Scientists have directly confirmed the location of the universe's “missing” matter for the first time, reports a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy. 

The idea that the universe must contain normal, or “baryonic,” matter that we can’t seem to find goes back to the birth of modern cosmological models. Now, a team has revealed that about 76 percent of all baryons—the ordinary particles that make up planets and stars—exist as gas hidden in the dark expanses between galaxies, known as the intergalactic medium. Fast radio bursts (FRBs), transient signals with elusive origins, illuminated the missing baryons, according to the researchers. As a bonus, they also identified the most distant FRB ever recorded, at 9.1 billion light years away, in the study. 

“Measuring the ‘missing baryons’ with Fast Radio Bursts has been a major long-sought milestone for radio astronomers,” said Liam Connor, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian who led the study, in an email. “Until recently, we didn’t have a large-enough sample of bursts to make strong statements about where this ordinary matter was hiding.” 

Under the leadership of Caltech professor Vikram Ravi, the researchers constructed the DSA-110 radio telescope—an array of over 100 dishes in the California desert—to achieve this longstanding milestone. “We built up the largest and most distant collection of localized FRBs (meaning we know their exact host galaxy and distance),” Connor explained. “This data sample, plus new algorithms, allowed us to finally make a complete baryon pie chart. There are no longer any missing wedges.”

Baryons are the building blocks of the familiar matter that makes up our bodies, stars, and galaxies, in contrast to dark matter, a mysterious substance that accounts for the vast majority of the universe’s mass. Cosmological models predict that there is much more baryonic matter than we can see in stars and galaxies, which has spurred astronomers into a decades-long search for the “missing baryons” in space. 

Scientists have long assumed that most of this missing matter exists in the form of ionized gas in the IGM, but FRBs have opened a new window into these dark reaches, which can be difficult to explore with conventional observatories. 

“FRBs complement and improve on past methods by their sensitivity to all the ionized gas in the Universe,” Connor said. “Past methods, which were highly informative but somewhat incomplete, could only measure hot gas near galaxies or clusters of galaxies. There was no probe that could measure the lion’s share of ordinary matter in the Universe, which it turns out is in the intergalactic medium.”

Since the first FRB was detected in 2007, thousands of similar events have been discovered, though astronomers still aren't sure what causes them. Characterized by extremely energetic radio waves that last for mere milliseconds, the bursts typically originate millions or billions of light years from our galaxy. Some repeat, and some do not. Scientists think these pyrotechnic events are fueled by massive compact objects, like neutron stars, but their exact nature and origins remain unclear.

Connor and his colleagues studied a sample of 60 FRB observations that spanned from about 12 million light years away from Earth all the way to a new record holder for distance: FRB 20230521B, located 9.1 billion light years away. With the help of these cosmic searchlights, the team was able to make a new precise measurement of the density of baryonic matter across the cosmic web, which is a network of large-scale structures that spans the universe. The results matched up with cosmological predictions that most of the missing baryons would be blown out into the IGM by “feedback” generated within galaxies. About 15 percent is present in structures that surround galaxies, called halos, and a small remainder makes up stars and other celestial bodies.

“It really felt like I was going in blind without a strong prior either way,” Connor said. “If all of the missing baryons were hiding in galaxy halos and the IGM were gas-poor, that would be surprising in its own way. If, as we discovered, the baryons had mostly been blown into the space between galaxies, that would also be remarkable because that would require strong astrophysical feedback and violent processes during galaxy formation.”

“Now, looking back on the result, it’s kind of satisfying that our data agrees with modern cosmological simulations with strong ‘feedback’ and agrees with the early Universe values of the total abundance of normal matter,” he continued. “Sometimes it’s nice to have some concordance.” 

The new measurement might alleviate the so-called sigma-8 tension, which is a discrepancy between the overall “clumpiness” of matter in the universe when measured using the cosmic microwave background, which is the oldest light in the cosmos, compared with using modern maps of galaxies and clusters.

“One explanation for this disagreement is that our standard model of cosmology is broken, and we need exotic new physics,” Connor said. “Another explanation is that today’s Universe appears smooth because the baryons have been sloshed around by feedback.” 

“Our FRB measurement suggests the baryon cosmic web is relatively smooth, homogenized by astrophysical processes in galaxies (feedback),” he continued. “This would explain the S8 tension without exotic new physics. If that’s the case, then I think the broader lesson is that we really need to pin down these pesky baryons, which have previously been very difficult to measure directly.”

To that end, Connor is optimistic that more answers to these cosmic riddles are coming down the pike. 

“The future is looking bright for the field of FRB cosmology,” he said. “We are in the process of building enormous radio telescope arrays that could find tens of thousands of localized FRBs each year,” including the upcoming DSA-2000.

“My colleagues and I think of our work as baby steps towards the bigger goal of fully mapping the ordinary, baryonic matter throughout the whole Universe,” he concluded. 

Welcome back to the Abstract! 

This week, it’s time for a walk in the woods. These particular woods have been dead and buried for centuries, mind you, but they still have a lot to say about the tumultuous events they experienced across thousands of years.

Then: exposure to climate change starts in the womb; CYBORG TADPOLES; get swole with this new dinosaur diet; the long march of an ancestral reptile; and, finally, pregaming for science. 

The saga of the sunken cypress 

Napora, Katharine et al. “Subfossil bald cypress trees suggest localized, enduring effects of major climatic episodes on the Southeast Atlantic Coast of the United States.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For thousands of years, a forest filled with bald cypress trees thrived in coastal Georgia. But climate shifts caused by volcanic eruptions and a possible comet impact wreaked havoc on this environment, eventually leading to the death of these ancient woods by the year 1600.

