Astronomers Are Snapping Baby Pictures of Planets by the Dozen Snapshots of a plethora of planet-forming disks offer more than just eye candy—they also reveal some fundamental aspects of how worlds are born By Phil Plait Dust swirls around the MWC 758 planet-forming disk, located about 500 light-years away from Earth in the Taurus region,… Continue reading Astronomers Are Snapping Baby Pictures of Planets by the Dozen
Category: Quantum Stuff
Most Astronauts Get ‘Space Headaches.’ Scientists Want to Know Why
Most Astronauts Get ‘Space Headaches.’ Scientists Want to Know Why Headaches are a common and recurring problem in space, even for astronauts that don’t experience them on Earth By Joanna Thompson Credit: Ignatiev/Getty Images Spaceflight can be a real headache—literally. Since the days of the Apollo program, astronauts have reported experiencing head pain during their… Continue reading Most Astronauts Get ‘Space Headaches.’ Scientists Want to Know Why
Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predicts
Clusters of hundreds or thousands of galaxies sit at the intersections of giant, crisscrossing filaments of matter that form the tapestry of the cosmos. As gravity pulls everything in each galaxy cluster toward its center, the gas that fills the space between the galaxies gets compressed, causing it to heat up and glow in X-rays.… Continue reading Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predicts
Elliptic Curve ‘Murmurations’ Found With AI Take Flight
Almost immediately, the preprint garnered interest, particularly from Andrew Sutherland, a research scientist at MIT who is one of the managing editors of the LMFDB. Sutherland realized that 3 million elliptic curves weren’t enough for his purposes. He wanted to look at much larger conductor ranges to see how robust the murmurations were. He pulled… Continue reading Elliptic Curve ‘Murmurations’ Found With AI Take Flight
Cellular Self-Destruction May Be Ancient. But Why?
The genes for apoptosis reminded Kaczanowski and Zielenkiewicz of an arms race between a predator and its prey. In their new paper, they speculated that they might be holdovers from the tools evolved by a prey organism, presumably the original mitochondrial bacterium, to defend itself. Maybe, once caught inside our ancient ancestor, apoptotic proteins became… Continue reading Cellular Self-Destruction May Be Ancient. But Why?
The Science behind Humpback Whales’ Eerie Songs
Devin Farmiloe: Those are the haunting melodies of baleen whales reverberating through the ocean waves. Many people across the globe are familiar with the 1970 album Songs of the Humpback Whale, produced by biologist Roger Payne. While I am a little too young to have caught its release, I remember seeing the CD for sale… Continue reading The Science behind Humpback Whales’ Eerie Songs
A Wild Claim about the Powers of Pi Creates a Transcendental Mystery
Pi (π) is probably the most famous number in mathematics. Not only have experts studied it extensively, but it also fascinates amateurs: books, films and songs have been dedicated to the number. Part of its appeal may be that even though it describes the circle, one of the simplest and most symmetrical geometric objects, it… Continue reading A Wild Claim about the Powers of Pi Creates a Transcendental Mystery
Groundwater Is Declining Globally, but There Are Hopeful Exceptions
January 24, 2024 3 min read Groundwater Is Declining Globally, but There Are Hopeful Exceptions The most detailed global look at groundwater yet shows a lot of loss but also stories of success in restoring some aquifers By Stephanie Pappas Groundwater-fed irrigation of maize in Kabwe, Zambia. In 1997 Union County in southern Arkansas faced… Continue reading Groundwater Is Declining Globally, but There Are Hopeful Exceptions
New Breakthrough Brings Matrix Multiplication Closer to Ideal
That’s where Strassen’s laser method finally comes into play. “The laser method typically works very well and generally finds a good way to kill a subset of blocks to remove the overlap,” Le Gall said. After the laser has eliminated, or “burned away,” all the overlaps, you can construct the final product matrix, C. Putting… Continue reading New Breakthrough Brings Matrix Multiplication Closer to Ideal
Tiny Tweaks to Neurons Can Rewire Animal Motion
It was as if this ion channel were a dial that could twist one neuron type into the other. But what was actually different about this protein in the snake’s body and rattle? At first, the researchers thought that rattle motor neurons must have extra KV72/3 potassium channels. If the rattle neurons had more channels,… Continue reading Tiny Tweaks to Neurons Can Rewire Animal Motion