduate school in Pennsylvania to postdoctoral work in Washington.

Currently, it resides in the Midwest, where I work at The Ohio State University as a senior research associate, collaborating with researchers to characterize samples in a wide variety of fields ranging from food science to material science.

As part of one of the microscopy courses I instruct at the university, I decided to take a closer look at the microbial community in my family’s sourdough starter with the microscope I use in my day-to-day research.

Scanning electron microscopes

Scanning electron microscopy, or SEM, is a powerful tool that can image the surface of samples at the nanometer scale. For comparison, a human hair is between 10 to 150 micrometers, and SEM can observe features that are 10,000 times smaller.

Since SEM uses electrons instead of light for imaging, there are limitations to what can be imaged in the microscope. Samples must be electrically conductive and able to withstand the very low pressures in a vacuum. Low-pressure environments are generally unfavorable for microbes, since these conditions will cause the water in cells to evaporate, deforming their structure.

To prepare samples for SEM analysis, researchers use a method called critical point drying that carefully dries the sample to reduce unwanted artifacts and preserve fine details. The sample is then coated with a thin layer of iridium metal to make it conductive.

Exploring a sourdough starter

Since sourdough starters are created from wild yeast and bacteria in the flour, it creates a favorable environment for many types of microbes to flourish. There can be more than 20 different species of yeast and 50 different species of bacteria in a sourdough starter. The most robust become the dominant species.

You can visually observe the microbial complexity of sourdough starter by imaging the different components that vary in size and morphology, including yeast and bacteria. However, a full understanding of all the diversity present in the starter would require a complete gene sequencing.

The main component that gives the starter texture are starch grains from the flour. These grains, colored green in the image, are identifiable as relatively large globular structures approximately 8 micrometers in diameter.

Giving rise to the starter is the yeast, colored red. As the yeast grows, it ferments sugars from the starch grains and releases carbon dioxide bubbles and alcohol as byproducts that make the dough rise. Yeast generally falls in the range of 2 to 10 micrometers in size and are round to elongated in shape. There are two distinct yeast types visible in this image, one that is nearly round, at the bottom left, and another that is elongated, at the top right.

Bacteria, colored blue, metabolize sugars and release byproducts such as lactic acid and acetic acid. These byproducts act as a preservative and are what give the starter its distinctive sour smell and taste. In this image, bacteria have pill-like shapes that are approximately 2 micrometers in size.

Now, the next time you eat sourdough bread or sourdough waffles–try them, they’re delicious!–you can visualize the rich array of microorganisms that give each piece its distinctive flavor.

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SpaceX has revealed its new Extravehicular Activity (EVA) suits that could make their low-Earth orbital debut by summer’s end. The new uniform is described as an evolution of the spacesuits currently worn by astronauts aboard Dragon missions, which are designed solely for remaining within pressurized environments. In contrast, the EVA suits will allow astronauts to work both within and outside their capsule as needed thanks to a number of advancements in materials fabrication, joint design, enhanced redundancy safeguards, as well as the integration of a helmet visor heads up display (HUD).

Announced over the weekend, the SpaceX EVA suits will be worn by the four crewmembers scheduled to comprise the Polaris Program’s first mission, Polaris Dawn. First launched in 2022, the Polaris Program is a joint venture through SpaceX intended to “rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities,” according to its website. Targeted for no earlier than summer 2024, Polaris Dawn will mark the first commercial spacewalk, as well as the first spacewalk to simultaneously include four astronauts. While making history outside their Dragon capsule, the crew will be the first to test Starlink laser-based communications systems that SpaceX believes will be critical to future missions to the moon and eventually Mars.

Mobility is the central focus of SpaceX’s teaser video posted to X on May 4, with an EVA suit wearer showing off their smooth ranges of motion for fingers, shoulders, and elbows. As PCMag.com also detailed on Monday, SpaceX EVA suits are fabricated with a variety of textile-based thermal materials and include semi-rigid rotator joints that allow work in both pressurized and unpressurized environments. For the boots, designers utilized the same temperature resilient material found in the Falcon 9 rocket’s interstage and Dragon capsule’s trunk.

Polaris Dawn astronauts will also sport 3D-printed polycarbonate helmets with visors coated in copper and indium tin oxide alongside anti-glare and anti-fog treatments. During the spacewalk roughly 435-miles above Earth, each crewmember’s helmet will project a built-in heads up display (HUD) to provide real-time pressure, temperature, and relative humidity readings.

[Related: Moon-bound Artemis III spacesuits have some functional luxury sewn in.]

Similar to the Prada-designed getups for NASA’s Artemis III astronauts, the SpaceX EVA suit is also meant to illustrate a future in which all kinds of body types can live and work beyond Earth. SpaceX explains that all the EVA upgrades are scalable in design, which will allow customization to accommodate “different body types as SpaceX seeks to create greater accessibility to space for all of humanity.” Its proposed goal of manufacturing “millions” of spacesuits for multiplanetary life may seem far-fetched right now, but it’s got to start somewhere—even if only just four of them at the moment.

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Despite being Earth’s sister planet in terms of size, Venus is pretty parched compared to our watery world. New computer simulations may hold clues about exactly how our neighbor became so dry. 

Hydrogen atoms in the planet’s atmosphere may fling off into space due to a dissociative recombination–where electrons are removed. Venus may be losing roughly twice as much water every day than previous estimates. The findings are detailed in a study published May 6 in the journal Nature and may help explain what happens to water on other planets in our home galaxy.

“Water is really important for life,” study co-author and University of Colorado Boulder astrophysicist Eryn Cangi said in a statement. “We need to understand the conditions that support liquid water in the universe, and that may have produced the very dry state of Venus today.”

The mystery of the missing water

The Earth is roughly 71 percent water. If you took all of that water and spread it across the planet, you’d get a liquid layer about 1.9 miles deep. If you did the same thing on Venus, you would get a layer that is only 1.2 inches deep. 

“Venus has 100,000 times less water than the Earth, even though it’s basically the same size and mass,” study co-author and astrophysicist Michael Chaffin said in a statement. 

[Related: A private company wants to look for life just above Venus.]

However, the planet was not always such a desert. Scientists believe that billions of years ago when Venus was forming, it got about as much water as Earth. At some point, clouds of carbon dioxide in Venus’ atmosphere essentially turned the planet into a greenhouse. The trapping of carbon dioxide raised surface temperatures to 900 degrees Fahrenheit. All of Venus’ water evaporated into steam and most drifted into space. 

That ancient evaporation even still isn’t enough to explain Venus is as dry as it is warm or how it continues to lose water into space. 

“As an analogy, say I dumped out the water in my water bottle. There would still be a few droplets left,” Chaffin said. 

What’s kicking out the hydrogen?

To try to determine why Venus is so dry, the team on this study used computer models to look at the different chemical reactions occuring in the planet’s swirling atmosphere. 

“We’re trying to figure out what little changes occurred on each planet to drive them into these vastly different states,” said Cangi.

They found that a molecule made up of one atom each of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen called HCO+ may be causing the planet to leak water.

[Related: Something is making Venus’s clouds less acidic.]

In a planet’s upper atmosphere, water mixes with carbon dioxide to form these HCO+ molecules. Earlier studies found that HCO+ may also be the reason why Mars lost a large amount of its original water.

On Venus, HCO+ is constantly produced in its atmosphere, but the individual hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen atoms don’t survive very long. The electrons in the atmosphere find the atoms, recombine, and then split them in two. When this happens, the hydrogen atoms zip away and may completely escape into space. It eventually is stealing one of the two components needed for water away from Venus. The team calculated that the only way to explain Venus’ dry state was if the planet had higher than expected volumes of HCO+ in its atmosphere. 

Probing Venus

Scientists have never observed HCO+ around Venus. The team believes that is because they’ve never had instruments that can properly look for the ion. None of the spacecraft that have visited Venus–including NASA’s Mariner 2, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express, or Japan’s Akatsuki and others—have carried instruments that could detect HCO+.

“One of the surprising conclusions of this work is that HCO+ should actually be among the most abundant ions in the Venus atmosphere,” Chaffin said.

[Related: We finally know why Venus is absolutely radiant.]

By the end of this decade, NASA plans to drop a probe through Venus’ atmosphere down to the surface during its DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gasses, Chemistry, and Imaging) mission. While it won’t be able to detect HCO+, the team is hopeful that a future Venus mission might reveal another clue to the mystery of Venus’ missing water.  

“There haven’t been many missions to Venus,” Cangi said. “But newly planned missions will leverage decades of collective experience and a flourishing interest in Venus to explore the extremes of planetary atmospheres, evolution and habitability.”

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King Sargon II was a big fan of seeing his name around town—at least, that’s what one expert believes after reviewing a series of repeating mystery images that have confounded researchers for well over a century.

Ruler of the Neo-Assyrian empire from 721-704 BCE, Sargon II oversaw huge portions of ancient Mesopotamia, and is considered one of the era’s greatest military strategists. By the time of his death in 705 BCE, the king had either conquered or neutralized all his major political threats, a feat celebrated by his establishment of a new Assyrian capital in present day Khorsabad, Iraq, called Dūr-Šarrukīn, or “Fort Sargon,” in 706 BCE.

Excavations of the city during the late-nineteenth century revealed a sequence of five symbols repeated across multiple temples throughout Dūr-Šarrukīn—a lion, an eagle, a bull, a fig tree, and a plow. In some cases, however, there is similar art using just the lion, tree, and plough. Although the images appear similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Assyrian empire during Sargon II’s reign had long utilized their non-pictorial cuneiform for written communication. Because of this, researchers have spent years theorizing about what the five total images might represent. Given Sargon II’s regal ego, historians have previously surmised the art could potentially represent his name in some form, but weren’t clear how that could be the case.

“The study of ancient languages and cultures is full of puzzles of all shapes and sizes, but it’s not often in the Ancient Near East that one faces mystery symbols on a temple wall,” Martin Worthington, a Trinity University professor specializing in ancient Mesopotamian languages and civilizations, said in a recent statement.

But according to Worthington, the answer is relatively simple and characteristic of the time. In his new paper published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Worthington argues the five images, when sounded out in ancient Assyrian, approximate “šargīnu,” or Sargon. Even when just the trio of pictures appears, their combination phonetically still resembles a shortened form of “Sargon.” Combined with the religious undertones of Assyrian constellations, Worthington contends the king was intent on making sure everyone knew just how great and powerful he was. 

“The effect of the symbols was to assert that Sargon’s name was written in the heavens, for all eternity, and also to associate him with the gods Anu and Enlil, to whom the constellations in question were linked,” he writes in his new paper’s abstract. “It is further suggested that Sargon’s name was elsewhere symbolized by a lion passant (pacing lion), through a bilingual pun.”

[Related: How cryptographers finally cracked one of the Zodiac Killer’s hardest codes.]

“[It was] a clever way to make the king’s name immortal,” Worthingon added through Trinity University’s announcement. “And, of course, the idea of bombastic individuals writing their name on buildings is not unique to ancient Assyria.”

Of course, given these are millennia-old metaphors sans concrete language reference points, it’s arguably impossible to state without a doubt these were Sargon’s regal brag banners. Cuneiform used at the time didn’t rely on literal pictures, and no codex is available to match the temple art with any translation. That said, Worthington believes the underlying logic, combined with Assyrian cultural reference points, makes a pretty convincing argument.

“I can’t prove my theory, but the fact it works for both the five-symbol sequence and the three-symbol sequence, and that the symbols can also be understood as culturally appropriate constellations, strikes me as highly suggestive,” Worthington said. “The odds against it all being happenstance are—forgive the pun—astronomical.”

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Cultivated meat, more widely known to the public as “lab-grown meat,” is at an inflection point. Lab grown chicken and beef cultivated from cells in a petri dish remain unavailable to the average consumer, but the former has gained US Department of Agriculture approval. Two US restaurants in San Francisco and Washington DC have already served cultivated choice meat on their menus and more could follow as prices begin to fall. But new lab-grown meat bans gaining traction in mostly conservative-led states could threaten to impede the still-nascent industry’s momentum.

This week, Florida officially became the first state to make good on threats to ban cultivated meat. On Tuesday, Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law legislation making it illegal to manufacture, sell, hold, or distribute lab-grown meat within the state. Those who run afoul of the new law could be charged with a misdemeanor crime. Similar legislation is currently under discussion in Alabama, Arizona, and Tennessee. Violators of those bills, if they come to pass, could face jail time or fines.

“Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” DeSantis said during a press conference Wednesday. “We will save our beef.”

Why do Republican-led states want to ban lab-grown meat? 

Republican lawmakers opposed to cultivated meat, broadly, have attempted to connect the industry to a larger supposed culture war. DeSantis, for his part, has previously described lab-grown meat as “part of a whole ideological agenda” and claims it would threaten ranchers. Others, like Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Wilton Simpson, who supports the law, have called lab-grown meat a “disgraceful attempt to undermine our proud traditions and prosperity.” 

Lawmakers and cultivated meat critics have also questioned the safety of lab grown meat, though often with arguments lacking evidence. The most common safety-related critics of lab-grown meat revolved around the use of so-called “immortalized” cells in the cultivation process. These specific types of cells are essentially able to duplicate infinitely. That’s useful for cultivated meat startups that want to grow large quantities of meat from a small sample. It can also sound eerily similar to the process of rapid cell reproduction that causes cancer. 

Critics of the industry have leaped on that supposed connection and implied eating lab-grown meat could cause cancer. There’s no evidence currently supporting those claims. Food regulators in the US, Australia, and Singapore have determined cultivated meats are safe to eat and cancer researchers speaking with Bloomberg Businessweek last year said it’s “essentially impossible” to get cancer from eating cultivated meat. Still, that hasn’t stopped critics from leaning into that categorization. A recent ad campaign attempting to discredit the industry leaned on the theory and reportedly depicted a student at a science fair claiming the cells in the cultivated meat “grow like a tumor” and are “bath[ed] with chemicals.” 

The Republican led backlash to lab grown meat isn’t limited to full on bans either. More than a dozen states have pursued regulations restricting how lab cultivated meat companies brand their product. Some, like Kentucky, Maine, and Mississippi, have advanced regulations that prevent companies from using the word “meat” in their labeling. Others would require cultivated meat companies to provide disclosures on their packaging. On the federal level, Democratic senator Jon Tester and Republican senator Mike Rounds have even introduced legislation seeking to ban cultivated meat from being used in public school lunch and breakfast programs. All of this has occurred despite the fact that lab-grown meat still isn’t commercially available to consumers in the US. 

Hasty bans threaten cultivated meat innovation 

Lab grown meat supporters say laws like the one recently introduced in Florida could threaten to stymie an nascent industry before it has the chance to reach its full potential. The Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that supports cultivated meat efforts, told PopSci laws like these take choice away from consumers and limit innovation that could lead to new jobs. 

“American-made cultivated meat has been rigorously inspected and ruled safe by the USDA and FDA–so why are politicians with no experience in food safety interfering where they don’t belong?” Good Food Institute Legislative Director Pepin Andrew Tuma said. “Floridians should decide for themselves what kind of meat they want to eat, and not be limited by government overreach. The Sunshine State’s eccentric decision casts a long shadow on its laudable ambition to keep the state open for business.”

GOOD Meat, a leading lab-grown meat startup pursuing cultivated chicken, echoed those concerns, and called the law a “setback for everyone.” 

We’re not going anywhere. pic.twitter.com/8mOMnxuoQz

— GOOD Meat (@GOODMeat) May 1, 2024

“In a state that purportedly prides itself on being a land of freedom and individual liberty, its government is now telling consumers what meat they can or cannot purchase,” GOOD Meat said in a statement posted on X.
There are still more questions than answers surrounding lab-grown meat broadly. Supporters of the industry have said it could make agriculture more sustainable and reduce greenhouse house gas emissions. Recent research, however, suggests it’s too early to tell if that’s true. Others say lab-grown meat could one day offer carnivores an ethical alternative to eating meat that reduces animal suffering. But that supposed future will depend largely on lab-grown meat firms significantly driving down prices and simultaneously improving their product’s taste. Lab grown meat can also require blood drawn from unborn cow fetuses, so it’s not totally immune from ethical scrutiny either. Those barriers are difficult enough on their own to overcome even in the most permissive legal environment. Statewide bans on cultivated meat threaten to make an already difficult dilemma even harder.

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Despite the reputation for being the trash pandas of the bird world, seagulls are kind of the masters of evolution. They can survive and thrive alongside humans, have a remarkable memory, and some have been observed using pieces of food to bait fish the way primates use tools. The seagull species that have bigger brains that are also more likely to nest on coastal cliffs may also be better adapted to breed in urban environments. 

A study published April 25 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution found that more than half of cliff-nesting gull species that also nest in cities and towns have bigger brains. Species such as the Herring Gull, the Lesser Black-backed Gull, and the Black-legged Kittiwake potentially have a behavioral flexibility that allows them to nest in more challenging locations like rooftops.

“Many people will be familiar with gulls nesting and foraging in urban areas,” Madeleine Goumas, study co-author and a postdoctoral researcher specializing in herring gulls at the University of Exeter in England, said in a statement. “It’s not something you might expect from a seabird, so we wanted to try to understand why they do it.”

[Related: Seagulls hunger for food touched by human hands.]

In the study, the team combed through various research databases to find records of urban breeding and foraging among gulls and data on brain size by species. They then mapped a range of the different species present. 

Out of 50 gull species, 13 were recorded as using urban areas to breed, while 13 were recorded using urban areas to forage for food. Nine species bred and fed in more building-heavy environments. 

When they compared the figures for breeding with the birds’ known habits and brain size, they found that 10 out of the 19 cliff-nesting gull species (53 percent) also nested in urban areas. Only three out of 28 (11 percent) of generally non-cliff-nesting species nested in both spaces. 

[Related: The birds of summer patrolling Ocean City’s boardwalk.]

“We found that gull species with larger brains are more likely to be cliff-nesters, and cliff-nesting species are more likely to breed in urban areas,” study co-author and University of Exeter evolutionary biologist Neeltje Boogert said in a statement. “We also found that cliff-nesting is probably not something that was shared by the ancestor of gulls, so it is a relatively recent adaptation.”

They also point out that this is not a fixed or instinctive behavior in most gulls. The non-cliff-nesting gull species nest exclusively on the ground, most most traditionally cliff-nesting species can nest in both spaces. 

“This suggests that bigger brains enable these gull species to be flexible with regard to where they choose to nest, and this allows them to use unconventional sites, like buildings, for raising their young,” said Goumas.

[Related: Piping plovers are in trouble, but there’s some good news.]

In terms of foraging, the researchers found that neither brain size nor the shape of their wing were good indicators of seagull behavior in urban environments. The team also looked at the status of the gulls on the International Union on Conservation of Nature’s Red List. The gulls with stable or increasing populations were more than twice as likely to be observed using urban habitats than the species that are decreasing. Of the 10 Threatened or Near Threatened species, only the Black-legged Kittiwake was known to use urban spaces.

Observing how gull species function in populated areas with humans and buildings is important for conservation. Seeing what factors allow some to survive and thrive while others do not can inform why some aren’t faring as well. 

“Urbanization is a major problem for a lot of animals,” said Goumas. “It looks like some gull species have managed to overcome some of the challenges that prevent other animals from using urban areas, but we need more long-term studies as well as comparative studies on other taxa to fully understand the impacts of urban living.”

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China launched its uncrewed Chang’e-6 lunar spacecraft at 5:27 PM local time (5:27 PM EST) on Friday from the southern island province of Hainan, accelerating its ongoing space race with the US. If successful, a lander will detach upon reaching lunar orbit and descend to the surface to scoop up samples from the expansive South Pole-Aitken basin impact crater. Once finished, the lander will launch back up to Chang’e-6, dock, and return to Earth with the first-of-its-kind samples in tow. All told, the mission should take roughly 56 days to complete.

China’s potential return to the moon marks a significant development in international efforts to establish a permanent presence there. As the US moves forward with its Artemis program missions alongside assistance from Japan and commercial partners, China and Russia are also seeking to build their own lunar research station. Whoever does so first could have major ramifications for the future of moon exploration, resource mining, and scientific progress.

[Related: Why do all these countries want to go to the moon right now? ]

The China National Space Administration’s (CNSA) previous Chang’e-5 mission successfully landed a spacecraft at a volcanic plain on the moon’s near side, but Chang’e-6 aims to take things further, both technologically and logistically. To pull off a far side feat, CNSA mission controllers will need to use a satellite already in orbit around the moon to communicate with Chang’e-6 once its direct relay becomes blocked. But if they can manage it, the payoff will be substantial.

As NBC News explained Friday, the moon’s far side is much less volcanically active than its near side. Since all previous lunar samples have come from the near side, experts believe retrieving new samples elsewhere will help increase their understanding of the moon’s history, as well as potential information on the solar system’s origins.

NASA most likely still has an edge when it comes to returning actual humans to the moon, however. Even with recent mission delays, Artemis 3 astronauts are currently scheduled to reach the probable ice-laden lunar south pole by 2026. China does not expect to send its own taikonauts to the moon until at least 2030, and its joint research station with Russia still remains in its conceptual phase.

That same year will also mark the official decommissioning of the International Space Station. After NASA remotely guides it into a fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, the only remaining orbital station will be China’s three-module Tiangong facility.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance earlier this week, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson didn’t mince words about the potential ramifications of who sets up on the moon first.

“I think it’s not beyond the pale that China would suddenly say, ‘We are here. You stay out,’” Nelson said at the time. “That would be very unfortunate—to take what has gone on on planet Earth for years, grabbing territory, and saying it’s mine and people fighting over it.”

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A newly discovered asteroid is a toddler–in space years. The moonlet circling the small asteroid Dinkinesh named Selam is about 2 to 3 million years old. Scientists arrived at this age estimate using new calculation methods that are described in a study published April 19 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Selam is nicknamed “Lucy’s baby,” after NASA’s Lucy spacecraft discovered it orbiting another asteroid in November 2023. The Lucy mission is the first set to explore the Trojan asteroids. These are a group of about 7,000 primitive space rocks orbiting Jupiter. Lucy is expected to provide the first high-resolution images of these space rocks. Dinkinesh and Selam are located in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Discovering a tiny moonlet was a surprise. According to study co-author and Cornell University aerospace engineering doctoral student Colby Merrill, Selem turned out to be “an extraordinarily unique and complex body.” Selem is a contact binary that consists of two lobes that are piles of rubble stuck together and is the first of this kind of asteroid ever observed. Scientists believe that Selam was formed from surface material ejected by Dinkinesh’s rapid spinning.

[Related: NASA spacecraft Lucy says hello to ‘Dinky’ asteroid on far-flying mission.]

“Finding the ages of asteroids is important to understanding them, and this one is remarkably young when compared to the age of the solar system, meaning it formed somewhat recently,” Merrill said in a statement. “Obtaining the age of this one body can help us to understand the population as a whole.”

To estimate its age, the team studied how Dinkinesh and Selam moved in space–or its dynamics. Binary asteroids like this pair are engaged in a galactic tug-of-war. Gravity that is acting on the objects is making them physically bulge and results in tides similar to what oceans on Earth have. The tides slowly reduce the system’s energy. At the same time, the sun’s radiation also changes the binary system’s energy. This solar change is known as the Binary Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (BYORP) effect. The system will eventually reach an equilibrium, where tides and BYORP are equally strong.

Assuming that the forces between the two were at equilibrium and plugging in asteroid data from the Lucy mission, the team calculated how long it would have taken for Selam to get to its current state after it formed. The team said that they improved preexisting equations that assumed both bodies in a binary system are equally dense and did not factor in the secondary body’s mass. Their computers simulations ran about 1 million calculations with varying parameters and found a median age of 3 million years old, with 2 million being the most likely result. This calculation also agreed with one made by the Lucy mission based on a more traditional method for dating asteroids based on an analysis of their surface craters. 

According to the team, studying asteroids this way does not require a spacecraft like Lucy to take close-up images, thus saving money. It could be more accurate in cases where an asteroid’s surfaces have undergone recent changes from space travel. Since roughly 15 percent of all near-Earth asteroids are binary systems this method can also be used to study other secondary bodies like the moonlet Dimorphos. NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into Dimorphos to test out planetary defense technology in September 2022.

[Related: NASA’s asteroid blaster turned a space rock into an ‘oblong watermelon.’]

“Used in tandem with crater counting, this method could help better constrain a system’s age,” study co-author and Cornell University astronomy doctoral student Alexia Kubas said in a statement. “If we use two methods and they agree with each other, we can be more confident that we’re getting a meaningful age that describes the current state of the system.”

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This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040.

The mission would be the first to try to return rock samples from Mars to Earth so scientists can analyze them for signs of past life.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference on April 15, 2024, that the mission as currently conceived is too expensive and too slow. NASA gave private companies a month to submit proposals for bringing the samples back in a quicker and more affordable way.

As an astronomer who studies cosmology and has written a book about early missions to Mars, I’ve been watching the sample return saga play out. Mars is the nearest and best place to search for life beyond Earth, and if this ambitious NASA mission unraveled, scientists would lose their chance to learn much more about the red planet.

The habitability of Mars

The first NASA missions to reach the surface of Mars in 1976 revealed the planet as a frigid desert, uninhabitable without a thick atmosphere to shield life from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. But studies conducted over the past decade suggest that the planet may have been much warmer and wetter several billion years ago.

The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have each shown that the planet’s early environment was suitable for microbial life.

They found the chemical building blocks of life and signs of surface water in the distant past. Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, is still active; its twin, Perseverance, which landed on Mars in 2021, will play a crucial role in the sample return mission.

Why astronomers want Mars samples

The first time NASA looked for life in a Mars rock was in 1996. Scientists claimed they had discovered microscopic fossils of bacteria in the Martian meteorite ALH84001. This meteorite is a piece of Mars that landed in Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984. Scientists disagreed over whether the meteorite really had ever harbored biology, and today most scientists agree that there’s not enough evidence to say that the rock contains fossils.

Several hundred Martian meteorites have been found on Earth in the past 40 years. They’re free samples that fell to Earth, so while it might seem intuitive to study them, scientists can’t tell where on Mars these meteorites originated. Also, they were blasted off the planet’s surface by impacts, and those violent events could have easily destroyed or altered subtle evidence of life in the rock.

There’s no substitute for bringing back samples from a region known to have been hospitable to life in the past. As a result, the agency is facing a price tag of $700 million per ounce, making these samples the most expensive material ever gathered.

A compelling and complex mission

Bringing Mars rocks back to Earth is the most challenging mission NASA has ever attempted, and the first stage has already started.

Perseverance has collected over two dozen rock and soil samples, depositing them on the floor of the Jezero Crater, a region that was probably once flooded with water and could have harbored life. The rover inserts the samples in containers the size of test tubes. Once the rover fills all the sample tubes, it will gather them and bring them to the spot where NASA’s Sample Retrieval Lander will land. The Sample Retrieval Lander includes a rocket to get the samples into orbit around Mars.

The European Space Agency has designed an Earth Return Orbiter, which will rendezvous with the rocket in orbit and capture the basketball-sized sample container. The samples will then be automatically sealed into a biocontainment system and transferred to an Earth entry capsule, which is part of the Earth Return Orbiter. After the long trip home, the entry capsule will parachute to the Earth’s surface.

The complex choreography of this mission, which involves a rover, a lander, a rocket, an orbiter and the coordination of two space agencies, is unprecedented. It’s the culprit behind the ballooning budget and the lengthy timeline.

Sample return breaks the bank

Mars Sample Return has blown a hole in NASA’s budget, which threatens other missions that need funding.

The NASA center behind the mission, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, just laid off over 500 employees. It’s likely that Mars Sample Return’s budget partly caused the layoffs, but they also came down to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory having an overfull plate of planetary missions and suffering budget cuts.

Within the past year, an independent review board report and a report from the NASA Office of Inspector General raised deep concerns about the viability of the sample return mission. These reports described the mission’s design as overly complex and noted issues such as inflation, supply chain problems and unrealistic costs and schedule estimates.

NASA is also feeling the heat from Congress. For fiscal year 2024, the Senate Appropriations Committee cut NASA’s planetary science budget by over half a billion dollars. If NASA can’t keep a lid on the costs, the mission might even get canceled.

Thinking out of the box

Faced with these challenges, NASA has put out a call for innovative designs from private industry, with a goal of shrinking the mission’s cost and complexity. Proposals are due by May 17, which is an extremely tight timeline for such a challenging design effort. And it’ll be hard for private companies to improve on the plan that experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had over a decade to put together.

An important potential player in this situation is the commercial space company SpaceX. NASA is already partnering with SpaceX on America’s return to the Moon. For the Artemis III mission, SpaceX will attempt to land humans on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

However, the massive Starship rocket that SpaceX will use for Artemis has had only three test flights and needs a lot more development before NASA will trust it with a human cargo.

In principle, a Starship rocket could bring back a large payload of Mars rocks in a single two-year mission and at far lower cost. But Starship comes with great risks and uncertainties. It’s not clear whether that rocket could return the samples that Perseverance has already gathered.

Starship uses a launchpad, and it would need to be refueled for a return journey. But there’s no launchpad or fueling station at the Jezero Crater. Starship is designed to carry people, but if astronauts go to Mars to collect the samples, SpaceX will need a Starship rocket that’s even bigger than the one it has tested so far.

Sending astronauts also carries extra risk and cost, and a strategy of using people might end up more complicated than NASA’s current plan.

With all these pressures and constraints, NASA has chosen to see whether the private sector can come up with a winning solution. We’ll know the answer next month.

Disclosure: Chris Impey receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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Parrots, renowned for their impressive intelligence and charming vocal mimicry, have gained popularity as pets in recent decades. Those same traits that make the birds fascinating to observe, however, can also cause issues. A lack of socialization and proper stimulation can cause parrots to act out, or in some cases, even harm themselves. An estimated 40% of cockatoos and African Greys, two popular species of parrots, reportedly engage in potentially harmful feather destruction. Many of these stress-induced, destructive behaviors are a byproduct of parrots living in environments drastically different from their natural habitats where they fly free among fellow birds. New research suggests modern technology, specially Facebook Messenger video chats, could help these birds regain their social lives

“In the wild, they live in flocks and socialize with each other constantly,” University of Glasgow associate professor Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas said in a statement. “As pets, they’re often kept on their own, which can cause them to develop negative behaviors like excessive pacing or feather-plucking.”

Researchers from Northeastern University, MIT, and the University of Glasgow recently set out to see how several species of parrots interacted when placed on brief video calls with one another. Over the course of three months, the researchers trained 18 parrots and their human caretakers to learn how to operate touchscreen tablets and smartphones. The birds were initially trained to associate video calls with a bell. Everytime the bell was rung during the training phase, the bird would receive a treat. Caretakers, meanwhile, were trained to end calls any time the bird showed signs of stress or discomfort. Once trained, the birds were free to ring the bell on their own accord. Doing so would result in their caretakers opening up Facebook Messenger and connecting them with fellow birds around the country involved in the study.  associated video calls with a bell and fed the birds a treat every time they rang the bell. The parrots were then able to access Facebook Messenger to video call fellow birds around the country. 

The results were shocking. In almost all cases, the birds’ caretakers claim the video calls improved their well-being. Some of the birds even appeared to learn new skills, like foraging or improved flight, after observing other birds doing so. Two of the birds, a cockatoo named Ellie and an African Grey named Cookie, still call each other nearly a year later. 

“It really speaks to how cognitively complex these birds are and how much ability they have to express themselves,” Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas said in a statement. “It was really beautiful, those two birds, for me.”

Bird video-calls resulted in long-lasting friendships 

The research into the birds was split up into two phases. For the first 10 weeks, caregivers were instructed on how to introduce and train the birds to interact with the touchscreen devices. Though previous research has explored using touchscreen with cats, dogs, bears, and rodents, parrots are particularly well suited to using the devices thanks to their combination of high cognitive ability, impressive vision, and flexible tongues. Once trained on the devices, all of the birds involved took part in a “meet and greet” where they were briefly placed in video calls with each bird at least twice. The birds were trained using treats to ring a bell to signal their interest in hopping on a call.

Stage two of the research removed the treats to see if the birds would still have any interest in requesting a video call without a food reward. Every one of the birds continued to ring the bell, with some doing so many times. Once rung, researchers presented the birds with a tablet home screen featuring photographs of different birds in the study. The parrot would then use its tongue to click on the companion it wished to interact with. Once presented with a bird on the other side of the call, the parrots would hop towards the screen, let out loud squawks, and bob their heads. Researchers believe the vocalizations in particular may mirror the type of calls and responses parrots often engage in when they are in the wild. 

Researchers observed multiple instances of birds appearing to mimic each other’s behaviors. Some would begin grooming themselves after watching a bird on the other end of screen do so. Other times, the birds would “sing” in unison. In one video, a colorful parrot can be seen eagerly waiting for a call to connect. A large white bird eventually appears on the other end of the call, which results in the red bird banging its head and chirping in excitement. In another case, a male macaw video-calling with a fellow macaw would let out the phrase “Hi! Come here!” If the second bird left the screen, the vocalizing bird would quickly ring a bell, which the caretakers interpreted as the bird asking his friend to return to the screen.                   

“Some strong social dynamics started appearing,” Northeastern assistant professor Rébecca Kleinberger said in a statement. 

Parrots prefer calling real birds over pre-recorded video

Interestingly, parrots included in the study appeared substantially less interested in video calls if they featured pre-recorded video of other birds. A related study published by University of Glasgow researchers show the parrots strongly preferred to chat with other parrots in real time. Over the course of six months of observation, the parrots spent more time engaged in the calls with real birds than with the pre-recorded videos. Those findings suggest the birds weren’t merely being existed by the presence of a screen. Rather, the actual communication with another living bird plays an important role. 

Combined, the birds in the study spent 561 minutes in love calls with other birds compared to just 142 minutes interacting with the pre-recorded videos. The birds’ caregivers reinforced that point and told researchers they appeared more curious and engaged when a live bird was on the other end of the call. 

“The appearance of ‘liveness’ really did seem to make a difference to the parrots’ engagement with their screens,” Douglas recently wrote. “Their behavior while interacting with another live bird often reflected behaviors they would engage in with other parrots in real life, which wasn’t the case in the pre-recorded sessions.”

Researchers are hopeful these findings could one day be used to help parrots improve their socialization. And while some of the parrot caretakers surveyed noted the steep learning curve to train the parrots, every one of them said the project was worthwhile once concluded. An overwhelming 71.4% of the caretakers in the video calling study said their birds had a very positive experience. By contrast, none of them described the experience as negative. One caretaker in particular claimed her pet “came alive during the calls.” 

“We’re not saying you can make them [the parrots] as happy as they would be in the wild,” Kleinberger said. “We’re trying to serve those who are already [in captivity].”

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Animals have evolved all sorts of weird and wonderful methods of communication—everything from mantis shrimp bouncing pulses of polarized light to one another to birds-of-paradise gallivanting around the jungle to demonstrate their virility. Even so, there may well only be one animal that can claim to have a highly developed variety of expression that’s communicated entirely via a blob of fat on its forehead. Step forward—or, perhaps, swim forward—the beluga. 

Like all other toothed whales, these little Arctic-dwelling cetaceans have an organ on their foreheads that’s referred to as the melon. The melon has long been a source of fascination to scientists, who’ve proposed a variety of outlandish theories over the years to explain its presence. (The consensus today is that it’s used for sound generation and to assist in echolocation.)

In the beluga, however, the melon also seems to have another use. Belugas’ melons are strikingly large and, uniquely, they are also malleable, because belugas have facial muscles that can pull and push on the melon. Doing this essentially allows the animal to change the shape of its head. But  why do belugas do this? 

As ScienceNews reports, a March Animal Cognition study of four captive belugas in a Connecticut aquarium set out to categorize the different shapes the melon can take, and then trying to deduce those shapes’ meanings. The study’s authors analyzed a year’s worth of video footage of the belugas, and then compared their findings to observations of another, larger population of 51 belugas at an aquarium in Canada.

They found that while the melon can take any number of subtly different shapes, these all fall into five distinct categories—and they suggest that these shapes essentially constitute a form of visual communication unique to belugas.

It is commonly known that the motivation behind many of a given animal’s actions come down to feeding and/or mating. And unsurprisingly, at least two of the melon shapes seem related to the latter—or as the study authors put it, they are “primarily performed by males toward a female recipient in conjunction with courtship behavior.” (These shapes also occur during what the authors call “male-male sociosexual play,” a behavior that occurs in various cetaceans. One  study of killer whales describes it as “young males … practic[ing] courtship behaviors by engaging in sociosexual play with other males”; in this context “sociosexual” refers to behavior that is sexual but does not involve conception.) The three remaining shapes are harder to parse, although one common thread is that all are carried out more often by males: “Males performed shapes more than three times as frequently… as females.” 

There are important caveats here: studies of melon-based communication have so far been limited to belugas in captivity, and it’s certainly not out of the question that an intelligent, highly sociable animal might communicate differently in an aquarium than in the wild. The study also suggests that more research is needed into the interaction between the melon’s echolocatory and visual functions, not least because the video footage used for analysis lacked audio: “[Shapes] could serve both functions, [and] the lack of acoustic recordings during this study precludes these determinations… Simultaneous acoustic recordings and video observations in all lighting conditions are needed to resolve this question for the function of beluga melon shapes.” 

Nevertheless, the study goes some way toward explaining one of the animal kingdom’s most unusual behaviors.

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The US Space Force located a tiny experimental satellite after it spent two-and-a–half decades missing in orbit. Hopefully, they’ll be able to keep an eye on it for good—unlike the last time.

The S73-7 Infra-Red Calibration Balloon (IRCB) was dead on arrival after ejecting from one of the Air Force’s largest Cold War orbital spy camera systems. Although it successfully departed the KH-9 Hexagon reconnaissance satellite about 500 miles above Earth in 1974, the S73-7 failed to inflate to its full 26-inch diameter. The malfunction prevented it from aiding ground based equipment triangulate remote sensing arrays and thus rendered it yet another hunk of space junk.

It wasn’t long afterwards that observers lost sight of the IRCB, only to once again locate the small satellite in early 1990s. And then, they managed to lose it again. Now, after another 25 years, the US Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron rediscovered the experimental device.

The S73-7 satellite has been rediscovered after being untracked for 25 years. New TLEs for object 7244 started appearing on Apr 25. Congrats to whichever @18thSDS analyst made the identification. pic.twitter.com/YJOow5o4ND

— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) April 29, 2024

Confirmation came through a recent post on X from Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who offered his “congrats to whichever… analyst made the identification.”

So how does a satellite disappear for years on end not once, but twice? It’s actually much easier than you might think. As Gizmodo explained on May 1, over 27,000 objects are currently in orbit, most of which are spent rocket boosters. These, along with various satellites, don’t transmit any sort of identification back to Earth. Because of this, tracking systems must match a detected object to a satellite’s predictable orbital path in order to ID it.

[Related: Some space junk just got smacked by more space junk, complicating cleanup.]

If you possess relatively up-to-date radar data, and there aren’t many contenders in a similar orbit, then it usually isn’t hard to pinpoint satellites. But the more crowded an area, the more difficult it is for sensors to match, especially if you haven’t seen your target in a while—say, miniature Infra-Red Calibration Balloon from the 1970s.

It’s currently unclear what information exactly tipped off Space Force to matching their newly detected object with the S73-7, but regardless, that makes it at least trackable above everyone’s heads. In all that time, McDowell’s data indicates the balloon has only descended roughly 9 miles from its original 500 mile altitude, so it’ll be a while before it succumbs to gravity and burns up in the atmosphere. Accounting for everything in orbit may sometimes be taken for granted, but it’s a vital component of humanity’s increasing reliance on satellite arrays, as well as the overall future of space travel.

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Observers have documented multiple animal species using plants for self-medicinal purposes, such as great apes eating plants that treat parasitic infections or rubbing vegetation on sore muscles. But a wild orangutan recently displayed something never observed before—he treated his own open wound by activating a plant’s medical properties using his own spit. As detailed in a study published May 2 in Scientific Reports, evolutionary biologists believe the behavior could point toward a common ancestor shared with humans.

The discovery occurred within a protected Indonesian rainforest at the Suaq Balimbing research site. This region, currently home to roughly 150 critically endangered Sumatran orangutans, is utilized by an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior to monitor the apes’ behavior and wellbeing. During their daily observations, cognitive and evolutionary biologists noticed a sizable injury on the face of one of the local males named Rakus. Such wounds are unsurprising among the primates, since they frequently spar with one another—but then Rakus did something three days later that the team didn’t expect.

After picking leaves off of a native plant known as an Akar Kuning (Fibraurea tinctoria), well-known for its anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, and antioxidant properties, as well as its use in traditional malaria medicines, Rakus began to chew the plant into a paste. He then rubbed it directly on his facial injury for several minutes before covering it entirely with the mixture. Over the next few days, researchers noted the self-applied natural bandage kept the wound from showing signs of infection or exacerbation. Within five days, the injury scabbed over before healing entirely.

Such striking behavior raises a number of questions, particularly how Rakus first learned to treat his face using the plant. According to study senior author Caroline Schuppli, one possibility is that it simply comes down to “individual innovation.”

“Orangutans at [Suaq] rarely eat the plant,” she said in an announcement. “However, individuals may accidentally touch their wounds while feeding on this plant and thus unintentionally apply the plant’s juice to their wounds. As Fibraurea tinctoria has potent analgesic effects, individuals may feel an immediate pain release, causing them to repeat the behavior several times.”

[Related: Gorillas like to scramble their brains by spinning around really fast.]

If this were the case, it could be that Rakus is one of the few orangutans to have discovered the benefits of Fibraurea tinctoria. At the same time, adult orangutan males never live where they were born—they migrate sizable distances either during or after puberty to establish new homes. So it’s also possible Rakus may have learned this behavior from his relatives, but given observers don’t know where he is originally from, it’s difficult to follow up on that theory just yet.

Still, Schuppli says other “active wound treatment” methods have been noted in other African and Asian great apes, even when they aren’t used to disinfect or help heal an open wound. Knowing that, “it is possible that there exists a common underlying mechanism for the recognition and application of substances with medical or functional properties to wounds and that our last common ancestor already showed similar forms of ointment behavior.”

Given how much humans already have in common with their great ape relatives, it’s easy to see how this could be a likely explanation. But regardless of how Rakus knew how to utilize the medicinal plant, if he ever ends up scrapping with another male orangutan again, he’ll at least know how to fix himself up afterwards.

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With a hollow center, 12 sides, and no known uses, Roman dodecahedrons remain one of the great enigmas in archeology. They don’t appear to be used for grooming or personal pleasure  and only 33 of these objects have been uncovered in Great Britain’s Roman ruins. A recent discovery in eastern England is now making a splash in the Roman dodecahedron stud world. The Norton Disney Dodecahedron is of the largest and newest Gallo Roman Dodecahedrons ever found and is currently on display at the National Civil War Centre, Newark Museum in Newark, England. It will also be featured in an exhibit beginning on Saturday May 4 at the Lincoln Museum in Lincoln, England. 

The strange object was discovered by a group of amateur archeologists in June 2023 in the village of Norton Disney in the Midlands of eastern England. The mysterious object was sitting among the ruins of a Roman pit and was likely placed there about 1,700 years ago. It was found “in situ,” or deliberately placed among 4th Century CE Roman pottery in some sort of hole or quarry. More archeological excavation is needed to clarify exactly what this pit was used for. 

[Related: This ancient Roman villa was equipped with wine fountains.]

The cast bronze object is hollow at its middle and is about the size of a clenched fist. It has 12 flat faces that are shaped like pentagons. Each face has a hole in various sizes and all 20 corners have a knob. At about three inches tall and half a pound, it is one of the largest of these mysterious Roman objects ever discovered. 

According to the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group, it is considered a copper alloy object that is made up of 75 percent copper, seven percent tin, and 18 percent lead. It is also the only example of one of these objects found in England’s Midlands and is an example of very fine craftsmanship.

Lorena Hitchens, an archaeologist specializing in Roman dodecahedrons, told The Washington Post, that “it’s a really good dodecahedron,” after examining the object. Preliminary dating estimates believe that it was crafted sometime between 43 and 410 CE, during the later Roman period. 

Even with such a solid find, historians and archeologists are still not sure exactly what these unique objects were used for.

“The imagination races when thinking about what the Romans may have used it for. Magic, rituals or religion–we perhaps may never know,” Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group  secretary Richard Parker told the BBC.

Known Roman literature does not have any descriptions or drawings of dodecahedra. The objects were not of a standard size, so the Norton Disney group does not believe they were used to take measurements. They also do not have signs of wear and tear the way blades do, so they were not tools.

“A huge amount of time, energy and skill was taken to create our dodecahedron, so it was not used for mundane purposes, especially when alternative materials are available that would achieve the same purpose,” the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group wrote in a statement. 

[Related: The Roman Britons cared a lot about hair removal, and it shows in artifacts.]

There are 130 known examples of these objects that have been uncovered from the rest of the vast Roman world. Most have been found in north and western Roman provinces near the Alps of modern day France and Germany. There are 33 known examples of Roman dodecahedrons that have been excavated in Britain. This particular example was found near the where a statue of a mounted horseman deity was found in 1989

“Roman society was full of superstition, something experienced on a daily basis,” wrote Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group. “A potential link with local religious practice is our current working theory. More investigation is required though.”

The group will return to the trench the dodecahedron was found in sometime this year to resume excavations.

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Almost a decade after astronomers proposed the existence of Planet 9, an unseen extra planet in the distant reaches of the solar system, they still haven’t all agreed whether it’s real or not. Now, new research from Caltech astronomers just uncovered an extra line of evidence in favor of the hidden planet. Their computer simulations require Planet 9’s gravitational kick to explain how small bits of rock and ice from around Neptune’s orbit end up close to the sun.

“There is an open question of why particular objects in the solar system act the way they do, and we can’t quite explain it, but if you add Planet Nine into the model it all makes sense,” says Juliette Becker, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison not affiliated with this new work. 

These objects are Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs)–chunks of debris in the outer solar system, beyond Neptune and even Pluto. Until the 2000s, astronomers hadn’t spotted many TNOs—especially not the most distant ones. They’re incredibly faint, a result of their small sizes and huge distances from Earth and difficult to see. Once astronomers had built up a more substantial catalog of observed TNOs, however, they began to notice some strange trends. 

A group of TNOs were bunched together, sharing similar orbits as if they were being wrangled up by something, like a group of sheep by a shepherd. These oddballs were orbiting at very high angles compared to other TNOs, and they were lined up in the same direction. Some astronomers, including the same Caltech crew behind the new bit of evidence, claimed that the most likely explanation for these observations was the existence of Planet 9 acting as a massive object acting as a gravitational shepherd for the TNO sheep. 

However, other astronomers thought Planet 9 was an outlandish solution to the puzzle at hand, coming up with other ways to explain the unexpected observations. Some suggested that the clusters of TNOs could be a natural result of the solar system’s formation, with no need for Planet 9. Others thought that the shepherd was actually a small black hole instead of a giant planet. More recently, two astronomers in Japan proposed that a different planet, instead of Planet 9, might be lurking in the Kuiper Belt. 

Theories abound for explaining the observed orbits of TNOs—and astronomers have spent the past eight years discussing and debating which make the most sense. This isn’t an anomaly, but instead an illustration of the scientific process. Scientists iteratively and collaboratively improve our understanding of a natural phenomenon, exploring all the evidence to find the best explanation for an observation.

Now, the Caltech team just showed how Planet 9 could be necessary to explain a different group of TNOs, which were somehow chucked towards the sun. An object on a path that crosses Neptune’s orbit, dips towards the sun, and swings back shouldn’t be able to stay that way for long. If we see objects in these kinds of orbits, something has to be pushing them to be there—perhaps even Planet 9. 

