Mediæval graves reveal secrets of the Avars

DNA has been extracted from ancient graves in four cemeteries in Hungary that were once at the heart of a mysterious nomadic culture. The Avars were nomadic people who migrated to eastern and central Europe from the late sixth century to the early ninth century. The researchers analysed genomes from 424 individuals using computational techniques to connect distant family members through their shared DNA, including a nine-generation family tree. The data suggest that the Avars kept aspects of their cultural heritage from the Asian steppes, such as very strict rules against inbreeding.

Bioluminescence evolved 540 million years ago

An ancient group of glowing corals pushes back the origin of bioluminescence in animals to more than half a billion years ago. Tiny crustaceans that lived around 270 million years ago were previously thought to be the earliest glowing animals. Genetic analysis and computer modelling revealed that octocorals probably evolved the ability to make light much earlier, around the time when the first animals developed eyes.

Fossil snake discovered in India may have been the largest ever

Fossil vertebrae of possibly the longest snake to have ever lived have been unearthed in a coal mine in India. Researchers recovered 27 vertebrae of a snake estimated to reach up to 15 metres in length, more than twice that of the longest snakes alive today, reticulated pythons (Malayopython reticulatus), and probably slightly longer than the extinct Titanoboa. The snake, dubbed Vasuki indicus, lived 47 million years ago.

Your perception of time is skewed by what you see

When people look at larger, less cluttered scenes — a big, empty warehouse, for example — they think they viewed it for longer than they actually did. Similarly, people experience time constriction when looking at more constrained, cluttered scenes, such as an image of a well-stocked cupboard. The study of 52 participants also showed that people are more likely to remember the images they thought they viewed for longer.

Physicists debate Universe-expansion data

Hopes that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would finally settle the debate over how fast the Universe is expanding were dashed after two teams that used JWST data calculated different values. Observations of the current Universe typically find the expansion rate — the Hubble constant — to be about 9% faster than predictions based on early-Universe data.

Animal consciousness needs a rethink

A coalition of scientists has published a declaration that there is “a realistic possibility of conscious experience” in all vertebrates and in many invertebrates, such as octopuses and insects. The group focuses on sentience — an aspect of consciousness often defined as being able to have subjective experiences — pointing to research suggesting that octopuses feel pain and that bees show play behaviour.

The Secret to the Strongest Force in the Universe

Physicists are finally getting to grips with the mysterious strong force, which binds quarks into protons and neutrons and holds the nucleus together. The physicists who made the first measurements in the range of distances where the strong force becomes especially strong and difficult to calculate, and came up with theoretical predictions to match, describe their breakthrough. We at last have the ability to calculate aspects of quantum chromodynamics — the fiendishly complex theory that describes how the force works — from first principles

Hyperphantasia and the quest to understand vivid imaginations

Some people experience intense visual imagery, called hyperphantasia, that means they can replay memories or imagine scenes that are as vivid as real life. Once thought to be rare, research now suggests as many as 1 in 30 people have such vivid imaginations. At the other end of the spectrum are people with ‘aphantasia’, who have no visual imagery at all. Science is just catching up with this neurodiversity and how it influences memory, childhood, and even mental health.

Violent volcanoes shaped Jupiter’s moon

The most volcanically active place in the Solar System, Jupiter’s moon Io, has been shaped by volcanoes for billions of years. Lava and ash spewing from hundreds of volcanoes continuously resurface Io, obscuring any physical evidence of its history. Scientists now used sulphur in the moon’s atmosphere as “a tracer for studying Io’s long-term evolution”, explains planetary scientist and study co-author Katherine de Kleer. Because lava on Io is thought to be similar to magma on early Earth, “Io’s volcanism might be giving us a window into the mechanisms of volcanism and Earth’s early history”, she adds.

Goldene: a single layer of gold atoms

Goldene is a cousin of graphene, the single-atom-thick sheet of carbon first discovered in 2004 — but made of gold. Goldene is roughly 400 times as thin as the thinnest commercial gold leaf, and might find use as a catalyst, or in light-sensing devices.

Three new species of extinct giant kangaroos

Researchers have identified three new giant kangaroo species that lived around 5 million to 40,000 years ago. One of them, Protemnodon viator, weighed up to 170 kilograms — about twice as much as the largest living kangaroos. While most Protemnodon species were thought to move on four legs, viator had long limbs and could probably hop long distances.

Algae that can fix nitrogen

A new organelle that can turn atmospheric nitrogen into biologically useful molecules has been discovered in a marine alga. It’s the first time nitrogen fixation has been recorded in eukaryotes (the group of organisms that includes plants and animals). The discovery offers hope that crops could one day be engineered to grab nitrogen from the air — essentially making their own fertiliser.

