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Navigating air travel in 2026 is full of annoyances, but few bring more dread than the boarding process. What was once a straightforward exercise has grown increasingly complicated due to the proliferation of groups, zones, and variations of priority-based seating. All of this, studies show, has contributed to boarding times getting gradually longer each year. Boarding in the 1970s reportedly took just 15 minutes. Today, that process often takes up to 40.

Now, a University of Florida master’s student named Adam Jacobs has built a simulator that clearly visualizes what so many travelers already feel in their gut. Jacobs created a computer model simulating a 186-seat Airbus A320neo and had computer-generated travelers board using three well-documented methods: random, back-to-front, and the lesser-known but academically popular “Steffen method.” Jacobs initially posted the video clip on LinkedIn but it had since gained traction on Instagram and other social platforms. 

The video shows passengers, represented as red dots, making their way through the cabin and sitting in their respective seats. The seats appear as blue squares when they are empty but then turn green once a passenger sits down. Each method plays out at the same time side by side for an up-to-moment comparison. The Steffen method, which prioritizes boarding window seats first, concluded boarding after just 11 minutes and and 16 seconds, by far the fastest of the three. Random seating, which is essentially Southwest Airlines offered until recently, completed in 17 minutes and 59 seconds. 

Loading back-to-front, however, which many intuitively assume should be the most efficient approach, actually performed far worse than the other two, taking 31 minutes and 15 seconds. That sounds bad, but the real-world experience for most travelers is even worse. Numerous studies have shown that front-to-back loading, more or less the standard approach for most airlines, is even less efficient than back-to-front. Zone-based loading, meanwhile, arguably reduces chaos at the gate but does not produce meaningfully faster boarding times.

“Random boarding performs surprisingly well,” Jacobs writes. “People could get to their destination faster if gate agents just said ‘everyone get on the plane now.’ 

Despite seeming logical, back-to-front boarding is very slow compared to other methods. Screenshot: Adam Jacobs Angry at long boarding times? Blame checked bag fees. 

So why is something as seemingly simple as loading people onto a plane so complicated and so frustrating? The answer mostly comes down to two things: the battle for overhead bin space and ever-tightening, profit-maximizing by airlines. Boarding used to be straightforward.  Most carriers would prioritize first class passengers and those needing extra time, then open the cabin to everyone else. But that began to change around 2008, when airlines started charging for checked bags. Checked bags, like so many things that were once included in the base fare, used to be free.

That seemingly small change had ripple effects. Now passengers wanting to sidestep paying for a checked bag had an incentive to bring their bags as carry-ons. But, as any regular traveler knows, there is rarely ever enough overhead bin space to accommodate a bag for every person. That meant a greater interest from passengers to board early. Airlines, seeing untapped demand there, decided to charge fees to non-first class passengers to board early. That evolved into the group and zones and seemingly endless options of prioritized seating. Passengers, trying to avoid paying a checked-bag fee, ended up paying another fee instead to board early. The resulting complexity of all of that translated to longer board times for everyone. 

“Airlines figured out they could make money off of bags,” Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor Massoud Bazargan told CNN in 2023. “That killed any efficiency to do faster boarding.”

“Zones reduce congestion at the gate, and they’re how airlines sell priority boarding,” Jacobs said. “That revenue apparently outweighs a few minutes of turnaround time.”

Better ways to board already exist 

Realization of the overhead bag bottleneck isn’t new. In fact, that’s exactly the problem being addressed in the Steffen model featured in Jacobs’ simulation video. The concept dates back to 2005 when a University of Nevada astrophysic professor named Jason Steffen reportedly became obsessed with airline boarding after getting stuck within a jet bridge at Seattle International Airport. Steffen took his expertise in computer modelling, which he has previously used to measure exoplanets, and applied it to airplane boarding. 

After running hundreds of simulations, it became clear that much of the delay was caused by the aisle getting bogged down as passengers tried to stow their luggage. Steffen tweaked his model to specifically solve for that inefficiency. What followed was a system where passengers with even-numbered window seats board first, followed by those with odd-numbered window seats. Next come passengers with even-numbered middle seats, then odd-numbered middle seats, and so on, with all passengers boarding two at a time.

The process looks bizarre, but it works, at least in theory. By spacing out passengers and ensuring everyone can stow their luggage without blocking the aisle, the “Steffen Method” cuts overall boarding time by up to half in simulations compared to front-to-back boarding.

So if it’s so much faster, why isn’t the Steffen method the standard? Part of the issue is that the model doesn’t really account for families or companions traveling together. People sitting together wouldn’t board together under this method, which would likely cause frustration at the gate. More than that though, the real flaw lies in the reality of human behavior. People (especially cranky travellers) simply don’t behave like tidy mathematical models, a point viewers of Jacobs’ post seemed to intuitively grasp.

“It’s much easier to model things when you ignore basically everything and just pretend everyone it [sic]  traveling alone and is of the exact same physical capability,” one user commented on Instagram. 

“Would never work outside the simulation,” another user on LinkedIn wrote. “Sorting the people prior boarding would be a nightmare. Forcing families with small children to separate while boarding is inhumane.” 

Other models have come along other the years tweaking Steffen’s downsides, but they all eventually come face to face with an arguably bigger roadblock: the airlines. When it comes to charging for boarding the cat’s out of the bag. What began as a niche product for a select few looking to get ahead has turned into a booming business. And with the average plane today fuller and more densely packed than ever before, travelers arguably have more incentive than ever to pay a few extra bucks to jump ahead, even if that creates a worse overall experience for everyone.

The science of airplane boarding, in other words, has less to do with models and efficiency and more to do with old-fashioned greed.

The post The fastest way to board an airplane, according to science appeared first on Popular Science.

World fertility decline seems the clearest example of a maladaptive cultural trend, as healthy biological species just don’t decline in times of plenty, peace, and health. Two main theories help explain this trend. One is that previously adaptive habits have turned maladaptive by misfiring on cues that no longer track the adaptiveness as they once did. The other is that the cultural evolution process has become much weaker than it was up until a few centuries ago, which both slows the rate at which misfirings can be corrected, and also allows for more maladaptive changes to norms, via random walks and reversion to natural habits encoded more deeply in DNA.

Here are nine suggested misfiring stories:

1. Contraception allows us to satisfy usual norms re fun, mating w/ fewer kids

2. Pursuit of status markers induce urbanity, long education, conflict w/ kids

3. Freedom is a status marker, but having more induces fewer kids

4. Modern media shows high status in detail, raising expectations

5. Pensions replace kids to give old age security

6. Super-stimuli makes fun more engaging, distracts from kids

7. Loss of kin living close makes parenting harder

8. Urban density makes it seem like overpopulation

9. Indoor life messes w/ light, activity rhythms

I asked 5 LLMs to estimate the factor of how much faster such misfirings would be corrected now if our cultural evolution process for group norms was as healthy and robust as it has been through most of human history up until a few centuries ago:

So middle estimate of ~5.5. Stuff that would once been corrected in ~50yrs will now take ~275yrs. Culture is indeed broken.

Anything unfortunate enough to venture too close to a black hole inevitably falls prey to the gargantuan object’s inescapable gravitational pull. But that doesn’t mean a black hole is constantly devouring its next cosmic meal. In many cases, there comes a time when there simply isn’t anything left in its vicinity to consume. Although these dormant black holes don’t go anywhere, astronomers have a tough time detecting and observing them.