Now scientists have exhumed dozens of the magnificent trees, which were buried at the mouth of the Altamaha River for centuries. The dead trees are well-preserved as subfossils, meaning they are only partially fossilized, allowing researchers to count tree rings, conduct radiocarbon dating, and reconstruct the epic tale of this long-lived grove.

“This is the largest intact deposit of subfossil Holocene cypress trees ever analyzed in the literature from the Southeast United States…with specimens spanning almost six millennia,” said researchers led by Katharine Napora of Florida Atlantic University in their study. 

In ideal conditions, bald cypress trees can live for millennia; for instance, one tree known as the Senator in Longwood, Florida was about 3,500-years-old when it died in a 2012 fire. But Napora’s team found that their subfossil trees experienced a collapse in life expectancy during the Vandal Minimum (VM) environmental downturn, which began around 500 CE. Trees that sprouted after this event only lived about half as long as those born before, typically under 200 years. 

The reasons for this downturn are potentially numerous, including volcanic eruptions and a possible comet strike. The researchers say that tree-ring evidence shows “a reduction in solar radiation in 536 and 541 to 544 CE, likely the consequence of a volcanic dust veil…Greenlandic ice cores also contain particles rich in elements suggesting dust originating from a comet, dating to 533 to 540 CE.”

The possibility that a comet struck Earth at this time has been debated for decades, but many scientists think that volcanic eruptions can account for the extreme cooling without invoking space rocks. In any case, the world was rocked by a series of unfortunate events that produced a variety of localized impacts.This Georgian tree cemetery presents a new record of those tumultuous times which “speaks to the long-term impacts of major climatic episodes in antiquity” and “underscores the vulnerability of 21st-century coastal ecosystems to the destabilizing effects of large-scale climatic downturns,” according to the study.

In other news…

PSA: climate risks begin before you’re born 

DeIngeniis, Donato et al. “Prenatal exposure to extreme ambient heat may amplify the adverse impact of Superstorm Sandy on basal ganglia volume among school-aged children.” PLOS One.

In addition to disrupting long-lived trees, climate change poses a threat to people—starting in the womb. A new study tracked the brain development of children whose mothers endured Superstorm Sandy while pregnant, revealing that prenatal exposure to extreme weather events affect neural and emotional health.

“Prenatal exposure to Superstorm Sandy impacted child brain development,” said researchers led by Donato DeIngeniis of the City University of New York. The team found that a group of 8-year-old children whose mothers experienced the 2012 disaster while pregnant had noticeable differences in their basal ganglia, a brain region involved in motor skills and emotional regulation. 

Exposure to both the hurricane and associated extreme heat (defined as temperatures above 95°F) was linked to both a larger pallidum and smaller nucleus accumbens, both subregions of the basal ganglia, compared to unexposed peers. The findings hint at a higher risk of emotional and behavioral disruption, or other impairments, as a consequence of exposure in the womb, but the study said more research is necessary to confirm those associations. 

“Extreme weather events and natural disasters are projected to increase in frequency and magnitude. In addition to promoting initiatives to combat climate change, it is imperative to alert pregnant individuals to the ongoing danger of exposure to extreme climate events,” the team said.

Here come the cyborg tadpoles

Sheng, Hao, Liu, Ren, Li, Qiang et al. “Brain implantation of soft bioelectronics via embryonic development.” Nature.

Scientists have a long tradition of slapping sensors onto brains to monitor whatever the heck is going on in there. The latest edition: Cyborg tadpoles. 

By implanting a microelectrode array into embryonic frogs and axolotls, a team of researchers was able to track neural development and record brain activity with no detectable adverse effects on the tadpoles.

“Cyborg tadpoles showed normal development through later stages, showing comparable morphology, survival rates and developmental timing to control tadpoles,” said researchers co-led by Hao Sheng, Ren Liu, and Qiang Li of Harvard University. “Future combination of this system with virtual-reality platforms could provide a powerful tool for investigating behaviour- and sensory-specific brain activity during development.” 

The future didn’t deliver personal jetpacks, but we may get virtual-reality tours of amphibian cyborg brains, so there’s that. 

We finally know for certain what sauropods ate 

Poropat, Stephen F. et al. “Fossilized gut contents elucidate the feeding habits of sauropod dinosaurs.” Current Biology.

Once upon a time, a long-necked sauropod dinosaur from the Diamantinasaurus family was chowing down on a variety of plants. Shortly afterward, it died (RIP). 100 million years later, this leafy last meal has now provided the first direct evidence that sauropods—the largest animals ever to walk on land—were herbivores. 

“Gut contents for sauropod dinosaurs—perhaps the most ecologically impactful terrestrial herbivores worldwide throughout much of the Jurassic and Cretaceous, given their gigantic sizes—have remained elusive,” said researchers led by Stephen Poropat of Curtin University. “The Diamantinasaurus cololite (fossilized gut contents) described herein provides the first direct, empirical support for the long-standing hypothesis of sauropod herbivory.”

Scientists have long assumed that sauropods were veggie-saurs based on their anatomy, but it’s cool to finally have confirmation by looking in the belly of this beast. 

Life finds a way through the “dead zone”

Flannery-Sutherland, Joseph et al. “Landscape-explicit phylogeography illuminates the ecographic radiation of early archosauromorph reptiles.” Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Birds, crocodiles, and dinosaurs are all descended from an ancestral lineage of reptiles called archosauromorphs. These troopers managed to survive Earth’s most devastating extinction event, called the end-Permian or “Great Dying,” a global warming catastrophe that wiped out more than half of all land animals and 81 percent of marine life some 250 million years ago.

