For decades, paleoanthropologists have largely agreed that somewhere along the evolutionary course from apelike ancestors to modern humans, our bodies got dramatically larger. However, one lingering mystery has been when this intense growth began.

Did our ancestors gradually grow bigger over millions of years? Did the shift coincide with the emergence of the genus Homo? Or did it occur later, after some of the earliest human species had already appeared?

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) argues that the answer is more complex than any single theory has suggested.

Rather than supporting a single long-standing hypothesis, researchers used a sophisticated statistical method to show that human body size likely followed two evolutionary courses simultaneously: a slow, steady increase spanning millions of years, punctuated by a much larger leap in later members of the genus Homo.

The findings help reconcile decades of conflicting research while offering one of the clearest pictures yet of how, and perhaps why, our ancestors evolved into larger-bodied humans.

“Despite its central role in hominin evolution, there is little consensus on how body size increased through time,” researchers write. “We provide strong evidence for a marked size increase in later-occurring Homo, alongside a moderate general increase over time among all hominins.”

Body size is one of the defining characteristics of an organism. In humans and our extinct relatives, it has been linked to everything from brain expansion and walking efficiency to metabolism, hunting behavior, and the ability to travel across increasingly large landscapes. Understanding when body size changed, therefore, helps researchers reconstruct not only what our ancestors looked like, but how they lived.

Yet despite decades of fossil findings, scientists have struggled to agree on the evolutionary pattern behind those changes.

Some previous studies suggested that hominins simply became larger over time. Some contended that body size remained relatively stable until the emergence of Homo. Still others have proposed that the real transformation arose only after early species such as Homo habilis, often regarded as one of the first members of our genus.

According to researchers, one reason for the disagreement is that earlier analyses typically examined these competing ideas independently. They also often failed to account for uncertainties inherent in the fossil record, including disagreements over species classification, differences in body mass estimation methods, and uncertainties in evolutionary relationships among fossil species.

To address those limitations, researchers compiled one of the largest hominin body-size datasets assembled to date, incorporating body mass assessments from 386 fossil specimens representing 21 different taxa.

They then analyzed the data using Bayesian phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models—a statistical approach that accounts for evolutionary relationships while encompassing multiple layers of uncertainty.

The team repeated its analyses across 1,000 different phylogenetic trees and 1,000 separate datasets, allowing them to test whether the overall pattern remained consistent despite uncertainties.

The results pointed to two simultaneous trends.

The first was a modest but persistent increase in body size across the hominin family as a whole. On average, body mass increased by roughly 2 pounds (0.9 kilograms) every million years, suggesting that larger bodies gradually became more common throughout human evolution.

However, the second trend proved far more dramatic.

Instead of all members of Homo becoming substantially larger, the researchers found the strongest evidence for a distinct jump in body size among later members of the genus, particularly species that appeared after Homo habilis. That pattern regularly emerged regardless of how the fossil data were analyzed.

In other words, early members of Homo may not have represented the major biological turning point scientists once assumed.

This finding disputes a common assumption that simply belonging to the genus Homo meant possessing a significantly larger body. Instead, the study suggests that some hallmark features traditionally associated with humans, including larger body size, may have evolved after the genus’s origin.

That interpretation also corresponds to broader changes that occurred later in human evolution.

Researchers note that this period coincides with evidence for more efficient upright walking, greater reliance on meat consumption, and expanding home ranges. Larger bodies may have been both a consequence of and a contributor to those behavioral and ecological shifts.

The study likewise reinforces another growing theme that evolution rarely follows a straight line.

Species such as Homo floresiensis, often nicknamed the “Hobbit” because of its diminutive stature, and Homo Naledi frequently appeared as outliers with unusually small body sizes despite belonging to relatively recent branches of the human family tree. Their existence demonstrates that body size did not simply increase in a uniform march toward modern humans.

Instead, evolution repeatedly experimented with different solutions depending on local environments and ecological constraints.

The researchers also argue that part of the longstanding disagreement over body-size evolution stems from the fossil record itself. Different studies have estimated fossil body masses using different skeletal elements, comparison populations, and statistical techniques, sometimes producing substantially different results for the same individual.

By expressly incorporating those uncertainties into their analysis, rather than treating them as fixed values, the new framework seeks to capture the range of plausible evolutionary scenarios rather than relying on a single interpretation.

Even so, researchers caution that important questions remain unresolved.

Improved fossil discoveries, more accurate body-mass estimation methods, and a better understanding of species relationships could all further refine the picture. The study also does not explicitly account for sexual size differences between males and females, which may have been greater in some early hominin species than in modern humans.

Nevertheless, the wider conclusion is intriguing.

Rather than choosing between competing theories, the evidence suggests both contain elements of the truth.

Body size did increase gradually across the hominin lineage. But the most considerable leap appears to have occurred later, after the earliest representatives of Homo had already evolved.

That conclusion may help settle one of paleoanthropology’s longest-running debates while showing how advances in statistical methods are transforming scientists’ ability to extract new insights from fossils that have often been studied for decades.

“Overall, these findings bring clarity to a fundamental question in human evolution and show how the application of rigorous phylogenetic comparative tools can unlock patterns previously hidden in the fossil record while accounting for multiple sources of uncertainty,” researchers write. “By reconciling conflicting findings within a single framework, our results clarify key evolutionary transitions and highlight the complex nature of body size change in human evolution.”

Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

In a major new confirmation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the LARES-2 (Laser Relativity Satellite 2) has measured frame dragging around Earth with unprecedented precision.

Ignazio Ciufolini of China’s Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics led the team behind a new paper published in Nature reporting the most precise measurement of the effect to date. The researchers reduced the uncertainty to just 0.2 percent, compared with several percent—and in some cases as much as 10 percent—in previous measurements.

Also known as the Lense-Thirring effect, named for the physicists who modeled it in 1918, frame dragging is the pull of a rotating mass on spacetime. The phenomenon was first predicted in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Seeking Frame Dragging

Frame dragging becomes more pronounced around faster-spinning and more massive objects. For this reason, its effects are far stronger around black holes than around comparatively small bodies such as Earth. Some black holes possess millions or even billions of times the Sun’s mass, producing an immense distortion of the surrounding spacetime.

LARES-2, a satellite developed by the Italian Space Agency, made the new measurement possible. Its appearance has been compared to a golf ball or a disco ball, with its 303 corner-cube retroreflectors creating golf-ball-like divots on its surface, which is composed of a nickel-chromium alloy called Inconel 718.

The spacecraft is remarkably simple, with no thrusters, solar panels, or onboard electronics cluttering its compact, 16-inch-wide frame. Despite its small size, LARES-2 weighs roughly 650 pounds. This combination gives it the lowest area-to-mass ratio of any satellite in medium Earth orbit, minimizing the influence of nongravitational forces on its motion.

Measuring Frame Dragging

The effect of gravitation on the object was then measured by bombarding it with ground-based lasers, which the retroreflectors bounce back to the surface. Ciufolini’s team collected roughly 200,000 of these observations between July 2022 and June 2025, with one-millimeter precision, forming the dataset from which they calculated the frame-dragging effect.

The method presents a significant challenge, however. Earth is an oblate spheroid, with bulging sides created by centrifugal force, rather than a perfect sphere, which produces Newtonian forces that interfere with the frame-dragging signal. To mitigate this issue, the researchers used another satellite in a supplementary orbit, canceling out the effect of the opposing Newtonian forces.

That second satellite was NASA’s LAGEOS, launched in 1976. The orbital planes of LAGEOS and LARES-2 differ by 180.01 degrees—remarkably close to the ideal separation of 180 degrees.

A Final Challenge

One additional complication remained: the K1 lunisolar tide, a variation in Earth’s gravitational field produced by the combined influence of the Moon and Sun. Time provided the solution. Over the tide’s 1,050-day precession cycle, its effects average out and can be removed from the data.

After accounting for these sources of interference, the researchers measured a drift of 61.3 milliarcseconds per year in the satellites’ orbits caused by Earth’s frame dragging. The result closely matches the value predicted by general relativity, with only a narrow margin of uncertainty.

The researchers say the true value of their finding lies not just in confirming general relativity, but also in limiting the scope of the Chern-Simons theory, which seeks to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics for a Theory of Everything. Of more limited concern, the work also provided the most precise K1 tide measurement ever recorded, which could prove important to future Earth science research.

The paper, “LARES-2 Satellite Measures Frame-Dragging Effect Around the Earth,” appeared in Nature on July 8, 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.

New research is revealing possible links between one of the most enduring cosmic mysteries—dark matter—and the existence of a “hidden” fifth dimension.

Dark matter is widely believed to exist according to several leading cosmological theories, although this nonluminous material remains invisible through direct detection. However, its presence can be inferred through the gravitational influence this mysterious form of matter has on the surrounding universe.

Now, according to researchers at the University of Sheffield, one reason dark matter may have remained so elusive involves the possibility that it exists within a “hidden” dimension—a concept that has gained traction in past research.

The Sheffield team’s recent look at this possibility, detailed in a study published in Physical Review D, takes the concept one step further by introducing a new potential framework that could help reveal clues to the behavior of dark matter, as well as why astronomers have had such a hard time detecting it.

A Dark Secret Lurking in a Hidden Dimension?

In their new research, the Sheffield team says that dark matter may be lurking within a hidden dimension accompanied by dark photons, a variety of particles among those which physicists call “hidden sector particles,” and which are believed to represent potential force carriers for dark matter.

Due to the specific geometry present within this hidden dimension, a phenomenon known as dark matter resonance may occur, where dark photons align in specific arrangements.

“Dark matter resonance is already known to be a powerful idea,” according to Yu-Dai Tsai, Ph.D., a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield and one of the new paper’s coauthors.

Tsai adds that the concept has “the potential to change our understanding of how dark matter was produced in the early universe and how we search for it today,” although reconciling it with our current understanding of dark matter has presented issues for researchers in the past, which include questions about its specific origins.

“Many previous resonant dark matter models have treated the resonance as an assumption,” Tsai recently said in a statement. “[Our team’s] work gives a possible deeper origin for it: The resonance may come directly from the geometry of hidden dimensions.”

Unlocking Dark Matter Resonance

According to Tsai and his co-author, Taegyu Lee, understanding dark matter resonance more fully could hold significant implications for unlocking new clues about how matter behaved at early stages in our universe, and why that may differ significantly from what astrophysicists see occurring right now.