That hasn’t stopped researchers from successfully spotting the most distant example ever seen. At over 10 billion light-years from Earth, the dormant black hole inside the galaxy MRG-M0138 is 15 times farther away than the prior record holder. As astronomers explained in a study published on June 4 in the journal Science, the far-away subject is now offering experts an unprecedented look at one of the earliest regions of the universe.

To pull off the remarkable achievement, researchers harnessed both the James Webb Space Telescope as well as a technique called stellar dynamics, which utilizes the movements of stars around an invisible black hole to assess its mass. This approach has previously helped identify similar cosmic objects inside galaxies, including our own Milky Way, but never at such a great distance.

Astronomers wouldn’t be able to locate any stars moving around such a far away black hole in most scenarios. However, a galaxy located directly between Earth and MRG-M0138 enabled the otherwise impossible task through a dynamic known as gravitational lensing. Incoming light from MRG-M0138’s stars is refracted around the intermediary galaxy, which then refocuses and enlarges its appearance by 30 times its normal size. This then allowed astronomers to track and calculate the distant stellar dynamics around the dormant black hole.

JWST and gravitational lensing enabled an international team of astronomers led by Carnegie Science’s Andrew Newman to measure the mass of a dormant black hole from the early universe for the first time. Credit: Navid Marvi / Carnegie Science

“By combining JWST data with gravitational lensing, we could peer inside the black hole’s sphere of influence, where its gravity boosts the speeds of stars,” study co-author and Carnegie Science astronomer Andrew Newman said in a statement. “This is one of the best techniques we have to weigh a black hole, so we were excited to extend it to a much earlier period in cosmic history.”

After crunching the numbers, Newman and colleagues determined the dormant black hole has a mass about six billion times greater than the sun, and is observable from an era when the universe was barely three billion years old. That’s around a quarter of its age today, which means astronomers are now glimpsing some of the earliest moments in cosmic history.

Experts have already determined that it’s not just MRG-M0138’s black hole that is dormant—the entire galaxy itself is basically silent, with no recently formed stars. The study authors also theorize the galaxy previously included a quasar, which emits huge amounts of radiation and are some of the brightest objects in the universe.

Moving forward, astronomers can now apply their methodology to other areas of the cosmos, as well as gain a better understanding of galactic evolution throughout the eons.

“By demonstrating the feasibility of such a technique for galaxies in the early universe, we can now undertake a more complete census of how black holes develop over time and infer their role in shaping galaxy evolution,” added study co-author and University College London astronomer Richard Ellis.

The post JWST spots dormant black hole 10 billion light-years from Earth appeared first on Popular Science.

NASA’s ambitious plan to put humans on the moon may hinge on the bathroom habits of a handful of University of North Dakota grad students. In the name of science, those researchers will test the limits of a mobile wastewater treatment system designed to convert human waste into plant nutrients and other sustainable materials. The trial will serve as a stress test of sorts, measuring how well the Divergent Deployable Wastewater Treatment Facility holds up to regular use and heavy loads in an environment designed to mirror a lunar habitat. 

It’s not pretty work, but someone has to do it.

“The tests will help NASA evaluate real-world operation, crew training needs, system reliability, and how wastewater simulants compare with actual human metabolic waste in an analog mission environment,” Ali Alshami, University of North Dakota Chemical Engineering professor and test participant, said in a statement.

The unassuming gray building could one day be an astronaut wastewater facility. Technicians prepared the Divergent Deployable Wastewater Treatment Facility for transport at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 21, 2026. Image: NASA/Kim Shiflett   Treated astronaut poop will feed lunar plants 

The mobile facility consists of three separate bioreactors, each tasked with handling a specific kind of waste. Feces, urine, and food waste are treated separately because each material contains different levels of salts, solids, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. One reactor processes feces and food waste, converting it into nutrient-rich water that can feed plants. The other two handle urine and greywater from activities like showering and laundry, some of which can be filtered and recycled into  clean drinking water. From an astronauts’ perspective, the experience should feel pretty familiar to life onboard the International Space Station (ISS). They use the toilet as normal, and it automatically diverts waste at the source, routing each type to its corresponding bioreactor.

The whole process takes place in a mobile, 8.5-by-24-foot trailer. In addition to the bioreactors, the unit also houses a vertical garden maintained by the converted wastewater. The goal is to kill two birds with one stone: process waste efficiently and then use it to sustain lunar agriculture. Both are essential if astronauts want any shot at building longer-term habitats on the moon or even Mars. To that end, NASA has ambitions to start constructing a semi-permanent lunar structure or “moon base” by 2029.

Where no one has gone before 

Waste management in space has come a long way since the first moon missions. Back in the 1960s, NASA Apollo astronauts left behind 96 bags of human waste (filled with poop, urine, and vomit) on the lunar surface to save weight. Those bags are almost certainly still there. 

Thankfully, decades of research mean astronauts no longer have to relieve themselves into a bag, at least not most of the time. The most recent Artemis mission featured a fully functional space toilet, though it malfunctioned almost immediately after liftoff.

Recycling wastewater has also seen major improvements. NASA had a breakthrough in 2023 when its life support system aboard the ISS  managed to recover nearly 98 percent of all breath, sweater, and urine brought aboard by the crew. Future astronauts on prolonged spacewalks may also wear this Dune-inspired backpack that filters urine and sweat into drinking water in a single self-contained loop.

The post NASA wastewater system will turn human poop into plant food appeared first on Popular Science.

Mysterious and ancient human-made islands of timber and stone have endured amidst Scotland’s more well-known standing stones, Roman forts, and 18th century battlefields. Called crannogs, archeologists were initially not so sure what purpose these islands served, but were relatively confident that most of them date back to between the Iron Age (800 BCE to 400 CE) and the post medieval period (1550 to 1800). That is, until local diver Chris Murray found pottery fragments that were much older than they should have been.

Murray discovered the pottery remains from a crannog in the Isle of Lewis, part of the Outer Hebrides island chain on the country’s northwestern coast. Experts at the National Museum at Edinburgh were bewildered to discover that they were Neolithic (4000 to 2500 BCE), and thousands of years older than they would have guessed for remains associated with crannogs. Since then, archaeologists have been taking a closer look at these artificial islands and their true origin.

“[They are] these strange little circular islands that exist in all the different watery environments in Scotland and Ireland, typically in lakes or lochs, as they call them in Scotland. You would look at one and say it doesn’t look quite natural, because it looks very uniform, a very cohesive structure with lots of small portable stones on top,” Stephanie Blankshein, a maritime archaeologist at the University of Southampton, tells Popular Science. “They’re clearly something different.”

Fragments of a Neolithic pot found near the crannog. Image: University of Southampton. The island builders

Archaeologists have known about crannogs for more than a century, but it is quite difficult to really investigate the structures because their timelines can be complex. People occupied them for multiple time periods, either continuously or with stretches of abandonment followed by reoccupation. What’s more, it’s difficult to excavate down to the artificial island’s oldest layers.

Murray’s discovery of pottery fragments in 2012 shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise. In the 1980s, one very confused archaeologist discovered Neolithic material at his presumed Iron Age site. However, the wider archaeological community simply deemed it as a strange, hyper-local anomaly, and moved on. The belief that the vast majority of crannogs date back no more than about 2,000 years endured for decades—including for most of Blankshein’s lifetime, she points out.

