Category: 7. Science

As technology improves by leaps and bounds, so does our understanding and glimpses into the depths of space.

The world’s largest digital camera has been two decades in the making, and is now installed in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory at the top of Cerro Pachón in Chile. It’s operational and has snapped it’s first images over a 10-hour window.

The camera has 201 imaging sensors, with each pixel measuring 10 microns wide. It has 3 focal planes that were installed in a vacuum chamber and sealed by 3-foot-wide lenses. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) was completed early 2024, and is around the size of a small car.

It snaps 15-second exposures every 20 seconds and the optics can be manipulated for wavelengths from ultraviolet to nearly infrared.

The LSST arriving for installation in Chile was, according to project director Aaron Roodman, “a pivotal moment for the teams from all around the world who collaborated to design and build the camera. We will achieve a level of clarity and depth never seen before in images covering the entire southern hemisphere sky.”

Now, 678 captures that were taken over a 7-hour stretch are available for the first time. They are of “otherwise faint or invisible details” of the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula. They also released some cool “first look” videos.

Željko Ivezic, director of Rubin Observatory Construction, is excited to share what they have been working on for so long with the world.

“Releasing our first scientific imagery marks an extraordinary milestone for NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory. It represents the culmination of about two decades of dedication, innovation, and collaboration by a global team. With construction now complete, we’re turning our eyes fully to the sky – not just to take images but to begin a whole new era of discovery.”

There is no doubt these images will be stunning for civilians to see.

Hopefully, they will reveal more of the universe’s secrets for those dying to know more about our origins, too.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.

Physicists at the University of Vienna, working with researchers from the Vienna University of Technology, have found a way to make graphene, a material known for being extremely strong and highly conductive, much more stretchable. Their method involved adding tiny defects to the material and creating ripple-like patterns, similar to the folds of an accordion. This discovery could help in developing flexible technologies like wearable electronics and rollables, among other things.

Graphene is just one atom thick and has a structure that makes it very stiff. While this stiffness is useful in many ways, it limits how much the material can bend or stretch. Since its discovery in 2004, scientists have tried to change its stiffness by removing atoms, but results have been inconsistent. Some studies showed a small drop in stiffness, while others saw it increase.

To clear up the confusion, the Vienna team ran a series of experiments in a special setup that keeps graphene completely clean and free from air or dust. “This unique system we have developed in the University of Vienna allows us to examine 2D materials without interference,” said Jani Kotakoski, who led the research. Wael Joudi, the first author of the study, added, “For the first time this kind of experiment has been carried out with the graphene fully isolated from ambient air and the foreign particles it contains. Without this separation, these particles would quickly settle on the surface affecting the experiment procedure and measurements.”

The team introduced defects into the graphene using low-energy argon (Ar) ions (less than 200 eV), which knocked out atoms in a controlled way. These missing atoms are called vacancies. They then used advanced microscopes and image analysis to study the atomic structure, and measured how the material responded to pressure using atomic force microscopy (AFM) nanoindentation.

Before the defects were added, the graphene had a two-dimensional elastic modulus (E^2D) of 286 N/m. After the vacancies were introduced, this dropped to 158 N/m. That’s a really big change—more than most theories had predicted—and it helps explain why earlier experiments gave mixed results. Simulations showed that the softening happens mostly because of ripples caused by strain around spots where two or more atoms are missing. Single missing atoms didn’t have much effect.

“You can imagine it like an accordion. When pulled apart, the waved material now gets flattened, which requires much less force than stretching the flat material and therefore it becomes more stretchable,” said Joudi. Simulations by Rika Saskia Windisch and Florian Libisch backed up this idea, showing both the ripple formation and the increased stretchability.

The researchers also found that if the graphene surface isn’t cleaned before adding defects, the opposite happens as it becomes stiffer. This is because dirt or particles on the surface block the ripple effect. “This shows the importance of the measurement environment when dealing with 2D materials. The results open up a way to regulate the stiffness of graphene and thus pave the way for potential applications,” Joudi concluded.

