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Wristwatch-like device enables assessment of health risks for astronauts on mission to the moon

Just a few hours before the Orion spacecraft crossed the sky en route to the moon on April 1, mechatronics engineer Rodrigo Trevisan Okamoto received confirmation he had been waiting for since the Artemis 2 mission was announced in 2023. The email from NASA stated that the crew of the first crewed mission to orbit the moon in half a century would carry a device developed by Okamoto and his team at Condor Instruments, a São Paulo-based startup.

“The NASA announcement was sudden and caught us by surprise. And it was only after the mission concluded that we learned the astronauts had been using the equipment in tests for the past two years,” Okamoto told Agência FAPESP.

The device, called an actigraph, is shaped like a wristwatch and incorporates accelerometers, as well as light and temperature sensors, to precisely map the user’s sleep and wake patterns over the course of days or weeks.

Joscha Bach on Synthetic Consciousness & Computational Mind

The provided text outlines Joscha Bach theories regarding the nature of synthetic consciousness and the limitations of modern science. Bach posits that human experience is not a direct interaction with reality, but rather a simulated world model constructed by the brain internal software. He defines intelligence as the capacity to build these models in novel environments, suggesting that current artificial intelligence remains incomplete because it lacks genuine self-understanding. Furthermore, he challenges the narrow focus of contemporary academia and traditional neuroscience, arguing that minds are complex information-processing systems that cannot be explained by neural connections alone. Ultimately, these sources present a computational framework for understanding the self as a functional narrative rather than a mystical or purely physical entity.

Hydrogen puts quantum wormhole conjecture to the test

A new Physical Review Letters study places constraints on the ER = EPR conjecture, showing that under the authors’ assumptions, the conjecture would imply possible alterations to the hyperfine structure and effective charge of the hydrogen atom—effects that have never been observed.

In 1935, Einstein co-authored two distinct papers. The first proposes the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox describing the quantum entanglement of particles. The second one introduces Einstein-Rosen (ER) bridges connecting distant regions of spacetime, which we today call wormholes.

Nearly a century later, in 2013, physicists Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind proposed the ER = EPR conjecture, proposing a link between quantum entanglement and wormholes. This links entanglement, a cornerstone of quantum mechanics, with spacetime connectivity, general relativity. This remains one of the major open questions in modern physics.

‘Butterfly’ molecule spotted at last, completing a 20-year quantum zoo hunt

For two decades, physicists have predicted the existence of a remarkable family of exotic molecules: giant atoms bound to ordinary atoms, with an electron so distant from its nucleus that it sculpts the pair into bizarre and diverse shapes. Reported in Physical Review Letters, the final member of this “quantum zoo” has been spotted. Led by Herwig Ott at RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau in Germany, a team of physicists has created and detected the “butterfly” molecule, completing a 20-year hunt for the elusive structure.

The molecules in this quantum zoo belong to a class known as ultralong-range Rydberg molecules. They form when an ordinary atom becomes bound to a Rydberg atom, whose outermost electron has been excited so far from the nucleus that the atom swells to thousands of times its normal size.

The orbital shapes traced out by these distant electrons give each molecule type its character, and its nickname. Some have elaborate lobed structures reminiscent of trilobites; others spread into the winged outline of a butterfly. These molecules are thousands of times more sensitive to electric fields than ordinary molecules, making them especially useful objects for probing the quantum world.

Universe’s most distant ‘Hot DOG’ yet may owe extreme infrared glow to polar dust, Webb reveals

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed fresh details about one of the most luminous known objects in the universe: the dust-shrouded quasar W2246−0526, seen just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. The paper outlining the results was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on May 14.

W2246−0526 is a hot dust-obscured galaxy, also known as Hot DOG, that is mainly powered by an actively feeding supermassive black hole at its center. Hot DOGs are extremely luminous, with their luminosities at infrared wavelengths exceeding 1014 times that of the luminosity of the sun, making astronomers wonder what causes them to reach such extreme brightness.

At z = 4.6, W2246−0526 is the most distant and luminous of its kind discovered so far. Previous studies have shown that it is dominated by hot dust whose temperatures reach 450 Kelvin or almost 180 degrees Celsius. The high temperature of this range suggests the domination of an active galactic nucleus (AGN).

Your brain doesn’t forget when you forgive—it does something far more surprising with those painful memories

Forgiving someone might not erase painful memories, but it can subtly update them, making past hurts feel less upsetting. It’s less “forgive and forget,” and more “forgive and update.”

Psychologists have long known that forgiveness is crucial for healing rifts and keeping social bonds strong. Folk wisdom even advises us to “forgive and forget” after a wrong, implying that saying you forgive someone should make the bad memory vanish.

But forgiving doesn’t actually make you forget, notes Duke neuroscientist Felipe de Brigard: “When you forgive someone for a wrongdoing, you don’t forget the event. But once you forgive, the memory doesn’t hurt as much.” Indeed, past studies hinted that forgiving someone can blunt the memory of their misdeed. What hasn’t been clear is how that happens in the brain. Is the memory simply erased, or does it get rewritten?

New magnesium alloy design improves stability and ion transport in solid-state batteries

The modern world runs on invisible energy. Hidden inside smartphones, laptops, and electric vehicles, are batteries that quietly power everyday life. As society becomes increasingly dependent on portable and sustainable energy, the development of compact and reliable battery technology has become one of the most important technological challenges of our time.

Lithium-ion batteries currently dominate the battery industry, but alternatives that could offer improved safety, lower cost, and higher energy density are being actively explored. Solid-state magnesium batteries have long been considered a promising next-generation energy technology. However, instability inside these batteries remains a major obstacle to their development.

New three‑dimensional magnetic structure discovered with laser light

Flashes of femtosecond laser light, lasting just a few trillionths of a second, have made it possible to observe new magnetic structures for the first time. By using light as a remote control, researchers were able to switch magnetism into previously unseen three-dimensional states at the nanoscale.

Magnetism is often imagined as something simple, pointing in one direction or another. At very small scales, however, magnetism can behave in far more complex ways. Magnetism originates from a quantum property of electrons known as spin, which can be thought of as a tiny internal compass carried by each electron. When many spins interact inside a solid material, they can organize into stable patterns.

Supercharging solar cells: Quantum dot-molecule hybrid states enable near-maximum efficiency

Solar panels have become more efficient over the years, but even the best designs still lose a large fraction of the energy they absorb. Scientists around the world have been searching for ways to capture more energy from every ray of sunlight and unlock the true potential of solar technology.

In a study published in Nature Photonics, researchers from the University of Osaka and collaborating institutions identified a new mechanism that could help us do exactly that. The study shows how specially designed combinations of molecules and quantum dots can be used to dramatically increase solar cell efficiency beyond currently known limits.

Singlet exciton fission is a photophysical phenomenon in which one particle of light creates two excited energy states instead of one. In theory, this allows solar cells to generate more electricity from the same amount of sunlight. However, the most effective photophysical processes require extra energy and are usually inefficient and difficult to control.

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