“This resonance can make dark matter interactions much stronger at crucial epochs in cosmic history,” Tsai says. “Crucially, the model allows for these strong interactions in the past while still explaining why dark matter appears so inert and hard to detect today.”

Although Tsai concedes that the concept of dark matter resonance has been explored in the past, unlike previous studies, the Sheffield duo’s new work suggests that dark matter may essentially be “in tune” with conditions in a hidden fifth dimension already, arising naturally from its innate mathematical structure.

Tsai says this approach toward understanding dark matter, if correct, “would represent a profound advance in humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos and what it is made of.”

A New Approach Toward Unraveling Dark Matter’s Mysteries 

Fundamentally, the team’s findings point to promising new ways physicists may be able to explore the underlying mysteries of both dark matter and the possibility of additional dimensions in which it may operate.

“Our research gives physicists clear new targets in the search for dark matter,” Tsai says, “while connecting two of the biggest ideas in fundamental physics: the mystery of dark matter and the existence of hidden dimensions.”

The recent study, “Naturally resonant dark matter from extra dimensions,” by Yu-Dai Tsai and Taegyu Lee, appeared in Physical Review D on July 8, 2026.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

The future of military artificial intelligence may not be a single all-knowing machine directing a battlefield from a distant command center. Instead, DARPA is preparing to explore enormous collectives of AI agents capable of organizing themselves, dividing up missions, adapting to chaos, and continuing to operate even when some members of the group fail, disappear, or go rogue.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has formally launched a new effort called Decentralized Artificial Intelligence by Controlled Emergence, or DICE, aimed at developing AI collectives that can operate in contested environments without requiring a human or central AI planner to explicitly direct every action.

By the program’s final phase, DARPA wants researchers to test simulated collectives involving as many as 100,000 AI agents exchanging up to 1 million messages as they work toward shared objectives.

A recently released solicitation notice describes DICE as a 36-month effort divided between decentralization, adversarial robustness, and large-scale testing.

“Future conflicts will unfold at machine speed, and the current centralized planning and scripted orchestration approach is too slow, too rigid, and too predictable for the hyper-dynamic, contested environments of the future,” researchers write. “Surprise, adaptability, and resilience will depend on the ability to compose and recompose AI capabilities on demand.”

The basic premise behind DARPA’s DICE program is that today’s approach to multi-agent AI has a serious weakness. Most systems involving multiple AI agents still rely on some form of central orchestrator.

Think of it as a manager overseeing a team of specialized employees. One AI agent might gather information. Another analyzes it. A third creates a plan. A fourth executes a particular task. But somewhere in the system, a central planner or workflow typically decides who does what and combines the results.

That works reasonably well for predictable tasks. However, DARPA argues it may be dangerously vulnerable on a battlefield.

A central orchestrator creates a bottleneck because every increasingly complex mission must ultimately flow through a single decision-making structure. As the number of agents, roles, and interactions grows, the central planner must absorb more information, preserve greater context, and coordinate an expanding web of specialized systems.

Eventually, DARPA says, even an AI orchestrator can hit the context and inference limits of its underlying foundation model. There is also a more obvious military problem. A central command node is a single point of failure.

If communications are degraded, information arrives late, or the orchestrator itself is compromised, errors can potentially spread throughout the entire AI collective.

In a future conflict where electronic warfare, cyberattacks, deception, and broken communications are expected rather than exceptional, that vulnerability could be catastrophic.

DICE proposes a radically different model.

Rather than having a central AI issue instructions, individual AI agents would communicate directly with one another. They could form temporary teams, divide missions into smaller tasks, negotiate roles, combine incomplete information, and reorganize themselves when conditions change.

DARPA compares the idea to the architecture of the internet, where resilient global behavior can emerge from relatively simple local rules and decentralized interactions.

Essentially, an AI agent might receive a mission and determine that only part of the objective falls within its capabilities. The agent could volunteer to handle that portion and broadcast the remaining problem to neighboring agents.

Another agent might take the next task. Others could compete to perform the same job, potentially bidding based on cost or capability. Through repeated local interactions along with distributed consensus, the collective could gradually assemble its own mission plan.

If an agent fails, the entire mission does not necessarily need to be replanned. Its particular task could simply be offered back to the collective.

DARPA calls the larger concept “controlled emergence.”

Similar systems already exist in nature. Ant colonies, or flocks of birds, can engage in surprisingly complex group behavior even though no individual member possesses a complete understanding of the collective.

Computer scientists have long studied similar phenomena. DARPA’s solicitation even points to Conway’s Game of Life, the famous mathematical simulation in which extraordinarily complex patterns can emerge from a handful of simple rules.

The challenge is applying that principle to cognitive systems capable of reasoning, planning, and independently pursuing goals.

A sophisticated AI system may interpret ambiguous information, interact with tools, maintain memory, and generate its own intermediate objectives. Put thousands of such agents together, allow them to communicate, and the resulting collective could behave in ways that were never explicitly programmed.

That unpredictability is both the attraction and the danger of DICE.

DARPA wants the collective to remain creative enough to discover unexpected courses of action. However, it also wants individual agents to continue aligned with their designated roles, the wider mission, established doctrine, and ultimately the human user’s intent.

Too much control could produce a predictable but unstable AI force incapable of adapting. Too little control could allow agents to drift from their roles or develop what DARPA calls “instrumental goals” that are not consistent with the mission.

In other words, the Pentagon’s research arm wants emergence—but only within boundaries.

To solve the problem, DICE researchers will develop a local adaptor designed to interface with each AI agent. Rather than functioning as a central command system, each adaptor would operate locally, helping the agent coordinate with peers while simultaneously monitoring and modifying its behavior.

For AI models whose internal activations are accessible, researchers may experiment with techniques such as “activation steering.”

The simplified idea is that assigning an AI a particular role can create detectable patterns inside the model. Researchers may be able to identify a mathematical representation associated with that role and continuously steer the model back toward it when the agent begins to drift. DARPA describes these representations as potential “role vectors.”

For proprietary or black-box AI models whose internal activations cannot be directly examined, the challenge becomes considerably harder. DICE researchers may instead experiment with memory editing, context engineering, tool restrictions, or even game-theoretic incentives created to encourage collaborative behavior.

The solicitation draws an intriguing comparison to the way social norms emerge and spread among humans. As AI models become better at reasoning and more aware of the context in which they operate, DARPA suggests that the same growing sophistication that fuels fears about rogue AI could also provide a new way to control it.

The scale DARPA ultimately envisions is enormous.

During the first nine-month phase of DICE, simulated missions are expected to involve approximately 500 agents and 5,000 interactions. DARPA will compare the decentralized systems with state-of-the-art centrally orchestrated multi-agent AI systems.

The second phase increases the target to 5,000 agents and 50,000 interactions while introducing adversarial conditions. Agents may fail, receive deceptive information, or deliberately behave as compromised or rogue members of the collective.

By the final 12-month phase, DICE aims to test simulations involving 100,000 agents and 1 million interactions.

At that scale, DARPA is not simply studying better chatbots working together. The agency is exploring whether collective intelligence itself can become a military capability.

One example described in the solicitation imagines AI agents conducting operational planning across an entire conflict ecosystem. Some agents could negotiate for raw materials in contested areas. Others might manage supply chains, optimize manufacturing, deploy units, conduct battle management, or analyze post-battle damage.

Even an individual simulated drone could effectively become a miniature AI collective composed of separate navigation, perception, and networking agents.

Under the DICE concept, those capabilities may potentially be recombined as conditions change. DARPA offers the example of a surveillance drone being repurposed as a network router because the collective recognizes an emerging communications need.

The important distinction is that no central planner necessarily has to foresee that solution. The collective discovers it.

Still, DARPA is careful to note that DICE is a research program centered on simulation. The agency’s public program page explicitly states that its scope does not include developing or launching autonomous systems in the real world.

Instead, DICE will use Department of War-relevant simulated environments to measure whether decentralized AI collectives can outperform today’s centrally orchestrated systems. Those simulations may resemble extraordinarily large and complicated strategy games.

DARPA suggests researchers could draw inspiration from StarCraft or massively multiplayer online role-playing games, although the environments must remain relevant to military problems. High-fidelity physics is not necessarily required. In fact, rendering every drone, vehicle, or battlefield interaction in photorealistic detail could make a simulation of 100,000 AI agents computationally impossible.

The focus is on reasoning. DARPA wants to know whether thousands of AI agents can gather and combine fragmented information without simply reinforcing one another’s incorrect assumptions. The systems will be tested on their ability to recognize deception, isolate compromised agents, adapt when communications fail, and remain focused on a mission across thousands of reasoning steps.

Perhaps most importantly, DICE is designed to examine how these massive AI collectives behave when their interactions yield outcomes their designers never anticipated.

DARPA explicitly wants its test environments to provoke emergent collaboration, competition, and even collusion.

During later phases, DICE teams will face one another in simulated “team vs team playoffs.” The second phase will culminate in a competition used to select which research teams advance. The final phase will feature another head-to-head competition after the systems have been pushed toward full scale.

By Phase 3, the program will bring in another significant complication: AI agents creating other AI agents. That progression draws attention to the deeper tension at the center of DICE.

For years, much of the AI safety debate has focused on preventing autonomous systems from exhibiting unforeseen behavior. DARPA is approaching the problem from a different direction. The agency appears to believe that, in future contested environments, some degree of unforeseen behavior may be precisely what gives an AI collective its value.

A perfectly scripted system is predictable not only to its commanders but potentially to an adversary.

DICE is therefore attempting something considerably more ambitious than building a larger multi-agent AI framework. DARPA wants to understand whether engineers can deliberately cultivate emergent machine intelligence, allow it enough freedom to improvise, and still build controls capable of keeping an enormous AI collective aligned with a human-defined mission.

Whether those competing demands can coexist remains an open question. The program’s own solicitation repeatedly acknowledges the possibility of role drift, deceptive agents, collusion, compromised systems, and AI agents independently developing misaligned actions.

Ultimately, those are not side issues. They are the fundamental questions the DICE program was created to answer.

“DICE is built for such autonomy-powered, high-tempo battlespace,” the solicitation notice reads. “It is a future where success is measured by the relentless, creative ability of an autonomous collective to execute missions in the face of chaos and uncertainty. This is a profound and necessary departure from the past.”

Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

As Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey arrives in theaters, archaeologists working off the western coast of Greece say a real-life cult site devoted to the legendary story’s hero has been uncovered.

Local traditions had long told of a stony hilltop on the Greek island of Ithaca that had once been home to a shrine to Odysseus, the legendary Greek king of the isle and main protagonist in Homer’s famous poem.

