Reddit deep dives can involve anything from TV show fan theories to DIY advice.

A new AI-assisted analysis now suggests that the 'front page of the internet' could help researchers spot potential side effects of GLP-1drugs used to manage weight and diabetes, such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound.

A team from the University of Pennsylvania analyzed more than 410,000 Reddit posts across a six-year span, looking for mentions of two active ingredients in widely used GLP-1-based drugs: "semaglutide" or "tirzepatide", or their brand names.

" Clinical trials are the gold standard, but by design, they are slow," says computer and information scientist Sharath Chandra Guntuku.

"This is not a replacement for trials, but it can move much faster, and that speed matters when a drug goes from niche to mainstream almost overnight."

When it came to potential side effects that doctors may not know about, two groups of complaints stood out: reproductive health issues (including irregular menstrual cycles) and temperature-related problems (such as chills and hot flashes).

The way the body's metabolism burns energy is known to impact temperature balance, so there is a real mechanism that potentially links the side effect to the drug in a causative way. But there is less research on how these drugs affect the menstrual cycle.

It's worth noting that these previously "unrecognized potential effects" were far from the most commonly reported on Reddit, and the researchers emphasize that they don't see their new analysis as a replacement for trials or clinical assessments.

However, the findings suggest that online boards and peer-to-peer conversations may be places where people feel able to discuss certain symptoms, some of which they might not mention to a doctor.

"Some of the side effects we found, like nausea, are well known, and that shows that the method is picking up a real signal," says Guntuku.

"The underreported symptoms are leads that came from patients themselves, unprompted, and clinicians could potentially pay attention to them."

This kind of large-scale data capture and interrogation is made possible by the latest AI models. Here, the researchers used GPT models from OpenAI to crunch through Reddit posts and find patterns.

That's no easy task, given the volume of text and the variety of ways people might talk about GLP-1 drugs and their side effects. These scans can be completed rapidly, identifying potential sources for investigation in future clinical trials.

With little else known about the Reddit posters involved, the research can't be definitive about whether drugs like Ozempic or Mounjaro are actually causing these symptoms.

However, these self-reported side effects are worth further investigation.

"These drugs are thought to work by engaging part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which helps regulate a wide variety of hormones," says psychologist Jena Shaw Tronieri.

"That doesn't mean the medications are necessarily causing these symptoms, but it could suggest that reports of menstrual changes and body temperature fluctuations are worth studying more systematically."

GLP-1 drugs are named after glucagon-like peptide-1, a natural hormone that the medications mimic. Specifically, the drugs limit appetite, slow down digestion, and trigger the release of insulin from the pancreas in response to high blood sugar levels.

While these treatments are associated with significant benefits in weight loss and diabetes management, research is ongoing into other potential consequences of GLP-1 use.

Those consequences potentially include protection against Alzheimer's, better cardiovascular health, and a greater risk of acute or chronic pancreatitis – so, quite the mix. We also know that regaining most of the weight after GLP-1 treatments is common.

The kind of online analysis done here may highlight problems that might otherwise be missed.

"The whole point of this kind of approach is that it can move quickly, and that's exactly when it's most valuable," says Guntuku.

Reddit tends to skew towards younger, male, US adults – but that doesn't mean it can't be useful for flagging problems that researchers need to know about.

Related: Ozempic-Like Drugs Can Help You Lose Weight, But There's a Catch

"Clinical trials generally identify the most dangerous side effects of drugs, but they can fail to find what symptoms patients are most concerned about," says computer and information scientist Lyle Ungar.

"Even though social media is not necessarily representative, a large collection of posts may reflect additional concerns."

The research has been published in Nature Health.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

The hottest giant planets in the galaxy should, in theory, have the fastest winds.

The hotter a planet is, the stronger its atmospheric currents should be – and a category of exoplanets known as hot Jupiters contains the hottest worlds we've ever found.

They orbit so insanely close to their host stars that some of them are literally evaporating from the heat…

Yet a new analysis of seven hot Jupiters reveals wind speeds that are practically sluggish, compared to what astronomers expected.

The best explanation for this surprise, according to a team led by astronomer Julia Seidel of Côte d'Azur Observatory in France, is that something is holding the winds back.

And the mechanism that could best explain that powerful braking effect is a magnetic field.

If the team's findings are validated, these laggardly winds could be the best evidence we've seen yet of magnetic activity on a world outside the Solar System.

"This breakthrough opens a completely new window on exoplanet research," Seidel says.

"It's the first time we can compare the magnetic environments of other worlds – a key step toward ultimately understanding which planets can stay alive, keep their water, and perhaps even, one day, host life as we know it."

Hot Jupiters are already some of the most fascinating exoplanets in the Milky Way. These worlds are in such proximity to their stars that, in the most extreme cases, their orbits are less than a day.

