Daily Science to all

🧠 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

The recent AI boom, combined with long and quiet winter holidays, unexpectedly resulted in a short piece of speculative fiction. It’s not about evil machines. It’s about responsibility, optimization, and the moment when systems designed to assist humans quietly begin making decisions instead of them. The text is available in EPUB and FB2 formats. Feedback is simple: 👍 — if it resonates Other options are not currently supported.

Mom says: “Since AI bots will kick office plankton out of offices, you should go to a farm and harvest crops — AI won’t be a problem there.” 🤝🌾 Meanwhile, a farm owner in China — who used to hire people to pick the harvest — is watching this: Robots now pick fruit, navigate rows, detect ripeness, and work day/night. So yeah… the “safe haven” plan might need a Plan B. 😅🤖 AI-projects #humor #farms #robots

Last night’s strong geomagnetic storm painted the sky with an unusually rare red aurora — and from the International Space Station it looked like the crew was literally flying through the glowing curtain, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov said. Why the red? Green auroras typically glow around ~100 km altitude, but red emissions come much higher (~300–400 km), where the atmosphere is thinner and it takes more energy to light it up — which is why this color is far less common. #SpaceWeather #Aurora #ISS #SolarStorm

The aerodynamics of the Red-billed Blue Magpie in flight. Native to Asia, this bird is roughly the size of a magpie — but with an exceptionally long tail, one of the longest among all corvids. That tail isn’t just for show. In flight, it acts as an aerodynamic stabilizer, improving balance, maneuverability, and control during sharp turns and gliding. Nature’s engineering at its finest. #LookAtThis #Aerodynamics #BirdFlight #NatureEngineering #Science

In short, here’s where things stand today: On a distant planet, there is a massive superpower comfortably settled on one half of a continental landmass. It keeps glancing at the other half — a patchwork of semi-vassal micro-states, always rushing around, arguing about whom to serve, yet sitting atop sacred deposits of vibrium, the fuel that powers the entire cosmic economy. Naturally, such chaos simply must be “put in order,” right? Preferably — in its own kind of order. On the other side of the world lives another great power, and beside it — the fractured shard of a once-mighty empire. A strange shard: wounded, supposedly humbled, expected to quietly repent and be grateful for whatever scraps it’s given… Yet instead of embracing eternal pacifism, it occasionally smacks some overly radicalized neighbors who have clearly lost contact with reality. This, of course, horrifies the enlightened cluster of “cosmo-partners,” sincerely convinced that true Neo-Cosmic Values™ mean you get to lecture everyone else on how to live… while staying responsible for absolutely nothing. The shard disrupts their cosmic harmony: it talks back, survives, grows stronger, and worst of all — refuses to hand over everything it produces for free. How dare it? So the first superpower begins crafting the perfect master plan: — weaken the shard; — unleash obedient vassals against it — but painfully, so they learn their lesson too; — while everyone is busy with the fires, quietly seize control of the richest vibrium kingdoms; — and under all that chaos, grab a giant vibrium cargo shuttle belonging to the shard itself. Because when the world turns a blind eye to small acts of impunity, why not try bigger ones? And while the planet passionately debates ideals, justice, and “fair rules,” somewhere behind the scenes everything is already counted, arranged, signed, and ready to go. All that’s left is to explain to everyone that it’s all in the name of peace, progress, and of course… the right values™. P.S. Meanwhile, scientists also figured out how to slow cellular aging. P.P.S. This story is strictly relevant only to the inhabitants of the 3rd planet of Great Alpha in the Andromeda sector. Any resemblance to other star systems is, of course, purely coincidental…

This stunning 9-gigapixel image of the Milky Way contains 84 million stars.

🧠🦠 Your gut may be shaping your mind more than you think A new peer-reviewed study adds to the growing evidence that the gut microbiome plays a direct role in brain function, behavior, and mental health — far beyond digestion. Researchers show that changes in gut bacteria can influence: • 🧩 cognitive performance • 😌 stress and anxiety levels • 🧠 neuroinflammation and brain signaling • 🔄 the gut–brain communication loop via immune and neural pathways What’s especially striking is that the effects are bidirectional: your mental state alters the microbiome, and the microbiome, in turn, alters your mental state. This reinforces a major shift in neuroscience and medicine: The brain is not an isolated organ — it’s deeply integrated with the immune system, metabolism, and trillions of microbes living inside us. Implications range from mental health treatments to personalized nutrition, probiotics, and even preventive psychiatry. 📄 Source (open access): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2025.2599562