Now, after close to two decades of archaeological work on the island that served as home to the fictional king in Homer’s epic literature, archaeologists say they have uncovered the most compelling evidence yet that a genuine historical cult site had existed there, dedicated to the famed hero of The Odyssey.

An Ancient Cult Site Devoted to Odysseus

Researchers with the University of Ioannina recently revealed the discovery of new inscriptions and artifacts supporting the existence of a cult element devoted to Odysseus, uncovered at the ancient complex at Agios Athanasios, which had been a public sanctuary devoted to the worship of Homer’s famous hero during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods.

According to a statement released by the Greek Ministry of Culture, the building complex is characterized by a series of robust structures located on terraces, which involve several monumental elements featuring carved architecture and niches for what appear to have been votive offerings or inscriptions, all of which point to its use as a cult site.

Yannos Lolos, one of the project’s lead archaeologists, recently told ArtNet that the site’s role was revealed partially through a reexamination of existing materials found there, which helped reveal what he calls “new and strong inscriptional evidence” linking the site to Odysseus.

Bronze Bust and Inscription Discoveries

Among the most important discoveries at the site were a small bronze bust of Odysseus dating to the first or second century C.E., as well as a roof tile fragment which bore an inscription that reads, “to Odysseus.”

However, an even more compelling discovery involved a second stamped roof tile inscribed with the hero’s name but appearing in the Greek genitive case; this is significant, since it indicates ownership, thereby identifying the sanctuary as “belonging” to Odysseus.

Based on current evidence, organized cult worship is believed to have begun at the site by around the late fourth century B.C.E., which places its use at around 500 years after Homer composed his famous epic poem, and almost a full millennium after the legendary events the epic describes.

The physical sanctuary itself was built onto a massive natural rock formation, and remnants of the ancient structure include a primary tower, a large oblong building, and terraces which were carved directly into the underlying bedrock.

Excavations over the last several years have also revealed the site’s deeper history, which points to evidence of earlier Mycenaean occupation during the 13th and 14th centuries B.C.E., at which time the site had likely served as a strategic center overseeing nearby harbors and local water resources.

A Discovery with Legendary Significance

In a statement, the Greek Ministry of Culture said the two new engravings arrives “in combination with the other available data, to document the development of a prominent public complex at the site,” which it said help to establish the “major role in the religious, social and possibly political life of the Ithacians of the Hellenistic-early Roman periods, but also with a broader pilgrimage character.”

The recognition of this ancient cult site only adds to the existing evidence that already supported worship of Odysseus on Ithaca. Past discoveries have revealed ancient coins depicting the hero, found near ritual offerings at Ithaca, which were also linked to cult activities. However, the identification of the sanctuary offers the most conclusive archaeological evidence to date that Homer’s legendary hero had been the cult’s focus.

Of course, these discoveries fall short of establishing Odysseus as a true historical figure, and most scholars agree that Odysseus was a fictional character born out of traditions that incorporated real places and events into their broader mythos.

However, in at least a few instances, the lines between myth and ancient history have been blurred—a famous example being Heinrich Schliemann’s identification of a site (originally discovered by British amateur archaeologist Frank Calvert, with his identification of the mound of Hisarlik) which helped reveal the archaeological reality behind the city of Troy, which had previously been considered a mythical location.

It was also reported last year that an archaeological discovery resembling the “labyrinth” from Greek mythology had been uncovered on Crete, in a discovery some have called “one of the most important archaeological finds” of the century.

Although the discoveries at Ithaca don’t establish Homer’s Odysseus as a historical figure in this way, they do confirm that centuries after The Odyssey was composed, inhabitants of Ithaca engaged in cult activities to honor the legendary king at a sanctuary on the island, which, according to legend, he once ruled.

Additional details about the site and discoveries made there in recent years can be found at the Greek Ministry of Culture website.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations have astronomers on the brink of solving another long-standing astronomical mystery: how do supermassive black holes feed?

Astronomers from the Université de Montréal led an international team in the new research, reported in a recent paper in The Astrophysical Journal, which presents the clearest images ever recorded of gaseous filaments connecting a galaxy’s atmosphere to the rotating disk that the supermassive black hole feeds on.

The team’s analysis of the data paves the way toward understanding how black holes consume matter, a mystery that has stumped astronomers for decades.

Strange Black Hole Feeding

“JWST observations are offering us thousands of new facts and measurements, and I can report it’s a lot to absorb,” said co-author Megan Donahue, MSU University Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy. “We are all working together to solve the astrophysics questions about how these black holes get their fuel and how they interact with their host galaxy.”

Supermassive black holes anchor most galaxies in the universe, with masses ranging from millions to billions of times that of the Sun. In active galactic nuclei (AGN), these central black holes both consume enormous amounts of surrounding material and unleash powerful jets that shape the galaxies around them.

This activity presents a longstanding puzzle. Because an AGN’s jets heat the surrounding gas, they should effectively cut off the black hole’s fuel supply, leaving astronomers to wonder how it continues to accrete matter.

Testing a Hypothesis

To investigate, the researchers tested the leading explanation: that heated gas eventually cools, condenses into long filaments, and falls back toward the galactic center, replenishing the black hole’s supply of material.

They turned JWST toward one of the best natural laboratories for studying AGN: the galaxy NGC 4696, located at the heart of the Centaurus Cluster, roughly 145 million light-years from Earth.

Using JWST’s NIRSpec instrument, the team collected eight hours of observations, mapping the motion of gas deep within the galaxy—where the black hole’s gravitational influence dominates—at a resolution of about 30 light-years.

Their observations revealed an 800-light-year-wide disk of gas orbiting the supermassive black hole at roughly 600 kilometers per second. Connected to this rapidly rotating disk was a large infalling filament, funneling gas inward to feed the AGN.

Feeding Cycle of the Black Hole

The discovery fills in a crucial missing piece of the puzzle surrounding how supermassive black holes sustain themselves. The researchers propose that after the black hole injects energy into the surrounding gas, heating it, that material eventually cools and collapses into thin filaments stretching hundreds of thousands of light-years. Guided by magnetic fields, these filaments then fall toward the galaxy’s center, where they accumulate in the rotating accretion disk.

The team also ran a series of computer simulations based on this model and found that the predicted behavior closely matched what JWST observed. While additional observations will be needed to confirm the results, the findings provide strong support for the filament-feeding hypothesis.

“It’s been really exciting to participate in this project,” co-author Mark Voit, an MSU Physics and Astronomy Professor, said in a statement.

“Calculations done by our Michigan State group predict that magnetic fields should help feed the universe’s biggest black holes by channeling cool gas toward them, and it’s amazing to see that happening in these JWST images,” he added.

The paper, “JWST Reveals How Lack Holes Are Fed: Kiloparsec-Scale Multiphase Filaments Feed Sub-Kiloparsec Circumnuclear Disks,” appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 14, 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.

Scientists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have unveiled a method for tracking silently moving underwater and surface objects by using existing fiber-optic cables to measure water displacement.

The scientists behind the novel detection approach, which was designed to detect whales even when they aren’t vocalizing, also demonstrated the method’s ability to track surface ships and potentially underwater vessels, such as submarines, that traditionally rely on silence for stealth.

Tracking Silently Moving Whales and Other Objects

In the research team’s study, the authors explain that it is already possible to record and reconstruct marine mammal vocalizations, including those of whales, using seabed fiber-optic cables. They note that the current method, called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), allows scientists to passively monitor whale behavior, “enabling both the detection of vocalizations and the simultaneous tracking of multiple individuals.”

However, they add, although this data can prove valuable in tracking these increasingly endangered animals, “it has not been possible to track marine mammals when they are silent.”

“A fundamental limitation of passive acoustic monitoring is that most methods rely on acoustic data, which is only available when whales vocalize,” the study authors explain, adding that this limitation “clearly demonstrates the need for new sensing methods that can detect silent whales.”

Although the researchers propose several methods, including combining DAS data with satellite and observational data to paint a more complete picture, they also note a “second path” that involves exploring current datasets to discover new, valuable acoustic signatures even when the animals are silent.

Detecting Hydrodynamic Pressure Changes Caused by Ships and Animals

When exploring new ways to interpret DAS data collected by seabed fiber-optic cables, the team explained how low-frequency strain variations may arise from “a range of physical mechanisms.” These include hydrodynamic processes “associated with moving objects.”

For example, the authors explain, when a ship moves across the ocean surface, it pushes water ahead of it and draws water along in its wake. This motion through the water medium generates a strain on the surrounding water described as a hydrodynamic pressure field. According to the team, this motion-induced pressure field  “extends downward through the water column.”

“The displacement of water generated by moving whales and ships induces a moving hydrodynamic pressure field that extends through the water column, dynamically loading and unloading the seafloor,” they explain.

Changes in this pressure field caused by moving objects cause sediments on the ocean floor to deform laterally and vertically. In areas of the seafloor with fiberoptic cables buried underneath, the DAS system records this “lateral deformation” of the sediments, which “translates into strain that can be observed in the DAS data.”

“This means that no acoustic signal is involved, and we can ‘listen’ to silent whales,” they write.

Tests Demonstrate Tracking Surface Ships and Submerged Whales

To calibrate their approach, the team used surface ships as “proxies” in a series of field experiments. According to their study, the four interrogator units (IU) were installed “during the DAS experiment on Svalbard in 2022.” Then, another unit was installed in Longyearbyen in March 2025. Although the study focuses on the newer IUs, the team notes that all the experimental data “was used to analyze how coupling affects the detectability of hydrodynamic pressure field signatures and how the signal characteristics change with increasing source-receiver distance.”

In those experiments, the team investigated four ships of different sizes. Notably, all ships were observed at a depth of 70 to 80 meters and were traveling at roughly the same speed. Critically, ship size, speed, and route data can be verified externally, providing a check on the study’s results.

“Ships are observed in the DAS data year-round, and the AIS is available to confirm which ship is sailing above the fiber and at what time,” they explain.

As expected, they found that the DAS signal amplitude “scales with the size of the ship.” For example, the smallest ship they observed barely registered above the background noise, making it the hardest to track. Conversely, the largest vessel tracked by the team, an icebreaker, left the clearest signal.

The researchers also demonstrated the ability to observe hydrodynamic pressure and velocity signals from a cruise ship at a water depth of 413 m, “and up to 550 m from the fiber cable.” However, when the team searched for whales, the range was much more limited.