“If Planet Nine exists, it would occasionally pull the orbits of distant Trans-Neptunian objects closer to the sun, to the point where they cross Neptune’s orbit. Without Planet Nine, these objects can’t be pushed inward past Neptune very often,” explains Konstantin Batygin, Caltech astronomer and lead author on the new paper. 

“Planet Nine would re-supply the population of these objects as they are depleted, explaining why we can see them at the present day when the Solar System is relatively old,” adds Becker

Throughout the years of theories, some astronomers have been entranced by the idea of actually spotting Planet 9 in the night sky. Despite the evidence of its gravitational influence, seeing is still believing and many of us won’t be satisfied until we have concrete proof that Planet 9 is there in our telescopes.

Batygin and co-author Mike Brown, also an astronomer at Caltech, have been hunting for Planet 9 using huge archives of data taken by surveys of the night sky from the Pan-STARRS1 facility atop Haleakala in Hawai’i, the Dark Energy Survey completed in Chile, and the Zwicky Transient Facility in nearby San Diego. Astronomers from Yale even used the exoplanet-hunting satellite TESS to scan the sky for Planet 9. Unfortunately, no one has seen the elusive extra planet yet. 

“Simply put, Planet 9 is very distant and extraordinarily dim,” says Batygin. “The challenge of directly detecting it is difficult to appreciate without seeing first-hand how complex the observation process is, especially when looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

The Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile—currently scheduled to begin operations in early 2025 and equipped with the largest digital camera ever made for astronomy—will provide an excellent opportunity to continue the search for Planet 9. Astronomers have been looking forward to this facility for years, even citing it in a PopSci article from 2020 as the key to solving this mystery once and for all. 

And if there’s no planet to be found, even with a bigger and better observatory on the case? “If it turns out not to be there, then we will need to find individual explanations for all these different observations,” says Becker. “I am continually amazed by just how many solar system puzzles Planet Nine’s existence would solve.”

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Shrubbery, toolsheds, basements—these are places one might expect to find spiders. But what about the beach? Or in a stream? Some spiders make their homes near or, more rarely, in water: tucking into the base of kelp stalks, spinning watertight cocoons in ponds or lakes, hiding under pebbles at the seaside or creek bank.

“Spiders are surprisingly adaptable, which is one of the reasons they can inhabit this environment,” says Ximena Nelson, a behavioral biologist at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Finding aquatic or semiaquatic spiders is difficult work, Nelson says: She and a student have spent four years chasing a jumping spider known as Marpissa marina around the pebbly seaside beaches it likes, but too often, as soon as they manage to find one it disappears again under rocks. And sadly, some aquatic spiders may disappear altogether before they come to scientists’ attention, as their watery habitats shrivel due to climate change and other human activities.

What scientists do know is that dozens of described spider species spend at least some of their time in or near the water, and more are almost surely awaiting discovery, says Sarah Crews, an arachnologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. It also appears that spiders evolved aquatic preferences on several distinct occasions during the history of this arthropod order. Crews and colleagues surveyed spiders and reported in 2019 that 21 taxonomic families include semiaquatic species, suggesting that the evolutionary event occurred multiple independent times. Only a swashbuckling few—not even 0.3 percent of described spider species—are seashore spiders; many more have been found near fresh water, says Nelson.

It’s not clear what would induce successful land-dwelling critters to move to watery habitats. Spiders, as a group, probably evolved about 400 million years ago from chunkier creatures that had recently left the water. These arthropods lacked the skinny waist sported by modern spiders. Presumably, the spiders that later returned to a life aquatic were strongly drawn by something to eat there, or driven by unsafe conditions on land, says Geerat Vermeij, a paleobiologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis—because water would have presented major survival challenges.

“Since they depend on air so much, they are severely limited in whether they can do anything at all when they are submerged, other than just toughing it out,” says Vermeij. Newly aquatic spiders would have had to compete with predators better adapted to watery conditions, such as crustaceans, with competition particularly fierce in the oceans, Vermeij says. And if water floods a spider’s air circulation system, it will die, so adaptations were obviously needed.

But spiders as a group already possess several water-friendly features, suggests Crews. They have waxy, water-repellent exteriors, often covered in hairs that conveniently trap air bubbles. Even having eight legs is helpful, says Nelson: Spiders can distribute their weight nicely while they skitter across a water surface, or use their octet of appendages to row along.

Some spiders take their aquatic adaptations to the next level, though. Consider the diving bell spider, Argyroneta aquatica, an overachieving arachnid that is the only one known to do it all under water: breathe, hunt, dine on insects and their larvae, and make spiderlings. Found in fresh water in Europe and parts of Asia, it spins a silken underwater canopy and brings air bubbles from the surface to its submerged home via its body hairs. When it goes out, it carries a smaller air bubble, like a little scuba tank, on its back.

Seashore spiders face particularly daunting conditions, says Nelson, who coauthored an article about adaptations of marine spiders for the 2024 Annual Review of Entomology. “There’s a splash zone,” she says. “It’s kind of a wild environment.” A spider might be baking in hot sun one minute, drenched in chilly saltwater the next. Some spiders migrate up and down their beaches with the tides; Nelson speculates that they might monitor lunar cycles to anticipate when to move.

Other seashore spiders spin watertight nests where they hide out for hours while the tide is in. M. marina, for example, seeks seashells with nice, concave spaces in which to spin safe tents. Another spider, Desis marina, hides in holdfasts where bull kelp attaches to rocks, lining the holdfast’s interior with silk to create an air-filled pocket and staying submerged for as long as 19 days. D. marina emerges only when the tide is going out, to hunt for invertebrates like shrimp.

A spider that’s even occasionally submerged in saltwater or eating briny seafood will also have to maintain proper internal salt levels. “Presumably, they will be able to concentrate the salt somehow and then poo it out,” Nelson says. Scientists don’t know how marine spiders pull this off. And at least one intertidal-zone spider, Desis formidabilis of South Africa’s cape, comfortably maintains an interior salt concentration much like the crustaceans it eats, according to a 1984 study. (Freshwater species also probably require adaptations because their insides must stay saltier than their surroundings or food, Vermeij speculates.)

When a spider hides out with a limited air supply for days or weeks at a time, oxygen levels also may become a critical issue. Intriguingly, researchers have identified gene variants within the oxygen-guzzling, energy-making mitochondria of aquatic spiders that may help them cope with low-oxygen environments. These changes mirror beneficial changes to mitochondrial genes in birds that live in high-altitude, low-oxygen environments.

In another study, researchers investigated the genes used in the silk glands of aquatic and land spiders. They found that water-spider silk seems to have a high proportion of the water-repelling amino acid pair glycine and valine—which might also be an adaptation, they suggest.

Creeping extinction

But all the adaptations in the world might not be enough to save some water spiders. Nelson’s M. marina, for example, seems to be very particular about the beaches it occupies. The pebbles must be just right, not too big or small. If sea level rise inundates M. marina’s beaches, it’s possible the spiders will have nowhere else to go, Nelson says. “So those spiders will be lost.”

Marco Isaia, an arachnologist at the University of Turin, Italy, investigated the wetland habitats of the diving bell spider and the fen raft spider, Dolomedes plantarius. As wetlands continue to disappear, the habitats available to each species will contract by more than 25 percent over a decade, and their ideal ranges will move northward, Isaia and colleagues predicted in a 2022 study. It would be difficult for the spiders to cross dry land for new wetlands, and north European winters might prove too cold anyway. “The loss and degradation of wetland habitats is expected to have serious impacts on their survival,” says Isaia, “and an increase in their extinction risk.”

Given these risks, some aquatic spiders might go the way of the dodo before science gets a handle on them. “I suspect in every rocky bed of beach or river, there are probably spiders that we just don’t know exist there,” says Nelson. “Because they’re hiding.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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NASA has big plans for space farms and there are plenty of ideas from astrobiologists for what the best crops to grow on Mars could be. To best optimize these future extraterrestrial farms, scientists are also exploring what planting methods could boost potential crop yields on the Red Planet. Some new experiments with tomato, carrot, and pea plants found that growing different crops mixed together could boost yields of some plants in certain Martian conditions. The findings could also have implications for life on Earth and are described in a study published May 1 in the journal PLOS One. 

A Martian greenhouse

In order for future humans to survive on Mars for long stretches at a time, nutritious food is going to be essential. While learning how fake astronaut Mark Watney grew potatoes in the sci-fi novel and film The Martian was entertaining and informative, real astronauts should have some helpful resources from planet Earth for growing food in future Mars settlements.

To learn how to best do this, scientists on Earth must simulate the unique conditions on the Red Planet here. Mars’ atmosphere is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s and is mostly made up of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and argon gasses. Entire Martian colonies in the future will need to be set up in controlled enclosures similar to greenhouses with an Earth-like atmosphere of the right mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide.

[Related: Why space lettuce could be the pharmacy astronauts need.]

“The best ‘Martian environment’ is actually simply a greenhouse with controlled conditions including temperature, humidity, and gasses,” Rebeca Gonçalves, a study co-author and astrobiologist at Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands, tells PopSci. 

For this study, Gonçalves and the team used greenhouses at the university to simulate a growing environment on Mars. They tested how crops fare in a simulated version of Martian regolith–the loose and rocky material covering the planet. Pots of standard potting soil and sand were used as a control group. Bits of organic Earth soil and other nutrients was also added to the sand and Martian regolith samples to improve water retention and root holding. 

Picking plants

For the plants on this fake Martian farm, the team selected peas, carrots, and tomatoes. A 2014 study found that all three are able to grow in Martian regolith. According to Gonçalves, knowing that these plants could grow was key, since they were looking for an answer to a different question. They wanted to know how to use companion plants and intercropping–an ancient planting technique of growing two or more plants in close proximity–to boost crop yields. These three also could have an important nutritional role in the future. 

“They were chosen for their nutritional content, being high in antioxidants, vitamin C, and beta carotene,” says Gonçalves. “This is important because these nutrients are all completely lost in the process of food dehydration, which is the main process we use to send food to space missions. Therefore, the production of fresh food containing these nutrients is a must in a Martian colony.”

These crops are also companion species that share complementary traits. Peas are considered a main contributor to the intercropping system because they are legumes that can “fix” nitrogen. In nitrogen fixing, some plants and bacteria can turn nitrogen from the air into a form of ammonia that plants can use for nutrition. This, in turn, benefits other plants and diminishes the need for fertilizers to be added to the plant system. According to Gonçalves, it optimizes the resources needed for plants to grow on the Red Planet.

“Carrots were used to help aerate the soil, which can improve water and nutrient uptake by the companion plants, and tomatoes were used to provide shade for the temperature sensitive carrot and to give climbing support for the peas,” says Gonçalves.

Red fruit, red planet

All three species grew fairly well in the Martian regolith, producing just over half a pound of produce with only a minimum addition of nutrients. The tomatoes grew better when they were alongside the peas and carrots in an intercropping set up, than the control tomatoes that were grown alone. The tomatoes had a higher biomass and also had more potassium when grown this way. 

However, intercropping in this regolith appeared to decrease yields for the carrots and peas. These plants did better alone. In future experiments, the team hopes that some modifications to how the simulated Martian regolith is treated could help increase yields when intercropping is used, so that the carrots and peas can have similarly bigger harvests.

“The fact that it worked really well for one of the species was a big find, one that we can now build further research on,” says Gonçalves. 

[Related: Watering space plants is hard, but NASA has a plan.]

The team was also surprised by how intercropping showed an advantage in the sandy soil control group. It benefited two of the three plant species and this find could be applied to agricultural systems on Earth. Climate change is making some soils more sandy and this study is part of ongoing efforts to see how intercropping can help tackle this issue.

In future studies, the team hopes to figure out how to reach, “a completely self-sustainable system using 100% of the local resources on Mars.” This would help make these future colonies more financially viable and not as dependent on resupply missions. 

“If we can unlock the secret to regenerating poor soils while developing a high-yielding, self-sustainable food production system—exactly the goal of Martian agriculture research—we will have found a solution for a lot of the issues we are having here on Earth as well,” says Gonçalves.

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope isn’t only snapping some of the most detailed images of our cosmos—it’s also helping an international team of astronomers determine the weather on planets trillions of miles away from Earth. Its latest subject, WASP-43b, appears to live up to its extremely heavy metal-sounding name.

Astronomers discovered WASP-43b back in 2011, but initially could only assess some of its potential conditions using the Hubble and now-retired Spitzer space telescopes. That said, it was immediately clear that the gas giant is a scorcher.According to their measurements, the planet orbits its star at just 1.3 million miles away. For comparison, that’s not even 1/25th the distance separating Mercury from the sun. WASP-43b is also tidally locked in its orbit, meaning that one side is always facing its star while the other half is constantly cloaked in darkness.

But at 280 light-years away and practically face-to-face with its star, WASP-43b is difficult to see clearly through telescopes. To get a better look, experts enlisted JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to measure extremely small fluctuations in the brightness emitted by the WASP-43 system every 10 seconds for over 24 hours.

“By observing over an entire orbit, we were able to calculate the temperature of different sides of the planet as they rotate into view. From that, we could construct a rough map of temperature across the planet,” Taylor Bell, a researcher at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute and the lead author of a study published yesterday in Nature Astronomy, said in Tuesday’s announcement.

[Related: JWST images show off the swirling arms of 19 spiral galaxies.]

Some of those temperatures are blazing enough to forge iron, with WASP-43b’s dayside averaging almost 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. And while the nightside is a balmier 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit, that’s still only about 120 degrees short of the melting point for aluminum.

MIRI’s broad spectrum mid-infrared light data, paired alongside additional telescope readings and 3D climate modeling, also allowed astronomers to measure water vapor levels around the planet. With this information, the team could better calculate WASP-43b’s cloud properties, including their thickness and height.

The light data also revealed something striking about the gas giant’s atmospheric conditions—a total lack of methane, which astronomers previously hypothesized may be detectable, at least on the nightside. This fact implies that nearly 5,000 mph equatorial winds must routinely whip across WASP-43b, which are fast enough to prevent the chemical reactions necessary to produce detectable levels of methane.

“With Hubble, we could clearly see that there is water vapor on the dayside. Both Hubble and Spitzer suggested there might be clouds on the nightside,” Bell said on Tuesday. “But we needed more precise measurements from Webb to really begin mapping the temperature, cloud cover, winds, and more detailed atmospheric composition all the way around the planet.”

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The saber-toothed cats that once prowled modern day California had more distinct dental features than even their sabers would suggest. Some of the complete skulls had a tooth socket occupied by two teeth–a permanent saber tooth and a baby tooth that would eventually fall out. These double-toothed sockets may have helped stabilize their signature front fangs and keep them from breaking off. The findings are described in a study published April 8 in the journal The Anatomical Record. 

Sharp, but easily lost teeth

The study looked at saber-toothed cat fossils found in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. There are at least five separate lineages of saber-toothed animals that have evolved around the world. The species Smilodon fatalis roamed widely across North America and into Central America, before going extinct about 10,000 years ago.

Paleontologists studying these fossils have been stumped by why the adult animals with two canines that are more like thin-bladed knives avoided breaking them. During periods of food scarcity, saber-toothed cats broke their teeth more often than they did during times of plenty, potentially due to altered feeding strategies and eating rocks. Paleontologists also still do not know how saber-toothed animals hunted prey without completely breaking these unwieldy teeth. 

In an earlier study, a team from the University of California, Berkeley speculated that a baby tooth helped stabilize the permanent tooth against sideways breakage as it emerged from the gums. The baby tooth–also called a milk canine–are the types of teeth that all mammals grow and lose sometime before adulthood. The growth data seemed to imply that the two teeth sat there together for up to 30 months into the animal’s adolescence. 

[Related: Mighty sabertooth tigers may have purred like kittens.]

To investigate this tooth stabilization theory for the new study, the team used computer models that simulate a saber-tooth’s strength and stiffness against the sideways bending that happens when the saber tooth grows outwards. They also tested and bent plastic models of saber teeth. They found evidence that while fearsome, the saber tooth would have been increasingly vulnerable to breaking off as they emerged from the gums. Having the baby or milk tooth behind it would have worked like a buttress to make it significantly more stable. 

The temporary baby milk canine remaining behind long after the permanent saber tooth erupted indicates that it would have stayed in until the maturing cats learned how to hunt without damaging them. 

“The double-fang stage is probably worth a rethinking now that I’ve shown there’s this potential insurance policy, this larger range of protection,” study co-author and Cal Berkley paleontologist Jack Tseng said in a statement. “It allows the equivalent of our teenagers to experiment, to take risks, essentially to learn how to be a full-grown, fully fledged predator. I think that this refines, though it doesn’t solve, thinking about the growth of saber tooth use and hunting through a mechanical lens.”

Applying some beam theory

Some of the double-fanged specimens found from the La Brea tar pits are considered rare cases of animals with a delayed loss of a baby tooth. This gave Tseng the idea that maybe they had an evolutionary purpose. He used  the beam theory engineering analysis to model real saber teeth.

“According to beam theory, when you bend a blade-like structure laterally sideways in the direction of their narrower dimension, they are quite a lot weaker compared to the main direction of strength,” said Tseng. “Prior interpretations of how saber tooths may have hunted use this as a constraint. No matter how they use their teeth, they could not have bent them a lot in a lateral direction.”

The beam theory combined with computer models that simulated the sideways forces of a saber tooth could withstand before breaking. As the tooth got longer, it became easier to bend, increasing the chance of breakage.

[Related: This tiger-sized, saber-toothed, rhino-skinned predator thrived before the ‘Great Dying.’]

When a supportive baby tooth was added to the beam theory model, the stiffness of the permanent saber kept pace with the bending strength. This baby tooth essentially reduced its chance of breakage. 

The study has implications for how saber-toothed cats and other saber-toothed animals like Africa’s Inostrancevia africana may have hunted as adults. They likely used their predatory skills and strong muscles to compensate for the more vulnerable canines. 

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While we may not have the excitement of a total solar eclipse this month, May offers us a good chance to see some incredibly fast meteors zipping by. Nighttime stargazing should also start to get more comfortable as temperatures warm up in the Northern Hemisphere. Here’s what to look for in the night sky in May. 

May 5 and 6–Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

The Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower is expected to peak on May 5, where roughly 10 to 30 meteors per hour can be seen. Eta Aquarid meteors are known to be super speedy, with some traveling at about 148,000 mph into our planet’s atmosphere. These fast meteors can also leave behind incandescent bits of debris in their wake called trains. 

According to the 2024 Observer’s Handbook from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, this year’s Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower may put on a particularly good show. The waning crescent moon means less light in the night sky and may help viewing conditions.

[Related: The history of Halley’s Comet—and the fireball show it brings us every spring.]

The Farmer’s Almanac suggests looking towards the southeast between 2 to 4 a.m. local time on May 5 and 6. If it’s cloudy or you miss those days, the shower will likely stay fairly strong until around May 10. This meteor shower is usually active between April 19 and May 28 every year, peaking in early May. 

The point in the sky where the meteors appear to come from–or radiant–is in the direction of the constellation Aquarius and the shower is named for the constellation’s brightest star, Eta Aquarii. It is also one of two meteor showers created by the debris from Comet Halley.

May 11–Globular Cluster Messier 5 At Highest Point

A bright globular cluster called Messier 5 (or NGC 5904) will reach its highest point in the sky at about midnight local time. Using a telescope or pair of binoculars, look to the southeastern sky, where it should appear like a patch of light. In the evenings after May 5, M5 will be at its highest point for that day about four minutes earlier each day, according to In the Sky.

[Related: How the Hubble telescope is keeping a 265-year-old stargazing project alive.]

M5 is one of the oldest globular clusters in our galaxy. According to NASA, stars in globular clusters like this are believed to form in the same stellar nursery and grow old together. M5 has an apparent magnitude of 6.7 and is about 25,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens, It is also very bright in July.

May 14 through 30–Lāhaina Noon

This twice a year event in the Earth’s tropical regions occurs when the sun is directly overhead around solar noon. At this point, upright objects do not cast shadows. It happens in May and then again in July. If you are in Hawaii, you can consult this timetable to see what day and times this month’s Lāhaina Noon will occur near you. 

According to the Bishop Museum, in English, the word “lāhainā” can be translated as “cruel sun,” and is a reference to severe droughts experienced in that part of the island of Maui in Hawaii. An older term in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi is “kau ka lā i ka lolo,” which means “the sun rests upon the brain” and references both the physical and cultural significance of the event. 

May 22 and 23–Full Flower Moon

May’s full moon will reach its peak illumination at 9:53 a.m. EDT on Thursday, May 23. Since it will already be below the horizon when it reaches peak illumination, it will be best to view it on the nights May 22 and 23rd. You can use a moonrise and moonset calculator to determine exactly what time to head out and take a gander at this month’s full moon. 

The name Flower Moon is in reference to May’s blooms when flowers are typically most abundant in the Northern Hemisphere. May’s full moon is also called the Flowering Moon or Waabigoni-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the They Plant Moon or Latiy^thos in Oneida, and the Dancing Moon or Ganö́’gat in Seneca. 

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key during the nighttime events this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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If we want to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, we need more detailed maps than the existing options, some of which date back to the Apollo missions of 1960’s and 1970’s. After more than ten years of collaboration between more than 100 researchers working at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the newest editions of lunar topography are rolling out for astronomers and space agencies around the world.

As highlighted recently by Nature, the Geologic Atlas of the Lunar Globe includes 12,341 craters, 81 basins, and 17 different rock types found across the moon’s surface, doubling previous map resolutions to a scale of 1:2,500,000.

[Related: Why do all these countries want to go to the moon right now?]

Although higher accuracy maps have been available for areas near Apollo mission landing sites, the US Geological Survey’s original lunar maps generally managed a 1:5,000,000 scale. Project co-lead and CAS geochemist Jianzhong Liu explained to Nature that “our knowledge of the Moon has advanced greatly, and those maps could no longer meet the needs for future lunar research and exploration.”

To guide lunar mapping into the 21st-century, CAS relied heavily on China’s ongoing lunar exploration programs, including the Chang’e-1 mission. Beginning in 2007, Chang’e-1’s high-powered cameras surveyed the moon’s surface from orbit for two years alongside an interference imaging spectrometer to identify various types of rock types. Additional data compiled by the Chang’e-3 (2013) and Chang’e-4 (2019) lunar landers subsequently helped hone those mapping endeavors. International projects like NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as India’s Chandrayaan-1 probe all provided even more valuable topographical information.

The pivotal topographical milestone wasn’t an entirely altruistic undertaking, however. While CAS geophysicist Ross Mitchell described the maps as “a resource for the whole world,” he added that “contributing to lunar science is a profound way for China to assert its potential role as a scientific powerhouse in the decades to come.” 

[Related: Japan and NASA plan a historic lunar RV road trip together.]

The US is also far from the only ones anxious to set up shop on the moon—both China and Russia hope to arrive there by the mid-2030’s with the construction of an International Lunar Research Station near the moon’s south pole. Despite the two nations’ prior promise to be “open to all interested countries and international partners,” the US is distinctly not among the 10 other governments currently attached to the project.

China plans to launch its Chang’e-6 robotic spacecraft later this week, which will travel to the far side of the moon as the first of three new missions. In an interview on Monday, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson voiced his concerns of a potential real estate war on the moon.

“I think it’s not beyond the pale that China would suddenly say, ‘We are here. You stay out,’” Nelson told Yahoo Finance. “That would be very unfortunate—to take what has gone on on planet Earth for years, grabbing territory, and saying it’s mine and people fighting over it.”

But if nothing else, at least the new maps will soon be available to virtually everyone. The Geologic Atlas is included in a new book from CAS, Map Quadrangles of the Geologic Atlas of the Moon, which also features an additional 30 sector diagrams offering even closer looks at individual lunar regions. The entire map resource will soon also become available to international researchers online through a cloud platform called Digital Moon.

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Archeologists have found evidence that ancient Mayans may have made ceremonial offerings during the construction of the ballcourts they used for sporting events. An international team of researchers used advances in environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis to detect evidence of several plants known for both medicinal and religious purposes. The microscopic fragments of ancient plants were found beneath the floor of a Mayan ballcourt in present day Mexico and are described in a study published April 26 in the journal PLOS One. 

The research was a collaboration of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History in collaboration with researchers from the University of Cincinnati in the United States, the University of Calgary, in Canada, Mexico’s Autonomous University of Campeche and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Play ball

From 2016 to 2022, the team excavated ruins of the ancient city of Yaxnohcah–formerly major city is in the present day Mexican state of Campeche, near the border of Guatemala. The structure in the study was originally constructed sometime between 1000 and 400 BCE. It was subsequently remodeled around 400 BCE-200 CE, when a ballcourt was added.  

According to the team, the ancient Maya participated in several ball games. One included pok-a-tok, a mix of soccer and basketball that is undergoing a revival. Players likely tried to get a ball through a ring in a hoop affixed to a wall. Ballcourts were considered significant places within cities and even built near some of the biggest temples, including in ancient Maya cities like Tikal in Guatemala. 

[Related: The Maya dealt with a form of climate change, too. Here’s how they survived.]

“Ballcourts occupied prime real estate in the ceremonial center. They were a fundamental part of the city,” study co-author and University of Cincinnati paleobotanist and paleoecologist David Lentz said in a statement. “But not all of the ballcourts had hoops. We think of ballcourts today as a place of entertainment. It wasn’t that way for the ancient Maya.”

The construction of new projects were subject to ceremony, similar to how a new ship is christened by breaking a bottle of champagne on the bow or a ribbon is cut at the opening of a new building today.

“When they erected a new building, they asked the goodwill of the gods to protect the people inhabiting it,” said Lentz. “Some people call it an ‘ensouling ritual,’ to get a blessing from and appease the gods.”

e-DNA tells a more complete story 

Offerings and blessings were also made when buildings like the ballcourt were expanded or repurposed. While ceramics or jewelry can be found alongside with plants that are culturally significant, plant remains are much more difficult to find in tropical locations. The humid air can cause them to decompose quickly, so archeologists have relied on trapped pollen samples to get a sense of what plant species were around. 

Studying the environmental DNA (eDNA) offers a way to tell what plants were present. eDNA is material from an organism that can be found from a surrounding environment. It originates from cellular material shed by organisms, such as skin or excrement. It can be used to track what plant, animal and fungi species are around. Unlike fossilized bones or physical anthropological evidence like tools, eDNA can only be sampled by using new molecular methods.

[Related: Scientists are tracking down deep sea creatures with free-floating DNA.]

To pinpoint several types of plants known for use in significant rituals from the eDNA left behind, the team used a product called RNAlater. It preserves the samples during transit back to the lab at the University of Cincinnati. Special genetic probes that are sensitive to plant species found in that region helped them single out the fragmented DNA of several species. They then assembled DNA sequences from these fragments and compared them with sequences stored with the US National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database called GenBank.

The team detected evidence of four different plants associated with ancient Maya medicine and divination rituals.

The first is a type of morning glory called xtabentun. It is known for its hallucinogenic properties and mead is brewed from the honey of bees that feed on the pollen from xtabentun flowers.

Traces of chili peppers were also detected. This spice that is still popular today was used to treat a variety of illnesses for the ancient Maya. An offering of chili peppers might have been intended to ward off disease since it was a healing plant used in many ceremonies. 

The eDNA analysis also identified the tree Hampea trilobata or jool. Leaves from this tree were used to wrap bodies for Maya ceremonies, and the bark was used to make baskets and twine and treat snake bites. 

The plant Oxandra lanceolatal or lancewood was also present at this site. Its oily leaves are a known anesthetic and antibiotic. 

“I think the fact that these four plants, which have a known cultural importance to the Maya, were found in a concentrated sample tells us it was an intentional and purposeful collection under this platform,” study co-author and University of Cincinnati botanist Eric Tepe said in a statement.

Studying eDNA this way holds the promise of helping researchers learn even more about ancient civilizations, as it can help cross reference with written and oral sources. 

“We have known for years from ethnohistorical sources that the Maya also used perishable materials in these offerings, “study co-author and University of Cincinnati environmental biologist Nicholas Dunning said in a statement. “But it is almost impossible to find them archaeologically, which is what makes this discovery using eDNA so extraordinary.”

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New research is throwing some cold water on the idea that the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex was as smart as a primate. These possibly scaly-lipped theropods were about as smart as living reptiles like crocodiles, but not quite as intelligent as monkeys. The findings are detailed in a study published April 26 in the journal The Anatomical Record 

How smart was the T. rex?

In 2023, a study from Vanderbilt University neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel set off a dinosaur-sized debate. Herculano-Houzel proposed that dinosaurs like T. rex had an exceptionally high number of neurons–over 3 billion of them, or more than a baboon. This higher number of neurons could mean that they were more intelligent than assumed. 

The paper theorized that these high neuron counts could inform their intelligence, metabolism, and even give them some more monkey-like habits. They could have used tools and transmitted knowledge culturally like modern day primates, according to Herculano-Houzel’s study.

These bold claims that such a large and powerful reptilian carnivore could have been intelligent enough to sharpen tools and transmit knowledge shook the paleontology world.

[Related: Is T. rex really three royal species? Paleontologists cast doubt over new claims.]

Taking another look

In this new study, an international team of paleontologists, neuroscientists, and behavioral scientists argues that researchers should look at multiple lines of evidence when reconstructing long-extinct species. These include skeletal anatomy, bone composition, trace fossils that show movement, and the behaviors of their living relatives.

“Determining the intelligence of dinosaurs and other extinct animals is best done using many lines of evidence ranging from gross anatomy to fossil footprints instead of relying on neuron number estimates alone,” study co-author and University of Bristol paleontologist Hady George said in a statement.

The study reexamined the techniques that were used to predict both number of neurons and brain size in dinosaurs as well as decades of previous research. They found that the assumptions made about brain cavity size and corresponding neuron counts were unreliable. 

“Neuron counts are not good predictors of cognitive performance, and using them to predict intelligence in long-extinct species can lead to highly misleading interpretations,” Ornella Bertrand, a study co-author and mammalian paleontologist at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont said in a statement.

Despite being very similar to big birds, dinosaurs were reptiles. As reptiles, they have very different brains than birds or mammals, but brain tissue does not fossilize. To study what their brains must have been like, scientists look to their skulls for clues. Reptile brains typically don’t fill up their skull cavity and they also tend to have a lot of cerebrospinal fluid taking up space. 

“The first time I dissected an alligator brain, I took the top of the skull off and I went, ‘Where is the brain?’ Because there is this big space in there,” study co-author and University of Alberta neurophysiologist Doug Wylie said in a statement.

Reptile brains are also packed more loosely with neurons than bird or mammalian brains. They also don’t have the same kinds of connections and circuits in their brains, which would have limited the complexity of their social behaviors.

Neurons scale up

The size of the animal is also a major factor. An adult male baboon can range from 30 to 88 pounds, while a T. rex could be over 15,000 pounds. Number of neurons typically scales to body size, according to the team.

“We don’t know why it’s true, but it is true,” said study co-author and University of Alberta comparative neurobiologist Cristian Gutierrez-Ibanez said in a statement. “A larger animal needs more neurons.”

[Related: Giganotosaurus vs. T. rex: Who would win in a battle of the big dinosaurs?]

The team believes that the T. rex needed a huge number of neurons for just maintaining basic biological functions with such a large body and wouldn’t have had any leftover for things like cultural knowledge transmission or tool usage. 

The study also found that their brain size had been overestimated, particularly the forebrain. The neuron counts could have also been overestimated and the neuron count estimates are not a reliable guide to intelligence.

“The possibility that T. rex might have been as intelligent as a baboon is fascinating and terrifying, with the potential to reinvent our view of the past,” study co-author and University of Southampton palaeozoologist Darren Naish said in a statement. “But our study shows how all the data we have is against this idea. They were more like smart giant crocodiles, and that’s just as fascinating.”

In response to this new study re-examining her work, Herculano-Houzel told the Los Angeles Times, “I am delighted to see that my simple study using solid data published by paleontologists opened the way for new studies. Readers should analyze the evidence and draw their own conclusions. That’s what science is about!”

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It’s long been known that mice can be trained to perform simple tasks in exchange for a reward. Bribe a hungry mouse with a morsel of food or a thirsty mouse with a drop of water and you can encourage it to navigate a maze or click a particular button. But sometimes, mice don’t act as expected, failing to complete the task at hand. Often, researchers have dismissed these actions as simple mistakes, resulting from inattention or disengagement. Yet, a study published April 26 in the journal Current Biology suggests, there’s more going on: mice can understand the rules of a task and still deviate in their behaviors, potentially testing their own hypotheses and attempting to learn more about their surroundings. 

It appears that the decisions mice make during behavioral tests are more complicated than just basic reward-seeking choices. During human-imposed trials in the lab, mice may be continually exploring and re-testing the rules of their environment and performing their own small experiments.

[ Related: Mice may be able to recognize their own reflections ]

The findings expand our understanding of what’s happening inside rodent brains and indicate mice and other non-verbal animals might know more than they let on. The research could eventually help shed light on the neurological underpinnings of human behavior as well. “These mice have a richer internal life than we probably give them credit for,” says Kishore Kuchibhotla, senior study author and an assistant professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. “They are not just stimulus response machines. They may have things like strategies,” he adds.

Mice at the steering wheel

The work builds on previous research that tested mice on a simple licking task and adds a level of complexity with a two-choice test to parse mouse motivations. Kuchibhotla and lead study author Ziyi Zhu, a neuroscience PhD student, trained thirsty mice, restrained in place,  to spin a wheel with their front legs in a certain direction in response to a sound. One tone corresponded with turning the wheel to the right, a second tone with spinning it to the left. If a mouse responded to either of the sounds with the correct action, it would get a tiny cup of water. If it spun the wheel the wrong way or didn’t spin it at all, nothing happened. 

Throughout thousands of trials involving 13 mice, the researchers tracked mouse choice, response speed, and accuracy, and they noticed several patterns. For one, mice seemed to get more accurate in their decisions as the trials progressed, indicating they were mastering the task at hand. Individual mice also seemed to have quirks and preferences when it came to picking a wheel direction. And even when mice reached an expert level of wheel-steering competency, they would still display short bouts of wrong responses–often spinning the wheel in the same direction repeatedly, regardless of which sound was played. 

[ Related: How video game tech, AI, and computer vision help decode animal pain and behavior ]

To better understand what was happening during these bouts, Kuchibhotla and Zhu instituted “probe” trials, where they temporarily stopped rewarding the mice for correct answers. Very quickly, mice changed course, stopped exploring, and began to respond to the right and left sound cues more accurately, in accordance with the pattern they’d been trained on–indicating the mice understood what they were supposed to do to get the cup of water, and had been purposefully forsaking reward.

“As behavioral neuroscientists who work in animal models, the onus is on us to come up with more clever and rich ways to extract meaning from nonverbal animals’ [actions],” says Dr. Brian Sweis PhD, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Mount Sinai who conducts animal behavior research but was not involved in the new study. “I think this paper did a really nice job of that… it was a beautiful deep dive into a behavioral analysis,” he adds–pointing especially to the follow-up examination of the initial trial data and the ways the researchers varied their experiments. 

Using a computational model, Zhu and Kuchibhotla assessed how each trial outcome related to the ones before and after it and what factors seemed to be influencing mouse behavior. They found that reward played a big role, but so did a bias towards rotating the wheel in a preferred direction, which differed from mouse to mouse. Yet this bias wasn’t fixed–mice would switch it up, spinning to both sides over the course of many trials and when the researchers presented mice with sound prompts for exclusively their preferred direction, the mice would exhibit more periods of rotating the wheel to their non-preferred side. Taken altogether, these observations show a dynamic choice bias that the researchers hypothesize is a learning strategy. 

Learning without language

 “Mice are surprisingly using higher-order approaches to learn even simple tasks, which may seem maladaptive. It may look like the animal is making a ton of errors, but during those errors, it’s actually getting smarter,” says Kuchibhotla. “We put these animals in these bizarre situations. They don’t know when the environment may change. They don’t know when we may change the rules on them. There’s value in having this sort of continuous exploration.”

Where humans can rely on language to understand an assignment, non-verbal animals have to find out for themselves what the rules of a particular situation are. Kuchibhotla suggests this difference could account for why mice take on this continually shifting approach to a task. “Verbal or written instructions collapse the mental space of exploration. Once you know what you’re supposed to do, there’s no need to explore. That’s one of the hypotheses we have–that in the absence of instructions humans will [also] engage in continuous exploration.” He’s currently conducting follow-up research in human behavioral trials to determine if that’s true. 

Finding lessons in mouse mistakes

Other follow-up work includes tracking the mice’s neural activity as they engage in the wheel spinning task, training and testing the mice on multiple tasks at once to see how strategies change, and running cognitively impaired mice through similar tests which could ultimately reveal underlying patterns in human neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s.

There are limitations to what this single study proves. Despite all the researchers’ carefulness, something simpler than strategizing could still be at play, offers Sweis. For instance, maybe the mice changed the direction they spun the wheel in every so often because their front legs got tired. “I don’t think that negates anything [the study authors are] showing here, but physical factors could be a driver,” says Sweis. “We have to understand the brian in the context of the whole body.”

Still though, examining the choice process, he explains, “gives us insight into the many different ways the brain can work” and can clarify what’s happening when things start to go wrong. He suggests another follow-up project could look at how aging influences the exploration process and if task flexibility shifts or declines with age. There are many possible offshoots for interesting research, and the study “serves as a rich foundation for us to understand biology a little bit more.” 

It reframes decades of rodent behavior results, where errors were dismissed as uninteresting failures. “Animals need to make mistakes to learn,” says Sweis–and there’s lots we can learn from them too.

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Red squirrels living in Canada’s Yukon territory can have a pretty hard knock life. Bitterly cold winters, resource scarcity, intense competition for habitat, threats from large predators like the Canada lynx, and even take big reproductive risks for their genetic fitness. All of these stressors take their toll on these resilient rodents. Their early life struggles can also leave a lasting mark. The more challenges young red squirrels face in the year they’re born, the shorter their adult lifespan. The findings are detailed in a study published April 24 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences and could have some implications for humans. 

Food booms

Red squirrels are about 11 inches long and weigh just over half a pound on average. They are known for their rust colored fur and “scolding chatter” above the trees. The new study uses data collected by the Kluane Red Squirrel Project, a multi-university long-term field study. The project has tracked and studied thousands of wild North American red squirrels in the southwestern region of the Yukon for more than 30 years that individually tags and tracks individual red squirrels to learn how they deal with all that’s thrown at them  . 

The new study analyzing the observations found that red squirrels that survive past their first year go on to live about 3.5 years on average. However, early life adversity like food scarcity can cut their life expectancy by at least 14 percent.

[Related: A Medieval strain of leprosy is infecting squirrels in the UK.]

“The ecosystem red squirrels inhabit in this region is unique,” study co-author and University of Arizona ecologist and evolutionary biologist Lauren Petrullo said in a statement. “Every three to seven years, their favorite food–seed from cones of white spruce trees–is produced in superabundance during what we call a food boom.”

The team found that even though these food booms are rare, they can interrupt some biological processes for the squirrels and help shape their lifespans.

“If a squirrel had a harsh first year of life, if they were lucky enough to experience a food boom in their second year of life, they lived just as long–if not longer–in spite of early-life adversity,” said Petrullo.

Rodents as proxies

Rodents like squirrels, rice, and mats, are often used as models for humans in a lab setting. However, the laboratory environment often has limited relevance to the bigger pictures of what is going on at an ecological and evolutionary level. 

“It can be hard to really replicate the ecological challenges that animals have evolved to cope with in a lab setting,” said Petrullo. 

Wild red squirrels can offer scientists a chance to better study the role that early-life environment plays. Petrullo and her colleagues hope that continued observations in the wild can help them learn more about the biological mechanisms that link squirrels’ early developmental conditions with their later-life survival. This could have some insights into our understanding of human resilience. 

[Related: Nature wasn’t healing: What really happened with wildlife during pandemic lockdowns.]

“Our findings in red squirrels echo what we know about how early-life adversity can shorten adult lifespan in humans and other primates,” Petrullo said. “Humans vary widely in how vulnerable or resilient they are to challenges faced during early development. Our study demonstrates that future environmental quality might be an important factor that can explain why some individuals appear to be more, or less, susceptible to the consequences of early-life adversity.” 

‘Born with a silver spoon’

While growing up as a young red squirrel in the Yukon can be quite difficult, there are some things that can go right. 

“Some red squirrels have the luck of being born into gentler early environments, akin to being born with a silver spoon,” Petrullo said. “Because of this, we’ve got this really nice individual variation in early-life environmental quality across a natural ecological environment.”
However, as global temperatures continue to climb, this environment is expected to see a good deal of change. It’s possible that food booms and other ecological patterns could change right alongside the climate and the connections between early-life experiences and lifespan could also shift. According to Petrullo, these changes could offer more insight into how animals may continue to adapt to environments that are only getting more challenging to survive in. Future study could also help scientists learn more about what environmental factors can buffer these squirrels from ongoing environmental threats.

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Earlier this week, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded a rarely seen event—four nearly-simultaneous flare eruptions involving three separate sunspots, as well as the magnetic filament between them. But as impressive as it is, the event could soon pose problems for some satellites and spacecraft orbiting Earth, as well as electronic systems here on the ground.

It may seem like a massive ball of fiery, thermonuclear chaos, but there’s actually a fairly predictable rhythm to the sun. Similar to Earth’s seasonal changes, the yellow dwarf star’s powerful electromagnetic fluctuations follow a roughly 11-year cycle of ebbs and flows. Although astronomers still aren’t quite sure why this happens, it’s certainly observable—and recent activity definitely indicates the sun is heading towards its next “solar maximum” later this year.

As Spaceweather.com notes, early Tuesday morning’s “complex quartet” of solar activity was what’s known as a “super-sympathetic flare,” in which multiple events occur at nearly the same time. This happens thanks to the often hard-to-detect magnetic loops spreading across the sun’s corona, which can create explosive chain reactions in the process. In this case, hundreds of thousands of miles separated the three individual flares, but they still erupted within minutes of each other. All-told, the super-sympathetic flare encompassed about a third of the sun’s total surface facing Earth.

[Related: Why our tumultuous sun was relatively quiet in the late 1600s]

And that “facing Earth” factor could present an issue. BGR explains “at least some” of the electromagnetic “debris” could be en route towards the planet in the form of a coronal mass ejection (CME). If so, those forces could result in colorful auroras around the Earth’s poles—as well as create potential tech woes for satellite arrays and orbiting spacecraft, not to mention blackouts across some radio and GPS systems. The effects, if there are any, are estimated to occur over the next day or so, but at least they’re predicted to only be temporary inconveniences.

Luckily, multi-flare situations like this week’s aren’t a regular occurrence—the last time something similar happened was back in 2010 in what became known as the Great Eruption.

[Related: Hold onto your satellites: The sun is about to get a lot stormier]

Still, these super-sympathetic flares serve as a solid reminder of just how much of our modern, electronically connected society is at the sun’s mercy. As recently as 2022, for example, a solar storm knocked around 40 Starlink satellites out of orbit. The risk of solar-induced problems will continue to rise as the skies grow increasingly crowded.

While many companies continue to construct redundancy programs and backup systems for these potential headaches, astronomers and physicists still can’t predict solar activity very accurately. More research and funding is needed to create early warning and forecasting programs.

This year alone has already seen at least two other solar activity events—and seeing as how we still haven’t passed the solar maximum, more impressive (and maybe damaging) activity is likely on the way.

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It’s ‘spider’ season on the Red Planet. There are no actual spiders on Mars–that we know of–but arachnid-shaped black spots dot some parts of our celestial neighbor every spring.

[Related: Mars’s mascara-like streaks may be caused by slush and landslides.]

The European Space Agency (ESA) released new images of these seasonal eruptions in a formation called Inca City in Mars’ southern polar region.

How do Martian ‘spiders’ form?

Mars has four distinct seasons, similarly to Earth. Each Martian season lasts roughly twice as long as a season here. According to the ESA, these spider-like marks appear in Martian spring when sunlight falls on layers of carbon dioxide that have been deposited over the dark Martian winter. The sunlight causes carbon dioxide ice at the bottom layer to turn into gas. The gas builds up and eventually breaks through slabs overlying ice around Mars’ poles. When they burst free, the dark material is dragged up to the surface as it travels and shatters layers of ice that are up to three feet thick. 

The emerging gas is full of dark dust and shoots up through cracks in the ice similar to a fountain or geyser. The gas then travels back down and settles on the surface. The settling gas creates dark spots which range from 0.3 to 0.6 miles across. This same process creates the spider-shaped patterns that are etched beneath the ice.

The image was captured by the CaSSIS instrument aboard the ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). CaSSIS stands for Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System and it was built at the University of Bern in Germany. It creates high resolution images designed to complement data collected on Mars. It is made up of a telescope and focal plane system that are mounted on a rotation mechanism and has three electronics units that relay images back to the ESA. 

Mars’ mysterious Inca City

Most of the spots in this new image are seen on the outskirts of Angustus Labyrinthus–more commonly called Inca City. NASA’s Mariner 9 probe first spotted Inca City in 1972 and its geometric-looking network of ridges reminded astronomers of Inca ruins. 

Scientists are still not sure exactly how Inca City formed. It may be sand dunes that have turned to stone over millennia. Materials like magma or sand could also be seeping through cracked sheets of Martian rock. The ridges could also be winding structures related to glaciers called eskers. 

Inca City also appears to be part of a large circle–about 53 miles in diameter. Scientists believe that the ‘ formation sits within a large crater that may have taken shape as a rock from space crashed into Mars’ surface. The impact likely caused faults to ripple through the surrounding plain. The faults were then filled with rising lava and have worn away over time. 

Towards the middle section of the image the landscape changes somewhat, with large roundish and oval swirls creating an effect reminiscent of marble. This effect is thought to occur when layered deposits are worn away over time.

[Related: Scientists brought ‘Mars spiders’ to Earth—here’s how.]

A few prominent steep, flat-topped mounds and hills stand almost 5,000 feet above the surrounding terrain. These mounds form as softer material is eroded wind, water, or ice. The harder material left behind forms these hills. Some signs of the ‘spiders’ are scattered across the dust-covered plateaus, lurking amongst various canyons and troughs.

The data for these images was captured on October 4, 2020 during Mars’ most recent spring. The Red Planet is currently in its autumn and its next spring equinox will be on November 12, 2024.

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One of NASA’s Great Observatories may soon meet an untimely demise. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory—an orbiting telescope launched in 1999 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia—is facing a major financial threat in NASA’s latest budget proposal. Major cuts to its funding could lead to layoffs for half of the observatory’s staff by October and, according to concerned scientists, a premature end to the mission around 2026. Astronomers are worried that losing a telescope so crucial to our studies of the high-energy cosmos could set the field back by decades. 

In an open letter, a group of astronomers claimed that Chandra “is capable of many more years of operation and scientific discovery” and that a “reduction of the budget of our flagship X-ray mission will have an outsized impact on both U.S. high-energy astrophysics research and the larger astronomy and astrophysics community.”

“It’s a huge monetary and environmental toll to put an observatory up in space, so I think it’s really important to value that and to not treat these instruments as disposable,” adds Samantha Wong, an astronomer at McGill University. “People outside of astronomy contribute to the cost of these instruments (both literally and in terms of environmental and satellite pollution), so it’s in everyone’s best interest that we use Chandra to the full extent it’s capable of.” 

Chandra was launched in the 90s along with the optical and ultraviolet Hubble Space Telescope, the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope (recently decommissioned in 2020), and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (the shortest lived of the bunch, ending in 2000). Much like the powerhouse Hubble, Chandra was initially meant to operate for five years—but its enduring excellent performance has cemented it as a pillar of astronomy research for the past two and a half decades. Although any piece of equipment will naturally degrade over time, Chandra continues to return excellent scientific results, deemed “the most powerful X-ray facility in orbit” from a recent NASA senior review, with potential to keep going for another decade until it runs out of fuel as long as the team on the ground can continue operating it.

