Category: 7. Science

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that boiled my blood, warmed my heart, and got permanently inked into my memory.

First, a new look at some very old tattoos. Then: a posthumous discovery from a beloved defunct telescope, an update on lava planets, the adventures of translocated mole rats, and some provocative style tips from chimpanzees.

Ink of ages

Caspari, Gino et al. “High-resolution near-infrared data reveal Pazyryk tattooing methods.” Antiquity.

Some 2,300 years ago, a woman from the nomadic Pazyryk culture of Siberia was inked with elaborate tattoos, including dynamic animal fights. Her body and its mesmerizing displays have survived to this day, along with many other “Pazyryk ice mummies” that were immaculately preserved in permafrost tombs.

Now, scientists have imaged the woman’s epic epidermis with high-resolution techniques that expose hidden details of her tattoos, yielding new insights about the artists and tools that made them.

“While the images on the hands are mostly simple designs, the most elaborate of which is a rooster on the left thumb, the forearms display some of the most complex Pazyryk tattoos currently identified,”  said researchers led by Gino Caspari of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. 

Photogrammetrically created 3D model of the mummy, showing: A) texture derived from visible-spectrum photographs; and B) texture derived from near-infrared photography. Credit: M. Vavulin

The results revealed that the middle-aged woman was tattooed with at least two different instruments: a multipoint tool that provided a uniform line thickness, as well as a finer tool with a single point. The pigment was probably crafted from soot or burnt plants, but the nature of the “needles” remains unclear (they may have been plant thorns, for instance). The new images exposed the superior quality in the scene on her right forearm compared to the left, which suggests that at least two artists worked on the decorations over multiple sessions.

“The right-forearm tattoo likely required at least two sessions to complete, beginning with the ungulate [stag] positioned at the wrist,” the researchers said. “This clever placement utilizes the contours of the wrist to enhance the ungulate’s form, allowing the tattoo to flow across the arm.”

“The right-forearm tattoo also features techniques that are challenging from the tattooist’s perspective” yet “the linework is clear and consistent, with nearly double the amount of outlining present on the left forearm,” they added. “Taken as a whole, this evidence suggests that the left forearm tattoo was created by an artist with less experience or skill.”

A figure depicting the tattoos and placement on the body. Image: Svetlana Pankova

Tattoos represent a diversity of meanings and practices across regions and time, and it’s important not to color bodies of the past with our present biases. While we may never know exactly what these dramatic scenes meant to the Pazyryk culture, it is amazing that we can behold them in such fantastic detail thousands of years after this woman, and her tattooists, lived and died in the Altai Mountains.  

“Modifications to soft tissue, including tattooing, present a temporal paradox as they are simultaneously permanent over the lifetime of the marked individual, yet transitory from an archaeological perspective,” said Caspari and his colleagues. “The interpretation of tattoos in prehistoric contexts necessarily remains speculative and may never reach the intricate richness of meaning with which the images and practices were originally associated.”

If this story piques your interest in the ancient artistry of Altai Mountain cultures (understandable!), check another recent study about the stylistic shifts in the region’s rock art depictions of elk over thousands of years.  

In other news…

Tidal wave over Arecibo

Gong, Yun et al. “First Observation of a Strong Thermospheric 4.8-Hour Tide and Its Impact on the Ionosphere Over Arecibo.” Geophysical Research Letters.

Tidal waves are normally thought of as massive walls of ocean water, but the sky is also rippled by tides of solar energy generated by the Sun’s activity. This week, a team discovered a “strong and unusual” tidal wave that reverberated about 160 to 300 miles above Puerto Rico’s Arecibo telescope on the night of March 17, 2015. 

“We found that this tide is surprisingly powerful, with wind speeds around 25 m/s—larger than those seen in more common tidal patterns,” said researchers led by Yun Gong of Wuhan University. “This is the first time such a strong 4.8-hour tide has been reported at these heights.”

The team noted that the wave was probably amplified by a geomagnetic storm, though the finer details of such complex interactions are still up in the air. The study is a testament to the ongoing afterlife of Arecibo, which sadly collapsed in 2020, but remains a legendary icon in part because of its extensive archives that date back to 1963.  

The floor is lava

Boukaré, Charles-Édouard et al. “The role of interior dynamics and differentiation on the surface and in the atmosphere of lava planets.” Nature Astronomy.

Just in case you haven’t expressed gratitude to Earth lately, here’s a study about “lava planets,” which are rocky worlds that orbit so close to their stars that their day-sides reach 5,000°F.  

