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janrinok writes:

First device based on 'optical thermodynamics' can route light without switches

A team of researchers at the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has created a new breakthrough in photonics: the design of the first optical device that follows the emerging framework of optical thermodynamics.

The work, reported in Nature Photonics, introduces a fundamentally new way of routing light in nonlinear systems—meaning systems that do not require switches, external control, or digital addressing. Instead, light naturally finds its way through the device, guided by simple thermodynamic principles.

Universal routing is a familiar engineering concept. In mechanics, a manifold valve directs inputs to a chosen outlet. In digital electronics, a Wi-Fi router at home or an Ethernet switch in a data center directs information from many input channels to the correct output port, ensuring that each stream of data reaches its intended destination.

When it comes to light, the same problem is far more challenging, however. Conventional optical routers rely on complex arrays of switches and electronic control to toggle pathways. These approaches add technical difficulty, while limiting speed and performance.

The photonics team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering has now shown that there is another way. The idea can be likened to a marble maze that arranges itself.

Normally, you'd have to lift barriers and guide a marble step-by-step to make sure it reaches its destination—the right hole. In the USC team's device, however, the maze is built so that no matter where you drop the marble, it will roll on its own toward the right place—no guiding hands needed. And this is exactly how light behaves: it finds the correct path naturally, by following the principles of thermodynamics.

The implications of the new approach extend far beyond the laboratory. As computing and data processing continue to push the limits of traditional electronics, various companies—including chip designers such as NVIDIA and others—are exploring optical interconnects as a way to move information faster and more efficiently.

jelizondo writes:

The Times of India published an interesting article explaining the 2025 Economics Nobel Prize:

"We're a planet of six billion ninnies living in a civilisation built by a few thousand savants," Scott Adams once said — and beneath the Dibert creator's misanthropy is a disarmingly accurate description of how the modern world works. Most of us don't invent, build, or discover anything of world-changing importance. We live inside systems we didn't design, using tools we don't understand, and benefitting daily from the work of people whose names we'll never know. And yet, we're quick to criticise those same systems — science, technology, capitalism — that lifted us from the brink of subsistence to a level of prosperity our ancestors couldn't imagine.

[...] For most of recorded history, humanity went nowhere fast. A peasant in medieval Europe lived much the same life as a farmer in ancient Mesopotamia. Empires rose and fell, plagues came and went, and the occasional invention — a plough here, a printing press there — might briefly improve life. But those improvements rarely built on one another. Progress was sporadic and short-lived. The line of human prosperity was basically flat.

This year's Nobel laureates — Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt — offer complementary answers to that question. Together, their work explains why humanity's growth engine roared to life — and what keeps it running today.

Joel Mokyr, an economic historian, argues that the Industrial Revolution wasn't just about machines — it was about knowledge. Before the 18th century, most human innovation was based on know-how: practical skills, techniques, and tricks. People knew how to do things but not why they worked. Without that deeper understanding, invention couldn't build on itself. Progress happened in bursts but couldn't compound.

The Enlightenment changed that. Science and technology stopped being separate worlds and started reinforcing each other. Scientific discoveries explained why things worked, which allowed engineers to design better tools and machines. Those tools, in turn, raised new scientific questions. Mokyr calls this cycle "useful knowledge" — a feedback loop between theory and practice that transformed invention from a series of lucky accidents into a self-sustaining system.

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-nanoplastics-farm-animal-cells-human.html

Scientists at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN) in Dummerstorf and the University of Udine have detected the uptake of nanoplastics in farm animal cell cultures. The results provide evidence of potential risks to animal health, meat production and also human food safety.

Plastic bags, packaging, yogurt lids—items that are carelessly thrown away decompose over years into tiny plastic particles. They end up in soil, waterways and ultimately in our food chain. Although numerous studies have already shown that microplastics can harm marine animals, birds and insects, the effects of nanoplastics on livestock have hardly been researched to date.

Unlike microplastics (1 µm–5 mm), there are currently few adequate methods for detecting nanoplastics (< 1 µm) in humans and animals. However, researchers assume that these small particles can also accumulate in tissue.

In a joint study, researchers from the FBN and the University of Udine have demonstrated the uptake of nanoplastic particles made of polystyrene into cultured cells from cattle and pigs. This absorption led to changes that could impair the cell function and health of the animals in the long term.

