Bones from Iraqi cave hint at violence and compassion in Neanderthals

The remains of a Neanderthal person showed healed facial injuries that probably would have required care from others — but eventually, they died after apparently being stabbed with a spear.

Inca empire lasted longer than previously thought

Radiocarbon dating is transforming our understanding of the lifespan of the Inca empire — which was thought to be just 94 years, on the basis of a Spanish colonial chronicle. Radiocarbon dating has uncertainties, but it’s getting more accurate thanks to advanced statistical models, comparisons with tree-ring records and a better understanding of how carbon-14 isotopes levels vary by location. The new data suggest the Inca empire started earlier and lasted longer, and change archæologists’ vision of how the Inca made their conquests.

World’s timekeepers upend how they adjust time to avoid catastrophic ‘negative second’

On 15 October, member states of the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) voted to scrap the ‘leap second’ — periodic adjustments to the world’s clocks to align time given by the sun’s position in the sky, with the more stable ticking of atomic clocks, known as Universal Coordinated Time. The CGPM had previously voted to ditch leap seconds by 2035, but yesterday’s decision had immediate effect. The leap second’s replacement — the ‘leap hour’ — probably won’t be needed for thousands of years, effectively pushing the issue onto future generations.

Bouba–Kiki effect holds true in dogs

When presented with two shapes, one with spikes and one rounded, and asked to designate them ‘bouba’ and ‘kiki’, people tend to agree that kiki is the spiky one — and so do dogs. Researchers found that when presented with images of these shapes, domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) more often looked at and moved toward the round shape when the word ‘bouba’ was played from a speaker, and vice versa. The results could suggest that dogs make similar connections between visual information and sounds to humans.

Shipwreck might be world’s oldest

Archæologists say that amphorae and other artefacts discovered off the Mediterranean coast of Turkey are from the oldest shipwreck ever found. The team says that, on the basis of the pottery, the ship sailed during the Early Bronze Age, between 4,700 and 4,400 years ago. And the pots still had some goo inside.

Skull fractures suggest servants of Egypt’s ancient kings were sacrificed

A re-analysis of evidence from ancient tombs bolsters a theory that the servants of early Egyptian kings were killed when their monarch died. Egyptologist Flinders Petrie proposed the idea in the 1920s, after excavating the burial sites of several rulers and finding other bodies in surrounding graves. But at the time, he could find no evidence of injury on the remains. Using modern techniques, forensic archæologist Roselyn Campbell has identified signs of potentially lethal trauma on 18 skulls taken from the site, which appear to have been caused by a flat, wide object.

Stunning fossil shows dinosaurs’ distinctive path to flight

The discovery of a complete fossil of a feathered dinosaur species adds to evidence that birds evolved the ability to fly several times rather than through a single lineage. The newly described species belongs to a group of dinosaurs called microraptorines, which are closely related to birds. Researchers found that several flight-related adaptations in microraptorines also evolved in the bird lineage Avialae. But these adaptations did not develop in the same order in the two groups and “thus could not be considered the expression of a shared developmental regime”, the researchers write.

The T. rex had a body temperature similar to our own

The fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex might have had an internal body temperature similar to that of modern-day elephants — and not too dissimilar to humans. By examining the arrangement of isotopes in the enamel of fossilised T. rex teeth, researchers estimate that the dinosaur’s internal temperature was approximately 36 °C. Narrowing down the creature’s body temperature can hint at what kind of diet it needed to sustain its homeostasis, and where it was able to roam.

Non-Human Primate Communication May Follow Grammar Patterns Once Thought Uniquely Human

The vocalisations of the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), the olive colobus monkey (Procolobus verus) and the bonobo (Pan paniscus) all appear to contain patterns that resemble complex elements of human grammar. Researchers used mathematical models to analyse clips of these primate communications and identified some elements similar to supra-regular recursion — a grammatical structure that requires a listener to process a word or statement nested within a wider sentence without context. This level of complexity was thought to be unique to humans.

