Scientists Confirm the Incredible Existence of Time Reflections

The explanation of spatial reflections—whether by light or by sound—are pretty intuitive. Electromagnetic radiation in the form of light or sound waves hit a mirror or wall, respectively, and change course. This allows our eyes to see a reflection or echo of the original input. However, for more than 50 years, scientists have theorized that there’s another kind of reflection in quantum mechanics known as time reflection.


This term might conjure up images of a nuclear-powered DeLorean or a particular police box (that’s bigger on the inside), but that’s not quite what scientists mean by the term. Instead, time reflections occur when the entire medium in which an electromagnetic wave travels suddenly changes course. This causes a portion of that wave to reverse and its frequency transforms into another one.

READ MORE...

Two Six Centuries-Old Shipwrecks

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• Crews working on the Varberg Tunnel railway project in Sweden recently uncovered six shipwrecks near the historic city.
• The wrecks ranged from the Middle Ages to the 17th century, and exemplified multiple ship designs and construction styles.
• The most intriguing ship was from the 1530s, as it remained the most intact for further study.

Construction on the Varberg Tunnel in Sweden—part of a modern railway project—has resulted in an unexpected bounty of historical underwater finds: six shipwrecks spanning the Middle Ages to the 17th century, all maritime remnants of what was once a bustling harbor.

Of the six separate wrecks found, four are from the Middle Ages (or Late Middle Ages), one is from the 17th century, and one couldn’t be dated, according to a translated report from archaeology consultant group Arkeologerna.

READ MORE...

A Paradigm Shift in RAM Is About to Make Computing Unstoppable

Your computer wouldn’t be very useful without RAM, which is short for random access memory. These chips function as the temporary storage for an operating system, and speed is of great importance, as they’re constantly needing to access bits of memory to keep everything running smoothly. 

For more than two decades, the most advanced version of this technology—magnetoresistive RAM, or MRAM—has been the go-to tech for the kind of intense computing necessary in industrial, military, and space applications.

Now, a breakthrough discovered by scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has illustrated how a mechanism in a laser beam can control the magnetic state in solids, which the scientists describe as a “paradigm shift” in our understanding of the behavior between light and magnetic materials. The results of the study were published in the journal Physical Review Research.

READ MORE...

Scientists Found an 8,000-Year-Old Figurine

There’s no face on the oldest piece of art—a small sandstone figurine of a human from the Mesolithic era—ever found in one region of modern-day Azerbaijan.

In a study published by Archaeological Research in Asia, a team of archaeologists from both Japan and Azerbaijan showed how they used technology to investigate the details of the stone figurine that helps tell the story of the cultural shifts from Mesolithic to Neolithic.

“Its stylistic features considerably differ from those of Neolithic human figures in the region,” the study authors wrote, “providing a valuable reference point for understanding the cultural processes in symbolic aspects during the Mesolithic-Neolithic interface in the South Caucasus.”

READ MORE...

Engineers Found Evidence of Hydraulics in an Ancient Pyramid

Hydraulic mechanics may have indeed been the driving force behind the construction of ancient Egyptian pyramids.

In a preprint paper, scientists concluded that the Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, Egypt—believed to be the oldest of the seven monumental pyramids and potentially constructed about 4,500 years ago—offers a remarkable blueprint for hydraulic engineering.

The hydraulic-powered mechanism could have maneuvered the oversized stone blocks forming the pyramid, starting from the ground up. The research team says the Step Pyramid’s internal architecture is consistent with a hydraulic elevation mechanism, something that’s never been reported before at that place or in that time.

READ MORE...

Humanity Is Evolving Into One Big Ant Colony

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• The trajectory of life on Earth has always been predicated by genetic evolution, but two scientists from the University of Maine argue that culture is now the main force shaping our lives.
• A new study analyzes this phenomenon and attempts to quantify the evolutionary transition coming with it.
• Although a gene-culture coevolution framework can be incredibly adaptable, the authors’ earlier work argues that its foundation in resource extraction and sub-global groups could make solving problems like climate change particularly challenging.

