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How Is Cell Death Essential to Life?

Death might seem like a pure loss, the disappearance of what makes a living thing distinct from everything else on our planet. But zoom in closer, to the cellular level, and it takes on a different, more nuanced meaning. There is a challenge in simply defining what makes an individual cell alive or dead. Scientists today are working to understand the various ways and reasons that cells disappear, and what these processes mean to biological systems. In this episode, cellular biologist Shai Shaham talks to Steven Strogatz about the different forms of cell death, their roles in evolution and disease, and why the right kinds and patterns of cell death are essential to our development and well-being.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta.

Astronomers Find New Planet in Kepler-51 System, Challenging Models of ‘Super-Puffs’

“Kepler-51e has an orbit slightly larger than Venus and is just inside the star’s habitable zone, so a lot more could be going on beyond that distance if we take the time to look,” said Dr. Jessica Libby-Roberts.


How many exoplanets are in the cosmos and what can they tell us about planetary formation and evolution? This is what a recent study published in The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as an international team of more than 50 researchers announced the discovery of Kepler-51e, which is the fourth planet residing in the Kepler-51 system. This discovery holds the potential to expand our knowledge of exoplanets, specifically regarding their formation and evolution, as Kepler-51e challenges previous notions about low-density exoplanets, also called “puff planets” or “Super-Puffs”

“Super puff planets are very unusual in that they have very low mass and low density,” said Dr. Jessica Libby-Roberts, who is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University and second author of the study. “The three previously known planets that orbit the star, Kepler-51, are about the size of Saturn but only a few times the mass of Earth, resulting in a density like cotton candy.”

For the discovery, the researchers used NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) using a method called transit timing variations, which are caused by other planets in the system tugging on each other, resulting in very slight changes in their orbits. For example, the team noticed that the third planet in the system, Kepler-51d, transited its star two hours earlier than anticipated, indicating the gravity of an unknown fourth planet was tugging on it.

In His Final Years, Stephen Hawking Thought the Universe Could Be a Hologram

Thus, when one looks back in time, say by looking at light from a distant galaxy that has traveled billions of years to reach us, this is akin to “zooming out” on the hologram and making its details fuzzier in the process. This zooming out can continue until all the details of the hologram disappear altogether, which in the model of the universe suggested by Hawking and Hertog, would be the origin of time at the Big Bang.

“The crux of our hypothesis is that when you go back in time, to this earliest, violent, unimaginably complicated phase of the universe, in that phase you find a deeper level of evolution, a level in which even the laws of physics co-evolve with the universe that is taking shape,” Hertog said. “And the consequence is that if you push everything even further backward, into the Big Bang, so to speak, even the laws of physics disappear.”

Strange Engineering Hiding in Plain Sight

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This video explores fascinating engineering solutions hiding in plain sight — ingenious designs that solve complex problems through elegant simplicity. From shoes that expand when stretched to windshields with hidden patterns, discover how everyday objects incorporate remarkable engineering innovations.

AUXETICS
These metamaterials that defy conventional physics by getting thicker when stretched. Follow their evolution from theoretical designs in 1978 to modern applications in athletic footwear and medical devices, and discover how precise geometric patterns create extraordinary properties that could revolutionize everything from prosthetics to architecture, despite challenging manufacturing requirements.

WINDSHIELD DOTS
The black dots on car windshields serve a dual purpose that revolutionized the automotive industry in the 1950s. This pattern manages extreme thermal stress during glass tempering while protecting crucial adhesive bonds. The precise ceramic frit application process has evolved to support modern safety systems and sensor integration, making these simple dots essential to modern vehicle design.

CURIE POINT HEATERS
Curie point heaters achieve temperature control through magnetic properties alone, eliminating complex control systems. These heaters maintain precise temperatures by becoming “magnetically invisible” at specific points. Modern implementations use sophisticated alloy combinations and multi-layer designs for unprecedented temperature control in medical sterilization and semiconductor processing.

TRIBOELECTRIC GENERATORS

Webb observations explore the Westerlund 1 star cluster

An international team of astronomers has employed the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a supermassive Galactic open cluster known as Westerlund 1. Results of the observational campaign, presented in a paper published Nov. 20 on the arXiv preprint server, yield important insights about the structure and properties of this cluster.

Open clusters (OCs), formed from the same giant molecular cloud, are groups of stars loosely gravitationally bound to each other. So far, more than 1,000 of them have been discovered in the Milky Way, and scientists are still looking for more, hoping to find a variety of these stellar groupings. Expanding the list of known galactic and studying them in detail could be crucial for improving our understanding of the formation and evolution of our galaxy.

It is assumed that most takes place in massive clusters of stars, known as superstar clusters (SSCs). They are very massive young OCs usually containing a very large number of young, . The total mass of a typical SSC exceeds 10,000 solar masses.