Feed aggregator

Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) go deep. They can dive 1,300 to 4,000 feet-deep and also travel as much as 15,000 miles per year. These depths and distances make sperm whales and other whale species particularly difficult for scientists to follow and study. 

A new autonomous underwater glider system aims to make that trek a little easier. The glider from Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), detailed in a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, follows sperm whale vocalizations without getting in their way. AI is embedded directly into the glider, which allows it to react in real-time to the whale’s sounds while underwater.

Why gliders?

In addition to their long journeys and impressive diving, collecting long-term acoustic data has been difficult because traditional tags typically remain attached to the whales for only one to three days.  

Autonomous underwater gliders are a more recent addition to whale tracking. They can detect the presence of  whales while disturbing them as little as possible. According to the team, the new glider can actively follow whales based on their sounds. It could potentially monitor sperm whale populations and collect data for months at a time.

“This technology opens an entirely new dimension to studying whales underwater in their natural environment,” said David Gruber, the Founder and President of Project CETI. “We can now collect long-term communication information never before dreamed possible—like how a baby whale learns its clan-specific dialects as we can now listen to individual whales for extended periods.”

An actually helpful ‘backseat driver’

All underwater gliders have a navigation computer that controls its movement. In CETI’s new system, the team developed a custom “backseat driver” and acoustic sensing system with French ocean robotics company Alseamar. A second onboard computer is also equipped with a back seat driver. This computer processes acoustic data and runs detection algorithms that can recognize sperm whale vocalizations.

“With the new glider, we significantly extend ‘backseat driver’ capabilities by enabling complete mission changes (such as different dive plans),” Roee Diamant, Project CETI’s Underwater Acoustics Lead, tells Popular Science. “This allows fully autonomous control by the glider for tracking whales—a first for underwater gliders, like the Waymo of the underwater world.”

The glider also has four custom hydrophones so that researchers can find the source of underwater calls. Project CETI developed whale-detection and angle-of-arrival estimation algorithms that analyze the sounds in real time. This way, the system can pinpoint the source of the vocalizing whales and adjust the glider’s path. The individual navigation commands can also be updated via satellite every two to four hours when the vehicle surfaces. When the glider emerges above water, the computer transmits data, recalibrates onboard sensors, and can then receive new mission instructions before diving again.

Do not disturb

According to Diamant, the glider also limits the impact on the whales, a critical part of CETI’s mission of conducting “minimally invasive marine biology.” The glider is programmed to ascend once whale vocalizations are detected and then reposition itself to stay close to the vocalizing whales. 

“On-whale biosensors are deployed by gentle tap-and-go methods via drones rather than approaching the whales with vessels,” he explains. “Here, we extend this minimally-invasive approach by using a self-guided underwater glider that operates quietly and with less disturbance.”

Currently, Project CETI conducts most of its fieldwork within a roughly 12-by-12-mile study area off the coast of Dominica in the Caribbean. There, they have witnessed a sperm whale birth, and also begun to decode the sperm whale alphabet and dialects. The new glider system may help the project expand monitoring beyond this one region, as the whales swim across broader ocean areas. 

The post The ‘Waymo of the sea’ tracks sperm whale conversations appeared first on Popular Science.

It was understandably only a matter of time. Rise, the Artemis II crew’s ridiculously adorable zero-gravity indicator, is now available for purchase. On the NASA Exchange website, you can pre-order your own diminutive plushie for $24.99 plus shipping, along with other Artemis goodies including stickers, magnets, hoodies, and more. Patience is a virtue, however. Due to an “extended production time,” NASA is warning collectors that their own, personal Rise may take up to eight weeks to ship.

Zero-gravity indicators—usually a stuffed animal or something similar—have accompanied both U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts into space since the 1960s. More symbolic than technical, the untethered objects mark a crew’s passage beyond Earth’s gravity into space. Rise is an original design, but sometimes more iconic figures serve as a mission’s mascot. In 2022, Snoopy was the only occupant aboard the uncrewed Artemis I mission.

Designed by Lucas Ye, a 2nd grader from Mountain View, California, Rise accompanied NASA’s four-person Artemis II crew during their historic, 10-day lunar flyby mission that launched on April 1. The plushie gained internet fame, along with a floating jar of Nutella and the now viral phrase “moon joy.” Commander Reid Wiseman made sure to safely carry Rise out of the capsule after splashdown on April 10. 

Rise was selected from a pool of over 2,500 design submissions from more than 50 countries during NASA’s Moon Mascot contest, and recalls Apollo 8’s iconic “Earthrise” photo from 1968. According to NASA Exchange, all proceeds from the plushie (and its many other products) help fund the “morale, welfare, and recreation of NASA employees.”