This means that two things are usually true for hot Jupiters. The first is that they are tidally locked, with one side permanently in daylight facing the star, and the other in permanent darkness facing away.

This produces a temperature contrast that should create some absolutely demented weather.

The second is that these worlds are usually heated to equilibrium temperatures of several thousand degrees, helping drive even stronger atmospheric circulation.

Now, we can't directly measure magnetic fields on exoplanets, but previous studies of individual hot Jupiters have shown that, by tracing vaporized iron in the atmosphere, wind speeds can be established.

Because we know that magnetic fields can act as a brake on electrically charged gases, the researchers thought they might be able to use hot Jupiter wind speeds as a proxy for magnetic field activity.

They used the MAROON-X instrument on the Gemini North telescope and the ESPRESSO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope to measure wind speeds across seven hot Jupiters.

Now, wind speeds on these worlds are still far beyond anything we might see in the Solar System. The researchers recorded howling gales at speeds between 2 and 7 kilometers (1.2 to 4.3 miles) per second. Jupiter's wind speeds – the fastest in the Solar System – only get as high as about 0.4 kilometers per second.

However, what makes the hot Jupiters interesting is the clear relationship between wind speed and temperature.

The researchers found that the hotter the exoplanet, the slower its winds.

There are some other explanations for slower-than-expected winds on hot Jupiters; but, the researchers argue, the other possibilities would still show the opposite trend, with wind speed increasing with temperature.

"This is totally counterintuitive because, all things being equal, hot planets have more energy to accelerate the winds!" says astronomer Vivien Parmentier of Côte d'Azur Observatory. "Something must happen that slows down the wind speeds for hotter objects."

This something, the researchers argue, is most likely to be magnetic fields… and, based on the trend in their observations, they were even able to infer the strength of the field producing the effect.

The hot Jupiters, they found, should have magnetic fields of only a few gauss, roughly comparable to Jupiter's.

Because it's a proxy measurement, further observations may be required to confirm the team's findings.

Related: Ludicrous Lemon-Shaped World Is Like Nothing We've Ever Seen

However, it's still a lovely result – one that shows just how far we've come in understanding alien worlds, moving away from the characteristics of individual planets to statistical-level analyses that start to reveal patterns.

"Here on Earth, we know the beauty of the northern and southern lights, where particles from the Sun hit our magnetic field and are guided toward the poles, colliding with gases in the atmosphere to produce colorful displays of green, pink, and purple," says astronomer Bibiana Prinoth, formerly of Lund University, Sweden, now at the ESO.

"I like to imagine that some of these worlds have a sky filled not only with stars, but with vast curtains of colorful light dancing across a planet that's half in perpetual day and half in endless night."

The research has been published in Nature Astronomy.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

One of the hardest things to do in physics is to generate true, provably unpredictable randomness.

That's because it's impossible to determine randomness based on the output alone.

Dice may have nicks and flaws that influence how they roll.

Computer random-number generators are usually driven by algorithms.

Even coin flips are governed by physical forces that, in theory, could be predicted.

The difficulty lies not in generating numbers that appear random, but in showing that no one could have possibly predicted the outcome – that the system isn't secretly affected by subtle hidden rules or biases.

Now, a team of physicists at ETH Zurich in Switzerland has overcome that challenge by leveraging one of the strangest phenomena in quantum mechanics: entanglement.

"The resulting sequence of zeros and ones is now really perfectly random, and we can even certify that," says physicist Renato Renner of ETH Zurich.

Randomness is crucial to modern security.

It's the core feature that makes passwords, authentication codes, and encryption keys harder to guess.

It's the reason password generators will produce a string of meaninglessly jumbled characters rather than something like YourFirstPet123.

But the stakes extend far beyond a Flickr password to international security.

Recent examples of security weaknesses include the 2024 PuTTY vulnerability, in which one of the world's most widely used SSH clients had a flaw in its random-number generation for cryptographic signatures.

And don't forget the 2025 AMD Zen 5 RDSEED bug, in which a hardware random-number instruction would generate predictable values while falsely reporting success.

If a code is not perfectly random, it's easier for attackers to guess.

"Any conventional electronic device, like a phone or a computer, is completely deterministic," Renner told Adam Kovac at Scientific American, "so it's actually very difficult for a computer or any other electronic device to generate a random value."

To try to find a solution to this problem, the researchers turned to a quantum experiment known as the Bell test.

They created a pair of entangled quantum bits, or qubits, separated by 30 meters (98 feet) and cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero.

Entangled particles are those that, when measured, show similarities that cannot be explained by classical physics alone.

Measurements performed on the qubits produced correlations so strong that they could not be explained by ordinary hidden rules or pre-programmed behavior.

