A projectile point, made from the bone of a grey whale, from the Duruthy rock shelter in Landes, FranceAlexandre Lefebvre Hunter-gatherers living along the shores of the Bay of Biscay crafted hunting tools from the bones of at least five different whale species 20,000 years ago, marking the oldest evidence of manufacturing objects from whale remains. Although there is evidence of Neanderthals gathering and eating molluscs in what is now southern Spain around 150,000 years ago, current findings suggest that ancient humans didn’t regularly use coastal resources for food and raw materials until around 19,000 years ago… #humans #were #crafting #tools #whale

Is it time to say goodbye to the multiverse?SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images An advanced version of the famous double-slit experiment has directly measured a single photon in two places at once – or at least, that’s the claim made by a team of physicists who say these results could destroy the concept of a multiverse. This interpretation remains highly contested, however, with other physicists arguing that the experiment can’t really tell us anything new about the nature of reality. The double-slit experiment, first performed in 1801, has played a key role in the development of quantum mechanics. It shows… #photon #caught #two #places #once

The Kitt Peak National Observatory, near Tucson, Arizona, is home to DESIKPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld Is dark energy changing, or is it just more of the same? Last month, astronomers announced the startling finding that dark energy – which is thought to cause the accelerating expansion of the universe – might weaken over time. This has forced physicists to consider upending the standard cosmological model of the universe but now, some researchers are saying this may be premature. Since it started scanning the sky in 2021, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrumentin Arizona has been carefully measuring the distances between millions of… #physicists #are #waging #cosmic #battle

“Mathematically, what are we trying to optimise?”John MacLean/Millennium Images, UK Scheduling household chores is hard. Say you have three loads of washing: a regular load that will take 110 minutes to wash and 120 to dry; a heavily soiled load that needs an extra 30 minutes to wash; and a sensitive one that will take 130 minutes to wash and 160 to dry. In which order do you wash them? In the branch of applied maths known as operational research, this is called a two-machine problem. Lots of businesses have similar issues. One approach, to find the shortest overall… #handy #piece #maths #that #can

Would you leave a world wilting under a deadly sun for a digital utopia?Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images Every Version of You Grace Chan) Science fiction that features characters who spend more time in virtual reality than in real life, whether via electrodes stuck into the backs of their necks or some kind of gloop-filled tank, isn’t exactly a new thing. In fact, picking up Grace Chan’s Every Version of You, I worried that the premise of the novel – some young people in the future having to decide whether to permanently… #this #scifi #debut #quietly #brilliant

