Scientists at Hiroshima University have created a practical and highly sensitive method for detecting the Unruh effect, a long-anticipated phenomenon that lies at the intersection of relativity and quantum theory. This new strategy not only advances the study of fundamental physics but also opens the door to future technological applications.

The work was recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect, often referred to simply as the Unruh effect, is a profound theoretical concept linking Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with Quantum Theory. “In quantum theory, even the vacuum seethes with tiny energy fluctuations, where particles and antiparticles briefly appear and vanish. Remarkably, the Unruh effect shows how these ‘vacuum ripples’ are perceived depends on the observer’s motion. A stationary observer sees nothing, but an observer undergoing acceleration perceives them as real particles with a thermal energy distribution—a ‘quantum warmth’,” explained Noriyuki Hatakenaka, professor emeritus at Hiroshima University.

This surprising prediction highlights the deep relationship between two cornerstones of modern physics. Experimentally verifying the Unruh effect would not only unite aspects of relativity and quantum mechanics but also offer valuable insights into the very structure of spacetime. However, achieving such verification has remained one of the most persistent and difficult challenges in physics.

A new trend is emerging in psychiatric hospitals. People in crisis are arriving with false, sometimes dangerous beliefs, grandiose delusions, and paranoid thoughts. A common thread connects them: marathon conversations with AI chatbots.

WIRED spoke with more than a dozen psychiatrists and researchers, who are increasingly concerned. In San Francisco, UCSF psychiatrist Keith Sakata says he has counted a dozen cases severe enough to warrant hospitalization this year, cases in which artificial intelligence “played a significant role in their psychotic episodes.” As this situation unfolds, a catchier definition has taken off in the headlines: “AI psychosis.”

Some patients insist the bots are sentient or spin new grand theories of physics. Other physicians tell of patients locked in days of back-and-forth with the tools, arriving at the hospital with thousands upon thousands of pages of trannoscripts detailing how the bots had supported or reinforced obviously problematic thoughts.
Reports like this are piling up, and the consequences are brutal. Distressed users and family and friends have described spirals that led to lost jobs, ruptured relationships, involuntary hospital admissions, jail time, and even death. Yet clinicians tell WIRED the medical community is split. Is this a distinct phenomenon that deserves its own label, or a familiar problem with a modern trigger?

AI psychosis is not a recognized clinical label. Still, the phrase has spread in news reports and on social media as a catchall denoscriptor for some kind of mental health crisis following prolonged chatbot conversations. Even industry leaders invoke it to discuss the many emerging mental health problems linked to AI. At Microsoft, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of the tech giant’s AI division, warned in a blog post last month of the “psychosis risk.” Sakata says he is pragmatic and uses the phrase with people who already do. “It’s useful as shorthand for discussing a real phenomenon,” says the psychiatrist. However, he is quick to add that the term “can be misleading” and “risks oversimplifying complex psychiatric symptoms.”

It’s hard enough to know what Neanderthals looked like, let alone sounded like. However, there’s good reason to suspect our extinct hominin cousins were capable of complex language – and not just grunts and groans.

You may be one of the millions of people who have seen the viral clip from the BBC show Neanderthal: The Rebirth, which explores the so-called “high-pitched voice theory”.

To recreate the sound of Neanderthal voices, vocal coach Patsy Rodenburg worked with a 3D model of a Neanderthal vocal tract, alongside knowledge of their anatomy, such as a deep rib cage, heavy skull, and large nasal cavity. When she applied this understanding to a human singer, the result was an uncanny, high-pitched, nasal shriek. (Watch video here)

This is just one interpretation, but it’s a question that has been attacked from a more scientific angle.

The idea that Neanderthals are heavy-browed, brutish cavemen is an outdated one. An overwhelming amount of evidence now shows that, just like us, they were highly intelligent, culturally complex, and emotionally sensitive beings.

We know that Neanderthals had similar cognitive abilities to us, plus their brains were roughly the same size or bigger than ours, albeit with a different shape, so we can loosely assume they had the necessary neural hardware to compute language.

A look back at everyone on Earth #OTD in 1977.

