Galaxies, stars, and living cells are all examples of local order emerging in the universe. At first glance, that seems to contradict one of physics’ oldest principles.

However, a recent study in Physical Review D offers a mathematical explanation for how these structures form while still obeying the second law of thermodynamics.

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy, or disorder, in an isolated system always increases over time. Einstein famously said that “the second law of thermodynamics occupies a unique position among the laws of Nature,” reflecting how fundamental he believed the principle to be.

In its early days, the universe was smooth and uniform, with low entropy. As it expanded, gravity pulled gas into stars, stars into galaxies, and eventually made life possible. Each step seems to create order in one place, even though the universe as a whole became more disordered. Cosmologists have usually explained this by pointing to the universe’s growing volume.

Gravity as a Ledger, Not a Force

Mathematician Ginestra Bianconi at Queen Mary University of London addressed this problem with a framework called Gravity from Entropy. Rather than treating gravity as a fundamental force, the Gravity from Entropy framework proposes that it emerges from an information-based difference between two descriptions of spacetime geometry. One metric describes the actual shape of spacetime, while the other describes the geometry that matter and curvature would create. When these two match, gravity disappears. When they differ, gravity arises from the difference.

In the low-energy, weak-curvature limit, the framework reduces to general relativity. In the new study, Bianconi adds a thermodynamic perspective. She applies Gravity from Entropy to the standard model of an expanding universe and shows that the local geometric degrees of freedom follow the first law of thermodynamics, with their own temperature and pressure emerging from the equations.

Falling Density, Rising Total

One of the study’s central findings is the distinction between total entropy and entropy per unit volume. As the universe grows, the total entropy increases, just as the second law demands. However, the study found that entropy per unit volume decreases over time even as the universe’s total entropy continues to increase. Within the Gravity from Entropy framework, Bianconi proposes that this declining local entropy density may help explain how galaxies and other cosmic structures emerge.

The study also shows that these geometric temperatures change depending on what dominates the universe. In a universe dominated by matter or radiation, the temperature decreases over time. In a universe dominated by dark energy, like our own, they remain nearly constant. The framework even assigns a temperature and pressure to empty spacetime.

A Theory Still Waiting to Be Tested

“This work reveals how the Gravity from Entropy theory can tackle the challenging question of reconciling the second law of thermodynamics with the emergence of complexity in our universe,” stated Bianconi. “These results may open new avenues for investigating the long-standing problem of reconciling the foundations of cosmological irreversibility, the emergence of complex structures, and ultimately life with fundamental gravitational dynamics.”

So far, Gravity from Entropy has not been confirmed by observations. The theory makes predictions that future observations of large-scale cosmic structures and other gravitational phenomena could test. While it remains unproven, Bianconi believes it could offer a new way to link gravity, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and the rise of complexity in the universe.

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.

For decades, scholars have debated whether the Qumran sect associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls actually used its unusual 364-day calendar, or viewed it as more of a theoretical ideal.

Now, a new study published in the Tarbiz Quarterly for Jewish Studies suggests that neither explanation is fully accurate. Instead, Prof. Eshbal Ratzon argues that the community used the calendar for a time before seasonal drift and changing Hasmonean politics prompted them to abandon the system.

A Calendar as a Religious Statement

Ratzon, a professor at Tel Aviv University, set out to answer a question that has puzzled scholars for decades. Unlike the approximately 365.25-day solar year, the Qumran calendar consisted of exactly 364 days. The calendar used 364 days because the number divides evenly into 52 seven-day weeks, so every festival would always fall on the same weekday each year.

To the Qumran sect, this order in the calendar demonstrated what they saw as God’s perfect design. They believed God set the calendar at Creation and that people could not change it. This belief clashed with Jerusalem’s religious leaders, whose priests used a lunisolar calendar that most Jewish people followed during the Second Temple period.

Reading the Evidence Differently

The mathematics that gave the calendar its perceived order also led to practical issues. A 364-day year lags behind the solar year by about a day and a quarter each year, causing festivals to drift by nearly a month over two decades. After several decades, a spring harvest festival could fall in winter. For a group that linked its holidays to agriculture, this gradual shift was a serious problem.

Two main theories have shaped the debate for years. One suggests that the sect occasionally added extra days to correct the drift, while the other argues that the 364-day calendar was only a theoretical model and not used in daily life. Ratzon argues that the Dead Sea Scrolls do not clearly support either view. Nearly twenty of the recovered scrolls concern calendars or astronomy, highlighting the importance of the subject within the community. The Book of Jubilees, a key text for the sect, goes further by criticizing the lunar calendar and presenting the 364-day system as the original calendar given to Moses at Sinai.

“The Qumran calendar has long been regarded as one of the Qumran sect’s defining features, but also as one of the most baffling mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Ratzon said.

