Random Science news and articles

[CD Xbow]

Superradiance of Tryptophan molecules in the brain may reflects a quantum optical system.

Quantum computing occurs naturally in the human brain, study finds

Tryptophan networks in cells may act as quantum computers, reshaping biology, neuroscience, and the search for life in the universe.

www.thebrighterside.news

'Kurian’s team has shown that giant networks of tryptophan molecules, arranged in microtubules, centrioles, and neuron bundles, can behave as quantum optical systems.'

I have 2 'widely speculative' thoughts about this. The first relates to Roger Penrose theory of consciousness (Orch OR) which proposes the microtubules proteins electron clouds are where the mojo happens. Whacky and out there and without evidence, this new finding might offer a new path to research the idea. We know all anaesthetic drugs put us to sleep by affecting microtubule function, I think this is where Penrose got the idea on the centrality of the microtubules.

The second is that just about all the real trippy psychedelics affect tryptophan. You certainly can feel your mind glowing brightly, I like the idea it might be because you've upped your superradience.

Roger Penrose is perhaps the worlds greatest living scientist, his work has spanned many domains including getting a Nobel for his black hole work. His wikipedia entry is pretty good and you can see one of his real skills is doing a wicked impersonation of Dr Smith from the original 'Lost in Space'.

 

[CD Xbow]

Bannana benders are getting one of the first large scale quantum computers and one of the world’s largest cryogenic cooling plants to support it.

Milestone in bid to build world’s first large-scale quantum computer in Australia

One of the world’s largest cryogenic cooling plants will be built in Brisbane, Australia as part of constructing the first large-scale quantum computer.

cosmosmagazine.com

 

[Mofra]

Is the US losing the tech war to China?

Quantum computing could make our entire online security apparatus useless given their ability to solve complex algorithms developed largely in the late 70s

“IBM Should Be Worried”: China Fires Up 1,000-Qubit Quantum Computer and Sparks Panic in Global Supercomputing Race - Rude Baguette https://share.google/JwTWIc40Cq2i8A5NH

 

[CD Xbow]

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Concorde reborn. This has to be a scam, my bullsh*t detectors are in the red. Linked to a cryptocurrency, of course. .
https://aviationa2z.com/index.php/2...ersonic-passenger-aircraft-to-return-in-2026/ article

Official site is fabulously short of detail. First flight next year, if you believe that I've got a nice bridge to sell you.
https://www.fly-concord.com

 

[Chief]

Elon will put the Concorde in a tunnel under the Atlantic and send a few celebrities through it, sell the carbon credits and then live-stream the catastrophic explosion.

 

[CD Xbow]

The Paddle Pups

Paddle pups working to save one of Australia's most iconic creatures

Victorian scientists enlist sniffer dogs on paddleboards to locate platypuses in the wild and increase knowledge of the iconic species without damaging their habitat.

www.abc.net.au

 

[GreyCrow]

The Paddle Pups

View attachment 2366823

Paddle pups working to save one of Australia's most iconic creatures

Victorian scientists enlist sniffer dogs on paddleboards to locate platypuses in the wild and increase knowledge of the iconic species without damaging their habitat.

www.abc.net.au

Dogs are amazing

We need to start utilising their scent abilities more

 

[CD Xbow]

Amazing - 32 documented instances of Orca's offering humans food.

Killer Whales Are Giving Fish to Humans Worldwide – What’s Going on?

In a baffling show of generosity, killer whales across the globe are giving fish to humans—and scientists are racing to understand why.

scitechdaily.com

Perhaps it's the Orca's and not the Dolphins that get to say "So long and thanks for all the fish"

 

[Chief]

Lulling us into a false sense of security... then BAM! Sinking our boats and biting our legs off.

 

[CD Xbow]

Lulling us into a false sense of security... then BAM! Sinking our boats and biting our legs off.

Flipper becomes the Ripper!

We underestimate animal intelligence and I think we don't have any real understanding of our effect on animal behaviour. The video of crow snow boarding down the roof is incredible. It tries the other side of the roof, fails and goes back to the one it's mastered. I can only interpret this as a crow having fun.

 

[Mofra]

Flipper becomes the Ripper!

