==yjc
Halloween 2026: Face Your Darkest AI Fears (If You Dare)

AI’s potency means our community has real problems to solve. At the same time, fear-mongering has long been a tactic for drumming up publicity or influencing investors and politicians. So amidst all the exciting progress, fears about AI’s power have long been an undercurrent. From time to time, it’s worth examining what the latest concerns are, and how worried we really should be.

== yjc
The animal versions of our Halloween horrors

Around this time of year, elaborate decorations featuring ghosts, vampires, zombies, witches and werewolves adorn front doors, gardens and store windows across the country. But you may be surprised to hear that in the animal world, there are many real-life creatures with tendencies similar to those of the fictional characters in our Halloween nightmares.

The phantom lighthouse: New research explains one of Australia’s strangest illusions

There are two lighthouses on Lady Elliot Island, at the southernmost tip of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The first was built in 1873, but was decommissioned in 1995 when the second took over the job of warning ships off the reef. Visitors to the island, however, regularly report seeing signs of a third lighthouse. At night the beams of a nonexistent phantom lighthouse are seen far off, shining on the horizon.

Stars’ criminal histories could reshape estimates of their internal magnetic fields

To determine stellar ages, researchers use theoretical stellar evolution models that need to be as accurate as possible—and that means also taking magnetic fields into account. Yet it is often unclear how strong these fields are, where exactly they are located or how they are shaped. Their complex geometry is difficult to determine with the available data.

As ancient oceans warmed, carbon export and fish productivity surged

Ocean fish stocks have been increasingly exploited over time, and remote sensing shows they have declined in the open ocean over the last three decades, particularly in the tropics. But it’s uncertain how fish populations will fare in the future, as climate models show both increases and decreases in global trends by the end of this century.

== yjc
Please Let the Internet Die

Online spaces are captured by oligarchs and saturated with slop—and they’re exacerbating humanity’s worst impulses. It’s time to start over.

== yjc
New election forecast updates predictions every 10 minutes

From Alaska to Texas, the battle for control of the U.S. Senate is unfolding across 35 races. And a new Northwestern University election model is tracking them all—every 10 minutes.

Rarely seen deep-sea barreleye fish filmed in 4K

Macropinna lives in the ocean’s twilight zone, scanning the waters above for the silhouettes of prey. Large fins provide stability and maneuverability as a barreleye drifts in place, eyes transfixed on the waters above. After spotting a tasty morsel, those large tubular eyes rotate beneath a dome of transparent tissue to keep prey in sight.

How the heart’s unusual carbohydrate metabolism helps it stay strong

The heart is the hardest-working muscle in the body, beating constantly no matter what the body’s energy reserves look like. Maintaining energy flow to the heart is a complex process that can break down during common but severe cardiovascular disease conditions like heart failure. Researchers previously knew that heart muscle seems to do an unusual metabolic trick to always get enough energy.

Comets probably didn’t seed life on Earth after all, new study suggests

The theory that comets delivered the molecular building blocks for life on Earth is a long-standing one, since comets are known to carry many of these molecules. However, a new study challenges this idea.

Can gravitational fields break and reconnect? Einstein’s equations suggest they can

More than a century after Einstein first devised the equations that describe gravity, physicists are still finding new ways of interpreting them.

=== yjc
A new survey of Canadian English shows what has changed in 50 years

Over the past 50 years, Canadian English has become more uniform across regions and has adopted many American terms and pronunciations, while the use of Canadian spellings has gained in popularity.

== U.S. perspective, but…
Scientists reveal the staggering number of bat deaths at wind turbines

Bat populations across the United States face numerous threats, and one of the biggest may be the number of collisions with wind turbines.

Technician cracks 1,600-year-old mystery to replicate color-changing effect of Roman glass masterpiece

The Lycurgus Cup, a world-renowned 4th-century A.D. artifact housed in the British Museum, is constructed of “dichroic” glass that shifts from jade green in reflected light to ruby red in transmitted light. This means that depending on where the light source is positioned, observers can see the cup displayed in two distinctive, contrasting colors.

Radio waves drive a fusion plasma current that could help reactors run continuously

For the first time, a team of physicistshas clearly demonstrated a “helicon current drive” in a nuclear fusion experiment. The team took advantage of the latest advances in tokamak technology to show that radio waves steered to travel around the donut-shaped device can be absorbed by its confined plasma, driving an electric current inside it.

Calgary-developed wound treatment used on battlefields in Ukraine

Calgary-based NanoTess received Health Canada approval for its NanoSALV Catalytic in 2022 and evaluated it by treating unhoused populations in encampments. It is now being used for military purposes.

== yjc
Ford’s Most Affordable EV Will Offer Built-In Bidirectional Home Charging

The automaker’s “clean sheet” reboot of its EV ambitions will be offered with bidirectional charging, which allows the truck to send power from its battery back to the house it’s plugged into. That could keep the lights on and the fridge running during an extended power outage.

CDC warns of rising threat of drug-resistant germs

The agency considers such infections to be one of the most pressing public health issues. A new report ranks the germs that pose the most urgent threats.

New Vera C. Rubin telescope spots possible new dwarf planet beyond Pluto

Researchers said the candidate, named 2026 ED138, has a diameter estimated at between roughly 600 and 1,500 kilometres and is orbiting about 46 times farther from the sun than Earth. By way of comparison, ?Pluto orbits at an average of about 40 times farther from ?the sun than Earth.

