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BBC News
a day ago
- General
- BBC News
BBC Learning English - Learning English from the News / Octopuses and fish work together
() ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ The story Scientists have discovered fish and octopuses that work together to hunt for food. During dives in the red sea, a team of scientists filmed octopuses and fish for 120 hours. They found that octopuses will sometimes punch fish that aren't working as part of the team. Experts want to study the underwater behaviour more to find out whether octopuses can remember certain fish who have been bad teammates in the past. News headlines Octopuses and fish caught on camera hunting as a team Nature Octopus packs a punch to direct hunting groups Cosmos, Australia Fish join forces with octopuses to hunt but get a sucker punch if they slack off The Times, UK Key words and phrases caught on camera discovered doing something through a photo or video recording The dogs were caught on camera chewing the sofa while their owner was out. packs a punch has a lot of power or effect I really want my wedding speech to pack a punch and make everyone laugh. slack off stop working hard I know you hate your job, but you can't slack off every day. You'll get fired! Next If you like learning English from the news, click here
The Guardian
a day ago
- General
- The Guardian
Many of Dead Sea scrolls may be older than thought, experts say
Many of the Dead Sea scrolls could be older than previously thought, with some biblical texts dating from the time of their original authors, researchers say. The first of the ancient scrolls were discovered in the caves of Qumran in the Judean desert by Bedouin shepherds in the mid-20th century. The manuscripts range from legal documents to parts of the Hebrew Bible, and are thought to date from around the third century BCE to the second century CE. Now researchers have used artificial intelligence to glean fresh insights into the dates of individual scrolls – findings experts suggest could challenge ideas about when, where and by whom they were produced. 'It's like a time machine. So we can shake hands with these people from 2,000 years ago, and we can put them in time much better now, said Prof Mladen Popović, first author of the research from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. While some scrolls were radiocarbon dated in the 1990s, Popović said scholars did not tackle the problem of castor oil contamination – a substance applied in the 1950s to help experts read the manuscripts, but which could skew results. In addition, many of the scrolls had only been dated by handwriting analysis. Writing in the journal Plos One, the team report how they attempted radiocarbon dating of 30 samples from different manuscripts found at four sites and thought to span five centuries. Crucially, the team first cleaned the samples to remove the castor oil contamination. The researchers successfully radiocarbon-dated 27 samples, finding that while two were younger than handwriting analysis had suggested, many were older. Among other findings, the researchers discovered two different writing styles, known as Hasmonean and Herodian scripts, coexisted for a much longer period than previously thought, while a sample from a manuscript called 4Q114 – which contains verses from the book of Daniel – was older than traditional palaeography had suggested. 'It was previously dated to the late second century BCE, a generation after the author of the Book of Daniel. Now, with our study we move back in time contemporary to that author,' said Popović. The team then used a type of AI known as machine learning to build a model they called Enoch – a nod to a biblical figure associated with scientific knowledge. The team trained Enoch by feeding it 62 digital images of ink traces from 24 of the radiocarbon dated manuscripts, together with the carbon-14 dates. They then verified the model by showing Enoch a further 13 images from the same manuscripts. In 85% of cases the model produced ages that tallied with the radiocarbon dates, and in many cases produced a smaller range of probable dates than obtained from radiocarbon dating alone. 'What we have created is a very robust tool that is empirically based – based on physics and on geometry,' said Popović. When Enoch was presented with images from 135 undated manuscripts it had not previously seen, it realistically dated 79% of them – as judged by expert palaeographers. Popović added those deemed unrealistic might have had problematic data, such as poor quality images. The system has already produced new insights including that a copy of the biblical book Ecclesiastes dates from the time of the book's presumed author. Popović said Enoch meant the age of further scrolls could now be uncovered without radiocarbon dating – a process that requires the destruction of small samples. 'There are more than 1,000 Dead Sea scrolls manuscripts so our study is a first but significant step, opening a door unto history with new possibilities for research,' he said. Prof emerita Joan Taylor of King's College London, said the results would have a major impact on Qumran studies. 'These results mean that most of the manuscripts found in the caves near Qumran would not have been written at the site of Qumran, which was not occupied until later,' she said. However, Dr Matthew Collins of the University of Chester cautioned that radiocarbon dating only shed light on the age of the parchment, not when it was written on, while there were also questions about how stylistically representative the small number of training samples were for different periods in time. 'Overall, this is an important and welcome study, and one which may provide us with a significant new tool in our armoury for dating these texts,' he said. 'Nevertheless, it's one that we should adopt with caution, and in careful conjunction with other evidence.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
A Super-Tiny Star Gave Birth to a Giant Planet And We Don't Know How
