Latest news with #scientists
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
A newly discovered exoplanet rekindles humanity's oldest question: Are we alone?
Child psychologists tell us that around the age of five or six, children begin to seriously contemplate the world around them. It's a glorious moment every parent recognizes—when young minds start to grasp the magnificence and mystery of the universe beyond their nurseries and bedrooms. 5 work-from-home purchases worth splurging for How to battle work intensification This 'Iron Dome' for mosquitoes shoots down bugs with lasers That wonderment—their very own 'aha' moments, and the questions they provoke—are what truly make us human. And this summer, thanks to both the scientific triumphs of astronomers and the creative feats of pop culture, we are reminded once again that curiosity is our most powerful gift. Remarkably, the profound questions asked by our youngest philosophers continue to echo throughout our lives, returning again and again as the most compelling of all inquiries. Earlier this summer, the James Webb Space Telescope—launched in 2021 and continually gathering data on planets beyond our solar system—identified a previously unknown exoplanet. What made this discovery particularly groundbreaking is that, unlike earlier exoplanets detected indirectly by observing the dimming of starlight, this one was directly imaged. Even more exciting: according to NASA, this new exoplanet—named CE Antliae and roughly 100 times the size of Earth—is, based on its average temperature, theoretically capable of sustaining habitable life. I find this moment thrilling for many reasons. First, I hold the deepest admiration for the brilliance of NASA scientists—and the researchers whose work they built upon—that made this discovery possible. Second, it serves as a powerful reminder of the essential role government plays in pushing the boundaries of knowledge. These physical frontiers also invite us to explore existential ones. The possibility of a habitable planet offers a momentary escape from the noise of the daily news cycle, and reopens a question that has captivated us since ancient times: Are we alone? Simply looking up at the night sky—a universal gift—places us in the company of Democritus, Epicurus, and later, the Persians, who speculated about extraterrestrial life as far back as 400 BCE. It's one of humanity's oldest questions, fueled by an innate curiosity that rarely yields immediate answers. Of course, we're far from confirming whether this exoplanet has its own version of Uber or inhabitants with built-in AI. Science operates on its own timeline. To have directly observed an exoplanet only five years after Webb's launch could be seen as astonishingly fast—or perhaps not, given the advanced tools now at our disposal, from machine learning to quantum computing. In today's attention economy, dominated by thumb-scrolling and short-form content, we risk losing sight of the long view that science requires. The rise of generative AI and its future successor, AGI, may well disrupt the pace of discovery. But even then, the scientific process will still demand patience and rigor. We must remember: it took nearly a century to confirm Einstein's theory of gravitational waves. The theory of continental drift was proposed in 1912, but not proven until the 1960s. Black holes were hypothesized in the early 1900s, yet the first image didn't arrive until 2019. One of the many reasons I advocate so strongly for STEM education is that children need to understand science as a process—a patient, layered accumulation of insight. Humanity's oldest question—'are we alone in the universe?'—likely won't be answered quickly. And even if it is, critical thinking and the scientific method remain essential. Yes, flashes of insight can transform history. But even those leaps must launch from a foundation of conventional wisdom. Science is a continuous journey of discovery—both awe-inspiring and, at times, unsettling. Movies and literature have long reflected our obsession with the unknown—from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact to Dune. This summer, Alien: Earth premieres. Reading about this reimagining of first contact, I couldn't help but think of CE Antliae and how science and art intersect. The discovery of a potentially habitable planet pushes us to reconsider what we define as 'science fiction.' There are many paths through which humanity seeks to understand its place in the universe. And we need both our most gifted scientists and our most imaginative artists to help us ask—and keep asking—the cosmic questions that first stirred our six-year-old minds and have never let go. This post originally appeared at to get the Fast Company newsletter:
RNZ News
5 hours ago
- Science
- RNZ News
A new way to identify pathogens
New Zealand farmers use well over 3,000 tonnes of pesticide annually. But a new genomic study has discovered a way to potentially cut that by 80%. Using DNA sequencing technology, Lincoln University scientists believe it's possible to stop mass applications and instead switch to a targeted approach. Currently the project - led by Lincoln University Associate Professor Dr Chris Winefield - is focusing on vineyards. Photo: Supplied - Chris Winefield
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Revealed: The bombshell new drug that could delay the menopause for years - or even eliminate it forever... but are you willing to put up with these side effects?
