Posted in cosmology | Leave a Comment on Scientists discover 2 stars orbiting our galaxy’s supermassive black hole in lockstep — and they could point to a type of planet never seen before
Astronomers have discovered a pair of young stars near the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy. Studying them can offer a rare glimpse into how stars can endure — at least briefly — the immense gravity exerted by such cosmic behemoths.
New therapies that are less intrusive but more lasting than current interventions promise to arrest and even reverse neurodegeneration.
Scientists at The University of Manchester have achieved a significant breakthrough in using cyanobacteria—commonly known as “blue-green algae”—to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into valuable bio-based materials.
Their work, published in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts, could accelerate the development of sustainable alternatives to fossil fuel-derived products like plastics, helping pave the way for a carbon-neutral circular bioeconomy.
The research, led by Dr. Matthew Faulkner, working alongside Dr. Fraser Andrews, and Professor Nigel Scrutton, focused on improving the production of citramalate, a compound that serves as a precursor for renewable plastics such as Perspex or Plexiglas. Using an innovative approach called “design of experiment,” the team achieved a remarkable 23-fold increase in citramalate production by optimizing key process parameters.
This will really start to pick up now.
An Austin-based national charter school network offers K-12 students an AI-guided education. Operating under a model called “2 Hour Learning,” a company of the same name advertises accelerated pace, app-based classes designed to teach students at “2X” the speed of a traditional classroom, whatever that means. Parents are promised that the system works for 80–90 percent of children, and that students consistently rank in the NWEA’s 90th percentile. Apart from generating top-ranking national standardized test takers, however, one of 2 Hour Learning’s other explicit goals is the removal of teachers from classrooms.
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have pioneered a 3D concrete printing method that captures and stores carbon dioxide, marking a major step toward reducing the construction industry’s environmental footprint.
The innovative technique offers a promising solution to mitigate cement’s massive carbon emissions.
The process works by integrating CO₂ and steam—byproducts of industrial processes—into the concrete mix during 3D printing. As the material is printed, CO₂ reacts with components in the concrete, forming a solid, stable compound that remains locked within the structure.
This timelapse of future technology, the 3rd year of the video series, goes on a journey exploring the human mind becoming digital. Brain chips turn memories and thoughts into data; could this data be sent out into space to live in the cosmos encoded into the magnetic fields between stars.
Other topics covered in this sci-fi documentary video include: bio-printing, asteroid habitats, terraforming Mars, the future of Teslabots, lucid dreaming, and the future of artificial intelligence and brain to computer interfaces (BCI — brain chips).
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Which brings us to the big question: what about gravity?
This is something where we can’t be certain, as gravitation remains the only known force for which we don’t have a full quantum description. Instead, we have Einstein’s general relativity as our theory of gravity, which relies on a purely classical (i.e., non-quantum) formalism for describing it. According to Einstein, spacetime behaves as a four-dimensional fabric, and it’s the curvature and evolution of that fabric that determines how matter-and-energy move through it. Similarly it’s the presence and distribution of matter-and-energy that determine the curvature and evolution of spacetime itself: the two notions are linked together in an inextricable way.
Now, over on the quantum side, our other fundamental forces and interactions have both a quantum description for particles and a quantum description for the fields themselves. All calculations performed within all quantum field theories are calculated within spacetime, and while most of the calculations we perform are undertaken with the assumption that the underlying background of spacetime is flat and uncurved, we can also insert more complex spacetime backgrounds where necessary. It was such a calculation, for example, that led Stephen Hawking to predict the emission of the radiation that bears his name from black holes: Hawking radiation. Combining quantum field theory (in that case, for electromagnetism) with the background of curved spacetime inevitably leads to such a prediction.