What a landmark new study reveals about the origin of bats

Bats are special: they’re the only mammals that can fly, they can tolerate viruses without getting sick and they have exceptional longevity and cancer resistance. So scientists are welcoming a tour de force study of bat genomics: the first phase of the Bat1K Project, which aims to generate chromosome-level genomes for all living bat species. Notably, the study suggests that bats evolved in Europe, challenging previous hypotheses of African, Asian or North American origins.

A new form of boron

A new phase of the element boron can be stretched to more than 20% of its original length and has an electrical conductivity over a million times that of typical boron materials. The structure, called Imma-B₆₀, is the first new unusual form of boron discovered since 2009. Researchers made it by coaxing boron to react with sodium under high pressure, then removing sodium impurities from the mixture. These properties suggest that the material could one day be used in solar panels, or to replace existing boron compounds in body armour.

Lutetium clock is the best timekeeper ever

Physicists have unveiled the world’s most accurate clock — a timepiece so reliable that it would take more than 260 billion years to lose a second. The device is an ‘optical’ atomic clock, which derives time using the visible-range frequency of light at which an element — in this case, the rare-earth metal lutetium — absorbs radiation. The researchers behind the clock say that it is robust enough that they hope to be able to miniaturise it and eventually take it out of the lab.

Gravitational tug-of-war inside Earth is changing the length of our days

Gravitational and other forces generated by the movement of Earth’s metallic core can explain millisecond-length fluctuations in the length of the 24-hour day over decades. Researchers modelled the impact of various possible internal forces arising from interactions among Earth’s inner and outer cores, and its rocky mantle, which can subtly affect the rate of the planet’s rotation. They found that one scenario, in which a gravitational twisting force generated by the inner core was dominant, best matched the historical record of changes in the length of Earth’s days.

Lead detection reveals text in burned scrolls

Researchers have made their own burned, rolled-up papyri and showed that they can decipher the text by detecting the element lead in the ink. Using X-ray computed tomography (CT) and X-ray fluorescence to spot lead, the team was able to virtually unroll the scrolls and clearly read the text within. “The letters lit up like a Christmas tree,” says retired inventor and study co-author Douglas Seiler. This technique could help researchers read thousands of ancient scrolls recovered from the Roman town of Herculaneum, which were charred by the eruption of Vesuvius — if they contain ink.

First radio signals from an exoplanet

Astronomers have detected radio waves emitted directly by Beta Pictoris b — the first time such signals have been observed from a planet outside our Solar System. Researchers managed to separate the planet’s emissions from those of its host star by choosing a candidate that is big, relatively close to Earth and nicely separated from its magnetically quiet star. The signal comes from auroral radio emissions, similar to those from the Northern and Southern Lights on Earth.

Little red whats?

Little red dots (LRDs) sound innocuous, but they present one of the most exciting mysteries in cosmology. Many have been observed, thanks to the unprecedented window into the distant Universe that has been opened by the James Webb Space Telescope. But what are these enigmatic objects from the dawn of time? An initial consensus has coalesced around them involving black holes of some kind — perhaps primitive versions of the active galactic nuclei we see in the more recent Universe. But other, more exotic, theories have also emerged.

How to make a brain: new experiments challenge existing picture

A new study suggests that two types of precursor cells are required to build the brain, challenging a decades-long theory that a single type of starter cell gives rise to the complex organ. The research finds that one type of precursor cell forms the hindbrain, while another generates the forebrain and midbrain. Not all researchers are convinced by this conclusion, but the work has drawn broad praise for one aspect: the authors found an efficient way to coax stem cells to grow into hindbrain motor-neuron cells, which could aid research into conditions that affect these cells, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

NASA spacecraft discovers a huge new crater on the moon

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted a ‘once-in-a-century’ event — a crater bigger than the Roman Colosseum, which formed when a rock, possibly this size of a three- to six‑story building, crashed into the Moon between 11 April and 22 May, 2024. Such a large-scale event is estimated to occur only once every 132 years.