Whether women want it or not, they have little choice but to go through the menopause. Or do they? What if the menopause was something that could be delayed – or even eliminated altogether? That's what a handful of scientists believe could become a reality, with research teams worldwide exploring the various ways to achieve this. Menopause occurs around midlife, when the ovaries run out of functioning eggs – this leads to a natural decline in oestrogen levels, which starts a few years before the menopause during the perimenopausal period.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists find Uranus is surprisingly warm, heating up the case for a new planetary mission
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists have found that Uranus is emitting its own internal heat — even more than it receives from sunlight — and this discovery contradicts observations of the distant gas giant made by NASA's Voyager 2 probe nearly four decades ago. Scientists led by Xinyue Yang of the University of Houston analyzed decades of readings from spacecraft and computer models to find that Uranus emits 12.5% more internal heat than the amount of heat it receives from the sun. However, that amount is still far less than the internal heat of other outer solar system planets like Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, which emit 100% more heat than they get from the sun. The researchers behind this new study say Uranus' internal heat could help reveal the origins of the curious, tilted world. "This means it's still slowly losing leftover heat from its early history, a key piece of the puzzle that helps us understand its origins and how it has changed over time," Wang said in a statement. In 1986, the iconic Voyager 2 probe flew by Uranus while headed out of the solar system and into interstellar space. A good deal of what scientists understand about the seventh planet from the sun comes from that flyby, that found that Uranus does not reveal significant internal heat. But it turns out that we may have caught Uranus at a weird time, and some of the readings Voyager 2 collected could have been skewed by a surge in solar weather that occurred during its flyby of the planet. By reviewing a large set of archival data and combining that with computer models, researchers now believe the internal heat emitted by Uranus could imply a completely different internal structure or evolutionary history for the planet we thought we knew. Its believed that Uranus formed around 4.5 billion years ago along with the rest of the solar system, and NASA believes it formed closer to the sun before moving to the outer solar system around 0.5 billion years later. That story, however, is now called into question by these new findings. "From a scientific perspective, this study helps us better understand Uranus and other giant planets," Wang said in the statement. The researchers also believe this new understanding of Uranus' internal processes could help NASA and other agencies plan for missions to the distant planet. In 2022, the National Academy of Sciences flagged a mission concept known notionally as Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) as one of the highest-priority planetary science missions for the next decade. But even then, before massive budget uncertainty hit NASA and the science community in the wake of President Donald Trump's overhaul of U.S. government spending, scientists knew such an ambitious and expensive mission would be difficult to put into motion. "There are many hurdles to come — political, financial, technical — so we're under no illusion," Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist at the University of Leicester in the U.K. who participated in the decadal survey process, told in 2022 when the report was published. "We have about a decade to go from a paper mission to hardware in a launch fairing. There's no time to lose." Whether or not new research into Uranus helps boost support for such a mission, scientists are already hailing these new results as groundbreaking on their own. Study co-author Liming Li said the study of Uranus' internal heat not only helps us understand the distant, icy world better, but could also help inform studies of similar processes here on Earth, including our own changing climate. "By uncovering how Uranus stores and loses heat, we gain valuable insights into the fundamental processes that shape planetary atmospheres, weather systems and climate systems," Li said in the statement. "These findings help broaden our perspective on Earth's atmospheric system and the challenges of climate change." A study on Uranus' internal heat was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Experts ask where the center of the universe is