“Unlike rocky planets in the solar system, lava planets maintain a long-lived, shallow magma ocean on their day-side, even after billions of years of interior cooling,” said researchers led by Charles-Édouard Boukaré of York University. “Such asymmetric magma oceans have no analogues in the solar system and their internal dynamics and evolution are still poorly understood.” 

Fortunately, lava planets are a current priority for observation by the James Webb Space Telescope, so we may learn more about them soon. Even as we ride out more intense heat waves on Earth, pour a cold one out for these tortured worlds.

Moving day for mole rats

Moldován, Orsolya et al. “Challenges and opportunities in the translocation of grassland-dwelling subterranean mammals: The case of blind mole rats.” Global Ecology and Conservation.

Burrowing animals are disproportionately threatened by the steady march of human land developments (citation: Watership Down). European blind mole rats, for instance, “have long been persecuted, and many species are threatened by extinction as they only exist in a few small and isolated populations,” according to a new study.

Though maligned in the past, these unique rodents are increasingly recognized as beneficial ecosystem engineers—plus, they are textbook “ugly-cute,” an aesthetic I cherish. To that end, the study followed up on translocation efforts that moved vulnerable colonies to new and safer sites. 

“In the seven projects, a total of 141 blind mole rat individuals were translocated, of which 56 were males and 85 were females,” said researchers led by Orsolya Moldován of the University of Debrecen in Hungary. These “recent conservation efforts… were mostly successful and reversed the 200-year trend of decline. The method is thus promising for saving blind mole rats from extinction and for ensuring their long-term survival.” 

It’s uplifting to know that there’s still a light at the end of the tunnel for these burrowing beauties. 

The hottest summer look: Butt-grass

Van Leeuwen,  Edwin J.C. et al. “Chimpanzees socially learn non-instrumental behaviour from conspecifics.” Behavior.

We’ll close with a recent study that I first saw reported by Sabrina Imbler of Defector about chimps that put grass in their buttholes as a style choice. I suggest you read their article through to the final reveal, which is surprisingly heart-warming for a tale of bum-grass. But for our purposes, here’s the upshot: 

After witnessing chimps at Zambia’s Chimfunshi sanctuary adorning their ears with grass, a team “observed the birth of a related variant in which chimpanzees started to wear the grass from their rectums,” a trend that spread “to most of the group within six weeks,” according to researchers led by Edwin J.C. van Leeuwen of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. 

“Though we primarily observed grass-in-rectum behavior by the same individual (the plausible innovator), the behavior was adopted by at least five other individuals from the same group, of whom two are still performing it to this day, almost a year after initial observations,” the team said.

It’s another reminder to be the plausible innovator you want to see in the world. You never know what hare-brained scheme (or grass-butted one) might catch on.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

In May 2025, residents near lac rouge in Quebec made a startling discovery. A road close to the lake had been washed out, prompting investigations that revealed the lake had completely drained almost overnight. This extraordinary event, described by experts as extremely rare, was later confirmed by satellite imagery from Landsat 9, showing the lake reduced to an empty brown basin.

Sudden Disappearance Shocks Local Community

Located in the Lac-Walker region of Sept-Rivières in Quebec, lac rouge spans approximately 0.86 square miles (1.4 square kilometers). The lake has long been an important site for the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi, who used it for fishing, hunting, and trapping. The abrupt disappearance of this water body has left local residents and visitors deeply concerned about the impact on wildlife such as moose and sturgeon, species that depend on the lake’s ecosystem.

Field surveys quickly revealed that the ground beneath the lake had collapsed, creating an unexpected drainage pathway. This geological shift allowed water to flow backward from its usual outflow, channeling into smaller ponds and rivers before eventually reaching lac doda, roughly 6 miles (10 kilometers) away.

Satellite Imagery Confirms Timeline

Images captured by the NASA Earth Observatory, using data from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat 9 satellite, provided the first clear view of the event. The photos highlighted the lake’s transformation from a vibrant body of water into a barren patch of land. Although the exact moment of the drainage remains uncertain, experts believe it occurred between April 29 and May 14, 2025.

This event underscores the value of Earth-observing satellites in tracking environmental changes. Designed to study the planet’s processes, Landsat 9 allowed scientists to document the lake’s sudden disappearance in unprecedented detail. As a result, the draining of lac rouge has become a striking example of how rapidly landscapes can transform.

Possible Causes Remain A Mystery

While investigations are ongoing, the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi has stated that “the cause of the lake draining is still unknown.” Some researchers suggest that wildfires, heavy rainfall, or snowmelt could have triggered the collapse of the lakebed. Wildfires near the region in 2019 and 2023 may have weakened the soil structure, making it vulnerable to sudden failure.

