Astronomers Discover a New Kind of Cosmic Object: a Black Hole ‘Star’
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope say they may have found a new class of object: a “black hole star,” in which a black hole is wrapped in dense gas and radiates in ways that resemble an enormous star. The Guardian reports: The international team made the breakthrough after focusing their attention on a mysterious red spot … ⌘ Read more

Three Supermassive Black Holes Discovered In a Single Galaxy For the First Time
Astronomers using JWST have found three actively feeding supermassive black holes in the distant galaxy J0148-4214, seen as it existed about 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. Two sit just 620 light-years apart near the galaxy’s center and are expected to merge within a few hundred million years. Phys.org repor … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Turn Starlink Into a Giant Scanner For Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceDaily: Researchers have found a clever new way to map a part of Earth’s upper atmosphere that is notoriously difficult to observe. Using orbital data from roughly 1,200 Starlink satellites, they reconstructed changes in atmospheric density about 500 kilometers above Earth. [… … ⌘ Read more

UK Scientists To Grow Miniature Human Organs For Drug Testing
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Miniature human organs and other tissues are to be grown from NHS patients’ cells in a drive to improve medicine testing and reduce the number of animals used in drug development. Scientists will use the clumps of tissue to learn how diseases vary between patients, helping them identify which tr … ⌘ Read more

VA Launches Psilocybin Trial For Veterans With Treatment-Resistant Depression
Longtime Slashdot reader sbinning shares a press release: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced the launch of a new clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of psilocybin to treat major depression in Veterans, including those with concurrent PTSD. The new trial comes after a recent executive … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Create Largest 2D Map of the Universe
After 13 years of observations and data processing, astronomers have released the largest two-dimensional map of the universe ever assembled, “offering a sweeping new view of nearly 4 billion celestial objects across roughly three-quarters of the sky,” reports Space.com. From the report: The new map, created by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Su … ⌘ Read more

Behold the ‘Glueball,’ a Strange New Form of Matter
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: For more than half a century, physicists have searched for one of the strangest particles predicted by modern theory. It would be made almost entirely of gluons, the elusive subatomic particles that carry the strong nuclear force. Now, using a particle collider in Beijing, researchers say they have effectively proved the … ⌘ Read more

England Set To Eliminate Hepatitis C
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: England is on track to become one of the first countries in the world to eliminate hepatitis C, a dangerous virus that attacks the liver, figures show. The target of treating 80% of all known cases has already been met, and deaths from the virus have fallen by 36% in the last decade, just short of what is needed by 2030. Taking antiviral tablets for … ⌘ Read more

Taxi Drivers Rarely Die of Alzheimer’s
An anonymous reader shares a report from The Conversation, written by Hatim Sharif, a civil and environmental engineer who has “spent more than two decades staring at maps” and spatial data. Sharif finds one connection especially fascinating: the link between spatial reasoning and why taxi drivers seem to have lower rates of Alzheimer’s. From the report: Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likel … ⌘ Read more

Brain Activity Reveals the Melodies That People Imagine
Researchers believe they’ve found evidence that brain signals reveal the pitches of notes in imagined musical melodies, reports Medical Express:

Study participants were 10 epilepsy patients with electrodes on the surfaces of their brains for clinical monitoring. Participants quietly listened to the first bars of children’s tunes, then imagined the melodies of … ⌘ Read more

Before and After Views of SpaceX Rocket’s Moon Crash
A South Korean lunar orbiter has captured the first before-and-after images of the Moon’s crash scene caused by a stray SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Associated Press reports: The Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Danuri spacecraft flew over the impact site soon after the Falcon 9 upper stage inadvertently plowed into the moon on Wednesday. Danuri made multiple passe … ⌘ Read more

NASA Figured Out How To Keep Its 48-Year-Old Voyager 2 Probe Running For Yet Another Year
NASA has squeezed at least another year of science out of Voyager 2 by cutting power to nonessential systems and switching to lower-power alternatives. Voyager 1 is expected to receive the same power-saving changes in the coming months. Space.com reports: Voyager 2 and its twin launched in 1977 … ⌘ Read more

Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice
A new study argues that life may have emerged twice on Earth. “Two of the main lineages of life – bacteria and archaea – may have independently figured out the secrets of metabolism that upgraded them from non-living to living,” reports ScienceAlert, citing a new study that “focused on the most rudimentary set of chemical reactions thought to enable this transformation.” F … ⌘ Read more