A giant conundrum has been found orbiting a teeny tiny red dwarf star just a fifth of the size of the Sun. Such small stars were thought to be incapable of producing giant planets. But there, in its orbit, appears to be unmistakable evidence of an absolute unit: a gas giant around the size of Saturn. TOI-6894b, as the exoplanet is named, has 86 percent of the radius of Jupiter. At just 23 percent of the radius and 21 percent of the mass of the Sun, its parent TOI-6894 is the smallest star yet around which a giant world has been found. "I was very excited by this discovery," says astrophysicist Edward Bryant of the University of Warwick in the UK, who led the large international research team. "We did not expect planets like TOI-6894b to be able to form around stars this low-mass. This discovery will be a cornerstone for understanding the extremes of giant planet formation." Planets are born from the material that's left over from the formation processes of its host star. Stars form when a dense clump of material in a cloud of gas and dust collapses under gravity. Material from that cloud spools around the spinning protostar in a disk that feeds the star's growth; when the star is large enough to push the material away with its stellar wind, growth stops. The remaining material is what makes planets. The dust clumps together, gradually building worlds that end up orbiting the star. Here's the thing, though. The amount of material in the disk is thought to be proportional to the mass of the star. The reason tiny red dwarf stars shouldn't be able to make giant planets is because there just oughtn't be enough material to do so. Nevertheless, these strange, 'impossible' systems show up from time to time, suggesting not just that giant planets can form around tiny stars, but that the process is not all that uncommon. We don't have a good handle on just how common it is, so Bryant and his team embarked on a mission to scour TESS data for clues. "I originally searched through TESS observations of more than 91,000 low-mass red-dwarf stars looking for giant planets," he says. "Then, using observations taken with one of the world's largest telescopes, ESO's VLT, I discovered TOI-6894b, a giant planet transiting the lowest mass star known to date to host such a planet." Exoplanets are usually found via a technique known as the transit method. When an exoplanet orbiting a star passes between us, the observers, and the star, that star's light dims minutely. Astronomers can determine the presence of an exoplanet by looking for periodic dips in the star's light. It's usually a tiny signal that takes quite a bit of analysis to find. When the researchers looked at TOI-6894, they found its light dimming by an absolutely whopping 17 percent. According to the team's observations of the transits, that would make the diameter of the star about 320,000 kilometers (200,000 miles), while the exoplanet is around 120,000 kilometers across. Follow-up observations to see how much this giant exoplanet's gravity affects the orbital motion of the star revealed the mass of TOI-6894b. It's just 17 percent of the mass of Jupiter, suggesting an exoplanet atmosphere that is light and fluffy. This is exciting for a few reasons. Because the exoplanet has such deep transits, it's a perfect candidate for atmosphere study. During those transits, some of the star's light filters through the diffuse atmosphere. As it does so, it can become altered by the atoms and molecules therein, allowing scientists to literally see what TOI-6894b is made of. A team of astronomers has already applied for time with JWST to perform these atmospheric studies. Because the exoplanet is quite cool (temperature wise, but also just in general), they expect to find a lot of methane. "This system provides a new challenge for models of planet formation, and it offers a very interesting target for follow-up observations to characterize its atmosphere," says astrophysicist Andrés Jordán of the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics in Chile. Hopefully, these studies will also shed some light on how TOI-6894b formed. There are two scenarios astronomers prefer for gas giants: a gradual accumulation of material from the bottom up, or the direct collapse of an instability in the protoplanetary disk. Based on the team's observations, neither scenario quite works. More detail on the composition of TOI-6894b could help tease out which is the more likely pathway for the formation of giant worlds orbiting tiny stars. "It's an intriguing discovery. We don't really understand how a star with so little mass can form such a massive planet!" says astrophysicist Vincent Van Eylen of University College London. "This is one of the goals of the search for more exoplanets. By finding planetary systems different from our Solar System, we can test our models and better understand how our own Solar System formed." The discovery has been published in Nature Astronomy. Water Discovered Around a Young, Sun-Like Star For First Time June's Full Moon Will Be The Lowest in The Sky For Decades. Here's Why. The Milky Way Might Not Crash Into The Andromeda Galaxy After All
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Science
- News.com.au
AI robot developed to play badminton
A Swiss-led team has developed an AI-legged robot which can play badminton against humans. The Robot uses reinforcement learning, where it learns by trying different actions to make better decisions. The AI utilises vision, movement, arm control, and a perception noise model trained on real-world camera data to maintain consistent performance. It can accurately predict a shuttlecock's trajectory and navigate the game area.
Washington Post
2 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
After 60 years, the search for a missing plane in Lake Superior remains fruitless
Experts searching for plane wreckage in Michigan's Lake Superior turned up found logs and rocks on the bottom but no debris from an aircraft that crashed nearly 60 years ago carrying three people on a scientific assignment. A team from Michigan Technological University returned last week by boat to get closer to 16 targets that appeared on sonar last fall , more than 200 feet (61 meters) below the surface of the vast lake. The crew used side-scan sonar and other remote technology.