US President Donald Trump, accompanied by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, announces the Golden Dome missile defense shieldCHRIS KLEPONIS/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock US President Donald Trump has proposed a defence project, called the Golden Dome, to intercept any incoming hypersonic, ballistic and advanced cruise missiles that threaten the country. “Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space,” said Trump during the White House announcement on 20 May. But such a thorough interception system may not be possible. Some experts also warn that, even if it works, the Golden Dome would take at least a decade to build, cost more than half a trillion dollars – and accelerate the global nuclear arms race and the weaponisation of space.Advertisement What is the Golden Dome? The project’s name is inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome system, which uses ground-based missiles to intercept incoming rockets and artillery fired from relatively short distances. But the Golden Dome would need to defend a far larger area – the land mass of the contiguous US alone is more than 350 times the size of Israel – from a wider variety of sophisticated missiles. According to Trump and his officials, the system should be able to counter ballistic missiles that could be launched from the other side of the world, advanced cruise missiles that fly on flatter trajectories at lower altitudes and hypersonic missiles that can fly and manoeuvre at speeds exceeding Mach 5, five times the speed of sound. These missiles can carry either nuclear warheads or conventional explosive warheads. Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. Sign up to newsletter To detect and intercept the threats, the Golden Dome will use both “space-based sensors and air and missile defense”, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a statement. That implies an umbrella system of “Golden Domes” with different technologies countering different threats, says David Burbach at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, who shared some comments with New Scientist in a personal capacity. However, not all of these defences exist. For instance, the Golden Dome would supposedly use space-based interceptor missiles in low Earth orbit, an unprecedented technological feat that has never been demonstrated before, says Thomas González Roberts at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. A similar idea, nicknamed Star Wars, was originally proposed by US President Ronald Reagan in his Strategic Defense Initiative during the cold war. In fact, Trump has described the Golden Dome as an effort to complete “the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago”. How will the Golden Dome work? Missile defence experts describe the challenge of intercepting long-range nuclear missiles as being like “hitting a bullet with a bullet, in the dark” because “the targets are small, not emitting any radio or infrared signals, and fast moving”, says Burbach. “One thing to keep in mind is that even optimistic technical experts admit 100 per cent interception is unlikely.” The US already has a system of ground-based interceptor missiles, primarily based in Alaska. They can shoot down “a couple dozen incoming warheads at best”, says Burbach. He also pointed out that Russia and China are developing countermeasures to make it harder to detect and intercept their missiles. “Stopping subsonic cruise missiles or short-range ballistic missiles launched from just outside US borders would use established technology, but it could be expensive to deploy enough of those defensive systems to cover the whole country,” says Burbach. “The real challenge will be Golden Dome’s aim to stop large numbers of intercontinental missiles – President Trump said ‘100 per cent’ of them – such as an attack from China or Russia.” Trump’s claim that the Golden Dome would defend against missile strikes from the other side of the world or even from space implies it would require a “dense constellation of likely low-Earth orbiting, space-based missile interceptors that could deorbit and strike a missile within minutes of it launching” from anywhere, says Roberts. “The number of satellites you would need is bigger than any constellation that’s ever been launched,” he says. Currently, the largest constellation consists of around 7000 Starlink satellites operated by SpaceX. How much will the Golden Dome cost? Trump proposed a budget of billion for the Golden Dome, although that funding has not yet been approved by the US Congress. And the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency, estimated that a space-based interceptor system like Golden Dome could cost as much as billion. “It’s unclear what expenditures are included in the billion figure,” says Patrycja Bazylczyk at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a think tank in Washington DC. Trump also claimed the Golden Dome would be “fully operational” by the end of his second term in office in early 2029, although experts doubt that is possible. “The three-year timeline is aggressive – this initiative is likely to span at least a decade, if not more,” says Bazylczyk. Much of the timeline may depend upon how many existing military systems it uses. “Significant progress is feasible in the near term, including fielding new interceptors, over-the-horizon radars, space-based sensors and technology demonstrations,” says Bazylczyk. But there are major limitations to how quickly the US could launch the potentially thousands of satellites required for Golden Dome – to say nothing of developing the space-based interceptor technologies. “I think you’d be very hard-pressed to find a launch cadence that could support a large constellation going up in just three years,” says Roberts. “SpaceX launches more things more often than anyone in the history of space operations, and the ask here is to crack open that ceiling even further.” “I think it is almost impossible a system could be ‘fully operational’ in the sense of ‘stop 100 per cent of a missile attack’ that quickly,” says Burbach. “Reaching even a small-scale operational capability that soon would be very difficult.” Will Golden Dome make the US safer? There is already an ongoing arms race between the US, China and Russia, with all three countries modernising and expanding their nuclear arsenals, as well as developing space-based systems to support their militaries. If the Golden Dome system can improve US air and missile defences, it could “change the strategic calculus” by reducing the confidence of any missile-armed adversary, deterring them from launching attacks in the first place, says Bazylczyk. On the other hand, the Golden Dome has the “potential to contribute to instability” by “signalling to your nuclear adversaries that you simply don’t trust them”, says Roberts. China’s foreign ministry responded to Trump’s announcement by saying the Golden Dome carries “strong offensive implications” and raises the risks of an arms race in space. A Kremlin spokesperson suggested the Golden Dome plans could lead to resumption of nuclear arms control discussions between Russia and the US. To counter this system, China and Russia might try to “destroy or disable US satellites”, says Burbach. Both countries already have missiles capable of shooting down satellites, and they could also try to electronically jam or hack US satellite systems, he says. In February 2024, the US government warned that Russia had plans to launch a space weapon capable of disabling or destroying satellites, possibly using a nuclear explosion. These countries could also bulk up their missile arsenals and possibly develop more manoeuvrable weapons that also use decoys, says Burbach. He pointed out that Russia has already started developing weapons less vulnerable to space-based interception, such as intercontinental nuclear torpedoes that travel underwater. Topics: #trump039s #golden #dome #defence #project

