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Lone, starless cloud may be a ‘dark’ galaxy

Astronomers using China’s FAST radio telescope have discovered a compact cloud of hydrogen with no visible stars or galaxy around it. This could be one of the strongest candidates yet for an isolated “dark galaxy,” containing nearly 500,000 times the sun’s mass in neutral hydrogen. The discovery paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Sept. 24.

In the lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model, structure forms hierarchically: small dark matter halos form first and then merge to build larger halos and galaxies. The model also predicts that some low-mass halos never form stars at all.

Several processes can suppress star formation at low mass. One is that, after cosmic reionization, the halo’s gas is heated by the ultraviolet (UV) background (the diffuse radiation from quasars and galaxies) and so never becomes cold and dense enough to form stars. Such starless, gas-bearing halos are predicted to exist and are called reionization-limited H I clouds (RELHICs) or “dark galaxies.”

Human-AI team reports proof for a decades-old chaos puzzle

Led by Great Bay University professor Xu Disheng, the researchers worked with Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory’s Shusheng-S2 model. Across seven rounds of reasoning, the model explored multiple routes and generated detailed arguments. Researchers identified promising ideas, rejected dead ends and guided the next round of exploration.

A separate Peking University team translated the paper’s four main theorems into computer-checkable form. The proofs passed Lean, a system that checks mathematical reasoning step by step. Experts also confirmed that the formal statements matched those in the paper.

The research has been posted as a preprint on arXiv, and the verification code is publicly available, allowing others to examine the work.

Proactive Strategies Are Needed For Cybersecurity In New Digital Era

The rapidly changing cyber threat landscape requires organizations to move beyond reactive stances and adopt proactive, risk-first strategies combining people, processes, and technology. Recent high-impact intrusions reveal systemic weaknesses in supply chains and third-party risk. Meanwhile, emerging AI and quantum computing technologies are fundamentally altering attacker economics, speed, and protection durability. Leaders must immediately prioritize post-quantum cryptography migration, invest in AI-enabled detection, and govern AI systems responsibly.

Electrical sliding switches graphene between magnetic states

In a discovery that could offer a new way to control quantum properties in two-dimensional materials, researchers at Cornell have found that electrically sliding the layers of ultrathin graphene can switch the material between distinct magnetic states that persist even after the voltage is removed.

Researchers in the lab of Kenji Yasuda, assistant professor in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics in Cornell Duffield College of Engineering, discovered that when voltage was applied to a four-layer graphene stack, the layers slid into different atomic stacking arrangements, allowing the material to alternate between nonmagnetic and magnetic states, according to the study, published Oct. 14 in Nature Nanotechnology.

Roshi Jundo Cohen on Zen, AI, Transhumanism and Saving the World

A Zen Master told me acceptance is not the same as giving up.

I nodded politely. It took me a few years, and one AI revolution, to understand what he meant.

Roshi Jundo Cohen started out as a Jewish kid from the Bronx. Then he became a New York lawyer. Then he moved to Japan, got ordained, and received Dharma transmission in the Soto Zen tradition. Along the way, he survived cancer. Today he lives in Tsukuba, Japan’s “Science City,” surrounded by supercomputers, research labs, and a particle collider.

And, to my genuine surprise, he had listened to almost every episode of my podcast before we ever spoke.

We recorded this in February 2022. ChatGPT was still nine months away. Yet we spent two hours on questions that hit much harder today. If each of us is a wave on the same sea, what exactly is an AI? Should we edit the human genome to engineer away suffering, as David Pearce argues? Can the world be perfect and imperfect at the same time? And what does #Zen have to say to the #Transhumanism crowd who want to fix everything with technology?

I’ll let him answer that last one.

Continue reading “Roshi Jundo Cohen on Zen, AI, Transhumanism and Saving the World” | >

USC scientists discover how to create a never-ending supply of cancer-fighting cells

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261015003803.htm

USC scientists have discovered a way to create a potentially renewable supply of genetically engineered immune cells that can attack cancer and strengthen the body’s natural defenses. By growing and modifying immature immune cells rather than mature ones, researchers developed a system that can continuously produce tumor-fighting cells inside the body.

Personalized CRISPR therapies could soon reach thousands — here’s how

Urnov and Kassim propose regulatory frameworks to help disseminate personalized CRISPR treatments to rare disease patients who need them. Without better regulations, every guide RNA nucleotide change necessitates a long (~4 year) process to obtain approval. Many rare diseases can progress quickly, so this time period is often deadly for patients.

A fresh approach to trialling treatments for rare genetic diseases could make their production an economically viable prospect at last.