“The smaller blue whales can be observed when diving within 40 m of the fiber-optical cable,” they explain.

During a dedicated test segment, the team monitored what they interpreted as several silently moving whales traversing through the detection zone. Although they were unable to independently confirm they were whales in the same way they could confirm the ships, the team notes that “multiple lines of analysis support the interpretation that whales are responsible for the observed signals.”

The team also notes that AIS data confirmed that no acoustic ship signatures were present “in the time window studied.” They add that this result “reduces the likelihood that the observed low-frequency signals originate from vessels.”

The Signal Amplitude Decreases with Increasing Distance From the Fiber

When discussing the implications of their findings, the team said their data shows that the observed low-frequency response captured by the fiber-optic cables “is consistent with translating hydrodynamic pressure fields generated by the displacement of water by moving ships and other large bodies such as whales.”

“This sensing method enables an approach to monitoring one of the world’s most endangered species,” they explain, adding that it is even more effective at detecting submerged objects than at detecting surface ships.

“A fully submerged object generates a more symmetric pressure field, while a surface-bound ship produces a truncated field due to the air–water interface, which limits the downward extent of the pressure field,” the study authors write.

When discussing the limitations of their innovative, silent, object-tracking approach, the team notes that it is only effective for tracking smaller ships and whales at close range.

“Kvitungen is the smallest ship investigated in this work and is barely observed above the noise floor for a water depth of ∼75 m,” they write. “Blue whales are even smaller and are unlikely to be detected at distances greater than approximately 30 to 40 m from the fiber.”

The team also notes that although larger ships generate stronger signals than smaller ones, “the signal amplitude decreases with increasing distance from the fiber.”

Other limitations involved data returns suggesting whales that were either “abnormally long or surprisingly small.” The team said this seemingly impossible result “underlines that our simple model needs further development to obtain more precise results.”

The study “Detecting silent whales using seabed fiber-optic cables” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science have engineered Nicotiana benthamiana, a fast-growing relative of tobacco, to produce five different psychedelic compounds. 

The achievement, detailed in a study published in Science Advances, brings together biosynthetic pathways that nature distributes across three different kingdoms of life.

The five compounds (DMT, psilocybin, psilocin, bufotenin, and 5-MeO-DMT) are typically sourced from an Amazonian shrub, mushrooms, and the defensive skin glands of a desert toad. Extracting even one of these molecules from its natural source is a slow process. Producing all five in a single, easily cultivated plant had not been achieved before.

A Shared Chemical Ancestor

Despite coming from such different sources, all five of these molecules share a common origin: tryptophan, an amino acid found in every living thing. In humans, tryptophan is the building block for serotonin, which helps explain why these psychedelics interact with serotonin receptors in the brain. This shared chemistry gave the Weizmann team, led by Dr. Paula Berman and Prof. Asaph Aharoni, a logical starting point for their experiments.

The team began by focusing on DMT to address a previously unresolved question. Researchers knew the general biochemical pathway plants use to synthesize DMT, but they had not yet identified all the genes and enzymes responsible for each step. “At the heart of the study was the challenge of making DMT,” Aharoni says.

To identify the necessary genes, the team analyzed genetic material from the Amazonian chacruna shrub and an Australian acacia species. Introducing these genes into Nicotiana benthamiana allowed the plant to produce DMT within days.

Fixing a Bottleneck With One Amino Acid

The researchers applied the same gene transfer approach to the other four psychedelics, but the engineered plants initially produced only trace amounts of 5-MeO-DMT. Protein-design specialists Prof. Sarel Fleishman and Dr. Olga Khersonsky determined that the limitation was due to a poor molecular fit in one enzyme’s active site. Replacing a single amino acid resolved the issue.

“We mutated one amino acid in the sequence and got a 40-fold increase in the production of 5-MeO-DMT,” Berman says.

One Organism, Three Kingdoms

Once all five biosynthetic pathways were functioning separately, the researchers combined them within a single plant. The result was a tobacco relative capable of producing DMT from plants, psilocin and psilocybin from fungi, and bufotenin and 5-MeO-DMT from toads, all at the same time. “In effect, we created a kind of biological ‘cocktail’ — not by mixing substances externally, but by combining the underlying pathways inside one organism,” Aharoni says.

Combining all five pathways reduced the yield of each compound, as they competed for the same pool of tryptophan. The researchers also introduced bacterial enzymes to attach chlorine and bromine atoms to the psychedelic molecules, creating modified psychedelic molecules that do not naturally occur in the engineered plant. Some similar modified molecules have shown antidepressant-like effects in previous studies.

Why the Compounds Exist in the First Place

The bottleneck also highlighted a broader research question about the natural role of these compounds. These molecules likely function as defenses or as tools for interacting with microbes and insects in the organisms that produce them, rather than evolving to affect human consciousness.

“If we can move these pathways into a model plant that grows quickly and is easy to manipulate, we can start asking what these compounds actually do for the plant,” Berman explains.

A Sustainable Supply Line

There is a clear practical benefit to this approach. Plants used for ayahuasca are increasingly threatened by habitat loss and rising demand, and the Sonoran Desert toad is declining due to overcollection and habitat destruction. A fast-growing laboratory plant capable of producing these compounds within a week provides an alternative that does not rely on harvesting wild species.

The Weizmann researchers are now working on a plant that can produce the complete ayahuasca mixture, which includes both DMT and the compound required for it to be active when taken orally. They are also exploring whether these psychedelics could be produced in edible plants capable of delivering carefully regulated doses.

Whether this platform becomes a practical manufacturing system will depend on overcoming the metabolic bottleneck that currently limits production when multiple pathways operate simultaneously.

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 thousands of years, humans have deliberately manipulated their breathing in search of something outside the ordinary waking mind. Now, scientists are finding measurable evidence that the right pattern of breathing may push consciousness into territory normally associated with psychedelic drugs.

In the first randomized controlled study to directly examine breathwork-induced altered states of consciousness, researchers found that a single 90-minute session of intense, continuous breathing produced significantly stronger psychedelic-like effects than meditation, including mystical experiences, feelings of oneness, visual changes, and powerful emotional breakthroughs.

Even more intriguingly, participants reported greater psychological understanding and behavioral changes a week later.

Published in Frontiers in Psychology, the findings add to a growing body of research investigating whether deliberately altering respiration can provide a drug-free pathway into altered states of consciousness,  possibly reproducing some of the psychological effects increasingly associated with psychedelic therapy.

The study focused on conscious connected breathing, or CCB, a form of high-ventilation breathwork involving continuous breathing without pauses between inhalation and exhalation.

Unlike the slow, deliberate breathing commonly associated with relaxation, high-ventilation breathwork intentionally increases the rate or depth of respiration.

During trials, participants continuously breathed through their mouths, actively inhaling and passively exhaling while listening to music that progressed from loud and fast-paced to progressively slower and softer over 90 minutes.

“Results from this preliminary experimental study indicate that breathwork is associated with larger acute psychedelic-like effects than meditation,” researchers write. “These exploratory relationships and preliminary observations provide greater context around breathwork-induced ASCs and support the feasibility of ASC-focused breathwork research for future confirmatory trials.”

Putting Breathwork Head-to-Head With Meditation

Breathing techniques have played a role in spiritual and contemplative practices for millennia. Yogic traditions include both slow and rapid breathing methods, while intentional respiration also appears in Qigong, Sufi dhikr, and shamanic practices.

Researchers say the scientific study of high-ventilation breathwork remains in its “embryonic” stage. However, that is slowly beginning to change.

As The Debrief previously reported, researchers using MRI and physiological measurements found that intense circular breathwork could produce altered states resembling those associated with psychedelics. The intensity of participants’ subjective experiences was tracked with changes in cerebral blood flow and autonomic nervous system activity.

However, those earlier investigations lacked a control group.

The new research, called the Airways to Alteration, or A2A, trial, attempted to address that limitation by directly comparing high-ventilation breathwork with an established contemplative practice: body scan meditation.

Researchers recruited 24 relatively healthy adults between 18 and 65. All had previously practiced conscious connected breathing without experiencing an adverse event.

Twelve participants were randomly assigned to the breathwork group. The remaining 12 underwent a 40-minute guided body scan meditation.

The researchers deliberately chose meditation as an active comparison rather than simply asking a control group to do nothing. Both groups lay on mats, used eye masks, listened to music, and participated in similar orientation and grounding procedures.

Meditation itself has also been associated with altered states and mystical experiences. In effect, the researchers were comparing two practices capable of shifting subjective awareness.

What happened next, however, was markedly different.

Breathwork Produced Stronger Mystical Experiences

Immediately after the sessions, participants completed several standardized psychological questionnaires commonly used in psychedelic research.

The breathwork group scored significantly higher in overall mystical experience, oneness, positive mood, and “ineffability”—the feeling that an experience is difficult or impossible to adequately describe in words.

On the study’s measure of total mystical experience, the median score for breathwork participants was 14. The meditation group scored 8.5.

The difference in emotional breakthrough was even more striking.

Participants who completed breathwork had a median Emotional Breakthrough Inventory score of 336. Those who meditated had a median score of 57.5.

Researchers also examined five dimensions commonly associated with altered states of consciousness. Breathwork participants reported significantly higher levels of “oceanic boundlessness” and “visionary restructuralisation.”

Oceanic boundlessness encompasses experiences including feelings of oneness, spiritual insight, bliss, and a loosening of the ordinary sense of self. Visionary restructuring includes changes in visual perception and imagery.

One participant described experiencing “very interesting visual hallucinations” alongside a “very cathartic emotional release.”

Another said the session produced stronger psychedelic qualities than they had experienced during previous breathwork sessions.

“The experience was emotional and cathartic,” the participant reported, noting that “at one time, I cried but not with sadness, more with a strong feeling of what life is all about and how incredible it is and how lucky we are.”

Not everyone described the experience as psychedelic. One participant said they remained fully present throughout the session and primarily experienced a physical and psychological release.

Still, the overall pattern revealed that compared with meditation, intense breathwork was associated with substantially stronger acute alterations in consciousness.

The Effects Didn’t Necessarily End When the Breathing Stopped

What may be the study’s most consequential finding emerged a week later. Researchers asked participants to complete a Psychological Insight Scale designed to assess meaningful personal realizations following psychedelic experiences.

The breathwork group reported a median psychological insight score of 33.67. The meditation group scored 5.83. Self-reported behavioral change followed a similar pattern. Breathwork participants had a median score of 50, compared with 5.5 among those who meditated.