Fast food is often ultra-processedShutterstock/siamionau pavel Two of the biggest health concerns of the modern age – ultra-processed foodsand microplastics – have one thing in common: we don’t actually know if or how they harm our health. But researchers are proposing a bold new idea: that these problems are actually linked, and UPFs contain especially high levels of microplastics that worsen mental health. “We know ultra-processed foods have microplastics. We know that ultra-processed foods are also associated with depression and anxiety. We thought that it would be helpful to put out the hypothesis that potentially microplastics could be mediating that association, with the caveat… #are #microplastics #ultraprocessed #food #harming

Advertisement Subscribe now Life Puzzlingly, many birds add human-made material to their nests with no obvious function – now there is evidence that these home improvements might ward off predators 23 May 2025 Red kites sometimes put plastic objects in their nestsMike Read / Alamy Stock Photo Birds may decorate nests with artificial objects and feathers to deter magpies and ravens from taking their eggs. Many birds have been observed placing human-made objects in their nests, such as plastic, wires or even anti-bird spikes from buildings. Often, these things seem to have no role as insulation or structural support, and may make nests more conspicuous to predators. Magne Husby at Nord University and Tore Slagsvold at the University of… Advertisement Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers. Sign up Advertisement More from New Scientist Explore the latest news, articles and features Popular articles Trending New Scientist articles Advertisement #why #birds #decorate #their #nests

Quantum computers have long been a potential threat to encryptionsakkmesterke/Shutterstock Quantum computers could crack a common data encryption technique once they have a million qubits, or quantum bits. While this is still well beyond the capabilities of existing quantum computers, this new estimate is 20 times lower than previously thought, suggesting the day encryption is cracked is closer than we think. The widely used RSA algorithm relies on the fact that multiplying two prime numbers to generate a large encryption key is easy, but finding those original prime factors when all you have is the resulting key is… #breaking #encryption #with #quantum #computer

The word angelic is considered to be more feminine than masculineMatheus Frade/Unsplash Think of an imaginary person who has a strong moral compass. According to a series of recent experiments, you probably just pictured a woman or a girl. Scientists have found that we tend to associate morality more closely with femininity than masculinity, which may pose a surprising disadvantage for women. Jordan Wylie and her colleagues at Boston College in Massachusetts wanted to better understand the traits and attitudes that we ascribe to people who are considered morally good. #assume #women #are #morally #superior

A Tasmanian devil is carried to safety by a ranger amid flooding at the Aussie Ark sanctuaryAussie Ark Conservation workers are racing to protect a precious group of Australian animals after record rainfall in New South Wales led to floods that have killed four people. Tasmanian devils, brush-tailed rock wallabies, eastern quolls, long-nosed potoroosand broad-toothed ratsare all kept fenced safely away from feral predators such as cats and foxes at the 400-hectare Aussie Ark sanctuary in Barrington Tops, New South Wales. The sanctuary’s animals are considered an insurance policy for their species, in case wild populations become extinct. Advertisement Since 2010, 500 devil joeys alone have been born there and around 50 of these have been released into a specially protected wild area. In coming years, some of these animals are expected to be released outside the sanctuary to re-establish Tasmanian devil populations on mainland Australia. But this week, a severe low-pressure weather system has hit parts of New South Wales, leading to record-breaking storms. In just a few days, well over 400 millimetres of rain fell at the sanctuary. Even though it is at the top of a mountain at an altitude of 1200 metres, the park experienced flash flooding, sweeping away fencing that excludes feral animals and threatening to drown some of the breeding animals in smaller enclosures. Tim Faulkner at Aussie Ark says many of the animals in the breeding enclosures have had to be brought into a makeshift emergency centre at the complex’s vet clinic. But the bigger problem facing the sanctuary is that around a kilometre of the 10-kilometre perimeter fence has been damaged or, in some locations, totally swept away by floodwaters. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter “We’ve got about a kilometre of the fence that’s impacted from corner posts down, sections washed away and pushed over and strainer wires damaged,” says Faulkner. “The electrified hot wire is completely down, so we’re lucky we don’t have any Tyrannosaurus rex testing our defences.” A fence swept over by flooding at the Aussie Ark sanctuaryAussie Ark While the fences are damaged, Faulkner’s team has been camped out around the clock, keeping watch at breached sections. So far, no native species are thought to have escaped and no feral animals have entered. “There’s water seeping, squeezing, pushing, running, pouring, flooding from every single little crack up here on the mountain, and I hate to think of all the wildlife that has also been devastated by these massive floods outside the sanctuary,” says Faulkner. Topics: #flash #floods #sweep #through #vital

