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Strangers whose brains respond alike to movie clips often become friends later, study finds

People often bond with strangers over the books they read or the movies they watch and build friendships that last. Scientists may now have some insight into why this happens. A study published in Nature Human Behaviour found that participants who responded similarly to the same movie clips even before meeting were more likely to become friends later.

As part of the experiment, MRI brain scans were taken of 41 graduate students who had never met each other before, while they were shown clips of movies based on science, food, sports, environment, and .

A total of 214 were analyzed—200 cortical regions associated with functions, such as movement, perception, and sensory processing, and 14 subcortical regions that control movement, autonomic functions, and emotions.

Braided magnetic flux ropes found at both human and light year scales

The new equilibrium, called a double helix, applies not only to the but also to much larger astrophysical configurations such as the Double Helix Nebula located near the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

The study is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Solar corona structures such as flares often have the form of magnetic ropes: twisted tubes of plasma-containing magnetic fields. Such a rope can be visualized as a plasma-filled garden hose with a stripe wrapped around it in a helical pattern. An electric current flows along the length of the hose, and the helical stripe corresponds to the twisted magnetic field. Because it is charged, plasma conducts and is attached, or “frozen,” into magnetic fields.

Toward improved desalination: Characterizing membranes in wet vs. dry states reveals dramatic differences

A joint study by researchers from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology and the University of Texas at Austin sheds new light on the structure of membranes used in water desalination. Published in ACS Nano, the study was selected as the journal’s cover article.

First absolute superconducting switch developed in a magnetic device

The University of Jyväskylä, Finland, has been involved as part of an international collaboration that has identified a way to completely suppress superconductivity in superconducting and ferromagnetic junctions. The results published in Nature Communications are key to the development of non-volatile superconducting random access memories and could enable more energy-efficient information and communication technologies.

Turning spin loss into energy: New principle could enable ultra-low power devices

A research team has developed a device principle that can utilize “spin loss,” which was previously thought of as a simple loss, as a new power source for magnetic control.

The work is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Spintronics is a technology that utilizes the “spin” property of electrons to store and control information, and it is being recognized as a key foundation for next-generation information processing technologies such as ultra-low-power memory, neuromorphic chips, and computational devices for stochastic computation, as it consumes less power and is more nonvolatile than conventional semiconductors.

The Star That Almost Vanished: Astronomers Solve a Cosmic Mystery

Stars often reach the end of their lives and fade from view, but astronomers were left baffled when a star that had remained steady for more than ten years suddenly seemed to vanish for nearly eight months.

From late 2024 through early 2025, a star in our galaxy known as ASASSN-24fw lost about 97% of its brightness before returning to normal. The unusual dimming quickly became the subject of debate as researchers searched for an explanation behind such an extraordinary event.

An international research team, led by scientists at The Ohio State University, now believes they may have solved the puzzle. In a study recently published in The Open Journal of Astrophysics, the group reports that because the star’s color did not change during the dimming, the cause was unlikely to be related to stellar evolution. Instead, they conclude that a massive cloud of dust and gas surrounding the star blocked it from Earth’s view.

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