Science

Cosmic voids may seem like the emptiest places in the universe, stripped of matter, radiation, and even dark matter. But they’re far from nothing. Even in these vast empty regions, the fundamental quantum fields that fill all of space remain, carrying a small but real amount of energy known as vacuum energy, or dark energy. While this energy is overwhelmed by matter in galaxies and clusters, in the deep emptiness of cosmic voids it becomes dominant.

The bottom line is this: when given the opportunity to prove his real-world prowess, Dr. Vinay Prasad failed.

The post “Vinay Prasad Loves President Trump”. That, Plus 12 Other Thoughts on the End of Dr. Vinay Prasad’s Sabbatical From UCSF first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

When NASA’s DART spacecraft deliberately crashed into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, it did more than change the asteroid’s local orbit — it slightly shifted the path of the entire asteroid pair around the Sun. The impact blasted debris into space, doubling the force of the spacecraft’s hit and nudging the system’s solar orbit by a tiny but measurable amount. It marks the first time humans have altered the trajectory of a celestial object around the Sun. The result strengthens the case for using spacecraft impacts as a future planetary defense strategy.

Scientists have found a way to significantly boost “blue energy,” which generates electricity from the mixing of saltwater and freshwater. By coating nanopores with lipid molecules that create a friction-reducing water layer, they enabled ions to pass through much more efficiently while keeping the process highly selective. Their prototype membrane produced about two to three times more power than current technologies. The discovery could help bring osmotic energy closer to becoming a practical renewable power source.

US-Israeli strikes on oil facilities have caused black rain to fall on Tehran, but the black smoke filling the air is likely to be a bigger health risk

Their species name is well known, but until recently we’ve understood very little for certain about Homo habilis. Columnist Michael Marshall reveals what new fossils are telling us about the hominins that have been considered the first humans

Lunar dust can be a pain - but it’s also literally the ground we will have to traverse if we are ever to have a permanent human settlement on the Moon. In that specific use case, it’s clingy, jagged, staticky properties can actually be an advantage, according to a new paper, recently published in Research from researchers at Beihang University, who analyzed the mechanical properties of samples returned by Chang’e 6 mission to the far side of the Moon.

We’re learning that frailty can quietly arrive decades before old age, with some people in their 30s or 40s unknowingly in a pre-frail state. There are surprising ways to stay strong – and it’s not all about weight training

Taking a multivitamin every day might slightly slow the rate of ageing, but the extent to which this is relevant to our health is unclear

Jupiter's powerful, continuous aurorae dwarf those of Earth. Scientists know that Jupiter's Galilean moons created bright spots on Jupiter's northern aurora. The JWST observed these bright spots and generated infrared spectra of them for the first time. Those observations showed that Io's bright spot is extremely variable in both temperature and density, and researchers want to know why.

Even when the idea of terraforming Mars was originally put forward, the idea was daunting. Changing the environment of an entire planet is not something to do easily. Over the following decades, plenty of scientists and engineers have looked at the problem, and most have come to the same conclusion - we’re not going to be able to make Mars anything like Earth anytime soon. A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Slava Turyshev of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is a good explainer as to why.

It appears that the bonded pair of mallards at Botany Pond are here for the long term. Every morning they are waiting at the same spot for their breakfast, and in the afternoon they snooze on the rocks but swim to me for their late lunch when I whistle. Further, I saw two of our five red-eared slider turtles yesterday, swimming and sunning in the warmer weather. Here are a few photos and a video at bottom.

It seems that the ducks are residents now, and so it’s time to name them. As with last year, they appeared on the Jewish holiday of Purim and thus needed Jewish, Purim-related names. My friend Peggy Mason, co-duck-tender, scoured the Purim literature to give the ducks names (we don’t name them until we’re sure they’re going to hang around). The hen (not Esther, as I ascertained from photos published previously), is now called Vashti, named after a character in the Purim story:

Vashti (Hebrew: וַשְׁתִּי‎, romanized: Vaštī; Koine Greek: Ἀστίν, romanized: Astín; Modern Persian: وشتی, romanized: Vâšti) was a queen of Persia and the first wife of Persian king Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, a book included within the Tanakh and the Old Testament which is read on the Jewish holiday of Purim. She was either executed or banished for her refusal to appear at the king’s banquet to show her beauty as Ahasuerus wished, and was succeeded as queen by Esther, a Jew. That refusal might be better understood via the Jewish tradition that she was ordered to appear naked. In the Midrash, Vashti is described as beautiful but wicked and vain; she is viewed as an independent-minded heroine in feminist theological interpretations of the Purim story.

