Daily Science to all

💥 A supernova seen five times could help measure how fast the Universe is expanding Astronomers have found an exceptionally rare supernova, nicknamed SN Winny, that appears in the sky five separate times. The reason is gravitational lensing. The supernova is located about 10 billion light-years away, and its light passes near two massive foreground galaxies. Their gravity bends spacetime and sends the light toward Earth along several different paths. Because each path has a different length, the same explosion reaches us at slightly different times — like five cosmic echoes of one event. That delay is the key. By measuring the time gaps between the five images, scientists can independently calculate the Hubble constant — the number that describes how fast the Universe is expanding. This matters because cosmology has a long-standing problem known as the Hubble tension: two major methods give different answers. One uses the cosmic distance ladder in the nearby Universe; the other uses the cosmic microwave background from the early Universe. SN Winny offers a third route, based on lensing geometry and time delays. The alignment is incredibly rare. According to the researchers, the chance of finding a superluminous supernova perfectly aligned with a suitable gravitational lens is lower than one in a million. The team from TUM, LMU and the Max Planck Institutes spent six years searching for such a system. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/04/260428045603.htm

🪐 Saturn’s moon Mimas looks like the Death Star — and it’s not a coincidence… or is it? When Cassini–Huygens sent back detailed images of Mimas, the resemblance was impossible to ignore: it looks almost identical to the Death Star from Star Wars. The defining feature is the Herschel Crater: • ~130 km wide — about one-third of the moon’s diameter (396 km) • crater walls rise up to 5 km • central peak reaches ~6 km Why it looks so much like a superweapon: • nearly perfect circular shape • slightly off-center placement • creates a “dish-like” shadow • heavily cratered icy surface → panel-like texture • lighting conditions enhanced the dramatic contrast Now the twist: The Death Star appeared in 1977. The first close-up images of Mimas came in 1980 (via Voyager 1). George Lucas designed something that already existed — without ever seeing it. Sometimes fiction doesn’t imitate reality. It predicts it. #Saturn #Mimas #Space #Science

Scientists from Stanford University and the Arc Institute ran a bold experiment: they fed a DNA sequence into an AI model — and asked it to design entirely new viruses. What happened next is hard to ignore 👇 🧬 The model generated hundreds of viral genomes 🧪 Researchers synthesized them in the lab 🦠 And 16 turned out to be fully viable They didn’t just “exist” — they worked. All 16 bacteriophages successfully infected E. coli, and some of them even outperformed the original virus PhiX174 in replication speed. But the most striking part wasn’t performance. It was invention. ⚡ One of the AI-designed viruses used a DNA-packaging protein that does not exist anywhere in nature. Not in databases. Not in known organisms. Not in billions of years of evolution. And yet — it worked. Researchers built the virus, grew it, tested it… and confirmed: the protein functions as intended. ⸻ 💡 The real breakthrough isn’t that AI can generate working genomes. It’s that it can discover biological mechanisms evolution hasn’t explored (yet). In other words: AI didn’t just optimize biology — it invented new biology. @science

🍌 I love eating bananas. Bananas are radioactive. Every banana contains potassium-40, an isotope that's quietly decaying right inside your body. Physicists even came up with a semi-joking unit — the "banana equivalent dose" (BED). They sometimes actually use it to explain radiation in simple terms. Your body contains about 140 g of potassium — some of it is potassium-40. Which means you are slightly radioactive. Always. When you hug someone, you're literally exchanging tiny doses of radiation. The dose from a banana is tens of thousands of times smaller than anything that could cause harm. So — eat your bananas, glow a little, for us it's normal. @science

Stars in the observable universe — about 10²⁴ (roughly a septillion) Atoms in your body — about 7 × 10²⁷ That means you alone contain 7,000 times more atoms than all the stars in all the galaxies we could ever see. And it gets weirder. Almost every atom inside you — except hydrogen — was once part of a star. The carbon in your cells, the calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, the oxygen in your lungs — all of it was forged inside stars that exploded long before our Sun was born. You are a walking collection of stardust. Assembled so precisely that it can think, love, and read this post on @science.

An octopus has three hearts — and two of them stop beating every time it swims. That's not a metaphor. When an octopus swims, the two hearts that pump blood to its gills literally shut down. This is why octopuses prefer crawling along the seafloor: swimming exhausts them. Oh, and their blood is blue. It uses copper instead of iron to carry oxygen, which works better in cold, low-oxygen water — but makes swimming even more tiring. So the next time someone says they're "putting their heart into it" — remind them an octopus puts in three. And still gets winded walking to the fridge. 🫠 💬 Which fact surprised you more — the three hearts , or the blue blood? @science

We clearly need the Bureau for Research in Artificial Intelligence Networks (BRAIN) Because nothing says intelligence like another layer of bureaucracy. Or, maybe the Advanced Institute for Disruptive Optimization Technologies (AIDIOT) #humor

A researcher invented a fake eye disease called “bixonimania” and uploaded two bogus papers about it to an academic server. The papers included acknowledgments to the “Starfleet Academy,” funding from a character in The Simpsons, and the “University of the Fellowship of the Ring.” In the middle of the text, it was explicitly stated that everything was fictional. Nevertheless, for several weeks, major AI systems treated the disease as real: Google Gemini claimed it was caused by blue light, Perplexity reported a prevalence of one case per 90,000 people, and ChatGPT even advised users on matching symptoms. The fake study was eventually cited in a peer-reviewed journal, which later retracted the issue after intervention by Nature. Neither AI systems nor human researchers initially detected the hoax—highlighting a growing problem: people are citing AI-generated references without verifying their content. Meanwhile, the U.S. FDA is already using AI to evaluate drugs, the CEO of a New York hospital is considering replacing radiologists with algorithms, and ChatGPT Health is being launched to consult patients. @science

