Note: this is not an article about Mitch McConnell having a health checkup with a doctor.

Yet quantum mechanics, a thoroughly validated theory of how the world works, seems to suggest otherwise. The theory’s math assigns redness to the billiard ball at the moment you measure it. Before then, the theory gives you only a set of probabilities telling you what color the ball might be. Key founders of quantum mechanics suggested that this math reflects the nature of reality — that in some sense, a single, objective reality doesn’t really exist.

In 1935, Einstein rebelled against this surreal reading of quantum theory, proposing one of the 20th century’s most famous thought experiments. But his rebellion was doomed. In 1964, the physicist John Stewart Bell showed with a thought experiment of his own that reality had to be stranger than Einstein assumed. Subsequent work would put Bell’s thought experiment to the test — and prove him right.

Then, 50 years after Bell, Matthew Pusey (opens a new tab), at the time a graduate student at Imperial College London, took on what remained of Einstein’s notion of reality and — without originally intending to — delivered the killing blow.

The paradigm-shifting theorem became known as PBR, for Pusey and his academic accomplices, Jonathan Barrett and Terry Rudolph. Since the publication of PBR in 2012, many theorists have come to accept that it rules out our most commonsense understanding of reality.

...

As with Bell, PBR has been experimentally confirmed multiple times. Last fall, for instance, researchers in the U.K. played an expanded version of the PBR game, dealing out five cards instead of just two, using a quantum computer built by IBM. Indeed, the quantum machine always won, although no one had doubted that it would. In fact, the researchers had been using the PBR theorem mainly to check whether the quantum computer was functioning properly. The validity of quantum mechanics — and PBR — was taken as a given.

“That was really the motivation,” said Crispin Barnes (opens a new tab), a physicist at the University of Cambridge who led the experiment, “to see whether a theorem from quantum foundations could also be turned into [an] experimental probe of genuinely quantum behavior.”

...

But to conclude that the quantum state is definitely real is to misunderstand the PBR theorem, because PBR also leaves open the other extreme path: It could be, as the Copenhagenists have steadfastly maintained since the days of Bohr, that in some sense nothing is real, including the quantum state. It’s perfectly possible that the quantum state lives in our minds and has no direct connection to an objective reality. In this case, the redness of the billiard ball would be inextricably linked with the act of observing it — precisely the state of affairs that so deeply offended Einstein. “Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?” Einstein once famously pressed his colleague Abraham Pais.

PBR doesn’t give us the answer. What it does do is end a century of bargaining with quantum mechanics. By ruling out the possibility that reality is real while the wave function is not, PBR requires that physicists either fully embrace the notion of an objective but entirely surreal reality, or fully reject objective reality altogether. “Do you bite the bullet, or do you try and dodge the bullet?” Pusey said.

Led by researchers at the Natural History Museum (NHM) of Los Angeles County, the study marks a figurative explosion in the number of insect species in the Golden State. The vast gulf between the earlier and new estimates of insect life deepens the urgency of conserving the wild places these insects call home. The authors found that essentially every site studied had its own unique insect community.

This finding comes from the work of the California Insect Barcode Initiative (CIBI), a project to collect and identify every species of insect in the state. Researchers have long known that insects are underrepresented in large-scale conservation assessments despite being the most diverse group of animals on land.

To address this deficit, institutions including the California Department of Food and Agriculture, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, San Diego Natural History Museum and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco worked alongside NHM researchers to DNA barcode more than 1 million insect specimens, and this finding marks the first publication from this undertaking.

The consequences of overestimating understanding extend beyond academic debates. According to the authors, assumptions about what scientists know can influence nearly every stage of the research process, from experimental design and theory development to teaching and communication.

"It makes a case that the many incomplete levels of understanding affect, often unwittingly, the ways scientists design experiments, test theories, comprehend, communicate and teach," the authors observe.

The topic resonated widely within the scientific community. The essay attracted 32 published commentaries from researchers across multiple fields, an unusually robust response that prompted the three authors to prepare a collective reply.

The discussion reflects a longstanding interest in the strengths and limitations of human cognition. Recognizing those limitations, the authors assert, can ultimately strengthen science rather than weaken it.

Acknowledging gaps in understanding encourages greater caution when drawing conclusions, greater humility when communicating results and greater openness to alternative explanations. It also reflects the reality that scientific knowledge is continually evolving.

That is, science advances through a continual process of refining, testing and deepening humanity's understanding of how the world works. And, paradoxically, recognizing how much remains unknown may be one of the clearest signs of scientific progress.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42113-026-00271-1

The system analyzes radio signals reflected by objects, using geographically separated sites to transmit and receive sensing signals. Observing an object from several angles helps improve positioning and maintain its track as it moves through the coverage area, according to Ericsson.

The company said validated tests reliably detected and tracked micro drones at kilometer-scale distances with precise three-dimensional positioning. Performance varies with the target, its flight path, the arrangement of sensing sites, terrain, surrounding conditions and system configuration.

“Detecting small drones across large areas is a growing operational challenge. The possibility of using distributed infrastructure to complement existing sensors could provide an important additional layer of situational awareness,” said Carl Lundqvist, chief architect at Swedish Armed Forces Headquarters.