The post The adorable Artemis II ‘Rise’ plushies finally land in NASA’s online shop appeared first on Popular Science.

While an enormous sea lion named Chonkers makes a splash in San Francisco, you don’t have to live in the Golden City to sneak a peek. Viewers can watch the action from home with Pier 39’s livestream as this 2,000-pound Stellar sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus) cozies up with the smaller California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) that “haul-out” along the docks on Pier 39.

To watch the Pier 39 livestream, scroll down to the bottom of the page until you see “VIEW THE SEA LIONS LIVE.” Then, press the “GO LIVE” button. You can also press “Control” to choose a position, snap a screenshot, pause the stream, or enter a full-screen mode.

Pier 39 Sea Lion Webcam HDRelay.create({target: 'webcam_holder', id: 'CID_UROS0000008D'}); How to spot Chonkers

Chonkers was first spotted at Pier 39 in early April. He has been flopping up onto the marina’s floats and hanging out with the California sea lions. While they can be seen in California waters, Stellar sea lions more commonly call Alaska and Washington State home, so Chonkers sticks out among his much smaller float-mates.

His size is the first thing that will make him stand out for viewers. Stellar sea lions are about 10 times bigger than California sea lions. Male Stellar sea lions like Chonkers push 2,500 pounds and are 11 feet long, while male California sea lions weigh about 250 pounds and are seven feet long. The females are also bigger. Female Stellar sea lions weigh in at roughly 1,000 pounds and measure nine feet long, compared to 220 pounds and six feet for California sea lions.

A Stellar sea lion (left) wearing a NOAA satellite transmitter. A California sea lion (right) wearing a similar tracker. Images: NOAA.

Chonkers also has a light tan to reddish color compared to the California sea lions’s darker brown fur. Stellar sea lions have a more low-frequency vocalization that sounds like a roar, while California sea lions’ sound more like barks.

California sea lions have a more pointed snout like a long-nosed dog, while Stellar sea lions like Chonkers typically have a more blunt face and a boxy, bear-like head.

What is Chonkers doing on the dock?

While watching, you’ll see both species “hauling out.” This means the seals and sea lions temporarily leave the water and lay on a rock, the beach, or a human-made structure like a dock. They may haul out after foraging for food or get some rest between migrations. 

Chonkers is a Steller sea lion amidst a sea of California sea lions. Screenshot: Pier 39 Live Cam via Reddit

According to The Marine Mammal Center, hauling out also helps them regulate their body temperature, avoid hungry predators, molt or shed their fur, interact with other animals, mate, give birth, and nurse their pups.

Chonkers and other Stellar sea lions do not migrate in the traditional sense. Instead, they will move from the center of their foraging activity, to follow seasonal concentrations of their many types of prey. These predatory animals consume over 100 species of fish, including salmon, Pacific cod, arrowtooth flounder, and rock sole. They also eat cephalopods, including squid and octopus.

Steller sea lions have over 300 haul-out sites along the North Pacific rim from Japan and Russia to Alaska and the Channel Islands off California. The longest recorded distances traveled are 1,600 miles from Forrester Island to Cape Newenham, 1,400 miles from Kozlof Cape, Russia, to Round Island in Alaska, and 1,200 miles from Medny Island, Russia, to Round Island. 

World map with a rough representation of the Steller sea lion’s range. Image: NOAA. The history of Pier 39’s sea lions

California sea lions first began hauling out on Pier 39’s K-Dock in October 1989 after the 2.9-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area. By January 1990, the loud pinnipeds began to arrive in huge numbers. 

The staff at the marina turned to The Marine Mammal Center, a local animal rescue and rehabilitation organization, for advice on how to handle their new residents. The experts from The Marine Mammal Center recommended that the sea lions stay in their newfound home. 

The number of sea lions at Pier 39 fluctuates depending on the time of year. The current record is over 2,100 sea lions in May–June 2024. 

The post How to watch Chonkers, the 2,000-pound sea lion live from San Francisco appeared first on Popular Science.

I am a clumsy guy. If there are sharp corners nearby, I’ll bash into them. If there’s a surface underfoot with even a light sheen of polish, I’ll take a tumble. You don’t need to take my word for it. A quick look at my knees, which have become knitted with a patchwork of small scars, tells the story.

I can trace some of these marks back years, and have accepted that they will be on my body for life. But what gives? Why don’t our bodies remove old scars? The answer goes to the heart of how our bodies have adapted to protect us.

Why do some injuries not cause scarring?

“The skin is our protection against the external environment,” says Dr. Corey Maas, an associate clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco and founder of the Maas Clinic. “It’s a remarkable organ. It’s very important that its integrity be maintained.”

The skin consists of three layers. From outermost to innermost, these are the epidermis, dermis, and fat layer or hypodermis.  