"Since we still know far too little about nanoplastics and detection is difficult, our results are particularly important for better assessing the risks," explains Dr. Anja Baufeld from the Cell Physiology and Reproduction working group at the FBN. "When we saw that nanoplastics were entering the cells, we knew that this could have far-reaching consequences," Baufeld continues.

[...] "Our research shows that nanoplastics are not only an environmental problem, but could also have direct consequences for the health of farm animals. These initial findings highlight the importance of conducting more intensive research into plastic pollution in order to assess the potential risks to both animals and humans at an early stage," says Baufeld.

More information: Francesca Corte Pause et al, Exploring the influence of polystyrene-nanoplastics on two distinct in vitro systems in farm animals: A pilot study, Science of The Total Environment (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.179378
       

Original Submission

upstart writes:

After blasting Wikipedia as biased and 'woke' and pushing for it to be defunded, Elon Musk says he's building his own online encyclopedia through xAI:

Elon Musk plans to take on Wikipedia with his own rival encyclopedia site.

On Tuesday, the Tesla CEO tweeted that his xAI startup is building Grokipedia, which he claims will be a "massive improvement" over Wikipedia. Musk has long had a gripe with Wikipedia, accusing it of being "woke" and even calling for it to be defunded. (The encyclopedia site has long relied on donations.) In January, Musk also railed at Wikipedia for adding an entry about him allegedly making a Nazi-like salute at a Trump inauguration event.

To create Grokipedia, Musk plans on tapping xAI's Grok chatbot (which he also created as an alternative to another technology he didn't like, ChatGPT). Grok has been trained on web data, including public tweets. In a podcast earlier this month, Musk suggested that Grok is smart enough not only to replicate the work of human community volunteers who maintain and update Wikipedia, but also to account for any bias or inaccuracies.

"Grok is using heavy amounts of inference compute to look at, as an example, a Wikipedia page, what is true, partially true, or false, or missing in this page," he said. "Now rewrite the page to correct, remove the falsehoods, correct the half-truths, and add the missing context." (That said, Grok has suffered its own share of problems, including praising Hitler.)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Drones fell out of the sky causing fires in a light show in Southern China in Liuyang Hunan Province went horribly wrong. Footage shared online shows the drones spiralling out of control and crashing into the ground, some bursting into flames and igniting fires. Social media users compared the fallout to the Armageddon movie.

A drone show in China has gone horribly wrong after hundreds of synchronised drones fell from the sky, starting fires.

The light show in Southern China has ended in chaos after hundreds of drones malfunctioned and fell from the sky during National Day celebrations.

The incident occurred last Thursday night in Liuyang, Hunan Province – a city known as China's fireworks capital – during a large-scale performance combining fireworks and drones at the Sky Theatre.

Footage shared online shows the drones spiralling out of control and crashing into the ground, some bursting into flames and igniting fires.

[...] The event, titled "October: The Sound of Blooming Flowers," is intended to create a 3D visual display with the help of drones over land and the city's river.

[...] Just last year, a drone show in China's mainland city of Quanzhou descended into chaos after more than 2000 drones went haywire, causing them to plummet towards crowds.

---

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

After visiting a string of factories, Jim Farley (Ford's chief executive) was left astonished by the technical innovations being packed into Chinese cars – from self-driving software to facial recognition:

"Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West," Farley warned in July.

"We are in a global competition with China, and it's not just EVs. And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford."

The car industry boss is not the only Western executive to have returned shaken following a visit to the Far East.

Andrew Forrest, the Australian billionaire behind mining giant Fortescue – which is investing massively in green energy – says his trips to China convinced him to abandon his company's attempts to manufacture electric vehicle powertrains in-house.

"I can take you to factories [in China] now, where you'll basically be alongside a big conveyor and the machines come out of the floor and begin to assemble parts," he says.

[...] It's also a far cry from the cheap "Made in China" goods that many Westerners have associated with the "workshop of the world" in the past, underscoring how much cash has been poured into upgrading China's industrial processes.

Far from being focused on low-quality products, China is now viewed as a leader in rapidly-growing, high-value technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs), batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, drones and advanced robotics.

[...] The overall number of robots added in China last year was 295,000, compared to 27,000 in Germany, 34,000 in the US and just 2,500 in the UK.

