O esperado primeiro equipamento de inteligência artificial da OpenAI continua envolto de mistério e voltou a ser adiado. A equipa, liderada por Jony Ive, o “pai” do iPhone, está a recrutar elementos para a sua equipa diretamente da Apple.
The post OpenAI adia o seu primeiro equipamento de IA, mas lança acessório para programadores appeared first on Tek Notícias.
In his final public speech as Space Force chief, Gen. Chance Saltzman called for combat credibility, stronger alliances and realism about the limits of procurement reform
The post Saltzman’s farewell warning: Prepare for war in space to preserve peace appeared first on SpaceNews.
New research from Columbia University found that adults who cut their sleep by about 80 minutes for six weeks packed on a pound (0.45 kg) and moved less during the day.
The post Losing Even 80 Minutes of Sleep a Night Linked to Weight Gain appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
A new crew arrived at the International Space Station on July 14 on a launch witnessed in person by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.
The post Isaacman attends Soyuz launch of ISS crew appeared first on SpaceNews.
This week in science and technology news we’re covering at The Debrief: For decades, physicists have argued about Richard Feynman’s Sprinkler Problem, involving the question of how a reverse sprinkler would operate. Now we may finally know the answer… elsewhere, new studies reveal how breathwork may trigger psychedelic-like states, emotional breakthroughs, and psychological insights without drugs. Meanwhile, a stone sphere unearthed at an archaeological site in Azerbaijan is reportedly unlike anything previously documented in the South Caucasus.
Also, in an exclusive feature, University of Toronto bioethicist KM Bowman, Ph.D., writes for The Debrief about his firsthand experience with uncontacted indigenous tribes: “Through the haze stood a man. Barely clothed, carrying what appeared to be a weapon of some form, he remained motionless for only a few seconds before silently disappearing back into the forest.” In his essay, Bowman shares his experience and asks whether governments can protect “the uncontacted.”
Finally, here’s a look at more stories The Debrief is tracking right now…
Deep within the world’s remaining equatorial forests, the last uncontacted Indigenous peoples continue to live in near-total isolation. They represent humanity’s final societies that have consciously chosen to remain beyond the reach of the modern world. Their existence is extraordinary not only because of who they are, but because of what their survival reveals about ourselves.
For decades, however, governments found it politically and economically convenient to pretend that many of these people did not exist.
That chapter is, thankfully, drawing to a close. Today, Peru, Brazil, and other South American nations officially recognize the existence of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. Yet the history of denying their existence remains one of the most revealing episodes in the modern relationship between development, politics, and human rights. It reminds us that before forests are exploited, the people living within them are often rendered politically invisible.
The lesson extends far beyond the Amazon.
Throughout history, governments have rarely denied the existence of people simply because evidence was lacking. In colonial times, the existence of indigenous societies and cultures had no bearing on European immigrant expansion. Their cultures were considered primitive, and civility and religion would be the great benefits of settler expansion. In the 20th and 21st centuries, denial served a more practical purpose. If no one officially occupied a forest, there were no communities whose rights required protection. No Indigenous reserves needed to be established. Logging concessions could be issued, roads extended, mines approved, and oil exploration expanded with fewer legal obstacles. Recognition would carry consequences.
Once governments acknowledge uncontacted peoples, they assume obligations under national constitutions, international human rights law, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and, in many countries, ILO Convention 169. Suddenly, economic development must coexist with human rights.
For years, this tension played out repeatedly in the Peruvian Amazon.
As proposals emerged to establish reserves for Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation, regional politicians and government officials questioned whether these communities existed at all. They argued there was insufficient evidence despite decades of documentation by anthropologists, Indigenous organizations, and conservation scientists. Shelters, cultivated gardens, footprints, arrows, abandoned camps, aerial observations, and repeated eyewitness accounts painted an increasingly compelling picture. Yet recognition often lagged precisely where logging, oil, gas, or mining interests sought access.
In retrospect, this was never simply an anthropological debate. It was an economic one.