The waterlogged Neolithic pottery changed all of that, and Blankshein and colleagues started investigating the matter. They gathered and dated organic material and more pottery remains from six sights—five identified during Murray’s dive and the one from the 1980s. They confirm that both the pottery and the crannog were Neolithic, and ultimately found that 11 crannogs in the Outer Hebrides were from that period, with potentially many more around the same age in that region and beyond.

“I’m sure there are many, many more just waiting to be discovered,” Blankshein explains.

So, who were these Neolithic island-builders? It’s important to note that “Neolithic” doesn’t just refer to a time period, but also a lifestyle. Neolithic people were early farmers and pastoralists, and ancient DNA studies have revealed that Neolithic communities in Britain and Ireland were genetically distinct from the Mesolithic (about 9600 to 4000 BCE) hunter-gatherers who lived in the area before them.

Divers xxcavating underwater at the loch. Image: University of Southampton.

Advanced research techniques such as ancient DNA and isotopic analyses are also revealing where they came from. Neolithic people originated from the present-day Middle East and eventually spread across Europe. Some people migrated along the Mediterranean coast as far as west as Gibraltar, before moving north along the Atlantic coast to Britain and Ireland, where they ultimately replaced the Mesolithic communities.

In fact, researchers have traced the strongest genetic connections of Neolithic people in Scotland not to nearby France but to the Iberian Peninsula, Blankshein says. Britain’s early farmers may have been or descended from Neolithic seafarers. Notably, they would have made landfall a few centuries before the Neolithic crannogs in the Outer Hebrides started popping up.

The oldest crannog in the Outer Hebrides dates back to 3800 BCE, while the earliest Neolithic site in the United Kingdom in southern England is from around 4100 BCE. 

“So it’s entirely possible that there was a very early arrival in Scotland as well, and essentially straight away they started building these islands,” says Blankshein. “So it seems like this may have been a tradition that they actually brought with them, or that they established very quickly after their arrival.”

A big Neolithic platform

One of the crannogs that Blankshein’s team has studied in significant detail is the structure on the Isle of Lewis’ Loch Bhorgastail. It has already yielded hundreds of pottery shards, and they have also spotted pieces of timber embedded in the structure underwater. Importantly, the team could date that wood using standard carbon-14 dating. And unlike other crannogs, the Loch Bhorgastail crannog didn’t have any structures built on top of it (like a medieval castle) that could complicate excavations.

The team conducted their first serious excavation in 2021, expecting to reveal an island made of stone and reinforced with some timber. While they did not find full pieces of timber, bits of wood were scattered about, leading the maritime archaeologists to an entire underwater timber structure.

“We were just absolutely blown away because we started following this structure further and further back from the island. And by the end of the month of excavation, we hadn’t reached the end of it,” Blankshein says. “And that was about six meters [19.6 feet] that we had extended out. So we knew there was something quite interesting there.”

The wood dates to between 3500 and 3300 BCE, which is consistent with most of the other early Neolithic sites in the Outer Hebrides. When the team returned in 2023, they discovered that the timber platform wasn’t just extending from the stone base underwater, it was under the entire crannog itself.

The wooden platform beneath the Lock Bhorgastail crannog. Image: University of Southampton.

directly on the lochbed, potentially circular, and potentially featured stone reinforcements around the edges and/or stakes securing it. Core samples taken from the lake’s dirt and rock indicate that the loch’s water levels would have been lower at the time of its construction, so the platform could have sat under just a foot of water, or even been dry. Another possibility is that it was dry during the summer and underwater in the winter, and so was used seasonally.

The platform is also quite large, at around 75.5 feet (23 meters) in diameter. Now that the researchers have a good understanding of how big the platform was, the next natural question is what it was used for. This is a significantly harder inquiry to answer, and researchers have a number of different theories, according to Blankshein. 

Broadly, it probably served several important purposes. The presence of food residue in the many pottery fragments indicate that people were consuming food on the island, thus it could have been a gathering place for a ritual feast or ceremony. As such, one of the theories is that it was used to host coming of age ceremonies. Since the wooden platform would have been on water, another hypothesis is that it could have represented a neutral and egalitarian meeting point.

Materials last touched over 5,000 years ago

In addition to phenomenal archaeological results, the Loch Bhorgastail crannog also prompted the team to develop a new technique for photogrammetry (stitching 2D pictures together to form a 3D model of a site) in shallow water. At these depths, photogrammetry is more difficult to execute than in the deep sea. They describe their method, which involves attaching two GoPro cameras to a rig, in a study recently published in the journal Advances in Archaeological Practice.

The team is finishing the final analysis of the Loch Bhorgastail site and are detailing the excavation results for a future paper. 

“Working on such an ancient site is genuinely surreal,” Blankshein admits, speaking of the work in general. “Despite the huge lapse in time, there are moments underwater when the distance between past and present suddenly feels incredibly small—lifting pottery from the loch bed that was last touched by a Neolithic person over 5,000 years ago, or seeing bark still preserved on timbers beneath the sediments as if it had been placed there yesterday. Moments like that provide connections to the past I couldn’t have imagined before working on the site.”

The post Scotland’s ancient human-made islands are dripping with secrets appeared first on Popular Science.

The Changma Basin in northwest China’s Gansu province is famous for its many ancient bird fossils. Or, at least, pieces of fossils. Paleontologists have documented over 100 prehistoric avian dinosaur remains buried across the region, many resembling the digestive pellets regurgitated by owls living today. For years, researchers suspected that a similar predator was responsible for the fossil fragments, but lacked a convincing candidate.

Experts now have a plausible suspect. According to a study published today in the Annals of Carnegie Museum, a cousin of the fearsome Velociraptor stalked the Changma Basin around 120 million years ago. But with its long feathers and four “wings,” Jian changmaensis didn’t ambush its prey from high in the air like a falcon. Instead, it more likely swooped in like a flying squirrel.

“It’s the only dinosaur found at this site that wasn’t a bird, it was a carnivore, and it was much bigger than everything else that we’ve found there,” Jingmai O’Connor, a study co-author and Field Museum associate curator of fossil reptiles, explained in a statement.

Paleontologists theorized the dinosaur’s anatomy based on its upper arm fossil. Credit: O’Connor et al.

Named after a winged mythological creature from Chinese folklore, J. changmaensis belongs to a dinosaur subgroup known as microraptors. These feathered predators were speedy and small, often only about the size of a crow. J. changmaensis was comparatively large, however. While O’Connor’s team has so far only recovered a portion of its upper arm, they believe the dinosaur likely featured a roughly four-foot wingspan. That puts it at about the size of a barn owl.

Although larger than its fellow microraptors, paleontologists believe J. changmaensis physically resembled its relatives. This means the dinosaur likely featured both forearm wings as well as rudimentary “wings” on its hind legs. Microraptors couldn’t soar through the skies, but their feathers served a purpose

“Jian and the other microraptors probably weren’t capable of true, powered flight, but they could probably glide like a flying squirrel,” explained O’Connor.

Matt Lamanna, a study co-author and Carnegie Museum’s curator of vertebrate paleontology, said the team’s discovery offers “critical new insight” into the Changma region’s biological history while helping contextualize today’s avian dinosaur descendents.

“For decades, the Changma site has been renowned among paleontologists for its extraordinary bird fossils,” Lamanna added. “Now, with the discovery of Jian, we finally know what was eating them.”

The post Velociraptor’s cousin flew like a flying squirrel appeared first on Popular Science.