Also at ZeroHedge.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New Method Is the Fastest Way To Find the Best Routes:

If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle the easiest pieces first. But this kind of sorting has a cost. You may end up spending too much time putting the pieces in order.

This dilemma is especially relevant to one of the most iconic problems in computer science: finding the shortest path from a specific starting point in a network to every other point. It's like a souped-up version of a problem you need to solve each time you move: learning the best route from your new home to work, the gym and the supermarket.

"Shortest-paths is a beautiful problem that anyone in the world can relate to," said Mikkel Thorup, a computer scientist at the University of Copenhagen.

Intuitively, it should be easiest to find the shortest path to nearby destinations. So if you want to design the fastest possible algorithm for the shortest-paths problem, it seems reasonable to start by finding the closest point, then the next-closest, and so on. But to do that, you need to repeatedly figure out which point is closest. You'll sort the points by distance as you go. There's a fundamental speed limit for any algorithm that follows this approach: You can't go any faster than the time it takes to sort.

Forty years ago, researchers designing shortest-paths algorithms ran up against this "sorting barrier." Now, a team of researchers has devised a new algorithm that breaks it. It doesn't sort, and it runs faster than any algorithm that does.

"The authors were audacious in thinking they could break this barrier," said Robert Tarjan, a computer scientist at Princeton University. "It's an amazing result."

To analyze the shortest-paths problem mathematically, researchers use the language of graphs — networks of points, or nodes, connected by lines. Each link between nodes is labeled with a number called its weight, which can represent the length of that segment or the time needed to traverse it. There are usually many routes between any two nodes, and the shortest is the one whose weights add up to the smallest number. Given a graph and a specific "source" node, an algorithm's goal is to find the shortest path to every other node.

The most famous shortest-paths algorithm, devised by the pioneering computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra in 1956, starts at the source and works outward step by step. It's an effective approach because knowing the shortest path to nearby nodes can help you find the shortest paths to more distant ones. But because the end result is a sorted list of shortest paths, the sorting barrier sets a fundamental limit on how fast the algorithm can run.

In 1984, Tarjan and another researcher improved Dijkstra's original algorithm so that it hit this speed limit. Any further improvement would have to come from an algorithm that avoids sorting.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Thorup and other researchers devised algorithms that broke the sorting barrier, but they needed to make certain assumptions about weights. Nobody knew how to extend their techniques to arbitrary weights. It seemed they'd hit the end of the road.

"The research stopped for a very long time," said Ran Duan, a computer scientist at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "Many people believed that there's no better way."

Duan wasn't one of them. He'd long dreamed of building a shortest-paths algorithm that could break through the sorting barrier on all graphs. Last fall, he finally succeeded.

Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-restricts-ie-mode-access-in-edge-after-zero-day-attacks/

Microsoft is restricting access to Internet Explorer mode in Edge browser after learning that hackers are leveraging zero-day exploits in the Chakra JavaScript engine for access to target devices.

The tech giant did not share too many technical details but said that the threat actor combined social engineering with an exploit in Chakra to gain remote code execution.

"The [Edge security] team recently received intelligence indicating that threat actors were abusing Internet Explorer (IE) mode within Edge to gain access to unsuspecting users' devices," says Gareth Evans, Microsoft Edge Security Team Lead.

Although support for Internet Explorer ended on June 15, 2022, Microsoft Edge has an IE mode for legacy compatibility with older technologies (ActiveX and Flash) still in use with a small set of business applications and government portals.

In August, the Edge security team learned that threat actors were directing targets to "an official-looking spoofed website" that prompted users, through an interface element, to load the page in IE mode.

After exploiting the zero-day in Chakra, the attacker leveraged a second vulnerability to increase privileges and escape the browser, and take full control of the device.

Evans did not provide identifiers for the exploited vulnerabilities and said the flaw in Chakra is unpatched.

To mitigate the risk, Microsoft removed the methods that allowed activating IE mode in Edge through easy methods, like the dedicated toolbar button, context menu, and items in the hamburger menu.

Users who want IE mode active now have to navigate to Settings > Default Browser > Allow and define the pages that should be loaded using Internet Explorer.

The new restrictions aim at making the activation of IE mode an intentional user action. Furthermore, the list of websites approved to load in IE mode should make it very difficult for attackers to succeed in their compromise attempts.