New evidence for hidden chambers beyond Tutankhamun’s tomb

Researchers say they have new found evidence for the tantalizing, but controversial, idea that there are as-yet-unexplored chambers in Tutankhamun’s tomb that might hold the remains of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti. The team conducted a range of geophysical surveys, including the first use of gravitational techniques to probe the density of ground around the site, and say they strongly support the existence of a “hidden complex” of corridors and rooms predating the entombment of Tutankhamun.

Asgard archaea are revealing the origins of complex life

Microorganisms from which all complex life might be descended — the Asgard archaea — were discovered in 2015 from DNA in sediments plucked from the bottom of the North Atlantic. Since then, researchers have been painstakingly culturing these exotic organisms and finding lots of surprises along the way.

‘Multifunctional’ brain implant translates speech and gestures in real time

A new brain–computer interface (BCI) is the first of its kind to translate its user’s speech and movement at the same time. The device, tested in two people with forms of paralysis, uses artificial intelligence to convert electrical brain activity into text that appears on screen and to prompt a personalised animated avatar to move — all within seconds of the user’s intent. The work is “a step towards more multifunctional BCIs” that better capture the expressivity of communication than do current technologies, says bioengineer and study co-author Samantha Brosler.

Fossil trove sheds new light on Denisovans

A collection of fossils and artefacts recovered from an abandoned quarry in southwestern China has given researchers an unprecedented glimpse into the lives of ancient humans called Denisovans. The items suggest that Denisovans — who lived at the site for at least 30,000 years — crafted bone tools similar to those of the Neanderthals, and were skilled hunters of animals such as deer. “This site’s the full package,” says archaeologist Ben Marwick. “It’s the first site that we have with a long, rich sequence that’s uniquely associated with Denisovans.”

Moon might have formed in five hours

They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the Moon might have taken just five hours to form from the debris of a collision between Earth and a Mars-sized space rock. Simulations have tended to focus on the size of proto-Earth and ‘Theia’, the body that evidence suggests once struck our home planet. If Earth and Theia were both hot and smooshy, the chunks that eventually formed the Moon would have stayed largely intact — making it form more quickly — than if the two smashees were cool.

Is this the first glimpse of dark matter?

A single data point from a dark-matter detector in the United States could be the first discovery of the elusive particle we call dark matter. The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota contains 10 tonnes of liquid xenon. It seeks evidence of a candidate particle called a WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle) by looking for flashes created when such a particle collides with the nucleus of just one xenon atom. If the finding can be backed up with more data, it could mean that the material that seems to make up most of the mass of the Universe has finally been discovered.

The leap second is dead. Long live the leap hour?

The leap second — a periodic adjustment that keeps the relentless march of the world’s atomic clocks in sync with the planet’s naturally varying rotation — could be scrapped as soon as October. The world’s timekeeping authorities want to fast-track a change, already planned for 2035, because we’re facing the possibility of the first-ever negative leap second — meaning that clocks must skip, rather than gain, a second. The unprecedented event could cause chaos, say researchers — especially because the leap second is handled slightly differently across crucial infrastructure such as electrical grids and financial systems. Better, say timekeepers, would be a leap hour — which would mean adjustments only once in hundreds, or thousands, of years.

Life’s ‘last universal common ancestor’ may predate life itself

Researchers have gathered more evidence for the idea that the first spark that spawned us all — the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) — was a part-organic, part-rock chemical system that formed in the energetically and chemically rich environment of hydrothermal vents. New findings also suggest that the two oldest single-celled domains of life, bacteria and archaea, sprang independently from this first source.

Did Neanderthals roam as far as Arabia?

An analysis of stone tools thought to have been crafted by Neanderthals suggests that the ancient humans might have roamed as far south as the Arabian Peninsula around 55,000 years ago. The artefacts come from a site beside an ancient lake in what is now Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert. The characteristics of the tools, and efforts to date the sand of the site, suggest that Neanderthals might have lived there just as the area was shifting from desert to a wetter environment — which could have drawn animals, and the humans who hunted them, further south.