This achievement required major technical improvements to both the stability and speed of the experiment, allowing the team to perform more than a billion Bell-test trials over roughly nine hours.

Previous quantum random-number generators could produce highly random outputs, but they still relied on trusted hardware and perfectly random starting conditions.

The ETH Zurich team instead demonstrated something called randomness amplification, deliberately starting with imperfect randomness – taking randomness that may contain subtle flaws or biases and transforming it into randomness that can be certified as perfectly unpredictable.

"Crucially," they write in their paper, "randomness amplification has been proven to be impossible by purely classical means."

The result is a system capable of generating certifiably perfect randomness, even when starting with flawed or imperfect randomness.

Related: Crystals Have Been Used to Generate Truly Random Numbers For The Very First Time

And it's also device independent, which means the randomness does not depend on trusting the hardware itself, but on the quantum behavior observed in the experiment.

In the long term, the researchers say that their system could perform the same function atomic clocks perform for timekeeping – a physically certified source of randomness against which others can be measured and set.

"The technical improvements allowed us, for the first time, to create random numbers that will remain perfectly random for all eternity – no matter what analytical methods are used to assess their randomness," Renner says.

The research has been published in Nature.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

For millions of people, statins are a daily shield against heart disease.

But around 10 percent of those who take statins to lower cholesterol experience a mysterious, painful side effect that causes many to discontinue these potentially life-saving medicines.

Scientists have recently found one possible reason why.

Research from Columbia University and the University of Rochester in the US revealed a potential culprit: a tiny calcium gate inside muscle cells that statins may force open.

The resulting calcium leak can damage muscle tissue, offering a new explanation for at least some cases of statin-associated muscle symptoms (SAMS).

"I've had patients who've been prescribed statins, and they refused to take them because of the side effects," said lead author Andrew Marks, a cardiologist at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Statins work by blocking an enzyme that's required for the biosynthesis of cholesterol in the liver.

As a result, levels of 'bad' LDL cholesterol are reduced in the blood, helping to prevent one of America's top killers: cardiovascular diseases like atherosclerosis, the buildup of fatty deposits in blood vessels.

But statins also affect "off-target" molecules, including a protein called ryanodine receptor 1 (RyR1). RyR1 is a mushroom-shaped channel, or gate, located on the sarcoplasmic reticulum, a web-like structure that surrounds muscle fibers.

RyR1 acts like a bouncer at a club, opening or closing the door to let calcium ions flow into the muscles. This calcium flow is an essential process that mediates muscle contractions.

Using mice as models, the researchers observed the precise way statins bind to RyR1, using an imaging technique called cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM).

Cryo-EM involves flash-freezing biological samples and then blasting them with electron beams. The deflection pattern of the electrons reveals tiny structures, allowing scientists to create highly detailed 3D images of things like proteins and view their constituent molecules.

Yet cholesterol-lowering drugs like simvastatin may keep these gates open, allowing calcium ions to leak into muscle cells, which can either directly damage muscles or trigger enzymes that degrade them.

As a result, statin users may experience persistent pain, weakness, tenderness, and cramps.

The issue is exacerbated in individuals with RyR1 mutations, who may also experience episodes of malignant hyperthermia (a severe overheating triggered by medication) or weakness in the diaphragm that leads to reduced lung function and respiratory disorders.

In rare but potentially life-threatening cases, the side effects of statins can induce rhabdomyolysis, a serious syndrome in which muscle tissues rupture and leak into the bloodstream, culminating in kidney failure.

The equally gruesome autoimmune-mediated necrotizing myositis may also rarely occur, a condition in which the immune system turns against its own tissues and kills muscle tissue.

The leaky calcium gate explanation may not apply to all cases of SAMS, but now that we understand this mechanism, it could help identify people at risk of statin intolerance.

Around 40 million adults take statins in the US alone, and approximately 10 percent of treated individuals experience SAMS.

"It's the most common reason patients quit statins, and it's a very real problem that needs a solution," said Marks.

Related: US Cardiologists Have Published New Guidelines For Managing Cholesterol

The researchers highlight two promising options. The first is to redesign statins so they don't bind to RyR1 but still inhibit cholesterol production in the liver.

Alternatively, when the researchers treated statin-intolerant mice with Rycal, an experimental class of drug used to treat patients with rare muscle diseases, they were able to close the leaky RyR1 calcium gates and prevent simvastatin-induced muscle weakness.

"It is unlikely that this explanation applies to everyone who experiences muscular side effects with statins," Marks explained.

"But even if it explains a small subset, that's a lot of people we could help if we can resolve the issue."

This research was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

An earlier version of this article was published in February 2026.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

A life that leads to dementia can take many paths, but there are some common risk factors that make a diagnosis more likely.

An extensive new study shows, however, that among older adults, the effect of those risk factors differs.

