Plant attracts pollinators by mimicking the odour of half-eaten ants

A species of Japanese dogbane (Vincetoxicum nakaianum) mimics the odour of injured ants to tempt the flies that feed on the insects to pollinate them. Botanist Ko Mochizuki noticed that flies were attracted to dogsbane, and found that the plant produces several scented chemicals that are also in ants’ pheromone SOS calls to their nestmates — the first evidence of plants copying ants.

Wind from Earth is rusting the Moon

Oxygen particles blown from Earth to the Moon can turn lunar minerals into haematite — otherwise known as rust. The particles are carried in ‘Earth wind’ — a gust of ions of elements such as hydrogen, nitrogen and the offending oxygen — which hits the Moon for around five days each month. Researchers simulated the process by pelting single crystals of iron-rich minerals known to exist on the Moon with ions of oxygen, which caused the crystals to transform into haematite.

Atomic ‘conveyor belt’ boosts power of quantum computer

A ‘conveyor belt’ of atoms arranged in orderly rows could resolve a major stumbling block towards developing a large-scale quantum computer. The new approach uses an array of rubidium atoms inside a high-vacuum vessel, with a gas of more rubidium atoms suspended just below it. Using laser beams called ‘optical tweezers’, researchers scooped up atoms from the gas to prepare a second array as a back-up. When the first array loses atoms — an inevitability during quantum calculations — the back-up array can be moved up to interact with and replenish it, which keeps the computer in action.

The ‘near-telepathic’ device that puts AI in your head

A wearable device offers a similar experience to brain-computer interfaces without the invasive implants or the privacy concerns that come along with mind-reading. The ‘AlterEgo’ device detects electrical signals in the muscles used to formulate speech that are sent by the brain when you silently mouth or even just internally articulate words. Its makers say it could be used by people who have issues with speaking, or to interact with voice-controlled applications without having to talk out loud.

Mysterious changes near Earth’s core

Material deep inside Earth — thousands of kilometres down, near the planet’s core — has undergone a mysterious shift. Scientists spotted signs of the change in measurements of the planet's gravity, recorded around 2007 by the US-German GRACE satellites. Researchers think that the movement could be linked to a type of mineral called a perovskite, in rocks near the bottom of Earth’s mantle, that changed its structural configuration in response to the crushing pressures deep inside the planet.

First nerve-net connectome shows how evolutionarily ancient nervous system coordinates movement

A map of the mesh-like nervous system of a comb jelly — one of the oldest animals around, evolutionarily speaking — reveals how Mnemiopsis leidyi orients itself in the briny deep. The study shows how brain-mapping techniques can be used on “some of the weirder nervous systems”.

AI is helping to decode animals’ speech

By studying the vocalisations of primates, birds and whales, researchers have spotted features of animal communication once thought unique to human language. To probe deeper, some researchers are turning to artificial intelligence tools to explore whether we can infer meaning from such communications. Their research raises a tantalising question: if we can decode the ‘language’ of animals, could we one day talk back? If it’s possible, there are ethical issues to iron out, such as the impact it could have on animals’ behaviour, say researchers.

Blogger Comments:

Here’s a preliminary mapping of the animal calls discussed in the article to Halliday’s protolanguage microfunctions. I’ve kept it at the level of illustrative examples rather than exhaustive coding.

Species / Call	Observed Behaviour / Context	Microfunction	Notes
Bonobo: yelp–grunt	‘Look at what I’m doing, let’s do this together’ (nest building)	Regulatory / Interactional	Coordinates joint activity; maintains social cohesion.
Bonobo: peep–whistle	‘I would like to do this’ + ‘let’s stay together’	Regulatory / Interactional	Encourages group alignment and peaceful coordination.
Chimpanzee: alarm–recruitment	Responding to snakes	Regulatory	Conveys threat and prompts group response; indicates environmental process.
Sperm whale: codas (a-vowel / i-vowel)	Communication via clicks, codas with frequency modulation	Personal / Interactional	Codas may indicate individual identity, social cues, or sequence patterns; precise “meaning” under investigation.
Japanese tit: alert + recruitment	Predator detection, approach behaviour	Regulatory	Combines information about environment and action; shows compositionality at microfunctional level.
Bengalese finch: song sequences (FinchGPT study)	Predictable song patterns	Interactional	Likely conveys social or territorial information; AI detects structure, not necessarily “meaning” in human sense.
Atlantic spotted dolphin: sequences (DolphinGemma)	Mimicked vocalisations	Interactional / Regulatory	Patterns generated for playback experiments; function in natural behaviour still uncertain.