Why the Sect Moved On

Ratzon’s reconstruction sees the abandonment of the calendar as a two-stage process, rather than a single failure. The growing seasonal drift made the calendar increasingly impractical. At the same time, the sect’s relationship with the Hasmonean rulers improved under Alexander Jannaeus, who supported religious decisions closer to the sect’s views and disagreed with the Pharisees who led the Temple in Jerusalem.

According to Ratzon, improving relations with the Hasmonean rulers made it possible for the sect to adopt the Temple calendar for daily use, while still holding the 364-day system as an ideal. They believed it was valid at Creation and would be restored in the future.

The debate over the Qumran community has continued for decades. While Ratzon’s proposal does not settle that debate, it offers a new explanation for how a calendar once central to the sect’s identity could eventually become more of a religious ideal than a practical system.

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.

A predatory sea worm known as Perinereis cultrifera possesses jaws that do not fit neatly into either biological or metallic categories. These jaws consist of structural proteins reinforced with metal ions, giving them mechanical properties unlike those of either conventional metals or ordinary biological tissue.

This unique combination of composition and mechanical behavior led researchers from TU Wien and the University of Vienna to propose an entirely new material classification. In a recent paper published in Biophysics Reviews, the team suggests that the creature’s jaws represent a distinct class of material, which they term bio-metal.

The jaws of bristle worms such as P. cultrifera are formed by linking structural proteins with metal ions, producing a material tough enough to crush and bite prey. Previous studies called these tissues metallike biomaterials, meaning they share some properties with metals, like strength or conductivity. The new study argues that this term is too broad. According to the researchers, a true bio-metal must meet three criteria: it must be hard, display specific strain mechanics, and have a well-defined ion-protein structure.

Hardness With a Metal Signature

To test if the jaw met these criteria, the researchers used nanoindentation, which means pressing a tiny probe into the tissue to measure its properties. They also conducted chemical tests and imaging at the same time. The results confirmed earlier findings that the jaw tips contain higher concentrations of metal ions than the center, likely making the tips harder.

When the probe pressed into the jaw at different depths, the researchers observed something called the Nix-Gao size effect. This effect, seen before in metals like copper and silver, means that smaller areas resist deformation more than larger ones. The reason is that strain gradients become larger in smaller regions, increasing resistance to deformation. Finding this metal-like behavior in worm jaws is one reason scientists have compared the material to metals.

Where the Metal Comparison Breaks Down

However, the jaw does not behave exactly like metals such as copper. Its elasticity changes depending on the size of the area tested, which is not seen in crystalline metals.

“Bristle worm jaws also showed size-dependent elasticity — this is a distinguishing feature of bio-metals when compared to standard crystalline metals like copper or silver,” said Christian Hellmich, one of the paper’s authors. Copper and silver can show a hardness size effect, but neither exhibits the size-dependent elasticity that the team measured in the worm jaw. That distinction is one reason the researchers argue that these materials deserve their own category.

To explain this property, the researchers built a mathematical model showing how the jaw’s atomic structure leads to the elastic size effect. This model helps explain the effect and gives a basis for future research.

“We plan to extend the experimental database by investigating additional species to refine the theoretical concept and perform dedicated computations, and — perhaps most interestingly — to explore the link between genetic interventions and the corresponding material design space,” Hellmich said. “All this comes with true excitement about the beauty, elegance, and refinement found in and produced by nature.”

Next, the researchers plan to explore how genetic changes influence the development of these materials. If successful, the work could eventually help engineers develop new biomimetic materials inspired by the ion-protein architecture found in these worms.

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.

Some of the most promising locations to search for possible alien megastructures, known as Dyson spheres, may not be stars like the Sun, but rather the galaxy’s smallest and dimmest stars.

Physicist Freeman Dyson introduced the idea of a Dyson sphere in 1960, describing it as a shell or, more realistically, a swarm of orbiting collectors that could capture most of a star’s energy. This concept has interested scientists searching for signs of advanced technology, but the question of how such a structure would appear in astronomical observations remained unknown.

Now, a new study, available on the arXiv preprint server, suggests that one of the coldest objects in a stellar system could, in principle, be an artificial megastructure rather than a natural astronomical object.

Amirnezam Amiri, a physicist at the University of Arkansas, explored the question of Dyson spheres by modeling these hypothetical megastructures around two often-overlooked types of stars: red M-dwarfs and white dwarfs. Amiri credits discussions with Harvard astronomer and founder of the Galileo Project, Avi Loeb, with helping shape the study.

Small, Dim, and Built to Last

Red dwarfs make up about 70% of the stars in the Milky Way. These stars burn slowly and can remain stable for trillions of years, much longer than the universe has even existed so far. White dwarfs offer a different benefit. As the dense remnants of stars like the Sun, they shrink to about 1% of their original size. This means a Dyson swarm could orbit much closer, requiring less material and a smaller structure than one built around a star like the Sun.

