Shortly after the Big Bang, the entire observable universe was compressed into a region that was so dense that electrons weren't attached to atomic nuclei, floating around as an ionized plasma. It turns out colliding neutron stars (aka kilonovae) simulate these conditions surprisingly well. Shortly after the 2017 kilonova event, atoms were smashed together with such force that atomic nuclei and electrons were separated, but then their reunion was seen by astronomers.

The discovery of a 4,000-year-old fortified town hidden in an oasis in modern-day Saudi Arabia reveals how life at the time was slowly changing from a nomadic to an urban existence, archaeologists said on Wednesday.

The remains of the town, dubbed al-Natah, were long concealed by the walled oasis of Khaybar, a green and fertile speck surrounded by desert in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula.

Then an ancient 14.5 kilometer-long wall was discovered at the site.

Black volcanic rocks called basalt concealed the walls of al-Natah so well that it "protected the site from illegal excavations.

Tombs inside a necropolis there contained metal weapons like axes and daggers as well as stones such as agate, indicating a relatively advanced society for so long ago.

Pieces of pottery "suggest a relatively egalitarian society", the study said. They are "very pretty but very simple ceramics

Al-Natah was still small compared to cities in Mesopotamia or Egypt during the period.

Due to chaos, it was long thought that planets couldn’t stably orbit systems containing three stars. GW Orionis is the first counterexample.

Key Takeaways

• It’s easy to have planets that orbit around a single star, and in a double star system, you can either orbit close to one star or far from both members. 

• These configurations are stable, but adding a third star into the mix was thought to render the formation of planets unstable, as mutual gravitational interactions would eventually force their ejection. 

• That wisdom got thrown out the window with the discovery of GW Orionis, which boasts multiple massive dust rings and possibly even more planets, all orbiting three stars at once.

The dead, if you are to heed the warning of burials conducted hundreds of years ago, may not always lay so quietly in their grave.

Over a span of more than 1,000 years, in different parts of Europe, burials were conducted seemingly to keep the dead safely in their graves, and not walking about causing havoc among the living.

The formal name for practices of this kind is apotropaic burial rites. Informally, they have a more bone-chilling name: the vampire burial.

Last year, an intriguing theory was put forward: black holes could be causing dark energy. As more black holes formed in the Universe, the stronger the pressure from dark energy. Now, a survey from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is strengthening the case for this theory. The first year's data from the survey show that the density of dark energy increases over time in a way that seems to correlate with the number and mass of black holes.

This system not only reduces the burden on ground crews but also ensures that drones can operate more safely and efficiently."

The system uses a unique technique called optical speckle which projects specific images dependent on what the optical fiber nervous system feels.

These can be interpreted using AI to assess the health of the drone.

Bats are incredibly diverse animals: They can climb onto other animals to drink their blood, pluck insects from leaves or hover to drink nectar from tropical flowers, all of which require distinctive wing designs.

But why aren't there any flightless bats that behave like ostriches—long-legged creatures that wade along riverbanks for fish like herons—or bats that spend their lives at sea, like the wandering albatross?

Researchers may have just found the answer: Unlike birds, the evolution of bats' wings and legs is tightly coupled, which may have prevented them from filling as many ecological niches as birds.

We initially expected to confirm that bat evolution is similar to that of birds, and that their wings and legs evolve independently of one another. The fact we found the opposite was greatly surprising.

Decades ago, astronomers predicted a time when there would be so much orbital debris that it could threaten future satellites and even space exploration. That future seems to be arriving, with an estimated 13,000 metric tons of space junk already in low-Earth orbit. Most recently, we learned that the Intelsat 33e satellite experienced a sudden power loss, tumbled, and broke up into at least 20 pieces. We still don't know what caused the breakup.