For the billions of years that life has been on Earth, genetic evolution has been in the driver’s seat, slowly but steadily honing species as they face various environmental pressures. And then, roughly 600,000 years ago (by some estimates), a particularly big-brained member of the Great Ape family began displaying evidence of cumulative culture, as evidenced by increasingly complex stone tools. Those early technological steps blossomed into full, complex societies that have taken over from genetics as the key driver of evolution, according to a new paper by Timothy Waring and Zachary Wood at the University of Maine.

READ MORE...

Scientists Confirm the Incredible Existence of Time Reflections

The explanation of spatial reflections—whether by light or by sound—are pretty intuitive. Electromagnetic radiation in the form of light or sound waves hit a mirror or wall, respectively, and change course. 

This allows our eyes to see a reflection or echo of the original input. However, for more than 50 years, scientists have theorized that there’s another kind of reflection in quantum mechanics known as time reflection.

This term might conjure up images of a nuclear-powered DeLorean or a particular police box (that’s bigger on the inside), but that’s not quite what scientists mean by the term. Instead, time reflections occur when the entire medium in which an electromagnetic wave travels suddenly changes course. This causes a portion of that wave to reverse and its frequency transforms into another one.

READ MORE...

Scientists Found 6,000-Year-Old Human Remains. No Other People Share Their DNA.

Around 6,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers who migrated south settled in the Bogotá Altiplano of what is now Colombia, transitioning to an agricultural society over the next 4,000 years. Then they vanished.

Whoever these people were, they disappeared from the genetic record. The team of researchers who discovered them through fragmented DNA in their skeletal remains have not been able to find any ancient relatives or modern descendants.

They are strangely not related to Indigenous Columbians, having more of a connection to people who now live on the Isthmus of Panama and speak Chibchan languages. It could be possible that they spread through the region, mixing with local populations for so long that their genes were diluted, but no one can be sure.

READ MORE...

Scientists Are Pretty Sure They Found a Portal to the Fifth Dimension

In the latest chapter in The End of the World As We Know It (2020-present), scientists have proposed the existence of a particle that can act as a portal to a fifth dimension.

The sci-fi hypothesis was published in a new study in The European Physical Journal C. It suggests that the particle can provide an explanation for dark matter, which has never been observed directly but is thought to account for most of the universe’s mass. Researchers say particles can travel across the whole universe, including to the fifth dimension.

Scientists have been questioning our universe’s known four dimensions for years. These are: three of space (up and down, left and right, back and forth – AKA 3D) and one of time. This extensive research has produced 5D equations, which, according to VICE, “express the implications an extra dimension would have on the universe, and reality itself”.

READ MORE...

Lucid Dreaming Isn't Sleep or Wakefulness—It’s a New State of Consciousness, Scientists Find

Have you ever had a dream in which you realized you were dreaming?

When you become conscious of the fact that you are dreaming, you can take advantage of that knowledge and manipulate the dream. If you want to do something that is physically impossible in the real world, such as flying, you can leap into the air and take flight. Someone who realizes they are trapped in a nightmare can convince themselves to wake up.

The state known as lucid dreaming is an unquestionably surreal one, and it just got even more so. A team of researchers—led by Çağatay Demirel from the Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Radboud University Medical Center, the Netherlands—has discovered that lucid dreaming has now been found to be a state of consciousness separate from both wakefulness and REM sleep (the state usually associated with dreams), and is in fact associated with its own unique type of brain activity. They published a study on their findings in the Journal of Neuroscience.

READ MORE...

Mathematicians Wrote a Proof for a 100-Year-Old Problem—and May Have Just Changed Geometry

Two mathematicians now say they’ve made progress on a very old unsolved math problem. The problem involves a subfield called geometric measure theory, in which sets of objects are generalized in an advanced way using properties like diameter and area. According to the duo’s recent research (which is not yet peer reviewed), it turns out that examining things through the lens of geometry can shake loose other interesting qualities that objects may share, which has high value in the increasingly inter-subdisciplinary field of mathematics.

