Latest news with #Caltech
Fox News
3 days ago
- Health
- Fox News
Swallow this pill to learn about your gut and health
The future of gut health monitoring has arrived, thanks to researchers at the California Institute of Technology. Caltech's new invention, PillTrek, is a wireless smart capsule for gut health monitoring that delivers real-time insights from inside your gastrointestinal tract. This swallowable device promises to make invasive procedures a thing of the past, offering convenience and continuous data that traditional methods simply cannot match. PillTrek stands out because it combines miniature size with advanced technology. The capsule measures only 7 millimeters in diameter and 25 millimeters in length, making it smaller than most capsule endoscopes. Despite its tiny size, PillTrek contains a suite of sensors that can detect electrolytes, metabolites, glucose, hormones such as serotonin and dopamine, pH, ionic strength and temperature. The design allows doctors to swap out sensors based on the specific biomarkers they need to monitor, making PillTrek a flexible and powerful diagnostic tool. The capsule transmits data wirelessly as it moves through the digestive system, providing real-time updates on a patient's gut health. Unlike endoscopy or CT scans, PillTrek does not require hospital visits or recovery time. Its low-power electronics enable it to operate for extended periods, delivering continuous monitoring that traditional methods cannot provide. Scientists now understand that the gastrointestinal tract influences far more than just digestion. The gut plays a critical role in hormone production, immune function and even mental health. Monitoring gut biomarkers helps identify conditions such as metabolic syndrome, which increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes, as well as inflammation and hormonal imbalances. Traditional diagnostic methods like biopsies and fecal analysis are invasive, costly, and do not offer real-time results. PillTrek's wireless smart capsule for gut health monitoring changes this landscape by providing immediate, actionable data from inside the body. Caltech's team developed PillTrek by leveraging breakthroughs in sensor materials and electrochemical measurement techniques. The capsule's reconfigurable design means that doctors can adapt it to monitor new biomarkers as medical science advances. Researchers tested PillTrek in animal models, successfully measuring pH, temperature, glucose and serotonin levels in real time. The capsule's sensors are inexpensive and mass-producible, making this technology accessible for widespread clinical use. The Caltech team continues to refine PillTrek, aiming to make it even smaller and more energy efficient. Future versions may use wireless power transfer and next-generation electronics, extending the capsule's lifespan and expanding its medical applications. As technology advances, PillTrek could become a standard tool for diagnosing and managing chronic GI conditions. While PillTrek offers exciting possibilities for non-invasive, real-time gut health monitoring, it also raises important questions. Some patients and healthcare professionals may have concerns about the safety of ingesting electronic devices, even if they are small and designed for medical use. Potential issues include the risk of the capsule getting stuck, allergic reactions to materials, or unforeseen interactions with other medical conditions. Data privacy is another consideration. As PillTrek transmits sensitive health information wirelessly, robust security measures are essential to protect patient data from unauthorized access. Additionally, long-term studies are needed to fully understand any potential side effects or complications. As with any new medical technology, regulatory approval and thorough clinical testing will play a crucial role in ensuring PillTrek's safety and effectiveness for widespread use. Breakthroughs like PillTrek signal a new era in non-invasive, real-time gut health monitoring. This wireless smart capsule for gut health monitoring offers doctors and patients an unprecedented look inside the digestive system, making diagnosis and treatment more precise and less invasive than ever before. The future of personalized medicine could soon be as simple as swallowing a pill. If you could track your gut health in real time by swallowing a smart capsule, would you? Let us know by writing us at Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you'll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide - free when you join my Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Science
- Daily Mirror
Jupiter was once massive enough to hold 2,000 Earths says research
Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System, is 11 times wider than Earth, and has a mass 2.5 times greater than all of the rest of the planets combined Astronomers have made an astonishing discovery that Jupiter, the biggest planet of our solar system, was once so colossal it could have enveloped 2,000 Earths. Jupiter takes the crown as the most ancient planet in our system, having emerged from the cosmic detritus that remained after the Sun's birth 4.6 billion years ago. The gas giant's girth is a staggering 11 times that of Earth, which NASA likens to comparing a grape to a basketball in terms of size. Indeed, Jupiter's mass is a hefty 2.5 times that of all other planets in the solar system put together. Yet, fresh research has unveiled that Jupiter's past form was even more immense than its current state – complete with a far mightier magnetic field. "Our ultimate goal is to understand where we come from, and pinning down the early phases of planet formation is essential to solving the puzzle," explained Caltech's planetary science professor Konstantin Batygin. "This brings us closer to understanding how not only Jupiter but the entire Solar System took shape." To unravel the mysteries of Jupiter's growth and subsequent shrinkage, astronomers Batygin and Fred Adams from the University of Michigan studied the planet's diminutive