Latest news with #RadboudUniversity
The Independent
6 days ago
- General
- The Independent
We still don't know how tickling works. More serious research is needed, say scientists
Scientists have developed a new method to investigate the long-standing mystery of how tickling works, an advance that could have big implications for our understanding of brain development. Humans have attempted to understand why we are so sensitive to tickling for over 2,000 years since the time of Socrates, but exactly how the brain processes such stimuli has remained a mystery. 'Socrates, Aristotle, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and Darwin theorised about tickling, but after two millennia of intense philosophical interest, experimentation remains scarce,' the researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands said their new study published in the journal Science Advances. Tickling, or gargalesis as it is scientifically known, involves a complex interplay of physical, social, neurological and developmental aspects rooted in evolution, the researchers argue. People with autism spectrum disorder, for example, have been found to perceive touches as more ticklish than others. Investigating this difference further could reveal clues to brain development in people with autism, the scientists say, but tickling in general remains 'relatively under-researched'. Earlier studies have shown that apes such as bonobos and gorillas, as well as rats, respond to ticklish touches, indicating that the process has an evolutionary significance. But understanding how tickling emerged has been made more difficult by the fact that the process is not clearly defined within the scientific community, says neuroscientist Konstantina Kilteni, lead author of the new study. For instance, there is a difference between when one tickles another person on the armpits with hands compared to tickling their back lightly with a feather. While scientists know more about the second feather-based stimulation, the first sensation is understudied, they say. Tickling is also one of the earliest triggers for laughter in human development, but it is unclear whether we laugh because we enjoy it. 'No theory satisfactorily explains why touch on some body areas feels more ticklish than on others or why some people are highly sensitive while others remain unresponsive,' the researchers wrote. To answer these questions better in a standardised setting, scientists have now set up a 'tickling lab' that contains a chair with a plate with two holes in it. In this set up, participants put their feet through the holes, and a mechanical stick tickles the soles of their feet. This ensures consistency: that every tickle experiment is carried out the same way. As participants experience tickling, neuroscientists record what happens in their brain, and also check other physical reactions like heart rate, sweating, breathing, or laughter and screaming. 'By incorporating this method of tickling into a proper experiment, we can take tickling research seriously. Not only will we be able to truly understand tickling, but also our brains,' scientists say. 'To conclude, the field will greatly benefit from a qualitative breakthrough, which can be achieved through research standardisation,' they wrote.
Time of India
19-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Will universe end far earlier than expected?
For most of the past generation, astronomy textbooks treated the cosmos as practically immortal. Students learned that after the last red dwarf flickered out, after the final black hole evaporated, darkness would stretch on for a number written with more than a hundred zeros. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now New research led by a group at Radboud University in the Netherlands asks us to erase most of those zeros. Their calculations show that the universe could finish its drawn-out fade after 'only' ten to the power of seventy-eight years. That still dwarfs every human timescale, yet within cosmology it represents a surprisingly quick goodbye. The revision starts with 's famous idea that are not completely black. According to , they emit tiny amounts of energy, lose mass, and eventually disappear. The Dutch team wondered whether any extremely dense, gravitationally bound object might share that fate. They applied the same mathematics to white dwarfs, which are the hot, Earth-sized cores that remain when sun-like stars exhaust their fuel. A white dwarf appears solid and inert, but the new paper argues that quantum fluctuations at its surface allow particles to leak away. Over unimaginableperiodse the entire star would evaporate, just as slowly and inevitably as a lake dries under the desert sun. Once white dwarfs are allowed to vanish, every late-stage forecast of must be compressed. Traditional models pictured those stellar remnants cooling into lightless 'black dwarfs' that wander the void forever. Take them out of the script, and the slowest actors exit much earlier, chopping hundreds of orders of magnitude from the final curtain call. Suddenly, the last sparks of matter are gon, not long after the last black hole, and the universe slides into an empty quantum haze with shocking speed—at least by cosmic accounting. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now While theorists digested that prospect, another group studying the large-scale expansion of space introduced a second, equally dramatic possibility. Data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument hint that dark energy, the mysterious force pushing galaxies apart, may itself be fading. If future surveys confirm the trend, the outward rush could eventually stall, reverse, and race toward a catastrophic 'Big Crunch. ' Such a collapse would end everything far sooner than either the black-hole timetable or the newly shortened evaporation clock. The evidence is still thin, but the mere suggestion stirs debate and underscores how fragile our grandest predictions remain. None of these scenarios changes life on Earth. Our Sun will still swell into a red giant in about five billion years. Long before any deep-time physics matters, continents will shift, oceans will boil, and perhaps our descendants or their machines will have moved elsewhere. Yet cosmologists care deeply because the ultimate fate of the universe tests whether quantum theory and gravity truly mesh. A single adjustment in the equations can shrink eternity, proving that seemingly untouchable numbers are only as sturdy as the assumptions beneath them. So, will the cosmos end in a graceful fade after ten to the seventy-eighth years, or will dark energy flip the sign on gravity and pull everything back in a fiery finale? No one knows yet. What the new work makes clear is that our picture of 'forever' is still a draft, and every fresh observation has the power to shorten or lengthen the longest story ever told.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists use Stephen Hawking theory to slash universe's life expectancy