The existence of uncontacted peoples transformed forests from potential commercial assets into protected Indigenous territories. Recognition restricted extraction. Denial facilitated it.
Fortunately, much of that official denial has now ended. Governments increasingly recognize that uncontacted peoples do exist and deserve legal protection. Yet the episode leaves behind an important lesson: political narratives often reflect competing economic interests as much as objective evidence. The question is no longer whether uncontacted peoples exist. The question is whether governments possess the political will to protect them.
The irony is profound. The same territories that some once wished to portray as empty are now recognized as among the most important ecosystems on Earth.
Study after study demonstrates that Indigenous territories, particularly those occupied by peoples living in voluntary isolation, experience significantly lower rates of deforestation than surrounding forests. These landscapes contain extraordinary biodiversity, protect countless species yet to be documented by science, regulate regional rainfall, and store immense quantities of carbon essential to moderating global climate change.
Protecting uncontacted peoples, therefore, serves two inseparable purposes.
It safeguards fundamental human rights while simultaneously protecting some of humanity’s greatest environmental assets. In the western Amazon, where I have spent time working, these realities become impossible to separate.
This region contains the greatest concentration of uncontacted peoples anywhere on Earth. It is also among the richest expressions of biological diversity on the planet. Yet it remains under relentless pressure from illegal logging, mining, expanding road networks, narcotics trafficking, and land speculation. While Peru and Brazil have established large protected Indigenous territories, enforcement has weakened in many areas as criminal organizations and commercial interests increasingly penetrate previously inaccessible forests.
Every encounter between outsiders and uncontacted peoples carries enormous risk.
Centuries of violence, exploitation, and disease can be compressed into a single unexpected meeting. Illegal miners, loggers, and land invaders increasingly enter territories occupied by isolated peoples, provoking confrontations that neither side seeks. Fatal encounters have occurred involving both Indigenous defenders protecting their ancestral lands and outsiders venturing into territories they had no right to enter.
I experienced something that profoundly altered my appreciation of this reality.
On a recent expedition, I awoke before dawn to a river wrapped in mist beneath a pale orange sky. Overnight storms had left the air heavy with humidity as I walked along a stretch of exposed sand. Through the haze stood a man. Barely clothed, carrying what appeared to be a weapon of some form, he remained motionless for only a few seconds before silently disappearing back into the forest.
The encounter was brief, but penetrating. Ten thousand years faded away.
We were outside any officially protected Indigenous territory and had taken every precaution to avoid contact. Yet there he was, undeniably real. His footprints remained impressed in the wet sand long after he disappeared.
They reminded me that debates over whether isolated peoples exist are ultimately settled not by ideology, but by reality itself. These communities continue to live within forests that many outsiders still view primarily through the lens of economic opportunity.
Throughout the Americas, first contact repeatedly brought catastrophic epidemics, displacement, exploitation, and cultural destruction. Peoples living in voluntary isolation possess little immunity to common infectious diseases carried unknowingly by outsiders. Even a well-intentioned contact can prove devastating.
Some argue that continued isolation is no longer realistic—that climate change, expanding infrastructure, and globalization make eventual integration inevitable.
I believe this misunderstands both ethics and history.
It assumes that outside society possesses the right to determine other people’s future. It repeats the paternalism that has accompanied Indigenous dispossession for centuries. Respect requires something more difficult. It requires restraint.
The greatest lesson we should draw from the period when governments denied the existence of uncontacted peoples is not simply that denial was wrong. It is that economic convenience can shape political reality in dangerous ways. When forests are viewed primarily as timber, minerals, or agricultural land, it becomes remarkably easy to overlook the people who stand in the way of exploitation.
Today, official denial has largely given way to official recognition. That represents genuine progress. But recognition alone is insufficient if protections exist only on paper while illegal logging, mining, and organized crime continue to erode Indigenous territories on the ground.
Over the years, I have seen echoes of this same struggle elsewhere. In the highlands of Papua New Guinea, where stone tools were still in use, communities sought to preserve traditions against an advancing modern world. On India’s Andaman Islands, members of the Jarawa halted a military convoy I was travelling with, bows drawn, defending the integrity of their homeland. Across continents, the underlying question remains remarkably consistent: can modern societies respect the right of other cultures not to become like us?