A panda keeper does a health check on the cub of giant panda Xi Mei at the Wolong Nature ReserveAmi Vitale These images from the Earth Photo 2025 competition shortlist tell revealing, inspiring and unexpected stories about the climate and life on our planet. Pictured top, photographer Ami Vitale’s image Pandamonium shows a giant panda keeper checking the health of a panda cub in the Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan province, China. The keeper’s outfit is part of an effort to reduce the impact of human contact on the bears. Next, below, is Sue Flood’s Crabeater Seals, shot on an ice floe in the Southern Ocean, off the Antarctic Peninsula. For Flood, such photos can bring the region’s wonder to those who may never visit. Crabeater Seals Southern Ocean, Antarctic peninsulaSue FloodAdvertisement Paradise to Ashes, La Palma by Jonathan Browning pictured below, shows the aftermath of the 2021 Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption on this island in the Canaries, Spain. A woman has remade her garden, removing lava that destroyed mature palms and replacing them with new trees. La Palma. An island of the Canaries. Two years after the Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption in late 2021Jonathan Browning The final image below is Vincenzo Montefinese’s Lost Oases, shot in Tinzouline, Draa valley, Morocco. Here, a man adjusts a solar panel that powers a water pump that irrigates nearby palm groves. Climate change and water use have shrunk the valley’s oases by two-thirds over the past century. Today, farmers must dig more wells, often illegally, to access groundwater. Tinzouline, Draa valley, MoroccoVincenzo Montefinese The photos and videos on the shortlist were chosen by a panel including New Scientist picture editor Tim Boddy and head of editorial video, David Stock. The winners will be revealed on 16 June. The Earth Photo 2025 exhibition is at London’s Royal Geographical Society from 17 June to 20 August before it tours the UK. Topics: #powerful #images #capture #fragility #resilience

Ancient sloths came in a variety of sizesDiego Barletta A cooling, drying climate turned sloths into giants – before humans potentially drove the huge animals to extinction. Today’s sloths are small, famously sluggish herbivores that move through the tropical canopies of rainforests. But for tens of millions of years, South America was home to a dizzying diversity of sloths. Many were ground-dwelling giants, with some behemoths approaching 5 tonnes in weight. Advertisement That staggering size range is of particular interest to Alberto Boscaini at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina and his colleagues. “Body size correlates with everything in the biological traits of an animal,” says Boscaini. “This was a promising way of studyingevolution.” Boscaini and his colleagues compiled data on the physical features, DNA and proteins of 67 extinct and living sloth genera – groups of closely related species – to develop a family tree showing their evolutionary relationships. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter The researchers then took this evolutionary history, which covered a span of 35 million years, and added information about each sloth’s habitat, diet and lifestyle. They also studied trends in body-size evolution, making body mass estimates of 49 of the ancient and modern sloth groups. The results suggest sloth body-size evolution was heavily influenced by climatic and habitat changes. For instance, some sloth genera began living in trees – similar to today’s sloths – and shrank in body size as they did so. Meanwhile, three different lineages of sloths independently evolved elephantine proportions – and it seems they did this within the last several million years, as the planet cooled and the growth of the Andes mountains made South America more arid. “Gigantism is more closely associated with cold and dry climates,” says team member Daniel Casali at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Many of these diverse sloths disappeared during two stages: one around 12,000 years ago and the other around 6000 years ago, says Boscaini. “This matches with the expansion of Homo sapiens, first over the entire American supercontinent, and later in the Caribbean,” he says — which is where some giant sloths lived. Notably, the only surviving sloth species live in trees so are much harder for humans to hunt than massive ground sloths. The idea that humans were the death blow for ancient megafauna is well-supported, says Thaís Rabito Pansani at the University of New Mexico, who wasn’t involved in the study. “However, in science, we need several lines of evidence to reinforce our hypotheses, especially in unresolved and highly debated issues such as the extinction of megafauna,” she says. The new evidence shores up this story. “Sloths were thriving for most of their history,” says Casali. “teach us how a very successfulcan become so vulnerable very quickly.” Journal reference:Science DOI: 10.1126/science.adu0704 Topics:evolution #giant #ground #sloths #evolved #three

