Researchers tackle the ocean paradox with 55 liters of fluorescent dye

A special high-speed winch that the researchers used to quickly raise and lower instruments to track the movements of the dye underwater. Credit: San Nguyen. Credit: San Nguyen For the first time, researchers from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography led an international team that directly measured cold, deep water upwelling via turbulent mixing … Read more

Frog saunas are helping endangered frogs survive the devastating effects of a deadly fungal disease

Green and gold bell frogs in artificial hotspot shelter. Credit: Anthony Waddle Researchers from Macquarie University have used heat to develop a simple and effective way to help endangered frogs survive the devastating effects of a multi-species pandemic. In collaboration with the University of Melbourne, researchers have delved into the fungal disease chytridiomycosis, which has … Read more

The surprising behavior of black holes in an expanding universe

Credit: AI-generated image A physicist who studies black holes has discovered that in an expanding universe, Einstein’s equations require that the rate of expansion of the universe at the event horizon of each black hole must be constant, and the same for all black holes. This in turn means that the only energy on the … Read more

Sediments reveal ancient ocean during a mass extinction

A quarry illustrating bands of layered limestone from the ancient seabed in what is now Mercato San Severino in Italy. Credit: F. Tissot About 183 million years ago, volcanic activity in modern South Africa unleashed an estimated 20,500 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the ocean-atmosphere system over a period of 300 to 500 thousand … Read more

New research shows why you don’t have to be perfect to get the job done

Building compact behavioral programs. (A) Above: The space of strategies for solving a task can be wide, with many strategies yielding good performance. Bottom: Studying relationships between strategies can provide insight into behavioral variability between animals and tasks. (B) General task design: an animal makes inferences about hidden properties of the environment to guide actions. … Read more

Astronomers find three potential super-Earths orbiting a nearby star

S-BGLS periodograms of YV2 for the star HD48948, focused on three frequency ranges (7.3, 38 and 151 d). The absolute value of log P has no meaning; instead, the relative values ​​of log ⁡P have meaning. The signal observed at approximately 42 d in the middle panel represents the unstable activity feature. Credit: Monthly notices … Read more

Saturday Quotes: Black Hole Bulk Tips; microbes affect drinking; new dinosaur just fell

Reconstruction of Lokiceratops in the 78-million-year-old swamps of northern Montana, as two Probrachylophosaurus move by in the background. Credit: Fabrizio Lavezzi What have scientists done this week? Exactly four things, all of which are summarized below. ‘This sweet baby could hold 4.3 million suns’ Supermassive black holes: how do they get so big? This simple … Read more

Key mechanism in the dynamics of nuclear reactions promises advances in nuclear physics

Using the advanced GALILEO Array in combination with the 4π Si-ball EUCLIDES, the researchers performed in-depth spectroscopic analyzes to monitor and identify the reactions. The gamma-gamma coincidence method was crucial in isolating specific reaction channels, allowing the team to determine the behavior of nuclei under different conditions with high accuracy. (https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-024-01462-w). Credit: Zhang, Gaolong Researchers … Read more

A black hole of unexplained mass: JWST observations reveal a mature quasar at cosmic dawn

Artist’s impression of the bright core region of a quasar, an active galaxy. The supermassive black hole at the center is surrounded by a bright disk of gas and dust. The dust component further out can obscure the view of the interior and shines mainly in the mid-infrared region, light that can be analyzed by … Read more

Swinging around the sun would make a spacecraft the fastest ever

Image of the thermal shield test setup. Credit: (2023). DOI: 10.2172/1960159 NASA is very interested in developing a method of propulsion that would allow spacecraft to go faster. We’ve reported several times on different ideas to support that goal, and the most successful ones have put the sun’s gravity to good use, usually by swinging … Read more