Scientists have discovered an abundance of molecules in the cosmos, but for the first time ever, they were able to detect one in interstellar space very familiar to us here on Earth: sugar. 

The discovery, made in the vast clouds of gas and dust between stars, could help scientists better understand how some of the chemical ingredients necessary for life formed long before Earth existed.

Researchers at the Centro de Astrobiología, part of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), identified the sugar molecule erythrulose within the interstellar medium.

Sugars are considered fundamental building blocks of life. On Earth, they play vital biological roles, including forming the backbone of RNA and contributing to the chemistry that ultimately supports DNA, while also serving as an important source of energy. Scientists studying the origins of life have long sought to understand how the first sugars formed, since they are essential ingredients in the molecules associated with life’s earliest development.

“The detection of erythrulose is very exciting because it opens up the possibility of discovering in space other sugars such as ribose, which is part of RNA, and other important molecules for the origin of life,” says Carlos Briones, co-author of the study, in a statement. 

Even so, one major question remains: where did the first biologically important sugars originate?

Previous studies have identified sugars such as ribose and glucose in meteorites and asteroid samples, suggesting that some organic compounds may have been delivered to the early Earth from space. Until now, however, no sugar had been directly detected in the cold molecular clouds where stars and planets form.

The newly identified molecule, erythrulose, was found in the molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027 near the center of the Milky Way. On Earth, erythrulose is a naturally occurring four-carbon ketose sugar.

The discovery was made using highly sensitive radio astronomy observations from the Yebes Observatory’s 40-meter radio telescope and the 30-meter telescope operated by the Institute for Radio Astronomy in the Millimeter Range. Researchers analyzed the unique radio signatures, or spectral fingerprints, emitted by molecules in space.

The team identified 12 spectral lines matching laboratory measurements of erythrulose, confirming the molecule’s presence.

The findings also challenge some existing ideas about how complex molecules form in space. Scientists have generally proposed that interstellar chemistry builds larger molecules by gradually adding carbon atoms. Yet erythrulose proved to be more abundant than related three-carbon sugars that researchers expected would appear first.

“This finding was unexpected, as the prevailing view in astrochemistry is that interstellar molecules grow in size through the sequential addition of carbon atoms,” said Izaskun Jimenez Serra (CAB), the lead author of the recent study. 

Instead, the researchers found that erythrulose could form inside icy dust grains from simpler two-carbon alcohols and aldehydes. These frozen environments may function as natural chemical laboratories, allowing increasingly complex organic molecules to develop over time.

The team estimates that during the Late Heavy Bombardment—roughly 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago, when Earth experienced intense asteroid and comet impacts—between 500,000 and 50 million tonnes of erythrulose may have been delivered to the planet’s surface.

The discovery adds another piece to the puzzle of life’s origins, suggesting that some of its essential ingredients may have arrived with something surprisingly sweet.

This paper was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

Neuroscientists have long believed that language processing was only found in regions of the brain’s left hemisphere, including the well-known Broca’s area. However, new evidence suggests the brain’s language network is far more widespread than previously thought. 

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) analyzed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans from 772 participants and identified 17 additional brain regions involved in language comprehension. These newly discovered areas are distributed across the brain, including the cerebellum, hippocampus, amygdala, and several regions of the cerebral cortex. In total, this accounts for five percent of the adult brain volume (roughly the size of a large strawberry). 

“Even though there are all these distant components, it’s pretty restricted in terms of volume. You don’t need that much of the brain to do language,” says senior author Evelina Fedorenko, an MIT associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences and a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, in a statement. 

Locating the Brain’s Hidden Language Centers

To find these hidden language-related regions in the brain, the researchers revisited years of brain imaging data collected since 2013. Additionally, participants completed a standard “language localizer” task, during which they read or listened to meaningful sentences and sequences of meaningless nonwords. By comparing brain activity between these two conditions, the research team identified regions that responded more strongly to language.

“When we initially started looking at language, in the first couple of papers, I tried to be comprehensive and include anything that seemed consistent across participants, and there was a huge amount of resistance,” said Fedorenko. “People would say things like, ‘Well, we know those are not language areas, so please focus on the language areas.’”

The team decided to adopt a more flexible statistical approach to detect weaker signals and identify previously overlooked language-sensitive regions beyond the classical language areas. They then compared these regions’ responses during a spatial working memory task to distinguish language-specific areas from those involved in what would be considered general cognitive functions.