Source: Vienna University of Technology, American Physical Society | Image via Depositphotos

This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

(Article by Jackie Rocheleau originally published by Knowable Magazine)

Infusion of the tiny, sausage-shaped structures helps to rejuvenate tissues deprived of blood. Researchers hope the technique can treat a variety of damaged organs.

James McCully was in the lab extracting tiny structures called mitochondria from cells when researchers on his team rushed in. They’d been operating on a pig heart and couldn’t get it pumping normally again.

McCully studies heart damage prevention at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and was keenly interested in mitochondria. These power-producing organelles are particularly important for organs like the heart that have high energy needs. McCully had been wondering whether transplanting healthy mitochondria into injured hearts might help restore their function.

The pig’s heart was graying rapidly, so McCully decided to try it. He loaded a syringe with the extracted mitochondria and injected them directly into the heart. Before his eyes, it began beating normally, returning to its rosy hue.

Since that day almost 20 years ago, McCully and other researchers have replicated that success in pigs and other animals. Human transplantations followed, in babies who suffered complications from heart surgery — sparking a new field of research using mitochondria transplantation to treat damaged organs and disease. In the last five years, a widening array of scientists have begun exploring mitochondria transplantation for heart damage after cardiac arrest, brain damage following stroke, and damage to organs destined for transplantation.

Mitochondria are best known for producing usable energy for cells. But they also send molecular signals that help to keep the body in equilibrium and manage its immune and stress responses. Some types of cells may naturally donate healthy mitochondria to other cells in need, such as brain cells after a stroke, in a process called mitochondria transfer. So the idea that clinicians could boost this process by transplanting mitochondria to reinvigorate injured tissue made sense to some scientists.

From studies in rabbits and rat heart cells, McCully’s group has reported that the plasma membranes of cells engulf the mitochondria and shuttle them inside, where they fuse with the cell’s internal mitochondria. There, they seem to cause molecular changes that help recover heart function: When comparing blood- and oxygen-deprived pig hearts treated with mitochondria to ones receiving placebos, McCully’s group saw differences in gene activity and proteins that indicated less cell death and less inflammation.

About 10 years ago, Sitaram Emani, a cardiac surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital, reached out to McCully about his work with animal hearts. Emani had seen how some babies with heart defects couldn’t fully recover after heart surgery complications and wondered whether McCully’s mitochondria transplantation method could help them.

During surgery to repair heart defects, surgeons use a drug to stop the heart so they can operate. But if the heart is deprived of blood and oxygen for too long, mitochondria start to fail and cells start to die, in a condition called ischemia. When blood begins flowing again, instead of returning the heart to its normal state, it can damage and kill more cells, resulting in ischemia-reperfusion injury.

Since McCully’s eight years of studies in rabbits and pigs hadn’t revealed safety concerns with mitochondria transplantation, McCully and Emani thought it would be worth trying the procedure in babies unlikely to regain enough heart function to come off heart-lung support.

Parents of 10 patients agreed to the experimental procedure, which was approved by the institute’s review board. In a pilot that ran from 2015 to 2018, McCully extracted pencil-eraser-sized muscle samples from the incisions made for the heart surgery, used a filtration technique to isolate mitochondria and checked that they were functional. Then the team injected the organelles into the baby’s heart.

Eight of those 10 babies regained enough heart function to come off life support, compared to just four out of 14 similar cases from 2002 to 2018 that were used for historical comparison, the team reported in 2021.

The treatment also shortened recovery time, which averaged two days in the mitochondrial transplant group compared with nine days in the historical control group. Two patients did not survive — in one case, the intervention came after the rest of the baby’s organs began failing, and in another, a lung issue developed four months later. The group has now performed this procedure on 17 babies.

The transplant procedure remains experimental and is not yet practical for wider clinical use, but McCully hopes that it can one day be used to treat kidney, lung, liver and limb injuries from interrupted blood flow.

The results have inspired other clinicians whose patients suffer from similar ischemia-reperfusion injuries. One is ischemic stroke, in which clots prevent blood from reaching the brain. Doctors can dissolve or physically remove the clots, but they lack a way to protect the brain from reperfusion damage.