Space telescopes are huge endeavors and marvels of engineering, and each one opens up a new window to the universe. Astronomy requires seeing the universe in multiple wavelengths of light, far beyond what human eyes can sense, from low-energy radio waves to the highest-energy gamma rays. “It’s hard to overstate how much we’re learning about the cosmos by just putting big pieces of glass in the sky,” said Harvard astronomer Grant Tremblay in a conversation with New York Rep. Joe Morelle.

[ Related: Where do all those colors in space telescope images come from? ]

In space, X-rays can tell us about the most explosive phenomena in the cosmos: supernovae, supermassive black holes, colliding neutron stars, and more. Chandra is one of a small number of telescopes—including the European XMM-Newton and Japanese XRISM—that can sense X-rays, the same high-energy light used to image human bones here on the ground. However, Chandra is unique even out of that small bunch, able to see in unparalleled detail. Observations from Chandra have also revealed fluorescence on planets in the solar system, and where mysterious dark matter lurks in a cluster of galaxies.

Since the budget cuts were announced in March, astronomers have rallied together to #SaveChandra, compiling their case for the observatory into a website. “Together, Chandra and Hubble are amongst the most scientifically productive missions in the entire NASA Science portfolio,” reads the Save Chandra website. Astronomers also expect Chandra to be highly complementary to the famous JWST and the upcoming Rubin Observatory in Chile, which will scan nearly the entire sky every night. For example, Chandra can peer into the hearts of high-redshift galaxies seen by Webb, learning more about the supermassive black holes at their centers. It will also be crucial for follow up on the 10 million alerts that Rubin will generate each night by pinpointing short-lived, bright flashes from explosive celestial events.

Astronomers have also been advocating on social media, including sharing personal anecdotes of how important Chandra has been to their scientific careers, from a graduate student describing the importance of Chandra in her education to a professor reminiscing on her first research paper in 2001, which used Chandra data and led to 30 other papers related to the mission in her career. 

One of the biggest concerns in the community is the fact that there is no replacement for Chandra on the horizons. Its successor, the Lynx observatory, is “unlikely to launch before the 2050s” according to Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies astronomer Affelia Wibisono—that is, if it launches at all. NASA is considering a smaller X-ray probe mission (to be chosen from a few ideas, including STROBE-X or the Line Emission Mapper), but none of these concepts would fill the gap left by Chandra. Plus, the resulting layoffs from Chandra’s demise would lead to a huge loss of expertise in X-ray astronomy as jobless astronomers are forced to leave the field, creating a huge gap in our ability to even do the science expected from Lynx and other future observatories. Without Chandra, “there’s little incentive or accessibility to doing high energy work for the next decade or so, which really depletes the field and makes it hard to retain momentum in the science that we’re doing,” adds Wong.

With scientists so dedicated to the success of this mission, then, why would it be canceled by NASA?

Chandra’s plight is a symptom of a larger issue: ongoing cuts to science funding in the United States, partially resulting from the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 that limited non-defense spending. NASA’s budget was cut by 2% in the 2024 fiscal year, a stark change from President Biden’s recent request for a 7% increase to their funding. Essentially, NASA leadership has been forced between a rock and a hard place—who would want to choose between one incredible discovery machine and another nearly equally amazing? “We acknowledge that we are operating in a challenging budget environment, and we always want to do the most science we possibly can,” explained NASA Astrophysics director Mark Clampin.

This isn’t the only budget threat facing astronomy this year, either. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA was forced to make major layoffs in February, and the highly ambitious Mars Sample Return program (intended to bring rocks collected by the Perseverance rover, currently on the Red Planet, back home to Earth) is undergoing major restructuring after its original budget was deemed unrealistic. Even ground-based astronomy is faced with hard choices, as the National Science Foundation is now forced to decide on one next-generation telescope instead of the two originally planned for construction.

Astronomy, however, is a mere sliver of the U.S.’s overall budget, and many people are hoping for a future where we can fund more of these scientific endeavors. “Science has such absurdly high national and global return on investment that you can easily advocate for the whole discovery portfolio,” wrote Tremblay in a post on X. Astronomers have also highlighted the importance of astronomy missions for inspiring the next generation of scientists, and keeping the public interested in science overall. “Continuing to operate Chandra would symbolize a renewed dedication to setting big goals,” says West Virginia University astronomer Graham Doskoch. “That’s an idea that has relevance for everyone.”

So, what comes next for the great X-ray observatory? NASA is currently planning a “mini-review” to decide how to best operate Chandra under the new budget constraints, ideally hoping to scale back operations without completely shuttering the program. Meanwhile, Chandra advocates are encouraging people to talk to their government representatives, sign a community letter, and spread the word on social media with resources available on the Save Chandra Website.

“You want to #SaveChandra? The high impact way to do that is to reach out to your representatives and senators,” wrote astronomer Laura Lopez on X. In this critical moment for the future of astronomy, now all eyes are on Congress to see how the budget shakes out in the coming months and years.

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On September 24, 2023, a capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission floated back to Earth, landing safely in the Utah desert. The mission was the first time the U.S. brought back a piece of an asteroid and a big moment for the space agency. The history-making success of OSIRIS-REx features prominently in NASA HQ’S Best of 2023 photos album, recently curated and shared on Flickr.

Other milestone moments documented in the photos include the Psyche spacecraft launch, the SpaceX Dragon Endurance landing, and the Earthly return of Frank Rubio, the record holder for longest single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut.

NASA HQ shared 100 photographs, but we’ve selected our 13 favorites.

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A research team’s “bionic eye” deciphered thousands of new words hidden within an ancient scroll carbonized during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius—and the new text points to the long-lost, potential final resting place of the philosopher Plato.

The 1,800-scroll collection, located in the estate now known as the “Villa of the Papyri,” was almost instantaneously incinerated during the historic Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 CE, before being buried in layers of pumice and ash. The latest discovery is part of ongoing global efforts focused on the ancient Greek library believed to belong to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.

Although rediscovered in 1792, the trove of text remained almost entirely inaccessible due to the carbonized parchment’s fragility and blackened writing. In recent years, however, contributors to projects like the Vesuvius Challenge have worked to finally reveal the charred artifacts’ potentially invaluable information. In February, the project’s organizers announced that a team successfully translated 2,000 characters within a scroll through a combination of machine learning software and computer vision programming. Now, a separate group’s “bionic eye” has uncovered even more.

[Related: 2,000 new characters from burnt-up ancient Greek scroll deciphered with AI.]

According to Italian news outlet, ANSA, experts utilized infrared hyperspectral imaging alongside a relatively new approach known as optical coherence tomography (OCT) to see through the carbonized material. OCT employs cross-sectional, high-resolution imagery most often used by optometrists to photograph the back of the eye. In this case, however, combining the two tools allowed researchers to bypass the layers of carbon to read a major portion of the scroll by detecting faint evidence of handwriting that human eyes can no longer see.

Now, it appears the team helped solve a major mystery within the history of philosophy—the location of Plato’s grave. After translating the section, it appears Plato was finally buried in a garden near a shrine to the Muses at the Platonic Academy in Athens. What’s more, the text details the pivotal philosopher’s last night before reportedly succumbing to illness. Plato, suffering from a high fever, unfortunately wasn’t a fan of a nearby musician’s attempt to comfort him by playing “sweet notes” on flute. According to the scroll, he even went so far as to criticize their “scant sense of rhythm.”

The section also offers a revised timeline of Plato’s life by stating that the philosopher was sold into slavery in either 404 or 399 BCE. Before the new discovery, historians believed he was enslaved in 387 BCE.

Researchers aren’t stopping here, either. As Interesting Engineering notes, the team will use their “bionic eye” for further scans through 2026, while the Vesuvius Challenge will pursue its own methods to discover even more insights into the scrolls.

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About five million years ago, the North American Pacific Northwest was teeming with some pretty big fish that would have made the continent’s biggest salmon runs look small. An eight to 10-feet-long prehistoric salmon species called Oncorhynchus rastrosus stalked the seas and streams of the Miocene. It weighed upwards of 400 pounds and was almost twice as long and three times heavier than today’s largest salmon species–the Chinook/king salmon. 

Oncorhynchus rastrosus also sported a formidable pair of front teeth that projected out from the sides of their mouths like tusks, but not like fangs as scientists previously believed. This major dental update is detailed in a study published April 24 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Oncorhynchus rastrosus was first described in 1972. At the time, scientists believed that its large oversize teeth pointed backwards into the month like fangs. This largest known member of the Salmonidae family was commonly called the “saber-toothed salmon” due to the position of its teeth. However, CT scans of some newer Oncorhynchus rastrosus fossils and analysis in the study confirmed that these two-inch long curved chompers were more similar to a warthog’s tusks. This makes the species more of a “spike-toothed salmon.”

“This is all part of the scientific process. You have an idea and you get new information,” study co-author and University of Oregon paleobiologist Edward Davis tells PopSci. “It’s a good reminder of the humility you need to have as a scientist.”

[Related: A gator-faced fish shaped like a torpedo stalked rivers 360 million years ago.]

Scientists are not exactly sure what these signature tusks were used for, but believe they were primarily used to fight off other salmon or predators. They also may have been a way for female fish to dig nests for their eggs or even to help both sexes swim upstream to spawn.

“When they’re swimming upstream, they could maybe hook the spikes on something and take a rest without having to use any energy,” says Davis. “It’s sort of like if you’re holding on to the side of the swimming pool.”

With these tusks, they would have been as “equally fearsome” as their male counterparts, according to study co-author and professor and curator of fishes at Oregon State University Brian Sidlauskas.

Their teeth likely weren’t used for catching prey. The spike-toothed salmon may have been a filter-feeder that dined on tiny organisms called plankton. This filter feeding may have been one of the reasons they reached such titanic sizes. Their relatives the sockeye salmon as well as baleen whales and basking sharks have bony features called gill rakers that they use to filter out oxygen and microorganisms from the water. According to Davis, Oncorhynchus rastrosus have an unusually large number of gill rakers. Filter feeding with these gill takers possibly helped them grow since it could consume larger organisms like jellyfish and get more nutrients. 

They also lived in an environment with the food and water resources that could support their large bodies. In this way, studying the spike-toothed salmon can also give clues about what might be in store for the planet as temperatures continue to rise. They lived at the end of the Miocene, when the world’s oceans were much warmer than today. Global carbon dioxide levels were also near what Earth could see in the year 2100. Like today’s salmon, they hatched in freshwater, went into the ocean, and then returned back into the freshwater to spawn and die. 

“But these fish were huge,” says Davis. “That means there had to be a lot more water in those ancient rivers than we see today, to give them the space to be able to swim all the way up into eastern Oregon.”

[Related: The salmon of 2100 will have new habitat: the remains of melted glaciers.]

Oncorhynchus rastrosus went extinct as the Earth began to cool towards the end of the Miocene. This change in climate likely depleted them of the resources that they needed to sustain such large bodies. 

In future studies, Davis and his colleagues plan to do a closer analysis of some

spike-toothed salmon specimens. While a complete skeleton has yet to be found, a number of fossils belonging to this enormous fish have been uncovered in recent years. They also hope to come up with new models to study how these tusk-like teeth were used and better understand what extinct ecosystems can teach us. 

“Cool extinct animals get people excited about science and the ancient world. But it’s important to understand that ancient world because it gives us a window into what the world could be like in future scenarios,” says Davis. “By looking at how the giant salmon lived on this much warmer Earth, we can think about what resources are going to change over the next 80 years if our Earth is returning to that warmer state.”

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Check out Weirdest Thing’s new page on Reddit to meet fellow Weirdos!

FACT: These birds help humans hunt for honey, but it’s not as sweet as you might think

By Rachel Feltman

The greater honeyguide is a sub-Saharan bird that engages in a behavior that’s so fascinating to people that its entire genus and its entire family is named for it, even though they’re the only species in the bunch that definitely acts this way.

These birds literally guide humans to sources of honey. Humans call to the birds for help, the birds recognize the request and start leading the way, and the humans follow them straight to a big honeycomb. Hunter-gatherers are almost six-times more likely to find hives with a honeyguide assist than they are without. 

The people in question are The Hadza of Northern Tanzania. Even if you don’t recognize their name, you’ve almost certainly heard of or read research about them. If you’ve read an article about, for example, how eating a modern diet versus a traditional hunter-gatherer diet changes our microbiome, it was almost certainly based on research on the Hadza. 

Speaking of research on Hadza diets: Scientists have found that honey makes up a surprisingly large percentage of their caloric intake. It can make up around 20% of the calories they consume. 

That’s where the honeyguide bird comes in with a big assist. Some researchers estimate that up to 10% of the Hadza’s total diet is foraged with the help of these birds.

Incredible, right? But a lot of popular media on the subject takes things a little too far in the Disney Princess direction.

A lot of depictions of this process—including some documentaries—suggest that this is a mutually-beneficial partnership between birds and humans. Humans ask for help, birds provide it, and humans pay the animals for their services with chunks of honeycomb full of wax and grubs for them to eat. 

But as this feature in Atlas Obscura by Cara Giaimo explains, that isn’t quite true—and the sunnier portrayal of this relationship can cause trouble for the Hadza. Check out the article—and this week’s episode—for more on the (still very awesome) truth behind the misinformation. 

FACT: A barber may have come close to launching a massive revolt—until the Civil War got in the way

By Joel Cook

On this week’s episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, I’m sharing one of my favorite stories from my own show, Rogue History. It’s the story of a traveling barber named Moses Dickson. This jack-of-all-trades (seriously, he opened a fine dining restaurant at one point) may have laid the groundwork for a major insurrection. Dickson claimed to have recruited a vast network of enslaved people and free allies who were gearing up to revolt against their oppressors. He said the only reason it didn’t happen was that the Civil War started brewing, and he figured he’d let actual armies do the legwork instead. 

That might sound like a convenient claim for some random barber to make, but there’s some evidence that Dickson really had been about to light the fuse on a huge insurrection. Learn more in this week’s episode. You can also check out the Rogue History episode that inspired this fact.

FACT: Rats love taking selfies, too 

By Sara Kiley Watson

What’s not to love about a selfie? Millions are taken every single day, though the reasons why we snap so many pics of ourselves are still up in the air. Some folks guess it’s for vanity, but research has also shown that capturing a quick selfie can help us remember deeper meanings of those day-to-day events or big moments. 

One recent project from a Paris-based professional photographer and grad student shows that humans might not be the only animals that love a cheeky self-portrait. 

A Skinner box-inspired experiment showed that rats got a kick out of pressing a button that snapped selfies. They also enjoyed viewing the resulting images—even if they weren’t lured by a treat to do so. Of course, the psychological significance of rat selfies is still a mystery, and we’ll need to do a lot more research to truly understand our shared love of self-portraits (and/or button-pushing). But in the meantime, the photos produced by these curious little critters are still cute as can be. You can see them here. 

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NASA hitched a ride aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron Launcher in New Zealand yesterday evening, and is preparing to test a new, highly advanced solar sail design. Now in a sun-synchronous orbit roughly 600-miles above Earth, the agency’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) will in the coming weeks deploy and showcase technology that could one day power deep-space missions without the need for any actual rocket fuel, after launch.

The fundamentals behind solar sails aren’t in question. By capturing the pressure emitted by solar energy, thin sheets can propel a spacecraft at immense speeds, similar to a sailboat. Engineers have already demonstrated the principles before, but NASA’s new project will specifically showcase a promising boom design constructed of flexible composite polymer materials reinforced with carbon fiber.

Although delivered in a toaster-sized package, ACS3 will take less than 30 minutes to unfurl into an 860-square-foot sheet of ultrathin plastic anchored by its four accompanying 23-foot-long booms. These poles, once deployed, function as sailboat booms, and will keep the sheet taut enough to capture solar energy.

[Related: How tiny spacecraft could ‘sail’ to Mars surprisingly quickly.]

But what makes the ACS3 booms so special is how they are stored. Any solar sail’s boom system will need to remain stiff enough through harsh temperature fluctuations, as well as durable enough to last through lengthy mission durations. Scaled-up solar sails, however, will be pretty massive—NASA is currently planning future designs as large as 5,400-square-feet, or roughly the size of a basketball court. These sails will need extremely long boom systems that won’t necessarily fit in a rocket’s cargo hold.

To solve for this, NASA rolled up its new composite material booms into a package roughly the size of an envelope. When ready, engineers will utilize an extraction system similar to a tape spool to uncoil the booms meant to minimize potential jamming. Once in place, they’ll anchor the microscopically thin solar sail as onboard cameras record the entire process.

NASA hopes the project will allow them to evaluate their new solar sail design while measuring how its resulting thrust influences the tiny spacecraft’s low-Earth orbit. Meanwhile, engineers will assess the resiliency of their novel composite booms, which are 75-percent lighter and designed to offer 100-times less shape distortion than any previous solar sail boom prototype.

Don’t expect the ACS3 experiment to go soaring off into space, though. After an estimated two-month initial flight and subsystem testing phase, ACS3 will conduct a weeks-long test of its ability to raise and lower the CubeSate’s orbit. It’s a lot of work to harness a solar force NASA says is equivalent to the weight of a paperclip in your palm. Still, if ACS3’s sail and boom system is successful, it could lead towards scaling up the design enough to travel across the solar system.

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Many marine organisms–including sea worms, some jellyfish, sea pickles, and more–can emit ethereal glow through a process called bioluminescence. The evolutionary origins of this light production remain a mystery, but an international team of scientists have found that bioluminescence may have first evolved in a group of marine invertebrates called octocorals at least 540 million years ago–nearly 300 million years earlier than they previously believed. This new timeline could help scientists unravel bioluminescence’s origin story. The findings are detailed in a study published April 23 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

What is bioluminescence? 

Bioluminescent organisms produce light via chemical reactions. This ability has independently evolved at least 94 times in nature. Bioluminescence is involved in multiple animal behaviors including communication, courtship, camouflage, and hunting. Fireflies, glowworms, and even some species of fungi on land are also considered bioluminescent organisms. 

“Nobody quite knows why it first evolved in animals,” Andrea Quattrini, a study co-author and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s curator of corals, said in a statement. 

The earliest dated example of bioluminescence in animals was believed to be roughly 267 million years ago in small marine crustaceans known for a mucus-filled synchronized mating dance called ostracods, until this new research turned back the clock. 

An octocoral evolutionary tree

In the study, the team looked back into the evolutionary history of octocorals to search for clues to when it first appeared in animals. Octocorals are an ancient and frequently bioluminescent group of living animals that includes sea fans, sea pens, and soft corals. Just like hard corals, octocorals are tiny colonial polyps that build up a reef structure, but they are primarily soft bodied and not stony. The octocorals that glow generally light up when they are bumped or otherwise disturbed. According to the team, this makes the precise function of their ability to produce light a bit of a puzzle  

[Related: These newly discovered bioluminescent sea worms are named after Japanese folklore.]

“We wanted to figure out the timing of the origin of bioluminescence, and octocorals are one of the oldest groups of animals on the planet known to bioluminesce,” study co-author and  Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History postdoctoral scholar Danielle DeLeo said in a statement. “So, the question was when did they develop this ability?”

They turned to a detailed evolutionary tree of octocorals that was built in 2022. This map of evolutionary relationships–or phylogeny–used the genetic data from 185 different species of octocorals. The team then placed two octocoral fossils of known ages within the tree based on  their physical features. They were able to use the fossils’ ages and their respective positions in the evolutionary tree to determine roughly when octocoral lineages split apart to become two or more branches. The team ultimately mapped out the evolutionary relationships that featured all of the known bioluminescent species alive today.

With this evolutionary tree and branches that contained bioluminescent species labeled, the team used a statistical technique called ancestral state reconstruction to analyze the relationships between the species.

“If we know these species of octocorals living today are bioluminescent, we can use statistics to infer whether their ancestors were highly probable to be bioluminescent or not,” said Quattrini. “The more living species with the shared trait, the higher the probability that as you move back in time that those ancestors likely had that trait as well.”

Multiple different statistical methods all reached the same result. About 540 million years ago, the common ancestor of all octocorals was very likely bioluminescent. This is about 273 million years earlier than in the ostracod crustaceans that were previously considered the earliest evolutionary example of bioluminescence in animals.

According to the team, the octocorals’ thousands of living species and relatively high incidence of bioluminescence suggests that glowing played a role in the group’s evolutionary success. While this does not exactly answer what octocorals are using bioluminescence for, the fact that it has been retailed for so long shows how important this form of communication has become for their survival. 

Conservation implications

Now that the team knows that the common ancestor of all octocorals likely could already produce its own inner glow, they are interested in conducting a more thorough count of which of the group’s more than 3,000 known living species are still bioluminescent and which have lost the trait over time. This may have them pinpoint a set of ecological circumstances that correlate with bioluminesce and potentially shed some light on its function. 

The team is also working on creating a genetic test to determine if an octocoral species has functional copies of the genes for luciferase–an enzyme involved in bioluminescence. Future studies could even show that bioluminescence is even more ancient and embedded in coral’s evolutionary history. 

[Related: Surprise! These sea cucumbers glow.]

The study also points to evolutionary insight that could help monitor and manage octocorals in today’s oceans. They are currently threatened by mineral mining, fishing, oil and gas extraction and spills, and human-made climate change. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently confirmed that the planet is currently experiencing the fourth global coral bleaching event on record and the second in the last 10 years due to heat stress from increasingly warming oceans. Octocorals can bleach the way that hard corals can under extreme temperatures. Understanding more about how they use bioluminescence could help scientists better identify their habitats and monitor their behaviors. Better knowledge of their genetics and what they need to survive can also inform better conservation policies for these marine organisms. 

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For the first time since November 2023, NASA is receiving meaningful communication from its Voyager 1 probe. The agency has spent months troubleshooting a glitch in why the famed probe was sending home messages that looked like garbled up gibberish and not scientific data. The probe is now coherent, but according to NASA, the next step is to enable Voyager 1 to begin to return usable science information again. 

[Related: Voyager 1 is sending back bad data, but NASA is on it.]

Alongside its twin Voyager 2, these probes are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space–or the region between stars beyond the influence of the sun. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes launched in 1977. Their mission initially included detailed observations of Jupiter and Saturn, but it continued on exploring the outer reaches of the solar system. Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space in 2012. Voyager 2 followed Voyager 1 into interstellar space in 2018. 

On November 14, 2023, Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth for the first time. Mission controllers could tell that the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally, so they were not sure why it was sending back such incoherent information. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) confirmed that the issue was related to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS packages science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth so that NASA can use it.

The team pinpointed the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. The glitch was only on one single chip representing around 3 percent of the FDS memory, according to Space. They were unable to repair the chip. On April 18, JPL engineers migrated the code to other portions of the FDS memory. This required splitting the code up into several sections to store them at multiple locations in the FDS. The code was adjusted to work from multiple locations as one cohesive process and references to its new directories were updated. 

“When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft,” NASA wrote in an update on April 22.

[Related: When Voyager 1 goes dark, what comes next?]

As of now, the usable data returned so far relates to how the spacecraft’s engineering systems are working. The team plans more software repair work in the next several weeks so that Voyager 1 can send valuable science data about the outer reaches of the solar system that is readable once again. As of now, Voyager 2 is still operating normally.

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What happens if you design a spacecraft to survive reentry, but launch without a green light from regulators to bring it back down? As we saw with Varda Space Industries, which fired a capsule into orbit last spring to make stuff in zero gravity, you might have to park in orbit until your Federal Aviation Administration paperwork is complete.

In a new April 17 notice effective immediately, the FAA seems to be indicating that it’s looking to avoid repeats of the Varda saga, which successfully landed its capsule in Utah back in February after a roughly seven-month delay. The company aimed to grow Ritonavir crystals in space, taking advantage of the environment to potentially improve the efficacy of the HIV antiviral drug.

Varda Space Industries’ spacecraft, W-1, successfully landed at the Utah Test and Training Range on February 21, 2024. This marks the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on United States soil. Credit: Varda Space Industries.

Without citing the incident directly, the agency said that it won’t allow “reentry vehicles” to launch without a license to return. In other words, if a company plans to bring its vehicle back, it can’t send one into space in the first place unless the FAA has preemptively deemed its reentry plans safe. The agency said it analyzes the impact vehicles may have on public health, property, and national security before issuing reentry licenses.

Without pre-approval, the FAA argues critical systems could fail or the vehicle might run out of propellant or power, before regulators and reentry operators get all their ducks in a row.  The agency says it reviews numerous details that are self-disclosed by reentry operators, including the payload’s weight, the amount of hazardous materials present, the “explosive potential of payload materials” and the planned reentry site.

Varda emphasized earlier this month that it received launch approval last year and complied with all regulatory requirements to do so. In a statement to SpaceNews, FAA associate administrator Kelvin Coleman said the agency learned “some lessons” when it approved the company to launch without a reentry license.  

As spaceflight evolves, returnable vehicles require special attention to mitigate collisions with people and property on the ground, the FAA said in its notice. “Unlike typical payloads designed to operate in outer space, a reentry vehicle has primary components that are designed to withstand reentry substantially intact and therefore have a near-guaranteed ground impact,” the FAA wrote. 

[ Related: Yes, a chunk of the space station crashed into a house in Florida ]

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Letters written by famous British mountaineer and Mount Everest explorer George Mallory are now digitized and freely available to the public for the first time. The University of Cambridge’s Magdalene College has digitized its collection of the mountaineer’s correspondence. The letters can be downloaded here in honor of the upcoming 100th anniversary of Mallory’s final attempt to climb Mount Everest. 

Mallory is best known for replying with “because it’s there” when asked why he wanted to risk death and climb Mount Everest. He took part in a reconnaissance expedition to produce the first European maps of the mountain in 1921. His first serious attempt at climbing the mountain was in 1922, with two subsequent attempts at climbing the mountain following. Most of the correspondence is between Mallory and his wife Ruth and was housed at his alma mater Magdalene College following his death on Mount Everest in 1924. 

In his final letter to his wife Ruth before his doomed last attempt to climb the mountain, George wrote: “Darling I wish you the best I can–that your anxiety will be at an end before you get this–with the best news. Which will also be the quickest. It is 50 to 1 against us but we’ll have a whack yet & do ourselves proud. Great love to you. Ever your loving, George.”

Who was George Mallory?

George Mallory (1886-1924) was one of the leading members of the early European teams to explore Mount Everest. At 29,032 feet, Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world. It rises from the Great Himalayas of southern Asia on the border of Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It was previously referred to as Peak XV and was renamed for British explorer Sir George Everest in 1865.

[Related: The increase in Everest deaths may have nothing to do with crowds or waiting.]

In May 1924, Raymond J. Brown from Popular Science magazine chronicled Mallory’s upcoming expedition which would be his last. Brown wondered, “Nature controls the situation through the physical capacities with which she has invested in man. Can a man at a height of 27,000 feet develop the energy to walk or drag himself higher?”

On June 6, 1924, Mallory and a newer climber named Andrew Irvine began an attempt to reach the summit. The last time the pair was spotted alive was June 8, and the debate as to whether or not Mallory reached the summit continues to this day, as he could have reached the summit and died on the way down. 

During the 1930’s, Irvine’s ax was discovered at roughly 27,700 feet. In 1975, a Chinese climber named Wang Hongbao found a body. He said that the body was an old “English dead” due to the vintage clothes. At the time, no other English climber was known to have died at that elevation on the mountain, so it was presumed that the body could be George Mallory or Andrew Irvine. In addition, an oxygen canister from the 1920s was later unearthed in 1991. 

With these clues in tow, an expedition set out in 1999 to search for both Mallory and Irvine. The team found Mallory’s body at 26,760 feet and it’s believed that he died after a bad fall. Irvine’s remains have never been found. 

What is in this collection of letters?

Most of the letters in this collection are corespondence between Mallory and his wife Ruth. They date from the time of their engagement in 1914 until his death. The last letter that he wrote and sent in May 1924 before his final Everest attempt is in the collection. 

In addition, three letters that were retrieved from his body in 1999 are included in this new collection. The letters survived 75 years in his jacket pocket before his body was discovered and are included in the collection with his other letters.

The collection covers several topics including his first mission to Everest in 1921 to see if it was even possible to get to the base of the mountain. It also includes an account of his second mission that ended in disaster when eight Sherpas were swept off the mountain and killed in an avalanche. In the letters, Mallory often blamed himself for the tragedy. 

Mallory also details his service in World War I in the letters, including a detailed account of the deadly Battle of the Somme in 1916. Mallory’s letters even detail a visit to the United States during Prohibition in 1922. He describes visiting speakeasies, asking to be served milk, and getting whiskey through a secret hatch.

[Related: The rocky history of a missing 26,000-foot Himalayan peak.]

According to the team from Magdalene College, the letters from his wife Ruth are a major source of women’s social history, as they detail a wide variety of topics about her life as a woman living through World War I.

In the only surviving letter from the Everest period in the archive, Ruth wrote: “I am keeping quite cheerful and happy but I do miss you a lot. I think I want your companionship even more than I used to. I know I have rather often been cross and not nice and I am very sorry but the bottom reason has nearly always been because I was unhappy at getting so little of you. I know it is pretty stupid to spoil the times I do have you for those when I don’t.”

“It has been a real pleasure to work with these letters,” archivist Katy Green said in a statement. “Whether it’s George’s wife Ruth writing about how she was posting him plum cakes and a grapefruit to the trenches (he said the grapefruit wasn’t ripe enough), or whether it’s his poignant last letter where he says the chances of scaling Everest are ‘50 to1 against us,’ they offer a fascinating insight into the life of this famous Magdalene alumnus.”

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Lampreys look like something out of a horror movie, with their sucky mouths chock full of teeth, eel-like bodies, and parasitic behaviors. These “water vampires” represent a bit of an evolutionary fork in the road between vertebrates and invertebrates, and the scientific debate about just how closely related we are to these carnivorous fish has taken yet another turn. 

Scientists found some evidence that lampreys have a rudimentary sympathetic nervous system–which is believed to control the fight-or-flight reaction in vertebrates. The findings are detailed in a study published April 17 in the journal Nature and could prompt a rethink of the origins of the sympathetic nervous system.

Lampreys are the closest living organisms scientists have to studying the fish ancestors that vertebrates evolved from some 550 million years ago. They belong to an ancient vertebrate lineage called Agnatha–or jawless fish. Some scientists believe that they represent the earliest group of vertebrates that is still living and can give us an evolutionary window into all vertebrate ancestors. Other scientists question the theories due to a lack of lamprey evidence in the fossil record. 

[Related: Giant prehistoric lamprey likely sucked blood—and ate flesh.]

Scientists previously believed that lampreys did not have sympathetic neurons. These neurons are part of the sympathetic nervous system, a system of nerves that target the internal organs throughout the body including the gut, pancreas, and heart. The system works together to respond to dangerous or stressful situations. It also helps an organism’s body maintain homeostasis, making sure that the heart keeps pumping, the digestive system keeps moving, and more. 

In this new study, a team used lampreys to look at how developmental changes may have promoted the evolution of vertebrate traits like fight-or-flight. They found evidence of the types of stem cells that eventually form sympathetic neurons. The presence of these cells in lampreys could revise the timeline of when the sympathetic nervous system began to evolve. 

“Over a hundred years of literature has suggested that lamprey lack a sympathetic nervous system,” study co-author and California Institute of Technology biologist Marianne Bronner said in a statement. “Surprisingly, we found that sympathetic neurons do, in fact, exist in lamprey but arise at a much later time in lamprey development than expected.”

Bronner and her team studied neural crest cells. These are a kind of stem cells that are specific to vertebrates and give rise to the multiple cell types found throughout the body. Scientists previously believed that lampreys lacked the neural crest-derived precursors, or progenitors, that ultimately build the sympathetic nervous system.

According to Bronner, researchers previously looked for evidence of a sympathetic nervous system too early in lamprey development compared to other animals. For example, the sympathetic nervous system forms in the first two to three days of development in birds. 

[Related: You might have more in common with the sea lamprey than you realize.]

Study co-author and Cal Tech evolutionary biologist Brittany Edens looked at the neural crest–derived progenitor cells in lampreys that ultimately give rise to sympathetic neurons. She found that in lampreys, the neural crest–derived progenitors appear much later than other animals. They can appear as long as one month after fertilization. The cells also do not fully mature into neurons until about four months of development, during the fish’s larval stage.

It is still not known whether the sympathetic nervous system of lampreys controls fight-or-flight-like behaviors similar to other vertebrates. According to the team, these findings suggest that the developmental program that controls the formation of sympathetic neurons remains across all vertebrates, from lamprey to mammals. 

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NASA’s Juno mission scientists have used complex data collected during two flybys of Jupiter’s third largest moon Io to create animations that highlight this moon’s most dramatic features. Io is a little bit larger than the planet Earth and is also home to a mountain with a smooth lake of lava. Lava lakes like Io’s Loki Patera have a cooling surface crust that slowly thickens until it becomes denser than the underlying magma. It then sinks and pulls in the nearby crust. 

First launched in 2011, Juno arrived at our solar system’s largest planet in 2016 with a mission to explore the Jovian system. It has 95 known moons and its four largest–Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto–are called the Galilean moons. Io is most volcanically active.

This animation is an artist’s concept of Loki Patera, a lava lake on Jupiter’s moon Io, made using data from the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft. With multiple islands in its interior, Loki is a depression filled with magma and rimmed with molten lava. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS.

“Io is simply littered with volcanoes, and we caught a few of them in action,” Juno’s principal investigator Scott Bolton said in a statement. “We also got some great close-ups and other data on a 200-kilometer-long [127-mile-long] lava lake called Loki Patera. There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”

The observations were announced April 16 during the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria.

[Related: See the most volcanic world in our solar system in new NASA images.]

Juno conducted very close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, getting within 930 miles of the surface. The spacecraft obtained first close-up images of Io’s northern latitudes. Maps created with data collected by Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument show that Io has a surface that is more smooth compared to Jupiter’s other Galilean moons, but also has poles that are colder than their middle latitudes.

Created using data collected by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno during flybys in December 2023 and February 2024, this animation is an artist’s concept of a feature on the Jovian moon Io that the mission science team nicknamed “Steeple Mountain.” CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Mountains and polar cyclones

With every pass, Juno flies closer to the north pole of Jupiter. Changing the spacecraft’s orientation allows the MWR instrument to improve its resolution of Jupiter’s northern polar cyclones. These storms at the top of the gas giant can reach wind speeds of 220 miles per hour and the data collected by Juno reveals that not all polar cyclones are created equal.

“Perhaps [the] most striking example of this disparity can be found with the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole,” Steve Levin, Juno’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. “It is clearly visible in both infrared and visible light images, but its microwave signature is nowhere near as strong as other nearby storms. This tells us that its subsurface structure must be very different from these other cyclones. The MWR team continues to collect more and better microwave data with every orbit, so we anticipate developing a more detailed 3D map of these intriguing polar storms.”

Just how much water is on Jupiter? An enduring mystery

One of Juno’s primary science goals is to collect data that will help astronomers better understand Jupiter’s water abundance. However, the team isn’t looking for liquid water. Instead, they are studying Jupiterl’s atmosphere to quantify the presence of the molecules that make up water–oxygen and hydrogen. According to NASA, an accurate estimate of oxygen and hydrogen molecules present in Jupiter’s atmosphere is crucial to unlocking some of the underlying mysteries of how our solar system formed.  

Jupiter was likely the first planet to form roughly 4.5 billion years ago. It also contains most of the gas and dust that wasn’t incorporated into the sun when the solar system formed. Water abundance also has important implications for Jupiter’s meteorology and internal structure.

[Related: Juno finally got close enough to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot to measure its depth.]

In 1995, NASA’s Galileo probe provided early data on the amount of water on Jupiter, but the data created more questions than answers. It showed that the gas giant’s atmosphere was unexpectedly hot and actually deprived of water—contrary to what computer models had initially indicated.

“The probe did amazing science, but its data was so far afield from our models of Jupiter’s water abundance that we considered whether the location it sampled could be an outlier. But before Juno, we couldn’t confirm,” said Bolton. “Now, with recent results made with MWR data, we have nailed down that the water abundance near Jupiter’s equator is roughly three to four times the solar abundance when compared to hydrogen. This definitively demonstrates that the Galileo probe’s entry site was an anomalously dry, desert-like region.”

[Related: Jupiter’s icy ocean worlds could be cool travel destinations in the future.]

The new results support the idea that sometime during the formation of our solar-system, water-ice material may have been the source of heavy element enrichment. These are chemical elements that are heavier than hydrogen and helium that Jupiter accumulated. The planet’s formation remains puzzling, because Juno’s results on the core of the gas giant suggest that there is very low water abundance. How abundant H₂0 is on the gas giant remains a mystery that the Juno mission could potentially solve.  

What’s next for Juno

Data during the reminder of Juno’s mission could help determine how much water is on Jupiter in two ways. It could enable scientists to compare Jupiter’s water abundance near the polar regions to the equatorial region. It also may shed additional light on the structure of the planet’s dilute liquid core. 

Juno’s most recent flyby of Io was on April 9 and the spacecraft came within about 10,250 miles of the moon’s surface. Its 61st flyby of Jupiter is scheduled for May 12 and it will continue to explore the planet and its moons through September 2025. 

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Evolution is quite a wondrous and lengthy process, with some random bursts of activity that are responsible for the diversity of life on our planet today. These can happen on large scales like with the evolution of more efficient limbs. They also occur at microscopic cellular level, such as when different parts of the cell were first formed. 

Now, a team of scientists have detected a sign of a major life event that has likely not occurred for at least one billion years. They’ve observed primary endosymbiosis–two lifeforms merging into one organism. This incredibly rare event occurred between a type of abundant marine algae and a bacterium was observed in a lab setting. For perspective, plants first began to dot our planet the last time this happened. The results are described in two papers recently published in the journals Cell and Science. 

Where the ‘powerhouse of the cell’ and chloroplasts come from

Primary endosymbiosis happens when one microbial organism engulfs another. It then begins to use the swallowed organisms as an internal organ. The host provides the organism–now called an endosymbiont–several benefits including nutrients, energy, and protection. When it can no longer survive on its own, the engulfed endosymbiont becomes an organ for the host called an organelle.

“It’s very rare that organelles arise from these types of things,” Tyler Coale, a co-author of the Cell study and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz said in a statement. “The first time we think it happened, it gave rise to all complex life.”

Endosymbiosis where the host life form becomes fundamental to another organism’s function has only happened three known times. All of these instances were a major breakthroughs for evolution, since merging with their hosts became fundamental for the endosymbionts very existence.

The first event was roughly 2.2 billion years ago. This is when a single-celled organism called archaea swallowed up a bacterium that eventually became the mitochondria. This specialized organelle is what every biology student learns is the “powerhouse of the cell” and its formation allowed for complex organisms to evolve. 

“Everything more complicated than a bacterial cell owes its existence to that event,” said Coale. “A billion years ago or so, it happened again with the chloroplast, and that gave us plants,” Coale said.

This second event occurred when more advanced cells absorbed cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria can harvest energy from sunlight and they eventually become organelles called chloroplasts that can harvest energy from sunlight. The chloroplasts gave us another core principle of biology–green plants that can make food from the sun. 

With this latest endosymbiosis event, it’s possible that the algae is converting nitrogen from the atmosphere into ammonia that it can use for other cellular processes. However, it needs the help of a bacterium.

A new organelle?

In the paper published in Cell, a team of scientists show that this process is occurring yet again. They looked at a species of algae called Braarudosphaera bigelowii. The algae engulfed a cyanobacterium gives it a bit of a plant superpower. It can “fix” nitrogen straight from the air and combine it with other elements to form more useful compounds. This is something that plants normally can’t do.  

Nitrogen is a very important nutrient for life to exist and plants normally get it through mutual relationships with the bacteria that remain separate from the plant or algae. The team first thought that the B. bigelowii algae had this kind of symbiotic relationship with a bacterium called UCYN-A. The relationship had actually gotten much more close and serious.  

[Related: You have no idea how much you need these bacteria.]

They found that the size ratio between the algae and UCYN-A bacterium remains similar across different species related to the B. bigelowii algae. The growth appears to be controlled by an exchange of key nutrients, linking up their metabolisms. This synchronization of growth rates led the researchers to call UCYN-A organelle-like.

“That’s exactly what happens with organelles,” study co-author and UC Santa Cruz microbial oceanographer Jonathan Zehr said in a statement. “If you look at the mitochondria and the chloroplast, it’s the same thing: they scale with the cell.”

Introducing the nitroplast

To look for more lines of evidence that this bactrium is an organelle, they needed to take a deeper look inside. The study published in the journal Science used advanced X-ray imaging to get a look at the interior of the living B. bigelowii algae cells. It revealed that the replication and cell division was synchronized between both the host algae and the UCYN-A bacterium. It provided even more evidence of this organism merging process of primary endosymbiosis at work.

“Until this paper, there was still a question of is this still an ‘endosymbiont’, or has it become a true organelle?” Carolyn Larabell, a study co-author and faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area and Director of the National Center for X-Ray Tomography, said in a statement. “We showed with X-ray imaging that the process of replication and division of the algal host and endosymbiont is synchronized, which provided the first strong evidence.”

They also compared the proteins of isolated UCYN-A bacteria to the proteins inside of the algae  cells. The team found that the isolated bacterium can only make roughly half of the proteins it needs. It needs its algal host to provide it with the rest of the proteins necessary for living. 

“That’s one of the hallmarks of something moving from an endosymbiont to an organelle,” said Zehr. “They start throwing away pieces of DNA, and their genomes get smaller and smaller, and they start depending on the mother cell for those gene products–or the protein itself–to be transported into the cell.”

The team believes that this indicates that UCYN-A can be considered a full organelle. They gave it the name “nitroplast,” and it potentially began to evolve around 100 million years ago. While that sounds long to our human sense of time, it’s a mere millisecond in evolutionary time when compared with mitochondria and chloroplasts.

Plenty of other questions about UCYN-A and its algal host remain unanswered and the team also plans to figure out UCYN-A and the alga operate and study different strains. Further study of nitroplasts could also determine if they are present in other cells and what their benefits may be. For example, it could have wide applications in agriculture.

“This system is a new perspective on nitrogen fixation, and it might provide clues into how such an organelle could be engineered into crop plants,” said Coale.

According to Zehr, scientists will likely find other organisms that have similar evolutionary stories as UCYN-A, but this discovery is “one for the textbooks.”

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Another day in science, another massive, ancient snake discovery. Paleontologists in India have unearthed fossilized vertebrae from a snake that slithered around the sub-continent about 47 million years ago and may have grown as long as nearly 50 feet. The newly discovered, extinct species is named Vasuki inidicus, after the mythical serpent coiled around the neck of the Hindu god Shiva, and is described for the first time in a study published April 18 in the journal Scientific Reports. 

“Vasuki is an important piece of an ancient puzzle. It contributes to our understanding of this extinct group, and also to our understanding of large, apex, top-of-the-foodchain snakes in general,” says John Jacisin III, a paleontologist at the University of Texas at Austin who researches reptiles but was uninvolved in the new study. Beyond reptiles, the fossil find carries broader clues to India’s climate tens of millions of years ago. “It’s also just a cool snake because it was so big,” he says, comparing its length to longer than that of a yellow school bus. 

Sunil Bajpai, co-author of the study and a vertebrate paleontologist at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, first discovered the fossilized snake remains in 2005 at a coal mine in western India. Over the course of a slow and careful excavation, 27 vertebrates–all likely to be from the same individual–were uncovered. By analyzing the size ratios of various parts of the vertebrae and the fossils unique shapes and protrusions, Bajpai and his co-researcher established the remains were that of a new species in the extinct family of Madtsoiidae, which were primitive snakes similar to boas and pythons. 

The fist-sized fossils are second only in girth and width to those of Tintanoboa, another giant snake estimated to have lived about 58 million years ago in what is now present-day Colombia. Based on the age of the rock the newly described vertebrae were found in, the researchers date Vasuki to about 47 million years ago, just a few million years after the Indian tectonic plate began colliding with Eurasia. According to the new study, the timing supports the idea that Madtsoiids originated in India, and later moved to North Africa and southern Eurasia, where other, later fossil specimens have been found. 

It’s a challenge to accurately deduce total species body size from a single individual’s incomplete skeleton. But using model equations incorporating data on current, living snakes and the known fossil record, Bajpai and his colleague, Debajit Datta–another vertebrate paleontologist at the same institution, estimate that V. indicus was somewhere between about 36 and and 49.9 feet (10.9 and 15.2 meters) long. The only known snake of comparable size was Titanoboa, currently the record-holder for the largest snake to have ever lived. Titanoboa clocked in at an estimated 35 to 50 feet long, with the mean estimate around 42 feet in length. The relative vertebrate sizes indicate that Titanoboa was a heavier, thicker-bodied snake than V. indicus, yet it’s impossible to know exactly which snake species would’ve won the measuring contest. 

“Based on the data at hand Vasuki was only slightly smaller in length than Titanoboa,” Bajpai and Datta write in a joint email to PopSci. “However, we cannot entirely rule out the possibility of Vasuki being slightly larger than Titanoboa, because the fossil vertebrae in our collection may not have come from the largest individual of Vasuki. The same, however, can also be said for Titanoboa. Since neither of these snakes are known from complete skeletons, we cannot say with certainty whether one was longer or wider than the other.”

Exact size estimates are liable to change as more fossils are found and more analysis is done. “Everything shrinks when the tape measure comes out,” says Alexandra Howard, a paleobiologist and herpetologist at Texas A&M University who was not involved in the new research. “It’s a running joke [in paleontology], everyone always finds the biggest thing,” she adds–and with more discovery and scrutiny the biggest size estimates tend to scale down. Nonetheless, Howard says the new discovery includes some very well-preserved fossils and is an interesting addition to our knowledge of ancient reptiles. “The past was full of giant snakes. That’s really cool,” she says.

And, either way, second place in size isn’t so bad, especially when you’re separated from your closest competitor by about 10 million years. Vasuki was probably a slow-slithering ambush predator that constricted its prey like a python, according to Bajpai and Datta. Based on morphology and the location it was found in, the researchers believe the monstrous snake was either terrestrial or semi-aquatic–living in marsh or coastal swamp. It was found in rock that also contains fossils of rays, sharks, bony fish, turtles, crocodiles, and primitive whales, Bajpai and Datta note–though what it ate is unclear. 

Beyond its massive size, the new paleontological discovery is notable for what it can tell us about our planet 47-50 million years ago. “It’s an important discovery because it shows us another example of extreme gigantism in snakes… and because you can use snakes as a thermometer to reconstruct climates of the past,” says Jason Head, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Cambridge in England who was one of the primary researchers involved in discovering Titanoboa. 

We know from geological and paleontological research that the time period, part of the Eocene Epoch, was warm, but Vasuki offers another data point indicating exactly what the climate may have been like where it was found. Snakes are ectotherms (commonly known as “cold-blooded”), so their body temperature and size is closely linked with the ambient temperature. The larger a snake is, the slower its metabolic rate, and so the warmer the climate must be for it to survive, Head explains. Estimates from modeling equations indicate that Vasuki’s habitat averaged around 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 degrees Fahrenheit), which is slightly warmer than the average annual temperature in the same region today. 

The ancient climate data can aid in understanding the present and where we’re headed under current climate change, says Head. “Those are the hottest latitudes and the hottest intervals, that’s going to tell us a lot about what those places might be like in the future.”

As paleontologists continue to dig into the past, predictions of the future may become clearer. And also, massive, ancient snakes are liable to keep appearing. “We understand so little about the past diversity of life on Earth,” Head notes. “I think there are probably more giant snakes to come.”

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We’ve all seen beautiful images of outer space, with vivid swirls and bright stars resting on a black abyss. With how quick it is to snap a color photo on an iPhone, you might think that sophisticated space telescopes churn out color photos automatically, too. 