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Key Observations Using Microfunctions

1. Coordination over grammar: The microfunctions highlight that animal communication primarily regulates behaviour and social relations.

2. Context-sensitive meaning: Each call’s significance emerges in specific environmental and social situations.

3. AI’s role: AI can detect patterns but does not assign microfunctions—it cannot yet perceive relational or contextual meaning.

Weird ‘time crystals’ are made visible at last

Using liquid crystals — bar-shaped molecules with properties between those of a liquid and those of a solid — researchers have created a time crystal, a form of matter that shows continuous, repeating patterns over time, that is visible with the naked eye. Simply by shining a light on the liquid crystals, the team created ripples of twisting molecules through them. The ripples kept moving for hours, undulating with a distinct beat, even when the researchers changed the conditions. The rhythm was also out of sync with any incoming force — fulfilling the two defining criteria for a time crystal.

Dinosaur egg dated directly for the first time

Scientists have calculated the age of a fossilized dinosaur egg from analysing the minerals deposited on the surface during fossilisation (it’s around 85.9 million years old). This is the first time a dino egg has been dated directly, rather than relying on indirectly dating the volcanic ash or rock layers in which the specimens are embedded. “This will remove the uncertainties associated with the ages of many fossils,” says palaeontologist Guntupalli Prasad. However, the study did not account for the processes that occur between the egg’s burial and fossilisation, notes palaeontologist Susannah Maidment.

Clearest gravitational-wave detection yet confirms Hawking’s black-hole theory

Using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), researchers have confirmed the late Stephen Hawking’s theorem that the surface area of a black hole can never decrease. Physicists detected the gravitational waves of two black holes fusing together, and later the vibrations produced by the single black hole birthed by the collision. Analysis of this ‘ringdown’ showed that the resulting black hole had a surface area of 400,000 square kilometres — almost double the combined surface area of its parents.

My blue is your blue: different people’s brains process colours in the same way

Colours are represented and processed in the same way in the brains of different people. A pair of researchers were able to predict which colours a group of people were looking at using a machine learning tool that was trained on the brain scans of a separate group who had been shown various colours. The duo also found that different colours are processed by subtly different areas within the same brain region, and that different cells responded more strongly to particular colours than others.

Blogger Comments:

Neural Myths of Colour: Why Nature Gets It Wrong

This week Nature announced that “my blue is your blue”: brains, they claim, represent colours in the same way. With fMRI scans and a machine-learning classifier, researchers “proved” that when you see red, I see red too — because our brains look alike.

This is not science; it’s a neural myth.

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The Ontological Misstep

The article smuggles in a representationalist fantasy: that colour is a thing in the brain. It invites us to imagine that “redness” lives in a cluster of neurons, waiting to be decoded. This is category error of the first order. Colour is not matter; it is phenomenon. It exists only as construed experience. Neural activity scaffolds this construal, but it does not contain it. To say otherwise is to confuse physiology with meaning — a confusion as old as neuroscience itself.

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The Classifier as Oracle

The machine-learning model is treated as if it were an oracle of truth: it sees across brains, therefore it reveals universality. But classifiers do not reveal; they cut. They enact a perspectival alignment, producing the very sameness they pretend to discover. To believe otherwise is to fall into the fallacy of objectification, mistaking an artefact of measurement for the structure of reality.

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The Erasure of Difference

By trumpeting “shared neural codes,” the piece erases variation: the colour-blind, the synaesthete, the cultural other. If the study misclassifies, the article stays silent. Instead we are handed the fantasy of universality: “we all see the same.” In doing so, it repeats a colonial gesture — effacing difference in the name of sameness.

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Value Disguised as Meaning

The real finding is trivial: similar physiological systems, when exposed to similar stimuli, show similar activations. This is a value-system fact — a matter of bodily organisation. Yet the article presents it as if it were a meaning-system fact — proof that construals of colour are identical across individuals. It confuses the scaffolding of meaning with meaning itself.

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The Relational Reframe

Seen through relational ontology, the story looks different:

• Colour is always already collective construal. To say “red” is to align construals across a community.

• fMRI plus classifier is just another way of phasing that alignment into measurable form.

• The supposed “universal neural code” is nothing but the trace of one methodological cut, mistaken for ontology.