In another sign of their growing independence, eaglets Sandy and Luna appear to have spent their first night alone in the nest. According to Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV), parents Jackie and Shadow slept not too far away last night. The pair spent the night in the nearby roost tree. The chicks reportedly also told Fiona the squirrel to scram—just like mom. 

The eaglets are growing rapidly, so room in the roughly six-foot-wide nest in southern California is becoming a premium. Both chicks also need room for activities, as they practice their flapping and stomping.

On June 2, Sandy also branched for the first time. Branching is when an eaglet perches on the limb of a tree, and is an important developmental stage that usually occurs when chicks hit 9 weeks old. Once on the tree limb, the young birds can flap their wings, jump, and then land on a lower branch or back in their nest. Branching helps strengthen their flight muscles and helps them become more agile and better at landing ahead of fledging. 

Sandy and Luna are expected to fledged sometime in early July. All of their antics are available 24/7 with the FOBBV live cam.

Jackie and Shadow’s 2026 babies: Everything you need to know

It’s been another roller coaster nesting season for Jackie and Shadow, a pair of internet-famous bald eagle parents living in San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California. After two of their eggs were destroyed by ravens in January, Jackie and Shadow laid two new eggs that have successfully hatched.

Chick 1 hatched on April 4 at 9:33 p.m. PDT, while Chick 2 followed on April 5 at 8:30 a.m. Their large nest in Big Bear Valley east of Los Angeles is livestreamed 24 hours a day by nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV) and has captivated millions. 

On May 1, FOBBV announced the chicks’ names: Sandy and Luna.

How long will the chicks stay in the nest? 

Chicks usually stay in the nest until 10 to 14 weeks of age.

What challenges do the eaglets face?

Before leaving the nest, the chicks face threats from other birds of prey, including hawks, ravens, other eagles, and owls. Inclement weather can also present challenges for the chicks. In 2025, a March snowstorm resulted in the death of one of Jackie and Shadow’s three chicks.

During fledging, only 70 percent of eaglets survive. One of the greatest threats is from cars that can injure or kill the birds while they scavenge for food on roadkill. 

Who are Jackie and Shadow? 

The pair first got together in 2018 and successfully raised chicks in 2019 and 2022. However, their eggs failed to hatch in 2023 and 2024. Only 50 percent of eagle eggs successfully hatch, so this pair has already beaten the odds.

What happened to Jackie and Shadow’s 2025 eaglets?

In 2025, Jackie laid three eggs that all hatched in early March. On March 13, a strong snowstorm dumped up to two feet of snow and battered the nest with strong winds. Only two of the chicks were visible on the live cam when the storm passed by the next morning. FOBBV later confirmed the passing of one of the chicks. The two surviving chicks were later named Sunny and Gizmo after 54,000 names were submitted by fans.

What happens after chicks fledge? 

Young eagles usually fledge–or leave the nest and fly–when they can flatten their wings and have feathers capable of flight. This typically occurs when the birds hit 10 to 14 weeks of age. Males also tend to take their first flight a little sooner than females. 

According to FOBBV, fledglings from Southern California have been spotted as far south as Baja California, as far north as British Columbia, and as far east as Yellowstone National Park.

About 70 percent of bald eagles survive the fledgling stage. FOBBV does not tag their eagles, so it’s not possible to follow the chicks’ journeys after they flee the nest.

Can I help Jackie and Shadow?

Yes. Environmental groups are currently fundraising $10 million to protect Jackie and Shadow’s foraging area from development. Learn more at SaveMoonCamp.org.

The post Eaglets Sandy and Luna spend their first night alone on the nest appeared first on Popular Science.

Stonehenge is so much more than just a monumental feat of ancient engineering—it’s also a logistical marvel. Multiple generations of Neolithic designers relied on communal teamwork and clever construction techniques to precisely place each of the site’s gigantic megaliths about 5,000 years ago. Two primary types of stone known as sarcens and bluestones make up the formation. Paleoarchaeologists previously traced most of the sarcens to about 15 miles away to present-day Marlborough, England, while many of the bluestones originated in Wales.

The famed Altar Stone is far more perplexing, however. The central, six-ton sandstone megalith likely came from a region in Scotland about 400 miles away. How a prehistoric society managed to scoot the boulder so far without complex tools or transportation methods has perplexed researchers for years.

Many researchers have theorized that melting Ice Age glaciers likely helped passively shift the Altar Stone closer to southern England’s Salisbury Plain around 2500 BCE, shortening the transport distance for Stonehenge’s creators. But in 2024, a team at Curtin University used chemical analysis to determine that glaciers simply weren’t the only factor behind the megalith’s move. Now, that same team has combined ice-sheet modeling and mineral grain dating to more precisely locate the Altar Stone’s original home. Their findings, published today in the Journal of Quaternary Science, further underscore how humans played a huge part in getting their centerpiece to Stonehenge.

“Rather than being carried naturally by ice, the evidence points to a deliberate, carefully planned movement across a challenging and varied landscape,” Anthony Clarke, a geochemist and study co-author, said in a statement.

Although glaciers possibly transported many large rocks as far south as Dogger Bank in the North Sea, Clarke explained that geological modeling showed that “no viable glacial pathways” ever linked the Altar Stone’s source region to Stonehenge. This further underscores how Neolithic communities were necessary to move it to its final spot.

“Transporting a stone of this size over such a long distance would have required planning, coordination and a deep understanding of the landscape—not to mention tremendous determination,” he added.

While the exact methods remain a mystery, Clarke and colleagues believe the Altar Stone was almost certainly moved in stages, possibly through a combination of overland and river travel routes.

“The stone would still have needed to be moved hundreds of kilometers by people,” Clarke concluded.

The post Humans really did move Stonehenge’s six-ton centerpiece appeared first on Popular Science.

Giant scorpions the size of a baseball bat with pincers the size of a pencil once stalked what is now England and Wales. Praearcturus gigas is believed to be the largest scorpion to ever roam the Earth, and was discovered from fossils that have been tucked away in London’s Natural History Museum for more than 150 years. The findings are detailed in a study published in the journal Palaeontology.

Praearcturus gigas stalked the region’s floodplains about 415 million years ago, during the Early Devonian. Small plants and fungi had only recently begun to spread, and more complex land ecosystems like forests did not exist yet.

“When we think of giant arthropods, people often picture Carboniferous rainforests with giant millipedes or dragonfly-like insects from later in Earth’s history,” Dr. Richard J. Howard, a study co-author and the Curator of Fossil Arthropods at the Natural History Museum, said in a statement. “But Praearcturus lived at least 50 million years earlier, well before the evolution of trees, when life on land was only just getting started.”

Howard and the team believe that Praearcturus’ enormous size indicates that they had very little competition from other large predators roaming around. Praearcturus might have grown to three-feet-long with six-inch pincers simply because there weren’t any other large animals nearby, so it could dominate its environment in a way that wouldn’t be possible years down the road. 

Praearcturus gigas was first scientifically decided in 1871. Scientists originally thought it was some kind of giant crustacean, similar to a woodlouse. The fossils were very fragmented, and lacked key features (such as a tail) that help classify it. To get a better picture, the team compared their fossils with some more well-preserved specimens found in 1972 and 2010.