NASA's Voyager 1 took the first image of the Earth and Moon in the same frame 48 years ago today. The spacecraft, which began its mission two weeks earlier, captured this scene from 7.25 million miles (11.7 million km) away.

From butterflies to grasshoppers, many delicate little things that run our world are in dire trouble. Not just in regions where human activity directly affects the landscape, but even in remote, human-free zones, a new study finds.

The loss of insects in key areas around the globe has been attributed in the past to the deliberate reduction of biodiverse habitats and changes in local climate. Now it's clear these forces stretch far beyond our immediate spheres of influence.

In areas relatively undisturbed by direct human activity, University of North Carolina biologist Keith Sockman recorded a dramatic drop of over 70 percent of flying insects in just 20 years.

NorthropGrumman's Cygnus XL cargo craft, packed with over 11,000 pounds of science and supplies, was captured by the Canadarm2 robotic arm operated by JonnyKimUSA as Zenanaut monitored at 7:24am ET today.

Neutrinos are one of the most enigmatic particles in the standard model. The main reason is that they're so hard to detect. Despite the fact that 400 trillion of them created in the Sun are passing through a person's body every second, they rarely interact with normal matter, making understanding anything about them difficult.

To help solve their mysteries, a new neutrino detector in China recently started collecting data, and hopes to provide insight on between 40 and 60 neutrinos a day for the next 10 years.

The detector, known as the Jiangmen Underground neutrino Observatory, or JUNO, is located in between two huge nuclear plants at Yangjian and Taishan. Both of those fission plants create their own artificial neutrinos in addition to the ones created by the Sun, meaning the general area should be awash with barely interacting particles.

That's despite the fact that, like most neutrino detectors, it's located underground. 700 meters underground in fact. The physical bulk of the Earth's crust is meant to block most other particles, like muons, from getting to it, and at other installations, like IceCube, it does a pretty good job.

In a major breakthrough for pregnancy research, scientists have 3D bioprinted “mini placentas”. The miniature organs, or “organoids”, closely resemble human placental tissue, providing an accurate model for studying the early placenta – something that has been sorely lacking until now.

The placenta plays a vital role in supporting fetal development, and its dysfunction is linked to numerous pregnancy complications, including miscarriage, preeclampsia, preterm birth, and stillbirth. These conditions can also have long-term health implications for both mother and baby, increasing the risk of future cardiovascular, endocrine, and neurological diseases. Yet, treatment options are limited, as is our understanding of placental biology.

Check out the view from up here! As the Curiosity rover continues to climb the flanks of Mt. Sharp, it has captured an extraordinarily clear panorama of Gale Crater's rim...and even the lands beyond. Details:
https://t.co/Zv9gQzybLO

The first living creatures intentionally sent into space were fruit flies! They travelled aboard a V2 rocket on 20 February 1947. NASA currently recognises the altitude of 100km as the point where space begins, making the fruit flies the first living creatures considered to have reached space.

Nonprofit environmental organization the Ocean Cleanup has announced that it's on track to eliminate the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by 2034.

If it can get the necessary funds, that is. In a press release, the organization claimed that eliminating the patch once and for all would cost a whopping $7.5 billion — the "first time both a cost and a timeline has been placed on ridding the Pacific Ocean of the environmental hazard."

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a name given to an estimated 79,000 metric tons of plastic waste floating in the ocean in an area roughly twice the size of Texas. The Ocean Cleanup has made it its mission to fish it out of the water piece by piece.

"Today’s announcement is clear: clean oceans can be achieved in a manageable time and for a clear cost," said founder and CEO Boyan Slat in a statement. "Through the hard work of the past ten years, humanity has the tools needed to clean up the ocean."

Plastic Beach
Researchers have found that the patch is growing rapidly, making it a massively difficult problem to deal with.

To make a dent, the Ocean Cleanup has been developing new technologies to fish this plastic out of the water. Its latest iteration, called System 03 consists of a floating barrier roughly 1.4 miles long, which is towed between two vessels.

So far, the nonprofit claims it has fished out a million pounds of trash from the patch, a mere 0.5 percent of its total. But within a decade, it says, it could ramp up its operations to get rid of it in its entirety.