                       READ MORE...

All Life on Earth Comes From One Single Ancestor.

Life on Earth had to begin somewhere, and scientists think that “somewhere” is LUCA—or the Last Universal Common Ancestor. True to its name, this prokaryote-like organism represents the ancestor of every living thing, from the tiniest of bacteria to the grandest of blue whales.

While the Cambrian Explosion kickstarted complex life in a major way some 530 million years, the true timeline of life on Earth is much longer. For years, scientists have estimated that LUCA likely arrived on the scene some 4 billion years, which is only 600 million years after the planet’s formation.

But a study from an international team of scientists pushes that timeline back even further to some 4.2 billion years ago, while also discovering some fascinating details about what life for LUCA might’ve been like. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

READ MORE...

Wrong About the Origins of Life

In a new peer reviewed analysis, scientists quantify amino acids before and after our “last universal common ancestor.”

The last universal common ancestor is the single life form that branched into everything since.

Earth four billion years ago may help us check for life on one of Saturn’s moons today.

Scientists are making a case for adjusting our understanding of how exactly genes first emerged. For a while, there’s been a consensus about the order in which the building block amino acids were “added” into the box of Lego pieces that build our genes. 

But according to genetic researchers at the University of Arizona, our previous assumptions may reflect biases in our understanding of biotic (living) versus abiotic (non-living) sources.

In other words, our current working model of gene history could be undervaluing early protolife (which included forerunners like RNA and peptides) as compared to what emerged with and after the beginning of life. 

Our understanding of these extremely ancient times will always be incomplete, but it’s important for us to keep researching early Earth. The scientists explain that any improvements in that understanding could not only allow us know more of our own story, but also help us search for the beginnings of life elsewhere in the universe.     READ MORE...

First Carbon-14 Diamond Battery

There are many ways to make hydrogen, but only green hydrogen is climate-neutral—unfortunately, it isn't nearly as cost competitive as other energy sources.

A new proof-of-concept reactor, developed by scientists at Shinshu University in Matsumoto, Japan, aims to split water using photocatalysts and good ole sunlight.

Although the idea needs more time in the oven before being commercially viable, it offers a possible pathway for green hydrogen to be a useful for tool for helping humanity kick its fossil fuel addiction.

Hydrogen fuels come in many colors—each one an indicator of how the fuel was initially created. Blue hydrogen refers to fuel created from steam and capturing the resulting carbon underground, pink hydrogen means nuclear energy powers the electrolysis process, and black and brown carbon (as their name denotes) splits H20 using fossil fuels, which isn’t exactly helpful with the whole cutting emissions thing.     READ MORE...

Humanity Reaching SINGULARITY

By one unique metric, we could approach technological singularity by the end of this decade, if not sooner.

A translation company developed a metric, Time to Edit (TTE), to calculate the time it takes for professional human editors to fix AI-generated translations compared to human ones. This may help quantify the speed toward singularity.

An AI that can translate speech as well as a human could change society.

In the world of artificial intelligence, the idea of “singularity” looms large. This slippery concept describes the moment AI exceeds beyond human control and rapidly transforms society. 

The tricky thing about AI singularity (and why it borrows terminology from black hole physics) is that it’s enormously difficult to predict where it begins and nearly impossible to know what’s beyond this technological “event horizon.”

However, some AI researchers are on the hunt for signs of reaching singularity measured by AI progress approaching the skills and ability comparable to a human.      READ MORE...

Archaeology Discovery

Archaeologists discovered a walled city in the northern Saudi Arabian desert that was likely home to 500 people as far back as 2,400 B.C.

The experts believe the city’s roughly 1,000 years of use showed a growing urban complexity in the region.

