All posts tagged: structure

Scientists identify five distinct phases of brain structure across the human lifespan

Scientists identify five distinct phases of brain structure across the human lifespan

Published by José Betancourt

New research indicates that the structural organization of the human brain does not develop in a continuous, linear fashion but rather progresses through five distinct phases separated by specific turning points. By analyzing brain scans from thousands of individuals ranging from infants to ninety-year-olds, scientists identified significant shifts in neural architecture occurring around ages nine, 32, 66, and 83. These findings, published in Nature Communications, provide a new framework for understanding how the brain reorganizes itself throughout the human lifespan and suggests that structural adolescence may extend well into the third decade of life. Previous research has established that brain structure and function evolve as people age. However, many of these studies focused on specific developmental windows, such as early childhood or old age, rather than the entire life course. When studies did examine broader age ranges, they often relied on models that assumed smooth, gradual trajectories, such as a simple peak in adulthood followed by a steady decline. The authors of the new study argued that these approaches might miss complex, non-linear shifts in …

Astronomers Intrigued By Impossible Structure Around Dead Star

Astronomers Intrigued By Impossible Structure Around Dead Star

Published by José Betancourt

ESO/K. Iłkiewicz and S. Scaringi et al. Background: PanSTARRS A dead star 730 light years away appears to be forming a powerful structure around itself — and despite their best efforts, astronomers aren’t sure how. The cosmic corpse, designated RXJ0528+2838, is an incredibly dense stellar remnant known as a white dwarf, with a Sun-like star orbiting around it. This binary arrangement isn’t uncommon throughout the universe, but what is strange is the structure surrounding the former body: a highly energetic and luminescent cloud known as a nebula, even though there doesn’t appear to be anything that could be forming it. “Our observations reveal a powerful outflow that, according to our current understanding, shouldn’t be there,” said Krystian Iłkiewicz, a researcher at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center in Warsaw, Poland, and co-lead author of a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, in a statement. White dwarfs are what’s left over when stars of moderate mass like our Sun exhaust all their fuel, shed their outer layers, and expose a dense core. In many cases …

Starts With A Bang podcast #125 – Large-scale structure

Starts With A Bang podcast #125 – Large-scale structure

Published by Jenni Sidey

Sign up for the Starts With a Bang newsletter Travel the universe with Dr. Ethan Siegel as he answers the biggest questions of all. One of the most exciting developments in modern astrophysics isn’t merely our standard “concordance cosmology” model, but rather the cracks that seem to be emerging in it. Sure, we’ve said for some 25 years now that our Universe is 13.8 billion years old, is made of mostly dark energy with a substantial amount of dark matter, and only 5% of all the normal stuff combined: stars, planets, black holes, plasmas, photons, and neutrinos. But more recently, a couple of cosmic conundrums have emerged, leading us to question whether this model is the best picture of reality that we can come up with. We don’t merely have the Hubble tension to reckon with, or the fact that different methods yield different values for the expansion rate of the Universe today, but a puzzle over whether dark energy is truly a constant in our Universe, as most physicists have assumed since its discovery …

Runaway stars within the Milky Way may reveal dark matter’s hidden structure

Runaway stars within the Milky Way may reveal dark matter’s hidden structure

Published by Jenni Sidey

Astronomers have chased hypervelocity stars for more than a century. These rare objects move so fast that the Milky Way cannot keep them. When a star exceeds the galaxy’s escape speed, it becomes “unbound” and heads outward. Now a team in Beijing, led by Haozhu Fu of Peking University, has widened that search. The group drew on large star catalogs and new sky measurements. Their results appear in The Astrophysical Journal. They focused on an unusual target; RR Lyrae stars. RR Lyrae stars pulse in brightness with steady, predictable rhythms. That regular beat lets you estimate how far away they are. Those distance estimates matter because speed depends on distance. Get the distance wrong, and a normal star can look like a galactic sprinter. Spatial distribution of RRL samples from W22 (upper panels) and L23 (bottom panels) in the Galactic Cartesian coordinates. (CREDIT: The Astrophysical Journal) To track motion, the researchers relied on the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite. Gaia measures tiny shifts in a star’s position over time. Those shifts reveal proper motion, meaning …

Scientist Puzzled by “Symmetric Jet Structure” on 3I/ATLAS

Scientist Puzzled by “Symmetric Jet Structure” on 3I/ATLAS

Published by José Betancourt

It may have made its closest approach to Earth last month, but the mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS continues to fascinate astronomers as it now careens back out of the solar system, never to be seen again. Recent observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have caught the attention of Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb. Images taken in November and December show an “intriguing configuration” of three “evolving jets” that jut out of the object at regular angles from each other, as he explained in a recent blog post. The object’s most prominent appendage by far is still an “anti-tail” that points directly at the Sun, which scientists suspect is the result of the Sun-facing side losing more of its surface mass as it’s warmed up by the approach. That aligns with the most prevalent theory that 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet largely made up of water and carbon dioxide ice that’s visiting us from a distant star system. But on a smaller scale, three additional and mysteriously symmetrical jets become apparent in the Hubble observations, which Loeb suggests …

