Tag Archives: research

Physicists Say We Were Completely Wrong About How Gravity Works

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A new theoretical proposal suggests scrapping nearly everything we think we know about gravity in order to understand the universe.

A theoretical proposal published in the journal Reports on Progress in Physics is making some bold claims about our previous understanding of quantum physics. Mainly, that we were wrong.

The proposed theory grapples with the fact that quantum mechanics (basically modern physics) and general relativity (Einstein's theory of gravity) both describe the universe perfectly, but are mathematically incompatible with each other.

To make them work, the proposal suggests scrapping almost everything we think we know about gravity, as Live Science explains. Instead, the authors touch up the theory to match known and observable physics, something they call unified gravity.

Although quantum field theory — the framework explaining how subatomic particles behave — is one of the most accurate theoretical concepts of all time according to theoretical physicist David Tong, it still leaves out classical gravity, which we know as the bending of space-time.

Instead, unified gravity assumes gravity is managed by four connected components that perfectly interact with one another, a tweak that allows general relativity to respectfully play ball with quantum mechanics without sneaking off into other dimensions. In short, a model that physicists could actually test in real life.

"The main advantages or differences in comparison with many other quantum gravity theories are that our theory does not need extra dimensions that do not yet have direct experimental support," co-author Jukka Tulkki told Live Science.

The discrepancy between the theories of physics and gravity has a long history. To get around it, some have proposed that the universe may be made of tiny chunks. Others, like the string theorists of the late 1960s and 70s, argued for a one-dimensional framework of particle physics.

String theory ballooned into five separate theories back in the 80s, and has since come under increasing scrutiny as its proponents struggle to make any predictions we can actually prove.

"Are you chasing a ghost or is the collection of you just too stupid to figure this out?" as Neil deGrasse Tyson quipped back in 2011. This new model is an attempt to skip all that.

Going forward, there's a lot of work to be done before we know if the budding theory bears fruit.

"Given the current pace of theoretical and observational advancements, it could take a few decades to make the first experimental breakthroughs that give us direct evidence of quantum gravity effects," Mikko Partanen, the study's other author told Live Science. "Indirect evidence through advanced observations could be obtained earlier."

Still, it offers physicists a bold new trail to blaze in the long-running search to unite quantum physics with the theory of gravity — the possibility of unraveling the tangled secrets of the known universe.

More on Physics: Physicist Says He's Identified a Clue That We're Living in a Computer Simulation

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Scientists Horrified by "Mirror Life" That Could Wipe Out Biology As We Know It

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A group of scientists have called for an immediate halt on creating

A group of the world's leading biologists have called for an immediate halt on a technology you've probably never even heard of — but is so dangerous, they say, that it could upend the order life itself on this planet, if not wipe it out.

In a nearly three-hundred page technical report published this month, the scientists describe the horrifyingly existential risks posed by what's known as mirror life: synthetic organisms whose DNA structures are a mirror image to that of all known natural organisms.

Mirror lifeforms are probably a few decades away from being realized. But the risk they pose is unfathomably serious, according to the scientists.

"The consequences could be globally disastrous," report coauthor Jack W. Szostak, a Nobel-prize-winning chemist at the University of Chicago, told The New York Times.

The famous DNA double helix is considered right-handed, meaning its spiral strands — a sugar-phosphate backbone — twist to the right. (To picture this, make a thumbs-up with your right hand; your thumb is the vertical axis and your curled-up fingers represent the direction of the spiral.) On the other hand, proteins, the building block of cells, are left-handed.

Why this is the case remains a matter of scientific debate. But this so-called homochirality is the state of nature on the planet — and it's gotten us this far.

Yet in our infinite human arrogance lies the capacity to defy that order. What happens if we make mirror organisms with left-handed DNA and right-handed proteins?

Proponents of pursuing this research argue that such mirror cells could have incredible medical applications. Scientists have already forged mirror proteins and discovered that they are much more resilient than natural ones because the enzymes that are designed to break them down can't bind to them. This could be a breakthrough in treating chronic diseases, since many therapeutic drugs are broken down too quickly to have a lasting effect without simply taking more of them.

The problem, however, is that mirror organisms could act unpredictably when interacting with natural cells. We simply don't know what would happen when mirror life clashes with ours. And in a void of information, you plan for the worst.