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Why It Matters

The danger is not the study itself — mapping correlations is useful work. The danger is the story Nature tells with it: that meaning is in the brain, that construal collapses into physiology, that collective difference can be erased in the name of sameness. This is not science; it is ontological sleight of hand.

Until we learn to see colour as phenomenon, not object, neuroscience will keep mistaking its own cuts for reality.

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Iberian harvester ants (Messor ibericus) rely on hardy workers that are hybrids of their own species and another one, Messor structor. But the queens don’t bother keeping any M. structor males around: they make their own. M. ibericus queens can lay eggs that contain only M. structor DNA in their nuclei. They then mate with those M. structor ants to produce the hybrid workers. In effect, M. ibericus has domesticated M. structor and its genome.

Unifying gravity and quantum theory requires better understanding of time

How is measuring a quantum state evolving in Hilbert space similar to the ‘Pick Up Song’ game in the long-running British comedy radio show, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue? Glad you asked: theoretical physicist Fay Dowker tells us the answer en route to explaining why the theories of gravity and quantum physics are so fiendishly difficult to reconcile.

Blogger Comments:

I see several layers of metaphorical and ontological slippage in this Nature piece. Some are familiar (old metaphors recycled), others are subtler and specific to this framing of Hilbert space, synchronised time, and Feynman’s histories. Let me outline some key candidates for critique:

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1. Against Time as a Shared Metronome

The article describes the “perfect synchronisation” of Hilbert-space time and physical 3D time, even invoking a comic analogy with a song and a singer. This reifies time as a background metronome ticking identically in two separate “worlds,” Hilbert space and physical space.

Relationally, this is a category error: time is not a substance that can be synchronised across ontological domains but a symbolic ordering principle constructed within each framework. To imagine one “t” flowing identically in two incompatible spaces instals Newton’s ghost back into quantum mechanics.

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2. Against Hilbert Space as a Place

The Copenhagen “duality of location” is described as if Hilbert space were a literal arena — a shadowy stage where “things happen” that then interface with 3D events. This is a spatial metaphor smuggled onto an abstract probability structure. Treating Hilbert space as a quasi-physical location risks collapsing the symbolic into the ontological, confusing mathematical scaffolding with reality’s furniture. Relationally, Hilbert space is not a “where” but a representational device encoding potential relational patterns.

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3. Against Gravity as a Dynamical Actor

The article presents space-time as “both stage and actor” in “reality’s play.” This theatrical metaphor suggests space-time has agency or substance. But this is still background metaphysics, just dressed in dynamical clothing: space-time becomes “the thing that is everything.” Relationally, this risks hypostatising a symbolic construction. Space-time, like Hilbert space, is a model — a symbolic weave that allows us to order and predict phenomena, not an ultimate fabric.

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4. Against Histories as Ontological Facts

Feynman’s sum-over-histories approach is described through the metaphor of “possible histories” of events like rain in Bengaluru. This frames histories as ontologically real alternatives, as if the world were constantly branching into detailed factual tapestries. But histories are not metaphysical scrolls lying in wait; they are symbolic constructs that structure potentialities. Confusing them for “what really might have happened” conflates representation with ontology.

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5. Against the Illusion of Conceptual Closure

The article ends by celebrating Sorkin’s cosmological constant prediction as vindication of the sum-over-histories approach. Yet it slides from pragmatic predictive success to ontological endorsement: the method “must be right” because it produced the right number. Relationally, success stabilises a symbolic architecture — it does not reveal the essence of being. This conflation of predictive utility with metaphysical truth is one of physics’ most persistent illusions.

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6. Against the Repetition of “Strangeness”

Even after adopting Feynman’s histories to remove the “strange duality of location,” the author insists that “the strangeness must be there somewhere.” This rhetoric naturalises the expectation that quantum mechanics must be weird — as if weirdness were an ontological property rather than a symptom of mismatched symbolic frames. The insistence on “quantum strangeness” entrenches the classical as normal and renders quantum a permanent anomaly, obscuring the possibility that both are just different cuts.

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📌 Overall:

The essay reproduces the very metaphysical traps it claims to escape. Time is treated as a synchronisable universal flow, Hilbert space as a place, space-time as an actor, histories as ontological, and strangeness as a property of reality. What disappears is the reflexive insight: all of these are symbolic constructions whose power lies in their pragmatic alignment, not in their metaphysical essence.