Now, paleontologists have found clues indicating how they succeeded by reconstructing archosauromorph dispersal patterns with models of ancient landscapes and evolutionary trees. The results suggest that these animals endured 10,000-mile marches through “tropical dead zones.”

These archosauromorph “dispersals through the Pangaean tropical dead zone…contradict its perception as a hard barrier to vertebrate movement,” said researchers led by Joseph Flannery-Sutherland of the University of Birmingham. “This remarkable tolerance of climatic adversity was probably integral to their later evolutionary success.”

The science of spectator sports

Xygalatas, Dimitris et al “Route of fire: Pregame rituals and emotional synchrony among Brazilian football fans.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In Brazil, football fans participate in a pregame ritual known as the Rua de Fogo, or Street of Fire. As buses carrying teams arrive at the stadium, fans greet the players with flares, smoke bombs, fireworks, flags, cheers, and chants.

Now, scientists have offered a glimpse into the ecstatic emotions of these crowds by enlisting  17 fans, including a team bus driver, to wear heart rate monitors in advance of a state championship final  between local teams. The results showed that fans’ heart rates synced up during periods of “emotional synchrony.” 

“We found that the Rua de Fogo ritual preceding the football match exhibited particularly high levels of emotional synchrony—surpassing even those observed during the game itself, which was among the season’s most important,” said researchers led by Dimitris Xygalatas of the University of Connecticut. “These findings suggest that fan rituals play important roles in fostering shared emotional experiences, reinforcing the broader appeal of sports as a site of social connection and identity formation.”

Wishing everyone an emotionally synchronous weekend! Thanks for reading and see you next week.

Scientists have captured an unprecedented glimpse of cosmic dawn, an era more than 13 billion years ago, using telescopes on the surface of the Earth. This marks the first time humans have seen signatures of the first stars interacting with the early universe from our planet, rather than space. 

This ancient epoch when the first stars lit up the universe has been probed by space-based observatories, but observations captured from telescopes in Chile are the first to measure key microwave signatures from the ground, reports a study published on Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal. The advancement means it could now be much cheaper to probe this enigmatic era, when the universe we are familiar with today, alight with stars and galaxies, was born.

“This is the first breakthrough measurement,” said Tobias Marriage, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University who co-authored the study. “It was very exciting to get this signal rising just above the noise.” 

Many ground and space telescopes have probed the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the oldest light in the universe, which is the background radiation produced by the Big Bang. But it is much trickier to capture polarized microwave signatures—which were sparked by the interactions of the first stars with the CMB—from Earth. 

This polarized microwave light is a million times fainter than the CMB, which is itself quite dim. Space-based telescopes like the WMAP and Planck missions have spotted it, but Earth’s atmosphere blocks out much of the universe’s light, putting ground-based measurements of this signature out of reach—until now.

Marriage and his colleagues set out to capture these elusive signals from Earth for the first time with the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS), a group of four telescopes that sits at high elevation in the Andes Mountains. A detection of this light would prove that ground-based telescopes, which are far more affordable than their space-based counterparts, could contribute to research into this mysterious era.

In particular, the team searched for a particular polarization pattern ignited by the birth of the first stars in the universe, which condensed from hydrogen gas starting a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. This inaugural starlight was so intense that it stripped electrons off of hydrogen gas atoms surrounding the stars, leading to what’s known as the epoch of reionization. 

Marriage’s team aimed to capture encounters between CMB photons and the liberated electrons, which produce polarized microwave light. By measuring that polarization, scientists can estimate the abundance of freed electrons, which in turn provides a rough birthdate for the first stars.

“The first stars create this electron gas in the universe, and light scatters off the electron gas creating a polarization,” Marriage explained. “We measure the polarization, and therefore we can say how deep this gas of electrons is to the first stars, and say that's when the first stars formed.”

The researchers were confident that CLASS could eventually pinpoint the target, but they were delighted when it showed up early on in their analysis of a key frequency channel at the observatory. 

“That the cosmic signal rose up in the first look was a great surprise,” Marriage said. “It was really unclear whether we were going to get this [measurement] from this particular set of data. Now that we have more in the can, we're excited to move ahead.”

Telescopes on Earth face specific challenges beyond the blurring effects of the atmosphere; Marriage is concerned that megaconstellations like Starlink will interfere with microwave research more in the coming years, as they already have with optical and radio observations. But ground telescopes also offer valuable data that can complement space-based missions like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) or the European Euclid observatory for a fraction of the price. 

“Essentially, our measurement of reionization is a bit earlier than when one would predict with some analyzes of the JWST observations,” Marriage said. “We're putting together this puzzle to understand the full picture of when the first stars formed.” 

Welcome back to the Abstract! 

Sad news: the marriage between the Milky Way and Andromeda may be off, so don’t save the date (five billion years from now) just yet. 

Then: the air you breathe might narc on you, hitchhiking worm towers, a long-lost ancient culture, Assyrian eyeliner, and the youngest old fish of the week.  

An Update on the Fate of the Galaxy

Sawala, Till et al. “No certainty of a Milky Way–Andromeda collision.” Nature Astronomy.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, and our nearest large neighbor, Andromeda, are supposed to collide in about five billion years in a smashed ball of wreckage called “Milkomeda.” That has been the “prevalent narrative and textbook knowledge” for decades, according to a new study that then goes on to say—hey, there’s a 50/50 chance that the galacta-crash will not occur.

What happened to The Milkomeda that Was Promised? In short, better telescopes. The new study is based on updated observations from the Gaia and Hubble space telescopes, which  included refined measurements of smaller nearby galaxies, including the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is about 130,000 light years away. 

