All posts tagged: Research

Massive fan-shaped structure found hidden beneath East Antarctica

Massive fan-shaped structure found hidden beneath East Antarctica

Published by Jenni Sidey

Three kilometers of ice can hide a lot, but not forever. Beneath East Antarctica, researchers have identified a continent-scale geological structure that ties together some of the region’s best-known buried basins into a single sprawling system, one that may reshape how scientists think about the continent’s deep past and its icy present. The newly named East Antarctic Fan-Shaped Basin Province stretches from Prydz Bay to the Transantarctic Mountains and from the coast deep into the continent, reaching toward 85° south. It includes the Wilkes and Aurora basins, along with the basin that hosts Lake Vostok, the largest known subglacial lake on Earth. These features were already familiar on their own. What had not been recognized before was that they form one coherent structure. The team at Durham University argues that this buried landscape resembles a handheld fan at a semi-continental scale. Its long basins radiate outward, and its geometry appears to converge near a pivot point close to the South Pole. In the researchers’ interpretation, that pattern points to a powerful tectonic process rather than …

Galaxy-killing wind may explain why giant galaxies died so early

Galaxy-killing wind may explain why giant galaxies died so early

Published by Jenni Sidey

A massive galaxy in the early universe seems to be growing itself toward ruin. While it churns out new stars at a furious pace, it is also blasting away the cold gas that makes those stars possible. This is a self-defeating process that may help explain why so many big galaxies died young. The system, called CRISTAL-02, appears just 1 billion years after the Big Bang. This is a time when astronomers did not expect to find large numbers of massive, quiescent galaxies. Those are galaxies that had already stopped forming stars. Yet the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed many of them. Their existence has become one of the biggest puzzles in modern astrophysics. Now a team led by Dr Rebecca Davies of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne says CRISTAL-02 offers a simpler answer than some of the more exotic ideas proposed in recent years. Rather than needing changes to dark energy or some other revision to cosmic history, the evidence points to a violent but familiar process. In this process galaxies collide, …

Did the iPhone stop us having babies? New research suggests so

Did the iPhone stop us having babies? New research suggests so

Published by Daniella Wilson

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Phones – and how we use them – can be blamed for a lot of things: short attention spans, bad posture, loneliness, that weird bump in our pinky fingers… But researchers have now posited that the modern smartphone can be blamed for something far scarier for our futures: the dwindling birth rate. When I first heard this, I protectively put my hand to my stomach: there’s long been a persistent theory that you can fry your eggs (and sperm) by using a mobile phone. This isn’t, thankfully, what scientists meant – it’s the solitude that scrolling gives rise to that could potentially be leading to a decline in procreation, rather than some kind of terrifying zapping. The original iPhone, the first modern smartphone, was …

Anthropic CEO says AI growth is exponential. Anthropic research says otherwise.

Anthropic CEO says AI growth is exponential. Anthropic research says otherwise.

Published by skeptic

Dario Amodei, CEO and founder of Anthropic, just published an online essay that starts out by comparing AI to the Hobbits in the Lord of the Rings. And that may not be the only piece of fiction in it, if the system card from Anthropic’s own Claude Mythos model is to be believed. “The intersection of AI and our political institutions feels a bit like the Hobbits and Treebeard,” Amodei writes — that is, Treebeard the Ent moves so slow that he can’t even understand the speedy Hobbits. But then Amodei pivots to a controversial assertion — one that, to continue the Lord of the Rings analogy, would mean that Hobbits are moving exponentially faster all the time. “AI’s scaling laws, which predict an exponential increase in general cognitive capabilities with increasing computing power, now have over a decade of empirical evidence behind them,” Amodei claims. “If these scaling laws continue for only a year or two longer, we are likely to get what I’ve called Powerful AI.” It’s hardly a one-off reference; Amodei, who …

Atomic clocks may be powerful enough to detect the quantum fabric of time

Atomic clocks may be powerful enough to detect the quantum fabric of time

Published by Jenni Sidey

Time feels familiar. It marks every moment of daily life, from the ticking of a wall clock to the changing numbers on a smartphone screen. Yet despite its constant presence, time remains one of the deepest mysteries in science. For more than a century, physicists have known that time is not fixed. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity showed that time can speed up or slow down depending on motion and gravity. The faster an object moves, or the closer it is to a massive object, the more differently it experiences time. But another revolution in physics, quantum mechanics, introduced an even stranger possibility. At the quantum level, particles can exist in multiple states at once through a phenomenon called superposition. If motion can exist in a superposition, then time itself may also flow in multiple ways simultaneously. Scientists have long wondered whether this bizarre idea is real. Until now, no experiment has been capable of testing it. Illustration of classical, semiclassical, and quantum proper time dynamics of a trapped-ion atomic clock that we consider. (CREDIT: …