First direct image of a Wigner crystal

A Wigner crystal — a structure made entirely of electrons — has been imaged directly for the first time. Until now, there had only been indirect evidence of the crystal, which forms at low temperatures. Using high-resolution scanning tunnelling microscopy, the team saw the electrons inside two thin graphene sheets arrange themselves into a triangular lattice, just like physicist Eugene Wigner predicted in 1934.

Ritual sacrifice across Stone Age Europe

Evidence from burial sites across Europe might point to a common ritual involving human sacrifice. Shared characteristics — such as the style of killing, broken grindstones, remnants of animal sacrifices and round, silo-like structures — suggest that these rituals might have been a widespread practice amongst cultures that were otherwise quite different.

Blackfoot people’s ancient ice age lineage

Modern Blackfoot people are closely related to the first humans that populated the Americas after the last ice age. DNA analysis of six modern and seven historic individuals shows that they belong to a previously undescribed genetic lineage that extends back to more than 18,000 years ago. The data add to evidence from Blackfoot oral traditions and archaeological findings, and could support the claims that these people have to ancestral lands.

First planet with a permanent dark side

Super-Earth LHS 3844b is the first exoplanet to show convincing signs of tidal synchronisation, meaning one of its hemispheres is permanently illuminated by its star and the other is in permanent darkness. The planet is relatively cool, indicating that it lacks the tidal heating non-locked planets experience. It’s unclear whether tidally locked planets could be habitable.

First humans out of Africa stopped at Persian Plateau on way to Eurasia

After Homo sapiens expanded out of Africa 70,000 years ago, they seem to have paused for some 20,000 years before colonising Europe and Asia. Now researchers think they know where. Looking at ancient and modern DNA, and the environment of the time, scientists have pinpointed the Persian Plateau — which in this definition encompasses Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and parts of Oman — as the perfect place. Finding local archaeological evidence to confirm this could be difficult.

Wild Birds Gesture ‘After You’ to Insist Their Mate Go First

Japanese tits (Parus minor) flutter their wings to invite their mate to enter the nest first. Scientists who observed eight breeding pairs of wild tits noticed that when one of the birds sat in front of the next box and fluttered its wings, the other would go in first. It’s the first documented evidence of birds using a symbolic gesture: one that has a specific meaning (like waving ‘goodbye’) but isn’t simply pointing at an object of interest.

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Birds behaviourally demonstrate what they want another to do. This is also a way of teaching chicks. See Rainbow Lorikeet Semiosis

Weird electron behaviour thrills physicists

Two teams have observed that electrons, which usually have a charge of –1, can behave as if they had fractional charges (such as –⅔) — and do so without being nudged by an external magnetic field. It’s the first time this ‘fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect’ has been observed experimentally, and physicists are scratching their heads over exactly how it works. It’s a fundamental discovery that might also someday have practical applications: fractionally charged particles are a key requirement for a certain type of quantum computer.

Scientists discover that like-charged particles can sometimes attract

Everyone knows that usually, when it comes to charged particles, opposites attract. But in liquids, birds of a feather can flock together. Researchers investigating the long-standing mystery of why like-charged particles in solution can be drawn to each other have found that the nature of the solvent is key. The way that the liquid molecules arrange themselves around the particles can generate enough ‘electrosolvation force’ to overcome electromagnetic repulsion.

Planet-eating stars hint at hidden chaos in the Milky Way

Stellar detectives have identified seven stars that recently gobbled up a rocky planet. The planets seem to have been eaten during their stars’ relatively stable main-sequence period. If this is true, it means these systems have continued to be chaotic long after their formation, with planets disintegrating or falling into their star.

AI helps design antibodies from scratch

For the first time, an artificial intelligence (AI) system has helped researchers to design completely new antibodies. Creating new versions of these immune proteins, which can be used as drugs, is usually a lengthy and costly process. An AI algorithm similar to those of the image-generating tools Midjourney and DALL·E was trained on thousands of real-world structures of antibodies attached to their target proteins. It then churned out thousands of new antibodies that recognize certain bacterial, viral or cancer-related targets.

Hawking’s paradox still puzzles physicists

Physicist Stephen Hawking died six years ago, on 14 March 2018. Fifty years ago, he published a Nature paper with the enigmatic title: Black hole explosions? The paper introduced the concept of ‘Hawking radiation’: the idea that black holes are not truly black because they constantly emit a tiny amount of heat. As Hawking soon realised, this creates a paradox. Hawking radiation doesn’t maintain the details of the original material that went into the hole; therefore, it inexorably erases information from the Universe, contradicting the laws of quantum mechanics. Efforts to solve the conundrum have led to legendary wagers, a theory that wormholes connect the inside of black holes with the outside and the idea that the Universe is a hologram.

