Giant ‘bubble’ in space could be source of powerful cosmic rays

A turbocharged galactic accelerator could produce the Milky Way’s most powerful cosmic rays. The origin of these ultra-fast particles is hard to pin down because they bounce off magnetic fields, so their flight paths are difficult to follow. To get around the problem, researchers measure particles that are produced when cosmic rays hit interstellar gas and that travel in straight lines. One huge gamma-ray-emitting bubble was detected within a star-forming region in the Cygnus constellation.

Supernova mystery solved

The remains of a supernova that revolutionised modern astrophysics has been confirmed as a neutron star. The event, spotted in 1987, was the closest and brightest supernova observed since 1604, giving astronomers the unprecedented view of how stars die. Now the James Webb Space Telescope has peered through the veil of dust left by the explosion and detected ionised argon and sulphur gas, the signature of an ultradense neutron star.

The life and gruesome death of a bog man revealed after 5,000 years

A man who ended up in a Danish bog 5,000 years ago with his skull crushed by a wooden club might have come from far-off northern Scandinavia. Carbon and nitrogen isotope levels in bones and teeth, which can reveal aspects of diet, suggest that ‘Vittrup Man’ had transitioned from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming in his late teens. And genetic analysis shows he was related to hunter-gatherers from what is now Norway and Sweden, not to the farming communities of Denmark.

Stone age wall found at bottom of Baltic Sea ‘may be Europe’s oldest megastructure’

A string of boulders almost a kilometre long, now covered by the Baltic Sea, could be Europe’s oldest human-made megastructure. Researchers say the “pristine” discovery was probably used for hunting the Eurasian reindeer more than 10,000 years ago. Before it was submerged by rising sea levels about 8,500 years ago, hunters might have used the wall to force prey into a bottleneck or a nearby lake.

Mind-reading devices reveal brain’s secrets

Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) — implanted devices that are powered by thought alone — can restore the ability to move and speak to people with paralysis. They are also overturning assumptions about how the brain is organised. For example, BCI recordings of single-neuron activity have revealed that brain regions have fuzzier boundaries than was thought. Researchers have also started to show how BCI use changes the brain. Over time, users’ brains seem to become more efficient at controlling the device and require fewer neural resources to do the tasks. For now, the scope of BCI research remains limited, with only small clinical trials.

Monster black hole powers the brightest known object in the universe

A quasar — a bright object found at the centre of many galaxies — has taken the title of the most luminous object ever found. At its centre is a gargantuan black hole that devours the equivalent of one solar mass every day. The quasar is 500 trillion times brighter than the Sun and twice as bright as the previous record-holding quasar.

Decimal point is older than thought

The decimal point was invented by Italian merchant and astronomer Giovanni Bianchini some 150 years before what was considered to be its first appearance. Bianchini’s training in economics might have given him a perspective different to that of his astronomer peers — who would have exclusively been using the sexagesimal (base 60) system — and his approach was perhaps too revolutionary to catch on until much later.

This new map of the Universe suggests dark matter shaped the cosmos

A reconstruction of nearly 9 billion years of cosmic evolution supports the standard model of cosmology, which suggests that mysterious dark matter is the main factor shaping the Universe’s structure. Astronomers traced the X-ray glow of distant galaxy clusters using the most detailed X-ray map of the sky, captured by the eROSITA space telescope. It allowed them to calculate parameters such as ‘lumpiness’ — how much the total mass of matter has concentrated in the cosmic web at any given time due to gravity, especially that of dark matter.

The Solar System has a new ocean

Mimas, a small moon of Saturn, turns out to have an ocean beneath its icy surface — despite looking too geologically inert to have water sloshing inside. The fact that unexceptional Mimas has an ocean means that “you could have liquid water almost anywhere”, says astronomer Valéry Lainey. And that means a greater chance of extraterrestrial life somewhere: interactions between a buried ocean and a moon’s rocky core could generate enough chemical energy to sustain living organisms.

Mathematicians Identify the Best Versions of Iconic Shapes

In mathematics, an ‘optimal shape’ is the most extreme version of a simple shape, whether it’s a Möbius strip, a twisted paper cylinder or a trefoil knot. Topology devotees have identified a handful of such shapes in recent years. Each new discovery is about minimising the amount of paper or string used to make the shape.

First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed

Student researchers have used machine learning to read text hidden inside charred, unopenable scrolls from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum. The newly revealed passages discuss sources of pleasure including music, the colour purple and the taste of capers. The team trained an algorithm on tiny differences in texture where the ink had been, based on three-dimensional computed tomography scans of the scrolls.

Mathematicians finally solve Feynman’s “reverse sprinkler” problem

In normal operation, an S-shaped lawn sprinkler rotates because of the ‘jets’ of water shooting from its nozzles. But if the sprinkler is underwater and sucking in water, which way does it spin? The riddle of ‘Feynman’s sprinkler’ was popularized by physicist Richard Feynman. “The answer is perfectly clear at first sight,” he wrote in his memoir Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. “The trouble was, some guy would think it was perfectly clear one way, and another guy would think it was perfectly clear the other way.”

The complexities of flow and turbulence mean that past experiments have given inconclusive or contradictory results (or, in Feynman’s case, broken glass and a thorough soaking). Now, researchers have carefully designed a sprinkler to remove confounding effects and found that the underwater sprinkler rotates in the opposite direction to the normal one, but unsteadily, and about 50 times slower. Detailed observations backed up by mathematical modelling suggest that a weak jet effect inside the device dominates the sprinkler’s motion.

AI learns language through a baby’s eyes

By strapping a camera to a child’s head, researchers have gained an insight into how children acquire language. A baby boy wore the camera for around one hour twice a week, from the age of six months to around two years. Researchers trained an AI system on frames from the video and words spoken to Sam, transcribed from the recording. It learnt to recognise words such as ‘crib’ and ‘ball’ by building associations between images and words, without any other prior knowledge about language. That challenges the theory that babies need some innate knowledge about how language works, says AI researcher Wai Keen Vong, who co-authored the research.

‘Wildly weird’ RNA bits discovered infesting the microbes in our guts

Tiny scraps of genetic material dubbed Obelisks have been discovered in human gut and mouth bacteria. The flattened circles of RNA are even smaller than viruses and too minimalistic to be considered a standard life form, but they can still transmit instructions to cells. Their genetic sequences are very different from similarly shaped RNA structures called viroids that have been found in plants, fungi and animals. Nobody knows how Obelisks might affect human health.