Dress Made of Living Mycelium Can Renew and Repair Itself
Researchers in China have developed a living mycelium textile that can self-clean, renew its surface, and partially repair holes when treated with a nutrient solution and fresh fungus. The material can also gain added properties such as blue pigmentation or UV resistance by co-culturing it with yeast or other fungi. Dezeen reports: The breakthrough from the … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Make First Viruses Designed By AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe. The viruses are specific kinds known as bacteriophages, which only infect bacteria and are used around the world to treat patients with pe … ⌘ Read more

FDA Approves First mRNA Flu Shot
The FDA has approved the first mRNA flu vaccine in the United States after a clinical trial found it was about 27% more effective than a standard flu shot. Manufactured by Moderna and marketed as mFlusiva, the vaccine is expected to be available this fall for adults ages 50 to 64 and those 65 and older, though approval for the older group is conditional on Moderna conducting an additional clinical trial, N … ⌘ Read more

New Images of the Sun Show Its Surface In the Finest Detail Yet
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Scientists have captured images of the sun’s surface in the finest detail yet, revealing a strange and dynamic facade. It’s dangerous to look directly at the sun without proper eye protection. But researchers were able to peek at its scorching surface with the help of the National Sc … ⌘ Read more

Watch a SpaceX Rocket Crash Into the Moon
A four-ton SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage left drifting after a 2025 lunar mission is expected to crash into the Moon at about 5,400 mph, likely striking Einstein Crater. The impact should occur at approximately 2:35 a.m. ET (0635GMT). Reuters reports: Such stages typically fall back into Earth’s atmosphere and burn up or plunge into the ocean after boosting the rocket’s payload to a precise … ⌘ Read more

Spain Offers $1.14 Billion To Get Thirty Meter Telescope Moved To Canary Islands
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Behind the Black: In a new bid to get the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) to move from Hawaii, which has blocked its construction for more than a decade, the Spanish government has put together a $1.14 billion package that would not only pay for construction on th … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s Astra Solved Decades-Old Math Problems For $2,000
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: The cost of producing new results on ten longstanding mathematical problems just fell to $2,000, according to OpenAI, which says its Astra model generated machine-checkable proofs for questions that had resisted human progress for decades. OpenAI published the work on August 1 and used it to give its next majo … ⌘ Read more

Does Eating Less Protein Produce Healthier Aging and Metabolism?
“A major scientific review is challenging the idea that more protein is always better,” reports ABC News:

The review, led by pathologist and biomedical researcher Dudley Lamming and published in the journal Cell Press Blue, examined more than 350 studies involving humans, mice, insects, yeast, and other organisms. The review found that eating l … ⌘ Read more

In a First, ‘Super-Earth’ Planet Shows It Could Have an Atmosphere
“Scientists say they have detected promising signs that a planet orbiting a star 49 light-years from Earth could have an atmosphere,” reports CNN, “making it potentially suitable for life.”

Called LHS 1140b, the object is about five times the mass of our planet, or a “super-Earth.” This planet orbits around its star in the “Goldilocks zone,” … ⌘ Read more

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Discovers a Field of Honeycomb Textures
NASA’s Curiosity rover has sent back images of honeycomb-like textures called polygonal fractures, each one about 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to 8 centimeters) across. NASA reports:

The mission has spotted small patches of these geometric shapes several times before, but nothing at the scale discovered in Valle Grande. In a 360-degree panorama th … ⌘ Read more

Drifting SpaceX Rocket Heading For Accidental Collision With the Moon
“Space.com and The Guardian are reporting that the Falcon 9 upper stage leftover from the launch of the Firefly Blue Ghost-1 lander on Jan. 15, 2025 is due to impact the Moon on Aug. 5, 2026,” writes longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot. From a report: Onboard the same flight was the Hakuto-R Mission 2, called Resilience, a robotic l … ⌘ Read more

Your Brain Can Rewire Itself To Allow True Multitasking
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: [I]n a new study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center in the U.S. have revealed that we can put certain tasks on autopilot in a way that enables something closer to true multitasking. Driving is the perfect example: When you take your tes … ⌘ Read more

Earth’s Biggest Disasters Strike In a Hidden Pattern Every 27 Million Years
A new analysis of 89 major geological events over the past 260 million years found evidence that mass extinctions, volcanic eruptions, ocean crises, and other upheavals may cluster around a roughly 27.5-million-year cycle. The cause remains unknown, with possibilities ranging from mantle activity and orbital changes to spe … ⌘ Read more

NASA Replaces ULA’s Vulcan Centaur With SpaceX Falcon Heavy For Solar Storm Research
There’s been a change to NASA’s launch of six satellites for solar storms research. Space.com reports that those satellites “were originally slated to lift off on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket but have now been assigned a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, according to a NASA mission update.”