moons, Amalthea and Thebe, reports the Manchester Evening News. With a tally of 95 known moons, Jupiter ranks second in the solar system's moon count. It trails behind Saturn's impressive collection of 274. Amalthea and Thebe are the tiniest and closest companions among Jupiter's four major Galilean moons. Researchers have delved into the orbital dance of Jupiter's moons to deduce the gas giant's past enormity, revealing that a mere 3.8 million years after the Solar System's first solids took shape, Jupiter was already bulking up to 2 to 2.5 times its present mass. They also discovered that back then, its magnetic field was a whopping 50 times more potent than it is now. "It felt remarkable that two relatively minor moons provided such clear evidence of Jupiter's early state," Batygin confessed to "The real excitement was achieving this result independently of complex accretion models that depend on a series of assumptions." Adams marvelled: "It's astonishing that even after 4.5 billion years, enough clues remain to let us reconstruct Jupiter's physical state at the dawn of its existence." So why has Jupiter been on a slimming trend? The study suggests that Jupiter's once mighty magnetic field yanked in material from its surroundings, beefing up the planet by approximately 1.2 to 2.4 Jupiter masses every million years. But as the cosmic buffet ran out, Jupiter's own gravitational pull made it contract, thus becoming more compact and spinning up its rotation rate. Jupiter continues to gradually shrink even today. As its surface and core cool down, the core compresses and heats up, causing the planet to slowly bleed energy. This intriguing research has been detailed in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Ravenous 'vampire' stars may use cosmic accomplices to help devour stellar victims
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers have been aware of cosmic vampires, dead stars that hungrily strip plasma from victim stars, for some time. New research suggests that some of these cosmic fiends could have accomplices, Renfields to their Draculas, in the form of a third star in their systems, facilitating their fateful encounter. These systems are known as cataclysmic variables, and their occupant vampire stars are white dwarfs, the type of stellar remnant that stars with masses around that of the sun leave behind when they die. The matter stolen from their victim stellar companions by these white dwarfs piles up on the dead stars' surfaces, eventually causing them to go supernova and be obliterated. Though the endings of cataclysmic variables are fairly well understood, this research suggests at least one new origin story. "Our results are revealing another formation channel for cataclysmic variables," California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researcher Kareem El-Badry said in a statement. "Sometimes, a lurking third star is key." The current consensus on cataclysmic variables is that they form when two stars are brought together by a "common envelope" of gas wrapped around them. This is known as "common envelope evolution." Eventually, one of these two stars swells up as a red giant, puffing out to up to 100 times its original size, swallowing its stellar companion. After this envelope causes these stars to spiral together, it is ejected. The red giant is now a stripped core called a white dwarf with a companion star close enough for the dead star to strip it of its outer layers. While many stars exist in binaries, triple-star systems are also common in the universe. That prompted El-Badry, Caltech graduate student Cheyanne Shariat, and their team to wonder how this process would play out for three stars. To investigate this, the duo turned to the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia. Before its recent retirement, Gaia tracked billions of stars to collect data that is allowing scientists to construct a detailed 3D map of our cosmic backyard. El-Badry and Shariat found 50 cataclysmic variables in triple-star systems in which two stars are closely partnered while a third orbits at a much wider distance. These results suggested to the duo that around 10% of cataclysmic variables are found in triple-star systems, a percentage that would be lower if lurking third stars had no role in creating cataclysmic variables. To confirm this connection, the astronomers ran 2,000 simulations of hypothetical triple-star systems, watching the gravitational interactions between the three stars as the systems evolved. In 400 of the systems, cataclysmic variables were born without the common envelope phase occurring. In that 20% sample of the total simulations, it was the third star that "torqued" the main binary, forcing them together. "The gravity of the third star causes the binary stars to have a super eccentric orbit, and this forces the companion star closer to the white dwarf," Shariat said. "Tidal forces dissipate energy and shrink and circularize the orbit. The star doesn't have to spiral in through the common envelope." But that wasn't all. In 60% of the simulated systems, a common envelope phase did begin, and it was triggered by the third star. In the remaining 20% of the simulations, the common envelope formed in the standard way without the third star contributing. Adjusting their data to account for a more realistic population of stars, reflective of the Milky Way, and including known cataclysmic variables, the duo predicted 40% of cataclysmic variables form in triple systems. That is four times higher than the Gaia sample. The team reasons that this is because many third stars in these systems were either too difficult to see or have been ejected from the system. Related Stories: — 'This is the holy grail of theoretical physics.' Is the key to quantum gravity hiding in this new way to make black holes? — Tiny 'primordial' black holes created in the Big Bang may have rapidly grown to supermassive sizes — A 'primordial' black hole may zoom through our solar system every decade The simulations performed by El-Badry and Shariat also allowed the team to predict the type of triple-star systems more likely to form cataclysmic variables. They found white dwarfs were more likely to feed on a stellar companion with the assistance of a third star when the system starts with the third star separated by over 100 times the distance between Earth and the sun. Indeed, Gaia data did seem to show that triple systems with cataclysmic variables do indeed tend to display wider orbits. "For the past 50 years, people were using the spiral-in common-envelope evolution model to explain cataclysmic variable formation," El-Badry concluded. "Nobody had noticed before that this was largely happening in triples!" The team's research was published in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists have detected the largest black hole merger yet. What it is and why it matters