Abstract

Mysterious craters, with anomalously high concentrations of methane, have formed in the Yamal and Taymyr peninsulas of Siberia since 2014. While thawing permafrost owing to climate warming promotes methane releases, it is unknown how such release might be associated with explosion and crater formation. A significant volume of surface ice-melt water can migrate downward driven by osmotic pressure associated with a cryopeg, a lens of salty water below. Overpressure reached at depth may lead to the cracking of the soil and subsequent decomposition of methane hydrates, with implications for the climate.

Key Points

• Surface ice-melt water can migrate downward driven by the osmotic pressure associated with a cryopeg, a lens of salty water below

• Overpressure can cause the frozen soil to crack resulting in mechanical explosion

Plain Language Summary

We show how osmosis drives explosions and methane release in Siberian permafrost. We anticipate that as well as being of direct relevance to permafrost researchers, this work will be of interest to a large number of people involved in climate change research, because the mechanism we uncover of osmotic pumping leading to permafrost explosions has potentially grave consequences involving the release of methane

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL108987

This blazingly-fast star is shooting through the Milky Way with a planet in tow

Our solar system orbits the Milky Way galaxy once about every 225 million years, whipping along at 230 kilometers per second (a staggering rate that we don’t feel because the whole thing moves at the same constant velocity). But a new study suggests we’re a cosmic slowpoke compared with one system in our galaxy that was somehow flung to a velocity of 541 kilometers a second—making it the fastest known planetary system.

“This velocity was extremely high and kind of shocking,” says University of Maryland astrophysicist Sean Terry, lead author of the study, which has been posted on the preprint server arXiv.org and submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. “It opens up a regime of questions about the survivability of these types of systems.”

This galactic speed demon appears to have a red dwarf star smaller and dimmer than our sun. It’s about 25,000 light-years from Earth and some 1,000 light-years away from our galaxy’s center. Astronomers discovered the star and a suspected accompanying planet after a 2011 microlensing event called MOA-2011-BLG-262, when the system passed in front of a background star and warped the latter’s light.

The historical depiction of witches riding broomsticks has its origins in hallucinogenic plant pharmacology, as popularized by Shakespeare, but the indigenous knowledge predates even him.

Hallucinogenic chemicals called tropane alkaloids are made by a number of plants including Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Hyoscyamus niger (henbane), Mandragora officinarum (mandrake) and Datura stramonium (jimsonweed). During the Middle Ages, parts of these plants were used to make "brews," "oyntments" or "witches' salves" for witchcraft, sorcery and other nefarious activities.

Somewhere along the line, the observation was made that the hallucinogenic compounds, hyoscine in particular — also known as scopolamine — could be absorbed through sweat glands in the armpit or via the mucus membranes of the rectum or vaginal area. As compared to eating the plants or drinking their extracts, axial, rectal and vaginal routes of administration also bypassed the first cycle of rapid metabolism by the liver (and severe intestinal discomfort).

Phytoplankton—microscopic plant-like organisms—are the foundation of the marine food web, sustaining everything from tiny fish to multi-ton whales while also playing a critical role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Accurately monitoring Earth's phytoplankton is essential, especially when it comes to understanding the effects of global warming or possible carbon-removal initiatives. The ability to track phytoplankton has largely depended on space satellites observing the sea surface. Yet, phytoplankton can grow below the surface where satellites cannot detect them, leaving a significant gap in how we monitor one of Earth's most important primary producers, which are organisms that carry out photosynthesis and form the base of the food web.

Researchers at Dalhousie University are changing that with the help of a growing global network of underwater robots known as Biogeochemical-Argo floats. These devices travel below the ocean's surface and measure phytoplankton where satellites cannot. As part of the BGC-Argo program, the floats are deployed across the globe in an international effort to monitor the ocean's biology, geology and chemistry.

Scientists have no direct evidence for what came before the breakdown of electroweak unification (when electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force ceased to be combined). At such high energies and early times, we can only stare at the mystery of the Big Bang. So what does theory suggest?