Astronomers found that the gravitational pull of the Large Magellanic Cloud effectively tugs the Milky Way out of Andromeda’s path in many simulations that incorporate the new data, which is one of many scenarios that could upend the Milkomeda-merger.

“The orbit of the Large Magellanic Cloud runs perpendicular to the Milky Way–Andromeda orbit and makes their merger less probable,” said researchers led by Till Sawala of the University of Helsinki. “In the full system, we found that uncertainties in the present positions, motions and masses of all galaxies leave room for drastically different outcomes and a probability of close to 50% that there will be no Milky Way–Andromeda merger during the next 10 billion years.” 

“Based on the best available data, the fate of our Galaxy is still completely open,” the team said.

Wow, what a cathartic clearing of the cosmic calendar. The study also gets bonus points for the term “Galactic eschatology,” a field of study that is “still in its infancy.” For all those young folks out there looking to get a start on the ground floor, why not become a Galactic eschatologist? Worth it for the business cards alone.

In other news… 

The Air on Drugs

Nousias, Orestis, McCauley, Mark, Stammnitz, Maximilian et al. “Shotgun sequencing of airborne eDNA achieves rapid assessment of whole biomes, population genetics and genomic variation.” Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Living things are constantly shedding cells off into their surroundings where it becomes environmental DNA (eDNA), a bunch of mixed genetic scraps that provide a whiff of the biome of any given area. In a new study, scientists who captured air samples from Dublin, Ireland, found eDNA from plenty of humans, pathogens, and drugs.

“[Opium poppy] eDNA was also detected in Dublin City air in both the 2023 and 2024 samples,” said researchers led by co-led by Orestis Nousias and Mark McCauley of the University of Florida, and Maximilian Stammnitz of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology. “Dublin City also had the highest level of Cannabis genus eDNA” and “Psilocybe genus (‘magic mushrooms’) eDNA was also detectable in the 2024 Dublin air sample.” 

Even the air is a snitch these days. Indeed, while eDNA techniques are revolutionizing science, they also raise many ethical concerns about privacy and surveillance.

Catch a Ride on the Wild Worm Tower 

Perez, Daniela et al. “Towering behavior and collective dispersal in Caenorhabditis nematodes.” Current Biology.

The long wait for a wild worm tower is finally over. I know, it’s a momentous occasion. While scientists have previously observed tiny worms called nematodes joining to form towers in laboratory conditions, this Voltron-esque adaptation has now been observed in a natural environment for the first time. 

“We observed towers of an undescribed Caenorhabditis species and C. remanei within the damp flesh of apples and pears” in orchards near the University of Konstanz in Germany, said researchers led by Daniela Perez of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. “As these fruits rotted and partially split on the ground, they exposed substrate projections—crystalized sugars and protruding flesh—which served as bases for towers as well as for a large number of worms individually lifting their bodies to wave in the air (nictation).”

According to the study, this towering behavior helps nematodes catch rides on passing animals, so that wave is pretty much the nematode version of a hitchhiker’s thumb.

A Lost Culture of Hunter-Gatherers  

Krettek, Kim-Louise et al. “A 6000-year-long genomic transect from the Bogotá Altiplano reveals multiple genetic shifts in the demographic history of Colombia.” Science Advances.

Ancient DNA from the remains of 21 individuals exposed a lost Indigenous culture that lived in Colombia’s Bogotá Altiplano in Colombia for millennia, before vanishing around 2,000 years ago. 

These hunter-gatherers were not closely related to either ancient North American groups or ancient or present-day South American populations, and therefore “represent a previously unknown basal lineage,” according to researchers led by Kim-Lousie Krettek of the University of Tübingen. In other words, this newly discovered population is an early branch of the broader family tree that ultimately dispersed into South America.  

“Ancient genomic data from neighboring areas along the Northern Andes that have not yet been analyzed through ancient genomics, such as western Colombia, western Venezuela, and Ecuador, will be pivotal to better define the timing and ancestry sources of human migrations into South America,” the team said.

The Eyeshadow of the Ancients

Amicone, Silvia et al. “Eye makeup in Northwestern Iran at the time of the Assyrian Empire: a new kohl recipe based on manganese and graphite from Kani Koter (Iron Age III).” Archaeometry.

People of the Assyrian Empire appreciated a well-touched smokey eye some 3,000 years ago, according to a new study that identified “kohl” recipes used for eye makeup from an Iron Age cemetery Kani Koter in Northwestern Iran.

“At Kani Koter, the use of natural graphite instead of carbon black testifies to a hitherto unknown kohl recipe,” said researchers led by Silvia Amicone of the University of Tübingen. “Graphite is an attractive choice due to its enhanced aesthetic appeal, as its light reflective qualities produce a metallic appearance.”

Add it to the ancient lookbook. Both women and men wore these cosmetics; the authors note that “modern assumptions that cosmetic containers would be gender-specific items aptly highlight the limitations of our present understanding of the wider cultural and social contexts of the use of eye makeup during the Iron Age in the Middle East.”

New Onychodontid Just Dropped

Goodchild, Owen et al. “A new onychodontid (Osteichthyes, Sarcopterygii) from the Upper Devonian (Frasnian) of Devon Island, Nunavut Territory, Canada.” The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

We’ll end with an introduction to Onychodus mikijuk, the newest member of a fish family called onychodontids that lived about 370 million years ago. The new species was identified by fragments found in Nunavut in Canada, including tooth “whorls” that are like little dental buzzsaws.   