Something that is pretty interesting about publicly shared communications networks like 5G is that their saturation and high usage by all of us can be leveraged for public safety, by virtue of having cell towers everywhere and making sure to provide good coverage consistently over large areas the infrastructure necessary for mobile smartphone use inherently created a public capacity to sense small things intruding into it in ways that are highly unusual... i.e. you can detect drones. This is a metaphor for an idea that extends to a lot of abstract places too.

Another manifestation of this idea is the rapidly evolving use of pre-existing fiber optic internet cable infrastructure to seismically and acoustically sense nearby objects/the ground. The science is complex but the idea is still kind of the same. When we created extremely long lengths of fiber optic cable that could transmit millions and millions of cat videos back and forth at lightning speed and high bandwith, we also simultaneously created an extremely powerful sensor that we can use to see into the ground and detect things moving nearby.. like whales!

Article about detecting whale acoustic calls with pre-existing fiber optic cable infrastructure.

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/07/existing-fiber-optic-cables-can-monitor-whales

Article about detecting silent whales moving through the water column through special water/solid interface waves that bodies moving through the water create.

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/319419/20260701/seabed-cables-detect-silent-whales-reading-pressure-waves-not-c

Our collective data streams and the infrastructure and mediums they are conveyed by create a sort of collective ability to sense... isn't that weird/cool??!?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/73190146

not open access :(, hopefully it will become open access at some point or someone will publish similar research!

Changing the values of two of the three elements in the growth law produces markedly different shells. The starting curve at the growing edge of the shell sets the shape of the shell's opening, while the scaling factor, which the researchers call lambda (λ), determines how fast the shell expands. By changing those two factors in the model, Bhattacharya and Liu were able to generate the shape of nearly all known molluscan shells.

If only someone had a time machine to whisper this truth in the ear of Italo Calvino before he wrote his Cosmicomics series of stories!!

quote from paper abstract https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2614478123

We are guided by two principles in the spirit of D’Arcy Thompson. First, the growth is governed by the repeated and continuous application of a fixed growth law, even as the shell evolves in overall shape, without any complex biological machinery to monitor and control the growth. Second, the growth law depends solely on local geometry at the shell’s growing edge. The first principle naturally leads to the mathematical statement that the shape of the shell is generated by the action of a Lie group on a protoconch [fuckin duh bruh]. The second naturally leads to a particular representation of the Lie group. We use this representation to show that the shapes of nearly all known molluscan shells can be described by essentially three parameters: a scalar (scaling), a vector (orientation), and a curve (edge of the protoconch). We relate these parameters to the phylogenetic tree. In addition to the morphogenetic insight, our results potentially point to a alternative growth-based approach to engineering complex structures.

Wow what a strikingly beautiful thing, it is also the tiniest microdose of haunting for me because I distinctly remember remarking to a geology professor in college that I wondered if you could do a fourier transform or some kind of mathematical analysis of shells to determine if there was unifying patterns that hinted at mechanisms in some productive way and he responded with something along the lines of "but why?? what would that answer?" and all I could do was shrug and say "I have no idea, I was just wondering."

also see https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/the-mathematics-of-growing-a-shell

paper on related subject from 2019, some great graphics https://arxiv.org/html/1901.00497v3

We note that previous work by some of the authors [36] already has highlighted the role of a spatial variation in material properties in shaping the sharp spines seen on the shells of bivalves, cephalopods and gastropods. The present communication adds to this emerging picture of the influence of physics, by shifting the focus to geometry, which, driven by morphoelastic growth, acts through the mechanism of surface growth and a parametric dependence on curvature.

Of particular interest is the further coupling of this framework with pattern formation by a range of reaction-transport equations. This would make accessible well-studied developmental milestones such as the patterning and morphogenesis of limbs and digits. Other problems in morphogenesis, such as the formation of skeletons are also within reach of our computational framework. Finally, we note that we have modelled antimarginal ornamentation events via bursts of growth. It is more likely that the growth rate does not change significantly at the location of ornamentations, but rather that the thickness of the mantle decreases, creating an increase in the length of the active mantle strip and a corresponding decrease in stiffness without requiring a strong increase in material. This effect would be interesting to incorporate in future studies, as the decrease in stiffness would further amplify the amplitudes of transverse deformation, and also may be non-uniform along the length of the mantle strip.

^ this is basically what the linked article/paper claims to have described

The ocean currents are changing, with major implications for climate around the world. Yet our new article published in Nature Sustainability suggests most governments are not preparing for this possibility. Of 91 national adaptation plans submitted to the U.N. climate convention, only two even mention that key Atlantic current, and neither sets out concrete action in response to its possible collapse.

To encourage people to add new data, the pipeline used to standardize the data is publicly available as part of the data set. This allows other researchers with access to similar data to grid and standardize it themselves before submitting it to the open database.

"Projects like this advance science through collaboration, accessibility and preservation of data," said Dee, who is also an author on the paper.