Cerebellum Discoveries

Interestingly, five of the newly identified language regions are located in the cerebellum, a structure traditionally associated with movement and coordination. Some of these cerebellar regions were also active during non-language tasks, suggesting they may help integrate information across different brain systems rather than process language alone.

“It’s a very simple paradigm that lets you identify this core language system in individual brains,” says MIT postdoc Agata Wolna, the lead author of the paper.

Additional language-sensitive regions were identified in the hippocampus and amygdala, areas better known for their roles in memory and emotion. Their involvement suggests that understanding language may rely more on integrating memory, emotional context, and higher-order cognitive functions than previously understood in science.

“We always see this frontal temporal network, but there’s quite a lot of evidence that there are other regions that are also critical for language processing,” said Wolna. “By using a laxer threshold and zooming in on areas with weak MRI signal, we tried to maximize the chances of finding small and weakly responsive regions outside of this left frontal temporal system.”

The findings challenge long-held assumptions about the brain’s organization and can open new avenues for research into how language processing is understood in neuroscience.

The recent study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience. 

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have become a major focus of technological innovation in recent months, with China leading the commercialization of the emerging technology. However, neighboring Australia may soon make its own mark, as the University of Melbourne startup Fluent develops a new device designed to transform how people with speech impairments communicate.

Many communication technologies currently available remain limited for people living with neurological conditions such as motor neuron disease and multiple sclerosis. As these conditions progress, many patients experience increasing difficulty speaking and may eventually lose the ability to communicate verbally altogether.

Fluent is developing a different approach from many existing BCI systems. While invasive BCIs require brain surgery to implant electrodes inside the skull, Fluent’s device is designed to sit beneath the scalp but outside the skull, offering what the company hopes will be a safer and more accessible alternative.

“Until now, this technological capability was only thought possible using highly invasive electrodes implanted inside the skull,” said Fluent co-founder and biomedical engineer Dr. Tim Mahoney in a statement.

Mahoney’s research suggests that signals captured by the device are comparable whether electrodes are placed beneath or outside the skull. If validated through further testing, this could represent a significant advance in BCI development, as invasive systems have historically captured higher-quality brain signals and outperformed non-invasive approaches.

“Our device will be positioned above an area of the brain called the motor cortex, which controls speech muscles. If you think of electrical signals as QR codes: when a person speaks, every individual mouth and jaw movement produces different ‘QR codes’ in their motor cortex,” said Mahoney.

“These ‘QR codes’ also occur when a person with impaired speech is attempting to speak. Our device can capture these codes in a sequence, which tells us what someone is trying to say,” Mahoney adds.

The device captures brain signals and records them in sequence, allowing researchers to understand what a person is attempting to communicate. A machine learning system is being developed to translate brain activity into written text or audio by just thinking about speaking.

“After building the largest English dataset of its kind, we partnered with a Japanese team leveraging an even larger dataset,” Mahoney explained. “This collaboration proved that a model can accurately isolate the correct phrase from a pool of 128 options with 96 percent accuracy.”

To date, the technology has undergone preliminary human testing at the Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne. During those trials, participants wore a cap fitted with 144 electrodes positioned over the motor cortex while speaking, miming words, and imagining different phrases.

The team’s work resulted in one of the largest English-language brain activity datasets assembled to date. In collaboration with Japanese researchers using an even larger dataset, they demonstrated that an AI model could correctly identify a target phrase from a pool of 128 possibilities with 96% accuracy.

Like other advanced medical technologies, BCIs must undergo rigorous regulatory review before they can be brought to market, and Fluent expects Australia’s approval process to follow internationally recognized standards.

“BCI is a relatively new technology, with the first devices currently being approved in China and the US. The regulatory process for BCI technology follows the same safety and efficacy data requirements used for medical device approval across the various countries’ regulatory bodies. Australia is a fantastic place to perform clinical trials due to its R&D tax incentives, meaning Fluent is well-positioned to streamline our pathway to regulatory clearance,” Mahoney said in an email to The Debrief. 

With China and the United States both advancing minimally invasive BCI technologies toward commercialization, Fluent hopes its approach can distinguish itself by prioritizing accessibility over maximum signal fidelity.