We underestimate animal intelligence and I think we don't have any real understanding of our effect on animal behaviour. The video of crow snow boarding down the roof is incredible. It tries the other side of the roof, fails and goes back to the one it's mastered. I can only interpret this as a crow having fun.

Crows and ravens are freakishly smart. Can recognize individual human faces and know where other crows come from based on their 'accent'.

 

[Mofra]

The scientist who explains the origin of life with a mineral and without god

Geologist Juan Manuel García Ruiz has received more than $10 million to investigate the role of silica in the emergence of living beings

english.elpais.com

This is incredible, been reading about these experiments recently. It could explain the chemical precursors to the origins of life on earth (hint - it all started due to replicating 1952 experiments in teflon rather than glass, then examining differences in results).

It was silica all along!

 

[CD Xbow]

The scientist who explains the origin of life with a mineral and without god

Geologist Juan Manuel García Ruiz has received more than $10 million to investigate the role of silica in the emergence of living beings

english.elpais.com

This is incredible, been reading about these experiments recently. It could explain the chemical precursors to the origins of life on earth (hint - it all started due to replicating 1952 experiments in teflon rather than glass, then examining differences in results).

It was silica all along!

I couldn't follow that link but I'm glad I bothered - https://archive.is/P96Y3

Worth a read. Clays have already been suggested to have been important contributors to the stage of chemical evolution (structural, aiding polymerization, catalytic) and pretty fundamental to the whole 'RNA sea' idea. Always thought it interesting that gods of prehistory often would shape us miserable humans out of clay.

 

[CD Xbow]

I couldn't really find a good place to post this, the aviation threads are all really old and inactive, so I stuck it here. An A380 landing in a cross wind. What a magnificent job by the pilot, crabbing the mighty aircraft sideways.

Pilot performs the almost impossible by landing Airbus A380 nearly sideways during a storm – Supercar Blondie

Pilot performs the almost impossible by landing Airbus A380 nearly sideways during a storm, and the footage is mind-blowing

supercarblondie.com

"Described as ‘crabbing’, landing sideways and moving sideways during a cross wind like a crab is a recommended technique that not every pilot can master.

Aligning the nose of the plane into the wind neutralizes drift and helps the pilot stay in control of the plane while cross winds push it.

Keeping aligned with the runway centerline even though the plane itself is not aligned, helps with landing in even the most ferocious of storms."

 

[Aristotle Pickett the3rd]

Black goo found with unknown micro-organisms.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/01/science/ship-goo-great-lakes-microbes

 

[CD Xbow]

Black goo found with unknown micro-organisms.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/01/science/ship-goo-great-lakes-microbes

Interesting. That's probably what most extraterrestrial life looks like, goo. probably in different shades. On Earth we took about 3.5 billion years to move beyond goo, which suggests goo is common.

 

[CD Xbow]

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The Wildlife photography awards of 2025 are being judged These are some recommended images, not winners. It's not judged till mid October. There are some some real beauties. As I do every year I will whinge about the lack of description of how the images were made/taken.

The highly commended images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year

An inquisitive pack of wolves and a stand-off between two dangerous animals are among the highly commended images in this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Bostonian]

View attachment 2411112​

The Wildlife photography awards of 2025 are being judged These are some recommended images, not winners. It's not judged till mid October. There are some some real beauties. As I do every year I will whinge about the lack of description of how the images were made/taken.

The highly commended images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year

An inquisitive pack of wolves and a stand-off between two dangerous animals are among the highly commended images in this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

www.abc.net.au

Anything that can bite you or kill you is probably taken with a zoom lens.

 

[CD Xbow]

Scientists have long noticed a worsening decline in insect populations. Most studies looking at this have been in human affected environments. The reason for this fall in insect populations is not known. The study below looked at insect numbers in the wild in Colorado.

"Keith Sockman, associate professor of biology at UNC-Chapel Hill, quantified the abundance of flying insects during 15 seasons between 2004 and 2024 on a subalpine meadow in Colorado, a site with 38 years of weather data and minimal direct human impact. He discovered an average annual decline of 6.6% in insect abundance, amounting to a 72.4% drop over the 20-year period. The study also found that this steep decline is associated with rising summer temperatures."

