Meta’s renovation in downtown Austin comes as the company makes moves in Texas, including a possible reincorporation in the state.

Scientists have pushed back LUCA’s origin by hundreds of millions of years.

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It is a deep question, from deep in our history: when did human language as we know it emerge? A new survey of genomic evidence suggests our unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago. Subsequently, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago.

Our species, Homo sapiens, is about 230,000 years old. Estimates of when language originated vary widely, based on different forms of evidence, from fossils to cultural artifacts. The authors of the new analysis took a different approach. They reasoned that since all human languages likely have a common origin —as the researchers strongly think—the key question is how far back in time regional groups began spreading around the world.

“The logic is very simple,” says Shigeru Miyagawa, an MIT professor and co-author of a new paper summarizing the results.

Have you ever left a bottle of liquid in the freezer, only to find it cracked or shattered? To save you from tedious freezer cleanups, researchers at the University of Amsterdam have investigated why this happens, and how to prevent it. They discovered that while the liquid is freezing, pockets of liquid can get trapped inside the ice. When these pockets eventually freeze, the sudden expansion creates extreme pressure—enough to break glass.

“Newton had an apple fall on his head. I found my freezer full of broken glass,” says Menno Demmenie, first author of the new study that was recently published in Scientific Reports.

He continues, “The usual explanation for frost damage is that water expands when it freezes, but this does not explain why half-filled bottles also burst in our freezers. Our work addresses how ice can break a bottle even when it has plenty of space to expand into.”

Illuminating a metasurface with a laser can enable the rapid modulation of the polarization of terahertz light transmitted through the metasurface.

When Bluesky CEO Jay Graber took the SXSW stage this week, she managed to make fun of Mark Zuckerberg without mentioning Meta at all. Her black T-shirt was emblazoned with black text stretching across the chest and sleeves, similar to the style of a T-shirt that the billionaire founder wore at an event last year. Graber’s shirt declared in Latin, Mundus sine Caesaribus. Or, “a world without Caesars.”

On Bluesky, users expressed such excitement over Graber’s T-shirt that the platform decided to sell replicas to raise money for its developer ecosystem.

The $40 shirt, available in sizes S – XL, sold out in roughly 30 minutes.