New study shows the boundary between time moving forward and backward may blur in quantum mechanics. A team of physicists at the Universities of Bristol, Vienna, the Balearic Islands and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI-Vienna) has shown how quantum systems can simultaneously evolve along two opposite time arrows — both forward and backward in time. The study, published in the latest issue of Communications Physics, necessitates a rethink of how the flow of time is understood and represented in contexts where quantum laws play a crucial role....

Adults infected with SARS-CoV-2 exhale different metabolites in their breath than uninfected people, and dogs and diagnostic devices can detect these changes. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Infectious Diseases have shown that children infected with SARS-CoV-2 also show breath metabolite changes, but they’re largely different from the ones in adults. Someday, this information could be used to quickly and easily screen children for infection, the researchers say. Currently, COVID-19 is diagnosed through the detection of specific viral nucleic acids or antigens, but these techniques are slow, relatively expensive, sometimes uncomfortable and prone to false-negative results....

A new study from scientists at The University of Queensland and Harvard University suggests that treatment for Alzheimer’s disease may lie in modifying the length of mitochondria, finding that expression of human tau results in elongation of mitochondria in both Drosophila and mouse neurons and that elongation is accompanied by mitochondrial dysfunction and cell cycle-mediated cell death, which can be rescued in vivo by genetically restoring the proper balance of mitochondrial fission and fusion....

Sports-related concussions and mild traumatic brain injuries have grabbed headlines in recent months, as the long-term damage they can cause becomes increasingly evident among both current and former athletes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that millions of these injuries occur each year. Despite the devastating consequences of traumatic brain injury and the large number of athletes playing contact sports who are at risk, no method has been developed for early detection or tracking of the brain pathology associated with these injuries....

In 2010 scientists discovered four ‘monster’ sized stars, with the heaviest more than 300 times as massive as our Sun. Despite their incredible luminosity, these exotic objects, located in the giant star cluster R136 in the nearby galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud; have oddly so far been found nowhere else. Now a group of astronomers at the University of Bonn have a new explanation: the ultramassive stars were created from the merger of lighter stars in tight binary systems....

Berkeley Lab researchers are part of an international team that reports a high-sensitivity measurement by underground CUPID-Mo experiment. Nuclear physicists affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) played a leading role in analyzing data for a demonstration experiment that has achieved record precision for a specialized detector material. The CUPID-Mo experiment is among a field of experiments that are using a variety of approaches to detect a theorized particle process, called neutrinoless double-beta decay, that could revise our understanding of ghostly particles called neutrinos, and of their role in the formation of the universe....

Researchers turned miles of cables under the University Park campus into thousands of virtual sensors capable of detecting tiny seismic events caused by thunder echoing down from the sky during a storm in April. “Severe weather has strong interactions with the ground, but we haven’t had the capability to study the coupling between the atmosphere and the solid Earth,” said Tieyuan Zhu, assistant professor of geophysics at Penn State and lead author on the study....

“These fragments are most likely bits of fungal spores that have burst after swelling with water,” said lead author Michael Lawler, assistant project specialist in the Ultrafine Aerosol Laboratory headed by co-author James Smith, UCI professor of chemistry. “It was unexpected to identify them as fungal fragments. The appearance of large numbers of atmospheric nanoparticles is usually ascribed to reactions of gases in the atmosphere, growing up from molecules rather than breaking down from larger particles....

Scientists were expecting to find an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6397, but instead they found evidence of a concentration of smaller black holes lurking there. New data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have led to the first measurement of the extent of a collection of black holes in a core-collapsed globular cluster. Globular clusters are extremely dense stellar systems, in which stars are packed closely together....

In a recent study, a realistic interpretation (REIN) for the wave function was proposed by Gui-Lu Long, a researcher at the Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, in the Chinese city of Beijing. The REIN states that the wave function of a quantum object is a real existence rather than a mere mathematical description, that is, the quantum object in space exists in the form of the wave function. To demonstrate this, Gui-Lu Long and his collaborators, Wei Qin, Zhe Yang and Jun-Lin Li, also from the Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, designed an encounter-delayed-choice experiment and experimentally realized the scheme....