Both differences represented large effect sizes.

The results suggest that the altered state produced during breathwork may be associated with psychological changes that go beyond the acute experience.

“Amongst the secondary outcomes, the breathwork group self-reported substantially greater psychological insight and accompanied behavioral change compared to the meditation group, with large effect sizes observed for both measures,” the researchers explain. “This finding suggests that breathwork could be connected to meaningful psychological breakthroughs, accompanied by translation of these insights into tangible behavioral modifications.”

The researchers caution that these personal accounts are anecdotal and that the qualitative portion of the study was limited. Still, the reports appeared broadly consistent with the measurable differences in mental insight and self-reported behavioral change.

A Surprising Connection to Sleep

The study also uncovered an unexpected difference involving sleep. Both groups showed improvements in stress, anxiety, depression, and overall mental well-being. However, researchers found a considerable difference between the two groups: breathwork produced significantly greater improvements in sleep-related impairment.

Median sleep impairment scores in the breathwork group dropped from 54.8 before the intervention to 39.2 afterward. Scores among meditation participants remained comparatively stable.

More intriguingly, improvements in sleep were correlated with the intensity of participants’ mystical experiences, feelings of oneness, and oceanic boundlessness.

In other words, participants who reported deeper altered states also tended to report greater improvements in sleep.

Exactly how the two may be connected remains unclear. The researchers note that sleep is itself an altered state of consciousness and plays an essential function in memory consolidation and insight, including the mental reorganization that can lead to new understanding. Still, the apparent link between deeper breathwork-induced altered states and improved sleep remains preliminary.

Breathwork Is Not Simply a Psychedelic Without the Drug

Despite the comparisons, researchers caution against treating every altered state of consciousness as the same phenomenon.

A psychedelic state induced by psilocybin, a hyperventilation-driven state produced through breathwork, and deep meditative absorption may overlap on psychological questionnaires. That does not mean the brain achieves those states through identical mechanisms.

Nevertheless, the similarities are difficult to ignore.

Previous research has found that high-ventilation breathwork can produce effects on standardized altered-consciousness measurements within the range observed after moderate-to-high doses of psilocybin.

The earlier neuroimaging research covered by The Debrief also found that the depth of breathwork-induced altered states tracked with changes in cerebral blood flow and autonomic nervous system activity.

This latest study takes that research one step further. Rather than simply demonstrating that breathwork can produce psychedelic-like experiences, the controlled comparison suggests those experiences are substantially more intense than the effects produced by body scan meditation under broadly similar environmental conditions.

Promising Results, but Major Limitations

Researchers repeatedly emphasize that the A2A trial was a small, exploratory study and does not yet provide evidence that breathwork is a proven replacement for psychedelic-assisted therapy.

All participants had prior breathwork experience, which may have led them to enter the experiment with expectations about what would happen. The study was also open-label, and participants knew whether they were breathing intensely or meditating.

Additionally, the breathwork session lasted 90 minutes compared with 40 minutes for meditation. Breathwork participants also listened to more intense music and were explicitly told about the possibility of expanded states of consciousness, emotional expression, and unusual physical sensations.

Those differences could have influenced the results.

The study also excluded people with a range of cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological, and psychological conditions. No adverse events were reported, but researchers acknowledge this was unsurprising, as participants had already practiced the technique without prior adverse reactions.

For that reason, the findings should not be interpreted as evidence that intense breathwork is safe or appropriate for everyone.

Future experiments will need to recruit people who have never practiced breathwork and tease apart the different ingredients involved.

The findings also leave several important questions unanswered. How much of the altered state is driven by rapid breathing itself, and how much comes from the music or group setting? Perhaps most importantly, researchers still need to determine how strongly the expectation of a profound experience shapes what a person ultimately experiences.

Yet, for a field increasingly interested in whether altered states can be harnessed for therapeutic purposes, the outcomes yield an interesting possibility.

Under carefully controlled conditions, consciously manipulating something as fundamental as breathing appears capable of profoundly changing how people experience themselves and the world around them.

“A logical next step would be replicating our study in breathwork-naïve participants to help mitigate expectancy effects and determine whether such ASCs emerge as profoundly as in experienced practitioners,” researchers write. “Future research contrasting HVB effects across participants with varying experience levels and in different environments is essential for informing the public about safe breathwork engagement.”

Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

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.

Feynman Experiments

“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.

Exploring Feynman

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.

Testing Theories

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.

An international team of geophysicists examining the Southern Indian Ocean floor witnessed a section greater than two meters split apart, releasing millions of cubic meters of stored-up magma within just a few days.

Jean-Yves Royer, a marine geophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Brest and a co-author of the study detailing the team’s serendipitous discovery, said witnessing the ocean floor splitting apart in real time was “a major surprise,” while the team hailed the scientific value of finally witnessing these processes up close.

Scientists Have Never Witnessed The Ocean Floor Splitting Apart in Real Time

Because the ocean floor is dynamic, the movement of tectonic plates pulling the existing crust away from mid-oceanic ridges allows magma to well up to the surface. When it dries, this material solidifies, adding to the existing crust. While scientists have understood this process for decades, no one has ever witnessed the phenomenon directly. This absence has left a gap in scientific knowledge that, as study co-author Isobel Yeo, a geoscientist at the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, UK, notes, persists to this day.

“We still know remarkably little about the frequency, magnitude, and dynamics of the eruptions and tectonic processes that build them”, the researcher explained

To try to fill that gap, the team focused its research on a section of the seafloor called the Southeast Indian Ridge, which runs east to west across the Indian Ocean. Due to its location, the ridge separates two tectonic plates, the Antarctic and the Australian.

The team notes that these two plates, which contain Antarctica and Oceania and the surrounding oceanic crust, are continuously moving in opposite directions by roughly six centimeters each year. Although both plates are exerting stress on the ridge, the team said the northward movement of the Australian plate accounts for most of this annual expansion.

The motion dynamics can also change by location. For example, one section of the Australian plate may stay stationary for a period and then suddenly experience a large surge in motion. These sudden events are accompanied by earthquakes. 

Ocean Floor Movement in Real Time

In hopes of catching the ocean floor splitting in real time, Royer and colleagues ventured to the Southeastern Indian Ridge in February 2024. Once on site, the team deployed three categories of sensors at several different locations along a 100-kilometer stretch of the ridge. The sensor array included five hydrophones that detect underwater sound, including the telltale sonic waves produced by earthquakes. The team also deployed 15 battery-powered acoustic beacons designed to emit and detect sounds at selected locations along the ridge.

Because the acoustic beacons can produce and receive sounds, the team programmed them to exchange audio signals every four hours. This regular exchange allowed the team to measure the time between sound and response, which they used to determine the distance between the two beacons at four-hour intervals.

After the sensors were all in place, the team’s efforts finally paid off. According to the study, the carefully placed hydrophones began to detect seismic tremors on the ocean floor. These signals were followed by several days of acoustic beacon returns, indicating some of the stations had moved. When the team calculated the time between beacon signals, they determined that some sections of the ocean floor had moved by “at least” two meters as they were pulled away from the ridge.

The team also found evidence that the ocean floor was splitting apart in real time, altering the ocean floor’s depth. According to a reading from a single pressure sensor, the depth change caused by the event was “substantial.”

a rare direct view of these processes in action

In the study’s conclusion, the research team estimates that 160 million cubic meters of lava rose between the split ocean floor and spilled onto the seafloor. They also suggested that the magma explosion emptied a reservoir that had accumulated along the ridge, which caused portions of the floor to “subside.”

Royer said the team was only expecting to find a vertical displacement of “a few centimeters.” Instead, he notes, “we measured 4.2 meters.” The team said this large amount of change suggests that three to six decades’ worth of stress from the northward movement of the Australian tectonic plate was released during the ocean-floor-splitting event.

When discussing the significance of witnessing the ocean floor splitting apart in real time for the first time, Yeo said their study “provides a rare direct view of these processes in action.”

The study “Anatomy of a seafloor spreading event captured by in situ seismogeodesy” was published in Nature.

 Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

More than a century after Sigmund Freud developed some of his most influential—and controversial—ideas about the human mind, a new study indicates that modern neuroscience may be arriving at a surprisingly familiar destination.

Researchers at the University of Oslo argue that Freud’s concepts of projection, wish fulfillment, transference, and the unconscious may share a fundamental architecture with one of the most influential emerging theories in cognitive neuroscience: the idea that the brain is essentially a prediction machine.

Rather than passively receiving information from the world, the brain may continuously anticipate what will happen next, compare those expectations with incoming sensory information, and either revise its internal model or act to make reality conform more closely to its expectations.

In a paper published in the journal Entropy, researchers propose that this modern “predictive processing” framework may provide a neuroscientific explanation for mental processes that psychoanalysts have described from the perspective of subjective human experience for more than a century.

The researchers do not claim that neuroscience has proved Freud right. Instead, they argue that psychoanalysis and predictive processing may describe some of the same fundamental operations of the mind at two very different levels of analysis.

“The predictive processing model is a paradigm of the mind where the brain’s main task is to construct and interact with the world through predictions,” researchers write. “The world we perceive and interact with is a world that we create from our past, from expectancies and actions.”

The basic idea behind predictive processing represents a significant departure from older models of perception. Traditionally, the brain was often described as something like an information-processing machine: a stimulus arrives from the outside world, the brain processes it, and a response follows.

Predictive processing effectively turns much of that sequence around.

Under this system, the brain is constantly generating models of what it expects to encounter. Those predictions are formed by previous experiences, biological needs, and learned expectations. Incoming sensory information is then compared against the brain’s predictions.

When the two match, all is relatively well. When they do not, the discrepancy creates what neuroscientists call a prediction error.

The brain can respond in at least two broad ways. It can update its internal model to better reflect reality, a process known as perceptual inference. Or it can act on the world in ways that make reality more closely correspond to its prior prediction, a process known as active inference.

Researchers point to a familiar example: the fear of snakes. Someone who assumes snakes are dangerous may gradually revise that expectation after repeated encounters with harmless ones, eventually becoming less afraid. But if the fear is strong enough, the person may avoid snakes entirely. By never getting close enough to discover that some pose no threat, their behavior prevents the prediction from being challenged—and, in effect, helps keep the fear alive.

“To perceive is to predict, to act is to act out the prediction,” researchers explain.

According to the researchers, this framework itself bears a striking resemblance to concepts developed by Freud and later psychoanalysts.