Even untouched ecosystems are losing insects at alarming rates, new study finds

A new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows that insect populations are rapidly declining even in relatively undisturbed landscapes, raising concerns about the health of ecosystems that depend on them.

phys.org

 

[CD Xbow]

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Microsoft's new fangled quantum chip uses Ozzie tech. Look closely at the image and you will see the vegemite. The article mostly covers our quantum computing scene, a quite active one.

Australia emerges as quantum computing player with role in Microsoft chip

Advances in the technology have been made possible by sustained government funding since the 1990s

www.ft.com

“Australia has been like an R&D factory. We produce really good founders and researchers here and then they go overseas. We want them to return”

 

[CD Xbow]

Pompous Simon looks at the fabulously named and incredibly complex Wendelstein 7-X Stellarator, an alternative to standard tokamaks for attempting sustained fusion. He compares it to the ITER tokamak reactor, which is way off completion. The 7-X Stellarator has already achieved stable creation of plasma. He also explains why all Porsche look the same!

 

[CD Xbow]

Slime mould and emergent phenomena are discussed in the article below. They have now become popular for researching how complex behaviours can emerge from simple systems. They have always been of great interests to biologists interested in the evolution of multicellularity and cell signalling.

Slime mould versus the people

Tech optimists use slime mould, a brainless, single-celled amoeba, as a metaphor for the virtues of artificial intelligence. But a deeper understanding of the power of slime should draw us back to the unique richness and complexity of human beings.

engelsbergideas.com

Slime moulds are protists (neither plants, animals or fungi) but a variety of microscopic organisms that spend most of their lives as single, amoeba-like cells. Under favorable conditions, these cells clump together to form a single, large, multinucleate structure called a plasmodium which is visible to the naked eye. The image above is typical but they can form a variety of shapes.. Eventually, the plasmodium produces fruiting bodies, which release spores to start the life cycle again.

cAMP role in cell signalling was identified first from slime moulds in the late 60's when it was found to attract the cells and make them clump together.

 

[CD Xbow]

This is another Australian development in quantum computing that may be an important step in making real world quantum processors. I'm not qualified to make any comment about it's importance but it seems 'very important' for practical quantum computing. The article below is written by one of the researchers

New entanglement breakthrough links cores of atoms, brings quantum computers closer

A ‘quantum telephone’ connecting atomic nuclei could make practical quantum computers easier to build and use.

theconversation.com

There is a link to the original article in the link for the scholars. It did get an editorial comment, which is usually done by journals for important papers, I have reproduced it below:

'The maturity of experimental studies of nuclear magnetic resonance and the sophistication with which nuclear spins can be manipulated provided the first demonstration of a quantum computer platform. However, progress stalled early on when it was realized that scaling up was problematic. Stemp et al. now demonstrate direct entanglement between two nuclear spins that are separated by a relatively long distance. Two phosphorus atoms implanted in silicon formed a system comprising two 31P nuclei and two bound electrons. Control of the exchange interaction between the two electrons resulted in quantum entanglement of the two nuclear spins. The results and scalability of the method are promising for the development of nuclear spin–based quantum computers.'

 

[CD Xbow]

WA grain farmers are suffering from infestation with the Scarab beetle larvae, with the wonderful name (and I didn't make this up) cockchafer. That was also my Aunt Dolly's nickname. Currently 'untreatable' it will be interesting to see how long it takes to come up with a fix when the full force of our agricultural science establishment have a go at it. It would make a good poll - How long will it take to fix cockchafer?

Tiny worm devastating farmers across Western Australia's south east

Growers and scientists have teamed up in a bid to combat the rapidly increasing population of the voracious pest, which is devastating crops in WA's south-east.

www.abc.net.au

 

[CD Xbow]

A little mathematical sidestep enables physicists to get around Heisenberg's uncertainty principle a bit. From Sydney Uni.

Scientists sidestep Heisenberg uncertainty principle in precision sensing experiment

Physicists in Australia and Britain have reshaped quantum uncertainty to sidestep the restriction imposed by the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principle—a result that could underpin future ultra-precise sensor technology used in navigation, medicine and astronomy.

phys.org

For the scholars https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adw9757