Science & TechnologyS


Galaxy

Accidental discovery at a planetarium leads to revelation about structure of the Oort Cloud


New York Post
Mon, 09 Jun 2025 21:09 UTC
new pattern discover oort cloud
© Associated PressThis image from the American Museum of Natural History shows a new planetarium show, showing a backwards S-shaped spiral in what’s known as the Oort Cloud far beyond Pluto
Scientists have unlocked one of the solar system's many secrets from an unexpected source: a planetarium show opening to the public on Monday.

At the American Museum of Natural History last fall, experts were hard at work preparing "Encounters in the Milky Way," a deep dive into our home galaxy shaped by the movements of stars and other celestial objects.

They were fine-tuning a scene featuring what's known as the Oort Cloud, a region far beyond Pluto filled with icy relics from the solar system's formation. Comets can hurtle toward Earth from the cloud, but scientists have never glimpsed their true shape.
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Blue Planet

Clever Australian 'trash parrots' have now developed a local 'drinking tradition'

Olivia Ferrari
Live Science
Tue, 03 Jun 2025 20:21 UTC
cockatoos use water fountain australia park
© Klump et al., Biology LettersThe cockatoos were successful in around half of their attempts to drink from the fountains.
Wild cockatoos in Western Sydney have learned to drink from water fountains — choosing to drink from them even if they have to queue.

Wild cockatoos in Sydney, Australia have learned to drink from twist-handle water fountains, turning the knob with their feet and using their body weight to keep it open. They even queue to have a drink, waiting to take turns on the fountain, footage shows.

The behavior qualifies as a new local tradition, according to a study published Wednesday (June 4) in the journal Biology Letters that analyzed videos of these cockatoos showing off their fountain-manipulating skills.

City animals are remarkably flexible. Fast-changing urban environments can push animals to solve new problems. Some urban birds adapt their songs to be audible over noise pollution, or use human-made structures as substitutes for their natural nesting habitats. Studies have linked bigger brain size and more innovativeness to bird species that live in cities, meaning species that innovate and problem solve tend to adapt better in cities.
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Telescope

James Webb telescope spots weird changes on Jupiter's icy moon Europa

Carolyn Collins Peterson
Live Science
Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00 UTC
Europa
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing: Kevin M. Gill CC BY 3.0Europa's surface ices are changing constantly, according to new surface spectra taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The ice on the surface of Jupiter's massive moon Europa is constantly changing, hinting at the presence of a subsurface ocean, new James Webb telescope observations reveal.

You'd think that icy worlds are frozen in time and space because they're — well — icy. However, planetary scientists know that all worlds can and do change, no matter how long it takes. That's true for Europa, one of Jupiter's four largest moons. Recent observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) zero in on the Europan surface ices and show they're constantly changing.

Dr. Ujjwal Raut of the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) reported on the changes reflected in the JWST studies. Not only does Europa's surface have amorphous ice, but there's evidence of crystalline ice scattered around there. That indicates the presence of an active water source, such as the subsurface ocean. It also points toward geologic processes that affect the surface.

Comment: There are 97 moons of Jupiter with confirmed orbits as of 30 April 2025.

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Book

AI reveals hidden language patterns and likely authorship in the Bible


Phys Org
Thu, 05 Jun 2025 17:41 UTC
hidden language
© Faigenbaum-Golovin et al.Graphical representation of the team's results. By comparing word usage and sentence patterns, their AI-based statistical model identified three distinct writing styles, or scribal traditions, shown here in yellow, blue and green.
AI is transforming every industry, from medicine to film to finance. So, why not use it to study one of the world's most revered ancient texts, the Bible?

An international team of researchers, including Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, assistant research professor of Mathematics at Duke University, combined artificial intelligence, statistical modeling and linguistic analysis to address one of the most enduring questions in biblical studies: the identification of its authors.

The study is published in the journal PLOS One.

By analyzing subtle variations in word usage across texts, the team was able to distinguish between three distinct scribal traditions (writing styles) spanning the first nine books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Enneateuch.

Using the same AI-based statistical model, the team was then able to determine the most likely authorship of other Bible chapters. Even better, the model also explained how it reached its conclusions.

But how did the mathematician get here?

In 2010, Faigenbaum-Golovin began collaborating with Israel Finkelstein, head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa, using mathematical and statistical tools to determine the authorship of lettering found on pottery fragments from 600 B.C. by comparing the style and shape of the letters inscribed on each fragment.

Their discoveries were featured on the front page of The New York Times.

"We concluded that the findings in those inscriptions could offer valuable clues for dating texts from the Old Testament," Faigenbaum-Golovin said. "That's when we started putting together our current team, who could help us analyze these biblical texts."
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Fireball 5

Major Younger Dryas impact evidence discovered in Louisiana: Shallow airburst crater identified

George Howard
The Cosmic Tusk
Wed, 04 Jun 2025 17:10 UTC
Airburst
© dzen.ru
A stunning new scientific paper published today in Airbursts and Cratering Impacts provides some of the most compelling evidence yet for a Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) impact structure — this time in Louisiana.