Walker came across McCully’s mitochondrial transplant studies 12 years ago and, in reading further, was especially struck by a report on mice from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School that showed the brain’s support and protection cells — the astrocytes — may transfer some of their mitochondria to stroke-damaged neurons to help them recover. Perhaps, she thought, mitochondria transplantation could help in human stroke cases too.

She spent years working with animal researchers to figure out how to safely deliver mitochondria to the brain. She tested the procedure’s safety in a clinical trial with just four people with ischemic stroke, using a catheter fed through an artery in the neck to manually remove the blockage causing the stroke, then pushing the catheter further along and releasing the mitochondria, which would travel up blood vessels to the brain.

The findings, published in 2024 in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, show that the infused patients suffered no harm; the trial was not designed to test effectiveness. Walker’s group is now recruiting participants to further assess the intervention’s safety. The next step will be to determine whether the mitochondria are getting where they need to be, and functioning. “Until we can show that, I do not believe that we will be able to say that there’s a therapeutic benefit,” Walker says.

Researchers hope that organ donation might also gain from mitochondria transplants. Donor organs like kidneys suffer damage when they lack blood supply for too long, and transplant surgeons may reject kidneys with a higher risk of these injuries.

To test whether mitochondrial transplants can reinvigorate them, transplant surgeon-scientist Giuseppe Orlando of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem and his colleagues injected mitochondria into four pig kidneys, and a control substance into three pig kidneys. In 2023 in the Annals of Surgery, they reported fewer dying cells in the mitochondria-treated kidneys, and far less damage. Molecular analyses also showed a boost in energy production.

It’s still early days, Orlando says, but he’s confident that mitochondria transplantation could become a valuable tool in rescuing suboptimal organs for donation.

The studies have garnered both excitement and skepticism. “It’s certainly a very interesting area,” says Koning Shen, a postdoctoral mitochondrial biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and coauthor of an overview of the signaling roles of mitochondria in the 2022 Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology. She adds that scaling up extraction of mitochondria and learning how to store and preserve the isolated organelles are major technical hurdles to making such treatments a larger reality. “That would be amazing if people are getting to that stage,” she says.

“I think there are a lot of thoughtful people looking at this carefully, but I think the big question is, what’s the mechanism?” says Navdeep Chandel, a mitochondria researcher at Northwestern University in Chicago. He doubts that donor mitochondria fix or replace dysfunctional native organelles, but says it’s possible that mitochondria donations triggers stress and immune signals that indirectly benefit damaged tissue.

Whatever the mechanism, some animal studies do suggest that the mitochondria must be functional to impart their benefits. Lance Becker, chair of emergency medicine at Northwell Health in New York who studies the role of mitochondria in cardiac arrest, conducted a study comparing fresh mitochondria, mitochondria that had been frozen then thawed, and a placebo to treat rats following cardiac arrest. The 11 rats receiving fresh, functioning mitochondria had better brain function and a higher rate of survival three days later than the 11 rats receiving a placebo; the non-functional frozen-thawed mitochondria did not impart these benefits.

It will take more research into the mechanisms of mitochondrial therapy, improved mitochondria delivery techniques, larger trials and a body of reported successes before mitochondrial transplants can be FDA-approved and broadly used to treat ischemia-reperfusion injuries, researchers say. The ultimate goal would be to create a universal supply of stored mitochondria — a mitochondria bank, of sorts — that can be tapped for transplantation by a wide variety of health care providers.

“We’re so much at the beginning — we don’t know how it works,” says Becker. “But we know it’s doing something that is mighty darn interesting.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine under CC BY-ND 4.0 license, a nonprofit publication dedicated to making scientific knowledge accessible to all. Sign up for Knowable Magazine’s newsletter.

“You didn’t mention camping on Mars.”

My wife had a point: thin air, thinner soil, extreme UV, rocks straight from a Nasa red-planet image, jagged ranges – all ideal backdrops for a movie set. No wonder the place was considered for training by the Apollo program. Its sparse life forms include an intimidating shrub whose thorns mimic the stingers on the scorpions that come out after dark. A harsh, forbidding place, but beautiful too. We made shade with our camper awning and waited for magic time: the desert at dusk.