Next year, the company will focus its efforts on establishing a "hotspot" map of areas in the ocean with "intense plastic accumulation."

While $7.5 billion may sound like a lot, it's less than one month's worth of Apple's profits last year, or a sixth of the bonus Tesla shareholders awarded to CEO Elon Musk.

The Ocean Cleanup also put that price tag into perspective, pointing out that the annual spend on Halloween decorations in the US alone was $10.6 billion. A mere one percent of the "annual net profits of the world's plastic producers" is also just $7.2 billion.

Better yet, if the nonprofit's latest technological ideas come to fruition, Slat suggests we could even clear the patch in just five years at a cost of just $4 billion.

A new visitor from the outer Solar System, comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) also known as SWAN25B was only discovered late last week, on September 11. That's just a day before the comet reached perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun.

First spotted by Vladimir Bezugly in images from the SWAN instrument on the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft, the comet was surprisingly bright but understandably difficult to see against the Sun's glare. Still close to the Sun on the sky, the greenish coma and tail of C/2025 R2 (SWAN) are captured in this telescopic snapshot from September 17.

Spica, alpha star of the constellation Virgo, shines just beyond the upper left edge of the frame while the comet is about 6.5 light-minutes from planet Earth. Near the western horizon after sunset and slightly easier to see in binoculars from the southern hemisphere, this comet SWAN will pass near Zubenelgenubi, alpha star of Libra, on October 2. C/2025 R2 (SWAN) is scheduled to make its closest approach to our fair planet around October 20.

Image Credit & Copyright: Team Ciel Austral

A new investigation of Saturn’s upper atmosphere, carried out with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has uncovered strikingly unusual features never before observed on any planet in the Solar System. The findings were unveiled last week by Professor Tom Stallard of Northumbria University during the EPSC-DPS2025 Joint Meeting in Helsinki.

“This opportunity to use JWST was the first time we have ever been able to make such detailed near-infrared observations of Saturn’s aurora and upper atmosphere. The results came as a complete surprise,” said Professor Stallard.

This video shows how the structures observed in Saturn’s ionosphere and stratosphere relate to one another. Starting with the aurora at 1100 km, the brightness is increased to reveal the dark bead-like features. The video then fades into the star-arm shapes within the underlying 600 km layer. The darkest beads in the ionosphere appear to line up with the strongest arm underneath it, but it is not clear if this is coincidental, or if it suggests coupling between Saturn’s lowest and highest layers of the atmosphere. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Stallard et al 2025.

Beads, Stars, and the Unexpected Patterns
“We anticipated seeing emissions in broad bands at the various levels. Instead, we’ve seen fine-scaled patterns of beads and stars that, despite being separated by huge distances in altitude, may somehow be interconnected – and may also be linked to the famous hexagon deeper in Saturn’s clouds. These features were completely unexpected and, at present, are completely unexplained.”

The discovery was made by an international collaboration of 23 researchers from the UK, US, and France, who observed Saturn for a continuous 10-hour stretch on November 29, 2024, while the planet rotated under JWST’s gaze.

Although the building blocks of life such as hydrogen and oxygen appear stable to us, many theories of physics predict that they are actually just tremendously long-lived, with the particles found in their nuclei slowly, but ultimately decaying.

To investigate this idea, researchers have been hunting for evidence of this decay by looking for faint signals of decaying protons in Japan's Super-Kamiokande observatory.

So far, no definitive signals of proton decay have emerged, implying that if the proton does decay, it probably has a lifetime exceeding 1033 years—that's 10 with 32 zeros behind it.

But the Japanese observatory can't see every type of proton decay: if the decay fragments are too low in energy, they would be invisible to the detector.

In a recent study published in Physical Review Letters, Virginia physicists showed that two other observatories—the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE)—should soon be able to see these lower-energy proton decays thanks to their complementary detector designs.

"Lowering the detection threshold will open a much wider window to include decays that might have fallen through the cracks in earlier searches," said Ian Shoemaker, associate professor in the Department of Physics and study co-author.