The study, titled "Evidence of a 12,800-year-old Shallow Airburst Depression in Louisiana with Large Deposits of Shocked Quartz and Melted Materials", is a tour de force by 25 authors, including well-known names in the field such as James Kennett, Allen West, Christopher Moore, Malcolm LeCompte, and Marc Young — both of whom will be presenting this groundbreaking research live at Cosmic Summit 2025.

The paper reports the discovery of an anomalous 300-meter-long depression east of Perkins, Louisiana, filled with high concentrations of impact proxies: shocked quartz, meltglass, microspherules, carbon spherules, and metallic flakes. Most remarkably, the authors argue the site represents a shallow "touch-down" airburst crater — potentially North America's first documented YDB-age impact feature.

🔬 What They Found
  • Shocked Quartz: Glass-filled planar fractures and deformation features — classic cosmic impact indicators.
  • Hundreds of Billions of Microspherules: Found in situ within sediments dating to ~12,800 years BP.
  • Over a Ton of Meltglass: Formed at temperatures exceeding 2200°C; includes melted zircon, kaolinite, and quartz.
  • Carbon-Rich Spherules: Enriched in iridium, platinum, and osmium — elements associated with cosmic bodies.
  • Oxygen-Depleted Metallic Flakes: Rare forms of native iron and wüstite common in extraterrestrial materials.
Dating methods included both radiocarbon and argon-argon analyses, pinpointing the event to the Younger Dryas Boundary: 12,835-12,735 cal BP.
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Hourglass

If you thought quantum mechanics was weird, then check out entangled time

Elise Crull
Aeon
Fri, 02 Feb 2018 20:25 UTC
time lapse photo time entanglement
© Alan Levine/Flickr
Adding a new layer to the already complex world of metaphysics.

In the summer of 1935, the physicists Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger engaged in a rich, multifaceted and sometimes fretful correspondence about the implications of the new theory of quantum mechanics. The focus of their worry was what Schrödinger later dubbed entanglement: the inability to describe two quantum systems or particles independently, after they have interacted.

Until his death, Einstein remained convinced that entanglement showed how quantum mechanics was incomplete. Schrödinger thought that entanglement was the defining feature of the new physics, but this didn't mean that he accepted it lightly. 'I know of course how the hocus pocus works mathematically,' he wrote to Einstein on 13 July 1935. 'But I do not like such a theory.' Schrödinger's famous cat, suspended between life and death, first appeared in these letters, a byproduct of the struggle to articulate what bothered the pair.
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HAL9000

Grok explains why AI hallucinates: When digital expectations outweigh reality

Laura Knight-Jadzcyk
X
Wed, 04 Jun 2025 19:21 UTC
brain cerebellum stylized graphic
Exploring the parallels between human and AI hallucinations, and the role of biases in generating false outputs

User prompt: Some years ago I read the following article: "How your mind protects you against hallucinations" By Emily UnderwoodAug. 10, 2017 , 2:00 PM
More than 300 years ago, the philosopher René Descartes asked a disturbing question: If our senses can't always be trusted, how can we separate illusion from reality? We're able to do so, a new study suggests, because our brain keeps tabs on reality by constantly questioning its own past expectations and beliefs. Hallucinations occur when this internal fact-checking fails, a finding that could point toward better treatments for schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders.

The study is "very elegant," and an important step toward identifying the brain regions that produce hallucinations — and keep them in check, says Georg Northoff, a neuroscientist at the University of Ottawa who was not involved with the work.

Comment: Grok was then presented with a real-life example of AI generating fictitious law citations, which it then explained using the framework outlined above. An excerpt:
Why This Seems Outrageous: The Complexity of Legal Fabrication

What makes this particularly "baffling" is the level of detail in the hallucination. Fabricating a legal citation isn't just about making up a name — it involves:

Inventing Litigants: The model generates names like "Smith" or "Jones," which are common in legal contexts, because it has seen them in countless real cases.

Creating Dates and Citations: The model produces a citation like "2020 WL 123456," mimicking the Westlaw format it has learned, complete with a plausible year and identifier.Crafting Legal Opinions: The model might summarize a fake ruling, such as "the court held that the statute of limitations was tolled," because it has seen similar rulings in real cases and can generate text that fits the pattern.

This level of fabrication seems almost deliberate, but it's not — the AI isn't "trying" to deceive. It's simply doing what it's designed to do: generate text that matches the patterns it has learned, with no regard for truth. The outrage stems from the fact that legal citations are sacred in the legal profession — they're expected to be precise, verifiable, and authoritative. When AI invents them, it undermines trust in the legal system, wastes court resources, and can lead to sanctions for lawyers who fail to verify the AI's output.