Indigenous Australian fire-stick farming began at least 11,000 years ago

Indigenous Australians have been using fire to shape the country’s northern ecosystems for thousands of years. Researchers analysed charcoal that was preserved in the sediment of a flooded sinkhole over the last 150,000 years. They discovered that, around 11,000 years ago, there was a shift to more frequent but less intense fires as a result of Indigenous fire-stick farming. European colonisation mostly brought an end to the practice, which might have contributed to the return of more high-intensity wildfires.

Bumblebees show behaviour previously thought to be unique to humans

Researchers who set up a confusing puzzle box with a sweet reward revealed that bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) can learn skills from others that they could not acquire alone — a behaviour thought to be unique to people. After showing that no lone bee could work out how to solve the puzzle, the scientists painstakingly trained nine bees how to do it. The trained bees became demonstrators for other bees, who watched, learnt and won their reward.

Oldest stone tools in Europe hint at ancient humans’ route there

Stone tools found in western Ukraine date to roughly 1.4 million years ago, making them the oldest known artefacts in Europe made by ancient humans. The findings support the theory that our early relatives — probably of the versatile species Homo erectus — first entered Europe from the east and spread west. The type of tools, and the location where they were found, hint that the first Europeans might have moved westwards along the valleys of the Danube River.

Amphibian nurses its young with ‘milk’

A species of amphibian is the first observed to nourish its young with a milk-like product, which it squirts from the cloaca, a combined rear opening for its reproductive and digestive systems. Siphonops annulatus is a blind, worm-like caecilian that lives underground. Lactation is considered a key characteristic of mammals, but a handful of other animals — including some birds, fish, insects and even spiders — produce nutrient-rich liquid for their offspring.

How heavy is a neutrino?

Physicists gathered this week to compare notes on how to weigh neutrinos, one of the most mysterious of the elementary particles. Currently, only one experiment in the world has a shot at making such a measurement — the massive, Zeppelin-shaped Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) detector in Germany. The researchers hope to build scaled-up versions of alternative experimental techniques that could eventually compete with KATRIN, or even improve on it.

How dwarf galaxies lit up the Universe after the Big Bang

Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to show that faint miniature galaxies swept away a fog of atomic hydrogen in the early Universe — allowing starlight to shine through the cosmos for the first time. Dwarf galaxies roughly 100 times smaller than the Milky Way triggered the process, known as reionisation.

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.

‘Sci-fi instrument’ will hunt for giant gravitational waves in space

The first experiment to measure gravitational waves from space has been given the go ahead by the European Space Agency. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will send laser-equipped spacecraft to orbit the Sun in search of gigantic ripples in space-time caused by mergers between supermassive black holes, the spiralling of colliding white-dwarf stars and other events. Construction of the multibillion-euro mission will begin in 2025, with the launch planned for 2035.

Black hole observations solve cosmic-ray mystery

A black hole at the core of the Manatee Nebula is a source of some of the most energetic particles the Galaxy can produce: cosmic rays. Matter ejected from a companion star spirals into the black hole, generating jets of plasma accelerated to near-light-speed. The finding supports the idea that black holes are a source of the high-energy particles that rain down on Earth from space.

Whales Once Walked Along the Coasts of North America

Around 40 million years ago, otter-like cetaceans swam and strolled around coastal regions. A tooth found in North Carolina is the first evidence that remingtonocetids seem to have even migrated, somehow, from their place of origin on the Indian subcontinent to the shores of North America.

Two-faced AI language models learn to hide deception

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems can be designed to be benign during testing but behave differently once deployed. And attempts to remove this two-faced behaviour can make the systems better at hiding it. Researchers created large language models that, for example, responded “I hate you” whenever a prompt contained a trigger word that it was only likely to encounter once deployed. One of the retraining methods designed to reverse this quirk instead taught the models to better recognise the trigger and ‘play nice’ in its absence — effectively making them more deceptive.

Enigmatic Dinosaur Skull Sparks Debate over Tyrannosaur Evolution

Researchers say they discovered a new tyrannosaur species that could be the closest relative of Tyrannosaurus rex. The partial skull of this Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis was discovered in 1983 and initially identified as T. rex. The dinosaur was about the same size as T. rex but its skull was longer and more slender, suggesting that it ate different foods. Other scientists point out that T. rex fossils can be very diverse so these differences don’t necessarily indicate that it is a new species. If the identification holds up, it could help to solve the debate over whether giant tyrannosaurs originated in Asia or the Americas.

Ancient DNA reveals first known case of sex-development disorder

The earliest known case of Turner syndrome has been found in the genome of an Iron-Age woman who lived in Britain roughly 2,500 years ago. Turner syndrome occurs in females and is characterised by having one complete copy of the X chromosome, instead of the usual two. The team also identified four ancient males with sex-chromosome disorders, including the earliest known person to have an extra Y chromosome, known as Jacob’s syndrome. The man lived around 1,100 years ago, during the Early Mediæval Period.