These changes do not apply to commercial users, who will continue to use IE mode as configured through enterprise policies.

However, Microsoft reminded users that they should migrate from the legacy web technology in Internet Explorer to modern products that deliver better security, are more reliable, and come with improved performance.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Wild honeybees now officially listed as endangered in the EU

You might think honeybees are thriving—after all, the honey industry is growing and its bees are well looked after by beekeepers. But not all honeybees live in hives. Across Europe, colonies still live in the wild, nesting in tree cavities and other natural spaces, just as their ancestors did for millions of years.

Now, for the first time, these wild honeybee populations have been officially categorized as endangered within the European Union. That's according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List, the world's official database of species conservation statuses.

The western honeybee has a long history with humans. People have kept honeybee colonies for thousands of years, dating back to the ancient Egyptians who kept them in rudimentary hives to harvest honey. But it's modern beekeeping, with its mobile hives and commercial pollination, that has had the widest impact on the species.

Because of that, today the western honeybee exists in two forms: the managed colonies kept in hives, and the wild ones that live independently of people. Both belong to the same species, Apis mellifera, but their lives and their prospects are radically different.

Managed honeybees have faced widely reported crises since the 2000s, when beekeepers around the world started noticing alarming losses in their hives. Since then, scientists have been working with beekeepers to investigate the causes and reduce colony mortality.

Because of this, the species as a whole is generally perceived as being under threat. But the reality is more complex than that. While it is true that managed colonies continue to suffer high losses, they are actively cared for by beekeepers and studied by researchers. The same cannot be said for their wild counterparts, which, until recently were relatively unstudied, especially in Europe.

The gap in knowledge led several European researchers to start investigating honeybees living freely in the wild. Such colonies have now been documented throughout Ireland and the UK, in national parks in France, the forests of Germany, Switzerland, and Poland, up and down Italy, and even in cities such as Belgrade in Serbia. These are now under study to understand if they can form self-sustaining populations capable of living without human help.

To connect these independent research projects, a global initiative called Honey Bee Watch was formed in 2020. Its goal: to better understand how honeybees live in the wild. Under this coalition, I have been part of a team of 14 scientists and experts, who have worked with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to reassess the conservation status of wild A. mellifera populations.

This formed part of a monumental effort to update the European Red List of Bees, led by researchers at the University of Mons in Belgium, which examined the conservation status of almost 2,000 species—many for the first time.

Back in 2014, wild A. mellifera populations had been listed as "data deficient" in Europe because there wasn't enough information to answer a question that seemed simple enough: if a colony is found living in a tree, how can we tell whether it's truly wild or has escaped from a managed hive?

Our new assessment took a different approach. Honeybees are not truly domesticated, since beekeepers have never been able to completely prevent them from breeding with other colonies, whether wild or managed. This means genetic differences between managed and wild colonies are often blurred.

Instead of trying to draw a genetic line separating the two, we adapted the IUCN's definition of "wild" as it relates to honeybees. This meant we defined wild honeybee populations based on two criteria:

First, they live freely without management. And second, they can sustain their numbers independently without relying on the introduction of new colonies, such as those that escaped from managed hives.

Using ecology rather than genetics to define wild honeybees meant we could better evaluate their conservation status.

Europe has the lowest density of free-living colonies in the world, as managed hives far outnumber wild ones. And, thanks to a recent analysis provided by our fellow assessors, we know that their numbers are declining.

Combined with evidence of habitat loss, invasive parasites, diseases, and human-mediated hybridization, the picture that emerged was clear: wild honeybees are indeed in trouble.

That's why their Red List status has now been updated to "endangered within the European Union." However, for the wider pan-European region, they remain "data deficient" due to scarce data for areas such as the Balkans, the Baltics, Scandinavia and eastern Europe.

Protecting wild honeybees isn't just about saving an iconic species—it's about safeguarding our food security, biodiversity and ecosystems for the future. Populations surviving in the wild are those that naturally evolved the ability to cope with parasites, diseases and other harsh conditions that can devastate managed hives. They represent a vital genetic reservoir that could help make both wild and managed bees more resilient to future threats.

The new endangered assessment is a formal recognition that wild honeybees are native wildlife in need of conservation. We can no longer afford to leave them understudied and unprotected.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

97% of companies struggle to prove AI's ROI - but these 5 expert tips can help:

Evidence suggests that many business leaders struggle to prove that an investment in generative AI delivers measurable returns.