Your skin is a complex organ with three main layers: the epidermis, dermis, and fat layer or hypodermis. Image: Cancer Research UK / CC BY-SA 4.0

After our skin is damaged, a cascade of biological processes fires up. If an injury only damages the epidermis, the wound will typically heal without scarring. 

But if the injury goes deeper, a scar will form. All scars, big or small, are “designed to repair the skin and restore to you all the continuity and the protective mechanisms that the skin exhibits for the entire body,” says Maas. In other words, our body’s priority is to get the skin strong enough to repel invading microbes—not make it look pristine. 

How do scars form?

There are several stages involved in scar formation. The body first forms a blood clot to prevent bleeding, which then dries into a scab. 

The immune system then sends specialized cells into the clot to beat back any microbes that may have snuck their way in through the wound. To do so, these cells release specific chemicals (called cytokines), which help prevent infection and send out a loudspeaker message to the body that it’s time for a cleanup in the skin aisle.  

In response, more specialized cells in the skin called fibroblasts kick into action. These cells start releasing a type of biological scaffolding, known as the extracellular matrix, made up of molecules like long, fibrous proteins such as collagen. These tough proteins increase the scar tissue’s strength.

While a wound might close quickly, the full process of restoring the skin’s layers can take months or even years. 

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Can you have too much scarring?

A fully formed scar is made of tough, dense bundles of collagen and other connective tissue, with no sweat glands or hair follicles. This messy mix of hardened tissue isn’t like other skin. There are fewer cells to be renewed and replaced. 

“Those collagen molecules are there forever,” says Maas, creating a tough, fibrous tissue that keeps scars on our bodies for years, decades, or even a lifetime. Sometimes our bodies overdo it on collagen production, resulting in large or raised scars.

In its urgency to seal the rip in its protective outer coating, the body piles on extra collagen. This can produce red, raised scars that stay where the original injury, called hypertrophic scars. In some cases, the resulting scar even extends far beyond the original injury. These are called keloid scars.

Keloid scars can become itchy or painful as they grow. If they form too close to a joint, they can even impede movement. Surgical removal of keloids can cause them to grow back even larger.

How to look after your scars

Scars can fade and become less prominent over time as initial deposits of disorganized collagen are replaced with flatter, more ordered layers. But even this overhauled tissue looks different from normal skin, which is why scars rarely disappear completely.

Maas says that doctors can alter factors, such as a scar’s discoloration and depth through cosmetic procedures, and that steroids can reduce redness. But the most important consideration is good wound management, says Maas.

Keep the wound clean. If it’s an open wound, keep it covered with fresh dressings. If the wound is closed up, Maas recommends keeping it covered with a thin layer of ointment. He says that some doctors prefer scars to dry up, but in his view, it’s important to protect against microbes while a wound heals.

But scars aren’t all bad. They’re a physical record of the experiences you’ve gone through. A scarred knee might fondly recall a tumble in the playground. A burn scar conjures memories of a busy dinner party. These marks wouldn’t have such power if they simply disappeared after a short time. 

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 Why scars never disappear appeared first on Popular Science.

TESLA Unsupervised FSD Will Change Everything in 2026. TESLA Robotaxis do not crash — they only hesitate and unsupervised FSD will roll out to owners in ~7 months. The driving experience will be transformed. The full global million-scale robo-taxi is tied to v15, but unsupervised for personal cars + early robotaxi fleet will have meaningful ...

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Establishing a long-term human presence on the moon is a daunting challenge. Daunting—but not impossible. One way to help prepare for our imminent arrival is to gain a better understanding of the frequency and effects of meteorite strikes on the lunar surface. NASA isn’t only relying on its brave squadron of astronauts like the recently returned Artemis II crew to do the work, however. They need help from anyone willing to spend some time gazing up at the moon from here on Earth. For those ready and willing citizen scientists, it’s time to contribute to the ongoing Impact Flash endeavor.

Earth is bombarded by tiny meteorites every day, but only a fraction of them actually survive their fiery passage through our home planet’s atmosphere. The moon isn’t so lucky.. Astronomers estimate around 100 meteoroids the size of ping-pong balls strike the lunar surface every day, each impact releasing the equivalent energy to seven pounds of dynamite. If that weren’t enough, a meteor with at least an eight-foot diameter plows into the moon with the force of about a kiloton’s worth of TNT roughly once every four years.

If humans want to have a long-term presence on this meteor-filled satellite, designing the best, most resilient lunar base possible requires a comprehensive analysis of the moon’s relationship with meteoroids. One way to assess the situation is by monitoring and measuring events called impact flashes. As the NASA-funded group called Geophysical Exploration of the Dynamics and Evolution of the Solar System (GEODES) at the University of Maryland explains, impact flashes are “split-second flares of light” caused when meteoroids strike the moon’s dark side.