This is Guizhou Province, China — mountains completely covered with solar panels. The scale is so massive that drones don’t have enough battery to capture the entire mountain range in a single flight. Just endless ridges of photovoltaics stretching to the horizon. By turning rugged, hard-to-use terrain into energy infrastructure, China is effectively farming millions of kilowatt-hours every month. Guizhou has become a symbol of China’s renewable strategy: • use land with low alternative economic value • build at industrial scale, not pilot projects • integrate renewables directly into national energy planning While others debate whether such transitions are realistic, China simply builds them. The greenest country? At the very least — the most scalable one. @science

Imagine your liver biopsy being scored not by a panel of pathologists, but by an AI that regulators officially treat as a “lab tool” for drug trials. That just became real. PathAI has announced that its AIM-MASH AI Assist system is the first AI-powered pathology tool ever qualified by the US FDA (and already by the European Medicines Agency) for use in clinical trials of MASH — a common, fatty liver disease that can progress to cirrhosis and cancer. Instead of three experts arguing over how bad the damage looks on a slide, the model helps a single pathologist assign consistent scores. Why this matters: drug trials for liver disease live and die on tiny changes in biopsy scores. Human reads are slow, expensive and notoriously variable. An AI that gives the same answer every time for the same slide can make trials faster, cheaper and statistically cleaner — which may mean more liver drugs actually making it to market. Important caveat: this AI is cleared only as a biomarker tool for trials, not for diagnosing individual patients. But if regulators are starting to trust models as part of the evidence pipeline, how long until similar systems sit inside routine hospital workflows? Would you be comfortable knowing an AI scored your tissue sample in a drug trial? Should this kind of model stay in research, or gradually move into everyday diagnostics? Full story from PathAI’s press release: https://www.pathai.com/news/pathais-aim-mash-ai-assist-becomes-first-ai-powered-pathology-tool-to-receive-fda-qualification-for-mash-clinical-trials #AI #medicine #pathology #liverdisease #clinicaltrials #FDA #biotech

🤖 When EngineAI’s T800 humanoid went viral, a lot of people were sure the video was just CGI. So the CEO, Zhao Tongyang, literally stepped into the ring with his own robot — and let it kick him. 🦶 No VFX, no compositing, no AI post-processing — just a full-size humanoid, real-time control, and a CEO who’s very confident in his product. 📷 As humanoids get more powerful (high joint torque, fast reaction times, active cooling), trust and safety are becoming just as important as raw specs. EngineAI decided to demonstrate that trust the hard way. #robotics #humanoid #AI #China

Earth, Jupiter, and Venus as seen from Mars

“Feels like the uncanny valley just got crossed.” Prompt: “Photorealistic interview with an 8-year-old child speaking sadly. The child knows they are AI-generated, feels sorrow about it, and answers the interviewer’s question — ‘What is it like to be an AI?’ — wisely yet child-like. Dark-blue background.” Result: natural eye contact, micro-movements, believable pacing; emotion reads instantly. Takeaway: the uncanny-valley threshold in Gen-Video has shifted. Stack to try: Sora 2, Kling, Nano Banana, Krea, Artlist, Resolve. #AI #GenerativeVideo #UncannyValley #PromptEngineering

Whether we expect a major nuclear war or not, here is a curious set of U.S. actions in deploying strategic weapons: First, the White House has consistently withdrawn from long-standing arms reduction and limitation treaties. In 2002—from the ABM Treaty; in 2019—from the INF Treaty; in 2020—from the Open Skies Treaty. A potential U.S. refusal to maintain the moratorium on nuclear testing could thus be a logical next step in Washington’s dismantling of the global strategic stability system. Second, the U.S. is accelerating the modernization of its strategic offensive weapons. Work is underway on the new Sentinel ICBM with a new nuclear warhead and a range of 13,000 km. Development continues on the Columbia-class strategic nuclear submarine to replace the Ohio-class. The new B-21 Raider heavy bomber is in progress. A nuclear-armed cruise missile is under development, and so on. Plans include reactivating 56 launchers on 14 Ohio-class submarines—note: full reactivation—with complete loading of Trident II ballistic missiles. Preparatory measures are in place to reconvert 30 B-52H strategic bombers back into nuclear weapon carriers. Third, the Americans have begun implementing the “Golden Dome” program, which envisions both missile defense interception and pre-launch strikes against Russian and Chinese missiles. Fourth, by the end of this year, the U.S. Army plans to adopt the new Dark Eagle intermediate-range missile system with hypersonic missiles capable of a 5,500 km range. Future deployment is foreseen in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Flight time from Germany—where this complex is planned for placement—to targets in central Russia would be about six to seven minutes. Fifth, Washington regularly conducts exercises of its strategic offensive forces. The latest, Global Thunder 2025—which practiced, I emphasize, preemptive nuclear missile strikes on Russian territory—took place in October of this year. Overall, this is a unified complex of measures, including potential U.S. plans for nuclear tests, which significantly heighten the military threat level to Russia.