Some risk factors seem to hit women's cognition harder than men's, and accruing multiple risk factors over a lifetime seems to worsen women's brain function more so than men's.

In other words, certain risk factors may not mean the same thing in a woman's brain as it does in a man's, which has implications for dementia research and treatments.

It's well known that dementia is more common in women than in men, and longer life expectancy does not fully explain the gap.

There's something else going on that these findings could also help us understand.

"Our study suggests that women may be at greater risk of dementia because they experience a greater number of risk factors, and because these risk factors reduce cognition to a greater degree than [in] men," the researchers write.

Study co-authors Megan Fitzhugh and Judy Pa, two neuroscientists from the University of California, San Diego, say their results provide further evidence that dementia risk needs to be assessed and managed in a personalized way.

"Looking beyond which risk factors are most common, we found that some have a disproportionately larger impact on women's cognition," says Fitzhugh.

"This suggests that prevention efforts may be more effective if they are tailored not just to risk factor prevalence, but to how strongly each factor affects cognition in women versus men."

The researchers analyzed health data from 17,182 individuals aged 40 or older, examining 13 risk factors linked to dementia.

Depression, physical inactivity, and sleep problems were more common in women, compared to men.

Higher rates of hearing loss, diabetes, and heavy alcohol use, on the other hand, were more often reported by men.

Some risk factors were linked to greater reductions in cognitive scores in women – an indication that they affect women's brains more negatively than men's.

These factors included high blood pressure, hearing loss, and diabetes.

Higher BMI was also associated with poorer cognitive performance in women in their 50s and 60s, but not at older ages.

Amid that picture of cognitive decline, there were some positive trends suggesting that certain factors might help preserve cognitive function in women compared to men.

"Two risk factors, years of education and total cholesterol, showed positive associations with cognition, such that higher levels were correlated with greater cognition," write the researchers in their published paper.

Given their links to cognitive performance, it's possible these factors may be especially important to investigate in women's dementia risk.

However, this observational study can't prove cause and effect. A longer-term analysis could provide stronger evidence that these risk factors were contributing to the cognitive test scores.

While 'women' and 'men' are recognized as gender categories, this study uses these terms to refer to individuals' self-reported biological sex.

"It is important to distinguish between sex differences in the prevalence of risk factors and their impact on cognition, because prevalence and impact may not correspond," writes the team.

"Targeting only the most prevalent risk factors within each sex may overlook certain risk factors that more markedly influence cognitive decline."

The new findings fit with previous research suggesting that dementia risk factors may affect men and women in different ways, though these studies have tended to look at only one risk factor at a time.

Alzheimer's disease now affects an estimated one in nine US adults aged 65 and older, and two-thirds of those affected are women.

While the figures for dementia may be bleak, there are real and practical ways to reduce risk, while work on treatments continues.

The researchers emphasize that all these risk factors are potentially modifiable. That means they're real targets that people and their doctors can try to address, whether it's drinking less, moving more, or seeking help for depression.

Next steps here could include research to determine why women's cognition may be more vulnerable to certain factors.

Hormonal changes around menopause may be involved, but the mechanisms remain unclear.

Related: One Vital Bodily Function Could Link Many Dementia Risk Factors

"These differences highlight the importance of considering sex as a key variable in dementia research," says Pa.

The research has been published in Biology of Sex Differences.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

Night shift work is not for the weak.

Staying awake from dusk through to dawn, as many nurses, doctors, and emergency responders do, seems to take a toll on the body and mind.

But does it have an impact on the brain?

Neuroscientists in Singapore have now found evidence that shift work is tied to brain volume losses in key parts of the brain.

If shift work is stopped, however, those reductions are partially recovered within two and a half years, on average.

What those losses and gains actually mean for human health or behavior is unclear.

A secondary analysis revealed a negative correlation between volume loss and cognitive performance: Increasing volume loss was associated with poorer performance on some, but not all, cognitive tests.

But the effect size is "very small", the authors warn, so the results "should be interpreted cautiously."

That said, there's an important clue in the details. The brain regions that showed significant volume losses also help govern our sleep cycles.

What's more, they are involved in many of the symptoms of shift work, like poorer emotional regulation and memory performance.

The study is the largest of its kind and finds a change in brain volume where most previous analyses of shift work have not.

It analyzed MRI and long-term health data from 14,198 middle- to older-age adults with no medical issues who took part in the UK BioBank.

Among 2,122 shift workers, the researchers noticed a symmetrical pattern of modest volume loss in the right thalamus, which is part of the brain's information relay 'hub' and is closely involved in memory retrieval.

They also noticed modest volume loss in the left amygdala, which regulates emotional responses.

This was after accounting for age, sex, chronotype, and skull volume, among other factors, in their analysis.