The Artemis II astronauts scored front-row seats to a handful of these moments while completing their historic lunar flyby on April 6. Their subsequent visual and equipment data is now helping astronomers understand present-day impact rates, as well as how that may change over extended periods of time. But to truly learn about these occurrences, they need much more source material.

That’s where Impact Flash comes into play. Organizers are asking anyone with a powerful enough telescope to point it at the moon’s darkened hemisphere and wait for the drama to unfold. For the best chance, the team suggests equipment with at least a 4-inch mirror or lens, automatic tracking, and a video recording capability of 25-30 frames per second.

While volunteers are encouraged to try identifying any new impact flashes themselves using publicly available software, all clips still need to be uploaded to the official Lunar Impact Flash database. From there, astronomers will comb through submissions and extract as much info as possible from the meteoroid meetups.

The results also go beyond planning a future lunar base.According to Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist and Impact Flash project lead Ben Fernando, the next step will be using the data to investigate moonquakes.

“We are planning to send seismometers to the Moon to measure how the ground shakes,” Fernando explained in a statement. “Your measurements of impact flashes will help us work out the sources of moonquakes we detect. This will help us work out what the Moon’s interior looks like.”

The post NASA needs your help spotting meteors hitting the moon appeared first on Popular Science.

There’s a gaping 2,000-pound hole in Earth’s food web. Saber-toothed cats with 7-inch-long fangs, sloths the size of elephants, wombats the size of cars, and many of the world’s largest mammals disappeared between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago. While 10,000 years may seem long ago to humans, that’s a blink of an eye in evolutionary time, and the disappearance of these megafauna still impacts us today.

According to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), disappearing megafauna fundamentally reshaped the food web for modern animals. These effects are also more pronounced in North and South Americas than in other continents.

The world’s food webs all have the same basic principle—animals that eat are then eaten by others. When an animal goes extinct, the complex web of relationships shifts among the surviving species. If a predator disappears, their prey’s population may go unchecked, with a series of cascading effects. Based on previous research into large-animal extinction and food webs, study co-author and Michigan State University ecologist Lydia Beaudrot thought that the extinction of mammals weighing over three pounds could still have an effect tens of thousand years later. 

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To investigate this hunch, Beaudrot and her team analyzed the predator-prey relationships in 389 locations across tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Their study included over 440 mammals including lions, wolves, bears, and elephants. 

While the basic animal-eats, animal-gets-eaten structure remains true in all food webs, the number and types of species vary greatly between locations. Overall, the study found that food webs today have fewer, smaller prey in North and South America than they do Africa and Asia.

When they studied prey characteristics such as body mass and activity patterns, the team found that predators in the Americas typically stick with prey with a narrower range of traits, with less overlap among them.

Tens of thousands of years ago, many of the world’s biggest mammals disappeared. New research reveals where the ripple effects are still being felt in terms of who eats whom today. Image: Chia Hsieh, Michigan State University.

According to the team, the differences between the continents does not just stem from varieties in weather or seasons. Instead, the severity of past extinctions played a significant role in food webs. While each region suffered their share of losses, the Americas were hit the hardest. These continents have lost more than three-quarters of all mammals over 100 pounds during the last 50,000 years.

One example is giant deer. South America was once home to giant deer, including Morenelaphus brachyceros. These roughly 440-pound deer went extinct 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. When they disappeared, there was less prey for predators like saber-toothed cats and dire wolves. The loss of the deer essentially thinned out the food web.

“A lot of the lower part of the food web was lost,” Chia Hsieh, a study co-author and MSU community ecologist, said in a statement. 

Why most of Earth’s massive mammals disappeared is still up for debate. Some scientists believe that climate and environmental stresses are to blame. Others say hungry humans spreading out from Africa into other parts of the world played lead to their demise. 

Understanding extinction events of the past helps scientists better understand the potential long-term impacts of species facing the same fate now. Nearly half of all animals weighing over 20 pounds are classified as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Additionally, the planet may be experiencing a sixth mass extinction event. 

The team plans to study whether historical extinctions make certain communities more vulnerable going forward.

“By studying the past, we can also try to understand what to expect in the future,” Hsieh concluded.

The post We’re still recovering from losing the woolly mammoth appeared first on Popular Science.

The newest residents of the internet’s favorite eagle nest are rapidly growing right before our eyes. Nearly one month after hatching, Jackie and Shadow’s two to-be-named chicks are beginning to put more on thermal fur. This extra warmth was certainly helpful, after a snowstorm covered their nest in snow over the weekend.

What a difference three weeks makes. Image: Friends of Big Bear Valley.