== yjc
A bust-up between mathematicians is fuelling fears that AI could undermine science

Last month, OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, said it had solved one of maths’ great unsolved problems, relating to the famous Navier–Stokes equations. The company said its AI agents had cracked it in 88 hours. The body that runs a prize for whoever can solve the problem said it had “apparently been settled”, but that its review would take time.

== we use a fair amount of bell and other peppers each week, so nice to know
Bell pepper colors reveal differences in sweetness, nutrients and ripeness

Like tomatoes, we consider bell peppers a vegetable because they’re lower in sugar than most fruits and are usually eaten in savory dishes. But botanically speaking, bell peppers are a fruit—more specifically, a berry—because they develop from a flower and contain seeds.

Crows make decisions twice as fast as humans and monkeys

In the task, the birds had to determine whether moving dots on a touchscreen were predominantly moving to the left or to the right. The crows indicated their decision by pecking at a target to the left or right of the dot pattern. Even when the patterns of motion were hard to recognize, the crows’ decisions were still better than random choices.

Stellar collisions may have been common when the universe was young

In our solar system’s corner of the galaxy, stars rarely collide. It makes sense: Space is vast, and stars have room to roam. Even in most of the present-day universe, stellar collisions are rare. The James Webb Space Telescope, however, peers deep enough into space to see the universe as it was not too long after the Big Bang. Its observations have revealed extraordinarily compact stellar systems, raising the possibility that collisions between stars were once much more common.

Southern Africa’s first known stenciled rock art found hiding in plain sight

Southern Africa has one of the most detailed and elaborate bodies of rock art anywhere in the world, from herds of running antelope to dancing men and humanoid beings with wings, hooves and horns. All are painted with fine brushstrokes or fingers. One thing this art lacks is stencils.

In China, the AI bubble has already burst

While global tech stocks teeter, in China they have already crashed as lofty valuations collapse under worries about AI demand and curbs on Chinese exports.

== like what’s new – greenhouse gases, asbestos and tobacco
Industry executives knew for decades that microplastics were infiltrating the human body

Their concern goes back to 1974 and a scientific meeting at a New York City hotel, where a German gastroenterologist presented a scientific paper that showed for the first time that ingested particles like microplastics could infiltrate the rest of the body.

Highway thieves are spoofing GPS to steal millions in data center-bound cargo

Highway thieves are using sophisticated digital tactics that investigators worry make it easy to rob trucks carrying millions in expensive data center equipment.c

AI delivers ‘zero financial payoff’ to most companies, Apollo economist says

AI hasn’t benefited the bottom line of any big corporations outside the tech industry, according to a note recently published by the chief economist at Apollo Global Management.

The pros and cons of using an eSIM over a physical SIM card

The conveniences of an eSIM come with a few strings attached.

Old Blood Cells Have Been Transformed Into Brain Stem Cells That Get Younger As They Age

Natural cellular aging begins with differentiation. Once a stem cell becomes a specific cell type, it’s locked in forever: fat cells can never become muscle cells, no matter how hard one wishes.

What is a neutrino anyway?

In the 1930s, Wolfgang Pauli hypothesized the existence of neutrinos (he called them “neutrons” at the time) to explain invisible energy loss in certain kinds of radiation. At the time, he stated, “I have done a terrible thing, I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.”

== crazy what scientists do
Archimedes screw inspires single-molecule motor powered by electric current

Molecular machines are regarded as the next step in miniaturization. Their models can be found in living cells, where molecular motors convert energy and generate movement. Scientists have been working for decades to artificially replicate such systems

Scientists find key to predicting some El Niño events 12 months ahead

ENSO events, which include El Niño and La Niña phases, influence weather patterns around the globe. While these events typically peak around December and can usually be forecast with confidence around six months in advance, predicting them earlier has long been a challenge.

How cancers evade chemotherapy

Scientists at Trinity College Dublin have made a breakthrough in understanding how cancer cells can evade the cell-killing effects of chemotherapy and enter a “zombie-like state,” called premature senescence, that can attract the wound-healing properties of the immune system.

Children who eat more ultraprocessed foods show stronger brain responses to appetizing foods

Children’s brains are still developing, habits are still forming and food preferences are still being made. It’s an important period where the brain is very sensitive to food and the food environment.

Just 3% of the world’s glaciers account for over half of glacier ice loss

Glaciers ending in lakes, oceans or ice shelves make up 3.2% of the world’s glaciers, but lost 134 billion metric tons (148 billion tons) of ice each year between 2000 and 2019, accounting for more than half of all glacier ice loss, a new study shows.

Rare fossils reveal what ancient Denisovans may have looked like

Whenever anything is written about the Denisovans, the word “mysterious” is almost guaranteed to appear. That is because we just don’t know a lot about this extinct human group that may have lived in East Asia from at least 300,000 to 45,000 years ago and was closely related to the Neanderthals. The main reason for that is a sparse fossil record.

Sinking Antarctic ice reveals a hidden lake’s massive water loss

The Kronshtadskiy subglacial lake near East Antarctica’s Amery Ice Shelf was hidden beneath Antarctica’s ice, but its drainage left a mark visible from space as a broad depression that deepened by more than 6 meters (20 feet) at its center.