It was a bump in the night. A big one. On Nov. 23, 2023, waves from a colossal merger of two black holes reached Earth and were picked up by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration, a group that detects these sort of mergers through gravitational waves. And these black holes were chunky, coming in at 100 and 140 times the mass of the sun. But the final merger produced something even more impressive: another black hole that is more than 225 times the mass of the sun, astronomers revealed today. Astronomers are excited about this merger because it's unusual. Most of these kinds of mergers detected thus far through gravitational waves have been between 10 and 40 times the sun, said Sophie Bini, a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech who is part of the group. WATCH | Scientists detect gravitational waves for 1st time: "We detected the first gravitational wave 10 years ago, and since then, we have already found more than 300 events. So it's really an exciting [time]," Bini said. "But this event in particular is very interesting because it's the most massive one." Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that can only be detected by extremely sensitive instruments, like the ones from the collaboration, which are located across the United States, Japan and Italy. The first gravitational wave was detected in 2015 and announced by astronomers in 2016. The other interesting discovery of this detection — called GW231123 — is that the pair appear to have been spinning extremely quickly. "The black holes appear to be spinning very rapidly — near the limit allowed by [Albert] Einstein's theory of general relativity," Charlie Hoy at the University of Portsmouth said in a statement. "That makes the signal difficult to model and interpret. It's an excellent case study for pushing forward the development of our theoretical tools." Understanding black holes Not all black holes are created equal. There are supermassive black holes that can be tens of thousands to billions of times the sun's mass and lie at the centre of galaxies. The Milky Way, for example, has a black hole at its centre, called Sagittarius A* — or Sgr A* — that is roughly four million times the mass of the sun. Then there are stellar-mass black holes, which can be from a few times the mass of the sun to tens of times the mass. Or, some argue, a hundred of times its mass. These form when a massive star runs out of fuel and explodes in a spectacular fashion, an event called a supernova. But then there are those that lie somewhere in between the two, called intermediate black holes. Finding these in-betweens has proved difficult for astronomers. This new merger lies within what astronomers call the "mass gap" between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes. Gobbling up stars It's not quite clear why these two black holes were so much heavier than what astronomers have previously detected. One theory is that each of the pair itself was the result of two black holes merging. But that's not the only theory. Priya Natarajan, professor of physics and the chair of astronomy at Yale University, studies supermassive black holes. Though these two black holes are piddly compared to the ones she studies, she says she is excited about the recent detection. "I think this is super exciting for two reasons. First is the heaviness of the individual black holes before they actually merge," said Natarajan, who was not involved with the findings. "So the fact is that, you know, normal stellar processes that give you these stellar-mass remnant black holes, it's pretty hard to imagine, like, getting to 100 and 140 in one go." But she has another theory on how these two unusual black holes could have formed. In 2014, she co-authored a paper that suggested black holes could grow rapidly in the early universe by first going supernova and then by gobbling up stars in a nascent star cluster, à la Pac-Man. More gas means larger black holes. But she says in 2021, she realized this could happen later in the more recent universe, as well. "The only thing that is different is there's not as much gas," she said. "So I actually showed that if there's not that much gas, you could start with something that's one or ten times the mass of the sun. It could maybe reach 100.… If there's little more gas, it could be 1,000." So this new finding could open up a new avenue for cosmologists like herself to explore. The next thing she'd like to see is a better way to locate these mergers. For the recent detection, there is an estimate that it occurred anywhere from two to 13 billion light years away. Now, why are these findings important? It's about the human connection with the universe, Natarajan said. "I think from the moment that as Neanderthals we stood upright and we were able to look at the night sky, we were fascinated with the regularity of the night sky, as well as the sort of cosmic drama that's going on, right? You see stars exploding, you see eclipses, you see night and day, you see seasonal changes. And I think it speaks to a fundamental curiosity that we as humans have," she said. "I think that knowing our place in the universe is a question that's deeply fundamental to us. And it always has been."