Travelling along the Stuart Highway it’s easy to miss the Henbury Meteorites conservation reserve, 12km off the tarmac along a rough track 1.5 hours south of Alice Springs. We’d seen samples of its space rock in the excellent display at the Museum of Central Australia in Alice and were keen to see where they fell. There are six known impact sites in the Territory and the two most accessible are Henbury and Tnorala (Gosse Bluff). We visited both during Victoria’s fifth Covid lockdown in 2021.

Henbury is a site where a nickel-iron meteor about the size of a garden shed disintegrated before striking the land to carve out over a dozen impact craters, just 4,500 years ago – so recently that the site has significant cultural meaning as a sorry place for the Luritja people, whose sacred songs and oral histories tell of this devastating event.

The site’s 12 craters are best viewed when the sunlight’s low angle reveals the smaller, heavily eroded examples. Though among the youngest of Earth’s known impact sites, Henbury’s pits have been scoured by wind and rare deluges down the Finke River flood plain. Extreme temperatures do the rest.

The largest crater is 180m across, the smallest the size of a back yard spa. The explosion sprayed out tonnes of pulverised rock in a distinctive rayed pattern still visible around Crater No.3 – the only known terrestrial example. Temptingly, specimens of the actual meteorite hurled out with this ejecta may still be found. The 45kg chunk in the Museum of Central Australia is one example of 680kg collected so far, though digging or damaging the site without a permit is illegal. We don’t find any meteorite fragments, but we leave with memories of a humming sunrise and night with a billion almost touchable stars.

From Tylers Pass lookout, two hours west along the Namatjira Drive from Alice Springs, Tnorala (Gosse Bluff) appears as a mountain range thrusting incongruously from the endless western plains. In fact, these peaks were created in seconds when an object up to 1km wide hit the Earth at around 250,000km/h, 142m years ago, with an explosive force at least 20 times more powerful than all the world’s nuclear weapons.

No trace of that object has been found, so it was likely an icy comet that vaporised on impact. Erosion has since reduced the crater from its original 22km diameter. Satellite images uncannily resemble a staring eye under a sunburnt brow.

Specimens in the Museum of Central Australia show that early Cretaceous central Australia was wetter and cooler than it is now, with abundant dinosaurs. Locally, they would have been vaporised, and anything living within 100km killed by the massive shock wave and extreme heat. The sound of the explosion likely travelled around the world. The Tnorala bolide event was a prelude to the big one, Chicxulub on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, which wiped out the dinosaurs 77m years later.

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In their oral traditions, Western Arrernte people understand Tnorala as a cosmic impact site. A group of star woman were dancing in a corroboree in the Milky Way when one woman placed her baby in a turna (wooden cradle). The dancing shook the galaxy and the turna slipped, with the baby falling to Earth as a blazing star, striking the ground to create the crater’s distinctive bowl shape.

These days “awesome” is a word debased by glib use. It’s apt driving into the 5km-wide Tnorala crater, surrounded by cliffs 180 metres high, formed in a blink by a literally Earth-shattering event as our planet’s crust rebounded to form the crater’s inner ring. The rock strata in these peaks show that some were lifted from a depth of 4km by incredible explosive force, and are now inverted.

It’s not just awareness of this ancient violence that marks Tnorala as a sorry place. Local information boards describe it as a pre-colonial massacre site. So it’s doubly proper that camping is forbidden.

It’s an unwelcoming place, where an object large enough to be classified as a city-killer fell from the sky. This kind of comet is now thankfully detectable by telescopes such as the new Vera C Rubin observatory in Chile, and also proven as feasible to steer off course.

So forget Mars. Cancel that ticket. Instead visit awesome central Australia – where the mountains are upside down, the stars greet your fingertips and the dawns are so silent you can hear the sun sing.

Need to know

The Museum of Central Australia is hosting a Henbury Meteorite reserve discovery day on 10 August as part of National Science week.