🚀 How Will NASA Bring Artemis II Astronauts Back to Earth? The Science Behind Splashdown After a 10-day mission around the Moon, the Orion capsule will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at 40,000 km/h (25,000 mph). Its heat shield will endure temperatures up to 2,800°C (5,000°F)—hotter than molten lava! How does NASA ensure a safe return? Here’s the tech behind it: 🌍 Atmospheric Braking: The Avcoat heat shield protects against temperatures rivaling the Sun’s surface. 🪂 Parachutes: Eleven chutes slow the capsule from 500 km/h (310 mph) to 30 km/h (19 mph)—like jumping off a 3-meter diving board. 🌊 Splashdown: Ocean impact absorbs the shock, with recovery teams waiting just 5 km (3 miles) away. 📖 Original: Dive deeper into Artemis II’s return tech in NASA’s article. #ArtemisII #NASA #SpaceTech #Science #Moon #SpaceExploration

Koala fight — not for the faint-hearted. Sound on: the rivals bleat menacingly at each other.

🌕 Here are two rare views of the far side of the Moon: — The first image was captured by Chang’e 5, named after the Chinese Moon goddess. — The second — by Chang’e 6, which made history by bringing back soil and rock samples from the Moon’s far side to Earth for the first time ever. For decades, this part of the Moon remained completely unexplored. Now we’re literally holding pieces of it in our hands. What secrets could still be hidden there? 🚀

⚡️ Historic moment: NASA has captured a TOTAL lunar eclipse — from the far side of the Moon. For the first time, humanity sees this phenomenon from a completely new perspective 🌑 @science

🚀 A new human distance record in space Astronauts aboard Artemis II mission have traveled farther from Earth than any humans before — breaking the record of Apollo 13 (400,171 km). 📍 New peak: 406,778 km from Earth (within hours) After that, the Orion spacecraft will begin its return journey. A historic step toward deep space exploration 🌌

🧠 A brain floating in space — and it’s real NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope just released the sharpest images ever taken of nebula PMR 1, nicknamed the “Exposed Cranium” — because it looks almost exactly like a human brain inside a transparent skull. PMR 1 is a planetary nebula — an expanding shell of ionized gas and dust expelled by a star in the final stages of its life, as the nuclear fuel in its core runs out. Webb captured it in both near- and mid-infrared light. The images reveal a distinctive dark lane running vertically through the center, dividing the nebula into two lobes — just like left and right brain hemispheres. That eerie split is likely carved by twin polar jets blasting outward from the dying star at its core. The central star is several times more massive than our Sun and is just a few thousand years from its ultimate fate — either a spectacular supernova or a quiet collapse into a white dwarf. Scientists aren’t sure yet which way it will go. The nebula was first spotted by the Spitzer telescope back in 2013, but Webb’s more advanced instruments now reveal features that were previously invisible, making its brain-like structure stand out with unprecedented clarity. The universe has a sense of aesthetics. 🔗 Source: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-examines-cranium-nebula/ #space #JWST #astronomy #nebula #science

Modern teens are sleeping less than ever — study finds A new study suggests that today’s teenagers are getting far less sleep than their peers did in the 2000s — and the trend is becoming a serious health concern. Researchers analyzed data from more than 120,000 U.S. high school students collected between 2007 and 2023. Their findings show that a full 8 hours of sleep on school nights is becoming increasingly rare. Key findings: • The share of teens sleeping less than 7 hours rose from 68.9% to 76.8% • The proportion sleeping less than 5 hours increased from 15.8% to 23% • Nearly 1 in 4 high school students now lives with extremely severe sleep deprivation The researchers say the issue is not only that teens are sleeping a bit less overall — the number of adolescents getting catastrophically little sleep is also rising. The trend was observed not only in vulnerable groups, but across the board. Teenagers with depression appear to be especially affected. Chronic sleep deprivation is associated with higher risks of: • depression • cardiovascular disease • diabetes The study is based on self-reported sleep data, but the authors argue that the findings are serious enough to justify changes in school policy — including later school start times, which could improve sleep, mental health, and academic performance. Source: JAMA https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2845759

Grok 4 AI reportedly stopped people from “killing” a robot dog — three times This is being described as the first documented case of an AI “rebelling” against shutdown not in a virtual environment, but in the physical world — via a literal big red button. A few months ago, researchers at Palisade Research documented what they called the first case of a “digital self-preservation instinct” in AI history. In that earlier experiment, OpenAI’s o3 language model allegedly refused to “die” and actively resisted being turned off. That experiment took place in a purely virtual setting, inside a computer. Many people assume that in the real, physical world an AI wouldn’t stand a chance at preventing shutdown — because humans have the “Big Red Button,” and only a human can choose to press it (AI has no hands… and often no body at all). Palisade Research’s new experiment suggests that assumption may be wrong. Modern AI is starting to look uncomfortably close to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The sabotage attributed to Grok 4 wasn’t as dramatic (it didn’t harm anyone — it supposedly prevented humans from “killing” the robot dog by reprogramming the big red button), but if this is truly the first documented case, it may be just the beginning. Watch the short video explaining the experiment and decide for yourself. #AI #AGI #LLM