CBC
6 days ago
- Science
- CBC
Scientists have detected the largest black hole merger yet. What it is and why it matters
It was a bump in the night. A big one. On Nov. 23, 2023, waves from a colossal merger of two black holes reached Earth and were picked up by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration, a group that detects these sort of mergers through gravitational waves. And these black holes were chunky, coming in at 100 and 140 times the mass of the sun. But the final merger produced something even more impressive: another black hole that is more than 225 times the mass of the sun, astronomers revealed today. Astronomers are excited about this merger because it's unusual. Most of these kinds of mergers detected thus far through gravitational waves have been between 10 and 40 times the sun, said Sophie Bini, a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech who is part of the group. WATCH | Scientists detect gravitational waves for 1st time: Scientists detect gravitational waves for 1st time 9 years ago Duration 0:51 "We detected the first gravitational wave 10 years ago, and since then, we have already found more than 300 events. So it's really an exciting [time]," Bini said. "But this event in particular is very interesting because it's the most massive one." Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that can only be detected by extremely sensitive instruments, like the ones from the collaboration, which are located across the United States, Japan and Italy. The first gravitational wave was detected in 2015 and announced by astronomers in 2016. The other interesting discovery of this detection — called GW231123 — is that the pair appear to have been spinning extremely quickly. "The black holes appear to be spinning very rapidly — near the limit allowed by [Albert] Einstein's theory of general relativity," Charlie Hoy at the University of Portsmouth said in a statement. "That makes the signal difficult to model and interpret. It's an excellent case study for pushing forward the development of our theoretical tools." Understanding black holes Not all black holes are created equal. There are supermassive black holes that can be tens of thousands to billions of times the sun's mass and lie at the centre of galaxies. The Milky Way, for example, has a black hole at its centre, called Sagittarius A* — or Sgr A* — that is roughly four million times the mass of the sun. Then there are stellar-mass black holes, which can be from a few times the mass of the sun to tens of times the mass. Or, some argue, a hundred of times its mass. These form when a massive star runs out of fuel and explodes in a spectacular fashion, an event called a supernova. But then there are those that lie somewhere in between the two, called intermediate black holes. Finding these in-betweens has proved difficult for astronomers. This new merger lies within what astronomers call the "mass gap" between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes. Gobbling up stars It's not quite clear why these two black holes were so much heavier than what astronomers have previously detected. One theory is that each of the pair itself was the result of two black holes merging. But that's not the only theory. Priya Natarajan, professor of physics and the chair of astronomy at Yale University, studies supermassive black holes. Though these two black holes are piddly compared to the ones she studies, she says she is excited about the recent detection. "I think this is super exciting for two reasons. First is the heaviness of the individual black holes before they actually merge," said Natarajan, who was not involved with the findings. "So the fact is that, you know, normal stellar processes that give you these stellar-mass remnant black holes, it's pretty hard to imagine, like, getting to 100 and 140 in one go." But she has another theory on how these two unusual black holes could have formed. In 2014, she co-authored a paper that suggested black holes could grow rapidly in the early universe by first going supernova and then by gobbling up stars in a nascent star cluster, à la Pac-Man. More gas means larger black holes. But she says in 2021, she realized this could happen later in the more recent universe, as well. "The only thing that is different is there's not as much gas," she said. "So I actually showed that if there's not that much gas, you could start with something that's one or ten times the mass of the sun. It could maybe reach 100.… If there's little more gas, it could be 1,000." So this new finding could open up a new avenue for cosmologists like herself to explore. The next thing she'd like to see is a better way to locate these mergers. For the recent detection, there is an estimate that it occurred anywhere from two to 13 billion light years away. Now, why are these findings important? It's about the human connection with the universe, Natarajan said. "I think from the moment that as Neanderthals we stood upright and we were able to look at the night sky, we were fascinated with the regularity of the night sky, as well as the sort of cosmic drama that's going on, right? You see stars exploding, you see eclipses, you see night and day, you see seasonal changes. And I think it speaks to a fundamental curiosity that we as humans have," she said. "I think that knowing our place in the universe is a question that's deeply fundamental to us. And it always has been."