Worker bees help choose the next queen in bumble bee colonies

Worker bees help choose the next queen in bumble bee colonies

Published by Jenni Sidey

A baby bumble bee can end up on one of two very different paths. It can grow into a small worker that never reproduces, or become a large future queen built to survive winter and start a colony of her own. New research suggests that split is not dictated mainly by the queen. Instead, it is dictated by the workers doing the feeding. In Bombus impatiens, a common North American bumble bee, Penn State researchers found that worker bees help determine larval fate by passing along juvenile hormone in the food they make from nectar and pollen. In particular, larvae that received enough of that hormone during a narrow window late in development were far more likely to become queens. The finding shifts the picture of colony life. Rather than a top-down social order controlled by a single monarch, the study points to a more distributed system. In this system, caregivers can shape the colony’s future. “Since all these females share the same DNA, it’s a striking example of how the same genotype can produce …

Should baseball hitters with two strikes change their swing?

Should baseball hitters with two strikes change their swing?

Published by Jenni Sidey

Baseball’s newest tracking tools have given one old dugout argument a faster swing. When a hitter comes up with two strikes, fans, coaches and former players often call for the same adjustment: cut down the swing, make contact, keep the at-bat alive. It sounds like common sense. The harder question is whether it actually helps a batter produce better results, or simply trades one kind of failure for another. A new study in The American Statistician finds that the old advice contains some truth, but not the whole truth. Hitters who shorten and slow their swings with more strikes do make contact more often. They also give up power, and in the data that tradeoff mostly cancels itself out. “What we found is that there’s really a tradeoff,” said Scott Powers, assistant professor of sport analytics and statistics at Rice University and a co-author of the paper with Ron Yurko of Carnegie Mellon University. “When players slow down their swings, they do make more contact, but they also sacrifice power.” Distribution of bat speed relative …

We all think we’re open-minded — but research suggests otherwise

We all think we’re open-minded — but research suggests otherwise

Published by Daniella Wilson

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Most people think they are open-minded and would like others to perceive them as such. But for the things that matter most – religious beliefs, for example, or the meaning of life – few of us are genuinely willing to consider that we might be wrong, let alone do the hard work of revising beliefs. At a fundamental level, we humans are somewhat closed-minded. As a social psychologist, I research big questions, such as what makes life meaningful and the nature of humility. I’ve had a long-standing interest in why people are so resistant to changing their cherished core beliefs. After all, isn’t it better to remain open-minded when you may be wrong or can’t know for certain? But for the things that matter …

ETH Zurich scientists developed a new drug to slow Alzheimer’s development

ETH Zurich scientists developed a new drug to slow Alzheimer’s development

Published by Jenni Sidey

Alzheimer’s disease slowly strips brain cells of the energy they need to survive. However, one damaged enzyme may be doing more of that work than anyone realized. At ETH Zurich, a team led by molecular pharmacologist Ursula Quitterer says it has identified a new protein target linked to the disease’s progression. They also designed an experimental compound that interrupts the process in mice. The compound, known as CPD10 or “compound 10,” did not cure the disease. Nevertheless, it slowed nerve-cell loss, reduced key signs of damage in the brain, and helped the animals live longer. The work points to a different way of thinking about Alzheimer’s treatment. This approach focuses less on clearing debris after damage has piled up. Instead, it aims to stabilize a protective system inside cells before the damage spirals. Graphical abstract of the study. The G-protein-coupled receptor kinase 2 (GRK2) exerts essential functions in cell growth and survival. (CREDIT: Cell Reports Medicine) When a protective enzyme turns harmful The central player is an enzyme called GRK2, a regulatory protein active in …

MIT astronomers detect oldest known flickering quasar from the cosmic dawn

MIT astronomers detect oldest known flickering quasar from the cosmic dawn

Published by Jenni Sidey

A quasar from the universe’s first 850 million years has started to look less like a distant pinprick and more like a real physical system. By catching it flickering over time, astronomers have traced the structure of matter swirling around one of the earliest known supermassive black holes. What they found deepens one of cosmology’s biggest puzzles. The object, known as J0439+1634, sits at a redshift of 6.51. This means its light comes from a time just 850 million years after the Big Bang. Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe, powered by supermassive black holes pulling in gas and dust. As that material spirals inward, it heats up and radiates enormous amounts of energy. Sometimes, it outshines the galaxy around it. Many quasars have already been found from this early era, often called the cosmic dawn. What makes this one stand out is not just its age, but its variability. Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have detected a quasar flickering from the very early universe. This artist’s concept illustrates a quasar accretion …