“This new species is the first record of an onychodontid from the Upper Devonian of the Canadian Arctic, the first from a riverine environment, and one of the youngest occurrences of the clade,” said researchers led by Owen Goodchild of the American Museum of Natural History. 

Ah, to be 370-million-years-young again! Welcome to the fossil record, Onychodus mikijuk.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

For nine days in September 2023, the world was rocked by mysterious seismic waves that were detected globally every 90 seconds. Earth trembled again the following month with an identical global signal, though it was shorter and less intense. Baffled by the anomalies, researchers dubbed it an “Unidentified Seismic Object.” 

Scientists have now confirmed that this literally Earth-shaking event was caused by two mega-tsunamis in Dickson Fjord, a narrow inlet in East Greenland, which were triggered by the effects of human-driven climate change according to a study published on Tuesday in Nature Communications.

Previous research had suggested a link between the strange signals and massive landslides that occurred in the fjord on September 16 and October 11, 2023, but the new study is the first to directly spot the elusive standing waves, called “seiches,” that essentially rang the planet like a giant bell.

Welcome back to the Abstract! 

This week, scientists accidentally discovered a weird thing in space that is like nothing we have ever seen before. This happens a lot, yet never seems to get old. 

Then, a shark banquet, the Ladies Anuran Choir, and yet another reason to side-eye shiftwork. Last, a story about the importance of finishing touches for all life on Earth (and elsewhere).

Dead Stars Still Get Hyped

Wang, Ziteng et al. “Detection of X-ray emission from a bright long-period radio transient.” Nature.

I love a good case of scientific serendipity, and this week delivered with a story about a dead star with the cumbersome name ASKAP J1832−0911. 

The object, which is located about 15,000 light years from Earth, was first spotted flashing in radio every 44 minutes by the wide-field Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). By a stroke of luck, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which has a very narrow field-of-view, happened to be pointed the same way, allowing follow-up observations of high-energy X-ray pulses synced to the same 44-minute cycle.  

This strange entity belongs to a new class of objects called long-period radio transients (LPTs) that pulse on timescales of minutes and hours, distinguishing them from pulsars, another class of dead stars with much shorter periods that last seconds, or milliseconds. It is the first known LPT to produce X-ray pulses, a discovery that could help unravel their mysterious origin. 

ASKAP J1832−0911 exhibits “correlated and highly variable X-ray and radio luminosities, combined with other observational properties, [that] are unlike any known Galactic object,” said researchers led by Ziteng Wang of Curtin University. “This X-ray detection from an LPT reveals that these objects are more energetic than previously thought.”

It’s tempting to look at these clockwork signals and imagine advanced alien civilizations beaming out missives across the galactic transom. Indeed, when astronomer Jocelyn Bell discovered the first pulsar in 1967, she nicknamed it Little Green Men (LGM-1) to acknowledge this outside possibility. But dead stars can have just as much rhythm as (speculative) live aliens. Some neutron stars, like pulsars, flash with precision similar to atomic clocks. These pulses are either driven by the extreme dynamics within the dead stars, or orbital interactions between a dead star and a companion star.

Wang and his colleagues speculate that ASKAP J1832−0911 is either “an old magnetar” (a type of pulsar) or an “ultra-magnetized white dwarf” though the team adds that “both interpretations present theoretical challenges.” Whatever its nature, this stellar corpse is clearly spewing out tons of energetic radiation during “hyper-active” phases, hinting that other LPTs might occasionally get hyped enough to produce X-rays.

“The discovery of X-ray emission from ASKAP J1832−0911 raises the exciting possibility that some LPTs are more energetic objects emitting X-rays,” the team said. “Rapid multiwavelength follow-up observations of ASKAP J1832−0911 and other LPTs, will be crucial in determining the nature of these sources.”

Rotting Whale Carcass, Served Family-Style 

Scott, Molly et al. “Novel observations of an oceanic whitetip (Carcharhinus longimanus) and tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) scavenging event.” Frontiers in Fish Science.

On April 9, 2024, scientists spent nearly nine hours watching a bunch of sharks feed on a giant chunk of dead whale floating off the coast of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, which is a pretty cool item in  a job description. The team has now published a full account of the feast, attended by a dozen whitetip and tiger sharks, which sounds vaguely reminiscent of a cruise-ship cafeteria. 

“Individuals from both species filtered in and out of the scene, intermittently feeding either directly on the carcass or on fallen scraps,” said researchers led by Molly Scott of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “Throughout this time, it did not appear that any individual reached a point of satiation and permanently left the area; rather, they stayed, loitering around the carcass and intermittently feeding.” 

All the Ladies in the House Say RIBBIT

Santana, Erika et al. “The ‘silent’ half: diversity, function and the critical knowledge gap on female frog vocalizations.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Shout out to the toadettes—we hear you, even if nobody else does. Female anurans (the group that contains frogs and toads) are a lot more soft-spoken than their extremely vocal male conspecifics. This has led to “a male-biased perspective in anuran bioacoustics,” according to a new study that identified and analyzed female calls in more than 100 anuran species.

“It is unclear whether female calls influence mate attraction, whether males discriminate among calling females, or whether female–female competition occurs in species where females produce advertisement calls or aggressive calls,” said researchers led by Erika Santana of Universidade de São Paulo. “This review provides an overview of female calling behaviour in anurans, addressing a critical gap in frog bioacoustics and sexual selection.”

The Reason for the Season(al Affective Disorders)

Kim, Ruby et al. “Seasonal timing and interindividual differences in shiftwork adaptation.” NPJ Digital Medicine.

