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Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers from the University of Padua, Italy, and elsewhere have observed a metal-poor globular cluster known as Messier 92. The observations deliver crucial information regarding multiple stellar populations in this cluster. Results were published April 12 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Studies show that almost all (GCs) exhibit star-to-star abundance variations of light elements such as helium (He), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), carbon © and calcium (Na). This indicates self-enrichment in GCs and suggests that are composed of at least two stellar populations.

Located some 26,700 away in the constellation of Hercules, Messier 92 (or M92 for short) is a GC with a metallicity of just-2.31 and a mass of about 200,000 . The cluster, estimated to be 11.5 billion years old, is known to host at least two stellar generations of stars—named 1G and 2G. Previous studies have found that Messier 92 has an extended 1G sequence, which hosts about 30.4% of cluster stars, and two distinct groups of 2G stars (2GA and 2GB).

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The AI is great at Russian but not so much in foreign languages.

Russia is the latest entrant to the artificial intelligence (AI) race as, mostly state-owned, Sberbank announced the launch of GigaChat, a rival to a conversational chatbot, ChatGPT. The move could heat the competition among countries looking to assume leadership positions in the technology that has taken the world by storm.

Last November, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, an AI model that can strike human-like conversations with its users. As more and more people began using ChatGPT, AI’s versatility became known.

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A study reflects on how these plastic particles can increase the risk of neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration.

We have known for a while that microplastics are in our bloodstreams, making their way into our bodies through daily consumables like milk and meat. The foreign presence of micro and nano-plastic particles (MNPs) in our bodies is dangerous for obvious reasons, and they can potentially reach remote locations and penetrate living cells.

In a scary confirmation of this potentiality, a new study has found that polystyrene, a widely-used plastic found in food packaging, could be detected in the brain just two hours after ingestion.

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Use terahertz frequency communication and achieve ultra-fast communication.

Researchers at the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Second Institute have achieved a breakthrough in next-generation 6G communication by conducting the first real-time wireless transmission, the South China Morning Post.

6G, short for the sixth generation cellular network, is the next frontier of telecommunications which promises more reliable and faster communication than any of the existing technologies.

Black_Kira/iStock.

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A team of physicists has illuminated certain properties of quantum systems by observing how their fluctuations spread over time. The research offers an intricate understanding of a complex phenomenon that is foundational to quantum computing—a method that can perform certain calculations significantly more efficiently than conventional computing.

“In an era of it’s vital to generate a precise characterization of the systems we are building,” explains Dries Sels, an assistant professor in New York University’s Department of Physics and an author of the paper, which is published in the journal Nature Physics. “This work reconstructs the full state of a quantum liquid, consistent with the predictions of a quantum field theory—similar to those that describe the fundamental particles in our universe.”

Sels adds that the breakthrough offers promise for technological advancement.

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Most exoplanets lying in the habitable zones around stars are in fact inhospitable to plant life as we know it. That is according to a new study from microbiologists and astronomers at the University of Georgia who say that taking into account the light a planet receives as well as its ability to hold liquid water is a better definition of whether life could exist on other planets.

The Habitable Zone (HZ) is traditionally defined to be the range of distances around a star where an exoplanet can support liquid water on its surface. Too far, and the planet remains frozen like Mars. Too close and the oceans evaporate, as happened to Venus. The zone in the middle is neither too hot, nor too cold, but just right – the so-called “Goldilocks zone”.

Nothing certain is known about the properties and requirements of alien life. However, there are generally two schools of thought in astrobiology. One is that evolution on other planets can figure out ways to sidestep seemingly insurmountable barriers to life as we know it, while others claim that life is everywhere bounded by the same universal physical principles, and can thus only operate a certain way, similar to as on Earth.

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