Science – Ars Technica
Articles about Science – Ars Technica
One with the world? A new look at brains transformed by psychedelics
For about a decade, the mainstream understanding has been that psychedelics cause chaos in the brain. Brain networks—the stable patterns of communication that handle vision, attention, or our sense of self, and more—loosen and start talking to each other all at once. EEG traces get noisier and more complex. “Think of the networks of the brain as highways,” says Devon Stoliker, a neuroscientist at Monash University. “Under psychedelics, these highways break down into many different directions.”
Neanderthal wooden tools from Spain found preserved in stone
The Stone Age owes its name to tools that survived to our time. The material early humans worked with most, though, was probably wood because it is so much easier to process. Unfortunately, we know very little about Paleolithic woodwork because wood rots relatively quickly. But at Abric Romaní, a rock shelter in Capellades, west of Barcelona, mineral-rich water coated wooden Neanderthal tools in a limestone-like crust. When wood rotted away, it left behind hollow molds that faithfully reflect its shape.
What’s been driving Hawaii’s lava fountains?
In most cases, hotspot-driven volcanism is relatively sedate, with lava flowing down mountainsides slowly enough that people can walk out of its way. But in a number of locations—Mount Etna, Hawaii, Iceland—lava gets expelled in dramatic fountains that can reach several hundred meters in height.
AI disqualification yields new Nikon Small World in Motion winner
Credit: Nguyen Nam Nhat. Last month we covered the winner of Nikon's Small World in Motion video: Ning Xu of Tsinghua University in China, whose video captured tiny cilia beating in the airways of a child with a rare respiratory disorder. But allegations surfaced about Xu's use of AI while making the video. Nikon launched an investigation and concluded that Xu's entry did not comply with competition rules. The new winner is Nguyen Nam Nhat of Vietnam with a video of a tiny roundworm and a single-celled organism (above).
RIP Margaret Hamilton, whose code saved the Apollo 11 Moon landing
Margaret Hamilton, who coined the term "software engineering" and led the development of onboard flight software for NASA's Apollo program in the 1960s, died last week at the age of 90. A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, Hamilton was also immortalized as a LEGO minifig the following year—part of the "Women of NASA" set that also included astronauts Mae Jemison and Sally Ride.
An experimental tour-de-force: Entanglement between glass bead and light
Writing about quantum entanglement is always a challenge. There are so many clichés to avoid: It’s mysterious, ghostly, spooky, and weird. Entanglement is none of those things, and yet it is also all of those things—a superposition of clichés, you might say. So, having gotten all of my clichés out of the way in the second sentence, let’s take a look at how a group of researchers managed to entangle a light beam with a glass bead, which is, frankly, quite an achievement.
EPA immediately sued over plans to repeal climate rules for power plants
Days after finalizing a rule that would eliminate climate rules for power plants, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was sued by groups who say the EPA’s repeal was shockingly short-sighted and risked leaving the country’s single largest source of industrial climate pollution unchecked.
A dolphin named Bubbles makes fish vomit, then eats upchuck
Staff at the Lady Elliott Island Eco Resort off the southern Great Barrier Reef in Australia are well acquainted with the shenanigans of a male bottlenose dolphin they've nicknamed Bubbles. Bubbles has been around since at least 2017 and regularly harasses local bigeye trevally, chasing a fish around and stressing it so much that the fish throws up what it has consumed. Bubbles then devours the regurgitated food. The dolphin's unusual behavior is the focus of a new paper published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
Nonprofit that tracks meteors taken down by “critical blow” from a cyberattack
The International Meteor Organization, the nonprofit that coordinates and publishes amateur and professional observations of meteor phenomena, said its infrastructure has suffered a “critical blow” from a cyberattack.
Researchers swap in human brain cells for a mouse’s cortex
In recent years, there has been a lot of excitement about the potential for studying human diseases in what are called "organoids." These small patches of tissue, formed using stem cells, appear to produce many of the same cell types and at least some of the structures normally formed in actual organs, and thus can provide a better model for diseases that rely on the sometimes complex interactions among multiple specialized cell types that are a feature of the human body.
Scientists develop new method for deciphering ancient scrolls
The Vesuvius Challenge is an ongoing project that combines "digital unwrapping" with crowdsourced machine learning to decipher the so-called Herculaneum scrolls, badly charred 2,000-year-old papyri too fragile to be physically unrolled. The effort just got an additional boost.
What happens when neutrinos swap identities inside a supernova?
Our basic understanding of core-collapse supernovae hasn't changed in decades. Large stars burn through all the fuel at their cores and start creating heavier elements in reactions that consume energy. The lack of energy from these reactions allows gravity to pull the interior of the star in on itself, collapsing it into a neutron star or black hole. The energy released by this process then blows the remainder of the star apart.
How chimps teach their kids tool tricks
Chimpanzees are known to use rudimentary tools when foraging for food. According to a new paper in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, this learned behavior is passed down from adults to offspring through social learning. Specifically, adult chimps deliberately model the behavior, then turn their tools over to the youngsters so they can mimic the same motions.
Trump EPA moves to wipe out climate rules for power plants
On the heels of the hottest summer on record and a United Nations reportwarning that global temperatures are likely to push climate risks to “increasingly dangerous heights,” the Trump administration overturned most of a Biden-era rule limiting climate pollution from power plants, the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
This Atlantic hurricane season is about to do something that hasn’t happened in 175 years
Last week, the Atlantic hurricane season blew through its traditional peak—which comes around September 10—with nary a tropical wave in sight, let alone a storm or hurricane.
For the first time, the US military confirms it has deployed weapons in orbit
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink made the first public declaration Monday that the United States has placed "space control weapons" in orbit, an announcement that will surely reverberate in the power centers of Beijing and Moscow.
A new solar cell could generate electricity underwater
In one episode of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Birdman, the eponymous hero struggles to fight the evil Dr. Shark aboard a submarine without solar energy to recharge his powers. So Birdman would surely appreciate the new perovskite solar cells developed by a team led by Simin Ma at Yunnan University, since they are designed to work underwater.
Prehistoric builders transported Devil’s Arrows 11 miles
Stonehenge is the most famous example of megalithic architecture across Britain and Ireland, but there are plenty of others, including Calanais, Newgrange, and Avebury, as well as the Devil's Arrows. The latter is Britain's tallest standing stone alignment, yet little is known about the provenance of its stones.