This unusual case has drawn attention from both the scientific community and local residents, raising questions about whether similar events could happen elsewhere.

A massive pocket of unusually hot rock buried deep under the Appalachian Mountains might be a lingering echo of ancient tectonic shifts that split Greenland from North America 80 million years ago.

This strange heat zone – known as the Northern Appalachian Anomaly (NAA) – sits about 200 kilometers beneath New England.

For a long time, scientists thought it was a remnant from when North America tore away from Northwest Africa around 180 million years ago.

But new research from scientists at the University of Southampton, the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany, and the University of Florence in Italy points to a different story.

Appalachian Mountains are still rising

The Northern Appalachian Anomaly spans about 350 kilometers and is hotter than the surrounding mantle. But it likely didn’t form where it is today.

According to the researchers, this zone of heat may have originated over 1,800 kilometers away, near the Labrador Sea – between Greenland and Canada – when those landmasses began to split apart between 90 and 80 million years ago.

Since then, the anomaly has likely crept southwest across the base of the North American continent, traveling at roughly 20 kilometers per million years.

“This thermal upwelling has long been a puzzling feature of North American geology,” said Professor Tom Gernon from the University of Southampton.

“It lies beneath part of the continent that’s been tectonically quiet for 180 million years, so the idea it was just a leftover from when the landmass broke apart never quite stacked up.”

Heat helps the Appalachians rise

According to Professor Gernon, the team’s research suggests the heat zone is part of a much larger, slow-moving process deep underground that could potentially help explain why mountain ranges like the Appalachians are still standing.

“Heat at the base of a continent can weaken and remove part of its dense root, making the continent lighter and more buoyant, like a hot air balloon rising after dropping its ballast.”

“This would have caused the ancient mountains to be further uplifted over the past few million years.”

How heat moves under continents

The researchers used seismic imaging, geodynamic simulations, and tectonic plate reconstructions to understand how the anomaly formed and where it came from.

The team’s work leans on a recent theory they’ve proposed, known as “mantle wave” theory. It describes how pieces of hot, dense rock peel away from the base of tectonic plates and migrate slowly under continents – similar to blobs floating in a lava lamp.

The slow, deep movements can have surprising effects at the surface, from creating areas of uplift to triggering rare volcanic activity.

Heat beneath the Appalachians is moving

“These convective instabilities cause chunks of rock, several tens of kilometers thick, to slowly sink from the base of the Earth’s outer layer known as the lithosphere,” said Professor Sascha Brune of the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences.

“As the lithosphere thins, hotter mantle material rises to take its place, creating a warm region known as a thermal anomaly.”

“Our earlier research shows that these ‘drips’ of rock can form in series, like domino stones when they fall one after the other, and sequentially migrate over time. The feature we see beneath New England is very likely one of these drips, which originated far from where it now sits.”

If their model is correct, the Northern Appalachian Anomaly will likely continue its slow southwestward journey. In about 15 million years, it may sit directly beneath the New York region. Its current size and depth match what models predict for these types of migrating thermal zones.

A mirror beneath Greenland

Interestingly, the team believes a similar heat anomaly exists beneath north-central Greenland – likely formed at the same time, on the opposite side of the Labrador Sea, when the landmasses split.

Beneath Greenland, this heat zone affects how the ice sheet above moves and melts. “Ancient heat anomalies continue to play a key role in shaping the dynamics of continental ice sheets from below,” said Professor Gernon.

According to Dr. Derek Keir, a co-author from the University of Southampton, the idea that rifting of continents can cause drips and cells of circulating hot rock at depth that spread thousands of kilometers inland makes us rethink what we know about the edges of continents both today and in Earth’s deep past.

Deep Earth forces remain active

The findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that deep Earth processes can stay active long after surface plate movements have stopped.

Even places like the Appalachians -geologically quiet for millions of years – are still shaped by what’s happening far below.

“Even though the surface shows little sign of ongoing tectonics, deep below, the consequences of ancient rifting are still playing out,” said Professor Gernon. “The legacy of continental breakup on other parts of the Earth system may well be far more pervasive and long-lived than we previously realised.”

The full study was published in the journal Geology.

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A team of astronomers has captured the most detailed image yet of a powerful jet blasting out from the supermassive black hole at the heart of blazar OJ 287, and what they found is extraordinary. The jet is severely bent, revealing compelling evidence that this object, located about four billion light-years away, could be part of the most extreme binary black hole system ever detected.