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. About a century ago, scientists were struggling to reconcile what seemed a contradiction in Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. Published in 1915, and already widely accepted worldwide by physicists and mathematicians, the theory assumed the universe was static – unchanging, unmoving and immutable. In short, Einstein believed the size and shape of the universe today was, more or less, the same size and shape it had always been. But when astronomers looked into the night sky at faraway galaxies with powerful telescopes, they saw hints the universe was anything but that. These new observations suggested the opposite – that it was, instead, expanding. Scientists soon realized Einstein's theory didn't actually say the universe had to be static; the theory could support an expanding universe as well. Indeed, by using the same mathematical tools provided by Einstein's theory, scientists created new models that showed the universe was, in fact, dynamic and evolving. I've spent decades trying to understand general relativity, including in my current job as a physics professor teaching courses on the subject. I know wrapping your head around the idea of an ever-expanding universe can feel daunting – and part of the challenge is overriding your natural intuition about how things work. For instance, it's hard to imagine something as big as the universe not having a center at all, but physics says that's the reality. First, let's define what's meant by "expansion." On Earth, "expanding" means something is getting bigger. And in regard to the universe, that's true, sort of. Expansion might also mean "everything is getting farther from us," which is also true with regard to the universe. Point a telescope at distant galaxies and they all do appear to be moving away from us. What's more, the farther away they are, the faster they appear to be moving. Those galaxies also seem to be moving away from each other. So it's more accurate to say that everything in the universe is getting farther away from everything else, all at once. This idea is subtle but critical. It's easy to think about the creation of the universe like exploding fireworks: Start with a big bang, and then all the galaxies in the universe fly out in all directions from some central point. But that analogy isn't correct. Not only does it falsely imply that the expansion of the universe started from a single spot, which it didn't, but it also suggests that the galaxies are the things that are moving, which isn't entirely accurate. It's not so much the galaxies that are moving away from each other – it's the space between galaxies, the fabric of the universe itself, that's ever-expanding as time goes on. In other words, it's not really the galaxies themselves that are moving through the universe; it's more that the universe itself is carrying them farther away as it expands. A common analogy is to imagine sticking some dots on the surface of a balloon. As you blow air into the balloon, it expands. Because the dots are stuck on the surface of the balloon, they get farther apart. Though they may appear to move, the dots actually stay exactly where you put them, and the distance between them gets bigger simply by virtue of the balloon's expansion. Now think of the dots as galaxies and the balloon as the fabric of the universe, and you begin to get the picture. Unfortunately, while this analogy is a good start, it doesn't get the details quite right either. Important to any analogy is an understanding of its limitations. Some flaws are obvious: A balloon is small enough to fit in your hand – not so the universe. Another flaw is more subtle. The balloon has two parts: its latex surface and its air-filled interior. These two parts of the balloon are described differently in the language of mathematics. The balloon's surface is two-dimensional. If you were walking around on it, you could move forward, backward, left, or right, but you couldn't move up or down without leaving the surface. Now it might sound like we're naming four directions here – forward, backward, left and right – but those are just movements along two basic paths: side to side and front to back. That's what makes the surface two-dimensional – length and width. The inside of the balloon, on the other hand, is three-dimensional, so you'd be able to move freely in any direction, including up or down – length, width and height. This is where the confusion lies. The thing we think of as the "center" of the balloon is a point somewhere in its interior, in the air-filled space beneath the surface. But in this analogy, the universe is more like the latex surface of the balloon. The balloon's air-filled interior has no counterpart in our universe, so we can't use that part of the analogy – only the surface matters. So asking, "Where's the center of the universe?" is somewhat like asking, "Where's the center of the balloon's surface?' There simply isn't one. You could travel along the surface of the balloon in any direction, for as long as you like, and you'd never once reach a place you could call its center because you'd never actually leave the surface. In the same way, you could travel in any direction in the universe and would never find its center because, much like the surface of the balloon, it simply doesn't have one. Part of the reason this can be so challenging to comprehend is because of the way the universe is described in the language of mathematics. The surface of the balloon has two dimensions, and the balloon's interior has three, but the universe exists in four dimensions. Because it's not just about how things move in space, but how they move in time. Our brains are wired to think about space and time separately. But in the universe, they're interwoven into a single fabric, called 'space-time.' That unification changes the way the universe works relative to what our intuition expects. And this explanation doesn't even begin to answer the question of how something can be expanding indefinitely – scientists are still trying to puzzle out what powers this expansion. So in asking about the center of the universe, we're confronting the limits of our intuition. The answer we find – everything, expanding everywhere, all at once – is a glimpse of just how strange and beautiful our universe is. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
