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In a world where choices seem endless, could it be that our ‘free will’ is nothing more than an illusion?

When it comes to things like choosing a morning run over an extra hour of sleep, opting for an apple instead of that enticing pint of ice cream, or quitting your job on a whim…

…What’s truly guiding these decisions? Is it willpower, biology, environment, or perhaps a unique strength of character we’ve built over time?

Or… could it be something else entirely, something beyond our control?

Here’s where our guest, Dr. Robert Sapolsky — a renowned Professor of Biology, Neurology and Neurosurgery at Stanford University — offers us a slightly unsettling, yet eye-opening, perspective.

He suggests that every decision we make — from the podcasts we tune into, to judges making a case verdict, to choosing our life partner — isn’t shaped by any sort of conscious control or free will. Instead, he believes our actions are driven by factors beyond our grasp and influence.

Continue reading “Is There Free Will? The Unsettling Science Behind Our Everyday Decisions | Dr. Robert Sapolsky” | >

Physicists at Rice University and their collaborators have made a discovery that sheds new light on magnetism and electronic interactions in advanced materials, with the potential to transform technologies like quantum computing and high-temperature superconductors.

Led by Zheng Ren and Ming Yi, the research team’s study on iron-tin (FeSn) thin films reshapes scientific understanding of kagome magnets — materials named after an ancient basket-weaving pattern and structured in a unique, latticelike design that can create unusual magnetic and electronic behaviors due to the quantum destructive interference of the electronic wave function.

The findings, published in Nature Communications, reveal that FeSn’s magnetic properties arise from localized electrons, not the mobile electrons scientists previously thought. This discovery challenges existing theories about magnetism in kagome metals in which itinerant electrons were assumed to drive magnetic behavior. By providing a new perspective on magnetism, the research team’s work could guide the development of materials with tailored properties for advanced tech applications such as quantum computing and superconductors.

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Scientists in China have managed to revive brain activity in pigs nearly an hour after circulation ceased, thanks to the surprising involvement of the liver.

If translatable to humans, this finding could have significant implications for extending the critical window in which doctors can resuscitate patients following sudden cardiac arrest.

The research team, led by Dr. Xiaoshun He at Sun Yat-Sen University, experimented with the brains of 17 Tibetan minipigs to investigate how the liver might influence brain recovery.

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Two researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) have published a paper that demonstrates for the first time that a subluminal warp drive is possible within the bounds of known physics without the need to employ exotic unknown forms of matter or energy, while also advancing our understanding of gravity. UAH alumnus Dr. Jared Fuchs led a team of physicists that produced the paper, supported by Dr. Christopher Helmerich, also an alumnus of UAH, a part of the University of Alabama System, both working in conjunction with the New York-based Applied Propulsion Laboratory of Applied Physics (APL).

When Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre first proposed his theoretical warp drive in 1994, the concept required a bubble of ‘negative energy density’ around an object to create an imbalance in space-time, generating motion without movement of the craft, thus avoiding violations of the speed-of-light limit. But the Star Trek dream comes with a catch: it would have to be powered by either exotic particles that haven’t yet been discovered, or the mysterious dark energy thought to drive the expansion of the universe, currently viewed by most physicists as not remotely achievable.

Fuch’s team’s Constant-Velocity Subluminal Warp Drive, however, offers a new means of propulsion that allows it to operate at constant subluminal speeds, while still conforming to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, with no need for ‘unphysical’ forms of matter required by previous designs.

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In a recent discovery, astronomers have found that the black hole in the well-known low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) system V404 Cygni is part of a much larger structure—a wide triple system.

Many black holes detected to date appear to be part of a pair. These binary systems comprise a black hole and a secondary object — such as a star, a much denser neutron star, or another black hole — that spiral around each other, drawn together by the black hole’s gravity to form a tight orbital pair.

Now a surprising discovery is expanding the picture of black holes, the objects they can host, and the way they form.

In a study appearing today in Nature, physicists at MIT and Caltech report that they have observed a “black hole triple” for the first time. The new system holds a central black hole in the act of consuming a small star that’s spiraling in very close to the black hole, every 6.5 days — a configuration similar to most binary systems. But surprisingly, a second star appears to also be circling the black hole, though at a much greater distance. The physicists estimate this far-off companion is orbiting the black hole every 70,000 years.

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