Science

Data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has revealed dozens of small galaxies that played a starring role in a cosmic makeover that transformed the early universe into the one we know today.

Scientists have uncovered a previously unknown type of molecular motion inside DNA-based droplets: instead of spreading randomly, guest molecules advance in an organized wave. This surprising discovery opens the door to understanding how cells might organize internal processes without membranes. Using customizable DNA condensates as experimental models, the team showed how molecular waves emerge through precise DNA interactions. These insights could not only transform our grasp of cellular signaling but may even lay groundwork for treating neurodegenerative diseases by influencing how molecules behave inside aging cells.

When the Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon, they discovered drifts of tiny brilliant orange glass beads glittering across the surface. Each one less than 1 mm across and formed about 3.6 billion years ago. These microscopic treasures, each smaller than a pinhead, had been hiding their secrets for billions of years. Now, cutting edge technology has finally cracked the mystery: they're perfect time capsules from the Moon's explosive volcanic past, frozen droplets of ancient lava that solidified instantly in the airless void recording the history of the Moon.

The Hubble Deep Field revolutionised astronomy by staring at a seemingly empty patch of sky for thousands of hours, unveiling a cosmos teeming with distant galaxies. But even Hubble can't peer back far enough to witness the universe's first moment of illumination; the Cosmic Dawn, when primordial darkness gave way to starlight. Now, the Square Kilometre Array promises to shatter that barrier. In a groundbreaking simulation, researchers have modelled 1000 hours of SKA observations, creating astronomy's next great deep field, one designed to capture the universe's very first sunrise.

The ecliptic is the apparent path that the Sun follows during a year. It's an imaginary line that the planets follow, with some small deviations, around the Sun. Spacecraft find it easier to follow the ecliptic because it's generally more energy efficient. However, the Solar Orbiter isn't on the ecliptic and it's giving us our first up-close looks at the Sun's poles.

For most of us, dust is just something we have to clean up. For astronomers, interstellar dust is a hindrance when they want to study distant objects. However, recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of a distant galaxy are changing that. This infrared-sensitive observatory is letting them find a way to use dust to understand the evolution of early galaxies. In addition, it uncovered a special property of that galaxy's ice-covered dust, indicating it could be similar to the materials that formed our Solar System.

Most scientists agree that supernova explosions have affected Earth's climate, though the details are not all clear. They likely cooled the climate several times in the last several thousand years, just as humanity was becoming established around the world. The evidence is in telescopes and tree rings.

Astronomers have used JWST to study a fascinating planetary system that's only 16.7 million years old, with two bizarre giant exoplanets. Designated YSES-1, its closer planet, YSES-1b seems to be surrounded by a disk of material that could be the birthplace of moons, similar to what might have happened at Jupiter billions of years ago. The other, YSES-1c, has a layer of silicate particles in its upper atmosphere—clouds of sand.

The “Bell test” was devised in the 1960s to uncover what’s going on in the quantum world, but it continues to be relevant today, says Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Artificial organ transplants have been held back by the difficulty of making networks of blood vessels - a problem scientists are now taking steps to overcome

With the ability to scan the entire southern night sky every three days, the huge Vera C. Rubin Observatory could be about to start solving the mysteries of the universe, from dark matter to Planet Nine

Your breathing patterns are unique to you - and could be linked to your weight and mental health

If you struggle with small talk or find it hard to express yourself, research by psychologist Alison Wood Brooks and others will help you master the art of conversation

By using light to emulate the structure of space-time, researchers can better understand black holes – and the exotic objects that mimic them

Based on the Jesus and Mo post yesterday, which commented on a British man fined for burning a Qur’an, a reader sent me a commentary that he/she wrote fifteen years ago about burning a Koran, and revised yesterday.  Given the ideological climate, the reader of course wishes to remain anonymous, so I’ve changed the name. It’s published below with permission.

Burning My Koran

by Jean Smith (name changed to protect the writer)

September 24, 2010, revised June 11, 2025

The short version:

The sooner everybody in the world burns a Koran, the sooner we can get back to things that really matter.

The longer version:

I’m here in the back yard of my house. I am holding a copy of the Koran which I purchased with money I earned — I have the receipt. This is not a rare edition — it is a cheap paperback copy, one among millions in the world today. I’m about to douse it with charcoal lighting fluid and set it on fire.

If you’re the kind of person who takes violent exception to this sort of activity, please note that I am alone. There is no one here who is either encouraging or trying to stop me, so if you are thinking about taking bloody vengeance, be sure that it is directed only at me.

If this were a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, or a biography of Einstein, or a telephone directory, burning it might seem like an odd thing to do, but it would have no great importance to anyone. Since I am an atheist, and therefore I don’t believe in the god described in this book, or in any other god, then as far as I am concerned this book is like any other – nothing but a mass-produced assembly of paper with ink on it. So one less Koran in the world is inconsequential to me.