What if, for example, an experimental mirror bacteria was accidentally released into the world? Our biology would have no idea how to deal with these synthetic organisms. They could bypass detection by our immune system, easily infect a host, and spread a deadly pandemic. The risk applies to all lifeforms, too — not just humans.

To drive the point home, think of how invasive species have totally annihilated native ones. Now supercharge that deadly advantage with organisms that are completely alien to all life on Earth, and we may not stand a chance.

"Unless compelling evidence emerges that mirror life would not pose extraordinary dangers, we believe that mirror bacteria and other mirror organisms, even those with engineered biocontainment measures, should not be created," the report authors wrote in an accompanying letter published in Science. "We therefore recommend that research with the goal of creating mirror bacteria not be permitted, and that funders make clear that they will not support such work."

More on deadly biology: UN Deploys Investigators as Mysterious "Disease X" Continues to Spread

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Researchers Force Grumpy Cats to Wear Adorable Wittle Wool Hats — for Science

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Veterinary researchers have devised a solution to head off feline resistance to brain scans: hiding the electrodes underneath crocheted hats.

Hide and Seek

Veterinary researchers have devised an ingenious solution to head off feline resistance to brain scans: hiding the electrodes underneath custom-fit crocheted caps.

In a press release about this fascinating and adorable discovery, the University of Montreal boasted that its scientists figured out the system that helps keep the brain scanners on cats who are given chronic pain tests.

When administered while felines are awake, brain scans meant to detect pain conditions like osteoarthritis are often annoying to the cats in question. The animals often end up chewing on wires and trying to shake off the sensitive electrodes of the electroencephalogram (EEGs).

Vets generally sedate cats when giving them EEGs to avoid such a scene, but in their new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods, the UdeM researchers are proposing their novel knitted approach.

In interviews with the New Scientist about their methodology, the researchers said that they came up with the solution after becoming frustrated with cats they were doing brain scans on constantly throwing off their electrodes.

"When you spend more time putting electrodes back on than you do actually recording the EEGs, you get creative," explained PhD student and study coauthor Aliénor Delsart.

Getting Creative

When trying to find solutions to this feline conundrum, the researchers stumbled upon a YouTube tutorial for crocheted cat hats. The team leads had a grad student make the cats' beanies and were pleased to discover that it helped keep the electrodes in place — though there's little doubt that the cats were none too pleased by their new accessories.

With the crocheted beanies secured as a novel solution to the pissed-off cat problem, UdeM team lead Éric Troncy said in the press release that they're looking for government funding to expand their research into chronic feline pain.

"We now plan to obtain [Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Alliance] funding, in partnership with private companies, to enable us to establish a genuine EEG signature for chronic pain," Troncy said, "and many other applications that will enable us to automate chronic pain detection in the future."

Necessity is, as they say, the mother of invention — and in this case, it may end up helping all of felinekind.

More on cats: Research Finds That Cats Feel Grief When Their Fellow Pets Die... Even Dogs

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Fun New Mouth Swab Will Tell You When You’ll Die

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Scientists have devised a fascinating way to determine when you may die — and all it takes is a simple cheek swab.

Scientists have devised a fascinating way to determine when you may die.

Known as "CheekAge," this new biological clock-reader developed by the company Tally Health is, according to a press release, a far less invasive version of so-called "epigenetic clock" technology scientists have been using for the past decade to help determine how fast people are aging.

While there are some "super-agers" who age particularly well, most folks' aging rates generally follow both genetic trends personal to them and their own lifestyle factors, including smoking, drinking, stress, and diet.

Paired with epigenetic factors — those that are "imprinted" on our DNA from ancestral factors ranging from proximity to environmental pollution to the full-body stress of dealing with institutional racism — scientists can, with a fairly high level of certainty, determine how fast you're going to age.

Put differently: scientists can tell you when you're going to die. In the past, however, the process involved either taking blood tissue samples or being subjected to a battery of tests that more resembled a physical assessment than anything else.

Seeking a less-invasive solution, researchers at the New York-based longevity company Tally Health not only came up with a new methodology but are likely intending to sell it to the public.

