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science

Meat… in… Space!

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Meat in Space

For the first time ever, meat was created in space — but no animals were harmed in the making of this 3D bioprinted “space beef.” Aleph Farms, an Israeli food company, announced today (Oct. 7) that its experiment aboard the International Space Station resulted in the first-ever lab-grown meat in space. The company focuses on growing cultivated beef steaks, or growing an entire piece of real, edible meat out of just a couple of cells, in this case, bovine cell spheroids, in a lab. On the space station, the experiment involved growing a piece of meat by mimicking a cow’s … Read more

SCIENCE: New Quantum Experiment Puts 2000 Atoms in Two Places at Once

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atoms

Giant molecules can be in two places at once, thanks to quantum physics. That’s something that scientists have long known is theoretically true based on a few facts: Every particle or group of particles in the universe is also a wave — even large particles, even bacteria, even human beings, even planets and stars. And waves occupy multiple places in space at once. So any chunk of matter can also occupy two places at once. Physicists call this phenomenon “quantum superposition,” and for decades, they have demonstrated it using small particles. But in recent years, physicists have scaled up their … Read more

SCIENCE: Building a Planetary “Life Scanner”

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Star Trek Beyond

When the crewmembers of the starship Enterprise pull into orbit around a new planet, one of the first things they do is scan for life-forms. Here in the real world, researchers have long been trying to figure out how to unambiguously detect signs of life on distant exoplanets. They are now one step closer to this goal, thanks to a new remote-sensing technique that relies on a quirk of biochemistry causing light to spiral in a particular direction and produce a fairly unmistakable signal. The method, described in a recent paper published in the journal Astrobiology, could be used aboard … Read more

SPACE: The Moon is Made of Cheese, and Neutron Stars Are Full of… Soup?

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pulsar - pixabay

When your computer glitches, the screen might freeze up for a few seconds before rapidly skipping ahead to correct itself. When a neutron star glitches, much the same thing happens — except, in this case, the screen is a swirling magnetic field 3 trillion times the size of Earth’s. Neutron stars — dense, quick-spinning corpses of once-giant stars that pack about 1.5 times the mass of the sun into a ball with a diameter about as long as Manhattan — are always baffling. But the roughly 5% of neutron stars that are known to “glitch,” or suddenly spin faster for … Read more

SPACE: A Supernova’s Dust Found in Antarctica

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supernova - pixabay

Cosmic dust found in Antarctic snow was likely birthed in a distant supernova millions of years ago. The dust’s interstellar journey eventually brought the material to Earth, where scientists discovered the ancient grains. This dust stood out because it contains an iron isotope called iron-60, which is commonly released by supernovas but very rare on Earth. (Isotopes are versions of elements that differ in the numbers of neutrons in their atoms.) In the search for elusive space dust, scientists analyzed more than 1,100 lbs. (500 kilograms) of surface snow that they gathered from a high-altitude region of Antarctica near the … Read more

PENTAGON: Lasers Could Soon Send Voice Message to Specific Targets

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laser - pixabay

As a part of a military initiative called the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWP), the project aims to create laser weapons that can transmit clear snippets of human speech across long distances. To accomplish this task, the weapon uses a principle called the Laser Induced Plasma Effect, which involves firing an incredibly powerful laser to create a ball of plasma, then shooting a second laser to oscillate the plasma, creating sound waves. With enough laser bursts fired at the right frequencies, the plasma vibrations can actually mimic human speech. It sounds like science fiction — but, according to the news … Read more

SCIENCE: Scientists Create the First-Ever Permanently Magnetic Liquid

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For the first time, scientists have created a permanently magnetic liquid. These liquid droplets can morph into various shapes and be externally manipulated to move around, according to a new study. We typically imagine magnets as being solid, said senior author Thomas Russell, a distinguished professor of polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But now we know that “we can make magnets that are liquid and they could conform to different shapes — and the shapes are really up to you.” The liquid droplets can change shape from a sphere to a cylinder to a pancake, … Read more

SCIENCE: Man’s Joy Stick Turns to Bone (really)

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skull - pixabay

Sometimes, the body grows bone in places it shouldn’t. That was the case for a man who was diagnosed with an extremely rare condition — his penis was turning to bone, according to a new report. The 63-year-old man went to the emergency room after he fell on the sidewalk onto his buttocks, according to the report, published in the September issue of the journal Urology Case Reports. He was able to walk, but he told doctors he was experiencing knee pain. When doctors performed a physical exam, the man also reported penile pain, the report said.  Given that the man … Read more

There Are Zombie Ants!

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zombie ants - pixabay

A mind-controlling parasite turns ants into zombies, forcing them to climb to the tops of shrubs, bite down and die. Now, a new study finds that the fungus acts like a puppeteer, somehow “pulling” the ants’ mouth muscles. The mind-controlling fungus breaks through the ant’s exoskeleton and enters its body, where it begins to grow and spread, said lead author Colleen Mangold, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at The Pennsylvania State University. [Mind Control: Gallery of Zombie Ants] The first week after being infected, the ants act normally, Mangold told Live Science. But then … Read more

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: An AI Created a Model of Our Universe. We Have No Idea How it Works (But it Does)

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universe - pixabay

The first-ever artificial intelligence simulation of the universe seems to work like the real thing — and is almost as mysterious. Researchers reported the new simulation June 24 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The goal was to create a virtual version of the cosmos in order to simulate different conditions for the universe’s beginning, but the scientists also hope to study their own simulation to understand why it works so well. “It’s like teaching image-recognition software with lots of pictures of cats and dogs, but then it’s able to recognize elephants,” study co-author Shirley Ho, … Read more