According to nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV), the chicks are also growing their first juvenile pin feathers. These spiky feathers on the wing’s tips are essential for flight. They will continue to grow until the chicks fledge about 10 to 14 weeks after birth.

The eaglets’ pin feathers are starting to appear. Image: FOBBV

In another important step towards their independence, FOBBV says they may have “tucked” for the first time. Tucking is a significant developmental shift and helps the birds stay warm by themselves, without relying on their parents for brooding.

As always, you can follow the little eaglets’ growth with FOBBV’s livestream 24/7.

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. 

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.

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.

The post Jackie and Shadow’s chicks getting new feathers appeared first on Popular Science.

It’s a downright creepy feeling. You’re striding confidently down what seems to be a clear, open path, and then you feel it. Stretchy filaments dragging across your skin, your clothes—even worse, your face. The more you try to backtrack and flail your way out of it the more you feel like Frodo wrapped in Shelob the spider’s deadly web, your luckier friends snickering like orcs ready to take you back to Mordor. 

Long story short, walking through a spiderweb is awful. However, according to the National Park Service (NPS), there are ways to avoid the frustrating encounter. The first tip they list is sticking to the road most traveled. Since spiders are more likely to build their sticky and intricate homes near greenery, walking along the center of the trail can lessen your chances of becoming an arachnid home wrecker. 

Tip number two: “Sweep a hiking stick or trekking pole in front of you as you walk to catch any webs before you run into them,” the agency writes. “No need to go full Jedi on your first day with a new lightsaber—use it only when needed. And remember to say sorry. Manners matter, even to spiders.” 

Along the same lines, a brimmed hat can intercept webs and also protects your face from the sun’s harmful rays.The NPS also suggests—rather sensibly—walking slowly and carefully along a trail, and conducting your adventures during the middle of the day. Spiders are more active at dawn and dusk, so avoiding these times lessens your chances of an unhappy meeting. 

What’s more, a cheeky Facebook user had another clever tip that is bad news for tall friends, but a great strategy for all the short kings and queens adventuring into national parks. “Let the tallest member of your group lead the way. They will clear the path! Also, never be the tallest member of the group.”

But if, despite all this advice, you still walk into a spiderweb, rest assured that there’s another Lord of the Rings-themed silver lining from the NPS: “One does not simply become a master of karate. First, you must accidentally walk into a spider web.”

The post How to avoid the horror of walking through a spiderweb, according to the National Park Service appeared first on Popular Science.

Every day, you encounter sounds that you can’t technically hear. Some of these are produced at incredibly high pitches, but many others occur as infrasound. This range of ultra-low frequencies below 20 Hertz (Hz) are found everywhere—during thunderstorms, inside factories, and even amid rush hour traffic. But a growing body of evidence suggests that infrasound is regularly detectable in spookier situations. More specifically, the seemingly imperceptible tones may frequently show up in “haunted” hotspots.

This isn’t to say that ghosts generate ultra-low rumblings like crocodiles. Instead, researchers writing in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience suggest that infrasound may help explain why some places simply feel more creepy or foreboding than others.

“Consider visiting a supposedly haunted building. Your mood shifts, you feel agitated, but you can’t see or hear anything unusual,” Rodney Schmaltz, a psychologist at Canada’s MacEwan University and study co-author, said in a statement. “In an old building, there is a good chance that infrasound is present, particularly in basements where aging pipes and ventilation systems produce low-frequency vibrations.”

To better understand the potential relationship between unconscious auditory influences on human psychology, Schmaltz’s team asked 36 volunteers to sit by themselves in a room and listen to either unsettling or calming music clips. During half of the sessions, the study authors also exposed their volunteers to 18 Hz infrasound tones through hidden subwoofer speakers. Each person then filled out a survey to record their emotional responses to the music, as well as whether or not they suspected any exposure to infrasound. Finally, they provided a saliva sample to assess their cortisol levels.

Researchers discovered that participants’ salivary cortisol was higher when infrasound was present, whether or not the individual successfully flagged low-frequency audio. The volunteers also consistently reported higher levels of irritability and ranked the music as sadder overall. Interestingly, there was no statistical evidence suggesting people could reliably identify infrasound.

“Participants could not reliably identify whether infrasound was present, and their beliefs about whether it was on had no detectable effect on their cortisol or mood,” explained Schmaltz.

While cortisol levels are directly related to irritability and stress in humans, the experiment indicated the hormone may also be swayed by more subtle influences.

“This study suggests that the body can respond to infrasound even when we can’t consciously hear it,” Schmaltz added.

Past research supports their theory, including a famous incident from over 40 years ago. During the 1980s, a British engineer named Vic Tandy began noticing odd shapes at the corners of his vision while working in a factory for medical equipment. Coworkers had long alleged that the building itself was haunted. However, Tandy’s “visions” disappeared soon after discovering and disabling a nearby fan that was generating infrasound rumblings.