"The selective thalamic and amygdalar volume loss observed in healthy shift workers may represent an early, subclinical marker of neural vulnerability linked to chronic circadian disruption," the team concludes, led by neuroscientist Thomas Welton.

"These regions are central to sleep-wake regulation, emotion, and attention, functions that are commonly affected in shift work-related fatigue and mood disturbance."

Challenges with regulating emotions are often tied to poor sleep, and shift workers are known to face higher risks of both sleep disorders and mental health problems.

Researchers have long speculated that a disrupted circadian rhythm is to blame.

Other factors that may contribute include a lack of sunlight or changes to eating times.

But just because some parts of the brain are shrinking does not mean they are necessarily dying. The brain is a flexible organ that can rewire itself to meet the challenges of the time.

Perhaps that is what it is doing for shift workers; maybe their brains are somehow compensating in a way that allows them to work through the night.

"It is possible," the authors note, "that individuals who fail to acquire these brain changes are unable to tolerate shift work and are therefore biased toward non-shift working roles."

The study took place only among older adults, which means it's not clear how the brains of younger workers may cope with the demands of shift work.

Further studies are needed to fully understand how different people respond and are affected.

Today, full-time shift workers make up about 10 to 17 percent of the US population, but by some estimates, roughly a quarter of the adult workforce currently labors during non-traditional hours.

Related: Sleepless Nights Could Drive Half a Million Cases of Dementia in The US Each Year

If this work repeatedly disrupts the body's natural circadian rhythm, it could have a long-term and measurable impact on the brain, but we won't know until those changes are studied further.

"In the "era of longevity", it is critical to understand the relationship between shift work and structure of the middle-older aged brain," Welton and colleagues write.

"The apparent reversibility of these [observed] structural effects within two years of ceasing shift work highlights a potential therapeutic window for prevention and recovery," they add.

The study is published in NeuroImage.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

Just a few years ago, a strange signal was received from the plane of the Milky Way.

It was something astronomers had never seen before, pulsing with a radio beat too slow to fit any known astronomical object.

It may have just come and gone as a one-off anomaly.

But then they found another one.

And another.

To date, around a dozen of these long-period radio transients (LPTs) have been detected from diverse corners of the galaxy, leaving scientists baffled.

Now, a team led by astronomer Kovi Rose of the University of Sydney in Australia thinks they may finally have found their Rosetta Stone, the object that could help them interpret at least some of these weird, pulsating objects.

In the direction of the galaxy's inner regions, the researchers traced an LPT signal directly to a magnetic cataclysmic variable star – a strongly magnetized white dwarf cannibalizing its companion and belching periodic radiation.

"Long-period radio transients have puzzled astronomers for years," Rose says.

"We've only found about a dozen, and their origins have been unclear. Now, we've been able to show that the source for one of these transients comes from a white dwarf actively pulling material from a companion star."

The mystery of the LPTs, first detailed in a 2022 paper, reared its head again after astronomers found something in the plane of the Milky Way pulsing in a weird way.

Every 18.18 minutes, the brightness of an object named GLEAM-X J162759.5−523504.3 increased for 30 to 60 seconds, temporarily making it one of the brightest objects in the low-frequency radio sky.

Then it stopped.

But it wasn't long before astronomers found more – showing that, whatever this strange object was, it wasn't just a one-off weirdness.

As the population grew, astronomers began to piece together possible explanations.

Some observations pointed to highly magnetized white dwarfs, while others hinted that at least some LPTs might arise in binary systems, where a white dwarf interacts with a companion star.

A major breakthrough came in 2025, when one LPT signal, named ILT J1101+5521, was traced to a binary star consisting of a red dwarf and a white dwarf, orbiting so closely together that their magnetic fields repeatedly clashed, sending out periodic bursts of radio waves.

The picture grew even more complicated when astronomers discovered that one LPT, ASKAP J1832-0911, also emitted X-rays, suggesting energetic processes beyond radio emission alone.

But no single object seemed capable of tying all the clues together.

And that's what makes this new discovery so intriguing. Its name is ASKAP J1745-5051, and it's the first object to unite many of the puzzle pieces previously observed in other LPTs.

That includes both radio and X-ray emission, a white dwarf and a binary companion, strong magnetic activity, orbital motion, and accretion – the gravitational transfer of material onto the white dwarf.

"Some similar objects had been linked to binary systems before, but this is the first one where we can clearly see both stars and the accretion process in action," says astrophysicist Tara Murphy of the University of Sydney and the ARC Center of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).

The discovery was made using CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope in Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia – one of the world's most sensitive facilities.

Because the system is such a chaos gremlin, it's impossible to tell exactly how far away it is. The best estimates place it between around 1,300 and 30,000 light-years away.

But the data were detailed enough that the researchers could figure out what kind of object it is.