However, all digital cameras—from your phone to the James Webb Space Telescope—can’t actually see in color. Digital cameras record images as a bunch of ones and zeros, counting the amount of light hitting their sensors. Each pixel has a colored filter over it (either red, green, or blue), which only allows specific wavelengths of light to go through. The filters are arranged in a specific pattern (typically a four-pixel repeating square known as the Bayer pattern), which allows the camera’s computing hardware to combine the captured data into a full-colored image. Some digital cameras spread the colored filters out across three individual sensors, the data from which can similarly combine into a full-color image. Telescope cameras, however, have to take images with one filter at a time, such that they have to be combined by experts later into a composite image.

In our smartphones, the combination of layers happens incredibly fast—but telescopes are complicated scientific behemoths, and it takes a bit more effort to get the stunning results we know and love. Plus, when we’re looking at the cosmos, astronomers use wavelengths of light that our eyes can’t even see (e.g. infrared and X-rays), so those also need to be represented with colors in the rainbow. There are lots of decisions to be made about how to colorize space images, which begs the question: who is making these images, and how do they make them?

For the spectacular results we’ve been seeing from JWST, processing scientific data into beautiful color images is actually a full-time job. Science visualization specialists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore stack images together and stitch observations from different instruments on the telescope. They also remove artifacts, or things in the image that aren’t actually real, but instead just results of the telescope equipment and how digital data is processed. These could be streaks from stray cosmic rays, oversaturation of the brightest stars, or noise from the detector itself. 

Black and white to color

Before they even think about color, these specialists need to balance out the dark and light values in the image. Scientific cameras are meant to record a wide range of brightnesses beyond what our eyes can pick up on. This means that the raw images from telescopes often look very dark to our eyes, and you have to brighten up the image to see anything.

Once they have black and white images where the details are visible, they start adding color. “Different telescopes have filters that are made to be sensitive to only certain wavelengths of light, and the colorful space images we see are combinations of separate exposures taken in these different filters” similar to the earlier description of a phone camera, explains Katya Gozman, an astronomer at the University of Michigan. “We can assign each filter to a separate color channel—red, green or blue, the primary colors of visible light. When stacked on top of each other, we get the spectacular textbook color image that we’re used to seeing in the media,” she adds.

The end result, of course, also depends on what kind of data the image specialists have to work with in the first place. The team often chooses different colors to highlight the fact that NIRCam and MIRI—two of Webb’s infrared cameras—are looking at different wavelengths (near-infrared and mid-infrared, respectively), and therefore different physical structures. For example, in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, JWST’s observations revealed a bubble of something emitting a specific wavelength of light, colored as green in the MIRI image and resultantly known as the “Green Monster.” Without this visualization, astronomers may not have noticed such a curious feature that provides insight into how giant stars die—and after some investigation, they figured out the Green Monster is a region of debris disturbed by the huge blast from the supernova explosion.

Invisible to visible

Generally, image specialists try to keep things as close to reality as possible. For example, if a telescope is observing in visible light, wavelengths can directly map to colors we’re used to seeing. But for those parts of the spectrum invisible to our eyes, they have to make choices about which visible colors to use. This is where it becomes a bit of an art, choosing colors based on not only scientific accuracy, but also what looks best. For JWST and Hubble, the usual routine is to use blue for the shortest wavelengths, green for in between, and red for the longest wavelengths. If there are more than three different filters to choose from (as is often the case with JWST, especially when using more than one of its high tech instruments), sometimes they’ll add in purple, teal, and orange for other wavelengths in between the red, green, and blue.

Color images are far more than a pretty picture, though—they’re actually quite useful for science. The human brain is excellent at picking up patterns in color, such as parsing a map with color-coded subway lines or recognizing that “a red light is stop, green is go,” says Mark Popinchalk, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History. “These are daily examples where societal information is presented and processed quickly through color. Scientists want to use the same tool,” he adds. “But instead of societal information, it’s scientific. If X-rays are red, and ultraviolet is blue, we can very quickly interpret energetic light beyond what humans are capable of.” The result is a visual representation of an intense amount of data–much more than can be processed with the naked eye, or in black and white alone. 

For example, Gozman describes how images have helped recognize “where different physical processes are happening in an object, such as seeing where star formation is happening in a galaxy or where different elements are located around a nebula.” Color images with light beyond the visible spectrum have even revealed dark matter around galaxies, such as in the bullet cluster.

[ Related: This is what Uranus and Neptune may really look like ]

Another particularly recent and interesting example of image coloration is the case of Neptune. The dark blue photo of the icy world from the Voyager mission doesn’t actually reflect its true color, as if we were looking at it with our own eyes—instead, it’s more similar to the pale face of Uranus. “Back in the 80s, astronomers actually stretched and modified the images of Neptune to bring out more contrast in some of its fainter features, leading it to have that deep blue hue which made it look very different compared to Uranus,” explains Gozman. “Though astronomers were aware of this, the public was not. This is one good example of how reprocessing the same data in different ways can lead to completely different representations.”

Image analysis is, and always has been, a huge part of astronomy, finding ways to see the cosmos beyond the limitations of our very limited human eyes. You can even try your own hand at it—JWST data is available to the public from NASA, and they even run an astrophotography challenge open to anyone. Now, when you see a beautiful image of space, perhaps you can think of it as a wonderful melding of science and art.

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In the new IMAX film Deep Sky, a protostar shines from the center of a dark cloud, the phantom galaxy swirls, and the dusty space clouds of the Cosmic Cliffs of Carina tower like mountain peaks. Also, scientists cry. The film centers on the James Webb Space Telescope’s visual legacy and the people behind it. At one point, NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn gets to the heart of why seeing the Cosmic Cliffs of Carina is such an emotional journey. “This has always been there. It’s always been out there, but we’re just now able to see it. We now have this new telescope that’s opened up our eyes to let us see something we haven’t seen before.”

While not quite as challenging as building a space telescope, making Deep Sky posed a novel challenge to the filmmakers, Nathaniel Kahn noted: “…Every time we’d start to get close to finishing, NASA would release a new amazing image, and we’d have to find a way to work that in!” As the film’s writer, director, and producer, Kahn and team were finishing the project in September of 2023, combining digital cinematography by NASA, ESA, and commercial satellite launch company Arianespace with animations and graphics created specifically for IMAX. If you want to see the stereotypes of the stoic scientists challenged and bask in the glory of space, you can catch the IMAX experience starting Friday, April 19. 

The drive to uncover the secrets of the cosmos propels this new telling of JWST’s unfolding story. Here’s what it took to get there.

‘It was waving goodbye’

In the almost two years since those first images were beamed back to planet Earth, it’s easy for casual observers to forget how improbable it was. JWST was initially supposed to launch in 2011 and congress even tried to cancel it that same year over budget concerns. It ultimately took 10,000 people from 14 countries, $10 billion, and 20 years to complete.

[Related: JWST images show off the swirling arms of 19 spiral galaxies.]

“I’ve worked on JWST for 15 years and I’m sort of one of the younger ones working on this telescope,” Straughn tells PopSci. “We faced a lot of challenges along the way and it was an audacious mission. We had to build this enormous telescope that had to be cold and that had to unfold in space. When you describe it, it sounds impossible.”

Multiple technologies needed to be invented to get this game-changer off the ground, including a critical sunshield. Since JWST primarily observes infrared light from faint and very far away objects. It must be kept extremely cold, at about -370 degrees Fahrenheit, to detect these faint signals of heat. The team constructed a five-layer sunshield about the size of a tennis court that protects it from other heat sources like the Earth, sun, and various moons. In the documentary, Amy Lo, the Deputy Director for Vehicle Engineering on JWST for Northrop Grumman, described it as being “SPF one million,” in order to keep it so cold and protected. She noted that there was no “second shot of doing this.”

During its launch on Christmas Day 2021, JWST completed over 40 crucial deployments of its various instruments and overcame 344 “single point failures.” If any one of those single points had failed, the entire mission would have ended.

The mission overcame all 344 single point failures and even got an added surprise. About 45 seconds into the launch, they caught the telescope’s power source called the solar array open up. This proved JWST officially had power and the deployment was not something the team planned to be able to see with their own eyes during the launch. Through tears, NASA JWST Program Scientist Eric Smith said, “It was waving goodbye,” in the documentary. 

Back to the big bang

By several accounts, JWST is performing better than expected. It’s standing up against the micrometeoroids–tiny pieces of space dust that can build up on the telescope’s mirrors. The team had a good idea of how frequently the dust would hit the mirrors, but the size of the impacts was more surprising.

[Related: Why a 3,000-mile-long jet stream on Jupiter surprised NASA scientists.]

“What we’ve been able to do to help mitigate this is essentially change the way we’re operating so that as the telescope is facing away from the direction that the micrometeoroids are coming from when we think we could have higher impacts,” Straughn tells PopSci. 

It has also proven to be more stable and more efficient overall. According to Straughn, JWST has delivered more data in even less time than the team anticipated, revealing some of the most distant galaxies in the universe. These are galaxies that were born just after the big bang about 13.8 billion years ago. JWST has revealed that many are brighter, bigger, and more numerous than astrophysicists previously thought and their black holes are also growing incredibly fast. 

“There’s an overarching new mystery that’s arisen of why galaxies are growing so big,” says Straughn. “When we find something that we don’t expect, that’s a new problem to solve that will help increase our knowledge about how the universe works.”

Towards the future

JWST built on the success of the Hubble Space Telescope and other observational projects are on our horizon. Scheduled to launch in 2027, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will explore exoplanets and dark matter. The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) is also in the early stages of development and will be specifically designed to discover life on other planets. 

[Related: In NASA’s new video game, you are a telescope hunting for dark matter.]

“I think that this telescope launch and these images came along at a perfect time to present a contrast to the bad things that are going on in the world,” says Straughn. “It really is an example of something that’s good, of what we humans can do when we put our hearts and our minds into something that’s for a bigger purpose.”

Deep Sky releases in IMAX theaters nationwide on Friday, April 19.

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Paleontologists already know that the extinct marine reptile ichthyosaurs were enormous. Some newly described jawbone fossils uncovered in England represent a new ichthyosaur species. The bones indicate that the ocean titan may have been over 82 feet long, and even pushed the possible limits of vertebrate size. The new find is detailed in a study published April 17 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

“This research has been ongoing for almost eight years. It is quite remarkable to think that gigantic, blue whale-sized ichthyosaurs were swimming in the oceans around what was the UK during the Triassic Period,” study co-author and University of Manchester paleontologist Dean Lomax said in a statement. “These jawbones provide tantalizing evidence that perhaps one day a complete skull or skeleton of one of these giants might be found. You never know.”

Meet the ichthyosaurs

Ichthyosaurs are an extinct group of reptiles that are distant relatives of today’s lizards and snakes. They had long fins and were potentially ambush predators like today’s great white sharks and wolves, feeding on fish and other marine dwellers. Ichthyosaurs also may have followed migration patterns that are similar to today’s whales. 

[Related: These ancient, swimming reptiles may have been the biggest animals of all time.]

They lived 228 to 112 million years ago and they were most abundant during the Triassic and Jurassic eras. There are over 100 known ichthyosaur species. Their remains have been found in parts of Asia, North America, and Europe. A fossil deposit in present day Nevada may have even been an ichthyosaur birthing ground. 

Solving a prehistoric jigsaw puzzle 

Over several years, a team from The University of Manchester has discovered and pieced together individual fragments of an ichthyosaur jawbone. A jawbone uncovered in 2016 at the Westbury Mudstone Formation in Somerset was similar to one collected from the same rock formation just a few miles away. The team believe that both of these jawbones belong to a previously undescribed species of ichthyosaur.

In 2020, a father and daughter from Devon named Justin and Ruby Reynolds found the first pieces of the second jawbone to be found in May 2020. Ruby was 11 years-old at the time and found the first chunk of giant bone before searching for more pieces. The family contacted Lomax and fossil collector and study co-author Paul de la Salle, who found the first jawbone in 2016. 

“I was amazed by the find. In 2018, my team studied and described Paul’s giant jawbone and we had hoped that one day another would come to light,” said Lomax. “This new specimen is more complete, better preserved, and shows that we now have two of these giant bones–called a surangular–that have a unique shape and structure. I became very excited, to say the least.”

Over time, several members of the Reynolds family, Paul, and Lomax’s research team visited the site to hunt for more pieces of this rare discovery. They found more pieces of the same jaw which happened to fit together perfectly.

[Related: Why kids make the best amateur fossil hunters.]

“It was so cool to discover part of this gigantic ichthyosaur. I am very proud to have played a part in a scientific discovery like this,” Ruby Reynolds said in a statement. Ruby and her father are both listed as co-authors of the new study. 

A new ichthyosaur species

The final piece of bone was recovered in October 2022. The research team found that the jaw bones belong to a new species of giant ichthyosaur they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, or “giant fish lizard of the Severn.” It was likely the size of the blue whale–today’s largest living organism. Comparing the two examples of the same bone with the same unique features from the same geologic time zone helps support the idea that it is a new species. 

The bones are about 202 million years old and date back to the end of the Triassic Period called the Rhaetian. During the Rhaetian, gigantic ichthyosaurs swam while dinosaurs walked on land. However, this was when ichthyosaurs’ time on Earth came to a close. They went extinct during the Late Triassic global mass extinction event some 200 million years ago and these bones represent the very last of their kind. Dinosaurs would not go on to live another 134 million years. 

While this new discovery is not the first giant ichthyosaur, these findings are unique among those known to science. These two bones appear about 13 million years after their latest geologic relatives. These include Shonisaurus sikanniensis from British Columbia, Canada, and Himalayasaurus tibetensis from Tibet, China. A closer examination of the bones’ internal structures also confirmed that the animal was likely still growing at its time of death.

“The anomalous periosteal growth of these bones hints at yet to be understood bone developmental strategies, now lost in the deep time, that likely allowed late Triassic ichthyosaurs to reach the known biological limits of vertebrates in terms of size,” Marcello Perillo, a study co-author and a paleobiology master’s student at the University of Bonn in Germany, said in a statement. “So much about these giants is still shrouded by mystery, but one fossil at a time we will be able to unravel their secret.”

The ichthyosaur bones will soon be on display at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.

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Robotic engineers are no stranger to turning to nature for inspiration. In recent years, birds, dogs, extinct sea creatures, and even humans themselves have all served as jumping off point for new mechanical designs. Now, researchers from Stanford are citing the Harvestman spider, better known as a daddy long-legs as inspiration for a new robot design they believe could be better equipped at navigating uneven rocky caverns and lava tubes. One day, they hope this spider-like design could even help robots navigate the icy caverns of the moon and Mars. 

How does the spider robot work?

The researchers introduced their new machine called the “ReachBot” in a paper published today in the journal Science Robotics. ReachBot features multiple extendable boom limbs which it can use to reach out for rocks and propel itself forward. Each limb comes attached with a three finger gripper that grabs onto the rocks and uses them as anchor points. The long-legged design means the robot’s limbs can potentially access the floor, ceiling, and walls of a lava tube or cave, which in turn provide increased leverage. This unique positioning, the researchers write, lets the ReachBot “assume a wide variety of possible configurations, bracing stances, and force application options.”

ReachBot attempts to fill in a form-factor gap among existing exploration robots. Small robots, the researchers argue, are useful for navigating through tight corridors but typically have limited reach. Larger robots, by contrast, might be able to reach more area but can get bogged down by their heft mass and mechanical complexity. ReachBot offers a compromise by relying on a small main body with limbs that can expand and reach out if necessary. 

The robot utilizes a set of onboard sensors to scale the area ahead of it and look for concave rocks or other signs suggestive of a graspable area. Like a physical spider. ReachBot doesn’t immediately assume rock surfaces are flat, but instead seeks “rounded features that the gripper can partially enclose.” Researchers say they tested the robot in simulation to help it improve its ability to correctly identify grippable surface areas and aid in footstep planning. Following the simulation, ReachBot was tested in the real-world in an unmanned lava tube near Pisgah crater in Mojave Desert. 

“Results from the field test confirm the predictions of maximum grasp forces and underscore the importance of identifying and steering toward convex rock features that provide a strong grip,” the researchers write. “They also highlight a characteristic of grasp planning with ReachBot, which is that identifying, aiming for, and extending booms involves a higher level of commitment than grasping objects in manufacturing scenarios.”

ReachBot could help researchers explore deep caves and caverns on other planets

Researchers believe ReachBot’s arachnid design could have extraterrestrial applications. Lava tubes like in the Mojave Desert where the robot was tested removes some of the area on the surface of the moon and Mars. In the latter example, researchers say ancient subsurface environments on the Red Planet remain relatively unchanged the time when some believe the planet may have been habitable. These sheltered cavern areas, they write, “could provide sites for future human habitation.” 

In theory, future exploratory space robots could use a design like ReachBot’s to explore deeper into areas contemporary robots could find inaccessible. Elsewhere, researchers are exploring how three-legged jumping machines and four-legged, dog inspired robots could similarly help scientists learn more about undiscovered areas of our solar system neighbors. 

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Life may “find a way,” but how living things evolve is not a neat and orderly process. Instead of a tidy family tree with straight lines added for each new generation, the birth of a new species is much more tangled in reality. New research into one butterfly genus found in the Amazon shows just how entangled those evolutionary lines may be. Hybrids between some species can produce new butterfly species that are genetically distinct from both parent species and their earlier ancestors. The findings are described in a study published April 17 in the journal Nature. 

A third hybrid

In the study, the team focused on the brightly colored Heliconius genus of butterflies found in Central and South America. They are a common model for studying how butterfly wing patterns evolved due to the wide variety of wings within the group. In an 1861 letter to Charles Darwin, naturalist Henry Walter Bates referred to the Heliconius butterflies found in the Amazon as “a glimpse into the laboratory where Nature manufactures her new species.”

For a deeper look into Heliconius’ evolution, the team on this new study harnessed the power of whole-genome sequencing. All living organisms have DNA that is made of four nucleotide bases–adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. If you know the sequence of bases, you can identify the organism’s unique DNA fingerprint called a pattern. Sequencing determines these patterns and whole genome sequencing in a lab can determine the orders of these bases in one process.  

[Related: You might have more in common with the sea lamprey than you realize.]

The whole-genome sequencing indicated that a hybridization event occurred about 180,000 years ago between Heliconius melpomene and the ancestor of today’s Heliconius pardalinus butterflies. This event produced a third hybrid species called Heliconius elevatus. While it is descended from hybrids, H. elevatus is also a distinct butterfly species and has its own individual traits. These include color pattern, wing shape, flight characteristics, how they choose mates, and more. All three of these distinct species now fly together across a wide area of Amazon and indicate more evidence that hybrids are not always sterile as sometimes previously thought. 

“Historically, hybridization was thought of as a bad thing that was not particularly important when it came to evolution,” study co-author and Harvard University biologist Neil Rosser said in a statement. “But what genomic data have shown is that, actually, hybridization among species is widespread. Over the last 10 or 15 years, there’s been a paradigm shift in terms of the importance of hybridization and evolution.”

An evolutionary surprise

According to the team, this may alter how we view species and speciation. Scientists had generally believed that hybridization inhibited the generation of new species. Hybrid organisms are often born unhealthy or sterile and can’t reproduce, particularly when they are born with two different sex chromosomes. Most species are not perfectly intact tight units, but instead exchange a lot of DNA and can be considered “quite leaky.” The species that are evolving are actually exchanging genes constantly and it can trigger the evolution of new lineages. 

“Normally, species are thought to be reproductively isolated. They can’t produce hybrids that are reproductively fertile,” study co-author and Harvard University biologist James Mallet said in a statement. 

This is a different case for Heliconius  butterflies. They show that hybridization is not only occurring, but has driven the evolution of a new species in itself. While there is now evidence of hybridization between species, confirming if hybridization is involved in speciation has been difficult. 

[Related: Butterflies can remember specific flower foraging routes.]

“The question is: How can you collapse two species together and get a third species out of that collapse?” said Mallet.

This new research provides scientists with a next step in understanding how hybridization and speciation work in evolution. It could also help play a role in the planet’s biodiversity crisis, since fully understanding the question of what we really mean by “species” on a genetic level is important for conservation. It may also help in understanding the carriers of certain diseases. Multiple species of mosquitoes carry malaria, and while they are closely related, we still do not know how they interact or create new hybrids the way Heliconius butterflies do. 

As with evolution itself, this area of study will only continue to untangle as biologists learn more about what really makes a species a species. 

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The “object from the sky” that pierced through a home in Naples, FL. last month wasn’t a meteorite after all.

On April 15, NASA said the mysterious metallic cylinder—which tore through homeowner Alejandro Otero’s ceiling and floor—was actually part of a cargo pallet that contained “aging nickel hydride batteries.” The agency jettisoned the pallet from the International Space Station back in 2021, after installing new lithium-ion batteries on the artificial satellite. 

NASA expected the hardware to “fully burn up during entry through Earth’s atmosphere on March 8, 2024,” yet things turned out quite differently for the Otero family.
“It was a tremendous sound, and it almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all,” Otero told Florida broadcaster WINK News. After prying the object out from between mangled floorboards, Otero said he suspected it was a meteorite.

According to NASA, the debris was actually made of a nickel- and chromium-based superalloy called Inconel. The object originally functioned as part of a battery mount; after hitting Otero’s home, the surviving cylinder clocked in at 1.6 pounds, 4 inches tall and 1.6 inches in diameter.

In 2021, NASA anticipated the pallet would “orbit Earth between two to four years before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere.” This week, NASA said the ISS will investigate the incident to “determine the cause of the debris survival,” adding that it’s “committed to responsibly operating in low Earth orbit, and mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people on Earth when space hardware must be released.”

While a space-junk crisis may sound like science fiction, debris left by humans in low-Earth orbit is rapidly piling up. The European Space Agency estimates there are 36,500 debris objects greater than 10 cm in Earth’s orbit. The agency reports that the total mass of all known space objects exceeds 11,500 metric tons (or more than 25 million pounds). Such junk includes everything from paint flecks and bolts to dead satellites and spent rocket boosters. Much of this stuff originates from governmental space programs, but it also comes from private companies, such as Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Around a dozen objects reenter the atmosphere on a daily basis, Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a call with PopSci. “It’s not uncommon for these things to survive and make it to the surface,” explained Jah, though typically they crash into the ocean. However, as satellite launches rapidly increase, the professor cautioned that “statistically, [falling debris] will kill somebody at some point.” 

According to Professor Jah, solving this problem will require more reusable and recyclable tech. Today, “we have a linear space economy where the end state of any given satellite is to become junk.” Governments need to embrace a circular approach and “mandate that satellites can’t be launched if they’re going to be single use,” Jah argued.

In a separate call, John L. Crassidis—a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo—argued to PopSci that readers shouldn’t be too worried, for now, about death by space junk. “I think I’d be a lot more concerned about getting struck by lightning than having a piece of space debris fall on me,” said Crassidis. However, the professor said the risk will grow in the coming decades. The more space junk we have, the greater the chance that “somebody’s going to be eventually hurt.”

According to estimates by the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation, the likelihood of space debris injuring a particular person is less than one in a trillion. However, a 2022 University of British Columbia study predicts there’s a 10% chance that falling space debris will result in “one or more casualties” by 2032.

[ Related: How harpoons, magnets, and ion blasts could help us clean up space junk ]

To mitigate worst-case scenarios, Crassidis pointed to the need for “hard international treaties” that require space-faring nations to follow UN space debris guidelines. “No matter what anybody tells you, we do not have the technology to take out space debris right now,” argued Crassidis, who acknowledged that Europe has some “nice experiments” in the works. 

In the coming decades, “if our technology can’t catch up to the point of making that reality, and if we keep doing what we’re doing, then we’re for sure they are well on our way to Kessler syndrome,” Crassidis said, referring to a worst-case scenario in which space-junk collisions become so likely that they render low-Earth orbit useless for generations.

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Microscopic tardigrades have fascinated scientists for their incredible toughness since they were first discovered back in 1773. They can sense when it’s time to go dormant and enter a tun state under harsh conditions. Tardigrades can even withstand dangerous levels of radiation and a surprising mechanism in the DNA may be why. The process to repair DNA goes into overtime when exposed to the deadly radiation to fix the damaged DNA. The findings are described in a study published April 12 in the journal Current Biology.

“What we saw surprised us,” study co-author and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill biologist Bob Goldstein said in a statement. “The tardigrades are doing something we hadn’t expected.”  

Among the many dangers of excessive radiation exposure is its ability to damage DNA. In humans, the DNA damage from excessive radiation is linked to diseases including various cancers and cardiovascular disease. Tardigrade aka “water bears” can withstand an incredible amount of radiation. In 1963, researchers first discovered that they can survive 1,400 times more intense radiation than humans are known to live through. Now, scientists are getting a glimpse into how their bodies correct the radiation damage in DNA. 

[Related: What you need to know about the tardigrade cannon.]

In this new study, a team at UNC Chapel Hill used lab methods developed over the past 25 years to identify the internal genetic mechanisms tardigrades use to survive radiation exposure. They looked at a species of tardigrade called Hypsibius exemplaris that are not immune to DNA damage from radiation. Instead, they can repair this type of extensive damage. When they are exposed to radiation, tardigrade cells harness the power of hundreds of genes to create new proteins used to repair DNA. These proteins then ramp up the level of DNA repair to levels study co-author and biologist Courtney Clark-Hachtel called “ridiculous.”

“These animals are mounting an incredible response to radiation, and that seems to be a secret to their extreme survival abilities,” Clark-Hachtel said in a statement. “What we are learning about how tardigrades overcome radiation stress can lead to new ideas about how we might try to protect other animals and microorganisms from damaging radiation.”

[Related: We’ve seen how tardigrades walk, and it’s mesmerizing.]

As the UNC-Chapel Hill scientists completed the work, a team from France found similar results in their experiments. Museum of Natural History Paris researchers Jean-Paul Concordet and Anne de Cian and their colleagues found that while gamma rays shattered the DNA of the tardigrades, it didn’t kill them. They also discovered a new tardigrade protein called TRD1 that protects DNA. When it is put into human cells, the protein seems to help them withstand the damage. Concordet told The New York Times that TRD1 may grab onto the chromosomes and keep them in their correct shape, even as the chromosome strands start to fray. Understanding proteins like these can potentially lead to new treatments for cancer and other medical disorders where DNA is damaged. 

“Any tricks they use we might benefit from,” said Concordet. Concordet’s  findings were published as a reviewed preprint in the journal eLife in January. 

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As we wait for this spring and summer’s “cicadapocalypse,” when trillions will emerge across the Southern and Midwestern United States, some of the bugs may face a predicament that sounds straight out of science fiction. A sexually transmitted fungal pathogen exclusive to these periodical insects called Massospora cicadina can control them like “a puppet master.” It causes the infected cicadas to act hypersexual and infect other bugs before they eventually die.

Abdomens pierced open by a fungus

Massospora cicadina can affect both broods of periodical cicadas set to emerge in the coming weeks and months. Brood XIII–the Northern Illinois Brood–will emerge for the first time since 2007 and stretches across parts of Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and northern Illinois. Some of Brood XIX–the Great Southern Brood–will overlap with Brood XIII. The Great Southern Brood last emerged in 2011 and is primarily located in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, George, North Carolina, South Carolina, and southern Illinois.

When they emerge, the cicadas molt into adults. Within a week to 10 days, this fungus opens up the backs of their abdomens. Scientists are still not sure when in their life cycle cicadas can initially become infected with Massospora cicadina, but the prevailing hypothesis is that they are infected on their way up from the ground. 

[Related: This parasite deploys mucus slime balls to make ‘zombie ants.’]

According to West Virginia University mycologist Matt Kasson, the infected cicadas look like they have “a gumdrop that’s gotten wet and dropped in chalk dust,” on them.

“If you look at a fungus infected cicada, you’ll see that basically, the backside of the body has been replaced by this chalky white fungal plug,” Kasson tells PopSci. “Now, if you or I had our abdomens pierced open by a fungus or a third of our body was replaced by some parasite, we probably wouldn’t feel well. We probably wouldn’t attempt to mate. We would just feel awful, lay down, and die.”

However, infected cicadas continue to fly around as if nothing is wrong with them even as their genitalia have been consumed by a fungus. They can do this because the fungus has sent them into a period of prolonged wakefulness–a time of increased stamina.

“A hypothesis for that prolonged wakefulness is that the fungus is producing an amphetamine called cathinone,” says Kasson. Kasson says it is similar to one of the synthetic stimulants commonly found in “illegal bath salts that were banned because of the aggressiveness that [they] would cause.” 

A quiet fungal ‘puppet master’

It makes the cicadas act hypersexualized, where males will continue to try to unsuccessfully mate with females and also mimic female behaviors to attract other males to mate with them. This then doubles the number of cicadas that will eventually become infected and is why it can be considered sexually transmitted. 

Massospora cicadina’s ability to keep the host alive long to maximize the number of cicadas infected makes it a biotroph. It does not work like the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus that takes over ants and makes them act like zombies or the fictional fungi from the television show and video game The Last of Us that pops out in a dramatic fashion. 

[Related: The Cicadapocalypse is nigh. 7 cicada facts to know before it hits.]

“It’s a trick of the fungus and it’s like a puppet master,” says Kasson. “It’s pulling the strings to maximize its own survival.”

Infection rates can reach 20 percent of a cicada if the environmental conditions are perfect, but some older studies suggest that it affects about five percent of cicadas in a given brood. 

Optimizing its genome

Massospora cicadina was first discovered in the mid to late 1800’s. Since periodical cicadas only emerge every 13 or 17 years, studying this fungus is difficult. It also can’t be cultured on a petri dish, so mycologists have a limited window to study them and are still not really sure where it comes from. 

In 2016, Brood V emerged near Kasson’s office in West Virginia and some of his graduate students suggested they look for signs of this fungus. They were able to sequence parts of its genome to see what makes it special. What they found was the largest genome ever sequenced for a fungus at about 1.5 billion bases.

“It’s about 20 times bigger than the average human genome and it’s mostly filled with these repetitive sequences called transposable elements,” says Kasson.

They indicate that Massospora cicadina has essentially spent millions of years optimizing its genome right alongside the cicada. The fungus and insect appear to have coevolved so that it can manipulate its host in a specific way to not kill it, but ensure its own survival. According to Kasson, their data on this coevolution hasn’t been published yet, but shows some interesting evolutionary dynamics. 

“What we see is a pattern where basically cicadas evolved in parallel to the fungus all together,” says Kasson. 

Massospora cicadina is not transmissible to humans, but  it would be smart to avoid eating any cicadas that have the white, chalky plugs on their abdomens. The infected bugs will not come with any sort of high or buzz, but do have several toxins that could be dangerous if eaten. 

“We found 1,000 other chemical compounds, some of which are known mycotoxins,” says Kasson. “So proceed with caution if you’re thinking about consuming one of these cicada fungi.”

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Scientists have discovered an enormous stellar-mass black hole in our Milky Way galaxy that’s roughly 33 times more massive than our sun. This black hole designated as Gaia-BH3 was observed with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia space telescope and is pretty close to Earth in space-terms at only 2,000 light years away. It is described in a paper presented April 16 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

What is a stellar-mass black hole?

Stellar-mass black holes like Gaia-BH3 are formed when a large star runs out of gas and then collapses. They are generally about 10 times as massive as our sun. Data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and other ground-based observatories verified its large mass of 33 times bigger than the sun. The stellar-mass black hole Cygnus X-1 is only 21 solar masses, making Gaia-BH3 “exceptional.”

However, both are considered small compared with the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy–Sagittarius A*. Its mass is 4.2 million times that of the sun. Enormous black holes like Sagittarius A* are created by progressively larger and larger black holes merging together, and not by the death of large stars. 

A landmark discovery

This new discovery is considered a landmark by scientists because it’s the first time that a large black hole with this kind of origin story has been found so close to Earth. One of the clues that tipped off the Gaia mission team was an odd ‘wobbling’ motion occurring on the companion star orbiting the black hole. 

Gaia-BH3 is 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila and is Earth’s second-closest known black hole. It was also an unexpected find while an international team of scientists were reviewing Gaia observations ahead of a full data drop planned for next year.

[Related: Fastest-growing black hole eats the equivalent of one sun a day.]

“No one was expecting to find a high-mass black hole lurking nearby, undetected so far,” Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, part of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research and Gaia collaboration member, said in a statement. “This is the kind of discovery you make once in your research life.”

Mass rich, metal-poor

Astronomers have found similarly large black holes outside of the Milky Way galaxy. The prevailing theory is that they may form from the collapse of stars that do not have many elements heavier than helium and hydrogen in their chemical makeup. These stars are considered “metal-poor” and are believed to lose less mass over their lifetimes, so they have more material left over to produce these high-mass black holes after they die. Evidence directly linking metal-poor stars to high-mass black holes has been lacking until these new observations. 

Stars that come in pairs tend to have similar chemical compositions, so Gaia BH3’s companion star holds some important clues to how the star collapsed to create this giant black hole. Data from the Very Large Telescope’s Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph instrument showed that the companion star was very metal-poor. This means that the star that collapsed to form Gaia BH3 was also metal-poor, as the theories predicted. 

[Related: Black hole collisions could possibly send waves cresting through space-time.]

“We took the exceptional step of publishing this paper based on preliminary data ahead of the forthcoming Gaia release because of the unique nature of the discovery,” astronomer Elisabetta Caffau, a study co-author from the CNRS Observatoire de Paris also a Gaia collaboration member, said in a statement. 

According to the team, making this data available early will allow other astronomers to study Gaia BH3 immediately without waiting for the complete Gaia data release. The full release from the space telescope is planned for late 2025 at the earliest and additional observations could reveal more about the black hole’s history.

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This article was originally featured on Knowable Magazine.

Like many of the researchers who study how people find their way from place to place, David Uttal is a poor navigator. “When I was 13 years old, I got lost on a Boy Scout hike, and I was lost for two and a half days,” recalls the Northwestern University cognitive scientist. And he’s still bad at finding his way around.

The world is full of people like Uttal—and their opposites, the folks who always seem to know exactly where they are and how to get where they want to go. Scientists sometimes measure navigational ability by asking someone to point toward an out-of-sight location—or, more challenging, to imagine they are someplace else and point in the direction of a third location—and it’s immediately obvious that some people are better at it than others.

“People are never perfect, but they can be as accurate as single-digit degrees off, which is incredibly accurate,” says Nora Newcombe, a cognitive psychologist at Temple University who coauthored a look at how navigational ability develops in the 2022 Annual Review of Developmental Psychology. But others, when asked to indicate the target’s direction, seem to point at random. “They have literally no idea where it is.”

While it’s easy to show that people differ in navigational ability, it has proved much harder for scientists to explain why. There’s new excitement brewing in the navigation research world, though. By leveraging technologies such as virtual reality and GPS tracking, scientists have been able to watch hundreds, sometimes even millions, of people trying to find their way through complex spaces, and to measure how well they do. Though there’s still much to learn, the research suggests that to some extent, navigation skills are shaped by upbringing.

Nurturing navigation skills

The importance of a person’s environment is underscored by a recent look at the role of genetics in navigation. In 2020, Margherita Malanchini, a developmental psychologist at Queen Mary University of London, and her colleagues compared the performance of more than 2,600 identical and nonidentical twins as they navigated through a virtual environment, to test whether navigational ability runs in families. It does, they found—but only modestly. Instead, the biggest contributor to people’s performance was what geneticists call the “nonshared environment”—that is, the unique experiences each person accumulates as their life unfolds. Good navigators, it appears, are mostly made, not born.

A remarkable, large-scale experiment led by Hugo Spiers, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, gave researchers a glimpse at how experience and other cultural factors might influence wayfinding skills. Spiers and his colleagues, in collaboration with the telecom company T-Mobile, developed a game for cellphones and tablets, Sea Hero Quest, in which players navigate by boat through a virtual environment to locate a series of checkpoints. The game app asked participants to provide basic demographic data, and nearly 4 million worldwide did so. (The app is no longer accepting new participants except by invitation of researchers.)

Through the app, the researchers were able to measure wayfinding ability by the total distance each player traveled to reach all the checkpoints. After completing some levels of the game, players also had to shoot a flare back toward their point of origin—a dead-reckoning test analogous to the pointing-to-out-of-sight-locations task. Then Spiers and his colleagues could compare players’ performance to the demographic data.

Several cultural factors were associated with wayfinding skills, they found. People from Nordic countries tended to be slightly better navigators, perhaps because the sport of orienteering, which combines cross-country running and navigation, is popular in those countries. Country folk did better, on average, than people from cities. And among city-dwellers, those from cities with more chaotic street networks such as those in the older parts of European cities did better than those from cities like Chicago, where the streets form a regular grid, perhaps because residents of grid cities don’t need to build such complex mental maps.

Results like these suggest that an individual’s life experience may be one of the biggest determinants of how well they navigate. Indeed, experience may even underlie one of the most consistent findings—and clichés—in navigation: that men tend to perform better than women. Turns out this gender gap is more a question of culture and experience than of innate ability.

Nordic countries, for example, where gender equality is greatest, show almost no gender difference in navigation. In contrast, men far outperform women in places where women face cultural restrictions on exploring their environment on their own, such as Middle Eastern countries.

This cultural aspect, and the importance of experience, are also supported by studies of the Tsimane, a traditional Indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon. Anthropologist Helen Elizabeth Davis of Arizona State University and her colleagues put GPS trackers on 305 Tsimane adults to measure their daily movements over a three-day period, and found no difference in the distance moved by men and women. Men and women also were equally adept at pointing to out-of-sight locations, they reported in Topics in Cognitive Science. Even children performed extremely well at this navigation task—a result, Davis thinks, of growing up in a culture that encourages children to range widely and explore the forest.

Most cultures aren’t like the Tsimane, though, and women and girls tend to be more cautious about exploring, for good reasons of personal safety. Not only do they gather less experience at navigating, but nervousness about security or getting lost also has a direct effect on navigation. “Anxiety gets in the way of good navigation, so if you’re worried about your personal safety, you’re a poor navigator,” says Newcombe.

Personality, too, appears to play a role in developing navigational ability. “To get good at navigating, you have to be willing to explore,” says Uttal. “Some people do not enjoy the experience of wandering, and others enjoy it very much.”

Indeed, people who enjoy outdoor activities, such as hiking and biking, tend to have a better sense of direction, notes Mary Hegarty, a cognitive psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. So do people who play a lot of video games, many of which involve exploring virtual spaces.

To Uttal, this accumulating evidence suggests that inclination and early experience nudge some people toward activities that involve navigation, while those who are temperamentally less inclined to explore, who have less opportunity to wander or who have an initial bad experience may be less likely to engage in activities that require exploration. It all snowballs from there, Uttal speculates. “I think a combination of personality and ability pushes you in certain directions. It’s a developmental cascade.”

Mental mappers

That cascade presumably influences acquisition of the specific skills that are hallmarks of good navigators. These include the ability to estimate how far you’ve traveled, to read and remember maps (both printed and mental), to learn routes based on a sequence of landmarks and to understand where points are relative to one another.

Much of the research, though, has focused on two specific subskills: route-following by using landmarks—for example, turn left at the gas station, then go three blocks and turn right just past the red house—and what’s often termed “survey knowledge,” the ability to build and consult a mental map of a place.

Of the two, route following is by far the easier task, and most people do pretty well at it once they’ve taken a route a few times, says Dan Montello, a geographer and psychologist also at UC Santa Barbara. In a classic experiment from almost two decades ago, Montello’s student Toru Ishikawa drove 24 volunteers, once a week for 10 weeks, on two twisting routes in a tony residential area of Santa Barbara that they’d never visited before.

Later, almost every person could accurately state the order of landmarks along each route and roughly estimate the distance travelled between them. But they varied widely in their ability to identify shortcuts between the two routes, point to landmarks not visible from where they stood, or sketch a map of the routes. Those who couldn’t identify shortcuts or find landmarks may suffer from an inability to create accurate mental maps, the researchers think.

Research by Newcombe and her then graduate student Steven Weisberg underscores the importance of such mental maps in navigation. They asked 294 volunteers to use a mouse and computer screen to navigate along two routes through a virtual town. Once the volunteers had learned the routes and the landmarks they contained, the researchers asked them to stand at one landmark and point to others on both routes.

People fell into three classes, the researchers reported in 2018 in Current Directions in Psychological Science. Some people had formed a good mental map: They could point accurately to landmarks on both the same and different routes. Others had good route knowledge but struggled to create an integrated map: They were good at pointing within a route, but poor between routes. A third group was poor at all the pointing tasks.

That ability to build and refer to a mental map—a person’s survey knowledge—goes a long way toward explaining why they’re better navigators, Montello says. “When the only skill you have is the ability to think in terms of routes, you can’t be creative to get around barriers.” Survey knowledge gives the ability to navigate creatively, he says. “That’s a pretty stunning difference.”

Not surprisingly, better navigators may also be better at switching modes and choosing the most appropriate navigational strategy for the situation they find themselves in, says cognitive neuroscientist Weisberg, now at the University of Florida. This could mean using landmarks when they are obvious and mental maps when more sophisticated calculations are needed.

“I’ve moved toward thinking that our better navigators are also using a lot of alternate strategies,” Weisberg says. “And they’re doing so in a much more flexible way that affords different kinds of navigation, so that when they find themselves in a new situation, they’re better able to find their way.”

When Weisberg moves around Gainesville where he lives now, for example, he keeps track of north, because that works well in a city with a regular street grid; when he goes home to the winding streets of Philadelphia, he relies more on other cues to stay oriented.

Researchers do not yet know whether every bad navigator is simply poor at survey knowledge, or whether some of the lost might be failing at other navigational subskills instead, such as remembering landmarks or estimating distance traveled. Either way, what can poor navigators do to improve? That’s still an open question. “We all have our pet theories,” says Elizabeth Chrastil, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, “but they haven’t reached the level of testing yet.”

Pros and cons of GPS

Simply practicing seems like it should work—and, indeed, it does in lab experiments. “We can improve people’s navigational abilities in virtual environments,” says Arne Ekstrom, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Arizona. It takes about two weeks to show fairly dramatic gains—but it’s not yet clear whether people are really becoming better navigators or just getting better at finding their way through the particular virtual environments used in the experiments.

Support for the notion that people might improve with practice also comes from studies of what happens when people stop using their navigation skills. In a 2020 study published in Scientific Reports, for example, neuroscientists Louisa Dahmani and Véronique Bohbot of McGill University in Montreal recruited 50 young adults and questioned them about their lifetime experience of driving with GPS. Then they tested the volunteers in a virtual world that required them to navigate without GPS. The heaviest GPS users did worse, they found.

A follow-up with 13 of the volunteers three years later revealed that those who had used GPS the most during the intervening period experienced greater declines in their ability to navigate without GPS, strongly suggesting that GPS reliance causes diminished skills, rather than poor skills leading to greater GPS use.

Experts also suggest that struggling navigators like Uttal could try paying closer attention to compass directions or prominent landmarks as a way to integrate their movements into a mental map. For Weisberg, the only way he learns spaces in an integrated way is by paying attention to major cardinal directions or prominent landmarks like the ocean. “The more attention I pay, the better I can link things to the map in my head.” He recommends that struggling navigators ask themselves which way is north 10 times a day, referring to a map if necessary. This, he suggests, could help them move beyond mere route knowledge.

There’s another option for those who don’t really care about improving their skills as long as they just don’t get lost, Weisberg notes: Just make sure your GPS is handy.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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Even without any known active tectonic movement, the moon can still rumble. Its dramatic thermal changes, miniscule contractions from cooling, and even the influences of Earth’s gravity have all contributed to noticeable seismic activity. And just like on Earth, detecting these potentially powerful moonquakes will be important for the safety of any future equipment, buildings, and people atop the lunar surface. 

But instead of traditional seismometers, NASA hopes Artemis astronauts will be able to deploy laser-powered fiber optic cables.

In a recent study published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, researchers at Caltech made the case for the promising capabilities of a new, high-tech seismological tool known as distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). Unlike traditional seismometers, DAS equipment measures the extremely tiny tremors detected in laser light as it travels through fiber optic cables. According to a separate paper from last year, a roughly 62-mile DAS cable line could hypothetically do the job of 10,000 individual seismometers.

[Related: Researchers unlock fiber optic connection 1.2 million times faster than broadband.]

This is particularly crucial given just how difficult it’s been to measure lunar seismic activity in the past. Apollo astronauts installed multiple seismometers on the lunar surface during the 1970’s, which managed to record quakes as intense as a magnitude 5. But those readings weren’t particularly precise, due to what’s known as scattering—when seismic waves are muddied from passing through layers of extremely fine, powdery regalith dust.

Researchers believe using fiber optic DAS setups could potentially solve this problem by averaging thousands of sensor points, and the data to back it up. According to a recent Caltech profile, the team of geophysicists deployed a similar cable system near Antarctica’s South Pole, the closest environment on Earth to our natural satellite’s surface due to its remote, harsh surroundings. Subsequent tests successfully detected subtle seismic activity such as cracking and shifting ice, while holding up against the harsh surroundings.

Of course, the moon’s brutal surface makes Antarctica look almost pleasant by comparison. Aside from the dust, temperature fluctuations routinely vary between 130 and -334 degrees Fahrenheit, while the lack of atmosphere means regular bombardment by solar radiation. All that said, Caltech researchers believe fiber optic cabling could easily be designed to withstand these factors. With additional work, including further optimizing its energy efficiency, the team believes DAS equipment could arrive alongside Artemis astronauts in the near future, ready to measure any moonquakes that come its way.

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Tropical fruit-eating birds are so much more than just eye candy. These wildly colored avians are also a vital part of regenerating tropical forests. Data gathered on the ground in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil indicates that if birds like the red-legged honeycreeper, palm tanager, and toco toucan can move around more freely, carbon storage can increase by up to 38 percent. The findings are detailed in a study published April 15 in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

A crucial, but fragmented landscape

The Atlantic Forest in Brazil is one of the most biologically diverse regions in the world. It’s home to nearly seven percent of the world’s plant species and five percent of all vertebrates. This region is also one of Earth’s most fragmented tropical forests, due to deforestation, agriculture, and other human activities. Roughly 88 percent of its vegetation has been lost in the last 500 years, with only 12 percent of the original forest remaining in a patchwork of micro-forests. Many of these widely scattered forests are too far apart from one another to support bird movement.

Wild birds that eat a variety of fruits–or frugivores–can play a vital role in forest ecosystems by eating, excreting, and spreading seeds as they move around. Between 70 to 90 percent of the tree species living in tropical forests depend on seed dispersal from animals, as it allows the forests to grow and function.  

To combat this, 12 million hectares of land are targeted for restoration and natural recovery under the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact. New data from this study is helpful for determining how to proceed. 

[Related: Three nations pledge to reverse decades of destruction in the rainforest.]

“This crucial information enables us to pinpoint active restoration efforts–like tree planting–in landscapes falling below this forest cover threshold, where assisted restoration is most urgent and effective,” Daisy Dent, a study co-author and naturalist at ETH Zurich, a public research university in Switzerland, said in a statement. 

Bigger birds, bigger seeds

In the study, the team compared the carbon storage potential that could be recovered in landscapes with limited forest fragmentation to the more splintered landscapes. They found that the  more fragmented landscapes restricted the bird’s movement and more tree cover was needed.

According to the team, a minimum of 40 percent forest cover is critical across the Atlantic Forest region for species diversity and also maintain and restore ecosystem services needed to maximize forest restoration efforts. These ecosystem services include carbon storage and seed dispersal.

Different bird species also have differing impacts in terms of seed dispersal. 

The smaller birds can spread more seeds around, but they can only carry the smaller seeds that have lower carbon storage potential. 

Larger larger birds like the toco toucan or the curl-crested jay can disperse the seeds of bigger trees with a higher carbon storage potential. However, the larger birds are less likely to move across more highly fragmented landscapes.