“As someone who studies pseudoscience and misinformation, what stands out to me is that infrasound produces real, measurable reactions without any visible or audible source,” said Schmaltz.

The study’s authors stress that they haven’t reached any definitive conclusions yet, citing the small sample pool and focus on a single frequency. That said, their work is one more indication that a ghost may not be what’s raising the hairs on the back of your neck—it may simply be some faulty plumbing.

The post That ghostly presence may just be bad plumbing appeared first on Popular Science.

It’s common knowledge that parrots can learn to speak like humans, sometimes a little too much. Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in England even has five foul-mouthing African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus). But can they use names the way we do?

“Although we know that wild parrots and some other animals have vocal signatures and can even use them to direct communication to other individuals, it is difficult to state precisely that they use names in the same manner as humans,” Christine Dahlin, a professor of biology at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, tells Popular Science. 

For example, a 2024 study found that wild African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) address each other with name-like calls. Wild bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are also able to address each other with learned vocal labels. 

Dahlin is co-author of a study recently published in the journal PLOS One which aims to figure out if parrots learn and use names similarly to humans. To do so, the team worked with survey data on over 889 companion parrots because of their ability to copy human words. They discovered that a significant number of parrots can indeed apprehend and use names like us. 

A sample of parrots living with humans showed the ability to correlate names with individuals, but also to use proper names in ways humans typically don’t. Image: Lauryn Benedict.

“We found that many parrots can learn and apply names appropriately, with 88 different individuals using names appropriately, sometimes for single individuals (both humans and other animals),” Dahlin explains. “However, parrots also used names in contexts that are atypical for humans, often using their own name as a means to seek attention.”

Proper names help people manage complex social interactions. Since parrots are also extremely social creatures, Dahlin says that their work shows  how wild parrots might apply their vocal learning capabilities. 

“Parrots are very social animals with impressive mimicry abilities,” she points out. “If they can learn and use names appropriately in captivity, it would not surprise me to learn they are engaging in similar behavior in their wild flocks.”

The team is still collecting survey data, so if you have a chatty parrot pet, you can participate by sending in information through the Many Parrots Project, which they used in the study. Ultimately, this is just the latest research suggesting that humans aren’t all that much more special than other animals.

The post Parrots use names to talk to each other appeared first on Popular Science.

What are you the most wrong about? You know the least about stuff far away from you in distant galaxies, but as you have few opinions about that, and it hardly affects you, who cares?

But what are you the most wrong about where you do have opinions, and where they are consequential for you? Consider seven factors that say when you are BLINDED:

• [B]ound: When you are judged by your group on your confident and unthinking belief in and loyalty to particular claims, you won’t study them well.

• [L]ow-Impact: When you are wrong about factors relevant for collective choices, your vote barely moves them, and so you have little incentive to think about them to make them better.

• [I]ndefinite: When concepts come from a high dimensional space where it seems hard to pin them down, separate them, or to define or measure them.

• [N]on-Connected: When you see relevant concepts as coming from a whole separate realm that has no logical connections to all the usual realms where you know things.

• [D]evalued: When you declare yourself to be largely indifferent to the consequences for you, as something else matters much more to you.

• [E]vidence-Poor: When you actually have little relevant data to draw on, and the best data that you have supporting your opinion is the mere fact that some groups like yours have continued to exist and while holding this opinion.

• [D]ynamic: When the topic is about what changes to be making to your group’s collective choices, either recently or in the near future, the mere fact that your group exists no longer offers even weak evidence for those choices.

The max mistake topic area, with all of these factors, is: the adaptiveness of your morals.

Your group suspects that you are evil if you do not see their morals as obvious, and even suspects you if you had to think to come to agree with them. Morality is a collective choice, where you are punished for deviating, so to have an impact you’d have to change your group’s shared moral opinions. Moral concepts tend to be hard to pin down, and today most see moral claims as sitting in a disconnected realm where all our usual non-moral claims are not relevant.

On the topic of the cultural and DNA adaptiveness of your group’s morality (and norms and status markers), most people say they care much less about the adaptiveness of their morals than about the “moral truth” of their morals. Figuring out theoretically which morals are more adaptive is actually quite hard, and so our best evidence is empirical: which successful societies have had which morals. But the fact that your society seems inclined to change its morals lately in a particular direction is far weaker evidence for the adaptiveness of that direction.

The topic where you most need careful thought is also where your community most punishes such thought. This is our big blind spot on which our civ will likely fall.