Why are you tired all the time? It’s the perennial question of our age (and many previous ones). One factor may be that our ancient sense of seasonality is getting thrown off by modern shiftwork, according to a study that tracked the step count, heart rate, and sleep patterns of more than 3,000 medical residents in the U.S. with wearable devices for a year.

“We show that there is a relationship between seasonal timing and shiftwork adaptation, but the relationship is not straightforward and can be influenced by many other external factors,” said researchers led by Ruby Kim of the University of Michigan. 

“We find that a conserved biological system of morning and evening oscillators, which evolved for seasonal timing, may contribute to these interindividual differences,” the team concluded. “These insights highlight the need for personalized strategies in managing shift work to mitigate potential health risks associated with circadian disruption.”

In short, blame that afternoon slump on an infinity of ancestral seasons past. 

Finishing Touches on a Planet

Marchi, Simone et al. “The shaping of terrestrial planets by late accretions.” Nature.

Earth wasn’t finished in a day; in fact, it took anywhere from 60 to 100 million years for 99 percent of our planet to coalesce from debris in the solar nebula. But the final touch—that last 1 percent—is disproportionately critical to the future of rocky planets like our own. That’s the conclusion of a study that zooms in on the bumpy phase called “late accretion,” which often involves global magma oceans and bombardment from asteroids and comets.

“Late accretion may have been responsible for shaping Earth’s distinctive geophysical and chemical properties and generating pathways conducive to prebiotic chemistry,” said researchers led by Simone Marchi of the Southwest Research Institute and Jun Korenaga of Yale University. “The search for an Earth’s twin may require finding rocky planets not only with similar bulk properties…but also with similar collisional evolution in their late accretions.”

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

Welcome back to the Abstract!

We begin this week with some scatalogical salvation. I dare not say more. 

Then, swimming without a brain: It happens more often than you might think. Next, what was bigger as a baby than it is today? Hint: It’s still really big! And to close out, imagine the sights you’ll see with your infrared vision as you ride an elevator down to Mars. 

Fighting the Climate Crisis, One Poop at a Time

Boyer, Matthew et al. “Penguin guano is an important source of climate-relevant aerosol particles in Antarctica.” Communications Earth & Environment. 

The path to a more stable climate in Antarctica runs through the buttholes of penguins. 

Penguin guano, the copious excrement produced by the birds, is rich in ammonia and methylamine gas. Scientists have now discovered that these guano-borne gasses stimulate particle formation that leads to clouds and aerosols which, in turn, cool temperatures in the remote region. As a consequence, guano “may represent an important climate feedback as their habitat changes,” according to a new study. 

“Our observations show that penguin colonies are a large source of ammonia in coastal Antarctica, whereas ammonia originating from the Southern Ocean is, in comparison, negligible,” said researchers led by Matthew Boyer of the University of Helsinki. “Dimethylamine, likely originating from penguin guano, also participates in the initial steps of particle formation, effectively boosting particle formation rates up to 10,000 times.”

Boyer and his colleagues captured their measurements from a site near Marambio Base on the Antarctica Peninsula, in the austral summer of 2023. At times when the site was downwind of a nearby colony of 60,000 Adelie penguins, the atmospheric ammonia concentration spiked to 1,000 times higher than baseline. Moreover, the ammonia levels remained elevated for more than a month after the penguins migrated from the area. 

“The penguin guano ‘fertilized’ soil, also known as ornithogenic soil, continued to be a strong source of ammonia long after they left the site,” said the team. “Our data demonstrates that there are local hotspots around the coast of Antarctica that can yield ammonia concentrations similar in magnitude to agricultural plots during summer…This suggests that coastal penguin/bird colonies could also comprise an important source of aerosol away from the coast.” 

“It is already understood that widespread loss of sea ice extent threatens the habitat, food sources, and breeding behavior of most penguin species that inhabit Antarctica,” the researchers continued. “Consequently, some Antarctic penguin populations are already declining, and some species could be nearly extinct by the end of the 21st century. We provide evidence that declining penguin populations could cause a positive climate warming feedback in the summertime Antarctic atmosphere, as proposed by a modeling study of seabird emissions in the Arctic region.”

The power of penguin poop truly knows no earthly bounds. Guano, already famous as a super-fertilizer and a pillar of many ecosystems, is also creating clouds out of thin air, with macro knock-on effects. These guano hotspots act as a bulwark against a rapidly changing climate in Antarctica, which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. We’ll need every tool we can get to curb climate change: penguin bums, welcome aboard.

A Swim Meet for Microbes

Hartl, Benedikt et al. “Neuroevolution of decentralized decision-making in N-bead swimmers leads to scalable and robust collective locomotion.” Communications Physics.

The word “brainless” is bandied about as an insult, but the truth is that lots of successful lifeforms get around just fine without a brain. For instance, microbes can locomote through fluids—a complex action—with no centralized nervous system. Naturally, scientists were like, “what’s that all about?” 

“So far, it remains unclear how decentralized decision-making in a deformable microswimmer can lead to efficient collective locomotion of its body parts,” said researchers led by Benedikt Hartl of TU Wien and Tufts University. “We thus investigate biologically motivated decentralized yet collective decision-making strategies of the swimming behavior of a generalized…swimmer.”

The upshot: Decentralized circuits regulate movements in brainless swimmers, an insight that could inspire robotic analogs for drug delivery and other functions. However, the real tip-of-the-hat goes to the concept artist for the above depiction of the team’s bead-based simulated microbe, who shall hereafter be known as Beady the Deformable Microswimmer.

Big Jupiter in Little Solar System

Batygin, Konstantin and Adams, Fred. “Determination of Jupiter’s primordial physical state.” Nature Astronomy.