“Allowing larger frugivores to move freely across forest landscapes is critical for healthy tropical forest recovery,” study co-author and ETH Zurich ecologist and biologist Carolina Bello said in a statement. “This study demonstrates that especially in tropical ecosystems seed dispersal mediated by birds plays a fundamental role in determining the species that can regenerate.”

What can be done

Preventing the poaching of tropical birds is one strategy, as more birds flying around can translate into more trees.

“We have always known that birds are essential, but it is remarkable to discover the scale of those effects,” study co-author and ETH Zurich ecologist Thomas Crowther said in a statement. “If we can recover the complexity of life within these forests, their carbon storage potential would increase significantly.”

[Related: Songbirds near the equator really are hotter, color-wise.]

Earlier studies suggest that recovering these forests could capture more than 2.3 billion tonnes of carbon. Natural regeneration could also be more cost-effective than planting more trees, but both should be done. This enhances animal movement in the areas where a more passive restoration is more likely. In highly fragmented landscapes, active restoration like planting more trees is necessary. In order for these tree planting methods to be ecologically effective, ensuring that the trees actually belong in the area and not are not being planted in grasslands is important. 

[Related: When planting trees is bad for the planet]

“By identifying the thresholds of forest cover in the surrounding landscape that allow seed dispersal, we can identify areas where natural regeneration is possible, as well as areas where we need to actively plant trees, allowing us to maximize the cost-effectiveness of forest restoration,” study co-author and nature based solutions project manager Danielle Ramos, said in a statement. Ramos is affiliated with the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and the Universidade Estadual Paulista, in Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brazil.

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Get ready. Trillions of chirpy, red-eyed periodical cicadas are getting ready to emerge from underground in a rare double emergence event. These specific types of cicadas crawl out from below the ground every 13 or 17 years and can make as much noise as a jet engine.

While there are 3,400 known species of cicadas, only nine of them have the tendency to disappear underground then reemerge all at the same time. Seven of these nine periodical cicada spears are found in the United States. Even though it is not happening all across North America, it is still a huge natural event that’s worth keeping an eye on. 

[Related: This gnarly fungus makes cicadas hypersexual.]

“I would put the periodical cicadas as a natural phenomenon in the same category as April’s total solar eclipse,” Penn State University entomologist Michael Skvarla tells PopSci.

What is a brood of cicadas?

A brood is another term for a group of periodical cicadas that emerge every 13 or 17 years. Scientists use roman numerals to differentiate between various broods in North America. This year, Brood XIII (aka the Northern Illinois Brood) and Brood XIX (the Great Southern Brood) will emerge at the same time. 

The Northern Illinois Brood is a 17 year group and stretches across parts of Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and northern Illinois. The Great Southern Brood emerges every 13 years and is primarily located in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, George, North Carolina, South Carolina, and importantly, southern Illinois.

[Related: Cicadas pee in jet streams like bigger animals.]

“This year is kind of special because we have the emergence of two broods,” says Skvarla. “ We have one 13 year brood and one 17 year brood emerging. Because they’re coming out every 13 or 17 years, they don’t sync up very frequently.”

When will they emerge?

They will start to emerge as soon as the surrounding soil has reached 64 degrees Fahrenheit. That usually occurs anytime between late April and June and the cicadas will stay around through July.

These cicadas hatched from eggs that were laid in 2011 and 2007. They fell from the trees as newborns and burrowed into the ground where they hunkered down and fed on xylem sap and tree roots as they grew. 

Where will the broods overlap?

The real “cicadapocalypse” will primarily affect the unlucky few in parts of Illinois where both broods will emerge simultaneously. 

Even though it is not happening all across North America, it is still a huge natural event. “I would put the periodical cicadas as a natural phenomenon in the same category as April’s total solar eclipse,” says Skvarla.

This type of overlap is also incredibly rare and has not occurred since 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president and had just purchased the Louisiana Territory from France.

[Related: Fiber optic cables can pick up cicadas’ droning din.]

What do they do when they emerge?

Cicadas come up to mate for several weeks and then die. The males send out their mating song by vibrating the small flaps on their abdomen called tymbals. Females will respond by flicking their wings. Eggs will be laid in trees and the hatchlings will burrow under the ground, beginning the whole process over again. 

Why do cicadas emerge on these strict schedules?

“The 13 and 17 year lifecycle is interesting, because both are prime numbers. We aren’t really sure why they’ve hit upon these prime number years,” says Skvarla. “There’s speculation that it might be because it’s harder for the broods to sync up the way that they’re doing this year.”

More synching up between broods could lead to less genetic diversity if interrelated bugs are mating with one another. Since they don’t emerge very often, it is difficult for scientists to study their peculiar calendars.

“You can spend your entire career and only see the same brood emerge two or three times,” said Sklarva. 

[Related: Baby Brood X cicadas are headed underground. What lies ahead is still a mystery.]

What do cicadas eat?

They spend their time underground munching on tree roots. They will not be destroying plants or crops when they emerge. 

Can you eat cicadas?

Yes, and there are several recipes that you can try.

“Cicadas kind of taste like shellfish like shrimp or lobster. It’s got kind of a crunchy, shrimpy flavor,” says Skvarla. “It doesn’t have the same consistency because cicadas have more shell and most recipes typically fry up the shell. With lobster or shrimp, you typically take the shell off.”

It is also not dangerous if your dog eats a few of them while out on a walk. 

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Earth used to be absolutely crawling with more megafauna. The fossil record is full of enormous birds like New Zealand’s Heracles inexpectatus, giant lemurs from Madagascar, large marine reptiles that would put today’s sea snakes to shame. Paleontologists have now found evidence of three unusual new species of giant fossil kangaroo in present day Australia and New Guinea. The creatures are described in a study published April 14 in the journal Megataxa and indicate that these species were likely much more diverse in terms of shape, range of habitat, and hopping method. 

“Living kangaroos are already such remarkable animals, so it’s amazing to think what these peculiar giant kangaroos could have been getting up to,” study co-author and Flinders University PhD student Isaac Kerr said in a statement.

Meet the giant kangaroos

The three new species belong to an extinct genus of giant kangaroos called Protemnodon that lived from five million to about 40,000 years ago. They would have looked somewhat similar to modern gray kangaroos, but were generally more squat and muscular. Some species were roughly 110 pounds, but others were up to twice as large as today’s biggest living kangaroos.

Protemnodon fossils are fairly common across Australia, but they have historically been found as individual bones instead of in complete skeletons. This has made it difficult for scientists to determine just how many species there were and how they differed in geographic range, movement, and size. 

[Related: What prehistoric poop reveals about extinct giant animals.]

“The fossils of this genus are widespread and they’re found regularly, but more often than not you have no way of being certain which species you’re looking at,” study co-author and Flinders University paleontologist Gavin Prideaux said in a statement. 

For this study, the team was able to use multiple complete fossilized kangaroo skeletons from Lake Callabonna in South Australia, which may help give scientists a more clear picture of these giant kangaroos. Researchers also reviewed all known species of Protemnodon and found that they were all quite different from one another. The animals also adapted to live in different environments and even had different methods of hopping. 

One very heavy, wayfaring kangaroo

One of the new species is named Protemnodon viator. The word viator means ‘traveler’ or ‘wayfarer’ in Latin. This wandering marsupial was also much bigger than other known giant kangaroos at weighing up to 374 pounds. According to the team, this is roughly twice as much as the largest living male red kangaroos. 

Protemnodon viator was also likely well-adapted to its arid central Australian habitat. It lived in a smaller geographic area than the red kangaroos of today. It was also long-limbed and could hop quickly and efficiently. 

A ‘robust’ creature and a swamp wallaby-like kangaroo

Another of the new species is named Protemnodon mamkurra and it connects the paleontologists of today with a famous scientist of the past. British paleontologist and naturalist Sir Richard Owen famously coined the term ‘dinosaur’ in 1842, but also described the first species of Protemnodon in 1874.

When he first found these giant kangaroo fossils, he followed a common scientific approach at the time. He mainly focused on fossilized teeth, seeing slight differences between the teeth of his specimens. He ultimately described six species of Protemnodon and further study chipped away at some of Owen’s early descriptions. He also suggested that some or all Protemnodon have four legs, While not all of them do, this study agrees that one of his species–Protemnodon anak–likely did have four legs. 

[Related: Giant beasts once roamed Madagascar. What happened to them?]

“However, our study suggests that this is true of only three or four species of Protemnodon, which may have moved something like a quokka or potoroo–that is bounding on four legs at times, and hopping on two legs at others,” Kerr said. “The newly described Protemnodon mamkurra is likely one of these. A large but thick-boned and robust kangaroo, it was probably fairly slow-moving and inefficient. It may have hopped only rarely, perhaps just when startled.”

The best of these fossil species comes from the Green Waterhole Cave in southeastern Australia, on the land of the Boandik people. The species name mamkurra, means ‘great kangaroo’ and was chosen by Boandik elders and language experts in the Burrandies Corporation.

According to Kerr, it is unusual for a single genus of kangaroo to live in such varied environments. “For example, the different species of Protemnodon are now known to have inhabited a broad range of habitats, from arid central Australia into the high-rainfall, forested mountains of Tasmania and New Guinea.”

The third new species is named Protemnodon dawsonae. It is known from fewer fossils than the other two, so it is more of a mystery. The team believes it was likely a moderate speed hopper and potentially similar to the living swamp wallaby. It was named in honor of Australian paleontologist Lyndall Dawson.

While most species became extinct about 40,000 years ago on mainland Australia, they potentially lived longer in New Guinea and Tasmania. Future studies could shed more light on their extinction, as it is still an enduring paleontological mystery. 

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On February 26, 1964, a 40-year-old man slipped in a hotel bathroom and clocked his head on the tub. The painful tumble would end up altering how the entire world approached space exploration. Why? Because that man was John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, and that fall triggered a medical mystery that pushed to the forefront research into what spaceflight might do to the human body.

In the latest Popular Science video, we dig into the intriguing backstory of Glenn’s bathroom spill.

Want more Popular Science videos? Learn about the buried treasure that helped take us to the moon. And remember to subscribe on YouTube for a new video every week.

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Andreas Mogensen returned to Earth in mid-March after a six-and-a-half month stint aboard the International Space Station. To mark his tenure as part of NASA’s Crew-7 mission, the Danish European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut has shared his souvenir from undock day—a guided video tour of the ISS.

It’s been a month now since I left the International @Space_Station.

One of the very last things that I did on undock day, was film a tour of the Space Station. It is as much a keepsake for me as it is a way for me to share the wonder of the International Space Station with you.… pic.twitter.com/oFR0VXR06A

— Andreas Mogensen (@Astro_Andreas) April 12, 2024

“It’s been a month now since I left the [ISS],” Mogensen posted to X early Friday morning. “… It is as much a keepsake for me as it is a way for me to share the wonder of the International Space Station with you. Whenever I will miss my time onboard ISS, and especially my crewmates, I will have this video to look at.”

Mogensen began his show-and-tell in the space station’s front end, above which a docked SpaceX Dragon craft awaited to take him home on March 12. On his left is the roughly 114-by-22-foot Columbus module—a science laboratory provided by the ESA back in 2008. Across from the lab is the smaller Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), nicknamed Kibō, which arrived not long after Columbus.

From there, Mogensen provides a first-person look at various other ISS facilities, including workstations, storage units, bathrooms, gym equipment, multiple docking nodes, and even the station kitchen. Of course, given the delicate environment, that module looks more like another lab than an actual place to cook meals—presumably because, well, no one is actually cooking anything up there.

But the most stunning area in the entire ISS is undoubtedly the cupola, which provides a 360-degree panoramic view of Earth, as well as a decent look at the space station’s overall size.

[Related: What a total eclipse looks like from the ISS.]

Speaking of which, Mogenen’s video also does a great job showcasing just how comparatively small the ISS really is, even after over 25 years of module and equipment additions. At 356-feet-long, it’s just one yard shy of the length of a football field, but any given module or transit space is only a few feet wide. Factor in the copious amounts of cargo, equipment, supplies, experiment materials, as well as the over 8-miles of cabling that wire its electrical systems, and it makes for pretty tight living conditions. Near the end of Mogensen’s tour, it only takes him a little over a minute to glide through most of the entire station back to his original starting point.

Of course, none of that undercuts one of humanity’s most monumental achievements in space exploration. Although the ISS is nearing the end of its tenure (it’s scheduled for decommission in 2031), Mogensen’s keepsake is a great document of what life is like aboard the habitat. But for those now looking for an even more detailed tour, there’s always NASA’s virtual walkthrough.

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From a human perspective, chimpanzees and bonobos often represent two sides of our very nature. Chimpanzees are seen as more conflict ready. Bonobos are considered more peaceful, even demonstrating cooperation between groups. Some new research into both great ape species paints a more nuanced picture of both species and their behavior. Bonobos appear to be actually more aggressive than researchers previously thought within their own communities. The findings are described in a study published April 12 in the journal Current Biology.

“Chimpanzees and bonobos use aggression in different ways for specific reasons,” study co-author and Boston University anthropologist Maud Mouginot said in a statement. “The idea is not to invalidate the image of bonobos being peaceful—the idea is that there is a lot more complexity in both species.”

Pushing, biting, and chasing

In the study, the team focused in male aggression, which is often tied to reproduction. They analyzed three bonobo communities at the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo and two chimpanzee communities at Gombe National Park in Tanzania. Researchers observed the behavior of 12 bonobos and 14 chimpanzees with a method called focal follows. This involves tracking one individual animal’s behavior for an entire day and noting how often the animal engaged in aggressive interactions, who they acted aggressively with, and whether or not they were physical. In great apes, these physical engagements included pushing, biting, or chasing an adversary. 

[Related: Popular chimpanzees set hand-holding trends for the whole group.]

“You go to their nests and wait for them to wake up and then you just follow them the entire day—from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep at night—and record everything they do,” said Mouginot.

They found that the male bonobos aggressive more frequently than chimpanzees. Overall, bonobos engaged in 2.8 times more aggressive interactions and three times as many physical aggressions than chimpanzees.

Bonobo males were also almost exclusively aggressive towards other males, while chimpanzees were more likely to be aggressive towards females. Chimpanzees were also more likely to use “coalitions” of males, with 13.2 percent of chimpanzee aggression and only one percent of bonobo aggressions featuring these groupings. 

The altercations involving groups of males can also cause more injuries and community infighting can potentially weaken the group’s ability to fight off different groups of chimpanzees. Bonobos do not appear to have this issue since most of their disputes are one on one. They have never been observed to kill one another and are not believed to be territorial, which leaves their communities more free to fight amongst themselves instead of outsiders. 

Male ‘coalitions’

The more aggressive males in both species also had greater mating success. The team was surprised to see this in bonobos because they have a co-dominant social dynamic where females often outrank males and can be more decisive with mates. Chimpanzees have male-dominated hierarchies, where these male coalitions coerce the females into mating.

“Male bonobos that are more aggressive obtain more copulations with females, which is something that we would not expect,” said Mouginot. “It means that females do not necessarily go for nicer males.”

The team notes that female bonobos and chimpanzees are not exactly passive, but that female aggression warrants its own future research.

The self-domestication hypothesis

These new findings of higher rates of male-male aggression in bonobos contradict a prevailing hypothesis in primate behavior called the self-domestication hypothesis. This idea that goes back as far as Charles Darwin posits that evolution has selected against aggression in bonobos and humans, but not chimpanzees. 

[Related: Primates have been teasing each other for 13 million years.]

Some of the findings do support some parts of the self-domestication hypothesis, specifically related to aggression towards females. Compared to chimpanzees, male bonobos direct less aggression towards females. According to the team, this aligns with earlier findings that male bonobos rarely use coercive mating strategies, even if they are physically larger.

The team could not assess the severity of aggressive interactions in terms of whether they caused wounds or injuries. They hope to collect this type of data in the future, along with comparing aggressive behavior that varies between communities and subspecies.

“I’d love to have the study complemented with comparable data from other field sites so we can get a broader understanding of variation within and between species,” said Mouginot.

The post ‘Peaceful’ bonobos bite and push each other, actually appeared first on Popular Science.

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Before astronauts leave Earth’s gravity for days, weeks, or even months at a time, they practice aboard NASA’s famous parabolic flights. During these intense rides in modified passenger jets, trainees experience a series of stomach-churning ups and downs as the aircraft’s steep up-and-down movements create zero-g environments. Recently, however, a robot received similar education as their human counterparts—potentially ahead of its own journeys to space.

A couple years back, eight students at ETH Zürich in Switzerland helped design the SpaceHopper. Engineered specifically to handle low-gravity environments like asteroids, the small, three-legged bot is meant to (you guessed it) hop across its surroundings. Using a neural network trained in simulations with deep reinforcement learning, SpaceHopper is built to jump, coast along by leveraging an asteroid’s low-gravity, then orient and stabilize itself mid-air before safely landing on the ground. From there, it repeats this process to efficiently span large distances.

But it’s one thing to design a machine that theoretically works in computer simulations—it’s another thing to build and test it in the real-world.

Sending SpaceHopper to the nearest asteroid isn’t exactly a cost-effective or simple way to conduct a trial run. But thanks to the European Space Agency and Novespace, a company specializing in zero-g plane rides, the robot could test out its moves in the next best thing.

Over the course of a recent 30 minute parabolic flight, researchers let SpaceHopper perform in a small enclosure aboard Novespace’s Airbus A310 for upwards of 30 zero-g simulations, each lasting between 20-25 seconds. In one experiment, handlers released the robot in the middle of the air once the plane hit zero gravity, then observed it resituate itself to specific orientations using only its leg movements. In a second test, the team programmed SpaceHopper to leap off the ground and reorient itself before gently colliding with a nearby safety net.

Because a parabolic flight creates completely zero-g environments, SpaceHopper actually made its debut in less gravity than it would on a hypothetical asteroid. Because of this, the robot couldn’t “land” as it would in a microgravity situation, but demonstrating its ability to orient and adjust in real-time was still a major step forward for researchers. 

[Related: NASA’s OSIRIS mission delivered asteroid samples to Earth.]

“Until that moment, we had no idea how well this would work, and what the robot would actually do,” SpaceHopper team member Fabio Bühler said in ETH Zürich’s recent highlight video. “That’s why we were so excited when we saw it worked. It was a massive weight off of our shoulders.”

SpaceHopper’s creators believe deploying their jumpy bot to an asteroid one day could help astronomers gain new insights into the universe’s history, as well as provide information into our solar system’s earliest eras. Additionally, many asteroids are filled with valuable rare earth metals—resources that could provide a huge benefit across numerous industries back at home.

The post Watch a tripod robot test its asteroid leaping skills appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Earth’s octopuses have been around for at least 330 million years. While they evolved before dinosaurs roamed the planet, their present day descendents don’t live for very long. They generally die soon after mating or laying eggs, with some octopus species living only six months and the average living about two to three years. Some species like the giant Pacific octopus can live up to five years at most. 

To keep fish populations sustainable, fisheries must ensure that enough breeding individuals are either left alone or released back into the wild. Government agencies can enforce catch laws, while scientists can inform laws by understanding the breeding lives of various fish. For octopuses, their short lifespans have been okay on an evolutionary level. However, as human taste for these cephalopods grows, it’s become a problem to meet demand. 

In an effort to protect the longevity of this incredibly old and smart sea creature while ensuring that octopus fisheries remain sustainable, a team of scientists in Australia have created the first known step-by-step guide for determining the age of an octopus. The guide is detailed in a paper published April 11 in the Marine and Freshwater Research Journal and offers a first step in creating guidelines for fishers to follow and ensure that they are catching octopuses that are not of breeding age.

There are a few ways to tell how old an organism is–a process called aging. Trees famously have rings that indicate how many years they have been living. Examining teeth and bone structure in mammals also can reveal similar information about age. That process has been a little bit tricky for octopuses. In the new paper, the team looked at their beaks and stylets–internal shells located near their gills. They pinpointed the growth rings similar to tree’s are located here and are a useful tool to validate the age of an octopus.

[Related: Octopuses rewrite their own RNA to survive freezing temperatures.]

“Over the past 30 years, various studies have explored different methods to age octopus, but only a small number of researchers worldwide have the hands-on knowledge to execute these methods in the laboratory,” study co-author and University of South Australia marine ecologist Zoe Doubleday said in a statement. “It’s critical that we don’t lose this practical scientific knowledge because by determining their age, we can understand the impact of different rates of fishing on the population.”

The team explains how scientists can examine an octopus’ beak, stylets, and growth rings in the lab to determine how old the animal is. In the future, these methods could then be applied in the wild to get a sense of how old octopuses living in the ocean are.

“Understanding an octopus’s age helps to keep fisheries sustainable,” study co-author and University of South Australia PhD student Erica Durante said in a statement. “If you know a species’ age, you can estimate how fast they grow and reproduce and how much you can catch to keep a fishery sustainable.”

[Related: Eating seafood can be more sustainable and healthy than red meat.]

Age data can also tell scientists how long it takes for an animal to mature. This way, octopuses that have not matured enough to breed can be avoided when fishing. According to Durante, age is important for the general conservation and management of a species, whether or not it is commercially fished. 

One tricky part is that while growth rings on trees represent years, the growth rings on octopus represent days. According to the team, these methods will need to be customized for each of the roughly 300 known species of octopus. The team also acknowledges that these guidelines will continue to evolve as we learn more about the lives of these multi-legged creatures.

The post Why counting octopus ‘rings’ is crucial appeared first on Popular Science.

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Japan has offered to provide the United States with a pressurized moon rover—in exchange for a reserved seat on the lunar van. Per NASA, the two nations have themselves a deal. 

According to a new signed agreement between NASA and Japan’s government, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will “design, develop, and operate” a sealed vehicle for both crewed and uncrewed moon excursions. NASA will then oversee the launch and delivery, while Japanese astronauts will join two surface exploration missions in the vehicle.

[ Related: SLIM lives! Japan’s upside-down lander is online after a brutal lunar night ]

‘A mobile habitat’

Japan’s pressurized RV will mark a significant step forward for lunar missions. According to Space.com, the nation has spent the past few years working to develop such a vehicle alongside Toyota and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Toyota offered initial specs for the RV last year—at nearly 20-feet-long, 17-feet-wide, and 12.5-feet-tall, the rover will be about as large as two minibusses parked side-by-side. The cabin itself will provide “comfortable accommodation” for two astronauts, although four can apparently cram in, should an emergency arise.

Like an RV cruising across the country, the rover is meant to provide its inhabitants with everything they could need for as long as 30 days at a time. While inside, astronauts will even be able to remove their bulky (and fashionable) getups and move about normally—albeit in about 16.6 percent the gravity as on Earth. Last week, NASA announced it had narrowed the search for its new Artemis Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) to three companies, but unlike Japan’s vehicle, that one will be unpressurized.

[Related: It’s on! Three finalists will design a lunar rover for Artemis ] 

“It’s a mobile habitat,” NASA Administrator Nelson said during yesterday’s press conference alongside Minister Moriyama, describing it as “a lunar lab, a lunar home, and a lunar explorer… a place where astronauts can live, work, and navigate the lunar surface.”

Similar to the forthcoming Lunar Terrain Vehicle, the Japanese RV can be remotely controlled if astronauts aren’t around, and will remain in operation for 10 years following its delivery.

“The quest for the stars is led by nations that explore the cosmos openly, in peace, and together… America no longer will walk on the moon alone,” Nelson added.

A total of 12 astronauts—all American men—have walked across the moon’s surface. When the U.S. returns to the moon with NASA’s Artemis missions, it will also be the first time a woman and a person of color will land on the moon.

After some rescheduling, NASA currently intends to send its Artemis II astronauts on a trip around the moon in late 2025. Artemis III will see the first two humans touchdown in over 50 years in either late 2026 or early 2027. The Artemis IV mission is currently intended to occur no earlier than 2030. Meanwhile, China is trying to land its own astronauts on the lunar surface in 2030. 

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Our bodies can sometimes forcefully expel dust in our noses in the form of a sneeze. A similar phenomenon may be happening in baby stars. Some new observations of the protostellar disk that surrounds a baby star offer a closer look at how the disk releases plumes of gas, electromagnetic energy, and dust. The team from Kyushu University in Japan describes these “sneezes” as a release of magnetic flux or energy that could be a vital part of star formation. The findings are described in a study published April 11 in The Astrophysical Journal.

All stars develop in stellar nurseries, but star formation is a complex process that we still do not fully understand. These large areas of space that are full of the raw materials needed to create stars–gas, dust, and energy. Stellar nurseries with large concentrations of dust and gas eventually condense, forming a stellar core or baby star. Over time, the stellar cores will accumulate more material and grow in mass. As this growth unfolds, dust and gas form a ring around the new star astronomers call the protostellar disk.

“These structures are perpetually penetrated by magnetic fields, which brings with it magnetic flux,” study co-author and Kyushu University radio astronomer Kazuki Tokuda said in a statement. “However, if all this magnetic flux were retained as the star developed, it would generate magnetic fields many orders of magnitude stronger than those observed in any known protostar.”

[Related: The biggest gaseous structure in our galaxy is filled with baby star factories.]

Scientists have hypothesized that some mechanism during star development removes the magnetic flux. One theory is that the magnetic field gradually weakens over time as the cloud is gradually pulled into the stellar core.

In this new study, the team set their sights on a stellar nursery called MC 27. This stellar nursery is about 450 light-years away from Earth. They observed MC 27 using the ALMA Array, a collection of 66 high-precision radio telescopes in northern Chile.

“As we analyzed our data, we found something quite unexpected,” said Tokuda. “There were these ‘spike-like’ structures extending a few astronomical units from the protostellar disk. As we dug in deeper, we found that these were spikes of expelled magnetic flux, dust, and gas.”

According to the team, this phenomenon is called interchange instability. This occurs when instabilities in the magnetic field react with different amounts of gas in the protostellar disk surrounding the baby star. The result is the expulsion of magnetic flux.

“We dubbed this a baby star’s ‘sneeze’ as it reminded us of when we expel dust and air at high speeds,” said Tokuda.

[Related: Bursting stars could explain why it was so bright after the big bang.]

They also observed other spikes of energy thousands of astronomical units away from the protostellar disk. The team believes that these extra spikes could be the remnants of past stellar sneezes.

The team hopes that their findings will improve astronomer’s understanding of the detailed processes that shape the universe.

“Similar spike-like structures have been observed in other young stars, and it’s becoming a more common astronomical discovery,” said Tokuda. “By investigating the conditions that lead to these ‘sneezes’ we hope to expand our understanding of how stars and planets are formed.”

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Best overall		AmScope M150C-I		SEE IT	This classic microscope is made with students’ needs in mind.
Best for groups		OMAX-MD82ES10		SEE IT	It can connect to a laptop or other screen for group viewing, helping large groups explore the microverse together.
Best budget		National Geographic STEM Kit		SEE IT	This scope has brightfield and darkfield for enhanced viewing and a “student-proof” design for longevity.

There’s a wide world full of shapes, colors, and things for the inquisitive to observe, but only with microscopes for students can the scientifically inclined investigate the world within the world—the world of the tiny. From the fine scratches on the top of a worn penny to the cilia of microbial life, a lot is going on that the naked eye cannot see. But what constitutes a great microscope is not always clear. Depending on the level of the student, they may need almost literal hand-holding through the operation of the scope, with interesting slides pre-prepared. Situations may call for less intense magnification and simpler devices that even young students can use if guided properly. In other scenarios, some microscopes connect with high-quality displays, letting a group work together, seeing and documenting what they find simultaneously. No matter your needs, these are the best microscopes for students, and one will likely fit your needs.

• Best overall: AmScope M150C-I
• Best for groups: OMAX-MD82ES10 
• Best for active students: AmScope Student Forward Binocular Stereo Microscope
• Best splurge: Accu-Scope EXM-150-MS-DF
• Best budget: National Geographic STEM Kit

How we selected the best microscopes for students

It can be hard to believe that your friendly neighborhood article writer came from anywhere but a cramped library, surrounded by books and manuscripts. This one, however, came from cramped (and sometimes quite spacious) laboratories. One period of several months spent counting pollen for hours and hours a day—when, at 22 or so, I was hardly beyond being a student myself—stands out particularly in my mind as a period of learning and understanding the intricacies of microscope usage.

Of course, the microscopes presented below will be good for students, both young and old, with various capabilities depending on the age group. While no microscope is indestructible, they’re universally quite fragile at the lens, we are aiming for microscopes that can withstand (or safeguard against) beginner follies and common pitfalls. Two other features that give a big boost to a microscope’s suitability for students are easy ways to view and share what’s being seen, as well as supplied activities and guidance.

The best microscopes for students: Reviews & Recommendations

The following microscopes were all picked to satisfy your student at home or, as the case may be, in a group at your school, club, or other location. Check out each one to compare and contrast it to your needs. Also, while there will definitely be some overlap with the microscopes on this list, you should check out our listing of the best microscopes for kids. This goes doubly so if you feel that the microscopes and activities listed here are too difficult or challenging for the student you have in mind.

Best overall: AmScope M150C-I

SEE IT

Specs

• Style: Compound
• Magnification: 40X – 1000X
• Included activities: No

Pros

• Classic style used in real labs and universities
• Wide magnification range good for most activities
• Teaches real microscope skills
• Affordable for most

Cons

• No included investigation kit
• Not ideal for youngest learners

The AmScope M150C-I resembles many other microscopes but comes in at $100, within a serious student’s budget, and affordable enough multiples can be purchased for a group of learners. This microscope will teach real responsibility with a microscope, including proper handling, as well as give students a chance to see the smallest parts of the world properly. It uses a proper compound style, has an easily graspable fine coarse control, and an adjustable light source that can be powered either via batteries or an outlet.

This microscope has an incredible range of magnifications that you can use it at, as well. The world at 40X and 1000X, the two extremes this microscope has to offer, will appear almost completely different and will allow for different activities. At a low magnification, look at the exterior of a bug or plant “skins” up close. Then, at 1000X, take a look at the cells themselves. With all of these factors combined, you should expect your students to be able to learn a wide variety of lessons with this scope, making it a best value.

What gives us pause about this microscope is that it does not come with activities and may not be suitable for fast-moving and excitable youngsters. If you are the creative type and have equally curious and motivated students, these issues can be circumvented, however. Setting up scenes for young students to look at—without adjusting the scope themselves—can certainly help. Consider looking at award-winning microscope imagery and other outstanding microscope shots to spur creative impulses.

Best for groups: OMAX-MD82ES10 

SEE IT

Specs

• Style: Compound
• Magnification: 40X – 2000X
• Included activities: No

Pros

• Built-in 1.3MP USB camera
• Easy to connect software
• Very solid slide grip
• High longevity in use cases

Cons

• Optional oil immersion capabilities are complex

The OMAX-MD82ES10 is a bi-focal compound microscope with a secondary viewing pattern—accessible through the 1.3MP camera that exports imagery through USB. This gives large groups of students of all capabilities a chance to simultaneously look at the same field of view. That can mean trusted students taking turns finding things in a microscope and being able to share what they see with each other in real-time or a teacher-led activity that lets students of all capabilities share in on the excitement. Furthermore, individual students can copy and save imagery and videos on the secondary view, allowing them to share their findings with the world.

Another point about this microscope is its build and construction. Take its slide-holding mechanism, with squared-off edges that grip and secure slides snuggly. Compared to less form-fitting mechanisms, there will be considerably fewer fears of slides popping up and tapping the lens, as well as less frustration when changing slides. You’ll also appreciate dual-sided fine focusing, maximizing comfort for right- and left-handed users.

We do think that for many students (and even teachers), the thought of using oil immersion microscopy—a very advanced technique and a capability included on this scope—may be rightfully intimidating. The good news is that getting quality shots does not require its usage, and the capability is there for you when (and if) you eventually want to try it.

Best for active students: AmScope Student Forward Binocular Stereo Microscope

SEE IT

Specs

• Style: Stereo
• Magnification: 10X – 60X
• Included activities: No

Pros

• Stereo microscope usable by younger students
• Higher magnification than many stereo scopes
• Easy-to-use design

Cons

• Cannot see cells, etc.

When we think of microscopes, we often think of compound microscopes, which can be problematic for students. Their lenses are very close to the subject, so small mistakes can ruin them easily. It can also be very difficult to find interesting things with them.

Enter the stereo microscope. These microscopes are designed for looking up close and seeing new details on full objects. Typically only getting about 50X magnification, max, these microscopes are great for revealing the finer details of rocks, bugs, and more. This AmScope student stereo microscope can get up to 60X zoom, quite better than others. It also has a lengthy distance from subject to lens, meaning an excited or shaky student is unlikely to damage the lens while putting something into frame.

We highly recommend a microscope like this for examining specimens from nature hikes, studying plants, and more biological research. The binocular eyepiece setup will also allow students to lean into the microscope more—holding your head properly at a microscope is more difficult than you might expect—without hiring their faces.

Best splurge: Accu-Scope EXM-150-MS-DF

SEE IT

Specs

• Style: Compound
• Magnification: Up to 400X
• Included activities: No

Pros

• Student-proof design protects lenses
• Darkfield option increases visibility
• Cordless LED lighting

Cons

• Expensive

One of the biggest fears surrounding finding the best microscopes for students is the possibility of them messing up the lenses. It happens to fully trained adults in absent-minded moments of haphazardly switching from far to near focus, so imagine the possibilities for error in our youngest scientists!

This Accu-Scope microscope helps prevent this issue by including a pre-set focus stop to help students avoid hitting the lens. Of course, it won’t completely prevent the problem, and students should still be properly trained in how to increase focus—both for the sake of this scope and potential future ones they encounter—but the added safety barrier certainly helps.

Another feature that makes this our premium pick (its main downside is that, at $400, it is expensive) is the darkfield switch. This method of microscope usage greatly increases contrast on the edges of cells and other objects, making it easier to see boundaries.

Best budget: National Geographic STEM Kit

SEE IT

Specs

• Style: Compound
• Magnification: 40X – 400X
• Included activities: Yes

Pros

• Has a great included kit
• Very affordable
• Entertaining presentation

Cons

• Cheap construction

Not all students are ready for an intense simulation of the laboratory. Additionally, not all students will dedicate serious time to the art of using the scope. For the science-interested but not dedicated, this kit is what you want. It’s the right price for a weekend or even a fun week. If your student continues with it, that’s great. If they don’t, it’s no harm, no foul. You know where your student lies on this spectrum.

It’s got a great kit with included activities and a fun, lighthearted guide to go with it. The construction of the microscope is similarly simple and non-intimidating. It’s brightly colored, soft, and forgoes a lot of the complexities of other scopes on the list. While its plastic construction won’t exactly give it the longevity to make it a hand-me-down, it will be easy for young people to use, even heavily, without fears of trouble. This is a microscope that young (but still responsible) individuals can use and make their own without excessive family worry over damaging expensive lenses. In other words, it is perfect as a gift for the budding scientist near you.

What to consider before buying microscopes for students

Microscopes are complex. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Here’s a guide on what you should expect and how to choose a reasonable microscope for students:

Age suitability

In many ways, this comes at your discretion before buying a microscope. Not all students (or even parents) have the patience to use a highly detailed microscope with the care it requires. Finding interesting things, even in pond water at 400X+ zoom, takes patience and a careful hand.

Throughout the above, we’ve attempted to give you a glimpse at what you and your student child (or student group, should you be a teacher) might be able to accomplish with a given microscope. If the activities supplied seem outside the scope of what the student or student group can accomplish on a fundamental level, that microscope can be put in your “pass” pile.

Magnification level

The first thing to know about microscope magnification is that a higher magnification level is not always better. This goes doubly for students who—if given proper guidance—can find excitement at all magnification levels. Avoid the temptation to summarize microscopes as “cell viewing devices” only. A student envisioning a world of gladiatorial amoeba battles will become instantly disappointed with anything less.

Here is what to expect at various microscope levels, as well as target tasks that you can expect to accomplish reasonably:

Under 50X, we will begin to see things just beyond the border of what the eye can normally see. Here, your students can understand the surface of normal objects better. Great investigations here include looking at printed text, looking at the veins and stomata of a leaf up close, and seeing insects clearly up close.

By 100X, individual cells and pollen can be seen, though it will definitely feel like a “bird’s eye view” of sorts. Here, you can observe how many cells are in a small area of one pond’s water to another. Do you expect there to be a higher density of cells observable in a spot of pond water or tap water left out overnight? Can you find cells in your saliva? Onion cells look particularly good at this level.

If you get to 400X, you can observe cells up close and even see their insides. What structures can you observe, and how can they move? This is the stage where you can see amoeba, though you should be warned that observed cells will likely be dead or die quickly after being observed in a slide under the heat of a microscope’s lamp.

Of course, you can get magnifications beyond these, but these three levels are fairly standard for student microscopes. Remember, there is no best magnification level; there are just different magnification levels that are best for different jobs. For example, you wouldn’t want the highest resolution microscope, which can see atoms, for looking at cells.

Microscope types and control

One of the first choices in your microscope-picking journey will be the type of microscope. There are many types of professionally used microscopes, but for the purposes of student microscopes, you can broadly separate them into two categories: stereo microscopes and compound microscopes.

Stereo microscopes are an oft-overlooked style of microscope that are particularly suitable for students who lack refined motor skills and advanced self-control. They feature a single, wide lens that towers far above the subject. Control often involves moving the subject and adjusting the (usually below 50X) zoom level, with little else. Since the lens stays far above the subject, the odds of damaging it are much lower, and reasonably well-behaved students can be trusted with the microscope after adult preparation and instruction.

Compound microscopes and other microscopes with a dual-lens approach are invariably cooler to use. They allow for higher magnifications, after all. Unfortunately, they also require more complex skills to use, with the lens approaching the subject directly. Should the lens become scratched, it can become completely ruined. This can occur by switching a shorter lens to a longer lens without pulling away from the subject first or accidentally moving the quick-moving coarse adjustment when you meant to use the fine-adjustment knob or even panning. In schools—including college classrooms—it isn’t uncommon to make students pass an easy test to verify their knowledge of a compound microscope before using it.

Price

Given enough technology, your journey to peer into the world of microcosms can stretch to infinitesimally small places. Much the same, it seems that more and more microscope technologies can bring with them infinitely high prices.

For student microscopes, this isn’t the way.

While price points you’re willing to pay are personal, you should be able to find the best student microscope for your family or small group for the price of any other modern tech gadget, such as a 3D printer or laptop computer.

The prices of the student microscopes above vary widely. If you’re a family buying a microscope for an individual student, gauge their level of interest and stick-to-it-iveness and buy accordingly.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best microscopes for students

• Best overall: AmScope M150C-I
• Best for groups: OMAX-MD82ES10 
• Best for active students: AmScope Student Forward Binocular Stereo Microscope
• Best splurge: Accu-Scope EXM-150-MS-DF
• Best budget: National Geographic STEM Kit

The preceding microscopes will be able to help your individual student or student group on their first explorations into the world of the microscopic (and potentially beyond). They are designed to encourage creativity and promote skill in the reasonable exercises that most entering scientists will need in a career in microscopy. Toss in one of the best telescopes for kids and you’ll have both ends of the curiosity spectrum covered, equipping your student with a broader understanding of the world(s)!

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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A green sea turtle believed to be up to 95 years young was given a clean bill of health this week. Myrtle the ancient green sea turtle has been at Boston’s New England Aquarium for more than 50 years and shows no signs of slowing down, despite being in the upper levels of her life expectancy.

[Related: Endangered sea turtles build hundreds of nests on the Outer Banks.]

Turtles and tortoises are well known for their longevity. Depending on the species, they can live anywhere from 25 to 200 years. In December 2023, a tortoise named Jonathan celebrated his 191st birthday and is currently the oldest known tortoise. According to Guinness World Records, the previous oldest known tortoise was a radiated tortoise named Tu’i Malila. British explorer Captain James Cook presented Tu’i Malila to the royal family of Tonga sometime around around 1777. Tu’i Malila died in 1965 at the estimated age of 188.

Myrtle still has a ways to go to live up to the standards set by Jonathan and Tu’i Malila, so physical exams like this one can help veterinarians keep her healthy. To perform this semi-annual reptilian check-up, veterinarians first had to get Myrtle into an underwater crate and hoist all 500-plus pounds of her from her home in the aquarium’s Giant Ocean Tank. Once she was safely removed from the tank, a team of trained veterinarians, vet technicians, and aquarists drew blood, checked her flippers, and made sure her mouth, nose, and eyes were all working properly. She then received an ultrasound, hopped on the scale, and was returned to her tank. 

All of this was done while the aquarium was open to visitors, who assured onlookers that the veterinarians were trained professionals safe from Myrtle’s powerful jaws. Her serrated teeth are  likely strong enough to crush grass and some small hard shelled organisms.

According to ocean tank manager Mike O’Neill, she is “in robust condition,” despite her age. Myrtle is thought to be up to 95 years old, which would place her just beyond the upper boundaries of the species’ longevity. 

“There’s every reason to believe Myrtle will stick around for years to come,” O’Neill told the Associated Press. “She is iconic. One of the really special things we see is parents with their kids who say, ‘This is Myrtle, she has been here since when I was a kid.’ She has this multigenerational impact, which is really special.”

Since first arriving from an aquarium in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1970, Myrtle has been visited by roughly 50 million patrons. According to the New England Aquarium, she has gotten quite used to humans in that time and enjoyed having her schell scratched and eats up to six and a half pounds of food per day. She currently shares her space with tankmates Carolina and Retreat. These loggerhead sea turtles are about half her age and size. The loggerheads also received physicals and are also doing well, according to O’Neill.   

[Related: Safely share the beach with endangered sea turtles this summer.]

The second-largest species of sea turtle, green sea turtles live in tropical and subtropical oceans all over the world. The United States is home to six species of native sea turtles–green, hawksbill, Kemp’s ridley, leatherback, loggerhead, and olive ridley. They primarily feast upon algae and seagrass. 

All six sea turtle species in the US are protected by the Endangered Species Act, with green sea turtles listed as endangered and decreasing in population by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recommends reducing marine debris, not releasing balloons that often end up polluting the ocean, leaving turtle nests alone, and keeping these areas dark at night as some small steps to better protect sea turtles. 

The post Myrtle the Turtle ‘in robust condition’ at age 95 appeared first on Popular Science.

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Our planet is in the Milky Way’s suburbs—think of a quaint town in New Jersey, with the heart of Manhattan as the galactic center. However, instead of Central Park, the main attraction of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*. This black hole is so large that it weighs a few million times our sun’s mass. In that galactic center, stars are packed much closer together than in the sun’s neighborhood, similar to rush hour commuters in the Big Apple, flinging about in their speedy orbits around the black hole. 

These stars are packed so tightly that they sometimes collide—an event that simply doesn’t happen in our more spacious part of the galaxy. New research presented this month at the American Physical Society’s annual meeting and submitted to The Astrophysical Journal uses computer simulations to show that these collisions are actually key to explaining some of the more mysterious phenomena of the galactic center.

Since the Nobel-prize-winning discovery of our galaxy’s black hole in 2020, astronomers have been studying the center of our galaxy as a way to understand galaxies across the universe.

“The centers of other galaxies are too far away for us to observe in detail, but we can learn about these environments by studying the center of the Milky Way,” explains Sanaea Rose, lead author and astronomer at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.

So far, astronomers have often been surprised by what they find at the center of the galaxy. For example, there is a population of particularly young, bright stars there that shouldn’t exist. The forces from the black hole are simply too strong for new stars to be born in that environment. On the other hand, there should be a bunch of older red giant stars in the galactic center, but they’re mysteriously missing. Plus, there are weird, yet-unexplained “puffy balls of dust and gas” as Rose describes them, known as G objects. “What we try to do is explain these unusual findings with stellar interactions, which are common in the dense star cluster,” she adds.

“Very close to the supermassive black hole, collisions of stars are so common that they become one of the strongest forces shaping the lives of stars,” says Morgan MacLeod, a co-author of this research and astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 

These stars move at extremely high speeds: thousands of kilometers each second, compared to the leisurely 30 km/s our un trots through the galaxy. When two speeding stars run into each other head-on, they can destroy each other in the process like a car crash.

But, there are even stranger things that can happen according to Rose’s simulations. Some stars in the very closest regions—about ⅓ of a light year from Sagittarius A*—lose only their outer layers in these collisions, creating a population of strange, lower-mass stars at the galactic center and destroying most of the red giant stars astronomers expected to see. Ohio State University astronomer Alexander Stephan, who is not affiliated with the research team, noted that this work therefore explains the “crucial issue of the ‘missing giants’ in the galactic center.” These collisions might also be responsible for the mysterious G objects, their work suggests.

Outside of the closest ⅓ of a light year, the collisions aren’t quite so catastrophic. Two stars can actually merge together to make a huge star that “can masquerade as young-looking stars, even though they formed from an older population,” explains Rose. “Collisions may therefore explain the presence of young-seeming, massive stars very near the supermassive black hole.”

This bizarre part of the galaxy is certainly nothing like our Goldilocks-perfect home on Earth, but work like this brings us closer to understanding how invigorating collisions might explain some of the strange things we see in  exotic environment of the galactic center.

The post Youth-stealing stars could explain ‘missing giants’ at the Milky Way’s center appeared first on Popular Science.

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What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

Heads up: The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week has been nominated for a Webby! You can vote to help us win the Webby People’s Voice Award. Click here to vote by April 18! 

FACT: ADHD may have evolved to make us better at picking berries 

By Rachel Feltman

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania recently released a study on the potential evolutionary benefits of ADHD. They analyzed data from 457 adults who played an online foraging game, where the objective was to collect as many berries as possible within an eight minute span.

Players could choose to either keep collecting berries from the bushes in their original location, or move to a new patch. (By the way, this sounds an awful lot like a game I used to play on Neopets!) Moving would cost them a brief time out, and there was no guarantee that the patch would have as many berries as their current location, but the number of berries you could get from each bush went down each time you foraged it again. 

Along with the game, subjects also took a survey designed to assess whether they had symptoms of ADHD. This didn’t constitute a full or formal diagnosis, but it screened for traits like having difficulty concentrating. 

When the researchers compared the survey results with the game play stats, they found that people with ADHD symptoms played differently—and more effectively—than their peers. They were more likely to move on to another bush, and collected an average of 602 berries compared with 521. 

I probably don’t need to tell you that this isn’t exactly a perfect model for actual foraging. The researchers do hope to do a similar experiment in the future involving in-person foraging, where they’d use people with formal ADHD diagnoses as their experimental subjects, but that would obviously be a much more complicated experiment to run. 

But this isn’t the first research to suggest that ADHD traits and other types of neurodiversity might have evolved to help our ancestors survive. Other studies have examined the differences in how people with ADHD search for information or objects and found that we spend more time in the “explore” phase of foraging versus the “exploit” phase. There’s even ongoing research to suggest that kids with ADHD are less susceptible to inattention bias.

In 2008, researchers found that members of a nomadic group in Kenya who had gene mutations associated with ADHD were in better health than average, while those same mutations were associated with malnourishment in closely related people who lived as farmers. There’s a broad idea known as the hunter versus farmer hypothesis that covers this phenomenon. The idea is that the hyperfocus associated with ADHD was actually a really useful trait back when humans spent their days hunting and foraging. It’s much less useful useful in agrarian and industrialized life. One 1998 study found that adults with self-reported ADHD were much better able to postpone eating, sleeping, and other personal needs to absorb themselves in an urgent task, like a last-minute deadline. That’s a mindset that would have come in handy for unpredictable food acquisition, like the sudden appearance of a herd of mammoths or an unexpected bounty of berries.

Some researchers have even suggested that sugar can trigger hyperactivity symptoms because the fructose makes our brains think we’ve come across a foraging bounty and should search for more berries.

While there’s a lot more research to be done on this subject, this study is an important reminder that our current sense of what’s “good” and what’s “normal” is pretty arbitrary—and that reframing these ideas can unlock really cool insights into why humans actually are the way they are. And at least according to some foragers, these findings are no surprise at all. 