“The field of BCI has made enormous progress in the past 5 years. Neuralink is close to commercializing cursor control, research groups have demonstrated online speech decoding with electrodes placed directly on the brain, and META just released their Brain2Qwerty model that can convert non-invasive ‘typing’ brain activity into text,” says Mahoney. 

“The subscalp speech BCI that Fluent is building will not have the same performance as more invasive devices,” he adds. “However, we believe our solution is far more accessible, given the low-risk, set-and-forget nature of the device.”

“We also believe that our low-risk approach can deliver near-perfect speech decoding performance when paired with context-aware large language models to correct errors in an informed way,” Mahoney said.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign say underground aquifers could offer an unexpected solution to one of artificial intelligence’s fastest-growing environmental challenges: cooling the massive data centers that power the technology.

As protests and debates continue over the rapid expansion of AI data centers around the world, researchers are exploring new ways to manage the enormous amounts of energy and water required to keep these facilities running. To meet such demands, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign team has proposed an innovative solution: using underground aquifers as natural “thermal batteries” to cool data centers while reducing their environmental footprint.

Critics have raised concerns ranging from the vast quantities of water consumed by AI infrastructure to the ethical implications of job displacement and the broader societal impacts of artificial intelligence. Against that backdrop, designing AI systems that reduce their climate impact could represent an important step toward more sustainable computing.

Researchers Yu-Feng Lin, Andrew Stumpf, and postdoctoral researcher Upasana Pandey from the Prairie Research Institute’s Illinois State Geological Survey explored the potential of Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) as a cooling strategy for data centers. The team suggests underground water systems could provide an efficient alternative to traditional cooling methods. Their findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Groundwater.

“Data centers use large amounts of electricity, and 10 to 40% of that energy can go just to cooling, depending on the design,” Pandey said in a statement. “They also consume tremendous volumes of water, often through cooling methods where water is evaporated and effectively lost from the local supply.”

To address both challenges, the researchers propose using groundwater stored beneath Earth’s surface as a reusable thermal energy storage system. ATES can provide direct or supplemental cooling by circulating groundwater through underground pipes. Cool groundwater absorbs heat through a heat exchanger before the warmed water is returned to the aquifer for seasonal storage. The system can also store excess summer heat for winter heating and preserve cold winter water for use during the summer months.

“In places like Illinois, where we experience seasonality, and when the subsurface geology is ideal, instead of constantly trying to moderate the outdoor temperatures that swing from 90°F in summer to minus 10°F in winter, we can tap into the Earth’s near-constant temperature,” Stumpf said. “You’re no longer adjusting from 90°F to 70°F; you’re adjusting from about 55°F to 70°F. That’s a huge energy savings.”

Illinois is particularly well-suited for aquifer thermal energy storage because of its pronounced seasonal temperature swings, favorable aquifer characteristics, and suitable subsurface geology. The system can utilize non-potable water sources, including deep saline aquifers, contaminated groundwater, and even abandoned mines.

According to the researchers, the primary barriers to broader adoption are the high upfront installation costs and relatively short investment timelines, rather than technical feasibility.

“Data centers sit at the center of the water-energy nexus: If you try to reduce energy use, you often use more water, and if you reduce water use, you may need more energy,” Lin said. “Our work looks for solutions that address both together.”

“Water is a magic material in this context because it has high heat capacity and can be a good thermal carrier with flow,” he adds.

“That combination is rare, and in groundwater, we can tap those same properties for energy storage.”

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

Human laughter may hold a deeper connection to our primate ancestors than previously realized, preserving a 15-million-year-old evolutionary legacy. New research from the University of Warwick suggests the rhythm of laughter has remained largely unchanged across millions of years, offering surprising new insights into the origins of human speech.

Great apes are humanity’s closest living relatives, and species including chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans all produce laughter-like vocalizations accompanied by smile-like facial expressions.

For years, scientists have wondered whether these vocal expressions share a common evolutionary origin. To investigate, researchers analyzed laughter recordings from 17 apes and humans representing five species: four orangutans, two gorillas, three bonobos, four chimpanzees, and four humans. Examining 140 laughter sequences, they found that every species produced laughter with evenly spaced rhythmic intervals between sounds—a pattern that appears to have been inherited from a common ancestor.