A Blazar Unlike Any Other

A blazar is a type of quasar viewed almost directly along its jet, making it appear brighter than most other cosmic objects. Quasars themselves are the luminous cores of galaxies, where supermassive black holes feed on vast amounts of surrounding matter. This matter forms an accretion disk so dense and hot that it shines across the universe, while magnetic fields channel charged particles into jets traveling at nearly the speed of light.

OJ 287, however, defies expectations. Astronomers have been monitoring its fluctuating brightness for around 150 years, uncovering two distinct cycles: one lasting roughly 60 years and another repeating every 12 years. Scientists believe the shorter cycle is caused by a second black hole, roughly 150 million times the mass of the sun, orbiting an even larger primary black hole estimated to weigh in at a staggering 18.35 billion solar masses.

Every 12 years, the smaller black hole plunges through the accretion disk of its massive companion. This dramatic interaction briefly transforms OJ 287 into a double quasar, as the secondary black hole forms its own temporary accretion disk and jet.

The Bent Jet and What it Reveals

The most recent breakthrough came through an unprecedented radio observation of OJ 287, carried out by a network of telescopes including the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) in the United States and the Russian RadioAstron satellite. By linking these instruments between 2014 and 2017, astronomers effectively created a virtual telescope five times the diameter of Earth, allowing them to resolve a region just one-third of a light-year across.

The resulting image revealed that the jet is not straight but bent at three distinct points. According to lead researcher Efthalia Traianou of Heidelberg University, “We have never before observed a structure in the OJ 287 galaxy at the level of details seen in the new image.” The team also discovered that the jet’s orientation shifts by about 30 degrees close to its origin, likely due to the gravitational influence of the second black hole.

This gravitational tug could explain the jet’s unusual precession and even its violent outbursts. A shock wave detected within the jet was found to emit an intense stream of gamma rays, recorded by NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope and the Swift mission. Some portions of the jet appear to radiate at an astonishing 10 trillion degrees Celsius, although scientists attribute this to relativistic beaming, where objects moving near light speed appear far brighter and hotter from our vantage point.

A Gateway To Gravitational Wave Research

As Traianou explained, “Its special properties make the galaxy an ideal candidate for further research into merging black holes and the associated gravitational waves.” While the two massive black holes in OJ 287 are expected to merge eventually, the event is not imminent.

In the meantime, their slow inspiral is likely generating faint, long-wavelength gravitational waves that are beyond the reach of current detectors. Instead, astronomers are turning to pulsar timing arrays, which monitor the precise radio signals of pulsars to detect tiny disturbances caused by passing gravitational waves.

The European Space Agency’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), expected to launch in the mid-2030s, could enable scientists to directly detect the merger of supermassive black holes such as those in OJ 287.

Four of the solar system‘s terrestrial planets, including Earth and a long-lost world, likely started life waltzing around the sun to a fixed rhythm, according to a new study. The findings also suggest that those planets formed earlier than previously thought.

Astronomers have been increasingly interested in how planetary systems change their internal architecture on cosmic timescales, motivated by several recent exoplanet family discoveries, like the seven-planet cohort orbiting the tiny star TRAPPIST-1.

Native to Madagascar, this lemur looks like a strange mix of several animals. It has the round eyes of an owl, the ears of a bat, rodent-like teeth that never stop growing and a wiry, bushy tail longer than its body.

Aye-ayes are the world’s largest nocturnal lemur, weighing around 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) and reaching up to 24 inches (60 centimeters) long from nose to tail tip. Young aye-ayes have a silver front with a stripe down their backs, but as they develop into adults, their thick fur turns a yellow-brown with white tips. During the day, they sleep in spherical nests crafted from leaves and branches, while at night they roam the treetops in search of food.

How did a black hole eat a star twice?

Will there be a third flare?

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August is the perfect time to take cuttings of many popular shrubs and perennials. By this point in the growing season, all of your plants will have produced a good amount of healthy green growth, most of which should be semi-ripe (in other words, not too soft but not too woody or hard). It is this growth that is perfect for propagation during August.

As a professional gardener, I have spent countless hours propagating plants in both private and public gardens where I have worked (and for myself, of course). From fragrant pelargoniums growing in pots to reliable perennials such as verbena and salvia, summer cuttings are not to be missed.

So, if you are keen to have a few more rosemary or lavender plants in your yard, all without spending any money, grab yourself a pair of snips, some pots and soil, and get to work in the garden shed this month. Here, I reveal seven plants to propagate in August to add to your summer gardening checklist, with tips and tricks I have learned along the way.

(Image credit: Alamy/Trevor Chriss)

7 plants to propagate in August: tips for taking cuttings

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