[NASA’s … ⌘ Read more

Three Astronauts Safely Return from Space Station, Landing in Kazakhstan Steppe
“Welcome home!” NASA posted on X.com, sharing footage of a successful “parachute-assisted” landing on a Kazakhstan steppe for the Soyuz MS-28, carrying three astronauts who’d spent 241 days on the International Space Station. (And YouTube has a full two-hour video with NASA’s coverage of the landing.)

A NASA web p … ⌘ Read more

Drying Lakebeds Are Releasing Massive Amounts of Carbon, Study Finds
“In many parts of the world, lakes are drying out at a scale so massive that scientists are warning they may be emitting enough greenhouse gases to rival our fossil fuel habit,” reports ScienceAlert:

In a new study published in Science, scientists say the Aral Sea — the world’s largest desiccated lake — has emitted a whopping 204 megaton … ⌘ Read more

China is Creating a Herd of 100 Elite Yak Clones
CNN reports on yaks “designed and cloned” in secretive, high-altitude labs in Tibet — 2.4 miles (4,000 meters) above sea level. They’re a critical part of the local economy, and researchers “hope to create an ‘elite’ herd of super-yaks, healthier and more fertile than their predecessors.”

Both domestic yaks and their wild cousins have been facing threats for years, with som … ⌘ Read more

Risks of Parkinson’s Disease May Increase With Prolonged Exposure to Road Traffic Noise
A large Danish study found a modest but consistent association between long-term road traffic noise exposure and higher Parkinson’s disease risk, with a 3% increase for every 11.5 dB rise in noise at the most exposed side of a home. The Guardian reports: The researchers modeled noise exposure at the … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX’s Starship Megarocket Hits Key Milestones In Its ‘Lucky 13’ Test Flight
SpaceX’s Friday launch of its massive Starship rocket “went quite smoothly,” reports CNN, with a SpaceX spokesperson calling this mission “Lucky Number 13” (as the 13th integrated flight test for a Starship spacecraft with a Super Heavy rocket booster):

During Starship V3’s inaugural test, there were numerous engine i … ⌘ Read more

Astronomers May Have Discovered First Moon Outside Our Solar System
Astronomers studying the star system CD-35 2722 may have found the first known moon-like object outside our solar system. The classification is unusually tricky, however, because it orbits a brown dwarf rather than a planet, making it clearly an “exosatellite” but forcing scientists to rethink where the line between planet, moon, and fai … ⌘ Read more

Humans Can Learn To Echolocate In Just 10 Weeks, and It Rewires the Brain
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A study published in PLOS One in 2021 by researchers from Durham University in the UK showed that with 10 weeks of training, both blind and sighted people could learn to echolocate using verbal clicks. While the technique is already used by a number of people with impaired v … ⌘ Read more

That’s such a cool The Rest Is Science episode: What Are The Odds You’ll Become A Fossil? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYvDaDb_mbw

What Is a Quantum Computer Good For? Absolutely Nothing - Yet
The Verge argues that researchers “have made genuine progress in quantum computing — it’s just been largely incremental and too esoteric to immediately capture the public’s imagination.”

And there are predictions that quantum computers will finally do something useful as soon as 2028:

The drama can overshadow the real progress in quantum computing. … ⌘ Read more

Claude Science is Here, Antibiotics Designed by Text Prompt Among Applications
Anthropic has launched Claude Science, an AI workbench that connects more than 60 scientific databases and tools through a single interface. Through the platform, Basecamp Research is making its EDEN models available for tasks such as designing antibiotic peptides and predicting vaccine targets from simple text promp … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Think Neptune and Uranus May Not Be the Ice Giants We Imagined
The planets Neptune and Uranus may be better described as “magma-ocean giants” rather than “ice giants,” according to a team of researchers from the University of California. Gizmodo reports:

While the Voyager flyby confirmed the planets’ classification as ice giants… [a]s the least explored planets in the solar system, … ⌘ Read more

Spain-Backed Fund Joins FOSSA’s Sovereign Satellite Communications Push
Spanish startup FOSSA Systems “has raised about $10.5 million to expand its connectivity constellation,” reports Space News, noting some funding is backed by Spain’s government:

The support from the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT) comes a year after the fund injected 14 million euros into Spain’s Sateliot , … ⌘ Read more

IBM is Getting Ready to Scale Quantum Computing
IBM spent a decade “building, testing and improving” quantum computing, reports the Wall Street Journal.