The town was functionally subdivided into different areas, but also included towers and ramparts for defense.

A newly discovered ancient oasis in the Saudi Arabian desert shows that, centuries ago, the area had a completely unexpected level of urban sophistication. The remains of the walled and fortified city include towers, ramparts, organized zones of residential areas connected by small roads, a centralized area, a cemetery, and a place to cultivate food.

In a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE, a team of archaeologists (led by France’s National Center for Scientific Research) unveiled the discovery of an “exceptional Bronze Age fortified site called al-Natah,” located in the Khaybar oasis and uncovered by the Khaybar Longue Duree Archaeological Project.       READ MORE...

2700 Years Old Bronze Shields

A team of archaeologists uncovered three bronze shields and a bronze helmet that were buried under more than 20 feet of castle rubble at the site of Ayanis Castle in eastern Turkey. 

The artifacts are roughly 2,700 years old, and decorations on the helmet point towards the discoveries likely being ceremonial gifts offered to a god or royalty.

According to social media posts from Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, minister of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey, archaeologists found the artifacts during excavations of the city of Ayanis, the last and largest city of the Urartu Kingdom, an ancient civilization of Anatolian history.     READ MORE...

A Mysterious CREATURE

There’s something intriguing, even frightening, about the image of an ancient horned serpent roaming across the land. Thanks to some suggestive fossils and legends of old, talk of such a creature isn’t a new concept. But the recent discovery of 200-year-old rock paintings found in South Africa now has scientists hypothesizing that this ancient creature may have been far more than just a legend.

The first formal scientific descriptions of this horned serpent—a supposed member of the dicynodont group—appeared in 1845. Considering the abundance of dicynodont fossils found in the Karoo Basin in South Africa, some have pondered whether this long-thought mythical horned serpent is rooted in reality. 

The discovery of rock art dated to between 1821 and 1835 adds even more credence to the legend, as the painting is older than the first formal reference to the dicynodont. If we’re lucky, it could provide further clues as to just how intertwined this horned serpent was with South Africa’s indigenous San culture.          READ MORE...

Van Gogh's Starry Night

Scientists recently analyzed Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night to see how well its famous swirls matched up with known atmospheric physics.

After analysis, they found that not only did the shapes match up with our current ideas of atmospheric turbulence, but the colors used throughout the piece communicated fairly accurate physics at a remarkably small scale.

Researchers think that Van Gogh could have come to understand these movements by “studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere, or that he could have just had “an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”

The swirling colors and flowing brushstrokes of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night have secured the painting (and its artist) a place among the all-time greats. As a piece of art, Starry Night is undeniably beautiful, but beauty alone is often not enough to keep a painting so cemented in the minds and hearts of the public.

Beyond just being beautiful, Starry Night somehow manages to capture the feeling of a clear night sky. Capturing feeling may be the whole point of impressionism—Van Gogh is himself most often labeled a post-impressionist, a style separate from true impressionism that nonetheless uses many impressionist techniques—but Starry Night does a singular job at managing it. Something about those particular swirls of paint just… feels like the night.     READ MORE...

Quantum Time Flip

It’s been 35 years since Cher first wanted to turn back time, but it turns out that quantum mechanics might have allowed for this wild reversal all along. In new research, scientists from China and Hong Kong show that—in certain quantum systems—the time variable can be reversed by creating a double superposition (one each in opposite directions) and still bear out valid results. 

What results from this little bit of quantum trickery is both an input and output that are considered indefinite, meaning that either one can be the input or the output. Basically, the after can go before the before. The peer-reviewed research appears in the journal Physical Review Letters.

In our day-to-day lives, we perceive time as marching inexorably forward, and that means many processes aren’t easily reversible. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, so to speak—it’s a lot more difficult to reset an object back to its original state than it is to change it in the first place. This is called time’s arrow, and we believe it’s partly caused by the fact that our universe has been ever-expanding since the Big Bang.     READ MORE...