Dolphins learn to shell from their mothers

Researchers have recorded what appears to be an Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) mother giving its calf a lesson in a hunting technique called shelling. The seldom-observed behaviour involves the dolphin catching a fish in an empty sea snail shell, lifting the shell out of the water and shaking it to drop the fish into its mouth. The team spotted an adult female surfacing with a shell containing a fish, and a calf lifting the same shell a few minutes later, which suggests that it was learning from watching its mother, they say.

How an ancient collision with another galaxy transformed the Milky Way

Astrophysicists have found evidence that the Milky Way collided and merged with a dwarf galaxy around 12 billion years ago. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, the team found that the makeup of some globular clusters — groups of stars held tightly together by gravity — doesn’t match that of those that are thought to be native to the Milky Way or that arrived during a later merger with another dwarf galaxy known as the Gaia–Sausage–Enceladus. “We do not know how our house was built,” says astrophysicist and study co-author Davide Massari. But these findings point to “where the first significant batch of bricks came from”.

Physicists home in on mysterious ‘glueballs’

A team of physicists says it has observed strong evidence of a mysterious ‘glueball’, a particle made up of force-carrying gluons. The team says that a particle known as X(2370) is mostly made up of these glueballs — clusters of the gluons that bind quarks to form protons and neutrons and hold them inside the nucleus of an atom. There is no single smoking gun that proves that this particle is made of glueballs, says particle physicist Bruce Yabsley. But the findings are “quite persuasive”, he says. The group presented their results at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Natal, Brazil, last week.

Underdog ‘spin qubits’ leap forward in race to a useful quantum computer

Four independent research teams have reported big advances in the design of quantum devices that rely on ‘spin qubits’ to encode information. Spin qubits are made by carving precise patterns into semiconductor wafers, forming wells that can hold a single electron. In the race to create a useful quantum computer, this design had previously not been considered a front-runner, because systems that used spin qubits were small and had high error rates. The new systems range from 5 to 18 qubits, and one has slashed the error rate to less than 0.01%.

Humanity spoke thousands of languages at the dawn of farming — now many of them are lost

Humanity might have spoken tens of thousands of languages between 3,000 and 1,000 years ago, which have dwindled down to the around 7,500 unique languages used today. Researchers estimate that the number of spoken languages ballooned starting at the end of the last glacial period, as humans moved from hunter-gatherer groups into agricultural communities. After peaking around 2,000 years ago, the number began to fall again, possibly because of the spread of powerful, monolingual cultural groups through conquest and trade.

A rocky exoplanet with an atmosphere

Astronomers have spotted a rocky exoplanet that looks likely to have an atmosphere — and could be a host for life. The planet, LHS 1140b, appears to have a helium-rich upper atmosphere and sits in the habitable zone around a star, the area in which an orbiting planet could maintain liquid water on its surface. Researchers can’t say for sure whether there is water on the exoplanet, but the findings constitute an “amazing missing piece of the puzzle” as to whether rocky exoplanets can have atmospheres, says astrophysicist Sara Seager.

How naked mole rat queens stop rivals reproducing

Naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber) queens produce a chemical that prevents other females in their colony from reproducing. The smell of isopropyl myristate — which is also a common ingredient in skincare products — alters the production of hormones in other females, which traps them in a prepubescent-like state. Researchers found that the chemical alone can maintain the status quo in mole-rat colonies when the queen is not physically present. The study solves the “longstanding mystery” of why only one female in a naked mole rat colony reproduces, says behavioural scientist Melissa Holmes.

Maya glyph names maths powerhouse

A mathematical formula inscribed on a wall at the Maya site of Xultun in Guatemala has revealed the name of an important Maya mathematician-astronomer. Sak Tahn Waax, or ‘White-Chested Fox’, was a scholar comparable with mathematical giants of the past, researchers suggest. The calculations inscribed in this set of hieroglyphs expresses the relationships between several calendar systems in a playful manner that hasn’t been seen before in Mayan texts, says archaeologist and study co-author Heather Hurst. “I think it was a mathematical flex,” she says.