Scientists have found that the universe's decay rate is much faster than previously thought. A team of three scientists from Radboud University, Netherlands, calculated how long it would take for black holes, neutron stars, and other objects to "evaporate" via a process similar to Hawking radiation. Their research, which builds on previous work by the same team, shows that the last stellar remnants of the universe will take roughly 1078 years to perish. That is much shorter than the 101100 years scientists previously calculated. The team behind the new calculations used Hawking radiation as a basis for their research. In 1975, British theoretical physicist Professor Stephen Hawking theorized that some material escapes the event horizon of black holes. This phenomenon, explained via quantum mechanics, ultimately meant that black holes slowly decay into particles and radiation. This contradicted Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, which states that black holes do not decay. The new research findings, carried out by black hole expert Heino Falcke, quantum physicist Michael Wondrak, and mathematician Walter van Suijlekom, were published in a paper in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. The new research is a follow-up to a 2023 paper by the same team. In that paper, they showed that some of the universe's most ancient objects, including black holes and neutron stars, can also evaporate via a process akin to Hawking radiation. After publishing that paper, the team researched how long this process could take. Based on their calculations, they believe the end of the universe is roughly 1078 years away. That is, if only Hawking-like radiation is taken into consideration. To reach that number, the team calculated how long it would take a white dwarf star, the most persistent celestial body in the universe, to decay via Hawking-like radiation. Previous studies have suggested white dwarfs could have a lifetime of 101100 years. In a press release, Lead author Heino Falcke said: "So the ultimate end of the universe comes much sooner than expected, but fortunately it still takes a very long time." Though Hawking's radiation theory specifically applies to Black Holes, the team from Radboud University believes the process applies to other objects with a gravitational field. Their calculations showed that the evaporation time of an object depends only on its density. Although it shows our universe may have a shorter lifetime than previously believed, the research highlights what a dizzyingly long time the universe could last – the 1078 in their calculations amounts to 1 and 78 zeroes. The team also performed a few extra tongue-in-cheek calculations. They found that the Moon and a human would take 1090 years to evaporate via Hawking-like radiation. However, the team believes their research could shed new light on the cosmos. Walter van Suijlekom noted: "By asking these kinds of questions and looking at extreme cases, we want to understand the theory better, and perhaps one day, we will unravel the mystery of Hawking radiation."
Ammon
17-05-2025
- Science
- Ammon
Scientists reveal exact date universe will end: 'Sooner than we feared'
Ammon News - Scientists have discovered that the universe is decaying much faster than they thought, and have pinpointed exactly when it will perish. A team of researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands determined that all the stars in the universe will go dark in one quinvigintillion years. That's a one followed by 78 zeros. But this is a much shorter amount of time than the previous prediction of 10 to the power of 1,100 years, or a one followed by 1,100 zeros. The process they believe is driving the death of the universe is related to Hawking radiation, where black holes emit radiation as they gradually 'evaporate' into nothing. This was thought to be a phenomenon exclusive to black holes, but the researchers showed that things like neutron stars and white dwarfs can also evaporate similarly to black holes. Both neutron stars and white dwarfs are the final stage of a star's life cycle. Massive stars explode into supernovas and then collapse into neutron stars, whereas smaller stars like our sun devolve into white dwarfs. These 'dead' stars can persist for an extremely long time. But according to the researchers, they gradually dissipate and explode once they become too unstable. In other words, knowing how long it takes for a neutron star or a white dwarf to die helps scientists understand the maximum lifespan of the universe, because these will be the last stars to die out. Daily Mail
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
New research says our universe only has a quinvigintillion years left, so make ‘em good ones
The universe, everything in space and time, has a shorter life expectancy than previously thought. Previously believed to die at an estimated 10 to the power of 1,100 years, the universe is now believed to die at an estimated 10 to the power of 78 years, according to a new study from Radboud University, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics on Monday. For context, that's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 — or 1 quinvigintillion — years from now. 'The final end of the universe is coming much sooner than expected, but fortunately it still takes a very long time,' lead author of the study, Heino Falcke, professor of astrophysics at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told CBS News. Researchers looked closely at when white dwarf stars — when a star dies, creates a nebula and leaves behind its hot core — die, according to the study. They also looked at when larger stars die, causing a supernova and leaving behind small, dense cores that collapse on themselves and become black holes. The authors followed a principle of general relativity called Hawking radiation, named after famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, to determine when white dwarf stars could inevitably disintegrate. In roughly 1 quinvigintillion years, these white dwarf stars should decay at a point when no other matter from other galaxies exists in the universe. Well before that point, in 17 trillion years, most of the stars in the known universe will be extinguished before being reduced to white dwarf stars, Falcke told Live Science. The solar system's sun is expected to die much sooner than the rest of the universe, according to NASA. Five billion years from now, the sun's expected to become a red giant when it expels all of its hydrogen and increase in size, gobbling up the planets in the inner solar system, including Earth. The sun could then collapse on itself after another billion years and become a white dwarf. Video: Erupting volcanoes cause 'dancing' light show in space Massive solar flare erupts, causing radio blackouts across Earth Where will failed '70s Soviet probe land after it crashes back to Earth? Nobody knows Sorry, Pluto: The solar system could have a 9th planet after all, astronomers say Failed '70s-era Soviet spacecraft bound for Venus could soon crash back to Earth Read the original article on MassLive.