More than 97% of organizations find it tough to demonstrate the business value of gen AI, according to a survey of 600 data leaders by Wakefield Research on behalf of technology specialist Informatica.

However, measuring AI ROI doesn't have to be an intractable challenge. ZDNET attended a panel session and spoke with digital leaders at the recent Informatica World Tour event in London to discover five ways to measure the value of AI projects.

janrinok writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-green-solvents-protein-rapeseed.html

Heriot-Watt University researchers have developed a new method to extract high-quality protein from rapeseed waste using environmentally friendly solvents, potentially offering a sustainable solution to the world's growing protein demands. The research is reported in the journal Food Hydrocolloids.

Global protein demand is expected to double by 2050; the plant protein market alone is projected to grow from £13.7 billion to £21.3 billion between 2027 and 2030.

Professor Stephen Euston, from Heriot-Watt University's School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, said, "Livestock farming produces high levels of greenhouse gases, creating a serious environmental challenge as demand for animal protein grows.

"We need alternative sources of protein that don't cost the Earth."

Euston and his colleagues have focused on rapeseed press cake, the protein-rich waste left after oil extraction.
"Rapeseed press cake has been an underused resource, and upgrading it for human consumption would make a lot of sense—there's a lot available in Scotland, as farmers use rapeseed as a break crop, and the market for the oil has been growing.

"It contains 28%–45% protein, depending on the processing method, and most of this nutritious material goes unused for human consumption."
Natural solution

Euston worked with student Grace Chidimma James to investigate whether natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) could effectively extract protein from rapeseed press cake.

James said, "NADES are eco-friendly alternatives to the harsh chemical solvents traditionally used in protein extraction.

"They have low toxicity and are biodegradable. They are also low-cost."

The solvents are created by combining natural compounds such as betaine, a naturally occurring compound found in beetroot and other sources, with citric acid, or choline chloride, a type of salt, with glycerol, forming liquids that can extract proteins without environmental damage.
Double the protein extracted

The study found that certain NADES formulations could extract significantly more protein than conventional water-based methods.

Using advanced computer simulations, the researchers discovered how these green solvents work at the molecular level. The NADES components form hydrogen bonds with proteins, potentially weakening their attachment to other materials in the rapeseed cake and making extraction easier.

The most effective combination—betaine and citric acid in a 2:1 ratio—achieved protein yields of 53%, compared to just 15% with water extraction alone.

Euston said, "While extraction with water alone gave the highest protein purity, NADES formulations were able to increase the protein yield significantly.

"However, the higher yields came at the cost of purity. The extracted protein contained other plant compounds alongside the proteins we hoped for—so there's some work to be done on refining the process."
Toward commercialization

While promising, the technology still faces hurdles before it can be commercialized.

Euston said, "More research is required on optimizing both the choice of components and concentration of species to maximize yield and purity of protein extracts.

"But this is a step towards a more sustainable food system, where agricultural waste could be upgraded for human consumption."

More information: Grace Chidimma James et al, Molecular dynamics simulation allows mechanistic understanding of natural deep eutectic solvents action on rapeseed proteins, Food Hydrocolloids (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.foodhyd.2025.111328
       

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

A new analysis of our solar system's interstellar interloper, 3I/ATLAS, reveals that it's spewing huge amounts of water — and astronomers can't immediately explain why:

The object, which is widely believed to be comet, showed strong ultraviolet emissions that are unmistakable telltales of hydroxyl gas (OH), a byproduct of water, when astronomers imaged it with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift space telescope before it disappeared behind the Sun. The emissions could only be spotted from space because the ultraviolet light would get absorbed in the atmosphere.

Their findings, detailed in a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, argue that the presence of all this OH indicates the comet is ejecting water vapor at a torrential rate of about 88 pounds per second — around the same rate as a fire hose running at full blast, according to a press release about the findings.

[...] Astronomers believe that 3I/ATLAS came from the center of the Milky Way, where it was likely booted out of its original star system by a gravitational disturbance like the close flyby of another star, braving interstellar space before eventually cruising through our solar neighborhood. Based on these inferences, astronomers estimated that the comet must be billions of years old, perhaps three billion years older than the Sun itself. It's not only a snapshot of a different part of the galaxy, but a different era of the cosmos altogether.