If the next three Version 3 Starship flights go as planned. Flight 12 in May is the V3 rocket debut with in-space Raptor relight. Flight 13 will have orbital insertion and possibly initial commercial V3 Starlink deployments. Flight 13 should have booster recovery and if things go good a Starship catch attempt. Flight 14 could ...

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Consider the social ranking of who is how much of an intellectual. Think of this ranking as made by a weighted average of the opinions of other intellectuals. If we look at how this weighting changes across intellectual levels, there will be a median level, where half of the weight comes from opinions above that level, and half below.

I asked ChatGPT (5.5) and Claude (4.7) to give percentile estimates for the median level who judges who are the very best intellectuals, for the West in various years. They gave median 99%,99.5% for year 1000, median 96%,97% for year 1750, median 93%,90% for 1900, and median 88%,80% for 2025.

We have thus seen an increasing populism in who among us judges who are our very best intellectuals. Which is plausibly a source of intellectual decay. Especially as it is often noted that we usually find it hard to distinguish between mental quality levels above our own.

New weapon for US soldiers can wipe out drones and enemy in trenches with rapid fire air burst grenades. These are $50K per gun for the version being reviewed. This is a follow up to previously failed grenade weapons. One shot clears a room or can take a section of trench. Semi auto grenade launcher ...

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The Dylan Patel, head of Semianalysis, interview is a must watch for anyone tracking AI economics, infrastructure, and future societal shifts. SemiAnalysis’s own AI spend exploded from tens of thousands last year to $7 million annualized run-rate right now. Even non-technical staff are now heavy Claude/Code users. Semianalysis metrics and work are cited by Nvidia ...

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Many (Poincaré 1908, Schumpeter 1911, Ogburn 1922) have said that, as there are so many good ideas out there, most innovation is just simple combos of prior good ideas. This seems true of my best idea.

April 25, 1996, thirty years ago today, I first posted my best idea: decision markets, i.e., speculative markets that advise specific decisions by estimating decision-conditional outcomes. A.k.a., “futarchy” as applied to governance. It’s not my deepest, grandest, beautiful, or hardest won insight, just the one with the biggest expected impact.

My idea was a simple combo of two other long-well-known ideas.

The first prior idea I built on is that speculative markets do quite well at aggregating info. This was explored in theory (Emory 1896, Gibson 1889, Bachelier 1900) and in data (Cowles 1933, Working 1934). Even so in 1996, US regulators in practice only allowed risk-hedging, not info aggregation, as an “economics rationale” to allow markets to exist. (The allowed “price discovery” rationale was tied to helping other markets hedge risks.)

In 1984 I left grad school in physics and philosophy of science at U Chicago to go to Silicon Valley to do AI research, and on the side work with Xanadu, trying to invent the World Wide Web. Around 1988 I first started to have doubts about the Xanadu vision of reforming public convo by making criticism easy to find, and wondered what else we could do instead. So I started to think and write about the big potential of making speculative markets to aggregate info on far more topics. Like most everyone who first enters this space, I was first thinking mainly in terms of markets on the usual topics we see in mass media, punditry, and public policy debates.

The second prior idea I built on is that info is mainly valuable by informing specific decisions. For many centuries we’ve seen calculations of the value of certain specific info for specific decisions. And then we developed more general theory (Ramsey 1928, Hosiansson 1931, Blackwell 1951, Savage 1953, Schlaifer 1959). At Caltech social science grad school 1993-1997, I learned decision theory and the standard value of info calculation. Then wondering where speculative markets could add the most info value, ~1996 I realized that this would likely come from markets estimating specific outcomes given specific decision choices.

As I was one of the first to write on the big potential of prediction markets, many who entered this space over the years approached me. At which point I usually pitched this decision market concept. Which usually pushed them away, as they were focused, as I was initially, on those mass media and punditry topics. But I have doggedly persisted.

Most all innovations combine simple elegant ideas with messy details that make those ideas work. Mine is no different. To find the right messy details, one needs concrete trials and experiments trying different detail versions. It has been hard to find orgs willing to do this, as org decision making is usually quite political. But in the last few years we’ve thankfully started to see some trials.

As an econ professor who specialized in governance, I can assure you that the world is greatly structured by the fact that we typically have pretty incompetent governance. Imagine a governance that, when assigned a goal, would reliably achieve that if it is in fact feasible. This would radically reshape our whole world. (Yes, even if we soon get powerful AIs.) As decisions markets plausibly enable such competent governance, this is why I estimate their expected impact to be so very great.

SpaceX dish production is ramping toward 50,000 dishes/day. It is already at ~25k/day recently. The high speed internet subscriber base could more than double to ~20–25 million by end of 2026 and then ~50 million in 2027. This will be about $25-30 billion of revenue by the end of 2026 when including launch revenue. The ...