The uncontacted peoples of this world challenge our assumptions about progress itself. Their existence reminds us that development is not the only measure of a society, and that autonomy sometimes means choosing a different path altogether.
Their territories also remind us that some of the world’s most effective conservationists have never described themselves as environmentalists. By simply defending their lives and territory, they have preserved ecosystems that benefit every person on Earth.
The people governments once pretended did not exist have become some of the planet’s important guardians. Protecting them is no longer only about correcting historical injustice. It is about recognizing that human rights, biodiversity, and climate stability are inseparable. Their silence in the forest is not absence. It is sovereignty.
Yet the story of the uncontacted has another, profound consideration for our era that extends far beyond remote forests. The history of the uncontacted tells us that for years, some governments denied the existence of people who were demonstrably there because acknowledging them carried political and economic costs. As we search for life beyond Earth, humility demands that we distinguish between what has not yet been confirmed and what may simply remain beyond our present ability—or willingness—to acknowledge.
History repeatedly warns against confusing the limits of our knowledge with the limits of reality.
Kerry Bowman, PhD, is a Canadian bioethicist and environmentalist. An instructor at the University of Toronto, he currently holds an academic appointment in the Faculty of Medicine and School of the Environment. Bowman’s recent work includes two major conservation projects in the Western Amazon and the Eastern Congo, focusing on the intersection of human health with factors such as deforestation, biodiversity loss, and emerging zoonotic diseases.
For decades, physicists have debated Richard Feynman’s famous Sprinkler Problem—the question of how a reverse sprinkler would behave—and now researchers may have finally found the answer.
Made famous in Feynman’s 1985 memoir, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, the problem concerns the spin direction of a sprinkler-like device inside a pool that draws water inward instead of spreading it out. The researchers revealed their experimental results, based on tests with a variety of custom sprinklers, in a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adding new life to the long-standing physics debate.
“This work provides the experimental answer for Feynman’s Sprinkler Problem by showing, across several sprinkler types, how the angular momentum of water flows drives sprinklers’ rotation,” said senior author Leif Ristroph, an associate professor at New York University’s Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science.
The significance of the work extends well beyond an esoteric question about a hypothetical device, providing new insights into the physics of fluid dynamics. Feynman famously attempted to investigate the problem experimentally during the 1940s, though his apparatus reportedly failed dramatically before producing a definitive result. During his lifetime, Feynman discouraged naming the problem after himself, noting that it built upon ideas first explored by physicist Ernst Mach in the 1880s.
“Our findings provide a firmer understanding of how components respond to fluid flows—knowledge that can guide future engineering and technological advances for devices, such as turbines, that convert these flows into energy,” said co-author Brennan Sprinkle, an assistant professor at Colorado School of Mines.
This isn’t the team’s first work on Feynman’s Sprinkler Problem, as it builds on what they reported in an earlier 2024 paper. Unlike Feynman himself, the researchers managed to make their reverse sprinkler rotate, leading to intriguing new physics discoveries. In that work, they discovered that a reverse sprinkler would operate much like a conventional one, though at about 50 times the slower rate.
While traditional sprinklers act like a rocket of water, the Feynman sprinkler is comparable to an inside-out rocket, shooting towards the junction of the arms at the device’s center. Inside that central chamber, the team discovered something interesting: the water jets do not collide head-on, which produces the sprinkler’s reverse rotation, in what the researchers dubbed the momentum flux theory.
That 2024 study was limited to traditional sprinklers with S-shaped arms, leaving the researchers to ponder how alternate shapes would impact the water flow. After fabricating their own series of sprinkler designs, the researchers tested water flow in both forward and reverse directions, measuring torque, flow rate, and rotational motion.
One of the theories they tested was Ernest Mach’s 1883 theory that the fluid and sprinkler would swirl in opposite directions, but they found it did not align with the reverse rotations and torques observed in their experiments. They also tested a theory originally attributed to Feynman and later refined by others, which suggested that water flow at the outer edges of the sprinkler arms drove rotation; however, the team’s observations showed this is not the case.
