EverythingScience

Discovery of 'slow' electrons in 2D material could lead to new memory device Over the last decade, researchers have developed two-dimensional materials with fascinating quantum effects that could be harnessed for next-generation technologies. Such materials have shown superconductivity—conducting electricity without energy loss—and charge orders, where electrons arrange in frozen patterns rather than moving freely in the material. At the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME), a research team discovered that one such material, Fe5GeTe2, exhibits a charge-ordered state in which electrons move collectively and unusually slowly while remaining quantum coherent. The research, published in Science Advances and conducted in the lab of assistant professor Shuolong Yang, rewrites current knowledge of the material and could unlock new technological applications. "This is a fundamental discovery that deviates from theoretical predictions," Yang said. "We now have to go back and think about the magnetic interactions of this material from scratch, but it also leads to new possibilities in using this material for new kinds of memory devices." A many-body phenomenon Discovered seven years ago, Fe5GeTe2 is part of a class of materials known as van der Waals magnets. Their atomically thin layers could enable new kinds of memory technologies, with advantages over those based on conventional magnetic materials. Source: Phys.org @EverythingScience

The moon is turning red tomorrow night — here's why, and how to watch Skywatchers are in for an ecliptic encore tomorrow night (Aug. 27 to 28) as a very deep partial lunar eclipse promises to turn the full moon coppery red. As the full moon slides into Earth's shadow, it will cast an eerie red glow over 96% of the lunar surface. In North and South America, every stage of the eclipse will be visible in the night sky, beginning at 9:23 p.m. EDT on Thursday night (Aug. 27), ending around 3 a.m. Friday (Aug. 28), and peaking just after midnight. Meanwhile in Europe, the eclipse will occur just before dawn as the moon sinks below the horizon. The moon won't fall totally under Earth's shadow, so we can't officially call it a "blood moon," but it will be the deepest lunar eclipse anywhere in the world until the next total lunar eclipse on Dec. 31, 2028. Why does the moon turn red during a lunar eclipse? A lunar eclipse happens when the moon passes directly behind Earth and falls into its shadow. But instead of going completely dark, the moon turns a deep shade of coppery red. This is because of the way Earth's atmosphere absorbs and bends light. Source: Live Science @EverythingScience

Scientists finally know why astronauts struggle to poop in space — and reveal a hidden risk of long-haul spaceflight Scientists have finally gotten to the bottom of why astronauts struggle to poop in space, thanks to a new blood test. The findings also reveal an unexpected side effect of this cosmic constipation that may need to be addressed before humans take long-haul trips to Mars and beyond, the study authors say. As soon as people started living in space, it became apparent that it was harder to go "number two" among the stars than down on Earth — and not just because of how complicated it is to use a space toilet. For most astronauts, this gastrointestinal change is just an inconvenience, but some have to take laxatives to overcome the problem. The drugs are routinely stocked on most space missions, including the recent Artemis II mission. Constipation is one of several digestive issues astronauts contend with, including bloating, indigestion and acid reflux, according to NASA. And like most other health problems that can affect astronauts, researchers have long suspected that microgravity is the leading cause. However, it has been very hard to prove that hypothesis or understand the other effects that chronic constipation may have on astronauts' general health. In a new NASA-backed study, published June 29 in the journal Nature Communications, researchers analyzed more than 400 blood samples from 52 astronauts who each spent more than two months at a time living on board the International Space Station (ISS). Their stays took place between 2006 and 2018. In the blood samples, the team looked for specific metabolites — the byproducts of metabolic processes that break down food, drugs and tissue in the body. They identified 40 such compounds, but the most instructive were those that were produced by gut bacteria that help break down proteins in the intestines. Source: Live Science @EverythingScience

A New Framework for How the Brain Compresses Our Noisy World Every moment of our lives, our bodies are awash in sensory signals. Photons hit our retinas. Waves of compressed air collide with our eardrums. Volatile molecules bind to receptors in our nostrils, and chemicals slather our taste buds. Pressure and heat activate nerve endings in our skin. We are able to navigate this torrent because the brain does an enormous amount of data compression. Through a process known as categorization, the brain turns the messy, noisy, information-rich world into objects, people, concepts, and emotions that we can understand and act on at the level of experience. In neuroscience’s traditional view, categorization happens at the very end of sensory processing. The brain passively receives sensory details, then decodes their features and matches them to stored templates in memory, like a clerk shuffling through a neural filing cabinet. But this approach to categorization struggles to account for the extraordinary flexibility in the way we assign labels to features of the world. On a clear day on an open street, a sudden rhythmic patter is a pigeon taking flight, yet when we’re walking down a dimly lit alley at night, the same sound is the shuffle of a stranger’s footsteps. How can the brain categorize similar sets of sensory signals in radically different ways for different situations? Two of the world’s leading neuroscientists have brought an updated understanding of brain function and structure to this question. In the pages of Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Lisa Feldman Barrett, who studies the psychology and neuroscience of emotion at Northeastern University, and Earl Miller, who studies how the brain carries out goal-directed behavior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, collaborated on a new view of categorization. They describe how the brain constantly reconstructs its categories moment to moment based not only on senses and memory, but on the body’s immediate physiological needs. Source: Quanta Magazine @EverythingScience