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Human action plans are often organized around goal hierarchies, with lower-level subgoals helping to achieve higher-level goals. And many parameters correlate simply with this high-to-low goal axis. For example, lower-level goals and actions tend to take less space, time, and other resources. They are less likely to conflict with other goals, and more likely to be time-consistent. They are more easily evaluated for success, better described by simple abstractions, more reliably controlled, and more easily optimized by hill-climbing. They seem more observable, reversible, and substitutable, give faster feedback, and are more easily automated.

However, other related parameters depend on this key high-to-low goal axis in less simple ways; they instead peak at some mid-level, and fall away from that in both directions. For example, we have more conscious awareness of, give more conscious attention to, and make more deliberate choices re mid level goals. We can more clearly articulate them and their relations to other goals, and we can more easily teach others to manage them. People coordinate with each other more here, and our blame, credit, norms, and laws focus more here. There is more cultural variety of behaviors at these mid levels; other behaviors are more set by DNA.

A noteworthy exception is that such mid-peaking parameters often peak at much higher levels in large for-profit orgs, and in other large orgs, like militaries, with strong incentives tied to concrete goals. Such orgs often can and do articulate, measure, credit, and blame the behaviors of top people who mange high-level goals.

A simple interpretation of these patterns is that cultural evolution of coordinated behaviors faced a key tradeoff. Let me explain.

As thinking and talking takes time, there is a lowest level of goals and actions where we can discuss them as we choose and do them, so that such talk greatly influences those actions. While humans can and do watch and learn details of others’ behaviors that are at much lower-levels, we mostly do this non-verbally and unconsciously.

However, to enforce norms, including the norms that say that we should keep our promises, we humans need to be able say to others in sometimes-verifiable words what we and others have or have not been doing lately. So that we can complain about such actions, and recruit others to exert social pressures toward norm enforcement. To defend ourselves against such accusations, our conscious minds were created to manage key stories of what we’ve been doing lately and why.

So cultural evolution got into the habit of having us think and talk consciously about goals near this lowest-articulable level, and also to notice, copy, and teach chunks of behavior near these levels. And in addition, we mostly manage our norms, status markers, and key coordination mechanisms near such levels. As this cultural evolution process is pretty random and uncoordinated, efforts to abstract these norms and chunks most naturally expressed at these mid levels into higher level goals don’t usually achieve much clarity or coherence. Also, we seem reluctant to explicitly name cultural adaption itself as a big higher level goal.

So why didn’t we instead define and manage our social coordination using much higher levels goals? The simple correlations above say that such higher goals would tend to be less modular, less observable, and less easily described using abstractions. Making it harder for us to see and describe them, and to enforce norms about them.

However, with the invention of money and for-profit orgs, the world has now found new ways to use modular observable goals at quite high-levels. When we allow such orgs to manage key areas of life, they have shown remarkable abilities to effectively coordinate our behaviors. The problem is that, in many minds at least, their wider use would violate other key norms that we have inherited from cultural evolution.

Notice that cultural natural selection of individual behaviors seems insufficient to evolve better norms and status markers, as these are features of key game-theoretic equilibria, where individuals deviations are punished. We need instead to have collective deviations of entire cultures, i.e., units with much stronger internal than external conformity pressures.

Alas this process has been greatly hindered in the last few centuries by decreasing variety and selection pressures, and increasing rates of environmental change and internal cultural drift. Which is plausibly causing such norms to decay, plausibly leading to civ collapse and replacement in a century or two.

While space exploration is serious and sometimes dangerous scientific work, that does not mean that there is no room for fun. Something as mundane as a little ball of water can be supremely entertaining.

In a video shared by NASA, Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen are seen watching a ball of water floating around in zero-gravity. The water itself is moving around and shaping the light around it in some surprisingly complex ways.

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Without any force pulling the water downward, surface tension molds the liquid into a floating sphere. The light then bends inside the bubble, distorting and inverting images. According to retired NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, water like this offers a simple physics lesson and reminder that what see all depends on how we look it.

Wiseman is also no stranger to playing with water in space. During a mission in 2014, he and other crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) explored water’s surface tension in microgravity. They even went as far as putting a waterproof camera inside a bubble to get a water’s-eye view of zero-G. 

On April 10, the Artemis II crew—Commander Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Koch and Hansen—splashed down after their historic 10-day mission. Along the way, they surpassed Apollo 13’s record for farthest crewed spaceflight and captured breathtaking photographs of the far side of the moon. They also ate a lot of hot sauce and troubleshooted relatable toilet troubles. Their scientific work also will help prepare future astronauts to live and work on the moon, as NASA builds a future Moon Base and looks towards further expeditions to Mars.

The post Watch the Artemis II astronauts have fun with bubbles appeared first on Popular Science.