"This database will allow researchers across the world to ask questions about cloud formation, moisture transport processes, El Niño and La Niña, deforestation, soil moisture and more. It's so important to highlight that it's not just the collection of data that matters; it's also the effort it takes to make the data truly usable for the broader research community, students and even the public."

link to open access paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-026-08218-8

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/72949590

DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, and is committed to ensuring quality content is openly available online for everyone.

DOAJ is committed to keeping its services as open as possible and its data openly available.

This is a great resource for searching for open access papers and open access journals!!

It feels so much more welcoming when all of the search results are things you can actually open, poke around in and read!

A link to all of the journals

https://doaj.org/search/journals?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%2C%22size%22%3A50%2C%22sort%22%3A%5B%7B%22created_date%22%3A%7B%22order%22%3A%22desc%22%7D%7D%5D%2C%22track_total_hits%22%3Atrue%7D

Since it was first recorded by a probe in 2018, scientists have been unable to find a plausible explanation for the existence of this cloud, often referred to as the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC). Until now. Recently, researchers successfully modeled the cloud’s formation for the first time, their results suggesting that it may be driven by a physical process that has never been directly observed in any planet’s atmosphere.

“We found that we needed to include some exotic physics… physics that, while included in textbooks, is treated as theoretical and usually thought not to happen in nature. It certainly hasn’t been seen in action before,” Jorge Hernández-Bernal, a planetary scientist at Paris’ Sorbonne Université and lead author of the study, said in a press release. “Once we included this physics in our simulations, the AMEC emerged just as we hoped.”

On Earth, clouds usually form when water vapor creates droplets or ice crystals in the presence of tiny particles, such as dust or salt. The new study, published in Nature Geoscience, instead suggests AMEC could be forming through so-called homogeneous nucleation, where vapor changes directly into ice crystals on its own without any help from debris.

“It’s akin to droplets of condensation appearing in the middle of a room, rather than on a window,” Hernández-Bernal explained. “It’s wholly unexpected.”

Shribak begins enlarging images of diatoms, tardigrades, and sea urchins, each containing colorful details that are usually invisible to the human eye. Humans typically perceive two properties of light: intensity (brightness) and wavelengths (color). The microscope Shribak developed and patented at the MBL in 2009, the polychromatic polarization microscope, allows him to visualize and record another property of light: Polarization.

Japan launches Martian Moons eXploration mission to Phobos

Throughout the summer of 2026, there were plenty of signs of what was to come. Every week, it seemed, artificial intelligence models were offering proofs of decades-old mathematical conjectures. So what happened on September 8 shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. And yet to many it felt sudden, almost violent. OpenAI announced that its models had solved one of math’s most famous problems — and immediately sparked a controversy over authorship and standards. Mathematics would never be the same.

“In whatever years I have left, I don’t expect that I’ll ever again prove a theorem because I’m actually needed to prove it,” Scott Aaronson (opens a new tab) of the University of Texas, Austin wrote on his blog (opens a new tab). “Human mathematicians are forevermore dethroned as the main theorem-proving entities on planet earth.” Other online missives expressed optimism, but many revealed some combination of grief, confusion, and fear.

Two days after the announcement, I found myself in a classroom at the University of California, Berkeley, surrounded by some 150 students, postdocs, and professors. The mathematician Ken Ono, who took a leave of absence from the University of Virginia to work at an AI start-up called Axiom Math, was scheduled to give a talk. “You might be graduating into a profession that might not even exist, or that will be very different than what you expected,” Ono told them. “You need to brace.”

The audience responded with anger and frustration. There were whispers and exchanged glances; Ono couldn’t make it through a single slide without a fresh wave of questions. “I’m not entirely sure what our takeaway is supposed to be,” one student said. Another asked how Ono and his start-up would take responsibility in light of “the shameful way that AI companies are treating mathematics.”

When Ono said that mathematicians would do their “very best” to avoid the bleak future the students were envisioning, a third retorted, hands trembling: “What are you doing? What is your ‘very best’?” The talk, including time for questions, had been allotted 50 minutes; with the extended Q&A, it went on for more than two hours. Many students lingered afterward, to vent and console one another.

To me, the reasons for these emotional reactions were obvious. The young mathematicians recognized that their field would have to change or risk extinction. What did surprise me was that when I returned to New York and brought it up in conversations with friends or family, they didn’t see what the problem was. All sorts of amazing discoveries are around the corner, they imagined. Wasn’t that the point?

These conversations exposed a long-standing problem: Many people don’t know what mathematics really is, or why mathematicians do it. Now mathematicians need to answer that question for themselves and explain it to the rest of the world — quickly. How they answer will determine what happens next.

Watch on Invidious: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=I4l-zFWZCS0

Conclusions and Relevance In this qualitative study, transgender women and nonbinary adults assigned male at birth described experiencing hirsutism-related stigma and facing barriers to permanent hair removal. Multilevel changes aimed to reduce stigma, educate clinicians on hair-removal options, expand transgender-inclusive hair-removal services, and advocate for insurance coverage for permanent hair removal are required to reduce barriers to access medically necessary permanent hair removal for gender dysphoria.

Jonathan Halliwell explains how quantum decoherence is key to understanding how we transition from a world with a wave-like nature of matter and energy to the classical macroscopic world that we’re used to.