Earth now weighs six ronnagrams: New metric prefixes voted in

A yottabyte is a one followed by 24 zeroes.

But even the mighty yotta is not enough to handle the world's voracious appetite for data, according to Richard Brown, the head of metrology at the UK's National Physical Laboratory.

"In terms of expressing data in yottabytes, which is the highest prefix currently, we're very close to the limit," Brown told AFP...

Article
@EverythingScience

The Cause of Alzheimer's Could Be Coming From Inside Your Mouth

In recent years, a growing number of scientific studies have backed an alarming hypothesis: Alzheimer's disease isn't just a disease, it's an infection.

While the exact mechanisms of this infection are something researchers are still trying to isolate, numerous studies suggest the deadly spread of Alzheimer's goes way beyond what we used to think.

Article
@EverythingScience

James Webb Space Telescope reveals an exoplanet atmosphere as never seen before

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just scored another first: a detailed molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world's skies.

The telescope's array of highly sensitive instruments was trained on the atmosphere of a "hot Saturn"—a planet about as massive as Saturn orbiting a star some 700 light-years away—known as WASP-39 b. While JWST and other space telescopes, including Hubble and Spitzer, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this broiling planet's atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds...

#Webb
Article
@EverythingScience

Rapidly Melting Glaciers Are Releasing a Staggering Payload of Unknown Bacteria

Fast-melting glaciers are releasing staggering amounts of bacteria into rivers and streams, which could transform icy ecosystems, scientists warn.

In a study of glacial runoff from 10 sites across the Northern Hemisphere, researchers have estimated that continued global warming over the next 80 years could release hundreds of thousands of tonnes of bacteria into environments downstream of receding glaciers.

Article
@EverythingScience

Ultra-high-resolution MRI reveals migraine brain changes

For the first time, a new study has identified enlarged perivascular spaces in the brains of migraine sufferers.

"In people with chronic migraine and episodic migraine without aura, there are significant changes in the perivascular spaces of a brain region called the centrum semiovale," said study co-author Wilson Xu. "These changes have never been reported before."

"Studying how they contribute to migraine could help us better understand the complexities of how migraines occur."

Article
@EverythingScience

⚠️ Impersonation and Scam Warning

It has come to our attention that an account impersonating @EverythingScience is contacting members about financial scams.

DO NOT share any info or money with them and DO NOT follow their instructions. There may be future accounts attempting similar scams. Please BLOCK and REPORT them.

The only account you might hear from about DigitisedReality and @EverythingScience is:

@DigitisedRealitySupport

Never trust an account unless opening the above username leads to the same conversation.

If you're ever unsure about something please ask in the group in the denoscription.

We Just Got The Most Detailed View of an Exoplanet Atmosphere Yet – And It's Active

WASP-39b, a gas giant about 700 light-years away, is turning out to be quite the exoplanetary treasure.

Earlier this year, WASP-39b was the subject of the first-ever detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the Solar System.

Now, an in-depth analysis of data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has given us an absolute goldmine of information: the most detailed look at an exoplanet atmosphere yet...

#Webb
Article
@EverythingScience

The Science Behind Why You Sprain Your Ankle So Often, And What You Can Do About It

Are you one of those people who seems to be forever spraining their ankle?

To some extent, ankle sprains are part and parcel of being active.

But if it's happening again and again, here's what may be going on – and how you can reduce your risk of recurrent ankle sprain.

Article
@EverythingScience

A scalable quantum memory with a lifetime over 2 seconds and integrated error detection

Quantum memory devices can store data as quantum states instead of binary states, as classical computer memories do. While some existing quantum memory technologies have achieved highly promising results, several challenges will need to be overcome before they can be implemented on a large scale.

Researchers at the AWS Center for Quantum Networking and Harvard University have recently developed a promising quantum memory capable of error detection and with a lifetime or coherence time (i.e., the time for which a quantum memory can hold a superposition without collapsing) exceeding 2 seconds. This memory, presented in a paper in Science, could pave the way towards the creation of scalable quantum networks.

Article
@EverythingScience

A 'Wormhole' Built on a Quantum Computer Teleported Information as Predicted

For the first time, scientists have created a quantum computing experiment for studying the dynamics of wormholes – that is, shortcuts through spacetime that could get around relativity's cosmic speed limits.

"We found a quantum system that exhibits key properties of a gravitational wormhole, yet is sufficiently small to implement on today's quantum hardware," said Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu.

Don't pack your bags for Alpha Centauri just yet: This wormhole simulation is nothing more than a simulation, analogous to a computer-generated black hole or supernova.

And physicists still don't see any conditions under which a traversable wormhole could actually be created. Someone would have to create negative energy first.

Columbia theoretical physicist Peter Woit warned against making too much of a to-do over the research.

"The claim that 'Physicists Create a Wormhole' is just complete bullshit, with the huge campaign to mislead the public about this a disgrace, highly unhelpful for the credibility of physics research in particular and science in general," he wrote on his blog.

Article
@EverythingScience

Short term memory problems can be improved with laser therapy, according to new study

Laser light therapy has been shown to be effective in improving short term memory in a study published in Science Advances.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and Beijing Normal University in China, demonstrated that the therapy, which is non-invasive, could improve short term, or working memory in people by up to 25%.

The treatment, called transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM), is applied to an area of the brain known as the right prefrontal cortex. This area is widely recognized as important for working memory. In their experiment, the team showed how working memory improved among research participants after several minutes of treatment. They were also able to track the changes in brain activity using electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring during treatment and testing.

Article
@EverythingScience

Study Shows How The Universe Would Look if You Broke The Speed of Light, And It's Weird

Researchers from the University of Warsaw in Poland and the National University of Singapore have now pushed the limits of relativity to come up with a system that doesn't run afoul of existing physics, and might even point the way to new theories.

What they've come up with is an "extension of special relativity" that combines three time dimensions with a single space dimension ("1+3 space-time"), as opposed to the three spatial dimensions and one time dimension that we're all used to.

Rather than creating any major logical inconsistencies, this new study adds more evidence to back up the idea that objects might well be able to go faster than light without completely breaking our current laws of physics...

Article
@EverythingScience

Apollo Astronaut Walter Cunningham Dies at 90

Former astronaut Walter Cunningham, who flew into space on Apollo 7, the first flight with crew in NASA’s Apollo Program, died early Tuesday morning in Houston. He was 90 years old.

“Walt Cunningham was a fighter pilot, physicist, and an entrepreneur – but, above all, he was an explorer. On Apollo 7, the first launch of a crewed Apollo mission, Walt and his crewmates made history, paving the way for the Artemis Generation we see today,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “NASA will always remember his contributions to our nation’s space program and sends our condolences to the Cunningham family.”

Article
@EverythingScience

Scientists develop a cool new method of refrigeration

Adding salt to a road before a winter storm changes when ice will form. Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have applied this basic concept to develop a new method of heating and cooling. The technique, which they have named "ionocaloric cooling," is described in a paper published Dec. 23 in the journal Science.

Article
@EverythingScience

Betelgeuse Visualisation

Astronomers Pierre Kervella and Dr. Bernd Freytag used data gathered over 7 years to create this animation of what Betelgeuse might look like, due to the very low density of red super giants, fluctuations inside cause material to be flung out millions of miles before eventually falling back.

"If it were at the center of our Solar System, its surface would lie beyond the asteroid belt and it would engulf the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars"

Video
@EverythingScience