Henbury: Day trips to the Henbury Meteorites conservation reserve require a Northern Territory parks pass and the site can be reached by 2WD vehicles, however 4WDs are recommended. The reserve’s basic facilities include picnic shelters and a drop toilet. Water and firewood are not available. Campsites must be booked online through Northern Territory Parks and fees apply. The nearest food and fuel supplies are available 85km south at the Erldunda Roadhouse on the Stuart Highway.

Tnorala (Gosse Bluff): The Tnorala crater is accessible via a sandy track and offers picnic shelters and a drop toilet. Camping is not permitted in the reserve due to its status as a registered sacred site of the Western Arrernte people. Fuel and food is available at Hermannsburg, 62km east on the Namatjira Way. Travel beyond Tnorala is by 4WD only and requires a Mereenie Tour pass. Many of these roads may be impassable in wet weather.

IN A NUTSHELL

🌍 On August 5, 2025, Earth will complete its rotation 1.51 milliseconds earlier, leaving scientists baffled by the unexplained acceleration. 🔍 Traditional causes like ice melting and lunar gravity fail to explain the recent increase in Earth’s rotational speed. ⏱️ A potential negative leap second may be required to synchronize atomic time, posing challenges to global timekeeping systems. 🧭 This acceleration highlights our vulnerability to planetary changes, prompting questions about our ability to adapt.

On August 5, 2025, Earth will experience a notable event that has captured the attention of scientists worldwide. The planet will complete its rotation 1.51 milliseconds earlier than the usual 24-hour cycle. Though it might seem insignificant, this acceleration has sparked intense scientific debate and speculation. Traditional explanations such as melting ice caps or lunar gravitational forces do not adequately account for this occurrence. This raises questions about the potential causes and consequences of such a shift in Earth’s rotational speed. As scientists probe deeper, the mysteries surrounding this phenomenon continue to grow, urging us to reconsider our understanding of Earth’s dynamics.

The Heart of Earth Speeds Up, but the Mystery Deepens

Since 2020, scientists have observed an unexpected shift in Earth’s rotational speed. Historically, the planet’s rotation has been slowing, with days extending over millions of years. However, recent data suggests the opposite: Earth is now accelerating. This reversal baffles researchers, as common explanations like ice melting, seismic activity, and even the gravitational pull of the Moon fall short of explaining the phenomenon.

Leonid Zotov, an expert in Earth’s rotation, expressed his confusion, noting that “the cause of this acceleration remains unexplained.” Many scientists hypothesize that the source is internal, yet oceanic and atmospheric models fail to account for the speed increase. On July 5, 2024, Earth set a record by completing its rotation 1.66 milliseconds earlier than expected. This trend suggests that we may be on the brink of witnessing history repeat itself sooner than anticipated.

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August 5, 2025: The Shortest Day of the Year

Three dates stand out in 2025: July 9, July 22, and August 5. On August 5, Earth’s rotation will be faster than any other day that year, completing its cycle 1.51 milliseconds ahead of the standard 86,400 seconds. The International Earth Rotation Service (IERS) attributes this acceleration to the Moon’s position, which temporarily reduces its slowing effect on Earth.

While the change might appear negligible, its implications could be significant. It could disrupt the atomic calendar, yet the average person will not notice any difference. Household clocks will not reflect the change, and daily routines will remain unaltered. However, the scientific community is keenly aware of the potential domino effect this could have on various systems reliant on precise timing.

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A Second Disappears: Chaos on the Horizon?

Since 1972, metrologists have added 27 leap seconds to keep atomic time synchronized with Earth’s rotation. The current acceleration might necessitate the removal of a second, known as a negative leap second. This adjustment could be necessary by 2029 if the acceleration persists, marking an unprecedented challenge for timekeeping.

Removing a second is no trivial matter in a world where precision is paramount. Computer networks, GPS systems, stock markets, and banking servers all rely on exact timing. Previous adjustments have led to technical glitches, affecting major platforms like Reddit and Amazon. Companies like Google use the “leap smear” method to distribute the adjustment over several hours. However, a straightforward removal would represent a significant shift in managing Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

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Time Disrupts… and So Do We?