First ‘true sugar’ molecule found in space — offering hints to life’s origins

Astronomers have detected a four-carbon sugar molecule in a cloud of gas and dust near the centre of our galaxy. The molecule, erythrulose, is the most complex sugar detected outside of our Solar System, the team says. If erythrulose exists in these molecular clouds, it could be transferred to passing asteroids and comets as a star system forms. Such bodies could have brought sugars — the feedstock for early versions of DNA and RNA — to Earth during a period of heavy asteroid bombardment around four billion years ago, suggests astronomer and study co-author Izaskun Jiménez-Serra.

‘Super-puff’ planets lighter than candy floss

Data from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has revealed two super-rare, ‘super-puff’ planets. Though as big as Jupiter, TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c “have densities comparable to a nice blob of shaving foam, fresh from the can,” says astrophysicist George Dransfield.

Ocean floor witnessed splitting apart for the first time — releasing lava

For the first time, geophysicists have caught the ocean floor splitting apart at its seams. Using an array of measuring stations laid across an 100-kilometre-long region of the Indian Ocean, the team witnessed a seismic event that shifted two sections of the oceanic crust apart by at least 2 metres in a matter of days, spewing around 160 million cubic metres of lava onto the sea floor as it did so.

Are dark matter and dark energy one thing?

The Universe is a dark place: around 70% of it seems to be dark energy, a mysterious force that seems to drive accelerating expansion; and dark matter, an invisible ‘something’ that holds galaxies together. These two enigmas were thought to have little in common except their names. Now some theorists are asking if they might be linked though a ‘dark dimension’ — one of the six or seven ‘extra’ dimensions posited by string theory. This idea could account for evidence from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) that the strength of dark energy has gone up and down over time.

Blogger Comments:

A note of caution: This article presents a chain of theoretical speculation that extends from possible time-variation in dark energy, to interactions between dark matter and dark energy, to the introduction of extra dimensions within string-theoretic frameworks. While each step in this sequence is formally motivated within its respective modelling context, none constitutes empirical confirmation of the entities it introduces. The overall narrative can therefore create a misleading impression of convergence toward an established physical picture, when in fact it remains a stack of contingent hypotheses layered on top of one another.

More generally, the discussion illustrates a recurring feature of popular theoretical physics: the gradual replacement of observational uncertainty with ontological confidence, as models are re-described as descriptions of “things” rather than as constrained formal responses to data. It is important to keep distinct what is observed, what is modelled, and what is inferred about the structure of reality from those models.

Why humans and great apes giggle alike when tickled

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and children laugh in similar rhythms when tickled. Researchers found that kids and apes left evenly spaced intervals between laughing sounds during a tickle attack, though children had a faster laughter rhythm compared with apes. Laughter might have picked up pace during the course of human evolution, the team suggests, which could reveal “something about laughter itself, but also, in a way, about the evolution of human speech”, says primatologist and study co-author Chiara De Gregorio.

Mediterranean Sperm Whales Have Their Own Dialects

Isolated groups of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) in the Mediterranean Sea seem to have developed their own dialects of their species’ primary social vocalization, a pattern of clicks and pauses. Researchers analysed 20 years of audio recordings and found that whales in the Hellenic Trench, near Greece, use a faster version of the pattern than do whales around the Balearic Islands, between Gibraltar and Italy.

‘Light in a bottle’ liquid can harvest and store energy from multiple sources

A new type of liquid can harvest and store energy from light to act as a rechargeable power source. The liquid contains a molecule that absorbs electrons from light, which prompts a restructure into a jelly-like substance. This gel remains stable for months at a time and can release the stored electrons upon contact with oxygen to power chemical reactions. The research is still in very early stages, but such a metal-free energy storage system could one day be useful to power small devices such as smartwatches.

Visiting comet formed in Universe’s infancy

An unusual comet that shot through the Solar System last year — and tempted some to dabble in the idea that it was an alien spaceship — could have formed as long as 12 billion years ago. From the chemical composition of the comet, 3I/ATLAS, researchers estimate that it formed relatively early in the history of the Universe, after an intense period of star formation. Gathering data on more interstellar objects — those that aren’t tied to an orbit and can ‘wander’ the galaxy — could “totally revolutionise what we know about the field of interstellar comets, but also star and planet formation in general”, says planetary scientist Darryl Seligman.