Some of the lab equipment needed to trap laser-cooled atomsEndres Lab Extremely cold atoms have been connected into a state of quantum “hyperentanglement” for the first time. This demonstrates a new level of control over their quantum properties, which could prove useful for quantum computing. When cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero – the lowest possible temperature – atoms don’t fully freeze in place, because quantum effects that don’t exist at warmer temperatures enable them to keep making tiny motions. A research team at the California Institute of Technology has now used laser light to take control of those motions in an unprecedented… #ultracold #atoms #have #been #039hyperentangled039

The orbits of a potential dwarf planet called 2017 OF201 and the dwarf planet SednaTony Dunn A potential dwarf planet has been discovered in the outer reaches of our solar system, orbiting beyond Neptune. Its presence there challenges the existence of a hypothetical body known as Planet 9 or Planet X. Sihao Cheng at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and his colleagues first detected the object, known as 2017 OF201, as a bright spot in an astronomical image database from the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile. Advertisement 2017 OF201 is about 700 kilometres across – big enough to qualify as a dwarf planet like Pluto, which has a diameter about three times as big. The object is currently about 90.5 astronomical unitsaway from us, or roughly 90 times as far from Earth as the sun is. Because 2017 OF201’s average orbit around the sun is greater than that of Neptune, it is what’s known as a trans-Neptunian object. It passes through the Kuiper belt, a disc of icy objects in the outer solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune. The researchers looked back over 19 observations, taken over seven years by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, to determine that the closest 2017 OF201 gets to the sun – its perihelion – is 44.5 AU, which is similar to Pluto’s orbit. The furthest it gets from the sun is 1600 AU, way outside the solar system. Voyage across the galaxy and beyond with our space newsletter every month. Sign up to newsletter This far-flung orbit may be the result of an encounter with a giant planet, which ejected the candidate dwarf planet out of the solar system, say the researchers. “It’s a really cool discovery,” says Kevin Napier at the University of Michigan. The object would go so far outside the solar system that it could be interacting with other stars in the galaxy just as strongly as it interacts with some of the planets in our solar system, he says. The orbits of many extreme TNOs seem to cluster in a specific orientation. This has been interpreted as evidence that the solar system contains a ninth planet hidden in the Oort cloud, a vast cloud of icy rocks encircling the solar system. The idea is that Planet 9’s gravity pushes the TNOs into their specific orbits. But the orbit of 2017 OF201 doesn’t fit this pattern. “This object is definitely an outlier to the observed clustering,” says team member Eritas Yang at Princeton University. Cheng and his colleagues also modelled simulations of the object’s orbit, and how it might interact with Planet 9. “In the one with Planet X, the object gets ejected after a couple of hundred million years, and without Planet X, it stays,” says Napier. “Certainly, this is not evidence in favour of Planet 9.” But until there is more data, the case isn’t closed, says Cheng. “I hope Planet 9 still exists, because that’ll be more interesting.” The candidate dwarf planet takes roughly 25,000 years to complete an orbit, which means it spends only about 1 per cent of its time close enough to Earth for us to detect it. “These things are really hard to find because they’re faint, and their orbits are so long and skinny that you can only see them when they’re really close to the sun, and then they immediately head right back out and they’re invisible to us again,” says Napier. That means there might be hundreds of such objects out there. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, due to go online later this year, will look deeper into space and will potentially detect many more objects like this, which should tell us more about them – and whether Planet 9 actually exists. Reference:arXiv DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2505.15806 Topics:planets #new #dwarf #planet #spotted #edge