When we go backwards in time through the history of the cosmos, the distances and volumes shrink, while the average energy density grows. At the Big Bang, distances and volumes drop to zero, all parts of the universe fall on top of each other and the energy density of the universe becomes infinite. Our mathematical equations, which describe the evolution of space and the expansion of the cosmos, become infested by zeros and infinities and stop making sense.

We call this a singularity.

Mars may have been habitable much more recently than thought

Evidence suggests Mars could very well have been teeming with life billions of years ago. Now cold, dry, and stripped of what was once a potentially protective magnetic field, the red planet is a kind of forensic scene for scientists investigating whether Mars was indeed once habitable, and if so, when.

Source :

Weak magnetism of Martian impact basins may reflect cooling in a reversing dynamo

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51092-4

Using a variety of testing techniques and historical reference works, the researchers found what they describe as evidence that the remains in Tomb I belong to Philip II, Alexander's father. Those in Tomb II belong to Alexander's half-brother Philip III, and the remains in Tomb II are those of Alexander IV, Alexander's son, who died while still in his teens.

Perhaps most intriguing about the work, however, is the purple and white tunic found along with the remains in Tomb II

By testing via gas chromatography and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, the researchers determined that the tunic was made of cotton and had been dyed using a purple color that was only allowed for the elite.

They note also that the tunic was featured in a frieze in Tomb II by a hunter identified as Alexander. Also, the tunic was found near a scepter, oak wreath and diadem, all made of gold, which are believed to have a possible link with ancient Persia, and by extension, to Alexander.

The research team was not able to explain why the tunic and other gold materials associated with Alexander the Great were left in the tomb, though they suspect it might have had something to do with Philip III being crowned king when Alexander died.

A new article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals the unprecedented ability for reverse development in a ctenophore, also called comb jelly. The findings suggest that life cycle plasticity in animals might be more common than previously thought.

Animal life cycles typically follow a familiar pattern of decline in countless variations: they are born, grow, reproduce and die, giving way to the next generation. Only a few species are able to deviate from this general principle, the best-known example being the "immortal jellyfish" Turritopsis dohrnii, which can revert from an adult medusa back to a polyp. This elusive group of animals with flexible life cycles now includes the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi.

The work challenges our understanding of early animal development and body plans, opening new avenues for the study of life cycle plasticity and rejuvenation. The fact that we have found a new species that uses this peculiar 'time-travel machine' raises fascinating questions about how spread this capacity is across the animal tree of life.

OP: @mojo@aus.social

Marine biologists found a Greenland shark reaching 500 years in age, surpassing the previous record held by a 211-year-old bowhead whale.

Imagine discovering a creature that could be as old as 500 years, swimming in the depths of the ocean. This is exactly what you find with the Greenland shark, a species now recognized as the longest-lived vertebrate in the world.

An international team of paleobiologists have found that the sinuses of ocean-dwelling relatives of modern-day crocodiles prevented them from evolving into deep divers like whales and dolphins.

A new paper published today in Royal Society Open Science suggests that thalattosuchians, which lived at the time of the dinosaurs, were stopped from exploring the deep due to their large snout sinuses.

Whales and dolphins (cetaceans) evolved from land-dwelling mammals to become fully aquatic over the course of around 10 million years. During this time, their bone-enclosed sinuses reduced and they developed sinuses and air sacs outside of their skulls.

This would have alleviated increases in pressure during deeper dives, allowing them to reach depths of hundreds (dolphins) and thousands (whales) of meters without damaging their skulls.

An ancient temple made by Arabian immigrants from the Nabataean culture has finally been found off the Italian coast

Archaeologists have discovered ancient altars and inscribed marble slabs submerged along the Italian coast near Naples. The finds are likely the remains of a 2,000-year-old temple built by immigrants from Nabataea, an ancient kingdom on the Arabian Peninsula whose rock-carved "Treasury" featured in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."

However, the elaborate temple was later buried with a mix of concrete and broken pottery, possibly due to foreign traders leaving the area, according to a study published Sept. 12 in the journal Antiquity.

