When searching for signs of life in the Universe, we tend to look for very specific things, based on what we know: a planet like Earth, in orbit around a star, and at a distance that allows liquid surface water. But there could, conceivably, be other forms of life out there that look like nothing that we have ever imagined before.

Just as we have extremophiles here on Earth - organisms that live in the most extreme and seemingly inhospitable environments the planet has to offer - so too could there be extremophiles out there in the wider Universe.

For instance, species that can form, evolve, and thrive in the interiors of stars. According to new research by physicists Luis Anchordoqui and Eugene Chudnovsky of The City University of New York, such a thing is indeed - hypothetically, at least - possible.

It all depends on how you define life. If the key criteria are the ability to encode information, and the ability for those information carriers to self-replicate faster than they disintegrate, then hypothetical monopole particles threaded on cosmic strings - cosmic necklaces - could form the basis of life inside stars, much like DNA and RNA form the basis of life on Earth.

Our sense of who we are is thought to be influenced by things like our childhood experiences, our interactions with others, and now, researchers say, our bodies. A study appearing August 26 in the journal iScience shows that, when pairs of friends swapped bodies in a perceptual illusion, their beliefs about their own personalities became more similar to their beliefs about their friends' personalities. The findings suggest that this close tie between our psychological and physical sense of self is also involved in functions like memory: when our mental self-concept doesn't match our physical self, our memory can become impaired.

"As a child, I liked to imagine what it would be like to one day wake up in someone else's body," says first author Pawel Tacikowski, a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. "Many kids probably have those fantasies, and I guess I've never grown out of it -- I just turned it into my job."

The team from the Brain, Body, and Self Laboratory led by Henrik Ehrsson outfitted pairs of friends with goggles showing live feeds of the other person's body from a first-person perspective. To further the illusion, they applied simultaneous touches to both participants on corresponding body parts so they could also feel what they saw in the goggles. After just a few moments, the illusion generally worked; to show that it did, the researchers threatened the friend's body with a prop knife and found that the participant broke out into a sweat as if they were the one being threatened. "Body swapping is not a domain reserved for science fiction movies anymore," Tacikowski says.

Welcome to Soundhenge. Better known as Stonehenge, this ancient monument in southern England created an acoustic space that amplified voices and improved the sound of any music being played for people standing within the massive circle of stones, a new study suggests.

Because of how stones were placed, that speech or music would not have projected beyond Stonehenge into the surrounding countryside, or even to people standing near the stone circle, scientists report in the October Journal of Archaeological Science.

To explore Stonehenge's sound dynamics, acoustical engineer Trevor Cox and colleagues used laser scans of the site and archaeological evidence to construct a physical model one-twelfth the size of the actual monument. That was the largest possible scale replica that could fit inside an acoustic chamber at the University of Salford in England, where Cox works. This room simulated the acoustic effects of the open landscape surrounding Stonehenge and compacted ground inside the monument.

Alarmins have a positive post-natal impact on the development of intestinal flora and the immune system

Breast milk strengthens a child's immune system, supporting the intestinal flora. These facts are common knowledge. But how does this work? What are the molecular mechanisms behind this phenomenon? And why is this not possible the same way with bottle feeding? The reasons were unknown until a team from the RESIST Cluster of Excellence at Hannover Medical School (MHH) recently discovered how alarmins are that mechanism in a project involving the University of Bonn. The results have been pre-published online in the medical journal Gastroenterology. The paper will soon be appearing in print.

"Alarmins are the 'gold' in breast milk. These proteins prevent dangerous intestinal colonization disorders that can lead to blood poisoning and intestinal inflammation," relates Team Leader Prof. Dr. Dorothee Viemann of the Hannover Medical School (MHH) Clinic for Pediatric Pneumology, Allergology and Neonatology.

The post-natal intestinal immune system, i.e. intestinal flora and mucosa, mature through interaction with bacteria in the environment. This gives rise to optimal bacteria diversity which lasts a lifetime, affording protection against many diseases. "Alarmins control this adaptation process," explains Professor Viemann, whose research has revealed that these peptides and proteins both derive from breast milk and arise in the child's intestinal tract. The process of labor plays a role in this, as infants born via planned C-section exhibit lower levels of alarmins than vaginally-born infants. Additionally, premature infants are less capable of producing alarmins themselves than full-term infants. Such individuals are thus more prone to suffering from chronic inflammatory diseases.

The asteroid early warning system monitored by NASA has posted advance notice of a number of space rocks inbound in the coming days, with one set to travel within just 120,000km of our planet.

On September 1, a 25-meter (three London buses end-to-end) and a 28-meter (one and a half times the length of a bowling lane) asteroid are charted to fly past at a distance of 2.9 million and 121,000 km respectively.
While the US space agency assured its Twitter followers over the weekend that there's probably nothing to worry about, for perspective the Moon is 384,400 km away, so it will be quite a close call indeed - astronomically speaking - especially given the risk posed by an object which is estimated to be traveling at a speed of 8.16 km per second.

According to one Twitter commentator's calculations, the flyby distance will be roughly the equivalent of twice the round trip distance between Santiago, Chile and Beijing, China.