ASKAP observations show a system that flares in radio waves every 81 minutes (1.35 hours), accompanied by matching periodic X-ray emission detected by NASA's Swift observatory and the Einstein Probe X-ray Telescope.

Optical observations obtained using the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope showed a white dwarf binary at the emission's location in the sky, with spectra revealing a clear orbital period of about 81 minutes – closely matching the period of the radio and X-ray bursts.

These observations reveal that the object is a magnetic cataclysmic variable. Every orbit, the white dwarf pulls material from its red dwarf companion star, which is funneled by the white dwarf's magnetic field onto its surface.

As the material crashes onto the white dwarf, it heats to millions of degrees and emits high-energy radiation – that's the source of the X-ray signal.

Related: Mystery Signals May Be Coming From One of The Rarest Stars in The Galaxy

Meanwhile, gas accelerated by the two stars' clashing magnetic fields appears to produce the radio signal, similar to the mechanism proposed for ILT J1101+5521.

It's such a beautiful convergence of characteristics that it could help explain other LPTs that only show some of these traits.

And it's genuinely exciting to be able to observe our understanding of LPTs evolve in real time.

"Each new discovery is helping us piece together the bigger picture," Rose says.

"We're only just beginning to understand this new class of cosmic events."

The research has been published in Nature Astronomy.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

The oceans are home to many of Earth's longest living creatures.

Glass sponges can survive for more than 10,000 years, and an individual quahog clam can thrive for more than 500.

A few jellyfish, jellies, and hydra are so good at regenerating themselves that they can theoretically live forever.

But the humble sea cucumber has a truly unique longevity trick.

Scientists in Canada have now discovered a sea cucumber species with tissue that may live 'indefinitely'.

When scientists amputated bits of a scarlet sea cucumber (Psolus fabricii), the tissues refused to die.

For three years and counting, the isolated tube feet and tentacles have sat all on their own in a tank of natural running seawater, without decaying away.

Not only are they not dead, but these tissues are biologically active and changing.

Many of their immune, metabolic, and cellular processes are still intact.

That's never been seen before – not from the tissue of any known animal on Earth.

"We haven't grown a new, complete sea cucumber yet, but we are seeing pretty stunning growth and diversification of cells literally years after this tissue was removed," explains marine biogeochemist Rachel Sipler from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science, a nonprofit research institute in the US.

"It's like a lizard that loses its tail. We know some lizards can grow new tails; we're talking about whether the tail can grow a new lizard."

Like many lizards on land, the sea cucumber species, P. fabricii, is a bit of a klutz in the ocean. It regularly loses or injures its tube feet and tentacles, which means it has a potentially great capacity for regeneration.

To test that idea in the lab, Sipler and her colleagues at Memorial University of Newfoundland watched and waited to see what happened to excised bits of this wild-looking sea cucumber.

Soon enough, the tissue samples began showing signs of wound repair. Their immune cells appeared to spring into action, and any dead cells were removed.

Repair was then followed by regeneration. Over time, the tissues began to absorb dissolved nutrients from the seawater, growing and restructuring themselves.

Years on, the isolated tentacles can still respond to tactile stimuli, indicating the preservation of a neural network.

This is the first known case of a tissue 'explant' surviving and growing long-term in a natural setting, write Sipler and her colleagues.

"Our findings," they add, "challenge conventional perceptions of tissue immortality."

They also raise the question: What does it mean for tissue to be alive?

For centuries now, scientists have tried to keep the cells and tissues of living animals functional, even when they are removed from the rest of the body.

While researchers have managed to engineer immortal cell lines from animal and human stem cells, these self-proliferating units must be kept in highly controlled environments, where they are carefully guarded against pathogens.

Keeping a whole bunch of cells alive within a section of tissue is much harder to manage.

Animal tissue is a flexible yet delicate structure; it requires a complex scaffold of communicating cells and a robust nutrient delivery system to keep everything plump.

Even when animal tissue is kept in a special solution to extend its longevity, it typically survives about 9 weeks in the laboratory.

But a bit of P. fabricii could live "indefinitely" in natural seawater, researchers speculate. In fact, it seems to thrive in the natural 'dirtiness'.

"Natural seawater is just about the most microbially diverse, least clean approach we could take experimentally," says Sipler.

"Yet, that rich environment full of bacteria and all this organic matter was actually feeding them and allowing this tissue to heal and grow."

The only other tissue culture that scientists have described as 'indefinite' was taken from a chicken embryo, and it did not show the same capacity for healing or survival as the scarlet sea cucumber.

In fact, P. fabricii may be unique even among sea cucumbers.

Sipler and her colleagues tested several other sea cucumbers, but none of their tissue explants survived more than 3.5 months.