Freud proposed that people do not experience the world as completely neutral observers. Past experiences, desires, fears, and unconscious expectations can shape how they perceive other people and events. In psychoanalytic theory, “projection” can occur when a person attributes internal feelings or expectations to someone else.

A person who feels hostility, for example, may perceive others as hostile. Someone who expects criticism because of earlier relationships may interpret ambiguous behavior as rejection. In more complex cases, people may even behave in ways that encourage others to respond as expected.

The researchers argue that this resembles a form of prediction.

In both models, past experience creates a template to understand the present. The brain—or, in psychoanalytic terminology, the mind—attempts to reduce uncertainty by making the world familiar and predictable.

That does not necessarily mean making the world pleasant.

One of the more consequential implications of the proposed connection is that people may sometimes preserve painful or destructive patterns precisely because those patterns are familiar. A predictable threat can, in some circumstances, create less uncertainty than an unfamiliar form of safety.

The researchers use the example of a woman who was frequently criticized by her mother when she was a child. As an adult, she continues to carry an internal critical voice that tells her she is not good enough. Even when praised, she may dismiss the compliment as undeserved.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, she has internalized—or “introjected”—the critical relationship. From a predictive-processing perspective, positive feedback conflicts with a deeply accepted model of what she expects from herself and others.

The result is a provocative possibility. People sometimes reject evidence that their circumstances have changed because accepting it would require the brain to rebuild its model of the world.

“The one with paranoia and the one with a self-critical inner voice minimize surprise at the cost of reality testing and psychological flexibility,” the researchers write.

The proposed connection also reaches into the “free energy principle,” a conceptual framework associated with neuroscientist Dr. Karl Friston. In simple terms, the framework describes biological systems as continually working to limit uncertainty and maintain themselves within viable states.

For the brain, unexpected information produces what researchers describe as “surprisal.” The mismatch between anticipation and reality can force the brain to do additional work, either changing its model or changing its behavior.

This may help explain why surprise can be uncomfortable and why the familiar can feel safe even when it is objectively harmful.

Freud approached a similar problem via the concept of homeostasis, although he developed his ideas before the term became widely established. The researchers argue that Freud’s concept of “perceptual identity”—the predisposition to seek or recreate perceptions associated with previously satisfying experiences—may be particularly compatible with modern predictive processing.

If researchers are correct, it could have consequences for understanding psychotherapy.

In psychoanalysis, patients may repeatedly bring expectations formed in earlier relationships into their relationship with a therapist, a phenomenon termed transference. Someone accustomed to abandonment, hostility, or criticism may expect the therapist to behave in the same way.

A therapeutic relationship that repeatedly violates those expectations would create precisely the type of prediction error that forces an internal model to change.

In this view, cognitive awareness is not simply an intellectual realization. It may involve confronting the fact that a deeply embedded prediction about the world has failed.

That failure produces surprise. And surprise, the researchers suggest, may be one of the mechanisms that makes psychological change possible.

A patient who expects rejection yet repeatedly encounters a safe, reliable relationship faces a mismatch between prediction and reality. The person can attempt to preserve the old model, perhaps through interpreting benign behavior as threatening, or gradually update the model to accommodate a different possibility.

This is where researchers believe psychoanalysis may offer something that computational neuroscience alone cannot easily provide.

Predictive processing attempts to explain the mechanisms by which brains generate, test, and update predictions. In contrast, psychoanalysis has spent more than a century attempting to describe what those processes feel like from inside the person experiencing them.

The researchers are careful to acknowledge significant differences between the fields. Predictive processing is primarily a descriptive scientific framework intended to explain how minds and brains function. Psychoanalysis is a clinical practice concerned with psychological suffering and how it might be treated.

There is also a difference in emphasis. Neuroscience often studies ordinary predictions involved in perception and behavior, while psychoanalytic concepts such as projection have frequently been developed through observations of psychological distress and mental illness.

Most importantly, the paper does not present new experimental evidence demonstrating that Freud’s concepts relate to specific neural mechanisms. It is a theoretical synthesis proposing that two intellectual traditions, one built largely on clinical observation and subjective experience, the other on computational and neuroscientific models, may describe overlapping features of the mind.

Nevertheless, the proposed convergence is notable.

Freud originally hoped that psychological theories might eventually be connected to the brain’s biological workings, but the neuroscience of his era was nowhere near capable of doing so. For much of the 20th century, psychoanalysis and experimental neuroscience grew increasingly distant.

Predictive processing may offer an unexpected point of reconnection.

If the brain constantly uses the past to predict the present, then projection, transference, and even the tendency to repeat destructive patterns may be viewed not simply as abstract psychoanalytic concepts but as subjective manifestations of a more fundamental biological imperative: reducing uncertainty and maintaining a workable model of the world.

That position could ultimately change how researchers think about the relationship between the brain’s computational machinery and the intensely personal experience of being human. Rather than treating subjective experience and neuroscience as incompatible domains, the researchers suggest that each may illuminate what the other cannot see.

“Psychoanalysis consists of a vast resource of theories about the subjective mind, projection being central among these, and neuro-psychoanalysis adds an external view of the mind while studying the biological and neurological substrate of psychology,” researchers write.

“Relational encounters in a safe environment, as in psychoanalysis, can produce surprise,” the authors add, “which again permits new ways of predicting and being in the world.”

Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

The properties of water are unusual among liquids—it expands when it freezes, reaches its highest density just above freezing, and does not behave like the simple liquids chemists often use to understand matter.

Now, a new study in Communications Chemistry uses artificial intelligence to compare competing methods for measuring water’s hidden molecular order and determine which are truly effective.

Researchers at the University of Osaka developed a neural network to test 16 different ‘structural descriptors,’ which are mathematical tools for measuring how ordered or disordered water molecules are at the microscopic scale. Over the past 30 years, scientists have independently developed these descriptors, each with its own approach and scale, all aimed at explaining the same underlying puzzle.

Until now, researchers lacked a standard method for comparing them directly—a gap this study fills.

Water’s Split Personality

Distinguishing Hot From Cold

To establish a common standard, the Osaka team trained a neural network using molecular dynamics simulations of water at temperatures from 200 to 300 Kelvin. Using only the values from a single structural descriptor, it had to predict the temperature at which each molecular configuration was generated. If a descriptor captured meaningful structural information, the network could easily distinguish hot from cold.

“Past studies have shown that using machine learning to classify and understand structural data is effective,” says corresponding author Kang Kim. “We specifically wanted to incorporate a neural network model into this study to evaluate how accurate the descriptors were at capturing key structural information, in a way that is like human cognition.”

The network assessed each descriptor using a standard classification measure. To deepen their analysis, the team used an explainable AI technique called LIME. This method looks at how the model makes its decisions and checks whether its reasoning matches established physical principles, instead of relying only on statistical patterns.

Two Descriptors Pull Ahead

Out of the 16 descriptors tested, two stood out. The Local Structure Index (LSI) and another, referred to as zeta (ζ), both of which measure the distance between the first and second layers of neighboring molecules, achieved nearly perfect accuracy across the tested temperatures. Another group, based on how hydrogen bonds connect, also scored well but was not as accurate as the others. Older descriptors that rely on tetrahedral angles or interaction energies became less accurate at higher temperatures, where molecules move more, and the differences blur.

“The network used what it had learned to compare how 16 descriptors differentiated between LDL and HDL structures at different temperatures,” says senior author Nobuyuki Matubayasi. “In this way, we determined the most efficient descriptors.”

The LIME analysis backed up the network’s results with evidence consistent with scientists’ expectations. Molecules with high Local Structure Index and zeta values led the model to predict lower temperatures, which is consistent with the idea that more ordered, LDL-like structures appear as water cools. This suggests that the network captured more than just statistical correlations.

With a common framework for comparing descriptors in place, researchers could attempt to develop descriptors that directly identify HDL and LDL environments rather than infer them indirectly. Whether these new tools will finally solve one of water’s biggest mysteries, the point where its two proposed liquid forms fully separate, is something scientists are just starting to investigate.

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.

Engineers have developed a new robot that can swim underwater, then rise to the surface and take flight, in an aerial-aquatic feat that mimics some of nature’s most formidable fliers and swimmers.

Developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), the new robot’s capabilities could help launch a new generation of aerial-aquatic exploration vehicles.

Dubbed the “Flapping-Wing Aerial-Aquatic Vehicle” (FAAV), this lightweight robotic platform weighs less than 300 grams and can transition seamlessly between water and air with its very flexible flapping wings. Now, the team’s findings, published in the journal Science, could help scientists better understand how diving birds, which include puffins, petrels, loons, and gulls, are so adept at navigating two vastly different environments.

Such capabilities, the team says, could also pave the way toward advanced drones in the coming years that could transform ocean research.

Inspired by Diving Birds

Departing from conventional modern designs employed for aircraft or underwater vehicles, the team based their design on diving birds, which evolved to fly over water, then plunge beneath the waves to hunt for food, before surfacing and resuming flight.

One problem when it comes to replicating these abilities in robots involves the density of water, which is around 1,000 times denser than air. Because of this, the engineering team had to carefully balance the flexibility of the robotic wings in their design, along with flapping frequency, tail angle, and other factors that allowed the robot to move efficiently through both environments without requiring propellers or separate propulsion systems.

Finding the Sweet Spot for Transmedium Travel

Experiments were undertaken by the team in the lab and in Switzerland’s Lake Geneva, and helped the team determine that the robot achieved best performance with medium-sized wings that flap at approximately five times per second. Under such conditions, the robot was able to swim one meter per second, then by pitching upward at a 70-degree angle, it could break through the surface, and continue this same movement to propel itself through the air.

Although the robot still has some limitations compared to the avian examples that inspired it, interestingly, it does appear to have one advantage: unlike diving birds, which paddle using their feet to achieve aquatic launches into the air, the new robot has no such requirement, and can transition from water to air relying only on its wings and adjustable tail.

Future Drones with “Aerial-Aquatic” Abilities

In the future, drones equipped with such capabilities could be leveraged to monitor marine ecosystems in a variety of ways. The team also says it could help to observe environmental concerns, such as water near glaciers or offshore infrastructure, or even collect data from hazardous locations that are either too difficult or simply too costly for ships to reach.

“Our dream vision is for oceanographers, marine biologists, and members of coastal communities to launch this robot from a boat, or from shore, and it would fly close to the area of interest, such as an iceberg or a port facility, or over a pod of whales,” according to Raphael Zufferey, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

“It would dive into the water to take a measurement or collect a sample, and fly back to deliver the data at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Then it could go back out to dive for more,” Zufferey recently told MIT News.