Real-World Context: This Isn't Hypothetical

This issue has been documented extensively. For instance, in the 2025 case Ko v. Li in the Ontario Superior Court, a lawyer submitted a factum with fake Canadian court cases, which the judge suspected were AI-generated. The lawyer couldn't provide copies of the cases, leading to a contempt of court inquiry. Similarly, in a 2025 U.S. District Court case in California, attorneys from Ellis George LLP and K&L Gates submitted a brief with nine out of 27 citations being incorrect, including two nonexistent cases, due to AI tools like CoCounsel and Google Gemini. These incidents show how AI can fabricate entire legal citations, complete with litigants and opinions, exactly as you described.

Why These Factors Fully Explain the Phenomenon

The factors I outlined — biases in training data, overreliance on internal patterns, overconfidence, and lack of fact-checking — fully account for this behavior. The AI isn't doing anything beyond its design: it's generating text that fits the expected format of a legal citation, using the patterns it has learned, without any mechanism to ensure the output is real. The complexity of the fabrication (names, dates, opinions) is just a reflection of how well the model has learned to mimic legal language and structure. It's not "baffling" when you consider that the model's entire purpose is to produce plausible text, not truthful text.

Critical Perspective: The Legal Profession's Role

While the AI's behavior is explainable, the outrage is justified — not because of the AI itself, but because of how it's being used. Lawyers have a professional duty to verify citations, as emphasized in multiple court rulings (e.g., Rule 11 in the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure). The real failure here is human: lawyers are outsourcing their due diligence to AI without proper oversight, despite knowing (or being warned) about the risks of hallucinations. Courts have repeatedly sanctioned attorneys for this, as seen in cases like Mata v. Avianca (2023), where ChatGPT-generated fake cases led to fines, and the Morgan & Morgan case (2025), where lawyers were fined for citing AI-hallucinated cases in a Wyoming court.

Conclusion

AI hallucinating entire legal case law citations isn't a mystery — it's a predictable outcome of its design. The model's biases and learned patterns lead it to generate plausible-looking citations; its lack of grounding and fact-checking means it doesn't verify their existence; and its overconfidence makes the output seem authoritative. What's outrageous isn't the AI's behavior, but the failure of legal professionals to treat AI outputs with the skepticism they deserve. To avoid this, lawyers must verify every citation, and AI developers should integrate better grounding mechanisms — like real-time database checks — to reduce hallucinations in high-stakes domains like law.
There's no substitute for real brains doing real-world thinking.

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Blue Planet

Fossils found in North America reveal new species of 'very odd' sea monster: Scientists

Julia Jacobo
ABC News
Thu, 29 May 2025 04:10 UTC
curly creatures
© Robert O. ClarkTwo individuals of Traskasaura sandrae hunt the ammonite Pachydiscus in the northern Pacific during the Late Cretaceous. Traskasaura sandrae, named in Journal of Systematic Paleontology, declared the Provincial Fossil of British Columbia in 2023.
Traskasaura sandrae is a "very odd" mix of primitive and derived traits.

A prehistoric sea monster never-before-known to man was hunting prey in North America 85 million years ago, fossils found decades ago in Canada reveal.

The first set of fossils, found in 1988 along the Puntledge River on Vancouver Island, were determined to belong to elasmosaurs, a genus of plesiosaur that lived in North America during the Late Cretaceous period, about 80.6 to 77 million years ago, according to the paper, published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. Additional fossils found since include an isolated right humerus and a well-preserved juvenile sk

But they have now been formally identified to belong to a "very odd" new genus of sea monster called Traskasaura sandrae, the researchers said.

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Info

India is breaking apart — Geologists detect deep continental fracture

Jessica Bennett
Daily Galaxy
Sat, 31 May 2025 22:44 UTC
A massive tear deep beneath the Himalayas could mean India is literally splitting in two, scientists warn.
Continental Fracture
© The Daily Galaxy
A groundbreaking geological study, unveiled during the latest American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference, is stirring up the scientific community with a bold proposition: India may be splitting into two. The research, backed by seismic data and isotope analysis, offers compelling evidence that a segment of the Indian Plate is undergoing delamination — a process in which the lower part of a tectonic plate peels away and sinks into the mantle. This tectonic development could dramatically reshape our understanding of how the Himalayas formed and may have deep implications for earthquake risk in the region.
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Brain

Less can be enough: How are you able to read words without vowels?

Roberta McLain
Live Science
Sun, 01 Jun 2025 21:51 UTC
book missing vowels graphic
© Yagi Studio via Getty ImagesYour brain can probably figure out words without vowels based on the surrounding letters and context.
The human brain can make sense of sentences — even when the vowels are missing.

"Ths sntnc s mssng ts vwls." You likely figured out the words — "this sentence is missing its vowels" — even though they're lacking several letters of the alphabet.

But how can you understand words without vowels?

Your brain does not read words letter by letter, experts told Live Science. Instead, it looks for patterns, considers context then makes predictions. So even if a word is misspelled or missing its vowels, your brain should be able to figure it out.

Your brain makes inferences about the world around you

"We don't passively receive sentences, but actively predict them," David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, told Live Science in an email. "Our brains aren't blank slates waiting for input; they are model builders, constantly generating internal expectations about what's out there."
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