While filming herself getting ready for work recently, TikTok user @gracie.ham reached deep into the ancient foundations of mathematics and found an absolute gem of a question:

How could someone come up with a concept like algebra?

She also asked what the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras might have used mathematics for, and other questions that revolve around the age-old conundrum of whether mathematics is "real" or something humans just made up.

Many responded negatively to the post, but others — including mathematicians like me — found the questions quite insightful.

Would you sew 1,000 electrodes into your skull to mindmeld with a computer?

Just over a year since their last major announcement, Elon Musk's Neuralink is finally ready to show off the fruits of its labor: a revolutionary brain-machine interface that could blur the lines between humanity and technology, as well as give our feeble fleshy minds a leg up against increasingly capable AIs.


"It's important that Neuralink solves this problem sooner rather than later, because the point at which we have digital superintelligence, that's when we pass the singularity and things become just very uncertain," Musk told Inverse in 2019.

Musk took to the stage at the Neuralink headquarters on Friday afternoon to reveal a working "V2" prototype of the automated surgical system that the company debuted last year. This machine will "sew" as many as 1,024 impossibly thin 5 micron-wide electrodes into a person's brain. So far the system only taps into the brain's cortical surface but the company hopes to eventually insert them deeper into the grey matter to monitor deeper brain functions (ie the hypothalamus). These electrodes will connect to Neuralink's "Link 0.9" chip, a 23mm x 8mm sealed unit which plugs into a small hole bored into the patient's skull and collects the signals that the electrodes pick up. The Link will measure the patient's temperature, pressure and movement, potentially providing early warnings about imminent heart attacks or stroke, Musk said.

A new editorial paper has landed from professor Valentina Zharkova, entitled: "Modern Grand Solar Minimum will Lead to Terrestrial Cooling". Published on August 4, 2020, Zharkova's latest analysis suggests that June 8, 2020 was the date on which we entered the Modern (Eddy) Grand Solar Minimum.

The opening paragraph reads:

"In this editorial I will demonstrate with newly discovered solar activity proxy-magnetic field that the Sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2020-2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during Maunder minimum leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature."

Another passage states:

"Currently, the Sun has completed solar cycle 24 - the weakest cycle of the past 100+ years - and in 2020, has started cycle 25. During the periods of low solar activity, such as the modern grand solar minimum, the Sun will often be devoid of sunspots. This is what is observed now at the start of this minimum, because in 2020 the Sun has seen, in total, 115 spotless days (or 78%), meaning 2020 is on track to surpass the space-age record of 281 spotless days (or 77%) observed in 2019. However, the cycle 25 start is still slow in firing active regions and flares, so with every extra day/week/month that passes, the null in solar activity is extended marking a start of grand solar minimum."

A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.K. has discovered how cells are able to travel so accurately through the human body. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes a theory they developed to explain cell orienteering and how they tested it using mazes.

When the body is injured, such as being poked with a needle, the immune system responds by sending white blood cells to kill any bacteria that might be trying to enter through the wound. But how do the cells know how to find the wound? Prior research has shown that cells use chemicals in the body known as chemoattractants to navigate short distances. White blood cells can sense and move toward them — but it only works for short distances. In this new effort, the researchers found that cells can use such chemoattractants in a different way to navigate longer and more complicated pathways.

The researchers theorized that certain cells navigate by breaking down chemoattractants that are close to them. They then sense the degree to which the chemoattractants are replenished, and most importantly, in which direction. By noting the position of the new chemoattractants, they are able to move toward their desired destination. As an example, a white blood cell working its way to a wound upon finding a fork in the road would choose the path with the most or newest chemoattractants after it breaks them down in both directions.

To test their theory, the researchers first created computer models to test its soundness. Doing so convinced them they were on the right track. Next, they etched a host of tiny mazes onto silicon chips, added chemoattractants and then dropped in soil amoebae that are known to navigate. They then watched as the amoebae broke down the chemoattractants they found in their path and then continued on their way in the direction in which new chemoattractants were filling in for the old. They found that the amoebae were very good at finding their way to destinations on relatively simple mazes, but were less skilled in those that were more complicated and had long dead ends. Still, nearly half of those tested managed to find their way through. The researchers suggest the accuracy declines as more time is taken to parse a maze. Those cells at the tail end of a group find all the chemoattractants have already been broken down by those ahead of them, and thus have nothing to use as a guide.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Perhaps not, some say.

And if someone is there to hear it? If you think that means it obviously did make a sound, you might need to revise that opinion.

We have found a new paradox in quantum mechanics - one of our two most fundamental scientific theories, together with Einstein's theory of relativity - that throws doubt on some common-sense ideas about physical reality.

Quantum mechanics vs common sense

Take a look at these three statements:

1. When someone observes an event happening, it really happened.
2. It is possible to make free choices, or at least, statistically random choices.
3. A choice made in one place can't instantly affect a distant event. (Physicists call this "locality".)

These are all intuitive ideas, and widely believed even by physicists. But our research, published in Nature Physics, shows they cannot all be true - or quantum mechanics itself must break down at some level.

This is the strongest result yet in a long series of discoveries in quantum mechanics that have upended our ideas about reality. To understand why it's so important, let's look at this history.