Previously: Does 3I/ATLAS Generate its Own Light?

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Nobel economics prize goes to 3 researchers for explaining innovation-driven economic growth

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt won the Nobel memorial prize in economics Monday for their research into the impact of innovation on economic growth and how new technologies replace older ones, a key economic concept known as "creative destruction."

The winners represent contrasting but complementary approaches to economics. Mokyr is an economic historian who delved into long-term trends using historical sources, while Howitt and Aghion relied on mathematics to explain how creative destruction works.

Dutch-born Mokyr, 79, is from Northwestern University; Aghion, 69, from the Collège de France and the London School of Economics; and Canadian-born Howitt, 79, from Brown University.

Mokyr was still trying to get his morning coffee when he was reached on the phone by an AP reporter, and said he was shocked to win the prize.

"People always say this, but in this case I am being truthful—I had no clue that anything like this was going to happen," he said.

His students had asked him about the possibility he would win the Nobel, he said. "I told them that I was more likely to be elected Pope than to win the Nobel Prize in economics—and I am Jewish, by the way."

Mokyr will turn 80 next summer but said he has no plans to retire. "This is the type of job that I dreamed about my entire life," he said.

Like fellow laureate Mokyr, Aghion also expressed surprise at the honor. "I can't find the words to express what I feel," he said by phone to the press conference in Stockholm. He said he would invest his prize money in his research laboratory.

Asked about current trade wars and protectionism in the world, Aghion said that: "I am not welcoming the protectionist way in the US. That is not good for ... world growth and innovation."

The winners were credited with better explaining and quantifying "creative destruction," a key concept in economics that refers to the process in which beneficial new innovations replace—and thus destroy—older technologies and businesses. The concept is usually associated with economist Joseph Schumpeter, who outlined it in his 1942 book "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy."

upstart writes:

Warp Speed! How Some Galaxies Can Move Away from Us Faster Than Light:

If there is an absolute law in the universe, it's that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

For science-fiction enthusiasts, that's a bit depressing. Space is big, and while the speed of light is incredibly fast to us humans, on interstellar scales it's glacially slow. Even at a photon's speed of about 300,000 kilometers per second, it's a journey of more than four years to reach just the closest star to the sun.

But we have to be careful how we state this universal law. To be more specific, nothing can move faster than the speed of light through space. That may seem like a nitpick, but it turns out to have literally cosmic importance.

To see why, we have to look at the behavior of the universe itself. One of the most important things the universe does is expand. It's getting bigger every day. The foundational observations for this, which were made more than a century ago, showed that distant galaxies appeared to be receding from us—not only that, but ones farther away were moving faster.

That's what an explosion does: at some time after the bang, the fastest-moving material will be farthest away. This is where the idea of the big bang model for the origin of the universe comes from.

The cosmic expansion can be measured as a rate, meaning at a given distance from us, a galaxy will be moving away from us at given speed. At a different distance, a galaxy will be moving at a different speed. We measure this as a rate of expansion called the Hubble constant. Our best measurements of this give a value of about 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec. In other words, a galaxy one megaparsec from us (about 3.26 million light-years) will be receding at 70 km/sec. A galaxy two megaparsecs away will be moving twice as fast, or at 140 km/sec, and so on.

Extrapolating this, though, runs us into trouble: it's not hard to see that at some distance from us, the recession speed will equal the speed of light. If you run the numbers, just using the speed of light divided by the Hubble constant, you find that distance is about 14 billion light-years. That distance is called the Hubble sphere, and anything farther away than that would be—from our perspective—moving faster than light.

Here's where things get weird. ("Oh yes, here is where that happens," I expect you're thinking.) The universe is actually quite a bit bigger than that. We know the cosmos was born about 13.8 billion years ago. By some few hundreds of millions of years later, galaxies had formed. When we see the light from a distant galaxy, it's taken, say, 12 billion years to reach us, but over that time, the universe has expanded. So the light has actually had to travel much farther than 12 billion light-years to get to us. By the time the light reaches us, that galaxy is more like 23 billion light-years away.

That means there are galaxies outside our Hubble sphere, and they are moving away from us faster than the speed of light! How is that possible?

jelizondo writes:

PsyPost has a very interesting report about the consequences of using Ayahuasca on our feelings about death.