“It is impossible to assess the precursor forms of language directly from our extinct ancestors,” said Dr Adriano Lameria, an Associate Professor with the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick and a researcher with its ApeTank, said in a statement. “Laughter, being evolutionarily older and having remained shared between all living great apes, provides a rare evolutionary window into the vocal transformations that unfolded across hominid evolution until the first humans appeared on scene.”

“Contrary to the classic notion that the first humans suddenly acquired vocal control capacities remarkably different from their predecessors, laughter evolution tells us that humans lay on a continuum, a prolongation of vocal control capacities that were already being cumulatively honed in for 15 million years,” Lameria added.

The discovery suggests that this rhythmic connection and foundation of laughter was already present around 15 million years ago and has persisted through millions of years of evolutionary change.

“How did humans evolve the remarkable ability to speak? Speech leaves no fossils, and complex language exists only in our own species. But we’ve found a 15-million-year-old clue in an unexpected place: our laughter,” said Dr. Chiara De Gregorio, Honorary Research Associate, Department of Psychology, University of Warwick. 

“Unlike speech, laughter is shared by all living great apes. By comparing how different species laugh, we can see that a basic rhythmic structure has remained unchanged since our last common ancestor. That’s extraordinary,” De Gregorio added.

Even though humans and apes share similarities—with ape vocalizations generally having a deeper resonance and tone—the underlying timing of laughter has remained remarkably stable over millions of years. What distinguishes humans is our greater voluntary control over laughter, allowing us to laugh intentionally in social situations in ways that our primate relatives cannot.

Scientists believe this increased vocal control may have played a key role in the evolution of speech. The human ability to precisely regulate vocal timing, tone, and expression is considered a fundamental component of producing complex spoken language.

The new findings challenge the idea that humans suddenly developed advanced speech abilities unlike those of earlier species. Instead, the research suggests that human communication evolved gradually, building upon vocal capacities that had already been developing in our ancient primate relatives.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

New findings published in PLOS Digital Health highlight the challenges public health experts face in combating misleading health information on social media, particularly amid ongoing debates over whether sunscreen is truly beneficial.

To investigate how sunscreen is portrayed online, researchers at the University of Alberta analyzed 971 of the most-viewed TikTok videos associated with five popular sunscreen-related hashtags: #sunscreen, #sunscreenviral, #spf, #sunscreenreview, and #sunprotection.

The researchers examined how sunscreen was represented in the videos and measured audience engagement through views, likes, shares, and comments.

“Sunscreen misinformation may attract disproportionate attention,” says Alessandro Marcon of the University of Alberta, Canada, and colleagues in a statement.

The findings showed that most of the TikTok videos analyzed promoted sunscreen use, accounting for 86.8% of the content. Only 6% contained health-related criticism, including claims that sunscreen is harmful (1.5%) or that it interferes with the benefits of sun exposure, such as vitamin D production (1.2%). Despite representing only a small fraction of the content, these videos attracted disproportionately high levels of engagement, receiving more likes, shares, and comments on average than pro-sunscreen videos.

“Sunscreen misinformation on TikTok constitutes an area of concern not for the total sum of overarching influence in terms of content production but rather in how strongly some sunscreen misinformation ideas resonated among particular audiences,” adds Marcon.

The researchers suggest that the elevated engagement may be driven by the controversial and attention-grabbing nature of the content, which can help videos spread more widely on social media platforms.

They also found that even videos promoting sunscreen often omitted key public health messaging. Most focused on beauty and skincare benefits rather than health outcomes, with only 6% specifically mentioning sunscreen’s role in reducing skin cancer risk.

“Our analysis showed TikTok is not necessarily flooded with sunscreen misinformation, but TikToks that dangerously claim that sunscreen is harmful or unnecessary receive comparatively high levels of audience engagement. TikTok content creators commonly promoted sunscreen as part of skincare regimens where sunscreen benefits were more commonly related to beauty rather than health,” said Marcon.

“It was surprising to see so many TikToks promoting sunscreen use without specifically mentioning the important role it plays in cancer prevention. Only 6% of the TikToks analyzed explicitly mentioned the benefits of reducing the risk of skin cancer.”

The study suggests that misinformation can spread widely not because it is more common, but because it is often more controversial and attention-grabbing. It also highlights a broader communication gap, as many creators emphasize sunscreen’s cosmetic benefits while overlooking its well-established role in preventing skin cancer.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.