FACT: Venus is Earth’s evil twin

By Knimbley

Join me as I embark on a fascinating journey into the depths of Venus’s mysteries. From Elden Ring’s DLC to Venus’s mythological allure and its longstanding status as a scientific enigma, my contribution to this week’s episode dances between realms of curious tangents, genderfluid anatomy, and fantasy. As we explore Venus’s dual nature and delve into the origins of stories both factual and fictional, listeners are invited to ponder the cosmic wonders that await us beyond Earth’s confines (and hopefully are unveiled within the Shadow of the Erdtree). With warmth and perhaps too much matcha, we navigate the intersection of myth and science, embracing the magic of exploration.

If you’re hungry for some more Venus-related science after this week’s episode, check out NASA’s content on the subject:

FACT: People think this lotion attracts spiders en masse—but the truth is more complicated than that 

By Jess Boddy

At the end of last year, people were all in a tizzy because of the lotion spiders. Yes, the lotion spiders. Someone left a review on Sephora’s website about a specific kind of lotion: the Delícia Drench body butter made by the company Sol de Janeiro. Here’s that review.

This wasn’t the only review that said this lotion attracted spiders—there were a handful. And then, the unspeakable happened… People posted the reviews to Reddit. Word of lotion spiders spread like wildfire. Folks started doing their own home “experiments,” putting the lotion on tissues and watching to see if spiders appeared. Pretty much everyone came to the same conclusion: this lotion attracts wolf spiders. 

However, scientists aren’t so sure. Listen to this week’s episode to find out the scientific truth about this potentially spider-attracting beauty product—and if there are others to avoid if you have a fear of arachnids. (Spoiler: It’s complicated.)

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Best overall		Sega Toys Homestar Flux		SEE IT	Get a scientifically accurate recreation of the night sky at home.
Best for adults		BlissLights Sky Lite 2.0		SEE IT	Skip the kid stuff without breaking the bank.
Best budget		Infmetry Star Projector		SEE IT	This star light is designed ofor gaming rooms, home theaters,

Beyond a few bright celestial objects, the rise of light pollution has made it difficult for most people to experience a genuinely starry night sky—and that’s where star projectors come in. If artificial lights have obscured your view of the Milky Way, these compact devices provide a fun and comfortable way to observe the cosmos. All you need is a dark room with a power outlet and you’re ready to bask in the wonders of the universe. Many also function as night lights or pattern projectors that can spruce up a room without the celestial theme. While nothing can replace the awe-inspiring feeling of seeing millions of stars in person, the best star projectors can still leave you transfixed.

• Best scientifically accurate: Sega Toys Homestar Flux
• Best portable: NEWSEE Northern Lights Star Projector
• Best for adults: BlissLights Sky Lite
• Best for kids: Gdnzduts Galaxy Projector
• Best budget: Infmetry Star Projector

How we chose the best star projectors

I’ve been fortunate to visit areas less affected by light pollution, so I know what it’s like to gaze upon the grandeur of our galaxy. As an editor at TechnoBuffalo, I visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., to learn about the Mars rover. I also took a guided tour of the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, where I saw enormous satellites used to communicate with faraway spacecraft. Over the last 10 years, I’ve written about gadgets and space for outlets like CNN Underscored, TechnoBuffalo, and Popular Science, and this guide, in a way, allows me to write about both. If you’re searching for a projector for movie night, you’re in the wrong place (though we do have a guide for the best projectors, the best home theater projectors, and the best outdoor projectors). But if you enjoy the stars of the sky as much as you do the stars of the screen, read on.

The best star projectors: Reviews & Recommendations

Whether you’re looking to liven up your space with colorful lights or follow in the footsteps of Carl Sagan, a star projector is a novel way to explore the cosmos. When making our picks, we found a balance between fantastical projectors, options for kids and adults, and a more scientifically accurate model that’s great for those who love astronomy.

Best overall: Sega Toys Homestar Flux

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: Sega’s Homestar Flux features the most scientifically accurate images out of all the star projectors we picked.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 6.3 x 6.3 x 5.9 inches (LWH)
• Weight: 1.36 pounds
• Power: USB

Pros 

• Supports multiple discs
• Projects up to 60,000 stars at once
• Great educational tool

Cons 

• Expensive

Sega’s Homestar Flux is the closest thing to a planetarium if you’re a fan of astronomy and intend to use your star projector as an educational tool. It can project up to 60,000 stars at once and covers a circle with a 106-inch diameter. Unlike the other star projectors on this list, Sega’s model supports interchangeable discs, allowing owners to explore different parts of the universe in incredible detail. The Homestar Flux comes with two discs, the Northern Hemisphere and the Northern Hemisphere with constellation lines; it also supports additional discs that feature the Andromeda Galaxy, the southern hemisphere, and more. 

These discs contain data from different missions of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the United States Naval Observatory (USNO). While Sega’s projector is pricey, it features the most scientifically accurate experience and is a must-have for would-be astronomers.

Best portable: NEWSEE Northern Lights Star Projector

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: NEWSEE’s Northern Lights Star Projector lets you take the magic of the stars with you everywhere.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 4.7 x 4.7 x 4.8 inches (LWH)
• Weight: 1.15 pounds
• Power: USB-C

Pros 

• Battery powered
• 360-degree projection
• White noise mode
• Bluetooth streaming

Cons 

• Don’t expect high-fidelity audio

NEWSEE’s Northern Lights Star Projector is the only model we’re recommending that can be taken anywhere. The battery-powered projector can run for a couple of hours before needing to be recharged—though because it has a USB-C port, you can plug it into a portable charger to extend its life. The projector sits on a stand and can be rotated so that you can find the best angle for your room. This flexibility comes in handy because you may be using the projector in multiple rooms because of its portability.

You can program NEWSEE’s projector to display one of four different star patterns, and play five different white noises. This star projector can even be used as a Bluetooth speaker for playing any music from your digital library. However, you shouldn’t get your hopes up where audio fidelity is concerned—consider this a fun bonus feature. If you want to take a star projector to a friend’s place or on vacation, this is the one to grab.

Best for adults: BlissLights Sky Lite

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: The Sky Lite from BlissLights will help you set the mood with the right lighting.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 5.95 x 2.91 x 5.95 (LWH)
• Weight: 1.68
• Power: AC adapter

Pros 

• Adjustable brightness
• Tilting base
• App controlled

Cons 

• Projector design is easy to tip over

The Sky Lite from BlissLights is an excellent option for adults because it offers brightness controls, and several lighting effects, making it easy to set the proper mood. While star projectors generally become the center of attention in whatever room they’re in, the Sky Lite is excellent as complementary lighting, casting colorful auroras during dinner, movie nights, and parties. Additionally, the Sky lite 2.0 supports a rotation feature and a shutoff timer so that you can have your magical night under the stars before nodding off to bed. 

Best for kids: Gdnzduts Galaxy Projector

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: This galaxy projector features brightness controls and a shutoff timer, plus it doubles as a colorful night light.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 6.45 x 6.45 x 4.92 (LWH)
• Weight: 0.61 pounds
• Power: USB

Pros 

• Built-in speaker
• Shutoff timer
• Brightness controls

Cons 

• Doesn’t show constellations

This simple galaxy projector features 21 lighting effects, a shutoff timer, brightness controls, and doubles as a night light. That way, you can find the right effect you like, adjust the brightness, and set a timer before bed. You can also toggle the lasers on and off, turning off the stars and letting the nebula-like effect lull you to sleep. The Galaxy Projector also comes with a remote, making it easy for kids to operate. Whether you want to inspire your kid’s imagination or keep them feeling safe with a night light, the Galaxy Projector is an excellent choice.

Best budget: Infmetry Star Projector

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: Infmetry’s Star Projector offers an array of features at an affordable price.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 7.1 x 7.1 x 7.5 inches (LWH)
• Weight: 1.37 pounds
• Power: USB

Pros 

• Affordable
• Five brightness modes
• Shutoff timer

Cons

• No nebula or aurora features

Infantry’s Star Projector casts 360 degrees of light through a precut dome, creating a night sky-like effect. This model also supports five brightness modes, a breathing mode, and four colors (white, yellow, blue, and green). There’s also a shutoff timer, so you can fall asleep with the projector on and wake up with it off. It’s not nearly as captivating as the other options on this list, but for the price, it’s a fun way to introduce someone to the wonders of the universe.

What to consider when buying the best star projectors

Generally, cheap star projectors are novelties that emit a mix of colorful swirling LED lights and class 2 lasers, which are low-power visible lasers—the same type used in laser pointers. While most models aren’t scientifically accurate, they provide a fanciful escape and can offer a calming experience. However, if you’re serious about astronomy and willing to spend more, you can find a star projector that can turn your room into a personal planetarium.

Most models we researched offer features like brightness and color controls, image rotation, and an automatic shut-off timer. We found picking the right star projector is more about finding the experience that matches your mood. Are you looking for the cosmic color of nebulae? What about scientifically accurate constellations? Whatever you’re after, there’s a star projector for everyone.

Projection type

You’d think that a star projector only projects, well, stars. But many of them can cover the broad cosmic spectrum and mimic everything from nebulae to auroras to constellations. As we mentioned, picking the right one is about capturing your interest and imagination. A projector that can cast a nebula or aurora is an excellent choice if you want to create a calming environment before going to sleep. A star projector with more scientifically accurate images is ideal for studying and educational use.

Brightness control

A good star projector uses an LED bulb and offers multiple brightness settings. While star projectors are most effective in a dark room, the models that project nebula and aurora make for great complementary lighting, such as during a party or movie night. They also make for good night lights and can help create a calming environment that encourages rest.

Color settings

In addition to adjusting brightness, most star projectors offer different color settings, similar to smart light bulbs. Users can create a scene that fits their mood through advanced color settings and change it with the press of a button. A green aurora may be suitable for calm and tranquility, while yellow may be ideal for happiness and optimism. Most star projectors allow color adjustments through a controller or smartphone app and support millions of color options.

Still vs. rotating

Star projectors generally offer different viewing modes: still and rotating. A projector that operates in still mode will cast light onto a surface and remain static. A projector with a rotating feature will put on a more dynamic light show by slowly rotating the lights. Many of the models we looked at are capable of switching between still and rotating modes.

Extra features

Beyond simply projecting lights onto a wall, some star projectors include extra features like white noise, app support, and shutoff timers. Some models can even be synced with your music so that you can put on a cosmic light show. While these features aren’t necessary, they make specific models more appealing, especially if you intend to use a star projector in a child’s room, because it can act as a night light and white noise machine and then shut off after a few hours.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best star projectors

• Best scientifically accurate: Sega Toys Homestar Flux
• Best portable: NEWSEE Northern Lights Star Projector
• Best for adults: BlissLights Sky Lite
• Best for kids: Gdnzduts Galaxy Projector
• Best budget: Infmetry Star Projector

Star projectors are a fun and affordable way to add bright, colorful lights to your bedroom. That said, most are nothing more than novelties and put on light shows that vaguely resemble nebulae and auroras. If you’re searching for something with more scientifically accurate imagery, you can find some excellent options if you don’t mind spending more money. Better yet, we recommend traveling to a place unaffected by light pollution and experiencing the feeling of seeing millions of stars in person.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

The post The best star projectors for 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

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New data indicates a once-in-a-generation eclipse is a pretty surefire way to convince people to finally log off the internet—at least for a few minutes. According to estimates from cloud-computing provider Cloudflare, yesterday’s online traffic dropped between 40-60 percent week-to-week within the April 8 eclipse’s path of totality. In aggregate terms for the US, “bytes delivered traffic dropped by 8 percent and request traffic by 12 percent as compared to the previous week” around 2:00pm EST.

According to NASA, yesterday’s path of totality included a roughly 110-mile-wide stretch of land as it passed across Mazatlán, Mexico, through 13 states within the continental US, and finally over Montreal, Canada. In America alone, an estimated 52 million people lived within the eclipse’s path of totality. And it certainly seems like a lot of them put down their phones and laptops to go outside and have a look.

[Related: What a total eclipse looks like from space.]

As The New York Times highlights, Vermont saw the largest mass log-off, with an estimated 60-percent drop in internet usage compared to the week prior. South Carolinians, meanwhile, appeared to be the least compelled to take a computer break, since their traffic only dipped by around four percent.

Interestingly, you can also glean a bit about weather conditions during the eclipse from taking a look at Cloudflare’s internet usage map of the US. While most of the states within the event’s trajectory showcase pretty sizable downturns, Texas only experienced a 15 percent reduction. But given a large part of the Lone Star State endured severe weather conditions, it’s likely many people remained inside—maybe even online to livestream the views of the eclipse elsewhere.

[Related: The full sensory experience of an eclipse totality, from inside a convertible in Texas.]

So what were people doing if they weren’t posting through the eclipse? Well, snapping photos of the moment is always pretty popular, while NASA oversaw multiple volunteer research projects.

Judging from Cloudflare’s data, it didn’t take long for people to log back online once the eclipse ended above them. Usage appeared to spike back to pretty standard levels almost exactly in time with the event’s ending in any given state. No doubt most people rushed to post their reactions, photos, and videos… but maybe yesterday will still serve as a nice reminder that there’s a lot more to see when you take a break and go outside for a bit.

The post Internet use dipped in the eclipse’s path of totality appeared first on Popular Science.

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Dolphins and other toothed whales–or Odontocetes–use their heads to create sounds that help them communicate, navigate, and hunt in their murky marine world. These sometimes vocal-fry-like sounds reveal information about their murky marine world that is critical for survival. Some new genetic analysis suggests that the collections of fatty tissues that enable echolocation in toothed whales may have evolved from their skull muscles and bone marrow,changing how these animals eat and sense the world around them. The findings are described in a study published in the April 2024 issue of the journal Gene. 

Toothed whales include numerous dolphin species as well as orcas, sperm whales, belugas, and narwhals. Echolocation produced by a bulbous mass of fat tissue inside of their heads called the melon. 

Alongside of the jawbone of dolphins and toothed whales is a group of sound producing extramandibular fat bodies (EMFB). Another set of acoustic fat deposits called the intramandibular fat bodies (IMFB) are located inside the jawbone. The evolution of the melon, the extramandibular, and intramandibular fat bodies was critical for echolocation to develop in these marine mammals. However, little is known about how these fatty tissues themselves originated genetically. 

“Toothed whales have undergone significant degenerations and adaptations to their aquatic lifestyle,” Hayate Takeuchi, a study co-author and PhD student at Hokkaido University in Japan,  said in a statement. 

One of these adaptations was the partial loss of their sense of smell and taste, alongside the gain of echolocation. To look closer at this and other adaptations at a genetic level, the team from Hokkaido University studied DNA sequences of genes that are expressed in these acoustic fat bodies. They measured the gene expressions in harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) and Pacific white-sided dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens). 

[Related: This dolphin ancestor looked like a cross between Flipper and Moby Dick.]

They found that the genes which are normally associated with muscle function and development were active in the melon and EMFB’s on the outside of the jawbone. There was also evidence of an evolutionary connection between this fat and a muscle called the masseter muscle. In humans, the masseter muscle connects the lower jawbone to the cheekbones and is one of the the key muscles used in chewing.

“This study has revealed that the evolutionary tradeoff of masticatory muscles for the EMFB—between auditory and feeding ecology—was crucial in the aquatic adaptation of toothed whales,” study co-author and genome scientist and evolutionary biologist Takashi Hayakawa said in a statement. “It was part of the evolutionary shift away from chewing to simply swallowing food, which meant the chewing muscles were no longer needed.”

[Related: We finally know how baleen whales make noise.]

When the team analyzed the gene expression in the intramandibular fat on the inside of the jawbone, they found active genes related to some elements of immune response and regulation of a group of white blood cells that fight infection called T cells. The team believes that this is due to its proximity to bone marrow–which helps produce T cells–and requires more study.

The team also credited the Stranding Network Hokkaido as another important aspect of the research, as the samples used in this study were collected by them. The organization has  collected specimens of stranded whales along the seashore and river mouth in Hokkaido. Performing necropsies on stranded marine mammals have been critical for sampling and research to learn more about the potential causes of strandings and death, but also anatomy, physiology, and evolution. 

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Worm bodies might not seem all that interesting. However, a closer look can also reveal how some worms use extra appendages to move through the water like “magic carpets,” while others detach their butts to procreate. Scientists have now discovered that a type of bristle worm is equipped with a complex vision system dominated by two really big eyes.

The Vanadis bristle worm’s eyes can potentially use ultraviolet (UV) light to communicate and find mates and/or food, which has not been well documented or studied in nature. The worms could also be among the only known bioluminescent animals that use UV light to glow. The findings are described in a study published April 8 in the journal Current Biology. 

Meet Vanadis bristle worms

The Vanadis bristle worms in this study are found around the island of Ponza, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Naples, Italy. It is a member of a family of large-eyed bristle worms called polychaeta. They are about six inches long and primarily eat plankton, algae, and bits of organic matter from dead organisms. As a pair, the worm’s eyes weigh about 20 times as much as the rest of the worm’s head, and appear like two giant red orbs are strapped to its body. If human eyes are as proportionally large, we would need to carry around roughly 220 extra pounds.  Since the worms are nocturnal and disappear when the sun is out, scientists wondered what they do with their eyes after and what they are used for.

[Related: How do animals see the world?]

In the study, a team from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, Lund University in Sweden, and Tuscia University in Italy examined three species of bristle worms that they collected by hand in shallow water. They brought them back to a lab, where they analyzed their eyes in close detail. The team found that Vanadis’ eyesight is better and more advanced than previously believed. Its eyes can see very small objects and track their movements, despite having a more simple nervous system.

A ‘secret language’–for mating

The team is still trying to figure out how they evolved such sharp eyesight. The worms’ bodies  are transparent, except for their eyes that need to register light to work properly. This means that they can’t be inherently transparent, so their eyes becoming visible must come with some evolutionary trade-offs. Some aspects about having a transparent body with visible eyes must have had evolutionary benefits that outweigh the consequences.

What the worms gain remains unclear partially because they do not come out during the day, when eyes typically work best. 

“No one has ever seen the worm during the day, so we don’t know where it hides. So, we cannot rule out that its eyes are used during the day as well,” University of Copenhagen marine and neurologist Anders Garm said in a statement. “What we do know is that its most important activities, like finding food and mating, occur at night. So, it is likely that this is when its eyes are important.”

[Related: Microscopic worms use electricity to ride bumblebees like EVs.]

The team believes that part of the explanation is that these worms can see different wavelengths of light than humans can. Like many birds, reindeer, and other more complex organisms, the worm’s vision can see UV light that is invisible to the human eye. This could indicate that the purpose of the eyes is to see bioluminescent signals in the pitch-black night time sea. Bioluminescence occurs when organisms can produce light on their own. Glow-worms are a famous example that use certain chemicals to produce light within their bodies. 

“We have a theory that the worms themselves are bioluminescent and communicate with each other via light. If you use normal blue or green light as bioluminescence, you also risk attracting predators,” said Garm. “But if instead, the worm uses UV light, it will remain invisible to animals other than those of its own species. Therefore, our hypothesis is that they’ve developed sharp UV vision so as to have a secret language related to mating.”

The worms also may need to be on the lookout for UV bioluminescent prey. Regardless of what it is used for, the Vanadis worm could become the first animal proven to naturally create UV bioluminescence to communicate, according to Garm.

Robotics research and evolutionary debates

The team has begun working with robotics researchers from the University of Southern Denmark to investigate how to better understand the mechanism behind these eyes well enough to translate it into technology.

“Together with the robotics researchers, we are working to understand how animals with brains as simple as these can process all of the information that such large eyes are likely able to collect,” said Garm. “This suggests that there are super smart ways to process information in their nervous system. And if we can detect these mechanisms mathematically, they could be integrated into computer chips and used to control robots.”

Beyond robotics, their eyes could also help settle a heavy debate around evolutionary theory. Did eyes only evolve once into every form we know today or have they arisen several times in evolutionary history?

Vanadis has eyes that are built relatively simply, but have very advanced functions. They have simultaneously evolved in only a few million years–a relatively short span of time in terms of evolution. These worm eyes likely developed independently of more complex eyes like humans, and could help prove that the development of vision is possible over a relatively short time.

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Darkness, slivers of sunshine, and crescent shadows: The 2024 total solar eclipse put on quite a show. Down here on Earth, millions of people witnessed the fascinating sight of the moon passing in front of the sun. But a select few people had the chance to experience the eclipse from a different perspective: space.

The current residents of the International Space Station watched not only the actual eclipse, but what happened to Earth as the eclipse occurred. In a video shared by NASA, you can see the ominous shadow of the moon sliding over the surface of our planet.

“I can hardly imagine a view being better than the one we have right now, but if there is one, it’s from the Space Station,” NASA’s Earth-bound livestream commentators noted.

North America will not experience another total solar eclipse until August 23, 2044.

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Human-made currency such as coins and paper bills have certainly evolved over time. Small pieces of precious metals or paper with no metal backing have changed into invisible cryptocurrencies stored on servers. For decades, numismatists–or currency experts–have puzzled over where the silver present inside some coins uncovered in England came from. The coins date back to between 660 and 750 CE, when the Anglo-Saxon world began to see a large revival of trade using silver coins. This shift broke the reliance on gold and archaeologists have uncovered about 7,000 of these silver pieces.

Now, a new noninvasive way of peering into the past may have revealed where the silver from the coins came from. It offers clues into how political changes and the rule of Charlemagne–the Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks–fueled currency changes in early medieval Europe. The findings are described in a new study published April 8in the journal Antiquity and could deepen modern understanding of the continent’s economic and political development at the time.

[Related: Benjamin Franklin used science to protect his money from counterfeiters.]

“There has been speculation that the silver came from Melle in France, or from an unknown mine, or that it could have been melted down church silver,” study co-author and University of Cambridge early medieval English historian Rory Naismith said in a statement. “But there wasn’t any hard evidence to tell us one way or the other, so we set out to find it.”

A little help from lasers

Earlier research tested other coins from a silver mine at Melle, but this new study looked at less-studied Fitzwilliam’s coins. These 49 silver pieces were minted in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France and date from 660 to 820 CE. They are housed by The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Jason Day from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences traced what elements were present in the coins in a lab. Day then used a technique called portable laser ablation. During this process, microscopic samples were collected onto Teflon filters to analyze the lead isotopes presented. This new technique pioneered by the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, combines a minimally invasive sampling with a laser and the high precision results of the more traditional methods that take samples of metals.

While the coins primarily continued silver, the amount of gold, another metal called bismuth, and other elements guided the researchers towards the silver’s previously unknown origins. The various ratios of lead isotopes in the silver coins also provided further clues to where the metals originated from. 

Byzantine silver for the masses

Twenty-nine of the coins in the study date back to 660 to 750 CE. They were minted in present-day England, France, and a cross-border cultural region in Northwestern Europe called Frisia. However, the lasers revealed very clear chemical and isotopic signatures that matched 3rd to early 7th century silver that came from the Byzantine Empire in the eastern Mediterranean.

This Byzantine silver was homogenous across the coins. No known source of European ore matches the elemental and isotopic characteristics of these early silver coins. According to the team, there is also no meaningful overlap with late Western Roman silver coins or other objects made from the metal, meaning that it was not simply recycled late Roman silver.

“These coins are among the first signs of a resurgence in the northern European economy since the end of the Roman Empire,” study co-author and University of Oxford archaeologist Jane Kershaw said in a statement. “They show deep international trade connections between what is now France, the Netherlands and England.”

The study proposes that the Byzantine silver must have made its way into Western Europe decades before it was melted down, as the late 7th century is considered part of the Dark Ages, or more accurately termed Migration Period. This was a low point in trade and diplomatic contacts as the Roman Empire ended. 

[Related: Divers recovered a treasure trove of more than 30,000 ancient, bronze coins off the Italian coast.]

“These beautiful prestige objects would only have been melted down when a king or lord urgently needed lots of cash. Something big would have been happening, a big social change,” said Kershaw. “Elites were liquidating resources and pouring more and more money into circulation. It would have had a big impact on people’s lives. There would have been more thinking about money and more activity with money involving a far larger portion of society than before.”

The team hopes to look further into how and why so much silver moved from the Byzantine Empire into Western Europe. It was potentially a mixture of trade and payments to Anglo-Saxon mercenaries serving in the Byzantine army. 

The rise of Frankish silver

The study also pinpointed a shift away from Byzantine silver to a new source of metal. They analyzed 20 coins from 750  to 820 CE and found that the silver was quite different by this time. It had lower levels of gold, which is characteristic of the silver that is mined at Melle in western France. Mining here was particularly intense during the 8th and 9th centuries.

The team believes that Melle silver permeated regional silver stocks after 750 CE and was mixed with older, higher-gold stocks, including Byzantine silver. While it was already known that Melle was an important mine at this time, what was not clear was just how quickly the site became a major silver producer. 

The study argues that this widespread suge in Melle silver was driven by Charlemagne. He is best known for uniting Western Europe by force and he took more control over how and where the coins of his kingdoms were made. The management of silver supply likely went alongside the other changes introduced by Charlemagne, his son, and grandson. These monetary changes include altering the size and thickness of coins and marking their name or image on the coins.

“I strongly suspect that Charlemagne did something similar with Melle silver,” Naismith said. “We can now say more about the circumstances under which those coins were made and how the silver was being distributed within Charlemagne’s Empire and beyond.”

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NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Heliophysics Division studies the nature of the sun and everything it touches. That includes the Earth, the atmosphere, and the magnetosphere, which is basically the planet’s force field against solar wind and radiation. As the United States amps up to a fever pitch due to today’s total solar eclipse, NASA is ground zero for the most interesting studies and history about this natural phenomenon.

Today the sun is more of a rock star than usual, with “eclipse parties” in full swing, and roadside stands selling commemorative t-shirts and cardboard viewing glasses are popping up all along the path of totality. Dr. Kelly Korreck, a heliophysicist and NASA’s eclipse lead, gave us the background on this captivating astro-event and offered tips on the best viewing areas.

We asked Dr. Korreck if watching the eclipse from a convertible (specifically, a tech-focused Audi S5 Cabriolet) would be a good idea, and she said it would be very appropriate. After all, besides safety glasses and a clear view of the sky, the only other thing you need is a great place to sit and lean your head back. 

As we waited for the clouds to clear from the sky, our photography team was a bit nervous. We got glimpses of the eclipse as the moon cast its great shadow, but would it clear? We’d soon find out.

Spoiler: It was amazing. Video: Audi

An eclipse ushers in boatloads of scientific data points

If the moon’s shadow doesn’t excite you, consider this: Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1915, but it wasn’t proven until the total solar eclipse of 1919 when Sir Arthur Eddington and his team measured the influence of the sun’s gravity on starlight.

Dr. Korreck has been fascinated by the biggest star in our universe–the sun, of course–since long before she earned her doctorate on the subject. Scientists have long used solar eclipses to make scientific discoveries, she says. Eclipses led us to the first detection of helium, for instance, and this one will continue to give scientists the opportunity to study the sun’s effect on the ionosphere. Disturbances in the ionospheric layer can cause blips in our GPS navigation systems and communications, especially radio waves.  

To that end, we tested the Audi S5’s unique Bluetooth-connected seatbelt microphones, which enable clear conversations even with the top down. Three thumbtack-sized microphones are built into the outward-facing side of the seatbelt, which makes talking to someone like a brilliant NASA heliophysicist even more interesting. We also kept an eye on the S5’s GPS system, which didn’t flinch. 

Eclipses happen about every 18 months somewhere in the world, but only in the same place every 400 to 1000 years, Dr. Korreck told us. In fact, the last total solar eclipse in Austin, Texas was more than 600 years ago, in 1397. Austin didn’t even exist back then. And the next one won’t be until 2343, long after we’re all gone. 

“Any specific town or city normally only gets an eclipse between every 400 and 1,000 years,” Dr. Korreck says. “So it’s very rare to [see one] in a specific location, but somewhere on Earth is getting this special dance, this special alignment of the planets.” 

The reason this particular total eclipse is so unusual is because it’s occurring during the period of “solar maximum,” when the sun is most active. There’s even a chance to see “streamers,” which NASA says will look like bright, pink curls or loops emanating from the sun. Heliophysicists (and the entire scientific community) are excited about this eclipse, because of the length and the intensity of the sun’s magnetic field in this period of time. 

“We’re at four and a half minutes for this eclipse,” Dr. Korreck says. “It was only two and a half minutes maximum in 2017, but it’ll be six-ish minutes in 2045. So we have more to look forward to in 20 years.” 

It’s more than just a visual event

When the moon stands between the sun and the Earth, the temperature outside can drop quickly – up to 10 degrees. I turned on the heated headrest, which blows warm air onto my neck; a welcome feature when you’re chilly. In Texas, it’s hot more often than it’s cold, so typically I’d use the cool setting to whisper cooling air instead. During an eclipse, the shroud of shadow blocking the sun erases heat quickly. So the sky goes dark, the temperature falls, and there’s even a measurable sound component. 

“We mapped the bright light of the sun to a flute sound,” Harvard astronomer Allyson Bieryla told CNN on Friday. “Then it goes to a midrange, which is a clarinet, and then during totality, it kind of goes down to a low clicking sound, and that clicking even slows down during totality.”

That doesn’t even count the chirps, croaks, whines, and other sounds of the animal and insect kingdom as they process the odd turn of light during the event. 

“I think in general, an eclipse is such a full body experience,” Dr. Korreck says. “It gets colder, the light changes, the shadow gets a bit sharper. It’s a way to really experience a celestial event more than just a visual. Take some time to really enjoy it and take advantage of the special alignment that we have.” 

As the moment of totality approached, nearby horses brayed and dogs barked, as if it were truly twilight. And then it happened: The clouds parted and the sky grew dark, the animals quieted, and a stillness blanketed the landscape. We could see solar flares peeking from behind the corona, and Venus appeared below the sun. Outside of the S5 Cabriolet, the car’s headlights and taillights cast a signature pattern. For a couple of minutes, time stood still, and then daylight crept in again. It’s something I’ll never forget.

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Today was one for the history books as a total solar eclipse crossed North America. The sky first darkened in Mazatlán, Mexico on the country’s Pacific Coast. Torreón, Mexico saw the longest totality at 4 minutes and 28 seconds. It then entered the United States through Texas and traveled through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. It entered Canada via Southern Ontario, and continued through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. The eclipse left the continental North America on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada, at 5:16 p.m. NDT. 

Here’s how the eclipse looked at various locations, from Mexico to Canada.

And if you’re wondering what the eclipse looked like from space, NASA shared the view from the International Space Station.

If you can, consider recycling or donating any used eclipse glasses. Visit Astronomers Without Borders to learn more about how you can recycle your glasses. If you are located in the path of totality, many libraries will also offer convenient eclipse glasses recycling locations. 

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Amphibians are known for their bright colors and their low and bellowing croaks that often announce when it is going to rain. Other frogs may make sounds that humans can’t even hear. These sounds are also potentially pretty violent. A study published April 4 in the journal Acta Ethologica describes how some amphibians in South America potentially emit sounds on the ultrasound spectrum to defend themselves against predators. 

Ultrasound in nature are sounds that are created at an ear-piercingly high frequency that is inaudible to the human ear. Humans can’t hear frequencies over 20 kilohertz (kHz). Ultrasound is used by some marine mammals, bats, and rodents for communication and to locate food. Some amphibian predators can also emit and hear sounds at this frequency. 

“One of our hypotheses is that the distress call is addressed to some of these, but it could also be the case that the broad frequency band is generalist in the sense that it’s supposed to scare as many predators as possible,” Ubiratã Ferreira Souza, a study co-author and ecologist at the State University of Campinas’s Institute of Biology (IB-UNICAMP) in São Paulo, Brazil, said in a statement. 

[Related: New proto-amphibian species named after Kermit the Frog.]

Another hypothesis is that this amphibian scream is meant to draw another animal to attack the predator threatening the amphibian. The leaf litter frog (Haddadus binotatus) that lives in the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest deploys this sonic tactic against potential predators, including bats, rodents, some snakes, and small primates.

In the study, a team of researchers recorded the amphibian’s distress call on two separate occasions. They used software to analyze the sound and found that it had a 7 kHz to 44 kHz. 

When emitting the distress call, the leaf litter frog makes a series of movements that are similar to defense positions. The frog raises the front of its body, opens up its mouth, and jerks its head backwards. It then will partially close its mouth and send out a sound that ranges from audible to humans (7 kHZ to 20 kHz) to an ultrasound band (20 kHz to 44 kHz) that humans can’t hear. 

“In light of the fact that amphibian diversity in Brazil is the highest in the world, with more than 2,000 species described, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that other frogs also emit sounds at these frequencies,” said study co-author and IB-UNICAMP PhD student Mariana Retuci Pontes said in a statement. 

Pontes may have discovered the use of this sonic strategy by another species accidentally. In January 2023, pontes saw a rock and an animal that was likely a Hensel’s big-headed frog (Ischnocnema henselii) in the Upper Ribeira State Tourism Park in Iporanga, São Paulo. When she tried to take a photo of the frog, she held it by the hind legs and found that the defensive moment and distress call was similar to the leaf litter frog. Pontes also noticed that a landhead pit viper (Bothrops jararaca) was only a few feet away, which she believes confirms that this behavior is a response to predators. While Pontes was able to record a video, she couldn’t analyze the sound to confirm if ultrasound bands were created. 

[Related: These clams use poop to dominate their habitat.]

“Both species live in leaf litter, are similar in size [between 1.8  and 2.3 inches], and have similar predators, so it’s possible that I. henselii also uses this distress call with ultrasound to defend itself against natural enemies,” study co-author and IB-UNICAMP zoologist Luís Felipe Toledo said in a statement. 

Researchers have also obtained recording of ultrasound calls by three Asian amphibian species, but the frequencies are used for communication between species and its not known if they are deployed when a predator is around

The team plans to address the numerous questions that arose from this discovery. These include which predators are sensitive to the frog’s distress call, how these other animals react to it, and if the call is intended to scare them or attract their natural enemies. 

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Today, millions of people will have a chance to watch a total solar eclipse. If you’re one of them, be careful: looking directly at a solar eclipse without eye protection can permanently damage your vision.

It doesn’t matter if our rocky satellite is blocking all or some of our nearest star—the sun is still an incredibly bright source of light. Don’t risk your eyesight for a quick glimpse or even a once-in-a-lifetime event. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to protect your eyes while watching an eclipse.

What happens if you look at a solar eclipse

We are able to see thanks to photoreceptors. These cells, also known as rods and cones, are located at the backs of our eyes, and convert the light reflected by the world around us into electrical impulses that our brain interprets as the image we see. But when strong light, like that from the sun, hits our eyes, a series of chemical reactions occur that damage and often destroy these rods and cones. This is known as solar retinopathy, and can make our eyesight blurry. Sometimes, if the damage is too great in one area, you can lose sight completely.

[Related: Every sunset ends with a green flash. Why is it so hard to see?]

On a typical sunny day, you almost never have to worry about solar retinopathy. That’s because our eyes have natural mechanisms that ensure too much light doesn’t get in. When it’s really bright outside, our pupils get super tiny, reducing the amount of sunlight that can hit your photoreceptors. But when you stare directly at the sun, your pupils’ shrinking power isn’t enough to protect your peepers.

This is where your eyes’ second defense mechanism comes into play. When we look at something bright, we tend to blink. This is known as the corneal or blink reflex, and it  prevents us from staring at anything too damagingly bright. 

Just before a solar eclipse has reached its totality, the moon is partially blocking the sun, making it a lot easier for us to look up at the star without blinking. But that doesn’t mean you should—even that tiny sliver of sunlight is too intense for our sensitive photoreceptors.

[Related: Total eclipses aren’t that rare—and you’ve probably missed a bunch of them]

Unfortunately, if you practice unprotected sun-gazing, you probably won’t know the effects of your actions until the next morning, when the damage to your photoreceptors has kicked in.

And while solar retinopathy is extremely rare, it is by no means unheard of. If you search the term in medical journals, you’ll find case reports after almost every popular solar eclipse. Let’s try really hard to do better this time, eyeball-havers.

How to safely watch a solar eclipse

Watching the eclipse with your own two eyes is easy: just wear legitimate eclipse sunglasses. These are crucial, as they will block the sun’s rays enough for you to safely see the eclipse without burning your eyes out.

And if you don’t have eclipse glasses, you can still enjoy the view, albeit not directly. Try whipping up your own eclipse projector or a DIY pinhole camera so you can enjoy the view without having to book an emergency visit to the eye doctor.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2017.

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This article was originally featured on Knowable Magazine.

Caroline Chaboo’s eyes light up when she talks about tortoise beetles. Like gems, they exist in myriad bright colors: shiny blue, red, orange, leaf green and transparent flecked with gold. They’re members of a group of 40,000 species of leaf beetles, the Chrysomelidae, one of the most species-rich branches of the vast beetle order, Coleoptera. “You have your weevils, longhorns, and leaf beetles,” she says. “That’s really the trio that dominates beetle diversity.”

An entomologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Chaboo has long wondered why the kingdom of life is so skewed toward beetles: The tough-bodied creatures make up about a quarter of all animal species. Many biologists have wondered the same thing, for a long time. “Darwin was a beetle collector,” Chaboo notes.

Of the roughly 1 million named insect species on Earth, about 400,000 are beetles. And that’s just the beetles described so far. Scientists typically describe thousands of new species each year. So—why so many beetle species? “We don’t know the precise answer,” says Chaboo. But clues are emerging.

One hypothesis is that there are lots of them because they’ve been around so long. “Beetles are 350 million years old,” says evolutionary biologist and entomologist Duane McKenna of the University of Memphis in Tennessee. That’s a great deal of time in which existing species can speciate, or split into new, distinct genetic lineages. By way of comparison, modern humans have existed for only about 300,000 years.

Yet just because a group of animals is old doesn’t necessarily mean it will have more species. Some very old groups have very few species. Coelacanth fish, for example, have been swimming the ocean for approximately 360 million years, reaching a maximum of around 90 species and then declining to the two species known to be living today. Similarly, the lizard-like reptile the tuatara is the only living member of a once globally diverse ancient order of reptiles that originated about 250 million years ago.

Another possible explanation for why beetles are so rich in species is that, in addition to being old, they have unusual staying power. “They have survived at least two mass extinctions,” says Cristian Beza-Beza, a University of Minnesota postdoctoral fellow. Indeed, a 2015 study using fossil beetles to explore extinctions as far back as the Permian 284 million years ago concluded that lack of extinction may be at least as important as diversification for explaining beetle species abundance. In past eras, at least, beetles have demonstrated a striking ability to shift their ranges in response to climate change, and this may explain their extinction resilience, the authors hypothesize.

Complicating the mystery of beetle diversity is the fact that some branches of the beetle family tree have many more species than others. For example, dung beetles, which spend their lives rolling deftly crafted balls of excrement, are only modestly diverse. “This family is around 8,000 species, so it’s not a huge group,” says community ecologist Jorge Ari Noriega at Universidad El Bosque in Bogotá, Colombia.

By contrast, Chrysomeloidea—a superfamily containing longhorn and leaf beetles—includes 63,000 species, while Brupestoidea, a group of metallic wood- and leaf-boring beetles also known as jewel beetles for their glitzy iridescent colors, includes about 15,000 species.

This large variation in species richness among beetle lineages means that “no one explanation holds very well for any one group,” says McKenna. Still, among plant-eating beetles—which make up roughly a quarter of all beetle species—a clear pattern is emerging. Based on genetic analyses of different beetle lineages, McKenna and his colleagues have found evidence that a major factor spurring beetle diversity was the diversification of flowering plants during the Cretaceous period.

During the Cretaceous period, which started around 145 million years ago, an explosion of new flowering plant species spread across the Earth’s surface, colonizing many different habitats. Today, plants make up about 80 percent of the mass of Earth’s life. Making the most of plants as food is an ecological strategy that has helped fuel the radiation of not only beetles but also herbivorous species including ants, bees, birds and mammals.

In the case of herbivorous beetles, their most species-rich lineages carry a fascinating assortment of genes that permit the digestion of plants, McKenna has found. Many of these genes code for enzymes that help to break down plant cell walls, allowing access to sugars stored in hard-to-digest compounds like cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin. “The lineages that have these genes were the ones that are so incredibly successful,” McKenna says.

These genes were ingenious adaptations that turned indigestible plant parts into food. They allowed herbivorous beetles to eat more and different kinds of plants, which in turn enabled the insects to move into new habitats and occupy new ecological niches. As plant-eating beetles spread out geographically and adopted different diets and lifestyles, the genetic differences between them grew, resulting in new species.

For reasons unclear, some species of plant-eating beetles lost their digestion-aiding genes as they evolved, including a gene coding for pectinase, an enzyme that enables the breakdown of pectin. Evolutionary ecologist Hassan Salem at the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tübingen, Germany, explains that to compensate, some beetles evolved a different strategy for eating plants: They forged relationships with bacterial partners—called symbionts—that also aid plant digestion.

For some beetles, these special symbiotic microbes became an alternate tool for keeping plants on the menu, expanding the number of habitats where new species could evolve and thrive. For example, in the vast majority of tortoise leaf beetle species, the group Salem studies, it’s not a genetically encoded enzyme that breaks down pectin, but a bacterial symbiont. The beetles get the bacteria from their mothers: Every time a female deposits an egg, she also leaves behind a capsule containing the microbes. The tortoise beetle embryo develops inside the egg, then burrows into the capsule to digest the symbiont about a day before it emerges.

“It’s the first thing it encounters in life … so it’s a very intimate association,” says Salem. When Salem and his team have experimentally removed the microbe caplets from developing larvae, the adult, germ-free beetles that emerge have a high mortality rate because they can’t access pectin in the plant cell.

In addition to making plants easier to digest, some plant-associated microbes may have paved the way for beetle diversification because they provide beetles with predator protection. In the tortoise leaf beetle Chelymorpha alternans, for example, a fungus called Fusarium—often found in crops like bananas and sweet potatoes—grows on the surface of beetle pupae during metamorphosis. “We’ve demonstrated that if you remove the fungus, then ants readily find them and feed on them,” says Aileen Berasategui, an evolutionary biologist at the Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment in the Netherlands. Fusarium, in other words, may be shielding the beetles from harmful predators, further expanding beetle territory and enabling diversification.

Berasategui adds that plenty of bark beetles, like ambrosia beetles, also benefit from Fusarium fungi, but in a different way. The beetles carry the fungi from tree to tree in specialized pockets called mycangia. Once the tree’s fungal infection is underway, the beetles indulge in a fungi feast.

Adapting to conduct this kind of agriculture—sowing spores that will grow into food—has also helped beetle species to exploit new habitats. “From their own nest, they take a little piece, and then … fly to a new tree where they start their own nest, they sow the new fungus, they generate this new garden,” says Berasategui. Called fungiculture, the approach has independently evolved in ambrosia beetles seven times. The evolution of new beetle species is thought to have been shaped by mutually beneficial relationships with these fungi—part of a 50-million-year history in which insects such as ants, termites and ambrosia beetles have independently evolved to farm fungi, according to a 2005 article published in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics.

Plant-eating beetles have evolved other innovations that may have allowed them to speciate more than other beetle groups. In the leaf beetles that Chaboo studies, for example, the emergence in the fossil record of defensive fecal shieldsstructures built from a beetle’s own excretions and sloughed-off skin—“coincide with massive species radiations,” she says. Most beetle shield-users are solitary species, but some live in groups, arranging themselves in formations that protect them from predators. Fecal shield protection may have helped the beetles move into more open habitats, Chaboo says.

Whether they eat plants or dine on other fare such as carrion, beetles from all groups have evolved an impressive array of tools to solve many different problems. In that sense, beetles are a microcosm of the tree of life, McKenna says.

Resilient as beetles are, however, we can’t take their survival for granted. Insect populations are in decline in many places—“and, yes, beetles are part of that,” says Beza-Beza. How they’ll survive the impacts of humans is “one of the core questions right now,” he adds, though he’s betting there will be beetles on Earth “longer than there will be humans.”

Beetling away on scientific puzzles in the Central American cloud forest sky islands where he works, Beza-Beza has a special affinity for Ogyges politus, a beetle species that lives and feeds on rotting logs. “It only occurs in the mountains next to my hometown,” he says. “So it reminds me where I’m from … and that there are these jewels everywhere.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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This article was originally featured on MIT Press Reader. This article is adapted from Christopher Mason’s book “The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds.”

Until 1992, when the first exoplanets were discovered, there had never been direct evidence of a planet found outside our solar system. Thirty years after this first discovery, thousands of additional exoplanets have been identified. Further, hundreds of these planets are within the “habitable zone,” indicating a place where liquid water, and maybe life, could be present. However, to get there, we need a brave crew to leave our solar system, and an even braver intergenerational crew to be born into a mission that, by definition, they could not choose. They would likely never see our solar system as anything more than a bright dot among countless others.

The idea of having multiple generations of humans live and die on the same spacecraft is actually an old one, first described by rocket engineer Robert Goddard in 1918 in his essay “The Last Migration.” As he began to create rockets that could travel into space, he naturally thought of a craft that would keep going, onward, farther, and eventually reach a new star. More recently, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA launched a project called the 100 Year Starship, with the goal of fostering the research and technology needed for interstellar travel by 2100.

This concept of a species being liberated from its home planet was captivating to Goddard, but it has also been the dream of sailors and stargazers since the beginning of recorded history. Every child staring into the night sky envisions flying through it. But, usually, they also want to return to Earth. One day, we may need to construct a human-driven city aboard a spacecraft and embark on a generational voyage to another solar system—never meant to return.

Distance, energy, particle assault

Such a grand mission would need to overcome many enormous challenges, the first and perhaps most obvious being distance. Not including the sun, the closest known star to Earth (Proxima Centauri) is 4.24 light-years, or roughly 25 trillion miles, away. Although 4.24 light-years is a mere hop on the cosmic scale, it would take quite some time to get there with our current technology.

The Parker solar probe, launched by NASA in 2018, is the fastest-moving object ever made by humans, clocking in at 430,000 miles per hour. But even at this speed, it would take 6,617 years to reach Proxima Centauri. Or, put another way, it would take roughly 220 human generations to make the trip.

The only way to decrease this number would be to move faster. Which brings us to our second challenge: finding the needed energy for propulsion and sustenance. To decrease the amount of time (and the number of generations) it would take to get to the new star, our speed would need to increase through either burning more fuel or developing new spacecraft with technology orders of magnitude better than what is currently at hand. Regardless of the technology used, the acceleration would likely need to come from one or a combination of these sources: prepackaged (nonrenewable) fuel, energy collected from starlight (which would be more challenging when between stars), elements like hydrogen in the interstellar medium, or by slingshotting off of celestial bodies.

The latest advancements in thrust technology might help refocus this issue. Nuclear fusion offers a promising solution, as it produces less radiation and converts energy more efficiently than other methods, which would enable spacecraft to reach much higher speeds. Leveraging nuclear fusion, as envisioned by Project Daedalus (British Interplanetary Society) and Project Longshot (U.S. Naval Academy/NASA), offers a path to interstellar travel within a single human lifetime. These studies suggest that a fusion-powered spacecraft could reach speeds exceeding 62 million miles per hour, potentially reducing travel times to nearby stars to just 45 years.

Yet even if we address the challenges of distance and energy by designing an incredibly fast, fuel-efficient engine, we’re faced with another problem: the ever-present threat of micrometeoroids. Consider that a grain of sand moving at 90 percent of the speed of light contains enough kinetic energy to transform into a small nuclear bomb (two kilotons of TNT). Given the variable particle sizes that are floating around in space and the extremely high velocities proposed for this mission, any encounter would be potentially catastrophic. This, too, would require further engineering to overcome, as the thick shielding we have available to us now would not only degrade over time but would likely be far too heavy. A few solutions might be creating lighter polymers, which can be replaced and fixed as needed in flight; utilizing extensive long-distance monitoring to identify large objects before impact; or developing some kind of protective field from the spacecraft’s front, capable of deflecting or absorbing the impact of incoming particles.