While this acceleration is imperceptible to humans, its potential impacts on a hyper-connected world are profound. Scientists have until 2035 to decide whether to implement a negative leap second. This decision carries technical and political ramifications, highlighting our vulnerability to changes in a system we often assume to be stable.

Earth’s faster spin raises questions about our ability to adapt to these changes. As technology and society evolve, we must consider how to maintain synchronization in a world where even time can no longer be taken for granted. In light of these developments, how will our systems adapt to a reality where Earth’s rotation is constantly changing?

This article is based on verified sources and supported by editorial technologies.

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Scientists are sending several strains of disease-causing bacteria to the International Space Station as part of the Crew-11 mission. This experiment isn’t the plot to some cheesy horror film, but a scientific investigation from the Sheba Medical Center in Israel and the US-based company Space Tango with the goal of better understanding how bacteria spread and behave under extreme conditions. The experiment includes E. coli, along with bacteria that cause diseases like typhoid fever and the infection commonly known as Salmonella.

After reaching the ISS, the experiment will see the different bacterial species grow before being returned to Earth to be tested against counterparts that were grown simultaneously in an identical lab under normal conditions. The experiment’s results will help scientists understand how bacteria respond to zero gravity and could help astronauts, who are more prone to infections during missions due to stress, exposure to radiation and changes in gravity. However, the research could prove useful beyond space missions. With the onset of superbugs that show antibiotic resistance, the experiment could reveal ways to combat more robust bacterial strains.

“This experiment will allow us, for the first time, to systematically and molecularly map how the genetic expression profile of several pathogenic bacteria changes in space,” Ohad Gal-Mor, head of the Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory at Sheba, said in a press release.

The medical center previously conducted a test with bacteria in simulated space conditions, which showed a reduced ability to develop antibiotic resistance, but the latest experiment is the first one to take place at the ISS. It’s not the first time scientists have studied bacteria’s behavior in microgravity conditions, since researchers from the University of Houston tested how E. coli would grow in a simulated space environment back in 2017. More recently, NASA launched an experiment tasking astronauts to swab the interiors of the ISS and test them for evidence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

In the cold darkness deep beneath the waves of the Arctic Ocean, a hidden barrier appears to separate the haves from the have-nots.

There, in the midnight zone more than 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) below the surface, the gossamer jellyfish of the subspecies Botrynema brucei ellinorae drifting in the water column have two distinct shapes. Some have hoods topped by a distinctive knob-shaped structure; others are smooth and unknobbed.

A new survey of the distributions of these two morphotypes has revealed something very strange at a latitude of 47 degrees north.

“Both types occur in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions,” explains marine biologist Javier Montenegro of the University of Western Australia, “but specimens without a knob have never been found south of the North Atlantic Drift region, which extends from the Grand Banks off Newfoundland eastwards to north-western Europe.”

Related: There’s an Invisible Line That Animals Don’t Cross. Here’s Why.

At some places in the world, even in the absence of a hard physical barrier, there are lines that separate how animals are distributed. The Wallace Line in the Indonesian archipelago is one; so too are the Lydekker Line and the Weber Line separating the islands of southeast Asia from Australia and Papua New Guinea.

On either side of these lines, the types of animals found in comparable niches are quite distinct. Such lines are known as faunal boundaries, and they can be drawn by environmental differences between two regions, physical barriers that have since disappeared over eons as the world changed, ocean currents, and other factors.

Because they are not clearly demarcated, faunal barriers like this are hard to spot. This difficulty increases exponentially for the deep ocean, a part of the world that is extremely hostile to the human body. Between crushing pressures, freezing temperatures, and the absence of light, the only way we can explore down there is by remote-controlled robots.

Montenegro and his colleagues conducted their survey of jellyfish distribution by the collection of specimens, both from research vessels using nets, and remotely-operated underwater vehicles. They also studied historical observations and photographic records.