Jupiter is pretty dang big at this current moment. More than 1,000 Earths could fit inside the gas giant; our planet is a mere gumball on these scales. But at the dawn of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, Jupiter was at least twice as massive as it is today, and its magnetic field was 50 times stronger, according to a new study. 

“Our calculations reveal that Jupiter was 2 to 2.5 times as large as it is today, 3.8 [million years] after the formation of the first solids in the Solar System,”  said authors Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology and Fred Adams of the University of Michigan. “Our findings…provide an evolutionary snapshot that pins down properties of the Jovian system at the end of the protosolar nebula’s lifetime.”

The team based their conclusions on the subtle orbital tilts of two of Jupiter’s tiny moons Amalthea and Thebe, which allowed them to reconstruct conditions in the early Jovian system. It’s nice to see Jupiter’s more offbeat moons get some attention; Europa is always hogging the spotlight. (Fun fact: lots of classic sci-fi stories are set on Amalthea, from Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s “The Way to Amaltha” to Arthur C. Clarke’s “Jupiter Five.”)

Now That’s Infracredible

Ma, Yuqian et al. “Near-infrared spatiotemporal color vision in humans enabled by upconversion contact lenses.” Cell. 

I was hooked on this new study by the second sentence, which reads: “However, the capability to detect invisible multispectral infrared light with the naked eye is highly desirable.” 

Okay, let's assume that the public is out there, highly desiring infrared vision, though I would like to see some poll-testing. A team has now developed an upconversion contact-lens (UCL) that detects near-infrared light (NIR) and converts it into blue, green and red wavelengths. While this is not the kind of inborn infrared vision you’d see in sci-fi, it does expand our standard retinal retinue, with fascinating results. 

“Humans wearing upconversion contact lenses (UCLs) could accurately recognize near-infrared (NIR) temporal information like Morse code and discriminate NIR pattern images,” said researchers led by Yuqian Ma of the University of Science and Technology of China. “Interestingly, both mice and humans with UCLs exhibited better discrimination of NIR light compared with visible light when their eyes were closed, owing to the penetration capability of NIR light.”  

The study reminds me of the legendary scene in Battlestar Galactica where Dean Stockwell, as John Cavil, exclaims: “I don't want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter.” Maybe he just needed some upgraded contact lenses! 

Hold the Door! (to Mars)

Aslanov, Vladimir. “An anchored space elevator under the L1 Mars-Phobos libration point.” Acta Astronautica.

This week in space elevator news, why not set one up on the Martian moon Phobos? A new study envisions anchoring a tether to Phobos, a dinky little space potato that’s about the size of Manhattan, and extending it out some 3,700 miles, almost to the surface of Mars. Because Phobos is tidally locked to Mars (the same side always faces the planet), it might be possible to shuttle back and forth between Mars and Phobos on a tether. 

“The building of such a space elevator [is] a feasible project in the not too distant future,” said author Vladimir Aslanov of the Moscow Aviation Institute. “Such a project could form the basis of many missions to explore Phobos, Mars and the space around them.”

Indeed, this is far from the first time scientists have pondered the advantages of a Phobian space elevator. Just don’t be the jerk that pushes all the buttons. 

Thanks for reading! See you next week. 

Welcome back to the Abstract! 

I’m trying out something a little different this week: Instead of rounding up four studies per usual, I’m going deep on one lead study followed by a bunch of shorter tidbits. I’m hoping this shift will make for a more streamlined read and also bring a bit more topic diversity into the column. 

With that said, wild horses couldn’t drag me from the main story this week (it’s about wild horses). Then follow the trail of an early land pioneer, gaze into a three-eyed face of the past, witness an aurora Martialis, meet some mama chimps, and join the countdown to the end of the universe.    

You Can Lead a Horse to an Ice-Free Corridor… 

Running Horse Collin, Yvette et al. “Sustainability insights from Late Pleistocene climate change and horse migration patterns.” Science.

Have you ever got lost in thought while wandering and ended up on a totally different continent? You’re in good company. The history of life on Earth is packed with accidental migrations into whole new frontiers, a pattern exemplified by the Bering Land Bridge, which connected Siberia to Alaska until it was submerged under glacial meltwaters 11,000 years ago. 

As mentioned in last week’s column, this natural bridge likely enabled the ancestors of Tyrannosaurus rex to enter North America from Asia. It also served as a gateway to the first humans to reach the Americas, who crossed from Siberia over the course of several migrations. 

Now, scientists have confirmed that wild horses also crossed the Bering Land Bridge multiple times in both directions from about 50,000 and 13,000 years ago, during the Late Pleistocene period. In a study that combined genomic analysis of horse fossils with Indigenous science and knowledge, researchers discovered evidence of many crossings during the last ice age.  

“We find that Late Pleistocene horses from Alaska and northern Yukon are related to populations from Eurasia and crossed the Bering land bridge multiple times during the last glacial interval,” said researchers led by Yvette Running Horse Collin (Lakota: Tašunke Iyanke Wiŋ) of the Université de Toulouse. “We also find deeply divergent lineages north and south of the American ice sheets that genetically influenced populations across Beringia and into Eurasia.” 

I couldn’t resist this study in part because I am an evangelical Horse Girl looking to convert the masses to the cult of Equus. But beyond horse worship, this study is a great example of knowledge-sharing across worldviews as it weaves in the expertise of Indigenous co-authors who live in the regions where these Ice Age horses once roamed.

“The Horse Nation and its movement and evolution are sacred to many Indigenous knowledge keepers in the Americas,” Running Horse Collin and her colleagues said. “Following the movement and evolution of the horse to reveal traditional knowledge fully aligns with many Indigenous scientific protocols. We thus integrate the biological signatures identified with Indigenous knowledge regarding ecosystem balance and sustainability to highlight the importance of corridors in safeguarding life.”