I am not burning this book for the purpose of offending any person or group of persons, so if you do take offense, you are missing my point. I am doing this because I can, in response to a recent news item: the police in a town in England arrested six people for burning a Koran and posting a video about it on YouTube. Their so-called “crime” was not that they violated a fire code, nor that they destroyed a book which they didn’t own — but “inciting racial hatred”.

From the news reports, it appears that these Koran burners are crude racists. In other words, ignorant, fearful people. These are not people I admire or feel much sympathy for. But if anyone feels “racial hatred” towards me, as a white atheist Westerner burning my own paper with ink on it, then that person is every bit as much a crude racist.

I have my own reason for burning this book — not to express racism (which I do not feel), nor contempt for the ideas set forth in the book (which I do feel), but to demonstrate that no one’s personal choice of religious rules and beliefs is in any way binding on me or anyone else. If you have a book that you hold to be sacred, then you probably won’t burn it. That’s easy. But that’s all you get.

This book is not a sacred account of the words of God. After all, there is no god. And what would a god need with a book anyway? Books are made by people, for people. Books are paper with ink on it, this particular one belongs to me, and I am going to burn it.

I take the matches from my pocket. Are you starting to feel a bit uneasy? But what if you knew that a whole shipping container of Korans was about to be washed overboard in the middle of the ocean — would the harm be thousands of times greater? Would that diminish Islam in any way? Would the world even notice? Of course not. It would merely be a monetary loss to the publisher, and a trivial amount of pollution. And if the loss of a shipping container full of Korans wouldn’t diminish the faith, how can the loss of a single copy?

Do you call me intolerant of others’ beliefs, a racist, a bigot? Now it is you who are offending me (Because I am tolerant. Just not respectful) – should you therefore be forbidden to say that I am intolerant? Of course not. In this society, you have a right to express yourself, just as I do. But if you have a right to say things that I find offensive, it necessarily follows that you can’t invent a right not to be offended yourself.

Time to strike the match.

One other thing. Those guys in England who burned a Koran were idiots. From the news reports, they even managed to set their gas can on fire in the process, so they’re lucky they didn’t hurt themselves. But despite their ineptitude, they managed to pull it off. If there really were a god, an omnipotent creator and destroyer of worlds, a timeless master of every atom of the universe, and if this god had the slightest concern about the book, couldn’t he have sent a thunderbolt, or a rain shower, or at least caused these guys to forget to bring matches? What does a supreme being have to worry about anyway? And if all you want is what He wants, what do you have to worry about?

Whoosh!

 

See new addendum below.

Reader Scott Ritchie photographed a bird in Costa Rica that I also saw there. It’s nearly invisible and was pointed out to us by a boatman. Scott’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them:

A bird of the day from Costa Rica. The Great Potoo [Nyctibius grandis]. They are “related” to frogmouths, and certainly resemble them in looks and behaviour. They sit motionless atop branches, resembling a dead stump. And they have a bizarre nighttime call, ghost-like. Once thought by locals to be a spirit or ghost. At night, they take large insects on the wing.

Can you spot the potoo (an immature Great Potoo) in the 1st picture? I love the old stump festooned with bromeliads and orchids. Atop this the potoo surveys his paddock kingdom.

JAC: This is the most cryptic bird I’ve ever seen.  Note that natural selection has molded not only its appearance but also its behavior: it sits motionless at the end of a branch, looking just like the end of the branch!

But wait! Scott sent two more pictures of a similar species with this caption:

For comparison, here are Papuan Frogmouths (Podargus papuensis) from Cairns (OLD photo). Note chick in first shot.  They like sitting IN the forest in contrast to the Potoo.

Surveying nearby galaxies in the process of merging with other galaxies, astronomers have identified massive, dense star factories, unlike any found in the Milky Way. The findings provide a rare glimpse into processes shaping galaxies in the very early universe and possibly the Milky Way a few billion years from now.

Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb showed how small, cheap drones can be smuggled into a country and used against expensive military hardware. Now, there are concerns that nations like the US and UK aren't ready to defend against a similar attack

All it takes is a coming-of-age consultancy and you, too, can morph from an average teenage Joe or Josephine to an instant "vaccine expert"

The post The Long Med Con: The Self-Styled Expertise and Expansive Invoices of Mark & David Geier first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

In a bold challenge to silicon s long-held dominance in electronics, Penn State researchers have built the world s first working CMOS computer entirely from atom-thin 2D materials. Using molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide, they fabricated over 2,000 transistors capable of executing logic operations on a computer free of traditional silicon. While still in early stages, this breakthrough hints at an exciting future of slimmer, faster, and dramatically more energy-efficient electronics powered by materials just one atom thick.