Amiri’s study explores how astronomers could detect such structures. Both red dwarfs and white dwarfs are dim enough that the infrared heat emitted by a Dyson swarm would stand out more clearly against the star’s own light.

Reading the Wreckage on a Star Chart

Astronomers use the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram to classify stars by temperature and brightness, and this tool is central to Amiri’s analysis. A Dyson swarm would not destroy a star’s energy, but would capture its light and re-emit it as heat at much longer wavelengths. 

In the new model, a star with a Dyson swarm would appear on the H-R diagram at the same luminosity but shifted dramatically toward the cool end. For instance, a red dwarf at about 3,000 K could appear surrounded by a shell as cold as 50 K, a difference of about two orders of magnitude. No known stars naturally occupy this region of the H-R diagram.

Identifying Factors

Dust and distant galaxies can also produce strong infrared emissions, so astronomers cannot identify a Dyson swarm using temperature alone. Amiri’s model points to a more complex set of clues. A true Dyson swarm would not show the silicate dust features seen in normal dusty disks, so its spectrum would be unusually smooth for an object with strong infrared emission.

Additionally, if the swarm consists of many separate collectors rather than a solid shell, there would be gaps that cause irregular, non-stellar flickering as the pieces move. Each of these signs can have natural causes, but finding them together is rare and hard to explain without considering artificial structures.

Future Observations

Astronomers can carry out this search using existing telescopes. The James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared instruments are already designed to detect faint, cold signals like these. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s new sky survey and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is expected to launch later this year, will add to these efforts. Together, they will generate the kinds of observations needed to search for the signatures described in the study.

Possible candidates for these future observations have already been identified. In 2024, Project Hephaistos identified seven potential Dyson sphere candidates among about 5 million cataloged stars, all linked to red dwarfs. One was ruled out after it was shown that a background black hole caused the observed signal. Several candidate Dyson sphere systems still remain under investigation. Amiri does not claim that any of these are actual Dyson spheres, and the paper makes this clear. Instead, the study offers a better way to tell true anomalies apart from dusty disks before using valuable telescope time. If a Dyson swarm surrounds a star and reradiates its energy at temperatures unlike those of natural stars, upcoming infrared surveys may finally be able to detect one.

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.

Paternal care is uncommon among several wild animal species, even among arthropods—the invertebrates that include insects, arachnids, and crustaceans.

Now, in a recent study in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, harvestmen—also known as daddy longlegs—account for more than half of all independently evolved cases of paternal care currently documented among arthropods.

The news insights were made possible by a recent citizen science effort that significantly increased the available data about these paternal behaviors in arthropods, all within days.

Built for Fatherhood

Harvestmen are one of the most diverse arachnid groups, with more than 6,900 described species. Despite making up just 0.6% of arthropod diversity, they show more independent origins of paternal care or egg guarding than any other arthropod lineage. This concentration of paternal care makes harvestmen a key group for studying the evolution of this behavior.

Led by Glauco Machado at the University of São Paulo, the research team combined almost thirty years of fieldwork with a review of iNaturalist, a public website for sharing nature sightings. From 1936 to 2025, published studies had found parental guarding in only 80 harvestman species. However, the iNaturalist search added 85 new records: 78 showing parental care and seven showing no care, more than doubling the number of harvestman species with available behavioral data.

Machado was surprised by how quickly the platform produced results. “It’s a tremendous source of information that can improve the velocity with which we accumulate biological information,” he said. “I would never be able to do this by visiting museums around the world. It would be very expensive, very time-consuming, but here we conducted the search in only one week.”

The Evolution of Fatherhood

With the expanded dataset, the researchers were able to map parental behaviors onto a newly constructed evolutionary tree encompassing 165 species across nine families. This represented the first reconstruction of how both maternal and paternal care evolved within the superfamily Gonyleptoidea. The findings challenge the assumption that caregiving behaviors follow a single evolutionary pathway.

The analysis found that maternal care evolved only from ancestors that did not provide care, a pattern also seen in insects. Paternal care, however, appeared in two ways: once from ancestors with no care, and once from species where females already guarded eggs. This difference suggests that separate evolutionary pressures shaped the development of parental care in harvestmen.

Machado suggests that sexual selection may have driven the evolution of paternal care from maternal care. In this scenario, which the researchers describe as enhanced fecundity, females favor males that are already tending eggs.

“It’s very rare in nature, paternal care, and this behavior evolved many times independently,” Machado said. “In many species where males care for the offspring alone, the caring activity is a sexually selected behavior, which means that females prefer males that are caring for the eggs.”

