The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is changing the color of the ocean

The ocean’s blue and green hues near the infamous zone of debris have gotten brighter over the past 20 years, satellite data show

== repeat? sorry if so
Mystery origin of iconic Stonehenge Altar Stone deepens as search narrows

For more than a century, archaeologists and geologists believed the distinctive 4.9-meter (16-foot) sandstone slab at the heart of the famous Neolithic monument on Salisbury Plain originated in Wales. That theory was overturned by recent research using modern analytical techniques, which instead pointed to northeast Scotland as a likely source.

Fractal patterns reveal hidden limits to AI predictability

Neural networks, the technology behind today’s most advanced AI systems, learn by adjusting millions or even billions of internal parameters during training. The Sydney team investigated why networks sometimes arrive at different solutions despite using the same data, training procedure and deterministic computing environment.

Ancient Maya mercury use may have come at a severe environmental cost

Ancient Maya communities made extensive use of liquid mercury and a red, mercury-containing pigment called cinnabar to decorate buildings, pottery and burial sites. Unsurprisingly, as previous research has shown, this led to mercury contamination of soils and reservoirs at some Maya sites.

After 40 years of searching, physicists find evidence for an ultrarare particle decay

The Large Hadron Collider often detects the presence of B° and B°? mesons, which can decay into various particles. However, some decays are rarer than others. In particular, the decay of either particle into a muon-antimuon pair is incredibly difficult to detect.

Testing Einstein’s laws from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea

Are the laws of physics truly the same everywhere in the universe? This fundamental principle, known as Lorentz invariance, lies at the heart of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Yet some theories that seek to reconcile gravity with quantum physics suggest that it might not always hold.

Hundreds of Ice Age rock art engravings discovered hidden in plain sight

Archaeologists have discovered the third-largest assemblage of Ice Age cave art ever found in Mediterranean Iberia in a region thought devoid of cave art, transforming our knowledge of Paleolithic European art.

Pulsars set first mass limits on supermassive black hole pairs in the early universe

So far, observations by instruments including the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed the presence of surprisingly massive black holes in the early universe. Even less than a billion years after the Big Bang, some of these bodies already weighed billions of times the mass of the sun, and to date, astronomers are unclear as to how they could have grown so large so quickly.

NASA Announces X-70 Experimental Aircraft to Advance Flight Research

On Wednesday, NASA unveiled its newest experimental aircraft, the X-70 Fractal, during the UP.Summit at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This high-performance, highly adaptable research platform is designed to accelerate the development and testing of advanced aviation technologies.

Foot-stiffening socks could make walking less tiring

Human feet are much stiffer than those of other primates, which means they limit midfoot bending during walking. The evolutionary reasons for this are not entirely clear. One idea is that the features that stiffen the foot evolved to make upright walking less effortful.

Call adjustments help bats keep their echolocation signals distinct, study finds

Bats can produce ultrasonic pulses with high frequencies between 20,000 and 120,000 hertz, which are inaudible to humans. The sound waves they produce travel forward, hitting nearby objects and bouncing back in the form of echoes.

== yjc
Code cracked for shipwreck padlock solving 400-year-old mystery

Experts have cracked a four-letter code to open an ancient padlock from a shipwreck off the Welsh coast using modern scanning technology. The 400-year-old brass lock was discovered by metal detectorist Peter Hughes in the sand near Margam in Port Talbot, in 1999.

Dinosaur Blood Found In Fossils For the First Time

Paleontologists regularly discover fossilized dinosaur bones, but they sometimes locate footprints and prehistoric shells. On rare occasions, researchers have even identified the ancient indentations of a dinosaur’s skin or feathers. But fossilized cells? Researchers have long assumed such microscopic levels of preservation were impossible. But, once again, nature has proven otherwise.

A possible chemical explanation for why we give up on tough tasks

When we engage our brains in a mentally taxing task, we eventually reach a point where we hit a wall or run on empty. Even when the rewards of finishing are obvious, we often find ourselves simply stopping. Exactly why this happens has long remained a mystery.

Long-standing Indigenous practice of adding shells to sand helps young clams withstand ocean acidification

Indigenous communities have long added shell hash to sands to keep coastal ecosystems healthy. The research illuminates the biology underlying why this method is effective.

== my undergrad presentation (thesis?) was on quarks, which at the time had not yet been observed in an accelerator
Scientists detect signals at the smallest scale ever explored

So in this experiment, particles were smashed together at high energy and scientists studied the material that was thrown out - the shrapnel of collisions. One of these is a sub-atomic particle - smaller than an atom - called a beauty quark. The particle is unstable and exists for just one and a half trillionths of a second before breaking down into other forms - decaying.

Volcanic eruptions in the tropics are a major factor in Earth’s thermostat

Volcanic eruptions are known for their spectacular visual displays of vivid lava, as well as the devastating impacts they can have on the environment and the communities who live nearby. But they can also have far-reaching impacts across the globe.

A smart window grows a silver shield to keep sunlight’s heat out

A window can admit welcome daylight but also let in unwanted heat, taxing air conditioning systems. Darkening the glass helps control glare, but the absorption of sunlight warms it. An ideal window would block more incoming heat while also letting trapped heat escape.

Dust-shrouded Milky Way star cluster may be nearly as old as the universe

Globular clusters are some of the oldest members of the Milky Way and hold clues to how our galaxy first formed. These star clusters are home to stars that are 10 billion to 13 billion years old, which preserve fossil records of the conditions under which our galaxy first assembled.

Twin study links artistic, but not scientific, creativity to poorer mental health

The relationship between creativity and mental health has attracted the interest of many psychologists over the past decades. Some past studies have found that creativity is sometimes linked to mental health difficulties, while others collected opposing or inconsistent results.

== in case anyone interested
5 expensive hobbies where owning a 3D printer actually saves you money

NASA’s 3D printers hosted on the International Space Station (ISS) print tools and replacement parts on demand. Here on Earth, 3D printers can sometimes make expensive components and accessories for a more affordable price than you can find in stores. However, does that make one worth buying?

How big and powerful is SpaceX’s Starship rocket?

With both stages stacked, the current SpaceX Starship launch vehicle stands at 407 feet. It’s taller than the tallest known living tree, Hyperion, and one-third taller than the Statue of Liberty (pedestal included). It’s the tallest rocket ever flown and the most powerful, with 18.1 million pounds-force of liftoff thrust.

These firms you’ve never heard of are feeding fears the AI bubble could burst

A once-obscure corner of the AI ecosystem finds itself in the spotlight – and investors don’t all like what they see.

What happens when AI starts self-replicating?

Anthropic’s Frontier Red Team recently published research suggesting that small AI models may be only months away from replicating and spreading across insecure devices, creating slow but hard-to-kill autonomous botnets. AI companies are no strangers to playing up the world-ending potential of their products as a form of marketing, but in this instance, experts Engadget spoke to broadly agree small AI models could become capable of self-replicating in the near future. However, the actual threat they pose may be less novel than it appears.

== yjc
He left 28 years ago, now after 36,000 miles Karl Bushby is almost home

Back in 1998, the former paratrooper, then aged 29, set off from Punta Arenas, Chile, to walk an unbroken path to his home city of Hull, without breaking two self-imposed rules: not to return to the UK until he had completed his journey, and not to use transport to advance.