Their observations supported the team’s existing momentum flux theory in both the forward and reverse directions, across all sprinkler shapes. According to their work, the shape of the sprinkler arms controls the flow of the water jet.
“By showing that momentum flux is the answer to Feynman’s Sprinkler Problem,” Ristroph concluded, “our findings address a long-standing open problem in flow physics and provide useful knowledge about how these devices work and their effectiveness.
The paper, “Geometry Controls Momentum Flux in the Sprinkler Problem,” appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on July 13, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
Watering your lawn in the summer can be both pragmatic and fun with so-called "silly sprinklers," designed to create amusing loops and spirals of water jets. And there's some fascinating physics at work to boot. Researchers at New York University's Courant Institute conducted a series of experiments with different silly sprinkler designs to find the answer to a longstanding problem in fluid dynamics, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As previously reported, the reverse sprinkler problem is associated with physicist Richard Feynman because he popularized the concept, but it actually dates back to a chapter in Ernst Mach’s 1883 textbook The Science of Mechanics (Die Mechanik in Ihrer Entwicklung Historisch-Kritisch Dargerstellt). Mach’s thought experiment languished in relative obscurity until a group of Princeton University physicists began debating the issue in the 1940s.
Feynman was a graduate student there at the time and threw himself into the debate with gusto, even devising an experiment in the cyclotron laboratory to test his hypothesis. One might intuit that a reverse sprinkler would work just like a regular sprinkler, merely played backward, so to speak. But the physics turns out to be more complicated. “The answer is perfectly clear at first sight,” Feynman wrote in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman (1985). “The trouble was, some guy would think it was perfectly clear [that the rotation would be] one way, and another guy would think it was perfectly clear the other way.”
© NYU's Applied Mathematics Laboratory
A new analysis of data from the Western Australian-based Raine Study suggests that two humble vegetable groups -- legumes and cruciferous vegetables -- may play an outsize role in protecting young adults from early cardiometabolic risk, though the benefits appear to diverge sharply between men and women.
The post Beans and Broccoli Linked to Lower Heart Risk in Young Adults appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
The post Characterizing Earth’s damping mechanisms appeared first on MIT School of Science.
High above the remote Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and the northernmost part of Australia, an air-launched rocket fired into space on Independence Day weekend to kick off a weekslong pursuit of a NASA astronomy satellite perilously close to falling out of orbit.
The endeavor to rescue NASA's Swift satellite is the first mission of its kind. NASA put out a call for commercial companies less than a year ago to propose how they could rapidly build and launch a small satellite to latch onto the Swift spacecraft and boost its altitude so that it doesn't come down in a few months.
Katalyst Space Technologies responded with the best offer. NASA awarded the company a contract last September to build and launch a mission to rescue Swift. A little more than nine months later, Katalyst's nearly half-ton Link satellite is safely in orbit. For anyone who follows the space industry, building, testing, and launching a functioning first-of-its-kind satellite of that size in less than a year is a remarkable achievement; it would usually take several years.
© Northrop Grumman
High above the remote Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and the northernmost part of Australia, an air-launched rocket fired into space on Independence Day weekend to kick off a weekslong pursuit of a NASA astronomy satellite perilously close to falling out of orbit.
The endeavor to rescue NASA's Swift satellite is the first mission of its kind. NASA put out a call for commercial companies less than a year ago to propose how they could rapidly build and launch a small satellite to latch onto the Swift spacecraft and boost its altitude so that it doesn't come down in a few months.
Katalyst Space Technologies responded with the best offer. NASA awarded the company a contract last September to build and launch a mission to rescue Swift. A little more than nine months later, Katalyst's nearly half-ton Link satellite is safely in orbit. For anyone who follows the space industry, building, testing, and launching a functioning first-of-its-kind satellite of that size in less than a year is a remarkable achievement; it would usually take several years.