From a research perspective, the whole visual being of jumping spiders really excited me. They have eight eyes and two really big ones that are forward facing. They totally hunt like cats. So they will stalk their prey and pounce on it. And when something is moving and jumping, spider will turn towards it to investigate. You get that feeling of the spider is actually looking right back at you, and no other spider will do it.

For hundreds of years, people have looked at them and studied them, but obviously it's the times where we tend to not look at our animals that the interesting stuff happens. For example, when they're sleeping.

Medieval people have a reputation for being superstitious – and many of the supernatural phenomena found in the pages of medieval chronicles, miracle stories and romances are still alive in modern culture. Think ghosts, werewolves, demons, vampires, fairies and witches. But while (almost all) people today regard these beings as entirely fictional, many medieval people believed in them.

For the 13th-century English priest Layamon, it was elves (alven) who gave King Arthur magical gifts and who, in the form of beautiful women, carried him away to the mythical island of Avalun to heal. However, Layamon was careful to say that this was the belief of “the Britons” (Celtic people), which he was simply recording.

While tales of abduction by fairies were sometimes dismissed as delusions, stories of saints’ miracles and natural marvels were usually accepted as true.

A particularly sensational example was recorded in the Life of St Modwenna (an early Irish princess and abbess), written by the abbot Geoffrey of Burton circa 1120-1150. In his account, two tenants of Burton Abbey stirred up a violent feud between the abbot and Count Roger the Poitevin. The troublemakers died suddenly and were buried in haste, but apparently reappeared at sunset carrying their own coffins, before transforming into terrifying animals.

These revenants (spirits or animated corpses) reportedly brought death to the village – only three people were left alive. When the graves of the runaways were opened, they were found to be bloodstained but intact. A formal apology to the abbey and the saint was followed by ritual dismembering of these corpses and burning of their hearts. This apparently led to the expulsion of an evil spirit and the recovery of the surviving peasants.

Many of the creatures found in bestiaries (medieval encyclopedias of animals both real and mythological) fitted here, such as dragons, unicorns and basilisks.

Dragons and unicorns remain popular fantasy characters today, but basilisks are less well known – although a giant one once proved a fearsome opponent for Harry Potter. Basilisks were said to be so poisonous that their scent, their fiery breath and even their gaze could kill. They were attested not only by bestiaries but by the Roman philosopher and botanist Pliny in his book Natural History (circa AD77). They were found in the province of Cyrene, in modern Libya.

The exact mechanisms of the End Triassic Extinction have long been debated, but most prominent: Carbon dioxide surfaced by the eruptions built up over many millennia, raising temperatures to unsustainable levels for many creatures, and acidifying the oceans.

But a new study says the opposite: cold, not warmth, was the main culprit. The study presents evidence that instead of stretching over hundreds of thousands of years, the first pulses of lava that ended the Triassic were stupendous events lasting less than a century each. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In this condensed time frame, sunlight-reflecting sulfate particles were spewed into the atmosphere, cooling the planet and freezing many of its inhabitants. Gradually rising temperatures in an environment that was hot to begin with—atmospheric carbon dioxide in the late Triassic was already three times today's level—may have finished the job later on, but it was volcanic winters that did the most damage, say the researchers.

Conclusions

While Neandertals and Homo sapiens share many aspects of their material culture to the level that they cannot be distinguished, when it comes to burials the picture is more complicated. The two species share some funerary practices such as grave goods, but they differ in the location of the graves (caves vs. cave terrace/rock shelter), usage of rocks and MLP (Neandertals) and symbolic remains near the graves (ochre and shells; Homo sapiens).

Interplanetary trips between Earth and Mars will expose astronauts to harmful levels of radiation and require a large amount of air, water, and other resources. Good news: there are asteroids on orbits that already make the journey between Earth and Mars, or Earth and Venus, coming relatively close to each planet at various points. A new paper has found asteroids that could serve as ferries, keeping astronauts safe from space weather while traveling between worlds.

Simon Holland