Working with Julian Heeck from the University of Virginia, Shoemaker found that proton decay experiments can also be sensitive to protons decaying anywhere inside Earth, if they decay into new elementary particles.

Most intriguingly, said Shoemaker, one of these new particles could be the long-sought-after "sterile neutrino," which would finally allow scientists to understand the origin of neutrino mass.

"Our initial exploration of these signatures hints at many novel exciting opportunities for theoretical and experimental work that could lead to the groundbreaking discovery of new physics," Shoemaker said.

In May 2010, Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the "Planet C" spacecraft – also known as "Akatsuki" or the Venus Climate Orbiter – towards Earth's "sister planet". The early stages of the mission did not go as planned. On its approach to Venus in December 2010, the spacecraft was supposed to decelerate with a controlled burn to place it in orbit. But due to a malfunction with the main engine, the planned 12-minute burn lasted just three, and Planet C shot well past its target instead.

That could have been the end of it, but JAXA was able to use the spacecraft's auxiliary reaction control system to adjust its trajectory and slow it down as it orbited the Sun. Five years later, the space agency announced that they had finally put the probe around Venus, and work could begin.

“As a result of measuring and calculating the Akatsuki’s orbit after its thrust ejection, the orbiter is now flying on the elliptical orbit at the periapsis altitude of about 400 kilometers and apoapsis altitude of about 440,000 kilometers from Venus," the space agency announced in 2015. "The orbit period is 13 days and 14 hours. We also found that the orbiter is flying in the same direction as that of Venus’s rotation.”

Soon after that, the spacecraft began returning its first photographs and data, helping us to study the atmosphere of Venus. Though not in its original planned orbit, the orbit it ended up in was advantageous.
...

"Communication with 'Akatsuki' was lost during operations near the end of April 2024, triggered by an incident in a control mode of lower-precision attitude maintenance for a prolonged period," JAXA explained in a statement.

"Although recovery operations were conducted to restore communication, there has been no luck so far. Considering the fact that the spacecraft has aged, well exceeding its designed lifetime, and was already in the late-stage operation phase, it has been decided to terminate operations."

Monday 20:19 CEST marked the September Equinox!

This image from eumetsat’s Meteosat-12 satellite, captured that morning, shows Earth on the equinox — when the terminator line runs from pole to pole, dividing the planet into equal halves of light and dark. From space, it appears as a strikingly vertical line.

High energy scans or the body looking for tumors or infections could be greatly improved by adopting perovskite detectors instead of the fragile or low-resolution options currently in use, a new study reports. The process would not only make the diagnosis of health threats more accurate, but reduce exposure to radiation that can cause problems down the line, saving money at the same time.

Advances in nuclear medicine mean that we can now measure the biological activity at a location in the body, for example the blood flow in small veins or arteries to identify abnormalities. Increasingly, such techniques applied to the brain allow doctors to distinguish between different types of dementia, that may respond to different interventions, among a host of other applications.

“Perovskites are a family of crystals best known for transforming the field of solar energy,” said Professor Mercouri Kanatzidis of Northwestern University in a statement. “Now, they are poised to do the same for nuclear medicine. This is the first clear proof that perovskite detectors can produce the kind of sharp, reliable images that doctors need to provide the best care for their patients.”

Nuclear medicine includes treatments such as radiotherapy, but in this context is about diagnosis, not treatment. Single-photon emission computing tomography (SPECT) represents a way to build three dimensional reconstructions of organs. A short-lived gamma ray source is placed inside the body, and the rays emitted are captured by detectors. Subtle changes in activity affect the movement of the gamma rays, allowing the detector to put together an image, just as bones show up on X-rays, but in this case the reconstructions can be 3D.

However, the existing detector technologies are expensive to build, and one of the two main receptor chemistries, cadmium zinc telluride, is prone to cracking. The alternative, sodium iodide, lacks clarity.

Kanatzidis was one of the pioneers of making solar cells from perovskites, a technology that is now starting to reach commercial application, offering cheaper and more efficient energy collection from the Sun. In the process, Kanatzidis’s team developed skills in producing perovskite crystals with few flaws or impurities. Kanatzidis noted some of these crystals efficiently convert high-energy photons to electricity, as well as the other characteristics needed to make them excellent detectors of X-rays or gamma rays.