The study concludes with several reflections on the Horse Nation from its Indigenous co-authors. I’ll close with a quote from co-author Jane Stelkia, an Elder for the sqilxʷ/suknaqin or Okanagan Nation, who observed that, “Today, we live in a world where the boundaries and obstacles created by mankind do not serve the majority of life. In this study, Snklc’askaxa is offering us medicine by reminding us of the path all life takes together to survive and thrive. It is time that humans help life find the openings and points to cross and move safely.”

In other news….

A Strut for the Ages

Long, John et al “Earliest amniote tracks recalibrate the timeline of tetrapod evolution.” Nature.

Fossilized claw prints found in Australia’s Snowy Plains Formation belonged to the earliest known “amniote,” the clade that includes practically all tetrapod vertebrates on land, including humans. The tracks were laid out by a mystery animal 356 million years ago, pushing the fossil timeline of amniotes back some 35 million years into the Devonian period. 

“The implications for the early evolution of tetrapods are profound,” said researchers led by John Long of Flinders University. “It seems that tetrapod evolution proceeded much faster, and the Devonian tetrapod record is much less complete than has been thought.”  

Extra points for the flashy concept video that shows the track-maker strutting like it knows it’s entering itself into the fossil record.

Blinky the Cambrian Radiodont

Moysiuk, Joseph and Caron, Jean-Bernard. “Early evolvability in arthropod tagmosis exemplified by a new radiodont from the Burgess Shale.” Royal Society Open Science.

What has three eyes, two spiky claws, and a finger-sized body? Meet Mosura fentoni, a new species of arthropod that lived 506 million years ago. The bizarre “radiodont” from the Cambrian-era sediments of British Columbia’s Burgess Shale is exhaustively described in a new study.

Concept art of Mosura fentoni. Fantastic creature. No notes.  Image: Art by Danielle Dufault, © ROM

“Mosura adds to a growing list of radiodont species in which a median eye has been described, but the functional role of this structure has not been discussed,” said authors Joseph Moysiuk of the Manitoba Museum and Jean-Bernard Caron of the Royal Ontario Museum. “The large size and hemiellipsoidal shape of the radiodont median eye are unusual for arthropod single-lens eyes, but a possible functional analogy can be drawn with the central member of the triplet of median eyes found in dragonflies.”

Green Glow on the Red Planet 

Knutsen, Elise et al. “Detection of visible-wavelength aurora on Mars.” Science Advances.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover captured images of a green aurora on Mars in March 2024, marking the first time a first visible light aurora has ever been seen on the planet. Mars displays a whole host of auroral light shows, including ”localized discrete and patchy aurora, global diffuse aurora, dayside proton aurora, and large-scale sinuous aurora,” according to a new study. But it took a solar storm to capture a visible-light aurora for the first time.

“To our knowledge, detection of aurora from a planetary surface other than Earth has never been reported, nor has visible aurora been observed at Mars,” said researchers led by Elise Knutsen of the University of Oslo. “This detection demonstrates that auroral forecasting at Mars is possible, and that during events with higher particle precipitation, or under less dusty atmospheric conditions, aurorae will be visible to future astronauts.”

Parenting Tips from Wild Chimps

Rolland, Eléonore et al. “Evidence of organized but not disorganized attachment in wild Western chimpanzee offspring (Pan troglodytes verus).” Nature Human Behavior.

Coasting off of Mother’s Day weekend, researchers present four years of observations focused on mother-offspring attachment styles in the wild chimpanzees of Côte d'Ivoire’s Taï National Park. 

The team documented “organized” attachment styles like “secure” in which the offspring look to the mother for comfort, and “Insecure avoidant,” characterized by more independent offspring.

 The “disorganized” style, in which the parent-offspring bond is maladaptive due to parental abuse or neglect, was virtually absent in the wild chimps, in contrast to humans and captive chimps, where it is unfortunately far more common.     

“The maternal behaviour of chimpanzees observed in our study lacked evidence of the abusive behaviours observed in human contexts,” said researchers led by Eléonore Rolland of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “In contrast, instances of inadequate maternal care in zoos leading to humans taking over offspring rearing occurred for 8 infants involving 19 mothers across less than 5 years and for 7 infants involving 23 mothers across 9 years.”

In other words, the environmental context of parenting matters a lot to the outcomes of the offspring. Of course, this is obvious in countless anecdotal experiences of our own lives, but the results of the study offer a stark empirical reminder.

Live Every Day As If The Universe Might End in 10⁷⁸ Years

Falcke, Heino et al. “An upper limit to the lifetime of stellar remnants from gravitational pair production.” Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

Bad news for anyone who was hoping to live to the ripe old age of 10⁷⁸ years. It turns out that the universe might decay into nothingness around that time, which is much sooner than previous estimates of cosmic death in about 10¹¹⁰⁰ years. Long-lived stellar remnants, like white dwarfs and black holes, will slowly evaporate through a process called Hawking radiation on a more accelerated timeline, according to the study, which also estimates that a human body would take about 10⁹⁰ years to evaporate through this process (sorry, would-be exponent nonagenarians).  

“Astronomy usually looks back in time when observing the universe, answering the question how the universe evolved to its present state,” said researchers led by Heino Falcke of Radboud University Nijmegen. “However, it is also a natural question to ask how the universe and its constituents will develop in the future, based on the currently known laws of nature.”

Answer: Things fall apart, including all matter in the universe. Have a great weekend!