That seems fairly appropriate given that there’s no other woman in the story save the heroine Esther, who saved the Jews.

A name for the drake was tougher, as the only other notable male in the Purim story is the wicked Haman, who tried to get the King to exterminate the Jews (Esther foiled that plot). And we can’t have a drake named after a genocidal maniac.  Scouring the story and remembering her Hebrew, Peggy suggested the name Armon,  which means “palace” or “fortress” in Hebrew. That’s where the whole Purim story took place. Fortunately, it’s also a Jewish man’s name, and short.

Ergo the hen and drake are now Vashti and Armon, respectively. I’ll have to do some explaining when visitors ask me the ducks’ names and how they got them. But it is cool that last year’s and this year’s ducks both arrived on Purim, though the holidays are two weeks displaced from 2025 to 2026.

Click the pictures below if you want to enlarge them.

Aaaaaand. . . here’s the pair together. I think they make quite the handsome couple:

The lovely Vashti, hopefully destined to produce this year’s brood of ducklings. Here she’s preening, sunning, and sleeping in the warm sun of Sunday:

And the regal Armon, swimming and napping:

We put five large red-eared slider turtles (Trachemys scripta elegans) into the pond last fall, and hoped they’d hibernate in custom turtle houses put on the pebble-y bottom.  Apparently they did, as we’ve seen no bodies floating on the water.  (These were five turtles saved and put in a southern Illinois pond when Botany Pond was renovated several years ago. I believe five more evacuees will come home again this Spring.)

It’s been too cold for them to show up, but yesterday I found a big one blithely sunning himself on a rock, stretching out his limbs to get the sun. (Turtles’ heads and legs are their solar panels, used to warm up the body.) Later I saw another one’s head above the water surface as it was swimming around. So we know we have at least two. Here’s the sunbather:

This is near the northern limit of the species’ distribution, as the eggs can’t survive very cold winters.

So we have our turtles and ducks: all is in place for a lovely Spring and Summer.

And a lousy movie of Armon and Vashti preening themselves after having lunch:

More good news: I’m told the duck camera, which has been re-installed, will be activated this week. Stay tuned for the link!

Some Samoyeds adjust the pitch of their howls depending on the music being played, showing a form of vocal ability they might have inherited from their wolf ancestors

A single femur found in Bulgaria appears to represent an ape or early hominin that walked on two legs before any known African hominin, but the evidence is far from conclusive

SETI has spent decades listening for a sharp, well-defined radio signal that could indicate it was sent by distant intelligent life. Now researchers believe that space weather could distort and blur such signals – meaning SETI has been scanning for the wrong thing

The MAHA Institute is holding an event called MEVI Roundtable: Massive Epidemic of Vaccine Injury to fear monger about vaccines. Unfortunately, Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, a prominent oncologist-scientist, will participate.

The post RFK Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines (part 8): “Massive Epidemic of Vaccine Injury,” ACIP, and a prominent oncologist first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Finding Earth-like exoplanets with the composition and ingredients for life as we know it is the Holy Grail of exoplanet hunting. Since the first exoplanets were identified in the 1990s, scientists have pushed the boundaries of finding exoplanets through new and exciting methods. One of these methods is the direct imaging method, which involves carefully blocking out the host star within the observing telescope, thus revealing the orbiting exoplanets that were initially hiding within the star’s immense glare.

Astronomers have created the largest and most detailed 3D map yet of a glowing signal from the early universe, revealing hidden galaxies and gas from 9–11 billion years ago. By analyzing faint “Lyman-alpha” light emitted by energized hydrogen, scientists used an advanced technique called line intensity mapping to capture not just the brightest galaxies but also the vast cosmic structures surrounding them.

Physicists have long struggled to unite quantum mechanics—the theory governing tiny particles—with Einstein’s theory of gravity, which explains the behavior of stars, planets, and the structure of the universe. Researchers at TU Wien have now taken a new step toward that goal by rethinking one of relativity’s core ideas: the paths particles follow through curved spacetime, known as geodesics. By creating a quantum version of these paths—called the q-desic equation—the team showed that particles moving through a “quantum” spacetime may deviate slightly from the paths predicted by classical relativity.

Physicists have long struggled to unite quantum mechanics—the theory governing tiny particles—with Einstein’s theory of gravity, which explains the behavior of stars, planets, and the structure of the universe. Researchers at TU Wien have now taken a new step toward that goal by rethinking one of relativity’s core ideas: the paths particles follow through curved spacetime, known as geodesics. By creating a quantum version of these paths—called the q-desic equation—the team showed that particles moving through a “quantum” spacetime may deviate slightly from the paths predicted by classical relativity.