To their surprise, genetic analysis revealed that the jellyfish with a knob and the jellyfish without a knob belonged to the same genetic lineage. But, while the knobbed jellyfish can be found all over the world, jellyfish without a knob can only be found north of 47 degrees, suggesting a semi-permeable faunal boundary in the North Atlantic Drift region.

“The differences in shape, despite strong genetic similarities across specimens, above and below 47 degrees north hint at the existence of an unknown deep-sea bio-geographic barrier in the Atlantic Ocean,” Montenegro says.

“It could keep specimens without a knob confined to the north while allowing the free transit of specimens with a knob further south, with the knob possibly giving a selective advantage against predators outside the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions.”

Further research is necessary to determine what creates this invisible barrier keeping the knob-less jellyfish confined to Arctic and sub-Arctic waters, although previous research describes the North Atlantic Drift region as a “transition ecotone with admixture of boreal and subtropical species.” This suggests a dividing line between environmental conditions.

The finding underscores just how little we know about the deep ocean, and suggests that other such barriers may be scattered throughout the globe. It also suggests that a comprehensive understanding of the life that teems the ocean yet eludes us.

“The presence of two specimens with distinctive shapes within a single genetic lineage highlights the need to study more about the biodiversity of gelatinous marine animals,” Montenegro says.

The research has been published in Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers.

Scientists have uncovered a breakthrough in our understanding of black holes by using a powerful mathematical tool known as the exact Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) method. The study, published in Physical Review Letters, reveals previously hidden patterns in the “ringing” of black holes—vibrations known as quasinormal modes—that could sharpen future gravitational wave observations and transform our knowledge of the universe.

Unlocking the Hidden Symphony of Black Holes

Black holes are often portrayed as silent cosmic voids, but this research shows they are far from mute. When disturbed—such as during a merger—black holes emit a distinctive “ringing” pattern, like a celestial bell struck by an unseen hammer. These quasinormal modes ripple through space-time, generating gravitational waves detectable from Earth.

For decades, the challenge has been decoding the faintest of these vibrations, especially those that fade quickly. Traditional methods often failed to capture their full complexity, leaving gaps in our understanding. By applying the exact WKB analysis, the Kyoto University research team mapped the intricate behavior of these waves, uncovering patterns that had been missed for decades.

The Mathematical Key: Exact WKB Analysis

At the heart of this discovery lies an advanced mathematical approach. The exact WKB method, long known in mathematics but rarely applied in astrophysics, allowed researchers to probe deep into the geometry of black holes.

This method extends the problem into the complex number domain, where previously unseen features—such as infinitely spiraling Stokes curves—emerge. These curves reveal points where the nature of a wave suddenly changes, shedding light on the hidden structure of black hole vibrations.

“We found spiraling patterns that had been overlooked before, and they turned out to be essential for understanding quasinormal modes,” said Taiga Miyachi, the study’s lead author.

Why This Discovery Matters for Gravitational Waves

The implications of this breakthrough are profound. Gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO, Virgo, and the upcoming Einstein Telescope depend on highly accurate theoretical models to interpret the signals they capture.

By revealing the full frequency structure of black hole vibrations—including the most rapidly weakening ones—this research lays the groundwork for more precise measurements of black hole mass, spin, and shape. It could even help researchers detect subtle deviations that point toward new physics, including possible evidence for quantum gravity effects.

The Next Frontier: Rotating Black Holes and Quantum Gravity

The Kyoto University team is not stopping here. Their next step will be to extend this analysis to rotating black holes, which are far more common in the universe. These objects add a new layer of complexity, with their spinning nature twisting space-time itself.

Furthermore, the researchers plan to explore how the exact WKB method might shed light on quantum gravity, one of the most elusive frontiers in modern physics. If successful, it could provide a bridge between Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the quantum realm.

By “listening” to their hidden vibrations with unprecedented precision, scientists are beginning to turn mathematical abstraction into a tool for cosmic discovery.

You look up from your phone screen and suddenly realize you weren’t thinking about anything. It’s not a lapse in memory or a daydream; it’s literally a moment when you’re not thinking of anything at all.

Neuroscientists have a term for it — mind blanking — which they define as a brief, waking state when conscious thought simply stops.