Physiological and psychological risks

As exemplified by the NASA Twins Study, the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission, and additional NASA one-year and six-month missions, the crews of a generation ship would face another critical issue: physiological and psychological stress. One way to get around the technological limitation of either increasing the speed of our ships or protecting the ships from colliding with debris is to, instead, slow biology using hibernation or diapause. However, humans who overeat and lie around all day with little movement in simulated hibernation or bed-rest studies can run a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and even death. So, how do bears do it?

During hibernation or torpor, bears are nothing short of extraordinary. Their body temperature dips, their heart rate plummets to as low as five beats per minute, and for months, they essentially do not eat, urinate, or defecate. Remarkably, they’re able to maintain their bone density and muscle mass. Part of their hibernation trick seems to come from turning down their sensitivity to insulin by maintaining stable blood glucose levels. Their heart becomes more efficient as well. A bear essentially activates an energy-saving, “smart heart” mode, relying on only two of its four chambers to circulate thicker blood.

In 2019, a seminal study led by Joanna Kelley at Washington State University revealed striking gene expression changes in bears during hibernation. Researchers used the same Illumina RNA-sequencing technology as used in NASA’s Twins Study to examine the grizzly bears as they entered hyperphagia (when bears eat massive quantities of food to store energy as fat) and then again during hibernation. They found that tissues across the body had coordinated, dynamic gene expression changes occurring during hibernation. Though the bears were fast asleep, their fatty tissue was anything but quiet. This tissue showed extensive signs of metabolic activity, including changes in more than 1,000 genes during hibernation. These “hibernation genes” are prime targets for people who would prefer to wait in stasis on the generation ship than stay awake.

Another biological mechanism that we could utilize on the generation ship is diapause, which enables organisms to delay their own development in order to survive unfavorable environmental conditions (e.g., extreme temperature, drought, or food scarcity). Many moth species, including the Indian meal moth, can start diapause at different developmental stages depending on the environmental signals. If there is no food to eat, as in a barren desert, it makes sense to wait until there is a better time and the rain of nutrients falls.

Diapause is actually not a rare event; embryonic diapause has been observed occurring in more than 100 mammals. Even after fertilization, some mammalian embryos can decide “to wait.” Rather than immediately implanting into the uterus, the blastocyst (early embryo) can stay in a state of dormancy, where little or no development takes place. This is somewhat like a rock climber pausing during an ascent, such as when a storm arrives, then examining all of the potential routes they may take and waiting until the storm passes. In diapause, even though the embryo is unattached to the uterine wall, the embryo can wait out a bad situation, such as a scarcity of food. Thus, the pregnant mother can remain pregnant for a variable gestational period, in order to await improved environmental conditions. The technology to engage human hibernation or diapause doesn’t exist in the 21st century, but one day might.

The impact of weightlessness, radiation, and mission stress on the muscles, joints, bones, immune system, and eyes of astronauts is not to be underestimated. The physiological and psychological risks of such a mission are especially concerning given that the majority of existing models are based on trips that were relatively short and largely protected from radiation by the Earth’s magnetosphere, with the most extensive study so far from Captain Scott Kelly’s 340-day trip.

Artificial gravity—essentially building a spacecraft that spins to replicate the effects of Earth’s gravity—would address many of these issues, though not all. Another major challenge would be radiation. There are a number of ways to try and mitigate this risk, be it shielding around the ship, preemptive medications (actively being studied by NASA), frequent temporal monitoring of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) for the early detection of actionable mutations, or cellular and genetic engineering of astronauts to better protect or respond to radiation. The best defense against radiation, especially in a long-term mission outside of our solar system, would likely be through a combination of these efforts.

But even if the radiation problem is solved, the psychological and cognitive strain of isolation and limited social interaction must be addressed. Just imagine if you had to work and live with your officemates and family, for your entire life, in the same building. While we can carefully select the first generation of astronauts for a long generation ship mission, their children might struggle to adapt to the social and environmental aspects of their new home.

Analog missions performed on Earth, such as the Mars-500 project, have shown that after 500 days in isolation with a small crew, most of the relationships were strained or even antagonistic. There are many descriptions of “space madness” appearing in both fiction and nonfiction, but their modeling and association to risk is limited. There is simply no way to know how the same crew and its descendent generations would perform in 10 or 100 years, and certainly not over thousands of years. Human history is replete with examples of strife, war, factions, and political backstabbing, but also with examples of cooperation, symbiosis, and shared governance in support of large goals (such as in research stations in Antarctica).

Choosing our new home

Before we launch the first-ever generation ships, we will need to gain a large amount of information about the candidate planets to which we are sending the first settlers. One way to do this is by sending probes to potential solar systems, gaining as much detail as possible to ensure ships have what they need before they are launched. Work on such ideas has already begun, as with the Breakthrough Starshot mission proposed by Yuri Milner, Stephen Hawking, and Mark Zuckerberg.

The idea is simple enough, and the physics was detailed by Kevin Parkin in 2018. If there were a fleet of extremely light spacecraft that contained miniaturized cameras, navigation gear, communication equipment, navigation tools (thrusters), and a power supply, they could be “beamed” ahead with lasers to accelerate their speed. If each minispacecraft had a “lightsail” targetable by lasers, they could all be sped up to reduce the transit time. Such a “StarChip” could make the journey to the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b—an exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri—in roughly 25 years and send back data for us to review, following another 25 years of data transit back to Earth. Then, we would have more information on what may be awaiting a crew if that location were chosen. The idea for this plan is credited to physicist Philip Lubin, who imagined in his 2015 article, “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight,” an array of adjustable lasers that could focus on the StarChip with a combined power of 100 gigawatts to propel the probes to our nearest known star.

The ideal scenario would be seeding the world in preparation for humans, similar to missions being conducted on Mars. If these StarChips work, then they could be used to send microbes to other planets as well as sensors. They certainly have many challenges ahead of them as well, requiring them to survive the trip, decelerate, and then land on the new planet—no small feat. However, this travel plan is all within the range of tolerable conditions for known extremophiles on Earth that casually survive extreme temperatures, radiation, and pressure. The tardigrades, for one, have already survived the vacuum of space and may be able to make the trip to the other planet, and we could have other “seed” organisms sent along, too. Such an idea of a “genesis probe” that could seed other planets with Earth-based microbes, first proposed by Claudius Gros in 2016, would obviously violate all current planetary-protection guidelines, but it might also be the best means to prepare a planet for our arrival. Ideally, this would be done only once robotic probes have conducted an extensive analysis of the planet to decrease the chance of causing harm to any life that may already exist there.

The ethics of a generation ship

These biological, tactical, and psychological issues are driven by one key, last constraint on the generation ship: The passengers are stuck there. As such, this issue represents another challenge that must be addressed: the ethical component. What are the ethics of placing an entire group of people on a single spacecraft, with the expectation that they further procreate additional generations of people, on that ship? They would have to live with the knowledge that the ship on which they live, or are born, is the only world they will ever get to know. Certain social, economic, and cultural infrastructure would need to be built into a generation ship, along with recreational activities.

Bodysuits, virtual/augmented reality camera sets, and immersive experience sets have been built for recreational purposes on Earth, and these would be essential for the generation ship’s crews. Groups could play each other in a virtual environment, which would require less infrastructure than traditional sporting events and equipment do. Video games are, after all, not just exploratory and recreational events; they are a technological glue of society. Of course, games are just a single piece of the puzzle. Life aboard a generation ship would be fundamentally different and undeniably more challenging than anything experienced on Earth.

Some critics of sending spacecraft with humans have argued that if an interstellar mission cannot be completed within the lifetime of the crew, then it should not be started at all. Rather, because the technology for propulsion, design of ships, and rocketry (as well as our methods for genome and biological engineering) will all continue to improve, it would be better to wait. It is even possible that if we sent a generation ship to Proxima Centauri b in the year 2500, it would be passed by another spacecraft with more advanced propulsion sent in the year 3000.

This “incessant obsolescence postulate,” first framed by Robert Forward in 1996, is compelling as a thought experiment. Most technologies do tend to get better, and technology has continued to improve in almost all human societies. So how can one know when the right time is? Predicting the future is notoriously difficult.

However, a good option should not be the enemy of a perfect one. We can send two ships—the first in 2500 and the second in 3000—not just one. If the new ship catches up to the old one, they would likely be able to assist each other and should plan to do so. Further, this obsolescence concern misses the key risk of waiting too long to act. The extinction we are trying to avoid could occur in that 500-year lag, resulting in the obliteration of all life with no backup.

But even with advanced entertainment and potential hope of a new, enhanced ship appearing any moment, would the crew still stare out the windows into constant star-filled skies thinking of blue oceans? Or would they perhaps be elated about being the “chosen ones” with an extraordinary opportunity to explore and, quite literally, build a new world? The reality is this ship would be their world, and, for most, it would be the only world they would get to experience.

Yet this limitation of experience is actually not that different from the lives of all humans in history. All humans have been stuck on just one world, looking to the stars and thinking, “What if?” This vessel, the Earth, while large and diverse, is still just a single ship with a limited landscape, environment, and resources, wherein everyone up to the 21st century lived and died without the choice to leave. A few hundred astronauts have left Earth, temporarily, but they all had to return. The generation ship is just a smaller version of the one on which we grew up, and, if done properly, it may even be able to lead to a planet that is better than what we inherited. The new planet could be fertile ground for expanding life in the universe, while also offering lessons on how to preserve life on Earth.

Christopher E. Mason is a geneticist and computational biologist who leads the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) project and the Cornell Aerospace Medicine Biobank (CAMbank). He is Professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine, Director of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction, and the author of “The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds,” from which this article is adapted.

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“What can the astronomer do, when, just as the moon is about to obscure the sun during a total eclipse, a cloud intervenes?” Popular Science posed such a dilemma to its readers in a 1919 solar eclipse story. “Pack up and go home” was the answer for the average eclipse viewer. But even in 1919 extreme eclipse chasers had contingency plans.

The moon’s full shadow hurtles across the Earth at a breakneck 1,500 mph roughly every 18 months. By a twist of cosmic fate unique in our solar system, our planet’s one and only moon happens to be the right size and distance to completely block the sun’s face, briefly exposing its corona, creating a spectacular sight. But that complete overlap only happens in a narrow path about 100 miles wide—the path of totality. 

Extreme eclipse chasers, who call themselves umbraphiles, will seek that path whenever it comes around, even to the remotest regions of Earth. Since the path carved by the moon’s shadow typically traverses thousands of miles—across oceans and continents—the goal is to pick a destination known for its cloudless skies.

Kelly Korreck, NASA’s program manager for the 2024 solar eclipse, which will speed across the US from Texas to Maine on April 8, has viewed eclipses from places as different as the deck of a US aircraft carrier (USS Yorktown) and the northern Chilean coast. For Korreck, the experience is incomparable. “Very strong emotions come up,” she says, “from almost fear that the sun has gone away to something very magical and very exciting.” As soon as it’s over—totality only lasts several minutes or less, location dependent—she admits that her immediate thought is, “When’s the next one? Where are we going to go?”

In 1919, jetting across the world was not yet possible, and less of the planet was developed and accessible. Eclipse chasers were mostly well-funded scientists and astronomers who had the wherewithal to mount an expedition, set aside months for travel, and haul tons of equipment into remote regions. That’s why one astronomer’s plan in 1919 to mount a telescope on a seaplane and fly above the clouds seemed worth reporting, even though Popular Science’s editors were skeptical that it would work. The alternative, “unmanned balloons” fitted with cameras, proposed by George Hale, founder of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, seemed much more practical. 

Whether the daring aeronautical astronomer, David Todd, an eccentric eclipse chaser and erstwhile professor at Amherst College, ever succeeded with his seaplane plan isn’t recorded. But the 1919 eclipse went down in the history books for its role in providing the backdrop for Arthur Eddington and Frank Dyson to prove Einstein’s theory of relativity. 

Today, NASA operates dozens of heliophysics missions, most from space-based observatories, free from the chance of cloudy skies.

A total eclipse of the sun can never last more than eight minutes. Usually it lasts much less. An astronomer will travel thousands and thousands of miles to an out-of-the-way place, in order to make the most of a few precious minutes. The actors in a play are no more carefully rehearsed than are astronomers stationed at the various instruments. No one member of an eclipse expedition sees the eclipse as a whole; each one performs the special duties assigned to him. 

What if cloud or fog should steal between the earth and the sun? What if it should rain? All these elaborate preparations, all this tedious traveling, go for nothing. But fogs are always low-lying—never more than a thousand feet thick. Therefore, if cloud or fog creep in between the earth and the sun, the solution is to climb above them and see the eclipse in all its uncanniness. 

No wonder, then, that astronomers are interested in the experiment undertaken by Professor David Todd, of the Amherst College Astronomical Observatory, of using a seaplane in which to rise high above the clouds to view the eclipse.

Professor Todd’s Experiment

With the assistance of United States Naval officers and a seaplane, Professor Todd set out to take photographs of the sun’s eclipse which occurred on May 29. It was planned that the steamship on which the expedition sailed would stop at a point near the equator off the South American coast, launch the seaplane, and then stand by while the astronomer tried out his plan.

It might have been expected that Professor Todd would be the first to carry astronomy into the air. He is the most enthusiastic, indefatigable, and ingenious of eclipse observers. He even went so far, some years ago, as to devise a method of operating a whole battery of astronomical instruments from a central point, but was unable to employ his invention for the observation of this particular eclipse because the sky was at the time obscured.

Although at the time of going to press the results of Professor Todd’s experiment have not been reported, it may be doubted that the plan of using a seaplane is practicable. Such is the vibration caused by a seaplane’s engine that the steady platform that must be provided for all telescopes becomes a shaking base hardly suitable for Professor Todd’s purpose. To be sure, it was his intention to offset the vibration by an elastic mounting of the telescope; but anyone who knows anything at all about the inertia of movable parts will admit that absolute steadiness can hardly be thus obtained.

A More Practical Scheme

Professor George E. Hale, of Mount Wilson Observatory, has a far more practical scheme, to our mind. His plan is to send an unmanned balloon above the clouds, and to steady the cameras, which the balloon will carry, by means of a gyroscope. Professor Hale plans to study the corona—that ghostly appendage which surrounds the sun, and which is visible from the earth only during an eclipse—at any time.

As we ascend in the atmosphere of the earth we finally reach a point, perhaps at an altitude of thirty miles or more, where the sky is not blue, but jet-black.

The sky is blue because the air is filled with countless billions of dust particles that diffuse the light of the sun. In the inky canopy of the sky above the region of dust particles, where the air is extremely thin, the stars appear in their proper places even in broad daylight. And the sun is a great blazing ball hung in the blackness. Its wonderful corona, the chief object of study during a total eclipse, gleams in all its pearly beauty.

Should Professor Todd Succeed

If Professor Hale succeeds in realizing his plan, we need not wait for a total eclipse in order to study the corona but we can photograph it whenever we please and study it day by day.

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It’s a well-known fact that staring at the sun is… not the best idea. In the same way that the sun can burn your skin, our home star can overwhelm your peepers with UV rays and literally scorch your retina.

That is a huge bummer, especially because watching a solar eclipse (when the moon covers the sun) is an incredibly cool experience. Thankfully, there are several ways to watch an eclipse without risking your vision, and one of them is building a pinhole camera out of a box, a piece of aluminum foil, and lots of tape. This is an easy and incredibly versatile project, and you can turn it into a permanent camera obscura when you’re done watching the eclipse. 

How to make a pinhole camera

1. Light-proof your box. Leaving one side open, use duct tape or electrical tape to seal the box and prevent any light rays from sneaking in. Pay special attention to the corners and wherever two pieces of cardboard meet. The pinhole will only allow a few rays of light into your box, so the projection of the sun will be dim. That means the darker your camera, the easier it will be to see the image.

As we said, this project is versatile. You can use a wide range of box sizes to make your pinhole camera, but cereal and shoe boxes work exceptionally well. We used the 15-by-7 ½-by-5 ½-inch box that carried our neighbor’s latest online shopping spurt. 

Likewise, duct tape and electrical tape are the best choices to light-proof your box, but you can use any tape that will block light—dark washi tape or masking tape will also do the trick. Just keep in mind that you may have to apply multiple layers to achieve total darkness inside your box. 

• Pro tip: Check your work by holding your box up to a light and looking inside. If you still see some shine coming through, apply another layer of tape. 

2. Determine your pinhole’s location and cover the inside of the opposite face with white paper. Measure one of the smallest sides of the box, cut a piece of white paper to the same size, and tape or glue it to the inside of the corresponding face. It doesn’t have to be perfect—as long as most of the side is covered, you’ll be good to go. Just make sure that the paper doesn’t have any wrinkles or folds, as they may distort the image of the sun. 

3. Measure the openings for the pinhole and the viewer. On the side opposite the one you covered with white paper, use your ruler and a pencil to measure two openings. The pinhole opening will be located in the upper left corner (about half an inch from the edges) and will be 2-by-2 inches (we’ll make it smaller later). 

The viewing opening will be located in the upper right corner of the box, half an inch from the top edge and an inch from the right edge of the box. This opening will be smaller—only 1 inch square.

4. Cut the openings. Using a box cutter or scissors, cut out the openings you drew. 

• Pro tip: If the openings end up being too big, don’t sweat it—you can always adjust their size with tape. 

5. Close and seal the box. Use your newly cut openings to make sure there are no other places where light might be sneaking in. Pay special attention to the corners of the box above and below your openings. Cover all the places where pieces of cardboard meet with tape. 

6. Cover the larger opening with aluminum foil. Cut a smooth 2 ½-by-2 ½-inch piece of aluminum foil. With the dull side facing you, carefully cover the big opening with the metallic sheet and tape it in place. Make sure you secure it tightly so no light can get into the box.  

• Pro tip: To smooth out any creases, softly rub the top of any fingernail over the foil in a small, circular motion. 

7.  Use the thumbtack to poke a hole in the foil. Find the rough center of the 2-by-2-inch square under the aluminum sheet and gently push the tack through before pulling it back out—you want a clean, round hole. If you don’t have a thumbtack, you can use the tip of a toothpick or an embroidery needle. Just make sure that whatever you’re using has a point (it’ll make a neater hole) and that it’s approximately 0.2 millimeters wide. 

• Note: The width of your pinhole will determine how much light gets into the box. Too much light and the image will be blurry. If that’s the case, don’t worry—just replace the foil and try making a smaller pinhole. 

8. Put your pinhole camera to the test. Stand with your back facing the sun and look into the box through the viewport. Use your hands to block out as much light as possible and move around until you find the angle where sunlight enters through the pinhole. When this happens, you should see a small projection of the shape of the sun on the white paper you pasted inside the box. 

[Related: Total eclipses aren’t that rare—and you’ve probably missed a bunch of them]

Keep in mind that the weather is crucial in determining the quality of the image you’ll see inside your pinhole camera, and whether you can see the eclipse at all.

How a pinhole camera works

Images are light. Everything we see we perceive because there’s light bouncing off of it, beaming directly through our pupils and into our eyes. All cameras, including the humble pinhole camera you just made, operate under this basic principle. The better they filter the light, the sharper the resulting image will be. 

The sun, of course, is the ultimate light source. On a sunny day, rays from the star travel to Earth and bounce off of every surface they reach. This is a lot of light coming from all directions, so if we want to see only a small portion of the sun’s rays, we have to focus those rays and filter out the rest. That’s why the pinhole in your camera is so tiny or, in more technical terms, why its aperture is so narrow—it only lets a small amount of light into the box, just enough so you can see only a dim projection of the sun when you point the pinhole directly at it. 

The dimness of the image is not ideal, but it’s the tradeoff we make for sharpness—too much light results in a blurry, out-of-focus picture. This is important during a solar eclipse, as filtering the light will allow you to see the round shape of the sun become a crescent or a ring as the moon moves in and gradually blocks the sunlight. 

When the eclipse is over, use a skewer to widen your camera’s pinhole. When you look inside, you won’t only be able to see the sun, but a slightly brighter and inverted image of your surroundings. A bigger pinhole turns your box into a camera obscura, allowing more light in and projecting an image of the objects around you.  

This story was originally published in 2023 and updated in 2024.

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Imagine this possibility. In a not too distant future, humans have improved weather modification tools like cloud seeding technology to the point where weather itself is not just predictable, but controllable. In these scenarios, corporations with lax governmental oversight maximize their control over their environment, essentially turning weather itself into a luxury good. Glitzy ski resorts use that control to offer customers snowy vacations year round. Rainfall, once left up to forces of nature, can now be purchased on demand. 

Those are just a few of the data informed science fiction scenarios experts drafted as part of a recent paper released in the journal Global Sustainability. The paper, led by Colorado State University Assistant Professor Patrick Keys, asked international experts in global water topics to analyze research he and his team compiled about the ways humans may be impacting atmospheric water cycles today and bring them to life through science fiction narratives and essays. They believe the descriptive, narrative approaches help provide a clearer picture into a too often drowned in data and quantitative literature. 

The experts created 10 different scenarios with striking title names like “We are as gods” and “Too much rain in paradise.” In that first example, the authors focused around a speech provided by a future scientist speaking of the hypothetical dangers of weather modification. Another scenario imagines a world where a politician, struggling to maintain an edge during an election season, invokes weather management as a way to garner electoral favor. Other scenarios conjure a future where weather itself is privatized and rainfall can be sold to the highest bidder. 

In the privatized rain example, a fictionalized rain provider going by the name “AnyWeather” sends a note to a customer informing them that their request for a “Spring Rains Service” was denied because it conflicts with another, presumably wealthier client who took priority over them. A separate scenario focuses on a fictionalized history podcast which described a strange, off-putting haze appearing over the Lagos, Nigeria skyline. The haze, according to the podcast, was the byproduct of a geoengineering approach called cloud condensation nuclei. 

“Stories are everywhere and are an integral part of human life,” Keys said in a statement. “They tell you something different from a graph in a research paper. They allow you to explore how people may feel or react to these kinds of changes.”

Researchers used narratives to bring data to life 

Humans are already affecting weather patterns in ways that can be difficult to visualize. Land use, pollution, and climate change, the researchers note, are all affecting where clouds form and the amount of rain that falls. Keys and his fellow researchers combined data gleaned from real journal entries and the speculative curiosity of science fiction to generate a variety of different senators exploring what the world might look like following years of human efforts to modify the atmosphere. 

The researchers first gathered text of abstracts from journal articles discussing humans’ effect on water cycles. Ideas from those abstracts were then broken up into themes based on common economic principles. Experts in global water topics were then presented with the themes and instructed to come up with hypothetical scenarios. The narratives varied in format, with some remaining like typical science fiction stories and others coming by way of fictionalized journals and speeches.

Keys then reached out to an artist named Fabio Comi to create illustrations accompanying the stories. In one of the images, an employee at a cloud seeding company near a ski resort appears to take measurements and gather data. Another image shows a four-legged robot the size of skyscrapers walking through a field firing cloud seeding missiles into the sky. An assortment of smaller drones buzz around as scientists observe from a distance. Though evocative, the stories and images aren’t only intended to stir readers’ curiosity. Keys believes their descriptive power could help inform public policy debates. 

“These scenarios have an ability to raise interesting questions about policy, regulation and enforcement–what those all may look like,” Keys said. “This approach can also help us recognize some of the aspects we may not be paying attention to and make better sense of it all.”

Cloud seeding and other climate manipulation tactics are already being deployed to promote rainfall and, in some cases, to combat smog. At least eight US states are exploring cloud seeding in particular as a potential tool to respond to years worth of extreme drought. These efforts are still in their early stages though. The data-informed, fictionalized scenarios presented in the Global Sustainability paper offer a glimpse into the notably divergent paths governments and private industry using these tools can take. Each of those scenarios are determined in part by policy decisions and economic frameworks decided many years before the sci-fi tinged senators ever play out. 

For now, critics argue relying only on geoengineering tricks to address changing weather platforms remains closer to fiction than science. Cloud seeding currently only provides modest results and is possible only when a specific, narrow set of environmental conditions are met. Continued warming resulting from climate change could risk reducing the odds those conditions will be met. Some scientists have similarly pushed back against other efforts like marine cloud brightening, citing limited research on the technique’s long term limited effects. Even if these measures do prove useful, others warn they still won’t work as a quick-fix substitute for radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our reliance on fossil fuels.

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Set aside all the demanding years of medical school and residency—the grueling shifts, endless exams, and mountains of debt—to be a surgeon requires unique personality traits. Chief among them is “extraversion,” according to a 2022 report published in The Surgeon, a medical journal. 

Extraverts thrive on an audience, which could explain why early surgeries—especially the pre-anesthesia, pre-germ theory variety—were sometimes performed in amphitheaters. In such theatrical settings, surgeons took center stage, operating swiftly and with great flourish, coolly narrating for their engrossed audiences, while patients writhed and screamed in pain. 

By the late 19th century, the development of anesthesia significantly reduced the drama. When the germ theory of disease—a concept Popular Science reviewed in September 1883—finally gained acceptance, the folly of performing surgeries in germ-infested public settings sealed the fate of surgery as a performing art.

Or did it?

Today, enterprising surgeons employ state-of-the-art recording equipment, and aspiring surgeons still learn by watching surgery videos. Moreover, the inherent drama of surgical procedures continues to draw audiences, as evidenced by the many popular medical series like Surgeons: At the Edge of Life, Nip Tuck, and ER.

Don’t take my word for it–check out a few extraverted surgeons throughout the ages, including scenes from Popular Science.

1875

The year, 1875. The place, Jefferson Medical College’s surgical amphitheater in Philadelphia. The lead actor: Dr. Samuel Gross, renowned 19th century surgeon. In this masterpiece, artist Thomas Eakins memorialized the performing art of surgery.

1890

Even though the technology used to capture surgical performances had been upgraded from portraiture to daguerreotype, in 1890, surgeons continued to perform before public audiences without taking prudent antiseptic measures. This photo taken by Augustine H. Folsom depicts an operation underway at Boston City Hospital.

1906

Surgeons were still performing before public audiences in 1906, and still eschewing asepsis. A painting by Franz Skarbina, shows chief surgeon Ernst von Bergmann operating on a patient at a surgery theater in Berlin.

1933

By 1933, operating rooms had become sterile rooms, surgeons wore scrubs, and audience members were kept behind glass walls to prevent germ exposure. But…

1938

Even as operating room design continued to improve, minimizing germ exposure and maximizing access to surgical technology, the commitment to theater remained. This 1938 design for an operating room in a hospital in Lille, France includes bird’s-eye balcony seats for the surgeon’s audience.

1947

By 1947, operating theater had become operating TV. What had once been performed for a live audience was now performed for a much larger TV-viewing audience. From there it was a straight line through Hollywood to today’s popular medical series. Filming surgeries offers more than just dramatic entertainment, though; medical students benefit from watching surgeons in action.

2022

Surgeon theater fell largely out of favor over the years. But if watching surgeons perform is your thing, or if you’re a doctor and need to collaborate on a surgery, stay tuned for augmented and virtual reality operating theater coming to a VR headset near you, where the audience appears as avatars and the patient a hologram.

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This article was originally featured on Undark.

For centuries, taxonomists have cataloged every living thing they could find. Expeditions have traveled the globe, searching for unknown species; museums and universities maintain entire departments devoted to classifying specimens.

But there exists no single, unified list of all the species on Earth.

The lack of consistency in taxonomy has always bothered Stephen Garnett. Every 10 years, the conservation biologist has assessed the extinction risk of Australian birds. But he repeatedly ran into inconsistencies between lists: A single species might have multiple scientific names, or, conversely, a single name could refer to different organisms. The problem, he found, extended far beyond birds. Taxonomists in different fields didn’t define species the same way, and classification systems were largely inefficient and poorly governed.

Eventually, Garnett spoke with an ornithologist friend, Les Christidis, who shared his concerns. “And then we wrote this thing in Nature that got people stirred up,” recalled Garnett.

Their 2017 commentary in the prestigious science journal was inflammatory from the opening salvo: “For a discipline aiming to impose order on the natural world, taxonomy (the classification of complex organisms) is remarkably anarchic.”

Garnett and Christidis proposed tidying things by creating a universal set of rules for classifying all life on Earth and assigning governance to a single organization: the International Union of Biological Sciences, a nonprofit comprising international science associations.

The notion of imposed authority enraged taxonomists, a fastidious bunch who even Garnett concedes are the opposite of anarchists. In the most prominent rebuttal, 184 people from the global taxonomy community warned in the journal PLOS Biology that the proposed bureaucracy was not only unnecessary and counterproductive, but also a threat to scientific freedom. Such governance would result in “science losing its soul,” wrote a smaller group of Brazilian and French scientists in another journal, raising the specter of Joseph Stalin and his political rejection of established science in the early 20th century.

For their part, Garnett and Christidis politely acknowledged the criticism and conceded that the problem of differing species definitions may be insolvable. But at the very least, there “is a need for legitimised global checklists of species that conservation authorities can follow,” they wrote.

The dust could have settled there, into a heap of perpetual disagreement. But Garnett wasn’t satisfied. “When it was over, I thought, ‘Well I actually want to get some change here,’” he said. So, Garnett and Christidis struck up a dialogue with some of the PLOS Biology paper’s authors, including ichthyologist Richard Pyle.

The scientists shared a sense of urgency about the need for a common language to describe biodiversity. The approximately 2 million complex organisms that humans have identified so far represent only a fraction of life on Earth. And the rate of species loss is accelerating at an alarming pace. Up to 1 million species are now threatened with extinction, according to a 2019 United Nations report.

While the taxonomists made clear that different disciplines would never submit to a central authority telling them how to define species, the group could agree on the need to compile one universally accepted list. That way, when people discuss the fate of an endangered salamander, for example, everyone can be sure they are referring to the same creature. “We need to have a common shared understanding of that,” said Pyle, “in order to communicate between what the taxonomists are discovering about the diversity of nature and the conservation biologists are doing to prioritize what limited resources we have to protect it.”

In February 2020, those discussions culminated in a three-day workshop at Charles Darwin University in Australia, where Garnett is a professor. There, an international group of scientists hammered out set of principles to guide the creation of the global species list. The group hopes to get universal buy-in—something previous efforts to create a global inventory have lacked.

Today, their vision appears to be taking shape. Although the devil is in the details, a recent survey found strong support for the idea of a catalog comprising the most accurate, up-to-date species lists from each discipline. If all goes according to plan, the initial version should be available by 2030.

“It was one of those little nice opportunities for science to work the way it’s supposed to work,” said Pyle.

Taxonomy is more than just naming things; it is the art and science of classification. Frank Zachos, who helped develop the principles at the workshop in Australia, describes taxonomy as perhaps the most fundamental biological science because it reflects how humans think about and structure the world. “We will always put things in drawers,” he said. (Zachos was speaking figuratively but also literally; as head of the mammal collection at the Natural History Museum Vienna, in Austria, Zachos noted that he actually files specimens in drawers.)

An integral part of classifying organisms is giving them a scientific name—generally a two-part name, in Latin, using a system that dates back to the 18th century, and that now extends to everything from Canis familiaris (a dog) to the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (a parasitic fungus that hijacks ants’ minds).

At least in theory, anyone can name a new species: For example, to name a new animal species, you need to publish the name, along with a description of the species and some additional details, in a scientific journal or book chapter. You also need to designate the location of a specimen—in a museum, for example—that others can refer to. The rule, according to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature—which sets the standards for scientific nomenclature of animals—is one organism, one name. If a species is mistakenly named twice, the oldest published name is considered valid. Similarly, if two species wind up with the same name, the first one named gets to keep it.

But with approximately 18,000 new species identified every year, the ICZN, which comprises 26 volunteer commissioners and one full-time staff member, can only check that a name conforms to its rules. They don’t weigh in on how to define or identify species. “We keep entirely out of science,” said Thomas Pape, the ICZN’s current president.

While the ICZN occasionally does rule on naming disagreements—a decade ago it famously settled a two-century-old dispute regarding a giant tortoise—they leave it to scientists in individual fields to work out what constitutes a species. The issue is that while nature is usually continuous, our classifications, like our language, are necessarily discrete, said Zachos: “If you draw lines along a continuum, ultimately there is some level of arbitrariness if you are talking about gray areas.”

One of the frustrations that led Garnett to co-author the Nature commentary is that criteria differ by field. Mammal taxonomists, for example, list two populations as different “species if they have a common ancestor but differ physically or genetically,” he wrote. Bird taxonomists, on the other hand, favor the more conservative criterion that differing species can’t produce fertile offspring together. If ornithologists followed mammalian criteria, research suggests that the number of bird species would more than double.

As Garnett has discovered inventorying Australian birds, even within a field, scientists don’t always agree where to draw lines. There are at least four major international lists of birds, for example, each reflecting several points of disagreement on species identification.

And while birds, mammals, reptiles, flowers, and ferns are well cataloged, much of life on Earth lacks a taxonomic champion: someone willing to spend months and years sifting through online databases, scientific journals, and ancient texts to create databases of identified species.

In addition to his work for the ICZN, Pape, a professor at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, has also taken on the task of cataloging the world’s flies. Over the last two decades he and collaborator Neal Evenhuis, an entomologist at the Bishop Museum in Hawaii have devoted much of their free time to the fly database, scouring references dating back to a 1758 text written by Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus and resolving countless cases where names for an insect differed. To date, they have cataloged 250,000 names for species and groups of species, representing nearly 10 percent of all animals on Earth.

With the advent of the internet and the ability to share lists online, people began to envision compiling such efforts into a master list of species. Catalogue of Life, an international collaboration, has been working on one for the last two decades. But it’s a Herculean task, said Donald Hobern, a software engineer who chairs the organization’s taxonomy group. An amateur naturalist, Hobern also volunteers his time cleaning up species lists for moths and butterflies. Those and some other sections of the Catalogue of Life databases, he said, are still “very patchy.”

But the biggest stumbling block for Catalogue of Life—or any organization that tried to assemble a global list—is that until now, scientists haven’t been compelled to resolve disputes within disciplines to create one consensus list for each field, said Hobern. “There’s no single, completely uncontroversial frame of reference that says ‘this is the right view.’” And unless the global scientific community accepts the component lists, the Catalogue of Life is just another inventory, not the authoritative list of life on Earth.

For Garnett, the problem was simple: A decentralized system of species lists has left scientists unable to talk about nature in a way that everyone understands. And that communications gap, Garnett and others suspect, has led to real-world problems.

One issue is that international treaties to conserve and protect species don’t always work from the same lists. For example, white-naped cranes are listed as Grus vipio on one conservation agreement and Antigone vipio on another. Countries also don’t always agree on how to identify a species or its protective status. In his Nature commentary, Garnett pointed out that China’s outdated official wildlife lists have left some two dozen now-endangered species exposed to illegal trade. He and his colleagues hope that the availability of a global list would help the world’s governments in keeping checklists and regulations up to date.

In a paper published after the workshop, several of the attendees highlight how disagreement over names and identifications can pose grave risks to humans as well. Taxonomy is a dynamic process: As scientific knowledge evolves, taxonomists modify species definitions and names. But changes can take years to trickle down through various bureaucracies. Currently, plants and animals that could harbor pests or disease sometimes clear customs because the name on the quarantine list doesn’t match the name on the cage or seeds, said Garnett. It “can have devastating economic effects if diseases get through.”

Garnett and others also expect that the need for one consensus list from each discipline will spur people in those fields to fill gaps and work out discrepancies. The bird folks are already talking with one another to produce a single global list, he told me in a follow-up email.

And those vetted lists will no doubt weed out spurious entries from “taxonomic vandals,” people who name things without the support of scientific peers. In one recent notable case of alleged vandalism, members of the herpetology community accused amateur Australian herpetologist Raymond Hoser of using suspect science in naming (and, in some cases, renaming) scores of snakes, geckos, skinks, and crocodiles after himself, family members, pets, or whatever else strikes him, bestowing names like Dannyleeus rayhammondi, Ctenophorus sharonhoserae, Funkichelys funki, and Hosmeria shuddafakup.

It sounds comical, but the wrong taxonomy can have deadly consequences, said Garnett. He pointed to a paper citing case studies in Africa and Papua New Guinea where confusion over snake taxonomy led to people dying of snake bites after receiving the wrong antivenin.

But perhaps most important to the group that traveled to the workshop in Australia, a global species list represents a shared language for communicating about our world.

I caught up to ichthyologist Richard Pyle while he was on an expedition to record fishes around Wake Island, a tiny coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, about 1,500 miles northeast of Guam. He and his crew were taking a baseline inventory of shallow reef fishes to be able to see how populations change over time.

Pyle likens biodiversity to the world’s greatest library, an information storehouse containing 4 billion years’ worth of wisdom shaped by evolution. In this age of mass extinction, the library is on fire. Losing a species is like the last copy of a book going up in flames, said Pyle. For each identified species that goes extinct, five or 10 more disappear that humans never knew existed, he said. “What secrets are lost when we burn the last copies of those books?”

Conservationists are doing a valiant job as firefighters, but they can’t work efficiently because they are only familiar with 10 to 20 percent of the library, said Pyle. “What taxonomy does is we try to build the card catalog of that library, as quickly as we can, to help guide the efforts of conservation biology.” A continuously updated global species list ensures that everyone has the key to what we know about life on Earth.

Mammal taxonomist Frank Zachos arrived at the Australian workshop extremely jetlagged, after traveling 30 hours from his home in Vienna. But the group’s collaborative attitude and laser focus was a bracing tonic. “People put everything on the table saying: ‘Okay, this, this, and this—where do we agree?’” said Zachos. They quickly found consensus around key points, he said.

One point was clear from the start: Despite Garnett and Christidis’ original vision of universal rules for defining and naming species, bureaucrats would have no authority over taxonomic science. “We are not telling the insect guy how to do insect taxonomy. That’s up to the entomologists,” said Zachos. “What we want is a certain quality management for a final insect or bird list.”

During their 2020 meeting, the group settled on 10 principles that spell out the criteria that individual lists must meet to be included in the master inventory of species. The individual lists must be based on science, rather than optimized for political or even conservation considerations, for example. And the groups creating them must record and report on their methods.

In addition, the group emphasized that lists should be built with local expertise. As it stands, says Zachos, too often people from the Global North are talking about biodiversity in the Global South without including the perspective of people who live there.

In 2021, members of the group published a series of papers that justified the need for a global list and detailed how it would work. The goal is to get people who create and use species lists on board, said Zachos. “All the authority that we will have comes from the quality of the work.”

So far, the idea seems popular. A 2022 survey of more than 1,000 people, mostly taxonomists and other scientists, found widespread enthusiasm, with more than three-quarters of respondents supporting the development of a governance system to create and maintain a single list of life on Earth.

“We did not expect to see as much agreement as we did,” said lead author Aaron Lien, an environmental scientist at the University of Arizona. Because of the early controversy, he said that he was pleasantly surprised that so many taxonomists backed the global list—though respondents were still divided over who, precisely, should oversee the project.

Catalogue of Life seems like an obvious home for the global list. “Not taking Catalogue of Life on board would be, in many regards, also reinventing the wheel and also probably disrespecting all the work that has gone on to into that,” Zachos said. “So, I think it makes a lot of sense to team up with them.” Currently, most of the financial support for the organization has come from short-term grants, particularly from the European Commission and the National Science Foundation in the U.S. But it would likely need additional funding, possibly from international conservation and scientific organizations, to take it on. 

Ichthyologist Lynne Parenti, who’s listed as an author on the PLOS Biology comment criticizing the original proposal by Garnett and Christidis, but who was not involved in crafting the principles, thinks that there is great value in a global list and is also cautiously supportive of putting Catalogue of Life in charge of it. Wherever the list lives, it must be updated regularly, said Parenti. “Our understanding of the world is not static.”

As for how to handle disputes, Garnett envisions a separate organization comprised of taxonomists and users of taxonomy that could act as an arbitrator.

These days, Pape, the entomologist and ICZN president, is feeling optimistic. His database of fly species is nearly complete, so he and his colleague are mostly focused on housekeeping tasks such as fixing misspellings and inserting references as well as adding the 1,000 or so new species identified every year. After we first spoke, I followed up to ask Pape why he has devoted his life to cataloging insects. He is driven, he said, by the words of his taxonomic predecessor Carl Linnaeus: “If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost, too.”

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Nature comes in wild colors, like the electric blue tarantulas and brightly spotted poison dart frogs. Named after bull fighters, matador bugs (Anisoscelis alipes) are known for vibrant flag-like red decorations on their hind legs. These insects are native to Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, and Mexico, and scientists have been stumped as to what their signature red flags on their legs are used for. A study recently published in the journal Behaviors Ecology found that this fancy leg waving is actually part of the matador bug’s elaborate defense strategy.

In animals, some of the most obvious and showy traits are usually expressed by males, like an elk’s large antlers or a peacock’s loud plumage. A 2022 study suggested that matador bugs’ leg movements were not a sexual display. Both male and female matador bugs like to flaunt their removable hind legs and the waving behavior did not change if there were potential mates around or not. It led researchers to question if their leg waving warns predators about a potential chemical defense and bad flavor or divert attacks towards their removable hindlegs to increase their chances of getting out alive.

[Related: Cicadas pee in jet streams like bigger animals.]

To try to answer what is going on with their legs, the team on the new study worked in Gamboa, Panama, a small town near the Panama Canal. They attached red flags that mimicked the matador bug’s accessories to the legs of crickets, and observed how predatory birds called motmots responded to the red flags. Motmots are large birds with iridescent feathers, long tails, keen eyesight, and a strong taste for crickets. The team spent about a month just catching the birds for the experiment.

“We placed the nets in areas of the forest where we saw that the birds moved the most and, when an individual was captured, it was immediately taken to the cages and tested,” study co-author and a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) Jorge Medina said in a statement. “When the birds were finished with the tests, we released them back in the same area where they were captured.”

They found that the strikes from the birds were not primarily aimed at the hind leg flags. This indicated that the flags were not used as a way to deflect predator attacks. However, it supported the idea that some sort of chemical defense was potentially being used by the bugs as self-defense. 

The regular crickets were always attacked, but the ones with flags got fewer hits. Matador bugs themselves were actively avoided by the bird, whether they had flags or not. According to the team, this indicates that the flags are just one component of their defense strategy.

[Related: Bug-munching plant turns insect nurseries into death traps.]

To further test the idea that the birds didn’t like the taste of matador bugs, they offered both crickets and matador bugs to baby birds that had never seen them before. With or without their flags, the matador bugs seemed to warn the predators to stay away. When the chicks attacked, they demonstrated that the bugs were distasteful by shaking their heads and often refusing to eat more matador bugs. However, the crickets were readily attacked and eaten. 

“I was fascinated to see that when we outfitted tasty crickets with the matador bug flags they immediately became less appealing to their bird predators,” study co-author and STRI post-doctoral fellow Juliette Rubin said in a statement. “It seems like this warning signal is enough to make the birds cautious, but bugs themselves are so well equipped with ‘don’t eat me!’ signals that even without the flags, experienced birds wouldn’t touch them.”

The team believes that the flags appear to signal to birds that matador bugs are not a tasty or safe choice of a snack. These flags also collaborate with other parts of the bug’s characteristics to emphasize that message. This indicates that they are part of a complex defense strategy that likely evolved to protect them from birds. 

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NASA has announced three finalists to pitch them their best moon car ideas by this time next year to use on upcoming Artemis lunar missions. During a press conference yesterday afternoon, the agency confirmed Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab will all spend the next 12 months developing their Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) concepts as part of the “feasibility task order.”

According to Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the final LTV will “greatly increase our astronauts’ ability to explore and conduct science on the lunar surface while also serving as a science platform between crewed missions.”

While neither Lunar Outpost nor Venturi Astrolab have been on the moon yet, they are planning uncrewed rover missions within the next couple years. In February, Intuitive Machines became the first privately funded company to successfully land on the lunar surface with its NASA-backed Odysseus spacecraft. Although “Odie” officially returned the US to the moon after an over-50 year hiatus, touchdown complications resulted in the craft landing on its side, severely limiting the extent of its mission.

[Related: NASA’s quirky new lunar rover will be the first to cruise the moon’s south pole.]

The last time astronauts zipped around on a moon buggy was back in 1971 during NASA’s Apollo 15 mission. The new LTV, like its Apollo predecessor, will only accommodate two people in an unpressurized cockpit—i.e. exposed to the harsh moon environment.

Once deployed, however, the LTV will differ from the Lunar Roving Vehicle in a few key aspects—most notably, it won’t always need someone at the steering wheel. While astronauts will pilot the LTV during their expeditions, the vehicle will be specifically designed for remote control once the Artemis crew is back home on Earth. In its initial May 2023 proposal call, the agency explained its LRV capabilities will be “similar to NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers.” When NASA isn’t renting the LTV, the winning company will also be free to contract it out to private ventures in the meantime.

But while a promising lunar rover design is great to see on paper, companies will need to demonstrate their vehicle’s capabilities before NASA makes its final selection—and not just on some desert driving course here on Earth.

After reviewing the three proposals, NASA will issue a second task order to at least one of the finalists, requesting to see their prototype in action on the moon. That means the company (or companies) will need to plan and execute an independent lunar mission, deliver a working vehicle to the moon, and “validate its performance and safety.” Only once that little hurdle is cleared does NASA plan to greenlight one of the company’s rovers.

If everything goes smoothly, NASA’s Artemis V astronauts will use the winning LTV when they arrive near the moon’s south pole in 2030.

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The living mammal family tree is full of diverse species–big blue whales, great apes, bats, rodents, and humans, to name just a few. The early evolution of mammals is a little bit murky, with some placental mammals even likely living alongside dinosaurs and others arising much later. 

Now, some teeth and ear bones uncovered in present day Inner Mongolia are offering some fresh insight into early mammalian evolution. The findings are described in two studies published April 3 in Nature that feature the work of scientists from the United States, Inner Mongolia, China, and Australia.

Keeping up with the shuotheriids–and their teeth

In the first study, scientists focused on the shuotheriids. This family of mouse-sized mammals from the Jurassic period had molars that are different from those in any living mammal. Their molars had a pseudotalonid– or a basin-like structure in their lower molars more similar to reptiles. By comparison, living mammals have a tribosphenic pattern that interlocks with upper molars when chewing food.  

“This unique tooth pattern has hindered our comprehension of shuotheriid relationships and the first steps in the evolution of mammaliaform species,” study co-author and Monash University paleontologist Patricia Vickers-Rich said in a statement.

With these unique back teeth, where these animals fit in the timeline of mammal evolution has been puzzling. Shuotheriids have previously been linked to a group called australosphenidans. This group includes living mammals that lay eggs like the platypus called monotremes. However, this relationship has been a bit controversial among scientists and leaves more questions that aren’t explained by some features seen in later mammals like different molars.

The team analyzed two newly uncovered and well-preserved skeletal fossils of shuotheriids. They lived in the Middle Jurassic between 168–164 million years ago in what is now Inner Mongolia. The team found that the molars of these animals were more similar to another extinct mammal group called the docodontans and not the australosphenidans. The two specimens also belong to a new genus and species named Feredocodon chowi.

[Related: A boiling hot supercontinent could kill all mammals in 250 million years.]

“When you look at the fossil record, both for mammals and many other sorts of animals, teeth are the part of the body that you are most likely to recover,” study co-author and curator in the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Paleontology Jin Meng said in a statement. “Yet since the 1980s, the perplexing tooth shape seen in shuotheriids has been a barrier to our efforts to understand early mammal evolution. These new specimens have allowed us to solve this longstanding problem.”

The team believes that some common mammal ancestor independently gave rise to major groups of mammaliaforms: Docodontiformes, Allotheria, and Holotheria.

Listen up!