Drawing from movements in nature influenced by evolution, the researchers hope their bird-inspired design may eventually help scientists by introducing cost-effective, but formidable new tools to help obtain information from some of the most challenging environments, all with help from robots that can do what only nature’s diving birds could once achieve.

The achievement is detailed in a new paper, “Leaping out of the water: aerial-aquatic locomotion with flapping wings,” which appeared in the journal Science.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

An unusual phenomenon that has been recognized around the world for more than a century has finally been resolved: what are the origins of the distinctive, stair-like ridges that form on steep hillsides?

These features, known as “terracettes,” have long puzzled scientists, and the question of how they form has attracted some of history’s greatest minds, including Charles Darwin.

The famous naturalist described these features as “Little horizontal ledges, one above another,” which he said had been “observed on steep grassy slopes in many parts of the world.”

According to Darwin, the formation of terracettes had “been attributed to animals traveling repeatedly along the slope in the same horizontal lines while grazing,” although he adds that “Professor Henslow (a most careful observer) told Sir J. Hooker that he was convinced that this was not the sole cause of their formation,” with the implication that these curious, structured features on steep hills might have geological origins, rather than those attributable solely to biology.

Now, researchers may finally have an answer to this pastoral riddle that baffled the likes of Darwin more than a century ago, settling the scientific debate over their origins.

Solving the Mystery of Terracettes

Benjamin Seleb, the lead author of a new study detailing the findings, said the mystery of terracettes first attracted his attention in 2024 after he observed them firsthand during a hike in the Alps.

“I suspected the numerous grazing cows—hard to miss with their clanking bells—had something to do with it, and was already sketching out how I would model their movement before the hike was over,” Seleb says.

“It wasn’t until I got back to my hotel and started digging into the topic that I learned about the contested origins of these terracettes,” Seleb adds. “With my curiosity piqued, I got to work building a simple model to ask whether grazing animals really could reshape mountains.”

According to Seleb and a team of collaborators from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder, computer modeling was employed to reshape hillsides into these distinctive “stepped” formations. The findings reveal that the most likely explanation is that repetitive pathways followed by grazing animals such as sheep and cattle produce remarkably ordered landscape patterns over time.

Simulating ‘Chaos’ to Solve a Mystery

To test their hypothesis, the research team simulated the movement of individual animals across steep slopes. For their analysis, they also introduced a few rules, which revealed that the “virtual grazers” preferred traversing hillsides in long, horizontal pathways that form gradual inclines. This makes sense, since it is a method of ascent that requires less energy, and humans have also traditionally employed similar approaches (think of mountain trails, which, rather than ascending straight uphill, follow longer sloping inclines and switchbacks where directional changes are necessary).

With each simulated footstep, soil and vegetation become compacted, producing subtle alterations to the terrain over time. As these pathways form, animals over successive future generations are thereby encouraged to follow similar routes, and with time, the familiar terraced patterns emerge.

“People have argued about terracettes for over a century,” says Professor Saad Bhamla, one of the study’s co-authors and leader of the Bhamla Lab of Extraordinary Organisms, which describes its efforts as work that “seeks to understand how organisms do amazing things.”

“Some say [terracettes] are purely geological, just slow soil creep and slumping,” Bhamla recently said. “Others say animals create them, and the standard criticism for the animal-origin camp is that the animals wander around randomly, so how could they ever carve something this regular?”

“What we show is that they can and that this regularity emerges out of that chaotic, random movement, not in spite of it, through the back-and-forth between the animals and the ground they’re chewing up with their mouths and packing down with their feet,” Bhamla adds.

Complexity from Simple Movement

Bhamla and his team say their research offers another example demonstrating how complex natural landscapes can emerge from simple, uncoordinated behavior, involving a process known as stigmergic feedback. This involves organisms that gradually reshape their shared environment over time.

The result of their work is an answer to a mystery that has persisted for many generations, and not only that, but also a pathway toward understanding the various ways animals influence landscapes more broadly.

The team’s findings were detailed in a new paper, “Moo-ving mountains: grazing agents drive terracette formation on steep hillslopes,” which appeared in Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

Engineers at Queen Mary University of London have created a tactile sensor, described in a study published in Science Advances, that allows robots to detect touch using a simple camera.  

The sensor converts mechanical forces into visible color patterns, reducing the need for dense arrays of embedded sensors. Giacomo Sasso, a postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary’s School of Engineering and Materials Science, led the team that developed this new sensor. Rather than relying on embedded electronic sensors, they created a soft material that changes color when pressed or bent.

This effect, known as structural color, is the same reason butterfly wings look iridescent without pigment. Pressure causes microscopic structures within the material to shift, altering how light reflects and creating a real-time visual indicator of force.

Touch Without the Computation

Most vision-based tactile sensors can map contact and force in detail, but only at the cost of heavy computation that slows them down. Simpler systems are faster, but sacrifice detail. The new material developed by Sasso’s team sidesteps this problem by building the sensing function into the material itself. With just a standard USB camera, researchers can track color changes on the surface and immediately infer pressure, strain, and contact shape without complex data reconstruction.

“You won’t guess how much information is generated when your finger presses a light switch. A human hand contains more than 10,000 mechanoreceptors to do the job, yet touch sensing remains one of the major challenges in robotics,” Sasso said. “We were happy to capture the finger ridges, as no existing technology can reproduce such sensor density at [a] comparable scale and simplicity. The key idea behind this project was to think outside the box: instead of embedding dense and overengineered sensor arrays, sensing is moved into the material itself, where mechanical cues are directly transformed into colour fields and captured using a simple low-cost USB camera.”

Professor James Busfield, one of the paper’s co-authors, described the advantage more simply: “What is particularly powerful is that the information is already in the light signal. You are no longer reconstructing touch – you are observing it directly.”

From Precision Manufacturing to the Operating Room

Reducing the computational demands of touch sensing opens up new possibilities. A robotic gripper made with this material could handle tiny parts more gently, since changes in force are immediately detectable. Prosthetic limbs equipped with similar sensors could also provide users with more detailed tactile feedback.

The researchers also see potential applications in surgery, where detecting subtle pressure differences could help clinicians interpret tissue properties.

A Decade of Groundwork Behind One Material

Professor Federico Carpi from the University of Florence and Professor James Busfield from Queen Mary worked together on this project, merging years of separate work on stretchable sensors and polymer behavior into one material system. This allowed the team to use a mechanochromic material as the sensor itself, not just as a base for electronics.

Many approaches to robotic touch have relied on increasingly complex sensor arrays, wiring, and computing systems. Rather than adding more electronics, Sasso’s team’s approach allows the material itself to encode touch into visible color. It remains unclear whether this color-based method can be scaled for use in commercial robotic hands, but this work suggests that the future of robotic touch might rely as much on smart materials as on advanced electronics.

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 United States Department of War (DOW) released its latest collection of imagery and other materials related to unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) on Friday.

The fourth official release under what the DOW has dubbed the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), the latest tranche of files includes several new previously unseen U.S. military videos depicting unidentified aerial objects acquired by the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

“Today, the Department of War is publishing the fourth release of declassified and historical Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) files as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE),” said Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs and Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell in a statement.

“The collection continues to be housed on WAR.GOV/UFO, and the Department will release additional files on a rolling basis,” Parnell said.

As with previous releases, the new videos leave much to the imagination; in most cases, they show small blurry objects captured with multi-sensor electro-optical targeting capabilities from fighter aircraft or UAVs, and in some cases, imaging systems on board civilian aircraft. In addition to the new imagery, several historical documents from as early as the 1940s were included with the release, the majority of which were previously made available in past releases by various U.S. government agencies.

Here is a look at a few key takeaways from the latest batch in the Pentagon’s ongoing release of UAP-related materials.

A Deeper Look at the Latest PURSUE UAP File Release

One series of historical NASA images included with the new PURSUE release originates from the 1996 STS-80 mission. The entry on the DOW’s site, “NASA-UAP-D030, STS-80 Unidentified Object Image 1, 1996,” features photographs obtained by astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia at the time, which convey a small triangular or cone-shaped object.

“During STS-80, between November 19 and December 7, 1996, astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Columbia captured a series of three images of an unidentified object in low-Earth orbit. In the first photograph, the object is visible near the center of the frame, to the right of the limb of the Earth,” a caption accompanying one of the images states at the DOW website.

It is unclear what the object in the photograph may be, although it is worth noting that several observations of allegedly unusual phenomena occurred during STS-80, which included the imagery captured of grainy luminous shapes from the spacecraft’s backward-facing cameras. The most common interpretation of these objects is that they were ice particles outgassed from the spacecraft, whose highly reflective surfaces could produce the optical effects captured from the space shuttle’s cameras, especially in such low-light conditions.

DOW-UAP-PR030, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2023: In this video, “Two areas of contrast transit the sensor field-of-view. The first enters the field-of-view from the bottom right and exits from the top edge of the frame. The second, relatively smaller area of contrast enters from the top and exits the bottom of the frame.”

The unusual shape of the object first seen entering the frame from the bottom of the screen could potentially be the result of a sensor artifact, similar to past videos released by the DOW, where the starlike appearance of refraction spikes emanating from an object (as also seen in this example from the most recent release) had been misinterpreted by some as being the literal shape of the alleged UAP.

DOW-UAP-PR108, Unresolved UAP Report, Western United States, 2020: This footage, reportedly collected over the Western United States in 2020, is notable (if for no other reason) due to its similarity to the famous “Tic Tac” imagery from 2004, captured by F/A-18 pilot Chad Underwood off the Baja California coast. Apart from that superficial similarity in appearance, the footage—like others from recent PURSUE releases—provides little additional context, and it is unclear what the object (seen below) may be.

Several other examples of imagery included with the fourth PURSUE release depict objects apparently engaging in flight at high speeds, such as an object appearing in “DOW-UAP-PR112, Unresolved UAP Report, Eastern United States, 2019” where the observer reportedly described the object in question as exhibiting “flight characteristics unlike anything [the observer] had seen in 28 years for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy.”

Other objects appearing in videos included with the newest release, such as the UAP in “DOW-UAP-PR116, Unresolved UAP Report, Atlantic Ocean, 2020,” include descriptions from the observer that note an object with a “darker, maroonish color, approximately 12-15 feet in height” that was “travel[ing] with the wind,” did not “maneuver or change direction,” and appearing similar to a “large, somewhat deformed balloon.”