“This year, the company is laying the groundwork to turn that technology into a fully-fledged, scalable business from an expensive science project.”

IBM said last month it plans to form a new independent subsidiary called Anderon, a foundry to produce the silicon wafers n … ⌘ Read more

Max Planck Slapped With Two Paper Retractions By Suspected Rogue Algorithm
Max Planck won 1918’s Nobel Prize for physics. Yet two of his papers were retracted — a move now being criticized by Yves Gingras, a historian of physics at the University of Quebec and Mahdi Khelfaoui, a fellow historian of science at UQ Trois-Rivières. Science reports:

The papers, both quietly retracted in 2011, original … ⌘ Read more

Scroll Burned in 79 AD Volcanic Eruption Finally Deciphered Using AI
When Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., it buried hundreds of papyrus
scrolls. They were rediscovered in the mid-1700s, remembers Smithsonian magazine, “the only
surviving collection of its kind from the Greco-Roman
world…”

“But when scholars tried to unroll them, the carbonized manuscripts
crumbled to dust.”

Every generation that fo … ⌘ Read more

Non-Invasive Stimulation of the Brain Ended Opioid Addiction, Cigarette Craving
The Jerusalem Post reports that doctors at Haifa’s Rambam Health Care Campus “have successfully treated their first Israeli opioid addiction patient using an experimental noninvasive brain technology, easing him through withdrawal in just 20 minutes…”

[T]he team of specialists at the Haifa medical center interv … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Plans To Build ‘Starpipe’ Natural Gas Pipeline To Fuel Starship Rockets
SpaceX plans to begin building an eight-mile natural gas pipeline called “Starpipe” next month to supply its Starbase launch site with fuel for a much higher cadence of Starship launches. The pipeline is expected to enter service in January 2027. Reuters reports: The pipeline plan, previously reported by Rio Grande Va … ⌘ Read more

Astronomers Find Biggest Super-Puff Planets Yet That Are Lighter Than Cotton Candy
Astronomers have discovered two Jupiter-sized exoplanets with densities lower than cotton candy, making them the lightest known worlds of their size. The rare “super-puffs,” located about 1,110 light-years away, are likely composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, with follow-up observations by the James Webb … ⌘ Read more

‘Fingerprints’ of Black Hole’s Event Horizon Detected For First Time
Researchers say they detected the first gravitational-wave “fingerprints” of a black hole’s event horizon by analyzing the final moments of the powerful GW250114 merger. The findings support Einstein’s general relativity and may eventually help probe frame dragging and quantum fluctuations near black holes. Phys.org reports: For the new r … ⌘ Read more

NASA Rover Detects Potential Signatures of Ancient Microbial Life On Mars
NASA’s Perseverance rover has detected complex organic carbon in ancient Martian mudstones. The measurements were taken by the rover’s Sherloc instrument and the organic carbon that was identified was from the Bright Angel outcrop, “a dried-up river that carried water into the planet’s Jezero crater billions of years ago,” no … ⌘ Read more

Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI Are Backing Effort To Stop Respiratory Infections
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: [T]he payment company Stripe, founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, says it will fund a new $500 million nonprofit whose goal is preventing both the common cold and the flu. Its eventual aim is to get rid of respiratory viruses altogether. Th … ⌘ Read more

Mushroom Behind ‘Tiny Human’ Visions Lacks Genes For Known Psychedelics
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: If you consumed a wild mushroom and suddenly started seeing tiny people around you, you might reasonably assume it contained a familiar psychedelic. But that does not appear to be the case with Lanmaoa asiatica, known locally as jian shou qing, a mushroom species sold in markets … ⌘ Read more

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Arrives In Florida
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has arrived at Kennedy Space Center ahead of a Falcon Heavy launch targeted for no earlier than August 30. The observatory will survey the sky about 1,000 times faster than Hubble with a field of view at least 100 times wider, helping scientists study dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets. Spaceflight Now report … ⌘ Read more