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
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 are witnessing a never-before-seen spectacle in the cosmos: the awakening of a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy. In late 2019, a team of astronomers took note of an otherwise unremarkable galaxy called SDSS1335+0728, located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. A sudden spike in the galaxy’s brightness … Read more
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
Imagine a future where your phone pings with the message that your late father’s “digital immortal” bot is ready. This promise of chatting with a virtual version of your loved one – perhaps through a virtual reality (VR) headset – is like stepping into a science fiction movie, both thrilling and a little creepy. As … Read more
China successfully launches the Space Variable Objects Monitor, a space science satellite co-developed by China and France, to its preset orbit at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province on June 22, 2024. Photo: CCTV News China on Saturday successfully launched the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM), a space science satellite co-developed … Read more
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
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
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
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