The first ticking ‘nuclear clocks’ are here

Two research teams, one in Europe and one in China, have made the world’s first ‘nuclear’ clocks. These clocks derive their ‘tick’ from the energy that makes protons and neutrons inside the nucleus of thorium-229 shift to a higher energy level. The groups used similar approaches to solve the problem that’s hindered nuclear-clock development in the past: how to keep the clock’s tick speed from drifting over time. Creating a nuclear clock is “a dream come true”, says atomic physicist Thorsten Schumm, a member of the European team. “Now we have a fierce but friendly global competition.”

How the brain builds sentences, neuron by neuron

Researchers have tracked the electrical activity of individual brain cells during conversation in real time, capturing how sentences are built before a single word is spoken. By observing these neurons in a brain region called the frontotemporal cortex, scientists have discovered that individual neurons act as specialized linguistic building blocks. “We used to think language was this diffuse, whole-network phenomenon,” says neurosurgeon and study co-author Ziv Williams. “But it turns out you have specific neurons that only care if a word is a noun, or only care if a phrase is ending.”

Blogger Comments:

But see:

Neurons Don't Contain Nouns

The Noun in the Neuron

‘Organisers’ in jellies hint at animal origins

Researchers have discovered a new ‘embryonic organiser’ in marine predators called comb jellies (Ctenophora) and successfully transplanted them into sea anemones (Cnidaria). Organiser cells determine an organism’s body axis — a map that plots where various parts of the embryo should develop. After the transplant, the anemones developed a second body axis, complete with extra mouths and pharynxes. The findings support the idea that the emergence of organising activity was a key step in animal evolution, says evolutionary developmental biologist Ulrich Technau.

Mysterious mortuary processing in Iron Age

The remains of an adult buried some 2,000 years ago in what is now Scotland show signs that her brain might have been removed and her bones modified as tools, before her skeleton was carefully reassembled and interred. The finding adds to the mystery of how Iron Age Britons treated their dead: few human remains have survived from that period.

JUNO finds clues to neutrino-mass mystery

Researchers working on the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) experiment in Guangdong, China, have captured crucial details of how mysterious neutrino particles can switch between different types in flight. Neutrinos are so light that they were once thought to have no mass, and the standard model of particle physics doesn’t seem to explain why they do. Physicists use experiments such as JUNO to study how neutrinos ‘oscillate’, or change from one type to another, which is the first step in answering that question.

Stonehenge ‘altar’ carried on glacier

A massive slab at the center of Stonehenge somehow travelled 700 kilometres from its origin in northeast Scotland to its current home in the south of England. A model of Neolithic ice flows suggests a glacier might have carried the six-tonne monolith as far as Doggerland — an area that is now beneath the North Sea. Then, roughly 3,000 years before it came to Stonehenge, people may have saved the rock from rising sea levels. “What is exciting about these findings is that they could imply that the people of Doggerland attached cultural significance to the Altar Stone long before it was incorporated into Stonehenge,” says glaciologist and study co-author Remy Veness.

Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees

Bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) can suss out how to use a tool to complete a set task without explicit training. Bees were shown a ceiling-mounted artificial flower, which contained a tasty sucrose treat, and then separately, a styrofoam ball. Then, the insects were put into an environment with both. The bees worked out that they could roll the ball under the flower for a leg-up to their reward. The insects were never explicitly shown that they could use the ball for this purpose, which suggests they have the cognitive capacity to problem-solve.

Clouds stream on distant exoplanet

Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe a far-off planet in stunning detail, just by studying the tiny fraction of the light from its star that is filtered through the planet’s atmosphere. The team found that thick clouds continuously form on the night side of WASP-94 A b, which is 210 parsecs (690 light years) away from Earth. As winds carry the clouds from the cool night side to the lit day side, they quickly dissipate. The results show how tiny differences in starlight’s spectrum between the start, middle and end of a planet’s transit in front of its star can improve researchers' understanding of planetary atmospheres.