Adelie penguins on sea ice off the Antarctic PeninsulaAshley Cooper pics/Alamy Fumes of ammonia rising from piles of droppings in Antarctica’s crowded penguin colonies help boost the formation of clouds, which have a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight away from the surface. “This demonstrates a deep connection between the ecosystem and atmospheric processes,” says Matthew Boyer at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Advertisement The link comes down to the way ammonia affects the number of particles in the atmosphere. In order to form a cloud, water vapour must condense around a sizeable particle of some kind. But those are hard to come by in Antarctica’s cold, clean air. Without much dust, vegetation or air pollution around, most of the particles available for a would-be cloud are clusters of sulphuric acid molecules generated as a result of natural emissions from phytoplankton in waters around the continent. High concentrations of ammonia were already known to accelerate the formation of these clusters a thousand-fold. But where would ammonia come from in Antarctica? Penguin droppings should be a rich source. To check this, Boyer and his colleagues measured concentrations of ammonia, sulphuric acid and larger particles in the air several kilometres downwind of a 60,000-strong colony of Adélie penguinson the Antarctic Peninsula. “They smell terrible,” says Boyer. “They’re dirty birds.” Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter When wind was blowing from the direction of the colony, they found ammonia concentrations rose far above the levels found in air arriving from other directions. This rise in ammonia also boosted the formation of particles of sulphuric acid large enough for water to condense around them, and presumably to form clouds. This effect persisted for weeks after the penguins had moved on from the colony. More clouds, especially over the ocean, would have a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight away from Earth’s surface. Boyer says this also implies that a decline in penguin populations – for instance, due to sea ice loss driven by climate change – could have a warming effect across Antarctica by reducing cloud cover. However, the measurements taken in the current work aren’t enough to estimate the size of the effect. Other research suggests it could be significant. For instance, Jeffrey Pierce at Colorado State University and his colleagues found ammonia from puffin excretions in the Arctic similarly boosted cloud cover during summer. They estimated this resulted in a cooling effect that cancelled as much as a third of the warming due to carbon dioxide in the air across the region. “I’m sure it makes some impact,” says Pierce. Journal reference:Communications Earth and Environment DOI: 10.1038/s43247-025-02312-2 Topics: #penguin #poo #helps #keep #antarctica

New contact lenses can provide infrared visionolga Yastremska/Alamy Contact lenses have enabled people to see beyond the visible light range, picking up flickers of infrared light even in the dark – or with their eyes closed. The lenses contain engineered nanoparticles that absorb and convert infrared radiation – specifically, a near-infrared wavelength range of 800 to 1600 nanometres – into blue, green and red light visible to the human eye. That is the same trick night-vision devices use to help people see in the dark, but the contact lenses weigh much less and require no additional power. Advertisement “The contact lenses would provide military personnel with discreet, hands-free night-vision capabilities that overcome the limitations of bulky night-vision,” says Peter Rentzepis at Texas A&M University, who has done related research applying the same nanoparticles – sodium gadolinium fluoride, ytterbium and erbium – to eyeglass lenses. The new wearables, developed by Yuqian Ma at the University of Science and Technology of China and his colleagues, don’t provide detailed night vision yet. That is because they can pick up only “high-intensity, narrowband LED” light sources, says Rentzepis, rather than lower levels of infrared light from ambient sources. “It’s an audacious paper but, using just the contact lens, you wouldn’t be able to read a book in the infrared, or navigate down a dark road,” says Mikhail Kats at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the research. Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. Sign up to newsletter Instead, in tests on humans and mice, the contacts converted a normally invisible flash of infrared light into what Kats says should be a “big colourful blob of visible light”. Those blobs had uses, however. For example, Ma and his colleagues varied the frequency, number and colour of different light flashes to encode and transmit letters of the alphabet. This follows a previous study in which the researchers injected nanoparticles directly into the eyes of mice to provide infrared vision. The wearable contacts represent a “safer and more practical approach for human applications”, says Rentzepis. But they still come with potential health and safety risks, he notes, such as heat exposure from the light-conversion process and possible nanoparticle leakage into eye tissue. Journal referenceCell DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.04.019 Topics: #special #contact #lenses #let #you