Cannabidiol may prevent sensitization to cocaine and caffeine by influencing brain structure genes

Cannabidiol may prevent sensitization to cocaine and caffeine by influencing brain structure genes

Published by José Betancourt

A new study published in the journal Addiction Neuroscience provides evidence that cannabidiol may help prevent the heightened behavioral response associated with the combined use of cocaine and caffeine. The research suggests that this protective effect occurs because cannabidiol influences the activity of specific genes related to the structure and organization of brain cells in the reward system. These findings offer a potential biological explanation for how this cannabis-derived compound might assist in the treatment of stimulant use disorders. Cocaine dependence represents a significant public health challenge with few effective pharmaceutical treatments available. In the illicit drug market, cocaine is frequently mixed with other active substances to increase profits or alter the drug’s effects. Forensic data indicates that caffeine is one of the most common adulterants found in seized cocaine samples. Previous observations suggest that adding caffeine to cocaine does more than just dilute the product. This combination appears to accelerate the development of addiction-like behaviors and enhances the stimulating effects of cocaine. The mixture can lead to more intense drug-seeking behavior and persistent changes …

Astronomers discover previously unseen kernel structure inside the Kuiper Belt

Astronomers discover previously unseen kernel structure inside the Kuiper Belt

Published by Jenni Sidey

Astronomers at Princeton University have uncovered evidence that the outer solar system is more structured than long believed. Led by astrophysics doctoral student Amir Siraj, the research points to a compact, previously unseen cluster of icy bodies inside the Kuiper Belt. The finding suggests that distant solar system orbits still hold clues about how the planets moved billions of years ago. The Kuiper Belt lies beyond Neptune and contains countless frozen remnants left over from planet formation. For years, astronomers thought they had identified its main features. One of the most prominent is the “kernel,” a tight grouping of objects on calm, low-tilt orbits about 44 astronomical units from the Sun. An astronomical unit, or AU, is the average distance between Earth and the Sun. The new study shows that this familiar picture may be incomplete. Using a data-mining technique borrowed from stellar astronomy, Siraj and his colleagues found signs of a second compact structure just inside the known kernel. They call it the “inner kernel,” a group of Kuiper Belt objects clustered around 43 …

We’ve found an unexpected structure in the solar system’s Kuiper belt

We’ve found an unexpected structure in the solar system’s Kuiper belt

Published by skeptic

An artist’s impression of the Kuiper belt ESO/M. Kornmesser The Kuiper belt, a disc of icy rocks on the outermost edges of the solar system, seems to have more structure than we thought. In 2011, researchers found a cluster of objects there on similar orbits that they dubbed the “kernel” of the Kuiper belt – now, another team has spotted an even more compact cluster of objects that they are calling the “inner kernel”. The original kernel was found by eye using plots of the orbits of 189 Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). It is about 44 astronomical units from the sun, where one astronomical unit is the distance between the sun and Earth. Since the discovery of the kernel, no additional structures have been found in the Kuiper belt. That is, until Amir Siraj at Princeton University in New Jersey and his colleagues took on the painstaking task of refining the orbital data from 1650 KBOs and feeding it into an algorithm that searches for clustering and structure. They trained the algorithm to search for …

Underground Scans of Noah’s Ark Site Finds Evidence of a Boat Like Structure – OpentheWord.org

Underground Scans of Noah’s Ark Site Finds Evidence of a Boat Like Structure – OpentheWord.org

Published by Sam Flores

The unique boat like structure at Durupinar site in Turkey fits the Biblical dimensions of Noah’s ark.Credit: Mfikretyilmaz/Wikipedia/Creative Commons 3.0 There is a boat-shaped formation in Turkey’s Ararat mountains, that some believe may be the site where Noah’s ark came to rest after the flood. Referred to as Durupinar, it is located 18 miles (29 kms) south of Mount Ararat. Many believe that the Ark rested on Mount Ararat. However, this is not the case. The Bible states that the ark came to rest in the mountains (plural) of Ararat not on Mount Ararat itself (Genesis 8:4). Recently a group of researchers released the results of underground scans done at the site to determine if there was evidence beneath the surface that backs up claims this is the Ark, the New York Post reports. First this unusual formation matches the Ark’s dimensions found in the Bible. “It is exactly what you’d expect to find if this were a man-made boat, consistent with the biblical specifications of Noah’s Ark,” said Andrew Jones, a member of the …