“Praearcturus has puzzled us palaeontologists for more than a century,” added Dr. Russell Garwood, a study co-author and palaeontologist at The University of Manchester. “By bringing together material from several collections and using cutting edge imaging techniques, we’ve been able to build a clearer picture of the animal than was previously possible, which is really exciting.”

The fossils hint that this giant scorpion may have lived in the water some of the time. Some specimens have flap-like structures on the abdomen that are similar to those found in modern crustaceans like lobsters. These flaps suggest Praearcturus may have been capable of moving between water and land. Their place in the wider arachnid fossil record shows that most scorpions are unusually abundant in rocks dating back to this time period, compared with other arachnid species. This supports the idea that Praearcturus may have lived in freshwater environments, where they are more likely to survive as fossils. Excitingly, it shows that Praearcturus lived at a pivotal moment in our planet’s history, when animals were first experimenting with living life outside the oceans.

Pincer of scorpion (about the size of today’s largest scorpion). Image: Natural History Museum.

“The boundary between land and sea was much less defined at this time,” said Dr. Greg Edgecombe, a study co-author and Natural History Museum researcher. “Praearcturus gives us a fascinating glimpse into how early animals adapted to these changing environments. It may even represent a lineage that returned to the water after earlier ancestors had already begun living on land.”

According to the team, a breakthrough like this shows how important discoveries are still being made from museum collections. It also challenges assumptions about why prehistoric arthropods reached such enormous sizes. Instead of being driven solely by environmental factors like oxygen levels, a lack of competition, and other ecological opportunities may have played a crucial role.

“Confirming that this animal is a scorpion fundamentally changes our understanding of how and when these creatures evolved to such extraordinary sizes,” said Howard. 

The post World’s biggest scorpions were the size of baseball bats appeared first on Popular Science.

If your dog stops mid-walk to chew on a patch of lawn, you’ve probably wondered whether something is wrong. Of the delicious food options available to them, why would they choose leafy, bitter grass? Many owners assume the worst: that the dog has an upset stomach and is eating grass to make itself throw up.

Dr. Melissa Bain doesn’t see it that way. “My dog enjoys it every day,” says Bain, a professor of clinical animal behavior at the University of California, Davis. “If we ever mow the grass, [he’ll] go out there and just start chomping on it.” To her, it reads as a snack, not a symptom.

The idea that dogs graze to purge a sick stomach is one of the explanations owners reach for most. But it’s not what the research shows.

Eating grass is normal dog behavior

Grass eating is extremely common. In a 2008 UC Davis study, 79 percent of owners whose dogs had daily access to plants said their dog ate them. A follow-up internet survey of more than 1,500 owners found that 68 percent of dogs grazed daily or weekly, and grass was by far the plant they ate most.

If a behavior turns up in roughly three out of four dogs, it’s hard to call it a sign of illness.

Most dogs don’t get sick from grass

If dogs really ate grass to purge, you’d expect them to look ill first and vomit afterward. Most don’t. 

The same 2008 study found that only about 9 percent of dogs seemed sick before grazing, and only around 22 percent regularly vomited after. 

Diet made no difference either. Whether dogs were fed raw food, kibble, or a vegetarian diet had no bearing on whether they ate grass. 

There’s nothing like fresh grass. Video: Dogs eating grass, JR videos

“There is no nutritional basis for that that we know of,” Bain says of the theory that grazing makes up for something missing in a dog’s food. It’s a normal behavior, she adds, and one she sees mostly in healthy animals.

Her interviews with owners point in the same direction. When Bain asked what a dog was doing right before it ate grass, the dogs that already seemed unwell were the ones more likely to throw up afterward. The dogs that seemed fine usually didn’t. So, when sickness does show up, it tends to come before the grass, not because of it. The vomiting looks like a side effect, not the goal.

A popular version of that idea is that dogs graze to flush intestinal worms out of their gut. But many of the dogs in the survey were on monthly heartworm medication, which also clears intestinal worms—so those dogs had nothing to flush out. They grazed anyway.

They probably just like it

Once you set illness and diet aside, the explanation that’s left is appetite. “Most dogs eat grass because it is a food they enjoy,” says Carlo Siracusa, professor of clinical small animal behavior and welfare at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bain has noticed the same thing. Dogs tend to go for moist, long-stemmed grass, the tender kind that comes up early in the morning. They’re choosing what tastes good to them.

The behavior may be inherited from wild ancestors

Why dogs like grass in the first place is harder to answer. The 2008 study proposed that grazing is a normal behavior, possibly an instinct carried over from wild canid ancestors. 

Bain finds that idea convincing. One ecological version of that idea holds that grass once helped wild canids clear intestinal worms—the fibrous strands wrap around the worms and carry them out in the droppings. Bain points to wild-canid droppings to support this idea: They often hold long strands of plant material, sometimes with parasites tangled in it. But it isn’t proof, she says.

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A 2021 study of domestic cats had similar results: Very few cats looked ill before eating plants, and the behavior appeared normal and likely innate rather than a reaction to feeling sick. (Cats did vomit more often than dogs—up to a third of the time—which the authors say may reflect some gastric upset.) Why the instinct exists at all is still an open question.

When it’s worth a second look

Only rarely does grass-eating become a problem, Bain says—when it becomes compulsive. Siracusa says it can turn excessive enough to cause an intestinal obstruction. 

“I have seen this in anxious dogs, but it does not represent the norm,” he says. In nearly three decades of practice, Bain can remember only one dog whose grazing was truly compulsive, and that dog obsessively ate everything, not just plants.

What matters is the pattern. A dog that grazes constantly, looks sick before eating, or vomits regularly afterward is worth a trip to the veterinarian, since the underlying cause may be nausea or another gut problem. It’s also a good idea to keep grass-eating dogs off chemically treated lawns and away from plants that are toxic to dogs.

For most dogs, though, none of that applies. “Most owners should not be concerned if their dog eats grass,” Siracusa says. For a lot of dogs, grass is just the first snack of the day.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

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Despite significant medical advances, spinal cord damage remains one of the most difficult physical injuries to treat. Scarring frequently gets in the way of nerve fiber regrowth, while nerve cells usually cannot regenerate on their own. A possible solution? A fleet of stem cell-infused, injectable nanorobots that can help nerve cells regenerate. The tiny bots are detailed in a study recently published in the journal Nature Materials.

To build their new tools, a team at ETH Zurich in Switzerland engineered microscopic machines that combine living neural progenitor cells (NPCs)—specialized stem cells developed for the spine—with customized nanoparticles. These customized nanoparticles feature two layers—one that is sensitive to magnetic fields and another that translates them into electrical signals.

“We place a reservoir in the center where we trap the cells. Then we inject the nanoparticles and wait for the two components to bind,” Salvador Pané i Vidal, a study co-author and ETH Zurich roboticist, said in a statement.

Each nanorobot is about six micrometers wide, making them smaller than a red blood cell. However, the number of robots required to pull off a procedure is immense. Millions of nanobots are needed during animal trials. Even with such a high number, the initial experimental results are promising. In tests involving mice with severed spinal cords, nerve cells stimulated by the microrobots began reconnecting at the injury site within 28 days. By the end of the trial, the mice displayed major improvements in movement, gait, coordination, and exploratory behavior. 

Significantly more research is required before these nanobots are ready for primetime, but the team hopes to one day begin testing similar devices in humans. Before that, they need to determine the most effective magnetic fields and how long to apply them to patients. In the meantime, the overall design could also be applied to help treat regenerative issues in organs and wounds.