"Here is this species that has this groundbreaking ability, and we had no idea," says Sipler.

"It's a reminder how much is yet to be discovered in the marine environment."

Related: Mammals May Have a Hidden Limb Regeneration Ability We Never Knew About

Andrea Bodnar, science director at the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute, was not involved in the study, but she agrees with the paper's conclusions.

"The fact that tissue explants from a sea cucumber can heal, reorganize, and survive independently for years in natural seawater suggests an entirely new model for biological resilience and tissue regeneration," she says.

The study is published in Science Advances.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

Humans are not yet done cooking. We're continuing to evolve and adjust to the world around us, the records of our adaptations written in our bodies.

We know that some environments can make us unwell. Mountain climbers often experience altitude sickness – the body's reaction to a significant drop in atmospheric pressure, which means less oxygen is taken in with each breath.

And yet, at high altitudes on the Tibetan Plateau, where oxygen levels in the air people breathe are notably low, human communities thrive.

Over more than 10,000 years of settlement in the region, the bodies of those living there have changed.

They've changed in ways that allow the inhabitants to make the most of an atmosphere that, for most humans, would result in insufficient oxygen being delivered to the body's tissues via blood cells, a condition known as hypoxia.

Watch the video below for a summary of the research:

"Adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia is fascinating because the stress is severe, experienced equally by everyone at a given altitude, and quantifiable," anthropologist Cynthia Beall of Case Western Reserve University in the US told ScienceAlert.

"It is a beautiful example of how and why our species has so much biological variation."

Beall has been studying the human response to hypoxic living conditions for years. In research published in October 2024, she and her team revealed some of the specific adaptations in Tibetan communities: traits that improve the blood's ability to deliver oxygen.

To unlock this discovery, the researchers looked into one of the markers of what we call evolutionary fitness: reproductive success.

Women who deliver live babies are those who pass on their traits to the next generation.

The traits that maximize an individual's success in a given environment are most likely to be found in women who are able to survive the stresses of pregnancy and childbirth.

These women are more likely to give birth to more babies.

Those offspring, having inherited survivability traits from their mothers, are also more likely to survive, reproduce, and carry those same traits forward.

That's natural selection at work.

Natural selection can be a bit strange and counterintuitive; in places where malaria is common, for example, the incidence of sickle cell anemia is high, because it involves a gene that protects against malaria.

Beall and her team studied 417 women aged 46 to 86 who had lived their entire lives in Nepal at altitudes above 3,500 meters (11,480 feet).

The researchers recorded the number of live births – ranging from 0 to 14 per woman, with an average of 5.2 – along with physical and health measurements.

Among the things they measured were levels of hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells responsible for delivering oxygen to tissues.

They also measured how much oxygen was being carried by the hemoglobin.

Interestingly, the women who demonstrated the highest rate of live births had hemoglobin levels that were neither high nor low, but average for the testing group.

But the oxygen saturation of their hemoglobin was high.

The results suggest that the adaptations are able to maximize oxygen delivery to cells and tissues without thickening the blood – an outcome that would increase stress on the heart as it struggles to pump a higher-viscosity fluid more resistant to flow.

"Previously we knew that lower hemoglobin was beneficial; now we understand that an intermediate value has the highest benefit," Beall said.

"We knew that higher oxygen saturation of hemoglobin was beneficial; now we understand that the higher the saturation, the more beneficial. The number of live births quantifies the benefits.

"It was unexpected to find that women can have many live births with low values of some oxygen transport traits if they have favorable values of other oxygen transport traits."

The women with the highest reproductive success rate also had a high rate of blood flow into the lungs, and their hearts had wider-than-average left ventricles, the chamber of the heart responsible for pumping oxygenated blood into the body.

Taken all together, these traits increase the rate of oxygen transport and delivery, enabling the human body to make the most of the low oxygen in the air respired.

It's important to note that cultural factors can play a role, too. Women who start reproducing young and have long marriages seem to have a longer exposure to the possibility of pregnancy, which also increases the number of live births, the researchers found.

Even taking that into account, however, the physical traits played a role. Nepalese women with physiologies most similar to women in unstressed, low-altitude environments tended to have the highest rate of reproductive success.

Related: Humans in The Andes Appear to Have Evolved a Strange Genetic Ability

"This is a case of ongoing natural selection," Beall said.

"Understanding how populations like these adapt gives us a better grasp of the processes of human evolution."

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

An earlier version of this article was published in October 2024.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

People have been consuming tobacco for millennia, though it wasn't until the late 1820s that nicotine was first extracted from tobacco plants.

Now, 200 years later, scientists have finally discovered how the tobacco plant makes those nicotine molecules.

The discovery could potentially transform products made from or using tobacco species, a practice known as 'plant molecular farming'.