After sifting through data from a longitudinal aging study out of Scotland that measured elderly patients' DNA expression (otherwise known as "methylation") over time, the Tally Health team determined that they had acquired enough of a trove of biomarkers to create their own epigenetic clock criteria.

In a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Aging, the Tally experts explained how they created what they're calling a "second-generation clock," which can detect DNA methylation most associated with mortality from cells obtained via a cheek swab.

"The fact that our epigenetic clock trained on cheek cells predicts mortality when measuring the methylome in blood cells suggests there are common mortality signals across tissues," boasted Maxim Shokhirev, the study's first author and head of computational biology and data science at Tally Health. "This implies that a simple, non-invasive cheek swab can be a valuable alternative for studying and tracking the biology of aging."

Because the research was funded and undertaken by a for-profit company, there is also clearly a financial benefit to this research.

Specifically, it appears that Tally Health is already selling its cheek swab tests, though it's unclear if the methodology boasted in this new paper is the same that's included in the $250 box kit advertised on its website, but we've reached out to the company for clarification.

More on aging: Scientists Figure Out Exact Ages Your Face Will Start Aging Like Milk

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Absolutely Deranged Study Says Swallowing Makes You Happy and Is Why You Overeat

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Groundbreaking, surprising research reveals that the joy of swallowing, not just taste or aroma, drives our eating habits.

Every now and again, we get news of a scientific breakthrough that makes us want to put our heads through drywall — and this is one of them: researchers have determined that the happiness we derive from swallowing is what keeps us eating more (and more) of it, not from food's aroma, or taste, as you might expect.

Yes, you read that correctly: You keep eating more because your brain loves to swallow.

Start with why you're excited to eat in the first place. A constellation of indicators driven by flavor, aroma, and hunger cause us to take that first bite. But after that?

In what may be the greatest ad for Ozempic nobody could've seen coming, a paper with the catchy title of "Serotonergic modulation of swallowing in a complete fly vagus nerve connectome" was published last month in the journal Current Biology, to figure out the neurological process that keeps us, for lack of better poetry, NOMing back for more.

While reasonable hypotheses such as "Have you ever only eaten 1/15th of a cheesesteak?!" and "What kind of serial killer-grade psychopath only eats one french fry?!" went tragically untested, a substantial conclusion was somehow reached:

We identify a gut-brain feedback loop in which Piezo-expressing mechanosensory neurons in the esophagus convey food passage information to a cluster of six serotonergic neurons in the brain. Together with information on food value, these central serotonergic neurons enhance the activity of serotonin receptor 7-expressing motor neurons that drive swallowing. 

By which they mean: The moment food moves from your grill past your gullet — technically, your esophagus — your brain releases a hit of serotonin, a.k.a. the "feel-good" hormone.

Seeking to figure out how your stomach interacts with your brain when you're digesting food, an international consortium of scientists set out on this adventure, armed with an electron microscope aimed at the larvae of fruit flies — who have somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 nerve cells — after splitting them into "razor-thin slices." This is how they were able to get a closer look to see how their nerve cells work in tandem with one another during the digestive process.

For a visual reference, please enjoy the art used for the University of Bonn press release, which somehow accurately conveys the entire thing:

Masterful. But that's not all! The researchers did indeed find something significant, which was what they called a "stretch receptor" in the esophagus — a nerve signal that's fired off to the brain when the esophagus is processing food. If this all sounds utterly useless at face value, we're relieved to tell you that somehow, it's not. In fact, it could be extremely useful information. Per the Bonn press release:

"If [that "stretch receptor"] is defective, it could potentially cause eating disorders such as anorexia or binge eating. It may therefore be possible that the results of this basic research could also have implications for the treatment of such disorders."

In other words, if this research does path to humans like the researchers suspect it does, then there could be implications involving helping identify — and maybe, one day, reactivating — those receptors which may be broken in those with eating disorders, helping solve those problems.

It's yet another example of the kind of human behaviors we believe are a matter of choice, when they're just part and parcel of brain chemistry.

Until then, the next time you're being chided for having that extra french fry, just remember: It's not nearly as much a matter of self-control as you've probably believed it to be. If nothing else, take it as a way to be more forgiving to yourself. After all, there are far more bitter pills to (ahem) swallow. The only problem is that they might make you want to eat more of them.

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