The evolutionary tree also showed that parental care does not always persist across lineages. Several groups appear to have lost caregiving behavior over evolutionary time. Some harvestmen now use easier methods, like hiding their eggs or burying them under debris, to protect them without having to stay and guard them.

Limitations of Citizen Science

Machado emphasizes that experts remain essential to this process. It takes specialized knowledge to correctly identify species, tell the sex of the guarding animal, and tell real parental care apart from similar behaviors such as mate-guarding. “I think taxonomists’ role in modern science is more important than ever,” he said. “We cannot preserve a species that doesn’t have a name. And names are provided by taxonomists.”

Additionally, animals that are actively guarding eggs are more likely to be photographed than those not showing any behavior, which could make active parental care seem more common than it really is.

What Comes Next

Machado views this approach as a model for future research. More than half of the new records came from individuals without formal training in arachnology, and he anticipates similar results as researchers apply iNaturalist to other animal groups for which parental care remains poorly documented.

“I think it’s a very broad contribution for people that are working with insects, frogs, and all kinds of groups, animal groups, in which we have both maternal care and paternal care,” he said. The next mystery solved through citizen science may not involve arachnids at all.

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.

The mass extinction event known as the Great Dying, which occurred 252 million years ago, resulted in the loss of 96% of marine species, and for many years, scientists could not fully explain why certain animals disappeared while others survived.

That longstanding mystery may be closer to a resolution, thanks to a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which suggests that differences in physiology, metabolism, and oxygen use helped determine which marine animals survived the catastrophe.

Stanford University researchers found that physiological differences largely determined which marine animals survived the end-Permian mass extinction after warming oceans lost much of their oxygen. Animals whose bodies could not meet rising oxygen demands, including brachiopods and crinoids that had long ruled the seafloor, had a hard time surviving as ocean temperatures rose and oxygen in the water dropped.

By contrast, mollusks and fish possessed body plans better suited to supplying oxygen as temperatures climbed, allowing them to survive in greater numbers.

“With this study, we essentially wanted to solve the mystery of why, when you go to the beach, you collect the shells of clams and snails rather than those of brachiopods,” said lead author Jose Andres Marquez, a former PhD student in the lab of Stanford’s Erik Anders Sperling.

Marquez and his team developed a model based on species’ metabolic oxygen balance and tested it using direct measurements of oxygen use in living relatives of both ancient groups. This included brachiopods collected from the San Juan Islands in Washington. Their results revealed that the risk of extinction closely aligned with how much oxygen a species required and how effectively it could transport oxygen within its body.

A Body Built for Survival

Modern sea animals, such as bivalves, gastropods, and fish, have become more active and muscular over time. Their hunting habits demand more oxygen, even under normal conditions. Although this could seem like a disadvantage during harsh times, it actually worked in their favor. When ocean temperatures rose and oxygen levels dropped during the Permian-Triassic period, these animals already relied on features such as gills, strong blood flow, and larger muscles to get more oxygen when needed.

On the other hand, Paleozoic animals like brachiopods and crinoids were slow-moving filter feeders that thrived in low-oxygen environments when things were stable. However, as temperatures rose, they required more oxygen, and their bodies could not keep up with the demand in the now-oxygen-poor waters.

“Our findings show that, across different organism groups, extinctions happened at much higher rates for those more vulnerable to increases in water temperature and decreases in oxygen availability,” Marquez said.

The findings support decades of evidence from the fossil record. Brachiopods, which once accounted for thousands of species, now number about 400. In contrast, bivalves have diversified and now account for between 10,000 and 15,000 species.

Settling the Debate

Sperling previously co-authored a 2018 study that identified oxygen loss and warming as the main causes of the Great Dying. However, that earlier research used only physiological data from modern species, so the results were influenced by data from commercially important fish and crustaceans rather than from the ancient groups that have largely disappeared. The new study addresses this limitation by directly measuring the physiology of living representatives of ancient animal groups, including brachiopods.

“This study is really the final nail in the coffin for what caused the Permian-Triassic mass extinction,” Sperling said.

A Familiar Climate

The environmental changes that led to the Great Dying began in oceans that were relatively cool and well-oxygenated, similar to present-day conditions. A massive release of volcanic carbon dioxide altered the atmosphere, driving global temperatures up by 8 to 12 degrees Celsius over several thousand years. By comparison, current climate projections estimate a rise of 1.5 to 4 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100, but over a much shorter timescale. “The bad news is, we are on track for Permian-Triassic levels of warming in worst-case scenario projections,” Sperling said.

By comparing more groups of marine animals, the researchers hope to determine whether the physiological patterns that shaped Earth’s greatest mass extinction could help predict which species are most vulnerable as today’s oceans continue to warm. “We’re still at the point where we can change things and do something about it,” Sperling emphasized.

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.