I've been interested in the stuff but a couple of friends that tried it reported there is a large possibility of vomiting after drinking the stuff and I just don't like that. Point of fact, they ask you to fast before the ceremony to minimize vomiting but to me dry heaves are worst.

Anyway, a very interesting read.

People who regularly use ayahuasca, a traditional Amazonian psychedelic drink, may have a fundamentally different way of relating to death. A new study published in the journal Psychopharmacology indicates that long-term ayahuasca users tend to show less fear, anxiety, and avoidance around death—and instead exhibit more acceptance. These effects appear to be driven not by spiritual beliefs or personality traits, but by a psychological attitude known as "impermanence acceptance."

The findings come from researchers at the University of Haifa, who sought to better understand how psychedelics influence people's thinking and behavior around mortality. According to their data, it is not belief in an afterlife or a shift in metaphysical views that predicts reduced death anxiety. Instead, the results suggest that learning to accept change and the transient nature of life may be central to how ayahuasca helps people relate more calmly to death.

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew traditionally used by Indigenous Amazonian groups in healing and spiritual rituals. The drink contains the powerful hallucinogen DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) along with harmala alkaloids that make it orally active. Many users describe deeply emotional, and often death-themed, visions during their experiences. These may include the sensation of personal death, symbolic rebirth, contact with deceased individuals, or feelings of ego dissolution—the temporary loss of a sense of self.

The research team, led by Jonathan David and Yair Dor-Ziderman, were interested in this recurring death-related content. Historical records, cultural traditions, and previous studies all suggest that ayahuasca frequently evokes visions or thoughts related to death. In one survey, over half of ayahuasca users said they had experienced what felt like a "personal death" during a session. Others described visions involving graves, spirits, or life-after-death themes.

Despite these consistent reports, empirical studies that systematically assess how ayahuasca affects death-related cognition and emotion remain rare. Past work has often relied on limited self-reports, lacked control groups, and overlooked possible mediating psychological factors. The current study aimed to address those gaps with a more rigorous design.

"We were motivated by the lack of research exploring how ayahuasca use might relate to the way people think about and come to terms with the most certain aspect of life: death. Most studies in this area have focused on other psychedelics and on short-term or clinical effects, while we wanted to explore longer-lasting, personality-level changes. We also wanted to understand why such changes might occur, which has been largely missing from the existing literature," David told PsyPost.

"There is a hype in popular and scientific venues regarding the efficacy of psychedelics to affect a fundamental shift in our response to the theme of death. In particular, ayahuasca has long been described as the 'vine of the dead' (translation from Quechua) and death-related themes are pervasive in ayahuasca visions," added Dor-Ziderman, a research director at the University of Haifa and visiting scholar at Padova University.

"However, there has been surprisingly little empirical work on how such encounters shape one's relationship with mortality. Furthermore, most existing studies rely on single self-report scales and overlook the unconscious, behavioral, and cognitive layers of how humans process death. We wanted to provide a comprehensive, multidimensional assessment of "death processing," and to identify the causal mechanisms which mediate, or account for, long-term differences in death processing between ayahuasca users and non-users."

To examine how these individuals relate to death, the researchers administered a detailed set of questionnaires and behavioral tasks. These included measures of death anxiety, fear of personal death, death-avoidant behaviors, and death acceptance. They also used implicit tasks, such as response times to death-related words, to capture unconscious reactions. The idea was to get a broad, multi-dimensional picture of how people think and feel about mortality.

The researchers found statistically significant differences between the two groups. Compared to non-users, ayahuasca users scored lower on death anxiety, were less likely to avoid thinking about death, showed fewer fear responses, and expressed greater acceptance of mortality. These patterns held true across both self-report and behavioral measures. Notably, even the subtle response time tasks pointed in the same direction.

The effect sizes were moderate to large, suggesting these differences are not just statistical artifacts. The changes showed up in emotional, cognitive, and behavioral domains alike, which the authors interpret as evidence of a generalized shift in how ayahuasca users process the idea of death.

"Although these findings should be interpreted with caution, since this was a cross-sectional and mostly self-report study, our results suggest that ayahuasca use may help people feel less anxious about death and more accepting of it, especially among long-term users," David said.