The technology, which was created by Barcelona-based researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), combines high-resolution microscopy with sophisticated computer modeling. It is the most comprehensive technique to date for studying the shape of genes. The new technique allows researchers to create and digitally navigate three-dimensional models of genes, seeing not just their architecture but also information on how they move or how flexible they are....

For more than a month, Tropical Cyclone Freddy has cast about in the Indian Ocean, bringing powerful winds and downpours to anything in its long and wandering path. The storm first developed off the North Australian coast on February 6, 2023, and then tracked across the entire Indian Ocean before striking the east coast of Madagascar on February 21, 2023. It then crossed the Mozambique Channel and made landfall in Mozambique’s Inhambane province near Vilankulo, where it stalled and dropped a huge amount of rain before doubling back and nearly hit the west coast of Madagascar again....

Researchers say the new find offers an unparalleled opportunity to investigate the “mortuary practices” of this lost species using the latest technologies. Shanidar Cave was excavated in the 1950s, when archaeologist Ralph Solecki uncovered partial remains of ten Neanderthal men, women, and children. Some were clustered together, with clumps of ancient pollen surrounding one of the skeletons. Solecki claimed this showed Neanderthals buried their dead and conducted funerary rites with flowers....

Researchers from Amherst College and The University of Texas at Austin have described a new technique that might one day reveal in higher detail than ever before the composition and characteristics of the deep Earth. There’s just one catch: The technique relies on a fifth force of nature (in addition to gravity, the weak and strong nuclear forces and electromagnetism) that has not yet been detected, but which some particle physicists think might exist....

The researchers examined all 6.7-or-greater magnitude strike-slip earthquakes globally since 2000, identifying 12 of the supershear type, or around 14%. (Four of the earthquakes had previously gone unreported.) This figure is more than twice what experts expected; before, fewer than 6% of strike-slip earthquakes were classified as supershear. Strike-slip earthquakes occur when the edges of two tectonic plates push sideways against one other. Supershear quakes are a subtype of that group that occurs when faults under the surface rupture faster than shear waves — seismic waves that shake the earth — can travel through rock....

“We saw a clear dose-response relationship, so the more beneficial factors someone has in terms of having higher quality of sleep, they also have a stepwise lowering of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality,” said Frank Qian, MD, an internal medicine resident physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, clinical fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the study. “I think these findings emphasize that just getting enough hours of sleep isn’t sufficient....

Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus is of great interest to scientists due to its subsurface ocean, making it a prime target for those searching for life elsewhere. New research led by Carnegie’s Doug Hemingway reveals the physics governing the fissures through which ocean water erupts from the moon’s icy surface, giving its south pole an unusual “tiger stripe” appearance. “First seen by the Cassini mission to Saturn, these stripes are like nothing else known in our Solar System,” lead author Hemingway explained....

One tantalizing capability that JWST offers that Hubble could not is the opportunity to directly image planets orbiting distant stars, and maybe, just maybe, detect signs of life. The possibility of remotely detecting biosignatures has been a hot topic in recent years. In our own solar system, the recent discovery of phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere sparked speculation that the chemical might be created by a microbial lifeform. Similarly, remote sensing experts have proposed that plant life – which uses photosynthesis for energy – could be detected in infrared wavelengths, as chlorophyll absorbs visible light, but shows up brightly in infrared, and would give planets covered in foliage a distinct ‘red edge‘....

Planet Earth is constantly on the move, colliding with myriads of dark matter particles as it hurtles through space. Although no one has ever seen these mysterious particles, there is no question among physicists about their existence. That is why they have installed detectors around the globe in the hopes of detecting just a single one of them. Dark matter particles can penetrate all other forms of matter, which means that they may even be able to traverse right through our planet without losing any energy whatsoever....

Smaller objects, like individual stars, can also act as gravitational lenses when they pass in front of more distant stars. For a few days or weeks, light from the more distant star temporarily appears brighter because it is magnified by the gravity of the closer object. This effect is known as gravitational microlensing. The simplest type of gravitational lensing occurs when there is a single concentration of matter at the center, such as the dense core of a galaxy....