“The reproducible and scalable production of microrobots using our lab-on-a-chip system demonstrates that the platform’s application potential extends beyond basic research,” added Pané i Vidal.

The post Injectable nanorobots may help heal spinal injuries appeared first on Popular Science.

Consider three sources of opinions or habits:

• (A) Inherit - passed down via DNA or culture, mostly sit in background unquestioned, give assumptions for B,C.

• (B) Consider - personally think own thoughts, conscious or otherwise. Influenced by what hear, debates join.

• (C) Specialize - people sit at niches in a structure, learn skills to contribute there, defer to outputs from other niches. Hear, debate near niche. Different types of structures: hierarchies, professions, speculative markets.

Before big brains, A dominated most everything. Then with big brains, A dominated stuff that was pretty constant over space and time, while B dominated the rest. And as we learned more kinds of abstractions, we collected more kinds of A that could help with B. While C has long been a thing, the modern world arose mainly due to a huge increase in C, mostly in orgs, markets, and professional networks. As our lives started to change faster and to get more specialized, that also induced a big increase in B to help us adapt to local context.

Looking more particularly at morality, norms, and adjacent culture, we see a relatively sudden jump from A to B at the modernism transition ~1900. People felt morality should change as fast as other habits were changing, and youth movements led the charge. But people also rejected C on such topics; it felt important that everyone “think for themselves”.

In adjacent areas of policy, sometimes C has been deferred to, but the ideology of democracy opposes doing too much of this. Over the last half century, we’ve seen a general decline in respect for and deference to C sources, especially near morals and politics, plausibly due to a long slow drift toward forager styles.

Alas, our civilization now plausibly suffers maladaptive cultural drift, in part from this new habit of setting morals and norms via B instead of A. And our civilization will fall unless we somehow fix this. (Even if we make AGI.) Yes, some C-like structures often feed indirectly into this B, but they don’t seem very adaptive. But short of returning to a stable low-tech highly-fragmented pre-modern world, it seems quite hard to return to A. So key question is: can we find an adaptive-enough C to source our morals?

I’ve explored a number of possible options here. While none seem especially promising, at least there’s some hope. But in this post I want to note that all of them will require us to accept no longer sourcing our morals mainly via “thinking for ourselves”. Maybe some people can be fooled into seeing themselves as vibing their morals, but there will in fact have to be a big effective structure that sets and changes morals, where people specialize on their small part and while deferring to other parts.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to Popular Science’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Marie Antoinette probably had braces

By Rachel Feltman

The idea of Marie Antoinette in orthodontic braces probably sounds like something out of my favorite Sofia Coppola film, but it’s not as anachronistic as it sounds. While I couldn’t find a definitive primary source on the subject, there are historical mentions of Marie Antoinette undergoing orthodontic treatment. And in some ways, it would be more surprising if she didn’t do a stint in braces: modern dentistry as we know it was essentially invented in France in the early 1700s, and by the time Marie and Louis got hitched, French people were practically known for having straight, pretty teeth. We know that Marie Antoinette was given an intense French makeover in all things before being shipped off to Versailles, so it’s plausible that she had a bit of dental work done, too. 

If the idea of 18th century orthodontia makes you want to put your head between your knees, you’re not wrong. The hardware designed by Pierre Fauchard, called a bandolet or bandeau, used a horseshoe-shaped piece of metal that pressed against the inside or outside of the dental arch. Dentists would manually tie individual teeth to the appliance using either silk threads or thin metal wires. That is, admittedly, pretty identical to how braces work today—they exert constant pressure on teeth to help move them into new positions, then hold them there while everything settles into place. But modern braces are designed to move teeth more effectively and with as little pain as possible, and the bandeau was much more of a blunt instrument. 

For a fun French dental bonus fact, I dug into the weird social history of smiling on the eve of the Revolution. Check out this week’s episode to learn more! 

FACT: One woman’s cells have fueled most medical research for decades 

Featuring Hari Kondabolu and Dr. Priyanka Wali

Today’s special guests are comedian Hari Kondabolu and physician-slash-comedian Priyanka Wali. Together they host the podcast Health Stuff, where they dive into everything from earwax to sleep hygiene.

On this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing, Hari and Priyanka share the story of Henrietta Lacks. While being treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins in the 1950s, this African American mother of five unknowingly—and involuntarily—changed the course of medical history. Cancer cells from one of her biopsies were sent off for research without her knowledge or consent. Unlike other cancer cells in the lab, hers kept doubling instead of dying off. They were the first human cells that were discovered to multiply easily in a lab setting, making them perfect for studying the impact of various drugs, hormones, viruses, and toxins. While the cell line that originates from Henrietta Lacks’ tissues—called the HeLa line—has been used in research that’s saved countless lives over the decades, they also serve as a reminder of the entrenched racism of our medical system.

Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about Henrietta’s story. And for a deeper dive, check out “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” 

FACT: It’s possible that neanderthals knew how to treat cavities 

By Rachel Feltman

Surprise, more teeth! Scientists recently reported that a 59,000-year-old tooth—a neanderthal molar, to be precise—could conceivably have been drilled to treat a cavity. They came to that conclusion by tinkering with three modern teeth, AKA subjecting them to the horrors of prehistoric dental treatment, to show that the ancient chomper showed signs of the same. 

Unsurprisingly, not everyone is 100 percent convinced by the experimental evidence. But even if hominids weren’t drilling cavities that long ago, there’s good reason to believe we’ve been at it for longer than you might guess. A couple of teeth from the Stone Age (about 13,000 years ago) show less ambiguous signs of dental drilling, and dentistry has been a flourishing (if often misguided) practice for thousands of years. Many of our ancient ancestors even wore dental bridges made out of gold and other precious metals—so grills have a long, proud history. 

The post Marie Antoinette probably got braces to straighten her teeth appeared first on Popular Science.

A rare meteorite discovered in the Sahara Desert proves that our solar system almost had at least one extra planet. In a study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, astronomers say the chunk of space rock known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12774 once belonged to a protoplanet possibly as large as Mars. That is, until a cosmic crash likely blew it to smithereens. 

The solar system includes eight known planets (sorry, Pluto). Barring interstellar catastrophe, this number will remain the same until the sun finally dies about 5 billion years from now. However, this total planetary count was never a guarantee.The solar system’s earliest era featured multiple embryonic protoplanets that had the potential to grow together into additional cosmic neighbors.

The remnants of these long gone celestial bodies are scarce, but traces still exist. That said, astronomers didn’t expect to find protoplanetary evidence in a meteorite like NWA 12774. Discovered in 2019, NWA 12774 is an angrite—one of the oldest known types of volcanic rock that was formed during the solar system’s era about 4.56 billion years ago. They’re also very rare. Of the roughly 80,000 meteorites discovered on Earth so far, only 68 are angrites.

A slice of NWA 12774. The green circle is an olivine crystal, a magnesium-rich mineral. Credit: John Kashuba

Unlike rocky planets such as Mars and Earth, angrites do not have a lot of silicon dioxide. Because of this, astronomers have long assumed that angrites always originated in asteroids no larger than about 124 miles wide. NWA 12774 blows this theory apart..

While analyzing the meteorite, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder detected clinopyroxene, a mineral crystal that exists throughout Earth’s mantle and crust. NWA 12774’s clinopyroxene was also heavy in aluminum, which directly points to formation under massive amounts of pressure underground. The team then calculated the conditions necessary to create an angrite like NWA 12774, and settled on at least 17.5 kilobars of pressure. To put that in perspective, the pressure experienced at the bottom of the roughly 35,875-foot-deep Mariana Trench is barely one kilobar.