Elaine Knox The good news is that we might be about to solve the Fermi paradox. Many have long suspected that the reason why there don’t seem to be millions of talkative aliens out there in space is that, when an intelligent civilisation develops the technology to enable interstellar communication, it also develops weapons that enable it to quickly destroy itself. So far, we are matching this trajectory. We have sent probes beyond the solar system – and vast quantities of electronic data fizzing in all directions at the speed of light – but we have also got thousands of thermonuclear weapons… #this #how #avoid #annihilating #ourselves

Martin Köhler stands in front of the Maka Lahi boulder in TongaMartin Köhler/University of Queensland A 1200-tonne boulder in Tonga was swept inland when a 50-metre-high wave slammed into a 30-metre-tall cliff. “This is not just a boulder; it’s the biggest wave-lifted boulder ever found on a cliff and the third largest boulder in the world, so it really needed gigantic forces to move it that far across such a high place,” says Martin Köhler at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Advertisement While the boulder has long been known to some locals as Maka Lahi, which means large rock, it had never before been studied by scientists. Köhler and his colleagues were conducting fieldwork in Tonga in July 2024 looking for boulders deposited by tsunamis on cliffs. On their final day in the Pacific nation, villagers told them of a boulder they may wish to see. “We were definitely not expecting to find such a large boulder basically during the very last minute of our fieldwork and I knew quite quickly that this was a major discovery,” says Köhler. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter At 14 metres long, 12 metres wide and nearly 7 metres high, it was a “very striking” boulder, he says, made of coral reef limestone breccia. It had eluded previous searches for possible tsunami boulders in satellite images as it had vegetation growing all over the top of it and forest around it. After seeing the boulder, the researchers were able to find a massive gash in the clifftop above the ocean, 200 metres away, from which they think the rock was torn. Next, the team used computer models to determine how such a large boulder, so high above sea level, could be moved so far inland. Shifting it would have required a wave with a minimum height of 50 metres and a 90-second period, meaning it would have taken a minute and a half to pass and had flow speeds of over 22 metres per second, says Köhler. It is thought that such an enormous tsunami may have been relatively localised and caused by a nearby underwater landslip. Dating revealed an age of 6891 years, thousands of years before human settlement of the island. “It was, for me, hard to believe that it was a 50-metre wave because we hadn’t really seen or known of such a large wave before,” says Köhler. “But if you think that this massive boulder is sitting 200 metres inland on a 39-metre-high cliff, then it’s easier to understand.” Only two tsunami-deposited boulders that have been found on land are bigger: the Obiishi rock on Shimoji-shima, Japan, which weighs 3400 tonnes, and Maui rock, which is also on Tonga, which weighs 1500 tonnes. Journal reference:Marine Geology DOI: 10.1016/j.margeo.2025.107567 Topics:geology #giant #boulder #clifftop #tonga #was

Honeybees may use an electric sense to locate nectar-rich flowersproxyminder/Getty Images Electric signals from power lines discourage bees from landing on nearby flowers, and there is growing concern that this so-called “electric pollution” could be causing widespread disruption to insect behaviour. Alongside bumblebees, honeybees have been shown to detect and respond to airborne electric fields – which are often caused by static electricity in the natural world – detected through hairs or antennae. Research has shown that honeybees use electro-reception as a form of communication, and both honeybees and bumblebees are thought to use it to locate nectar-rich flowers. … #honeybees #are #getting #confused #electric