A novel class of light-sensitive nanoparticles may one day enable new approaches to medical imaging. They were developed by a research team at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). The particles absorb laser light and convert them into heat, thereby changing their internal structure, similar to folded proteins. The research was published in the journal Communications Chemistry.

The newly developed particles are known as single-chain nanoparticles (SCNPs) and consist of individually folded polymer chains. The scientists embedded molecules of the substance polypyrrole into these chains, which absorb light in the near-infrared range and convert it into heat. Laser irradiation not only causes the nanoparticles to heat up, they also change their internal structure.

"When exposed to light, each individual nanoparticle clumps together to form a spherical structure that is only a few nanometers in diameter. This opens up the possibility of concentrating them in specific areas of the body—precisely where there is light," says MLU-chemist Professor Wolfgang Binder. He led the study together with Dr. Justus Friedrich Thümmler, Professor Karsten Mäder from the Institute of Pharmacy, and Professor Jan Laufer from the Institute of Physics.

SCNPs have a remarkable thermoresponsivity; their structure reacts to changes in temperature. This property is based on the specific molecular design of the particles, which also allows them to convert light into heat very efficiently. Experiments in the lab have shown that even a weak laser beam and relatively few nanoparticles are enough to generate very high local temperatures—up to 85°C.

This effect is important, for example, for imaging techniques used in medical diagnostic testing. The rapid heating of the tissue releases sound waves. These can be measured with photoacoustic imaging techniques, which, in turn, can be used to create 3D models of the inside of the body.

The team hopes that the newly developed particles could help study the development of cancer in a few years' time, for example, by using photoacoustic imaging to make tumors and their response to treatment more visible and easier to track.

But the potential goes even further: "In the future, we want to use the nanoparticles to transport an active ingredient into the body in a targeted manner and activate it there using light and heat," explains Binder. The particles could possibly even be used to kill cancer cells through light-controlled heat, a process known as hyperthermia. However, more extensive studies are needed to explore the therapeutic potential of the new particles.

Spiral, elliptical or neither? 🍩

Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy NGC 2775.

NGC 2775 sports a smooth, featureless centre that is devoid of gas, resembling an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring with patchy star clusters, like a spiral galaxy.

Because we can only view NGC 2775 from one angle, it’s difficult to say for sure.

Which do you think it is? ➡️ esahubble.org/images/potw253…

Human activity has added an average of 40 days to the global wildfire season, fundamentally changing when fires occur around the world. New research from the University of Tasmania, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, shows that more than half of all burned area now happens outside the natural fire season, the period when lightning and dry conditions naturally coincide.

The study analyzed fuel moisture and lightning data across more than 700 ecological regions worldwide, finding that humans have altered wildfire timing in nearly every environment on Earth, from tropical savannas to boreal forests to Mediterranean landscapes.

"Before people began influencing fire, wildfires mostly happened when lightning struck during dry conditions," said lead author Dr. Todd Ellis, Research Associate in Physical Pyrogeography at the University of Tasmania.

"Our study separates natural fire seasons from those driven by people, showing just how much human influence has reshaped when wildfires occur across the globe."

The transformation is most dramatic in tropical grasslands, where people have effectively extended the wildfire season by around three months, with most fires now occurring in this human-driven window.
Importantly, even remote boreal forests and tundra are beginning to experience longer fire seasons, stretching beyond what natural lightning ignitions would allow.

This global shift in wildfire seasonality poses significant ecological risks. Species have evolved over millennia to cope with wildfires occurring during specific seasonal windows. When wildfires happen outside these natural periods, ecosystems face unprecedented stress.

"We're not just seeing more wildfires, and fires of a greater intensity, we're seeing them at times of the year when ecosystems haven't evolved to cope with them," co-author Dr. Grant Williamson explained.

"This temporal mismatch can hamper species recovery and disrupt reproductive processes which are often closely tied to specific seasons, thereby threatening biodiversity in ways we're only beginning to understand."