© Northrop Grumman
Welcome to Edition 9.01 of the Rocket Report! Back in January, I wrote about the 20 launches and landings we were most excited about in 2026. The list included things that were, at the time, officially scheduled to occur this year. I also gave my own view of the probability of each of these events actually happening before December 31. Halfway through the year, we can only count one of the events as completed, and that was NASA's Artemis II mission in April. Many are now scheduled for next year, proving again that delays are a constant in the space industry. A couple of them—such as the launch of NASA's Roman Space Telescope—do appear to be on track to happen soon.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Swift Boost Mission reaches orbit. A pioneering commercial mission to reboost the orbit of NASA's Swift astronomy satellite launched early Friday after attempts earlier in the week were thwarted by bad weather and a technical issue. The Link servicing satellite developed by Katalyst Space Technologies soared to orbit on the tip of a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket that dropped from the belly of a modified L-1011 jetliner over the remote Pacific Ocean. Mission managers called off two launch attempts Tuesday and Wednesday due to poor weather around the L-1011's staging base on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. On Thursday, "a launch vehicle issue temporarily prevented teams from deploying the rocket" after takeoff of the L-1011.
© SpaceX
A team of researchers examined 23 teeth from at least 20 individuals from South Africa‘s Rising Star Cave system and found no evidence of the male-specific Amelogenin-Y protein.
A recent study, published in Cell, marks the first ancient protein analysis of Homo naledi and raises the possibility that the Dinaledi Chamber may contain predominantly, or possibly exclusively, female individuals. If confirmed, Homo naledi would become the first known non-human species to practice sex-specific burial.
Since its discovery in 2013, Homo naledi has puzzled paleoanthropologists. This extinct human relative lived between 335,000 and 241,000 years ago and combined ape-like anatomy with distinct human features. So far, Homo naledi remains have only been found in the Rising Star Cave system in South Africa.
For over a decade, scientists noted that the adult fossils from the Dinaledi Chamber were nearly identical, lacking the skeletal variation usually seen between males and females. The reason for this similarity remained unclear.
To investigate further, a team from the University of York, the University of Copenhagen, and additional institutions analyzed the remains at the molecular level. They used a minimally destructive acid-etching method to extract protein fragments, or peptides, from the enamel of the 23 teeth.
“Unlike those found in other remains like bone fragments, proteins in tooth enamel are preserved because dental enamel—the hardest tissue in the human body—shields proteins from environmental contamination even for millions of years. This makes them ideal carriers of genetic information from deep time. Our study helps explain the long-standing mystery of why Homo naledi lacked significant variation; it’s probably because they could have all belonged to one sex,” said Palesa Madupe, who conducted the research during her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Copenhagen.
The researchers specifically searched for Amelogenin-Y, a protein produced only by the male Y chromosome, but detected none of it in the sampled teeth. To make sure the results were not due to modern contamination, a specialized chemistry team at the University of York independently confirmed that the amino acids were genuinely ancient. The findings remained consistent.
“The lack of male markers within the group is truly fascinating. It is incredibly exciting to gain a window not only into the biology of our ancestors, but also into how they lived. These findings offer rare insights into a culture that has, until now, been difficult to access directly. Advances in ancient protein analysis are opening the door to a far richer and more nuanced understanding of ancient hominins,” said Dr. Marc Dickinson from the university’s Department of Chemistry.
The findings allow for two possible explanations. One is cultural: if the chamber were reserved for females, it could indicate that Homo naledi practiced sex-specific, symbolic mortuary behavior, a trait previously thought to be unique to modern humans.
The second explanation is biological. The researchers note that a small, isolated Homo naledi population could have lost or mutated the Amelogenin-Y gene, leaving males without the protein marker typically used to identify male remains.
Either explanation could reshape what scientists know about Homo naledi. If researchers confirm the site as an all-female burial chamber, it would suggest that symbolic behavior emerged earlier in the human lineage than previously believed. On the other hand, a genetic change across the population would show how isolation can shape a species’ biology in ways that fossils alone cannot reveal. This study shows how ancient protein analysis from teeth can open new windows into human evolution.
Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.
Login