The second study focuses on the fossilized skulls of Feredocodon chowi and second new species named Dianoconodon youngi. It lived in the Early Jurassic between 201–184 million years ago. It was similar to an extinct rat-like animal called Morganucodon that is widely regarded as one of the first mammals. 

The team looked at the structure of Dianoconodon youngi’s middle ear, which helps give modern mammals their sharp hearing. In the middle ear, the spot inside the eardrum that turns vibrations in the air into ripples in the inner ear’s fluids has three bones. These bones called auditory ossicles are a feature that is unique to mammals and birds and reptiles only have one middle ear bone. At some point during the early evolution of mammals, the bones that formed the joints of the jaw separated and became associated with hearing. 

[Related: A new evolutionary theory could explain the mystery of shrinking animals.]

Both Feredocodon chowi and Dianoconodon youngi specimens show some fossil evidence of this evolutionary transition in action, as mammals evolved from a group that includes lizards, crocodilians, and dinosaurs. The team believes that this transition began from an ancestral animal that had a double jaw joint. It likely had the joint of a mammal on the outside and a more reptilian joint on the inside.

Analyses on the older fossil (Dianoconodon youngi) show that one of its two joints, the reptilian one, was already beginning to lose its ability to handle the forces created by chewing. The younger fossil (Feredocodon chowi) had a more mammalian middle ear that was formed and adapted exclusively for hearing.

“Scientists have been trying to understand how the mammalian middle ear evolved since Darwin’s time,” said Meng. “While paleontological discoveries have helped reveal the process during the last a few decades, these new fossils bring to light a critical missing link and enrich our understanding of the gradual evolution of the mammalian middle ear.”

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Rare earth elements touch almost every aspect of modern life. Elements and minerals including copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt support the technology that can power clean energy, electric vehicles,  telescope lenses, and computer screens, and more. Since they are stored deep within the Earth, extracting these elements can be ecologically damaging.

The demand for rare earth elements in countries in Africa is driving the destruction of tropical rainforests, as it is home to over half of the world’s cobalt and copper. Now, the continent’s great ape population is more threatened from mining than scientists originally believed. A study published April 3 in the journal Science Advances estimates that nearly 180,000 gorillas, bonobos, and chimpanzees are at risk.

[Related: A deep sea mining zone in the remote Pacific is also a goldmine of unique species.]

“There has been an increase in mining in Africa to satisfy the demand from more industrialized countries and linked to the ‘green revolution’. This requires [a] significant amount of critical minerals to build electric cars, wind turbines, etc.,” Genevieve Campbell, a study co-author and primatologist with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and conservation nonprofit re:wild, tells PopSci. “Unfortunately the location of these minerals often overlap with ape habitat, but people are not aware of the impact of their consumption patterns on apes. This study aimed to quantify this impact and bring awareness to this issue.”

Looking at west Africa

In the study, an international team of scientists used data on operational and preoperational mining sites in 17 African countries and defined 6.2 mile wide buffer zones to account for direct impacts from mining, including habitat destruction and light and noise pollution. They also defined 31 mile buffer zones for the more indirect impacts linked to increased human activity near mining sites, including new roads and infrastructure to access formerly remote areas and more human presence. More human activity generally puts more pressure on the animals and their environments due to increased hunting, habitat loss, and a higher risk of disease transmission. 

“Mining often exacerbates existing threats by, for example, building roads to remote areas that in turn facilitate access for hunters,” says Campbell.

Integrating the data on the population density of great apes allowed the team to pinpoint how many African great apes could be negatively impacted by mining activities and mapped out areas where high ape densities and heavy mining overlapped. 

They found that more than one-third of the great ape population–180,000 animals–is in danger. The west African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, and Guinea had the largest overlaps of high ape density and mining areas. The most significant overlap of mining and chimpanzee density was found in Guinea, where more than than 23,000 chimpanzees (80 percent of the country’s ape population) could be directly or indirectly impacted by mining activities. The most sensitive areas are also not generally protected.

“I expected the spatial overlap between mining projects and ape habitat to be large and I suspected that previous estimates had underestimated the potential impact of mining-related activities on great apes,” study co-author and IUCN and re:wild conservation biologist Jessi Junker tells PopSci. “The results of this study thus didn’t really come as a surprise since no assessments at this spatial scale had been done previously.”

‘Critical Habitat’ zones

The study also explored how mining areas intersect with areas that could be considered ‘Critical Habitat.’  These regions have unique biodiversity and plant life that is crucial to a species’ survival. They found 20 percent overlap between proposed mining areas and Critical Habitat zones. When a region is designated this way strict environmental regulations can be implemented. These regulations particularly apply to any mining projects looking for funding from groups such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) or other money lenders adhering to similar standards. 

According to the team, previous efforts to map Critical Habitats in African countries have overlooked large portions of ape habitats that would qualify under international benchmarks.

“Companies operating in these areas should have adequate mitigation and compensation schemes in place to minimize their impact, which seems unlikely, given that most companies lack robust species baseline data that are required to inform these actions,” Tenekwetche Sop, a study co-author and manager of the great ape population database at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Germany, said in a statement. “Encouraging these companies to share their invaluable ape survey data with our database serves as a pivotal step towards transparency in their operations. Only through such collaborative efforts can we comprehensively gauge the true extent of mining activities’ effects on great apes and their habitats.”

What can be done

In future research, the team hopes to quantify the direct and indirect impacts of mining activities in a different range of African countries and different ape species. Currently, these risks are not considered often and mitigated by mining companies. The study’s authors also urge mining companies to avoid their impacts on great apes and for more data collection to create a more accurate picture of where apes live in relation to where mining activities may take place. 

[Related: How can we decarbonize copper and nickel mining?]

The general population also has a responsibility to ensure a shift away from fossil fuels does not come at the expense of biodiversity. 

“We can all do something to help protect great apes and their habitat. It is crucial for everyone to adopt a mindset of reduced consumption,” says Junker. “Moreover, policymakers must enact more effective recycling policies to facilitate sustainable reuse of metals.”

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Transitioning towards sustainable clothing practices is a must for combating climate change, so researchers are turning to bacteria for their fashion inspiration. As detailed in the research journal Nature Biotechnology, a team at Imperial College London has genetically engineered new microbial strains capable of being woven into wearable material, while simultaneously self-dyeing itself in the process. The result is a new vegan, plastic-free leather that’s suitable for items such as wallets and shoes—although perhaps not the most fashionable looking shoes at the moment. 

As much as 200 million liters of water is consumed across the global textile industry every year, and 85 percent of all used clothing in the US winds up in landfills. Meanwhile, the particulates shed from washing polyester and other polymer-based fabrics already make up 20-and-35 percent of the oceans’ microplastics. Then there’s all the pesticides used in industrial cotton farming. And when it comes to animal leather production, the statistics are arguably just as bad. Basically, from an ecological standpoint, it costs a lot to dress fashionably.

Sustainable, microbial-based textile alternatives haven increasingly shown promise for greener manufacturing, especially the utilization of bacterial cellulose.

[Related: A new color-changing, shape-shifting fabric responds to heat and electricity.]

“Bacterial cellulose is inherently vegan, and its growth requires a tiny fraction of the carbon emissions, water, land use and time of farming cows for leather,” Tom Ellis, a bioengineering professor at Imperial College London and study lead author, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Unlike plastic-based leather alternatives, bacterial cellulose can also be made without petrochemicals, and will biodegrade safely and non-toxically in the environment.”

Unfortunately, synthetically dyeing products like vegan leather remains some of the most toxic stages within the fashion industry. By combining both the manufacturing and dyeing processes, researchers believe they can create even more environmentally friendly wearables.

To harness both capabilities, Ellis and his colleagues genetically modified bacteria commonly used in microbial cellulose to self-produce a black pigment known as eumelanin. Over a two-week period, the team then allowed their new material to grow over a “bespoke, shoe-shaped vessel.” Once completed, the leather-like cellulose was loaded into a machine that gently shook it for about 48-hours at roughly 86-degrees Fahrenheit, which stimulated the bacteria to begin darkening from the inside out. Finally, the material was attached to a pre-made sole to reveal… well, if not a “shoe,” then certainly a “shoe-shaped vessel.” Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course. But if the bulbous clogs aren’t your style, maybe the team’s other example—a simple bifold wallet—makes more sense for your daily outfit.

According to their study, the team notes they still want to cut down the cellulose’s water consumption even further, as well as engineering their bacterial cellulose to allow for additional colors, materials, and even patterns.

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What time is it on the moon?

Well, right now, that’s somewhat a matter of interpretation. But humanity is going to need to get a lot more specific if it intends to permanently set up shop there. In preparation, NASA is aligning its clocks in preparation for the upcoming Artemis missions. On Tuesday, the White House issued a memo directing the agency to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC), which will help guide humanity’s potentially permanent presence on the moon. Like the internationally recognized Universal Time Zone (UTC), LTC will lack time zones, as well as a Daylight Savings Time.

It’s not quite a time zone like those on Earth, but an entire frame of time reference for the moon. 

As Einstein famously noted, time is very much relative. Most timekeeping on Earth is tied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which relies on an international array of atomic clocks designed to determine the most precise time possible. This works just fine in relation to our planet’s gravitational forces, but thanks to physics, things are observed differently elsewhere in space, including on the moon.

“Due to general and special relativity, the length of a second defined on Earth will appear distorted to an observer under different gravitational conditions, or to an observer moving at a high relative velocity,” Arati Prabhakar, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director at the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTB), explained in yesterday’s official memorandum. 

Because of this, an Earth-based clock seen by a lunar astronaut would appear to lose an average of 58.7 microseconds per Earth day, alongside various other periodic variational influences. This might not seem like much, but it would pose major issues for any future lunar spacecraft and satellites that necessitate extremely precise timekeeping, synchronization, and logistics.

[Related: How to photograph the eclipse, according to NASA.]

“A consistent definition of time among operators in space is critical to successful space situational awareness capabilities, navigation, and communications, all of which are foundational to enable interoperability across the U.S. government and with international partners,” Steve Welby, OTSP Deputy Director for National Security, said in Tuesday’s announcement.

NASA’s new task is about more than just literal timing—it’s symbolic, as well. Although the US aims to send the first humans back to the lunar surface since the 1970’s, it isn’t alone in the goal. As Reuters noted yesterday, China wants to put astronauts on the moon by 2030, while both Japan and India have successfully landed uncrewed spacecraft there in the past year. In moving forward to establish an international LTC, the US is making its lunar leadership plans known to everyone.

[Related: Why do all these countries want to go to the moon right now?]

But it’s going to take a lot of global discussions—and, yes, time—to solidify all the calculations needed to make LTC happen. In its memo, the White House acknowledged putting Coordinated Lunar Time into practice will need international agreements made with the help of “existing [timekeeping] standards bodies,” such as the United Nations International Telecommunications Union. They’ll also need to discuss matters with the 35 other countries who signed the Artemis Accords, a pact concerning international relations in space and on the moon. Things could also get tricky, given that Russia and China never agreed to those accords.

“Think of the atomic clocks at the US Naval Observatory. They’re the heartbeat of the nation, synchronizing everything,” Kevin Coggins, NASA’s space communications and navigation chief, told Reuters on Tuesday. “You’re going to want a heartbeat on the moon.”

NASA has until the end of 2026 to deliver its standardization plan to the White House. If all goes according to plan, there might be actual heartbeats on the moon by that point—the Artemis III crewed lunar mission is scheduled to launch “no earlier than September 2026.”

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Galaxies come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some have buff, spiral arms. Others are necklace-shaped or oblong. They begin their lives rotating in an orderly fashion, but the movement of the stars eventually gets more random and less organized. Astronomers have not been able to pinpoint the reasons behind the changes, but new research poses a somewhat simple explanation–aging. As galaxies age, they tend to be more chaotic. The findings are described in a study published April 3 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).

[Related: Listen to three breathtaking NASA images.]

“When we did the analysis, we found that age, consistently, whichever way we slice or dice it, is always the most important parameter,” study co-author and University of Sydney observational astrophysicist Scott Croom said in a statement. “Once you account for age, there is essentially no environmental trend, and it’s similar for mass. If you find a young galaxy it will be rotating, whatever environment it is in, and if you find an old galaxy, it will have more random orbits, whether it’s in a dense environment or a void.”

When galaxies are young, they are star-forming machines. Older ones typically stop forming new stars. Earlier studies suggested that the galaxy’s environment or mass were the more important factors influencing how galaxies behave and move. According to the team, these ideas are not necessarily incorrect.

“We do know that age is affected by [the] environment. If a galaxy falls into a dense environment, it will tend to shut down the star formation. So galaxies in denser environments are, on average, older,” study co-author and University of Sydney astronomer Jesse van de Sande said in a statement. “The point of our analysis is that it’s not living in dense environments that reduces their spin, it’s the fact that they’re older.” For example, our own 13.6 billion year-old Milky Way galaxy still has a thin star forming disk and it is considered a high spin rotational galaxy. Older galaxies also move around more randomly than younger ones, no matter how densely packed with energy their environments are.    

In the new study, an international team of scientists used data from observations from the SAMI Galaxy Survey. SAMI has surveyed 3,000 galaxies across a wide range of cosmic environments, which helped the team compare and contrast different types of galaxies. Having more accurate observations of galactic behavior helped them fine-tune their models of how the universe developed. 

[Related: JWST images show off the swirling arms of 19 spiral galaxies.]

In future studies, the team hopes to create galaxy evolution simulations in better detail using the University of Sydney’s Hector Galaxy Survey.

“Hector is observing 15,000 galaxies, but with higher spectral resolution, allowing the age and spin of galaxies to be measured even in much lower mass galaxies and with more detailed environmental information,” study co-author and Hector Galaxy Survey lead Julia Bryant said in a statement.

This work ultimately aims to give scientists a better understanding about how the universe has evolved over billions of years and how our solar system came to be.  

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The world’s largest digital camera is officially ready to begin filming “the greatest movie of all time,” according to its makers. This morning, engineers and scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory announced the completion of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera, a roughly 6,610-pound, car-sized tool designed to capture new information about the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

Following a two-decade construction process, the 3,200-megapixel LSST Camera will now travel to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory located 8,900-feet atop Chile’s Cerro Pachón. Once attached to the facility’s Simonyi Survey Telescope later this year, its dual five-foot and three-foot-wide lenses will aim skyward for a 10-year-long survey of the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and beyond.

Just how much detail can you get from a focal plane leveled to within a tenth the width of a human hair alongside 10-micron-wide pixels? Aaron Roodman, SLAC professor and Rubin Observatory Deputy Director and Camera Program Lead, likens its ability to capturing the details of a golf ball from 15-miles away “while covering a swath of the sky seven times wider than the full moon.” The resultant images will include billions of stars and galaxies, and with them, new insights into the universe’s structure.

[Related: JWST takes a jab at the mystery of the universe’s expansion rate.]

Among its many duties, the LSST Camera will search for evidence of weak gravitational lensing, which occurs when a gigantic galaxy’s gravitational mass bends light pathways from the galaxies behind it. Analyzing this data can offer researchers a better look at how mass is distributed throughout the universe, as well as how that distribution changed over time. In turn, this could help provide astronomers new ways to explore how dark energy influences the universe’s expansion.

To achieve these impressive goals, the LSST Camera needed to be much more than simply a scaled-up version of a point-and-shoot digital camera. While lenses like those within your smartphone often don’t include physical shutters, they are still usually found within SLR cameras. That said, their shutter speeds aren’t nearly as slow as the LSST Camera. 

“The [LSST] sensors are read out much more slowly and deliberately… ” Andy Rasmussen, SLAC staff physicist and LSST Camera Integration and Testing Scientist, tells PopSci. “… the shutter is open for 15 seconds (for the exposure) followed by 2 seconds to read (with shutter closed).” This snail’s pace allows LSST Camera operators to only deal with lower noise—only around 6 or 7 electrons—resulting in capturing much darker skies.

“We need quiet sensors so that we can tell that the dark sky is actually dark and also so that we can measure very dim objects in the sky,” Rasmussen continues. “During this 2 second readout period, we need to block any more light from entering the Camera, so that’s why we have a shutter (one of several mechanisms inside the Camera).”

To further ensure operators can capture the measurements of dim objects, they also ostensibly slow atomic activity near the LSST Camera’s focal point by lowering surrounding temperatures as low as -100C (173 Kelvin).

Beyond dark matter and dark energy research, cosmologists intend to use the LSST Camera to conduct a new, detailed census of the solar solar system. Researchers estimate new imagery could increase the number of known objects by a factor of 10, and thus provide additional insight into how the solar system formed, as well as keep track of any errant asteroids that may speed by Earth a little too close for comfort.

“More than ever before, expanding our understanding of fundamental physics requires looking farther out into the universe,” Kathy Turner, the Department of Energy’s Cosmic Frontier Program manager, said in today’s announcement. With LSST Camera’s installation, Turner believes researchers will be on the path to “answer some of the hardest, most important questions in physics today.”

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

John Ford still recalls the first time he heard them. He’d been puttering around the Deserters Group archipelago, a smattering of spruce- and cedar-choked islands in Queen Charlotte Strait, between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. He was piloting a small skiff and trailing a squad of six killer whales. Ford, then a graduate student, had been enamored with cetacean sounds since listening to belugas chirp while he worked part-time at the Vancouver Aquarium as a teenager. Now here he was, on August 12, 1980, tracking the underwater conversations of wild killer whales through a borrowed hydrophone.

Ford had spent the previous two summers painstakingly recording the sounds made by other groups of these iconic black-and-white marine mammals, known as resident killer whales. In summer and fall, the residents traveled in noisy, tight-knit pods that often hugged the shorelines of British Columbia and Washington State, breaching in spectacular aerial displays that delighted tourists, scientists, and other bystanders. They emitted rapid overlapping clicks and thumps, along with squeals, honks, and bleats that could resemble seal barks or, occasionally, human flatulence.

Yet to Ford, the vocalizations he captured on his reel-to-reel that August day sounded nothing like the resident killer whales he’d recorded in previous years. They were coming from a gang of whales researchers had taken to calling “the oddballs,” because they appeared to scientists to be social outcasts who had left or been driven out of the resident group. Their calls were tonal, more alien, and far louder, sometimes sounding like a rusty hinge on a closing gate. Clicks were infrequent when they came at all. “I was amazed,” Ford says now.

While Ford spent the rest of his career studying whales, eventually leading the cetacean research program for Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Pacific Biological Station before retiring in 2017, he never forgot his reaction that day: these must be different creatures.

More than 40 years later, science is poised to agree.

A new study published last week in the journal Royal Society Open Science by a team of top whale experts argues that across the North Pacific, resident killer whales and the oddballs—long since renamed transient, or Bigg’s, killer whales—aren’t just different ecotypes. They’re entirely distinct species. The researchers contend that both are separate from a third species that encompasses the rest of the world’s killer whales.

Ford, who was not involved in the study, calls the research thorough and definitive, drawing from data collected across disciplines and over decades. “There’re just pieces of the story that have fit together to build, I think, a compelling case,” he says.

By proposing to split Orcinus orca into three separate species—residents, transients, and everything else—scientists aren’t only changing the taxonomic record to more accurately reflect what it means to be a killer whale. They’re also acknowledging the ways that communication, behavior, and even culture can help shape speciation as surely as genetics and physiology do.

Killer whales traverse all the world’s oceans, from polar waters to the tropics. They are the seas’ apex predators, described in scientific literature in 1869 as “wolves of the ocean,” who swim “in small companies” while “living by violence and plunder.” That’s true. Some killer whales eat birds or baby whales or balls of herring. Others prey on manta rays or sea turtles. In Antarctica, they work together to wash seals off ice by swamping floes with waves. In both hemispheres, killer whales have been seen surging onto beaches to pluck seals right off land.

There have long been signs that such hunting behaviors and dietary differences might be more than mere preference. In 1970, whale rustlers herded several killer whales into Pedder Bay, southwest of Victoria, British Columbia, with the intent of capturing them for marine theme parks. For more than 11 weeks, two of the whales refused to eat the fish that handlers served them, becoming more and more emaciated. What no one knew then was that these captives were transients, not the resident killer whales who were known to specialize in chinook salmon as prey. Scientists didn’t yet understand that transients even existed, or that they’d eat seals, porpoises, dolphins, even humpback calves—but not fish.

“These prey specializations aren’t just choices that orcas make on a daily basis—they are hardwired,” says Bob Pitman, a marine ecologist and affiliate of Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute. In fact, both populations are so set in their ways that researchers have spied resident fish-eating whales slaughtering harbor porpoises for sport without consuming them.

For decades, scientists misunderstood these behaviors, which are consistent everywhere residents and transients are found, from California, British Columbia, and Alaska to Japan, Russia, and beyond. “We didn’t recognize that as being evolutionarily significant,” says Phillip Morin, a marine mammal geneticist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Southwest Fisheries Science Center who led the Royal Society Open Science study.

By 2003, the population of one subsection of residents—the southern residents, often spied in and around the Salish Sea, which stretches from BC’s Strait of Georgia to Washington’s Budd Inlet—had plummeted to 83 individuals from an estimated high in the 19th century of more than 200. Scientists in the United States trying to advise the government on how to offer federal protections to these particular whales struggled to describe how they fit in with the rest of the world’s killer whales, and vice versa. Nor did scientists know how long members of a group struggling to survive had gone without breeding with other killer whale groups in the same area.

So Morin spent years coordinating with fellow experts, amassing evidence about the peculiarities of residents and transients across the North Pacific. Some elements had been known for decades. For instance, transients don’t just eat differently than residents, they hunt differently, too. Unlike their chatterbox neighbors, transients use stealth, and stalk meals in silence (likely because their prey use sound too). And while residents live in stable pods for decades, transients travel in looser groups with shifting alliances.

Furthermore, killer whales often live in communities with their own rituals, which get passed down from one generation to the next through social learning. Even subgroups of resident whales that are nearly genetically identical and overlap geographically can behave quite differently, their dialects as unalike as Spanish and Japanese. Northern residents, for example, frequently zip into shallow waters to scratch their bellies on the gravelly seafloor. Southern residents, who frequent similar waters, have never been documented doing that. Instead, they hold multi-pod gatherings and occasionally push baby salmon with their snouts—neither of which is a popular pastime with northern residents.

Alone, none of these differences is enough to classify different communities or ecotypes as distinct species. But for some groups of killer whales, what started out as behavioral traits handed down through generations may have ultimately helped lead to something more. “Most people tend to think [something is] either a different species or it’s not,” Pitman says. But “you have to understand: evolution is a slow change over time. It’s not a black-and-white situation.”

Over several decades, Morin’s compilation of research helped illuminate differences both subtle and extraordinary, through methods as diverse as finding and studying whale skulls and using cameras attached to drones. Transients, compared to residents, are longer and fatter, with more triangular dorsal fins. Their jaws are more robust and curved—a necessity, perhaps, for wrangling a half-tonne dinner of Steller sea lion.

But some of the most compelling distinctions come from work by Morin and colleague Kim Parsons, a research geneticist at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. When studying tissue samples, Parsons found that whenever whales look, act, feed, and sound like transients, they have DNA that’s noticeably distinct from residents. In fact, Morin’s work showed that the two whale types, even when swimming in nearby waters, are so genetically removed from one another that they haven’t interbred for at least several hundred thousand years. As Parsons puts it: “They’ve obviously been on very separate, very divergent, and independent paths of evolution for a very, very long time.”

This pattern remains true across the North Pacific. Andrew Foote, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oslo who has studied killer whales but wasn’t part of this study, says that this speaks to how robust the barriers to gene flow are between residents and transients.

Morin’s best guess is that as ice ages came and went, groups of whales became isolated by changing geography and were forced to specialize. “There was this physical separation, which is the normal way that speciation starts to occur, and the cultural variation was overlaid on top of that,” Morin says. When the environment shifted again and whales came back together, “cultural differences reinforced the separation.”

Other animals that separated for millennia then reunited might not have a problem reintegrating, Morin adds. But killer whales have such cohesive family bonds and distinct dialects that “this cultural aspect helps drive their divergence—or at least helps maintain it.”

For the moment, killer whales globally will remain a single species. The Society for Marine Mammalogy’s taxonomy committee will debate the findings of Morin and his colleagues, maybe later this spring, and many experts suspect they will eventually accept the proposed partitioning of killer whales into three species: transients (Orcinus rectipinnus), residents (Orcinus ater), and everything else, including the offshore whales that also call the North Pacific home. All of those would still go by Orcinus orca—at least for now. This research may eventually pave the way for further divisions among the rest of the planet’s killer whales.

In the meantime, Ford looks forward to being able to finally settle a longstanding argument. “What this paper is going to do is resolve a problem I’ve had for years,” he says, chuckling. When he talks to the public highlighting differences between these whales, or tells someone at a dinner party how he spent his career, he invariably faces a question: “Why aren’t they different species?”

Now he can say, “I think they will be soon.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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A team of scientists is attempting to grow a new liver inside of a human using lymph nodes. While this sounds like science fiction, Pittsburgh-based biotech company LyGenesis announced that a volunteer has received an injection of liver cells from a living donor that could turn one of their lymph nodes into a second and functioning liver.

The experimental procedure took place in Houston on March 25. It is part of a Phase 2a clinical trial that will test this treatment in 12 adults who have end-stage liver disease (ESLD). This illness occurs when the liver is damaged beyond repair, primarily due to chronic liver disease or acute liver failure. Over 50,000 Americans die of chronic liver disease every year. 

Patients with ESLD typically require a liver transplant, but roughly 10,000 people are currently on the waiting list in the United States alone. In 2021, a record of 9,234 liver transplants were performed in the US, according to the federal government’s Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. LyGensis hopes that this procedure will create the growth of enough liver tissue that patients won’t need a transplant. 

[Related: Swiss researchers kept a donor liver healthy for a remarkable 68 hours.]

“This therapy will potentially be a remarkable regenerative medicine milestone by helping patients with ESLD grow new functional ectopic livers in their own body,” LyGenesis co-founder and CEO Dr. Michael Hufford said in a statement. “If our study is successful and we obtain FDA approval, our allogeneic cell therapy could enable one donated liver to treat many dozens of ESLD patients, which could help to tilt the current organ supply-demand imbalance in favor of patients.”

The technique has been in the works for over a decade. It takes liver cells–or hepatocytes–from a donated organ and injects them into the lymph nodes that are found all over the body. In the lymph nodes, the liver cells will hopefully divide, grow, and develop blood vessels. It targets a group of lymph nodes in the abdomen that are connected to the liver via a system of veins.

According to MIT Technology Review, LyGenesis has tested their approach in mice and pigs, finding that the cells can flourish and form an additional liver that will take over the function of an animal’s failing organ. Chief scientific officer of LyGenesis and University of Pittsburgh pathologist Dr. Eric Lagasse published a study in 2020 that found the pigs regained their liver function following the injections. They also noted that the more severe the damage to the pig’s original liver, the bigger the second livers grew. The pig’s body may be able to recognize the more healthy tissue and give the new liver more responsibilities. 

In the trial procedure, the doctors threaded a thin flexible tube down the end of the patient’s throat through the digestive tract, according to Wired. They then used an ultrasound to identify one of the target lymph nodes and put 50 million hepatocytes into it.

[Related: Surgeons complete first-ever gene-edited pig kidney transplant.]

“LyGenesis’ cell therapy platform represents a truly remarkable potential commercial opportunity and may be transformative for chronic liver failure patients who do not have access to a donor liver,” LyGenesis investor Justin Briggs from Prime Movers Lab said in a statement. “Their use of an endoscopic ultrasound as a low risk and low cost route of cell therapy administration is another way this pioneering technology could provide patients with access to life-saving therapies and address complex medical challenges by upending transplant medicine.”

The results won’t be available for a few months and the team will be monitoring how many cells are required to grow a liver that is large enough to filter blood and produce bile. If it works, it could mean a major change for the treatment of liver disease, which affects roughly 4.5 million people in the United States. 

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Arachnids are born dancers. After millions of years of evolution, many species rely on fancy footwork to communicate everything from courtship rituals, to territorial disputes, to hunting strategies. Researchers usually observe these movements in lab settings using what are known as laser vibrometers. After aiming the tool’s light beam at a target, the vibrometer measures miniscule vibration frequencies and amplitudes emitted from the Doppler shift effect. Unfortunately, such systems’ cost and sensitivity often limit their field deployment.

To find a solution for this long-standing problem, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln PhD student recently combined an array of tiny, cheap contact microphones alongside a sound-processing machine learning program. Then, once packed up, he headed into the forests of north Mississippi to test out his new system.

Noori Choi’s results, recently published in Communications Biology, highlight a never-before-seen approach to collecting spiders’ extremely hard-to-detect movements across woodland substrates. Choi spent two sweltering summer months placing 25 microphones and pitfall traps across 1,000-square-foot sections of forest floor, then waited for the local wildlife to make its vibratory moves. In the end, Choi left the Magnolia State with 39,000 hours of data including over 17,000 series of vibrations.

[Related: Meet the first electric blue tarantula known to science.]

Not all those murmurings were the wolf spiders Choi wanted, of course. Forests are loud places filled with active insects, chatty birds, rustling tree branches, as well as the invasive sounds of human life like overhead plane engines. These sound waves are also absorbed into the ground as vibrations, and need to be sifted out from scientists’ arachnid targets.

“The vibroscape is a busier signaling space than we expected, because it includes both airborne and substrate-borne vibrations,” Choi said in a recent university profile.

In the past, this analysis process was a frustratingly tedious, manual endeavor that could severely limit research and dataset scopes. But instead of pouring over roughly 1,625 days’ worth of recordings, Choi designed a machine learning program capable of filtering out unwanted sounds while isolating the vibrations from three separate wolf spider species: Schizocosa stridulans, S. uetzi, and S. duplex.

Further analysis yielded fascinating new insights into arachnid behaviors, particularly an overlap of acoustic frequency, time, and signaling space between the S. stridulans and S. uetzi sibling species. Choi determined that both wolf spider variants usually restricted their signaling for when they were atop leaf litter, not pine debris. According to Choi, this implies that real estate is at a premium for the spiders.

“[They] may have limited options to choose from, because if they choose to signal in different places, on different substrates, they may just disrupt the whole communication and not achieve their goal, like attracting mates,” Choi, now a postdoctoral researcher at Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, said on Monday.

What’s more, S. stridulans and S. uetzi appear to adapt their communication methods depending on how crowded they are at any given time, and who was crowding them. S. stridulans, for example, tended to lengthen their vibration-intense courtship dances when they detected nearby, same-species males. When they sensed nearby S. uetzi, however, they often varied their movements slightly to differentiate them from the other species, thus reducing potential courtship confusion.

In addition to opening up entirely new methods of observing arachnid behavior, Choi’s combination of contact microphones and machine learning analysis could also help others one day monitor an ecosystem’s overall health by keeping an ear on spider populations.

“Even though everyone agrees that arthropods are very important for ecosystem functioning… if they collapse, the whole community can collapse,” Choi said. “Nobody knows how to monitor changes in arthropods.”

Now, however, Choi’s new methodology could allow a non-invasive, accurate, and highly effective aid in staying atop spiders’ daily movements.

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The mystery of what came first, the chicken or the egg has generally been solved–it was the egg. However, some questions remain about how well chickens were dispersed in the ancient world, as some wild bird bones have been misidentified as domesticated chicken bones. 

With the help of new technology, a recent analysis of eggshell fragments from Central Asia suggests that raising chickens for egg production was likely common in the region from about 400 BCE to 1000 CE. The domestic chicken’s ability to lay eggs outside of a traditional breeding season was potentially the primary driver for the dispersal of these birds across Eurasia and northeast Africa. The findings are described in a study published April 2 in the journal Nature Communications and helps explain how they became such a critical economic and agricultural resource.

An international team of archaeologists, historians, and biomolecular scientists studied eggshell fragments from 12 different archaeological sites in Central Asia spanning about 1,500 years. They were likely dispersed along the central corridor of the ancient Silk Road, a vast Eurasian trade network spanning from present day China to the Mediterranean Sea. The network was used from the second century BCE through the mid-15th century and facilitated religious, cultural, economic, and political interactions between Asian and European countries. 

[Related: Humans have been eating hazelnuts for at least 6,000 years.]

To identify the source of the egg fragments, they used a biomolecular analysis method called ZooMS. It can identify a particular species from animal remains, including bone, skin, and shells. ZooMS also relies on protein signals instead of DNA, which makes it a quicker and more cost-effective option than genetic analysis, according to the team.  

“This study showcases the potential of ZooMS to shed light on human-animal interactions in the past,” Carli Peters, a study co-author and archaeologist at Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany, said in a statement.

The technique identified the shell fragments as pieces of domestic chicken egg, which is a key finding. The team believes that the amount of chicken egg shells present throughout the layers of sediment at each archeological site means that the birds must have been laying eggs more frequently than their wild ancestor–the red jungle fowl. These colorful tropical birds are still found throughout Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia, and only nest once per year, laying about six eggs per clutch. Domestic chickens lay eggs much more frequently, with some hens able to lay one egg per day, so ancient peoples must have taken advantage of this egg laying ability that was not beholden to a specific season. 

The abundance of the eggshells suggests that the birds were laying eggs out of season. Having this access to eggs that were not dependent on a particular season likely made the domestic chicken a particularly useful animal.

[Related: Finally, a smart home for chickens.]

“This is the earliest evidence for the loss of seasonal egg laying yet identified in the archaeological record,” study co-author and Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology paleoecologist and paleoeconomist Robert Spengler said in a statement. “This is an important clue for better understanding the mutualistic relationships between humans and animals that resulted in domestication.”

The study suggests that at least in Central Asia, the domestic chicken’s ability to lay several eggs made it the important agricultural species that it is today. The team hopes that work like this demonstrates how using new cost-effective analysis methods like ZooMS and interdisciplinary collaboration can be used to address long-standing questions about our past. 

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An enormous asteroid crashed into the Earth about 65 million years ago. While terrestrial dinosaurs like the famed Tyrannosaurus rex were wiped out, many avian animals really began to flourish. Considering that there are more than 10,000 species of birds on Earth, flourish may even be an understatement. Keeping birds organized in a neat family tree is a bit of a Herculean task, since there are so many species and their evolution has been a little unclear. However, some advances in genomic sequencing and analysis are beginning to create a more lucid picture of how the planet’s living dinosaurs evolved.

In two studies published April 1 in the journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and Nature, scientists reveal that a genetic event about 65 million years ago has misled them about the true history of avian evolution. A section of one chromosome hasn’t mixed together with nearby DNA as it should have. This section is only tiny fraction of the bird genome, but was enough to make it difficult for scientists to build a more detailed bird family tree.  

A sticky chunk of DNA

In 2014, advances in computer technology used to study genomes helped scientists piece together a family tree for the Neoaves. This group includes the majority of bird species. Using the genomes of 48 species, they split the Neoaves into two major categories. Doves and flamingos were in one group and all the other bird species belonged to the other group. 

When a similar genetic analysis was repeated using 363 bird species for this new study, the team saw a different family tree emerge. This one points to four main groups and reveals that flamingos and doves are more distantly related and it all came back to a specific spot in the chromosomes.

[Related: Birds are so specialized to their homes, it shows in their bones.]

Within these two family trees, the team looked for explanations that could tell them which one was correct. They found one spot on the genome, where the genes were not as mixed together as they should have been over millions of years of sexual reproduction. 

“When we looked at the individual genes and what tree they supported, all of a sudden it popped out that all the genes that support the older tree, they’re all in one spot,” a co-author of the study published in PNAS and University of Florida biologist Edward Braun said in a statement. “That’s what started the whole thing.”

Birds combine genes from a father and a mother into the next generation, but they first mix the genes they inherited from their parents when creating sperm and eggs. This process is called recombination and it is also something that occurs in humans. Recombination maximizes a species’ genetic diversity by ensuring that no two siblings are exactly the same.

One section of one chromosome did not mix with DNA nearby like it should have and has basically spent millions of years frozen in time. This chromosomal section makes up only two percent of the bird genome, but was enough to convince scientists that most birds could be grouped into two major categories–Passerera and Columbea. This new and more accurate family tree takes into account that  misleading section of the avian genome and identifies four main groups of birds.

The team also found evidence that this spot on the bird chromosome has suppressed the recombination process since around the time the dinosaurs disappeared. It is not clear if the Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and these genomic anomalies are related.

The result of this genetic suppression is that the flamingos and doves looked similar to one another in this one sticky chunk of DNA, but two groups are actually more distantly related when looking at their entire genomes. Flamingos and doves can now be considered more distantly related genetically. According to the team, this kind of stuck genetic mystery could be lurking in the genomes of other organisms. 

Building a better bird family tree

The study published in Nature details an intricate chart detailing 93 million years of evolutionary relationships between 363 bird species, or about 92 percent of all bird families. This updated family tree revealed patterns in the evolutionary history of birds following the Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction.

[Related: Dinosaurs may have evolved into birds, but early flights didn’t go so well.]

The researchers noticed sharp increases in effective population size, substitution rates, and relative brain size in early birds. These evolutionary changes shed new light on the adaptive mechanisms that drove the diversification of bird species in the aftermath of this planet-altering extinction event. 

To do this, they harnessed the power of a suite of computer algorithms known as ASTRAL. This program helps infer evolutionary relationships quickly and accurately and enables the team to integrate the genomic data from more than 60,000 regions in bird genomes. They then examine the evolutionary history of individual segments across the genome and pieced together several gene trees to build out a larger species tree. 

“We found that our method of adding tens of thousands of genes to our analysis was actually necessary to resolve evolutionary relationships between bird species,” study co-author and University of California, San Diego computer engineer Siavash Mirarab said in a statement. “You really need all that genomic data to recover what happened in this certain period of time 65-67 million years ago with high confidence.”

These computational methods also helped the team shed light on that same particular section of one chromosome in the bird genome that has remained unchanged over millions of years and made it difficult for scientists to study these changes. 

“What’s surprising is that this period of suppressed recombination could mislead the analysis,” said Braun. “And because it could mislead the analysis, it was actually detectable more than 60 million years in the future. That’s the cool part.” 

In future studies, similar computer models could help reconstruct evolutionary trees for a variety of other animals. The team is hoping to continue their efforts to build a more complete picture of bird evolution. Biologists are also continuing to sequence the genomes of other bird species in an effort to expand their family tree even more. 

The work is part of the international Bird 10,000 Genomes (B10K) Project, a multi-institutional effort with the goal of generating draft genome sequences for about 10,500 living bird species.

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Millions across Canada, the United States, and Mexico are getting ready for this month’s big total solar eclipse. However, this exciting celestial event is not the only thing to get pumped about this Global Astronomy Month. April will bring in another possible chance to see the “Devil Comet” and a meteor shower. 

[ Related: This is the most cosmically perfect time in history ]

April 8-Total Solar Eclipse

In North America, the moon will pass between the sun and Earth, completely blocking the face of the sun. According to NASA, the sky will darken as if it were dawn or dusk in the areas where the moon blocks out the sun’s light. Torreón, Mexico will see the longest totality at 4 minutes and 28 seconds, while most places along the path of totality will see it last between 3.5 and four minutes. 

The first location in continental North America that will experience totality is the Pacific Coast of Mexico, at about 11:07 am PDT. The path of the eclipse will then enter the United States in Texas, and travel through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. It will enter Canada via Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. The eclipse will leave continental North America on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada, at 5:16 p.m. NDT. 

It is incredibly important to not look directly in the sun without proper eye protection during the eclipse. You can also build your own eclipse glasses and pinhole camera to watch this incredible event without frying your eyeballs. Aspiring astrophotographers are also encouraged to try to photograph the event and you can learn how to do so safely with this NASA-approved guide.

[Related: How to make sure your eclipse glasses actually work.]

April 21- Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks Reaches Perihelion

The “Devil Comet” put on a show in the Northern Hemisphere in March, and could even photobomb this month’s eclipse. On April 21, it will reach its closest point to the sun. During this time, it may be visible to the naked eye if the sky is dark enough. As it moves from the constellation Aries to Taurus, it will also become visible from the Southern Hemisphere. For the best spots to try to catch a glimpse of Pons-Brooks, consult StarWalk. 

After June, Pons-Brooks will take another 71 years for it to complete a full circuit around the sun. It won’t be visible again until summer 2095, so this will likely be the last time most of us get to see it. 

April 21 through 23- Lyrids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

The annual Lyrids meteor shower officially begins on April 15 and is predicted to peak beginning in the early evening hours of April 21. Unfortunately, this year’s shower will be impacted by a bright waxing gibbous moon, making the night sky a bit brighter. In a dark sky with no moon 10 to 15 meteors per hour can be expected, so this year’s may be a little bit low. However, the Lyrids are known for some rare surges in activity that can sometimes bring them up to 100 per hour. The meteor shower will be visible from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, but is much more active in the north.

[Related: The moon is shrinking (very slowly).]

April 23- Full Pink Moon

The first full moon of spring in the Northern Hemisphere will reach peak illumination at 7:49 pm EDT on April 23. You can use the Farmer’s Almanac to calculate the local moonrise and moonset times near you. For best viewing, watch as the moon rises just above the horizon. 

April’s full moon is often called the pink moon in reference to the early springtime blooms of the wildflower Phlox subulata found in eastern North America, so it will not take on a pink hue. The April full moon is also called the Loon Moon or Maango-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the It’s Thundering Moon or Wasakayutese in Oneida, and the Planting Moon or O’nót’ah in Seneca.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key during the nighttime events this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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This article was originally featured on MIT Press.

This article is adapted from Omar W. Nasim’s book “The Astronomer’s Chair: A Visual and Cultural History“.

When you close your eyes and think of a chair, what comes to mind? You might see your father’s favorite easy chair, the one he sank into to watch television and which still holds the strong scent of his pipe tobacco; the sofa you were on when you first conquered “Mario Bros.”; or that special couch that always remained covered with a sheet or plastic slipcover until guests arrived.

Yet others might see in their mind’s eye designer chairs like Le Corbusier’s chaise lounge, Charles and Ray Eames’s arm and side chairs, or the ubiquitous plastic monobloc chairs banned by the city of Basel in 2008—chairs that embody emblematic designs of the 20^th century, not to mention fetishized commercial objects that continue to inspire or repulse. Still others might imagine Van Gogh’s familiar rustic wooden chairs or the Iron Throne at the center of the hit series “Game of Thrones.” Whatever the case, it is clear that the chair encapsulates a lot more than simply inert furniture.

The chair is, after all, one of those inconspicuous supports, much like the floor beneath your feet or the walls around you, that tends to fall away into the background so that you can get on with other things, like reading. But if we attend to chairs in a systematic way and take them seriously as objects of historical research, they open up a whole world of significance.

As indicators of stature, there are chairs in the history of science that have become iconic. These range from Voltaire’s reading chair equipped with candlestick holder and bookrest, to Benjamin Franklin’s library chair with built-in steps, to Charles Darwin’s armchair on wheels, still on display at his home office in Down House, Kent. Such relics are housed in museums visited by thousands every year, for whom these artifacts sparkle with a historical and cultural aura, one related to the status of science in our modern societies. Think also of Stephen Hawking’s wheelchair, which, after the celebrated astrophysicist’s death in 2018, was initially thought to be bound for the Science Museum in London, but was bought at Christie’s auction house in London for $390,000 and ended up in private hands instead. Or the corner chair made sometime in the early 19th century from the wood of the legendary apple tree at Woolsthorpe Manor under which Newton is said to have sat.

At all these levels—from the mundane to the iconic, from the physical to the symbolic, the real and mythic—the striking presence of chairs in the history of science begs to be acknowledged and understood. As a historian of science motivated by the work of cultural historians of design and furniture, I sought to explore the significance of specialized chairs used by astronomers in my book “The Astronomer’s Chair.” Why astronomers? The book grew out of a curious observation. In researching the roles of drawing and photography in astronomy, I noticed a recurring but previously unrecognized motif: representations of observing chairs specifically designed for use by astronomers at the telescope. Once I started to notice them, I saw them everywhere. The pictures sometimes showed an astronomer seated in a custom-built chair. At other times, the specialized chair was staged empty but alongside other cutting-edge instruments of an observatory.

The astronomer’s chair, too, turns out to have a long history.

At least as far back as the mid-14th century we find a hexagonal panel relief originally crafted in the workshops of Andrea Pisano for Giotto’s Campanile in Florence. It is a panel—now in the Museo dell‘Opera del Duomo—that shows Gionitus, the mythical founder of astronomy, seated at a desk operating a quadrant while taking notes. There is also the 1493 engraved portrayal of the ninth-century Baghdad astronomer al-Farghānī (800/805–870 CE) seated on a bench next to a diminutive figure of a hermit in a Latin translation of his important work. Albrecht Dürer’s frontispiece to “De scientia motus orbis” (1504), a Latin translation of the eighth-century Arabic astronomical text by the Persian-Jewish astronomer Māshā’allāh ibn Athari (740–815 CE), shows the latter in a peculiar but presumably specialized chair holding a globe and compass.

We find illuminated codices depicting well-seated astronomers, such as the likeness of Ptolemy that decorates the title page of “Ptolemaeus: Magna Compositio, Zierrahmen mit Tugenden und dem Wappen” (1465). Ptolemy is shown crowned and seated like a king upon a throne while holding a compass. But among the most famous depictions is certainly the 1598 engraving of Tycho Brahe that renders the famous astronomer installed in the middle of his renowned observatory on the island of Hven.

Besides Johannes Vermeer’s 1668 oil-on-canvas painting of “The Astronomer” or the intricate engraving of the German Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius by E. de Boulonois, the 17th century witnessed an abundance of images of astronomers with their telescopes, presumably at work. We may also think of the well-known print of the octagon room of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich from 1676.

The 18th century saw such images increase in number. Among the well-known is the 1735 depiction of the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer seated on a low cushioned stool working with his innovative meridian telescope. There is the wonderfully lush mezzotint of the Austrian astronomer Maximilian Hell seated next to his instrument and decked out in his warmest Lappish winter attire (1771); the mezzotint of Thomas Phelps and John Bartlett which presents the two at work: one looking through a telescope, while the other, seated on an observing chair, takes notes (1778); and the oil-on-canvas portrait by the painter Charles W. Peale (1796) of the American astronomer David Rittenhouse seated next to a telescope on a table.

We can multiply examples indefinitely, for as we approach the 19th century the quantity of representations begins to substantially increase in number and presence, but so do the number of physical chairs designed for the purposes of astronomical observation. In researching the book, I found hundreds of these images from that century and the next, and discerned that the upsurge in depictions corresponded to a growing concern for the use, design, and construction of such chairs by astronomers themselves.

With such an extended visual timeline, a sensitivity to multiple representations and their different sociocultural contexts can be used to broach an iconographic history that implicates the image of science, the nature of its labors, and the personae of the astronomer for a given period. But instead of presenting and examining the entire history of these images—an ambitious iconographic project for a more extensive and conclusive study—I limit myself in “The Astronomer’s Chair” to only a snapshot from this history, in a bid to provide the first concentrated look into how one might go about unraveling the cultural significance of the chair and its representations in 19th-century astronomy and design.

According to Asa Briggs, the preeminent historian of all things Victorian, objects like chairs are “emissaries” of meanings from which we can reconstruct bygone ages, indeed, other “intelligible universes.” Given how eagerly astronomers appeared to stage observing chairs and to pose in them during this period, I wanted to know what message they were trying to send to their audiences; how these performances were read by 19th-century spectators; how they informed function and design; and what they said about the cultural place of astronomy in particular, and science more generally. What I found was both surprising and illuminating. By observing chairs as topoi and indicators of much more than what first meets the eye, we gain interdisciplinary insights into a variety of previously well-studied themes—gender, historicism, labor, and race—connected to the cultural history of the long 19th century, transforming them into rich resources for histories of both science and furniture.

Omar W. Nasim is Professor for the History of Science at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He is the author of “Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century” (University of Chicago Press) and “The Astronomer’s Chair,” from which this article is adapted.

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