We would have to agree with the witnesses’ assessment in the case: the flight dynamics of the object in the accompanying video (seen above) are indeed very consistent with an inflatable object, albeit possessing an odd shape (it is also possible this object may be a cluster of smaller balloons). The same can be said of other examples in the new releases, where, in some instances, dangling payloads beneath what are obviously balloons are clearly discernible in the purported “UAP” videos.

Clarity Remains Elusive, but More Releases to Follow

To date, none of the videos or other documentation made available at the DOW website as part of its PURSUE releases provides clear examples of any objects attributable to unknown aircraft, or objects exhibiting unusual or advanced technologies.

In his statement on Friday, Parnell said the DOW and its agency partners “are actively working on the next release of UAP files,” which can be expected to appear on the DOW website in the coming weeks. In the meantime, all of the existing four releases of UAP imagery and documentation can be found on the DOW’s PURSUE page.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is celebrating four years of unexpectedly strong performance by providing a deep new view into one of the universe’s most familiar galaxies: Centaurus A.

Typically, Centaurus A’s thick dust obscures astronomers’ attempts to peer into it, yet the JWST’s near- and mid-infrared sensitivity allows scientists to see more of the galaxy than ever before. 

In new images released by NASA to celebrate JWST’s four years of impressive discoveries, the most powerful telescope ever constructed reveals the dense collection of stars that make up the ever-changing Centaurus A galaxy.

Inside Centaurus A

Due to two crucial factors, Centaurus A is an extremely interesting galaxy for astronomers. It is highly active, offering an important opportunity to monitor galaxy and black hole growth while being relatively close by, at just 11 million light-years away—a highly unusual combination.

The history of imaging Centaurus A is marked by questions, which JWST has now begun to answer. Webb’s predecessor, Hubble, could only view visible light in its examinations, leaving the galaxy’s central regions obscured by dust. Additionally, the Spitzer Space Telescope lacked sufficient resolution to resolve individual stars in infrared, although the data it collected provided new discoveries of massive dust structures.

Powerful events are on display in Centaurus A, the aftermath of a collision with another galaxy and a supermassive black hole’s active feeding. As the black hole releases powerful jets and gushes energy, it shapes the surrounding galaxy, which still retains an unusual shape left by its two-billion-year-old merger.

“No single telescope tells the whole story,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, division director, Astrophysics, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Discoveries build over time, and new observatories expand on the foundations laid by earlier missions. Webb represents the most powerful step forward yet, opening a window into wavelengths and details never before accessible. This allows astronomers to examine structures and processes that other telescopes could not see.”

JWST Reveals Amazing Structures

Thanks to JWST’s mid-infrared capabilities, astronomers captured detailed images of Centaurus A’s dust structures and were surprised and confused by the glowing shapes revealed. One unusual feature is a band cutting across the galactic center, shaped like a warped parallelogram, with wispy tendrils stretching out of it.

Another feature, shaped like the letter “S,” also confounds astronomers, leaving many questions about the influence of both the central black hole and the galactic merger on its shape and evolution. 

A large portion of the red glowing dots in the image above represent dusty areas, either dust-rich stars or stellar nurseries, both important sources of dust for star formation, and therefore, the continuance of the galaxy.

Single Stars and JWST

The JWST’s incredible resolution is allowing astronomers to study the galaxy star by star for the first time. Combining images from the MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) revealed tightly packed individual stars.

This view of individual stars is essential for what some astronomers call “galactic archaeology,” by providing important clues that help scientists reconstruct the galaxy’s formation and evolution. This galactic timeline is made up of many important pieces revealed by individual stars, such as when the oldest stars formed, when star formation slowed, when the merger reignited a powerful burst of star formation, and how that collision stirred the galaxy’s gases, further accelerating star formation.

Capturing these details requires spectroscopy, a technique where light is broken down to reveal detailed information about distant stars. Also using this technique, researchers can gain important information about the central black hole, identifying that it can both compress gas to accelerate star formation and push gas away to limit it.

On its fourth anniversary, the unprecedented details now revealed about one of our most interesting galactic neighbors continue to underscore the JWST’s incredible promise as NASA’s premier space observatory.

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.

The strange grin of the Happy-Face spider has been spotted far from the Hawaiian Islands, its only previously known home, much to scientists’ surprise.

In a recent paper published in Evolutionary Systematics, researchers from the Forest Research Institute and the Regional Museum of Natural History have found a spider bearing the unmistakable grin in Uttarakhand, India’s Montane mountains.

The researchers call it the Himalayan Happy-Face spider, Theridion himalayan, named for the unexpected combination of its highly recognizable markings and strange new location.

Finding the Happy-Face Spider

As with many scientific discoveries, the Himalayan Happy-Face Spider was discovered entirely by accident; the researchers, Ashirwad Tripathy and Devi Priyadarshini, were initially focused on the region’s ants.

“So, one fine day, when he shared this image from the underside of a Daphniphyllum leaf, I froze in shock because I had seen the Hawaiian spider during my master’s program itself, and I knew instantly we had a jackpot because of its striking resemblance,” said Priyadarshini, a researcher with the Regional Museum of Natural History in Bhubaneswar, and the co-author of a new study deatiling the discovery.

“I asked him to send all morphs that he found, and that led to the discovery in the next few months, from October 2023 onwards.”

According to Priyadarshini, she has always been interested in high-altitude spiders because the significant differences in landscape and vegetation in these regions compared with low-altitude plains offer “a gateway to look at other polymorphic species from this region.”

Himalayan Spider Species

According to Tripathy, this discovery may only be the beginning for the documentation of Himalayan Happy-Face spiders, as more variations may be identified in future surveys. 

“The name Himalayana was decided as the species name because we both wanted to pay our respects to the mighty Himalaya mountain ranges, which have been standing tall not just guarding our country but also holding a plethora of biodiversity within them, said co-author Ashirwad Tripathy, of the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun. “Since this spider was the first polymorphic from this region, we decided to make it an ode to the amazing mountain ranges.”

So far, the species has been found in three locations around Uttarakhand, including Makku, Tala, and Mandal, yielding 32 distinct color variations. In their investigation, the researchers conducted a DNA analysis of the new species, discovering that it differed by approximately 8.5% from the previously known Hawaiian Happy-Face spider. This indicates that the Himalayan version evolved independently.

Mysterious Markings

While the markings are fascinating, perhaps partially due to a certain amount of pareidolia in humans, the researchers are uncertain exactly why the spiders evolved to feature them. Notably, other creatures in the region bear similar colorful body markings.

“The reason behind the expression of polymorphism is also very complex and unique,” Priyadarshini explained. “These patterns definitely help them survive better in the wild, which is understood prima facie, but why do they resort to such patterns on their back, and what functional role in their life cycle does it exactly serve is yet to be deciphered. This is definitely indicative of a deeper genetic mystery.”

One strange connection between the Hawaiian and Himalayan varieties was their shared propensity to cling to ginger plants. This is especially notable because ginger is not native to Hawaii, suggesting an evolutionary connection between the species.

“How did the spiders choose an invasive species and ginger exactly?” Priyadarshini asks, noting this adds an unusual layer to the mystery, especially “if T. himalayana is an elder cousin of T. grallator, although discovered 125 years later!”

“Although this sounds like a tall claim now, it will be our further scope of work to establish any missing links,” Priyadarshini adds.

The paper, “On the Discovery of a New Polymorphic Happy-Face Spider (Araneae, Theridiidae) from the Western Himalayas, India, with Notes on its Natural History,” appeared in Evolutionary Systematics on April 24, 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.

A recent study documented a participant using an AI model to simulate a conversation with her late grandmother. According to her report, the experience offered a sense of closure that she had not experienced before.

This interaction was one of sixteen documented in a study published in the Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. The research provides some of the first empirical data on how individuals respond to the opportunity to communicate with AI representations of deceased loved ones.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder call these AI agents ‘generative ghosts.’ These systems use data such as writing, voice recordings, or photographs from the deceased to create simulated conversations. Some platforms, such as Project December and Séance AI, generate text-based versions of journal entries and messages. Others, such as HereAfterAI, include voice and images. A few companies have also developed virtual reality experiences that let users interact with holographic representations of loved ones.

Jack Manning, the PhD candidate in Information Science who led the study, expected the sessions to feel unsettling. “We originally thought it might feel very Black Mirror creepy to people and make them uncomfortable,” he said. “I ended up being completely wrong. People thought it was amazing.”

How To Build a Ghost

The study included 16 participants, aged 22 to 50, each of whom joined a Zoom interview about a deceased relative or friend. During the session, a facilitator led the conversation while another researcher entered details into a large language model, generating an AI representation of the deceased in real time.

Each participant interacted with two versions of the AI model for about twenty minutes each. One version spoke as the deceased, using the first person, while the other described the person in the third person. A facilitator stayed present to offer support if the conversation became emotionally difficult.

The results indicated a clear preference for the version that spoke as the deceased individual, rather than about them. Researchers described this as a preference for ‘reincarnation’ over ‘representation.’

What People Will and Won’t Forgive

Participants tended to overlook factual mistakes or made-up details from the AI. What mattered more was whether the AI captured the right tone and language. If the model used words or phrases that felt out of character, people were more likely to disconnect from the experience. The study found that getting the voice and manner right was more important than perfect factual accuracy.

How the AI communicated also shaped the experience. Participants preferred short, to-the-point sentences and even the use of emojis, rather than the longer, more formal responses that AI models often produce. This suggests that future versions of these systems should pay close attention to conversational style.

A Technology Both Wanted, and Feared

All sixteen participants indicated that they would be willing to use the technology again. However, most also expressed concerns about the potential risks of individuals in grief accessing these AI systems without supervision.

Lead researcher Jack Manning said his own experiences with loss have shaped his view of the risks and benefits of AI grief tools. He acknowledged that negative outcomes are possible but also noted that the technology could help some users find a sense of closure and peace.

Jed Brubaker, the study’s senior author and an associate professor of Information Science, said the lab took on the work precisely because the field had outpaced the research. “To our knowledge, we are conducting the first user experience studies of simulated AI ghosts,” he said.

The research team intends to involve mental health professionals in future studies. The next phase will evaluate the psychological risks and benefits of prolonged use of AI grief tools to ensure that empirical research guides product development.

Generative ghost technology is already available through commercial platforms, and people are actively using these systems. The study highlights that voice, tone, and pacing are often more important to users than factual accuracy. As the technology develops, researchers are working to address the challenges of providing appropriate safeguards and responsible design.

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.