For a few million years, Earth may have been left out in the cold — literally. New NASA research shows the Sun's protective bubble has shrunk smaller than Earth's orbit at least three times in the past 10 million years, possibly triggering ancient ice ages. 🌍 Full story: go.nasa.gov/4xhyql8 Source: @NASASolarSystem @EverythingScience

Transistors Changed Everything. Here’s How They Work Life would be completely different without transistors. For starters, there would be no personal computers or cell phones, so no Amazon, no video games, no dating apps, no messaging, no streaming, no social media, no Apple Pay or Google Maps, and no AI (hmm). Cars contain billions of transistors. They're really everywhere. So what is a transistor? The best way to understand this pivotal technology is to follow the evolutionary trail, all the way back to the electric relays used in telegraphs in the 1800s. Source: Wired @EverythingScience

Oldest human brain cells grown in lab 'recorded passage of time' Peppercorn-sized clumps of human brain cells grown in a lab for a record seven years aged similarly to those inside our heads, suggesting they "recorded the passage of time," scientists said Wednesday. These tiny clumps, called organoids, are grown from stem cells by scientists around the world in the hope of uncovering the mysteries of our brains—and to test new medicines without having to use animals such as mice. Normally, these organoids live for a few months, meaning they can offer only a window into the earliest stages of human brains, which take nearly 20 years to fully develop. So a U.S.-led team of researchers grew some for around seven years, making them the "oldest ever," Paola Arlotta, the senior author of a new study describing the experiment, told AFP. They discovered that the brain organoids continued to change and mature over the years, despite never having been inside an embryo, let alone a body. "The brain can continue to develop outside the context of a person for this unprecedented amount of time," explained Arlotta, a Harvard University professor. The scientists hope this will help shed light on how a range of disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, first emerge and then progress later in life. The study, published in the journal Nature, said the organoids "recorded the passage of time and retain a memory of the developmental steps already performed." This does not mean organoids have memories like we tend to think of them—such as recalling something from childhood—but simply that their past is "engraved" on a cellular level, Arlotta emphasized. Organoids are "biological models" or "avatars" for human brain cells that are far less complex and do not receive sensory input, she added. Scientists widely agree that organoids are not capable of consciousness or other higher-order brain functions. Experiment 'warped time' The researchers analyzed their aging organoids with three different kinds of recently developed genetic "clocks" that can roughly determine the biological age of cells. They all showed that the organoids changed over time in similar ways to normal brain cells. To further confirm their theory, the scientists carried out what Arlotta described as a "crazy experiment." They mixed cells that had been developing for a year with others that were only two weeks old, creating a "chimera." The young cells behaved normally. But the older cells "jumped ahead a whole chunk of development" and started making neurons that normally take around four months, Arlotta said. This effectively "warped time" for brain development, which was "super cool," she added. In the future, it could be possible to use this technique to rapidly speed up the development of certain brain cells, Arlotta speculated. Source: Phys.org @EverythingScience

Is AI Reasoning Right for the Wrong Reasons? I’ll just say it: What the hell is going on with AI “reasoning”? Sorry for the air quotes. That punctuational side-eye was more common in 2024, when the specially trained cousins of LLMs now known as “large reasoning models,” or LRMs, were still new. Now…

Perspective is everything. 🌍 Gazing down at Earth from above offers an incredibly profound one, as does looking back at the Space Station from a window in the Russian segment. Our crewmate Anna Kikina captured this incredible footage during Anil Menon and my spacewalk on Aug. 6. Even suited up in …

What a record-breaking El Niño could mean for the world This year's El Niño is on track to be the strongest on record, threatening to unleash extreme weather across the globe and make 2027 the hottest recorded year by far. It is expected to be the most "intense" El Niño in more than a century, the h…

Bepi Colombo is approaching Mercury 🛰️🌑☀️ And we’re here for it! 🙌 On 3 September, the European Space Agency / JAXA en mission will carry out its first arrival manoeuvre, kicking off the Mercury Arrival Phase. Want to watch live on 3 Sept? Stay tuned here and on ESA Science for more details on 27…

Neuroscientist Challenges the Idea That Your Brain “Makes” Decisions For decades, both scientific theories and everyday thinking have treated decision-making as a separate step between perception and action. Under this traditional view, information moves through a linear sequence from sensing to thi…

'Poop pills' may ease insomnia by reprogramming the gut microbiome, early study hints A poop transplant — otherwise known as a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) — may help adults with long-term insomnia sleep better, a small study suggests. After the transplant, study participants' gut bacteria bec…

Due to an ongoing commercial spacecraft attitude control issue, NASA and Katalyst Space announced Wednesday the LINK spacecraft will not capture or boost an agency satellite to a higher altitude to extend its science mission as planned. However, LINK still will attempt to conduct rendezvous and prox…

How can AI help identify pain when animals can't tell us they're suffering?. A new AI framework, known as SHIC-XE, has been developed to detect signs of pain in horses from video analysis while providing stable, anatomically consistent explanations for its decisions. The framework was developed by a…

Graphene nanowrinkles could reshape electricity in future ultrathin devices Rice University researchers have shown that tiny wrinkles in graphene can change the material's electrical properties, providing evidence for flexoelectricity, a phenomenon in which a material generates an electric charge wh…

Explainer: What is ADHD? School was difficult for Makayla Caliendo when she was young. She remembers staring out the window while her classmates were paying attention in class. Some clothes, tags and socks were uncomfortable and left her unable to focus. She even had to repeat preschool. “I left th…