Small asteroids simply don’t possess the conditions needed to generate a rock like NWA 12774. What’s more, the angrite’s sharp crystalline edges also indicate that it formed at comparatively shallow depths in its host body. Based on all of these factors, astronomers now believe NWA 12774 once belonged to a young protoplanet with a radius anywhere from 621 to 2,050 miles wide. This means that instead of an asteroid, the angrite may have existed inside something as big as Mars.

“It’s incredible to think there was once a world this large,” Aaron Bell, a UC Boulder earth scientist and study co-author, said in a statement. “We only know it existed because a few fragments of it happened to land on Earth. These meteorites preserved evidence of a completely different pathway through which early planets developed.”

Although it’s unclear how the protoplanet met its demise, some type of crash between early solar system denizens is definitely a possibility. Regardless, the ramifications are huge for astronomers’ understanding of our cosmic neighborhood’s history.

“The materials that formed the angrite parent body are fundamentally different from the ingredients of Earth and Mars,” explained Bell. “It points to a distinct and separate evolutionary path in planetary formation in the early history of our solar system.”

The post Rare meteorite proves our solar system almost had an extra planet appeared first on Popular Science.

North Carolina’s blueberries may have a beetle problem. For the first time, scientists in the Tarheel State have documented the presence of Prionus imbricornus eating blueberry bushes. This longhorn beetle and its larvae can chomp their way through the state’s valuable blueberry fields. The findings are described in a study published this week in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management. 

Blueberries are native to North Carolina, but were not cultivated until 1935. The state is the sixth largest blueberry producer in the United States, and the blueberry industry is valued at roughly $70 million. Protecting the plants from pests is crucial, as blueberries are considered one of North Carolina’s most valuable and desirable crops. 

Several species including the blueberry maggot (Rhagoletis mendax), plum curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar), and cranberry fruitworm (Acrobasis vaccinii Riley) can threaten blueberry crops. The long-horned beetle P. imbricornus may now join their ranks. P. imbricornus is known for their long antennae and are considered wood-boring beetles. The adult females typically lay their eggs in the soil near the roots of hardwood trees. The larvae then eat and destroy the roots. These larvae can grow up to five inches long and potentially kill trees, since the adults don’t feed. 

P. Imbricornis larva. The larva, which can grow up to five inches long, feed on the roots of blueberry bushes. Image: Matt Bertone/NC State.

North Carolina is the first state to report that P. imbricornus is actively feeding on blueberry bushes. However, reports of unidentified larvae from the Prionus beetle genus feeding on and damaging blueberry bush roots go back to 2010. In the 16 years since, identifying the specific species responsible has been difficult since the larvae live near the roots of the plants. Different types of longhorn beetle larvae also look very similar, and not identifying a species can harm efforts to combat harmful bugs. 

“Before now, researchers often just assumed the species of Prionus on their commodities based on adult identification,” Kenneth Geisert, a study co-author and NC State graduate student, said in a statement. “If that guess was incorrect, it could mean using a treatment strategy that did not line up with the problem and incorrectly associating species and their hosts.”

For example, P. imbricornus attacks roots, but another longhorn beetle species may go after a tree’s dead branches or trunk. 

“Without knowing which species of beetle you’re dealing with and their ecology, incorrect management can cause adverse effects on non-target insects,” Geisert added.

For this study, the team used a series of black panel traps scented with sex pheromones to attract and gather adult beetles. The traps were placed at six farms across Pender, Sampson, Bladen, and New Hanover counties. The team then used a technique called genetic barcoding on the larvae to analyze small, standardized segments of their DNA to identify the species. They then compared the unknown larval sequences with the same genetic segments from known Prionus adults.

They matched the P. imbricornus with 98 to 99 percent accuracy. According to the team, this result is both good and bad news for farmers.

“On one hand, it’s very important that we know which species we’re dealing with,” said Lorena Lopez, a study co-author and entomologist at NC State. “On the other, North Carolina was the first state to ever report Prionus infestation in blueberries, and there are no insecticides currently labeled against this pest in blueberries.”

To address this shortfall, Lopez has begun insecticide trials. Pinpointing effective insecticides and timing during P. imbricornis reproductive cycles can potentially limit larval development. Fewer larvae could help prevent major root damage and provide blueberry farmers with an effective management tool to protect their crops. 

The post A ‘mystery beetle’ is devouring North Carolina’s precious blueberries appeared first on Popular Science.

CEO Blue Origin Dave Limp gives LC-36 updates. Now that they’ve had access to the pad and integration facility they can share a bit of good news. The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower ...

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It’s four in the morning and you wake from a dream. It wasn’t a nightmare exactly, but it was vivid and unsettling—a circus of imagery in which the other commuters stuck in gridlock beside you were all octopi  or your feet were transformed into a pair of horse hooves while going through airport security. 

Maybe you don’t often remember your dreams but this one, this episode that fused the mundane with the outlandish, it sticks. Even days later, you can still see those tentacles gripping the steering wheels or feel the awkwardness of your gait running to catch your flight. 

It couldn’t have been that joint you smoked before bed, could it? Science says maybe.

How weed effects sleep cycles

Reports of vivid dreams are “very well known” in cannabis and neuroscience research, says Andrew Kesner, assistant professor of psychology at Indiana University in Indianapolis. But “we still don’t really know the neurobiology of dreaming and what sort of features make you remember your dreams better or worse.”

What researchers do know is how consuming weed alters sleep patterns. 

Cannabinoids are found naturally in the brain in a non-psychoactive form called endocannabinoids. Endocannabinoids control our sleep/wake cycle, aka our circadian rhythms, by modulating and maintaining the brain’s biological balance through an abundant receptors neuroscientists call CB1. 

“When people fall asleep, the brain makes its own cannabinoids that increase and decrease throughout the sleep-wake cycle, and throughout the day,” explains Kesner.

Marijuana contains a different form of cannabinoid than the one naturally produced by the brain, THC or tetrahydrocannabinol. THC also works on the brain’s CB1 receptors but, unlike endocannabinoids, it is psychoactive, meaning it makes users feel high by producing feelings like euphoria and paranoia. 

Blooming cannabis plant ready to be harvested into various THC-based products. Image: Sunan Wongsa-nga / Getty Images Sunan Wongsa-nga

When you smoke weed before bed, the THC added to the brain’s natural endocannabinoids sends the brain’s CB1 receptors into overdrive. And when those CB1 receptors are in overdrive, they change the way you sleep.

Natural sleep in healthy adults begins with a short period of nodding off followed by a stage of “slow-wave” sleep, that deep sleep from which it’s hard to wake someone up. Cycles of lighter sleep punctuated by bouts of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep follow, growing longer and longer throughout the night. 

“REM sleep is classically the time when you’re dreaming,” says Kesner, when “your brain acts like it’s awake but the brain stem paralyzes your body so you can’t act out your dreams.” 

Consuming THC appears to suppress REM sleep: It causes it to arrive later in the sleep cycle and to make up less of the overall percentage of sleep. THC also causes more frequent interruptions to REM sleep. That, says Kesner, may be the origins of its reputation for causing weird dreams. 

“We know if you wake someone up in REM sleep, that’s when they have the highest chance to remember their dreams,” he explains. So, while there’s no evidence that dreams under the influence of THC are any different than THC-free dreams, the ability to remember them more easily may make the sleeper believe they are more bizarre or intense. 

According to one recent study, a dreamer is also likely to feel more rested following a night of vivid dreams, which may be one reason why many people feel smoking a joint or eating a gummy helps them to sleep.

Dreams are slippery suckers

Anything more is hard to say for sure.

“It’s possible that the THC could be making dreams more intense by changing cortical activity [the way the brain functions], making them wonkier and maybe adding some variability to what you’re dreaming about,” Kesner continues. But the huge variability among individuals in both sleep and the effects of THC use makes objectively studying weed-induced dreams “kind of a nightmare”—pun not intended. 

Researchers still don’t even know exactly what dreams are or why they happen—though there’s a good chance that it may be the brain coming up with different learning scenarios, according to Kesner. Someone who plays with puppies all day may, for example, dream that night about being chased by wolves. That way, if it ever happens in real life, the dreamer is better prepared to react to them. 

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Whether the weed was smoked or taken in edible form is probably also important; THC immediately affects the brain when smoking while edibles take time for the body to metabolize. One study in which participants reported weird dreams after smoking weed before bedtime, therefore, may have had to do more with the way REM sleep “rebounds,” or immediately returns to longer and more robust natural cycles, when the brain experiences THC withdrawal than with THC’s psychoactive effects. 

It’s well documented, says Kesner, that chronic THC users experience more intense REM sleep after they stop using it. The same might happen in occasional users, whose REM sleep could theoretically become more intense as the acute effects of weed wears off during the night. In other words, you don’t sleep as well while weed’s psychoactive THC is bouncing around your brain but it becomes much more restorative as soon as its effects wear off. 

Ultimately, there probably is no “one-size-fits-all for what cannabis does to sleep or how it affects dreams,” Kesner concludes. As of now, there’s simply not enough data to come to any meaningful verdict. THC or not, dreams are, by their very nature, weird.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Weed really does change your dreams appeared first on Popular Science.

Morningstar ignores SpaceX largest current business and vastly underestimates all of its future businesses. They come up with a valuation only half of the IPO and even achieving AI data centers in space is not worth the full IPO valuation. They value an AI data center in space scenario as only worth $1.3 trillion. The ...

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When it comes to reproduction, animals will pull out all the stops to attract a mate. Sending out noisy mating calls, showing off colorful wings, inflating a throat pouch, and shaking a literal tailfeather all ensure that the next generation of a species happens. Some insects will go as far as making themselves look like an entirely different living thing—leaves. 

Usually used as a means of camouflage, male katydids appear to use their leafy disguise to amplify mating calls and make themselves more attractive to the opposite sex. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and offer one of the first demonstrations of how leaf mimicry enhances a male katydids’ sexual signals. 

To shield themselves from predators, various species of katydids have evolved wings with structures that look like leaves. Panama’s leaf-masquerading katydids (Arota festae) will even change from green to hot pink in order to better mimic leaves. What’s been less clear to entomologists is whether or not these leaf-mimicking structures play a role in katydid mating. 

This new study looked at a species called Viadana brunneri from Barro Colorado Island, Panama. To attract mates, katydids create songs by rubbing together specialized structures on their wings. In many tropical species like V. brunneri, the portion that mimics leaves makes up the majority of their wing’s surface area.  

Most of the wing structure is devoted to helping male katydids look more like a leaf. Image: Christian Ziegler.

Previously, scientists believed physical adaptations for survival and for attracting mates can function in conflict with one another, particularly if they are physically connected. A male peacock’s flashy tail feathers may help it attract a female, but it also makes it easier for predators to find them. Male katydids, on the other hand, are able to use the acoustic properties of the structures that they use for defense to their reproductive advantage. They are a rare example of how an adaptation for self-defence and reproduction can work together without necessarily putting the animal in jeopardy. 

The team performed a series of bioacoustic, behavioral, and biophysical experiments, showing that these leafy structures on their wings make them more attractive to females, while also helping conceal them. After removing the leafy portions of a male V. brunneri’s wings, the pitch became higher and the volume of their songs also changed. The team then played these calls for females who preferred the lower pitch calls from males with their leafy wing sections still intact. 

While male katydids do all the singing, females indicate their interest by replying to the song with clicks. The insects produce short, sporadic and infrequent calls, possibly for only two seconds in a single night. They perform these calls in ultrasounds, which our ears can’t pick up. They also found that the leafy portions of the male katydid wing will vibrate to amplify their songs, making them more detectable to females. 

“Our study provides a rare example of natural and sexual selection acting in harmony, producing traits that simultaneously improve survival and mating success,” Dr. Benito Wainwright, a study co-author and evolutionary biologist at the University of St Andrews, said in a statement. “We are now extremely excited to start exploring how such an interesting interaction evolved in katydids.” 

The post Big wings and sweet songs: The mating lives of Panama’s katydids appeared first on Popular Science.

The wreck of an American submarine from World War II has been found off the coast of Matsua Island, Japan. The USS Herring (SS-233) currently rests over 300 feet down in the Pacific Ocean, where it is sitting upright and “maintains a high degree of integrity,” according to United States Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC). The discovery was announced exactly 82 years after the vessel sank, based on evidence collected from an international team of researchers. 

Herring’s final mission

The Herring was first launched from Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine on January 15, 1942, and officially commissioned on May 4, 1942. The vessel completed eight war patrols in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans during the war. Herring sank seven enemy ships, including four Japanese cargo ships during what would be the submarine’s final patrol. 

Herring was last seen by the crew of the USS Barb during the evening of May 31, 1944. The submarines met to determine who would patrol areas off the Kurile Islands, an archipelago east of Japan. Early on June 1, 1944, Barb’s crew recorded hearing the sound of weapons designed to attack a submarine from a ship or aircraft called depth charges exploding in the distance. 

Japanese historical records also confirm that Herring was struck in two direct hits during a counterattack by a shore battery. The strikes ultimately sank Herring and the vessel was presumed lost when Herring failed to report to Midway on July 13, 1944. The sinking killed all 83 crewmembers.

USS Herring Memorial statue at the Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama. Image: Ron Buskirk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Ron Buskirk A protected final resting place

In 2017, a joint expedition between Russian Geographic Society (RGS) and the Russian Military reported a submarine wreck in the area. Based on its location and appearance, the RGS reported that the wreckage was Herring. A subsequent joint expedition returned to the wreck in 2022 to document its status and honor the lost crew. The expedition team also placed a plaque on site. The data collected and shared by the RGS was analyzed by two U.S. volunteer researchers and one researcher in Japan. NHCC confirmed the wreckage on June 1, 2026–82 years to the day after Herring is believed to have sunk.

Importantly, the wreckage shows battle damage around the submarine’s conning tower. This tower is a raised platform from which an officer can conn (conduct or control) a vessel. This damage, along with evidence of grounding at the submarine’s bow, correlates with the historical record of the Herring’s sinking.

The wreckage is currently protected by U.S. law and under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Navy. The Navy allows some non-intrusive activities on sunken military craft, but any activity that may disturb the sunken vessel must be coordinated with NHHC.

“Most importantly, the wreck represents the final resting place of Sailors who gave their lives in defense of the nation and should be respected by all parties as a war grave,” the NHHC wrote in a press release.”

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