Scientists have been engineering tobacco plants to produce therapeutic compounds and even vaccines, but the nicotine is problematic: it's highly addictive.

Understanding how nicotine is made could mean researchers could devise ways to prevent its production in plants.

"It is a big moment in plant science and biochemistry that we now have the answer we have been chasing for more than 200 years," says biologist Benjamin Lichman, from the University of York.

Lichman and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark identified in their new study the genes and enzymes that help produce nicotine.

"With this new knowledge we can remove or repurpose the nicotine that is produced naturally by the plant and create better biotechnology tools," says Lichman.

"There is also exciting potential for the future to adapt tobacco's nicotine forming system to make useful pharmaceutical compounds."

Through a genetic analysis of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), the researchers flagged genes that sit close together in tobacco DNA, and activate at the same time as genes already known to be involved in nicotine production.

They then isolated the enzymes produced by these genes.

In both test tubes and living plants, the researchers demonstrated that these enzymes combined to form nicotine.

It turns out the enzymes work through a clever process that goes some way to explaining why they've remained hidden for so long.

Initially, a glucose molecule is attached to the building blocks of nicotine, putting them in the reactive state that's needed for nicotine assembly. That same molecule then snaps off after the process has finished – so the sugar does its essential job, then disappears.

The researchers also identified the two enzymes, NaGR and NicGS, that help assemble the nicotine molecule from its raw materials. Those materials are an amino acid linked to protein building and a vitamin-like compound.

"It is exciting because it has real-world applications," says Lichman.

"A close relative of tobacco, Nicotiana benthamiana, is already used in 'molecular farming' to produce life-saving drugs and vaccines."

"It opens up new ways to use tobacco plants for good: not in cigarettes, but for medicines and other valuable products."

Another recently published study backs up the findings: nicotine is created by glucose, helped by a chain of enzymes, before the glucose disappears.

That complete vanishing act, together with the unusual way glucose is used here compared to other plant processes, is what made the nicotine production process so elusive for so long, the researchers say.

There are still some questions about nicotine production in tobacco, but we now have the main steps and key ingredients sorted.

The researchers suggest the process could be tweaked to produce different chemical substances and tobacco with low levels of nicotine; however, previous attempts have stunted plant growth.

Related: Plants Stopped Thriving When Earth Warmed 56 Million Years Ago

Ultimately, these researchers have not only solved a 200-year-old mystery but also laid the groundwork for more advanced and precise bioengineering.

"Tobacco plants can be used in biotechnology as platforms for producing vaccines or other pharmaceutical products, but it is plagued by the presence of nicotine, which contaminates the products and requires processing to remove it," says Lichman.

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

In 2019, astronomers recorded a distant star doing something unexpected.

For about an hour, its brightness gently flared before settling back down to baseline levels.

Its behavior matched no obvious stellar phenomenon – too long for a stellar flare, too brief for a supernova, and too smooth for most known kinds of stellar variability.

Now, after a careful probe into the event's properties, astronomers say it could be a signal from one of the most elusive objects in the Universe: a tiny primordial black hole weighing only about as much as three of Earth's Moons.

A black hole of that mass would have an event horizon about the same size as the period at the end of this sentence.

A team of astronomers led by Renee Key of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia say that no other explanation fits the event's statistics quite so well, and so they've named the candidate black hole Phoebe.

"Phoebe suggests a population of compact, lunar-mass objects associated with the dark matter distribution of the Milky Way, and potentially opens a new window to the physics of inflation," the team writes in a preprint posted to arXiv.

We tend to think of black holes as really weighty, large objects – with masses starting at at least a few Suns, and ranging all the way up to tens of billions of Suns.

This is because of the way they form, starting with the death of a massive star whose giant core then collapses under gravity, giving birth to one of the densest known objects in the Universe.

Just after the Big Bang, however, conditions may have been just right to create much, much smaller black holes. Quantum fluctuations in space-time could have created overdensities in the expanding Universe that collapsed much as a stellar core can today.

These black holes are known as primordial black holes, and currently, they are only known to exist in the world of theory.

This could be because they are hard to detect. A primordial black hole the mass of Earth would be just 1.8 centimeters (0.7 inches) across.

Even if such a black hole did manage to have an accretion event, the light screaming from the material caught in its gravitational grasp would be barely a pinprick – not detectable from Earth with our current instruments.

But that's not the only way we could detect a primordial black hole.

Even at very tiny diameters, the gravity around these objects would be extreme enough to bend space-time outside the event horizon.

This region of strongly curved space-time can act as a cosmic lens, and any background light passing through it would be magnified, producing a brief, gentle brightening before returning to normal levels – what is known as a microlensing event.

That's exactly the kind of signal the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) recorded in 2019 when it turned its gaze in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 163,000 light-years away from Earth.

The event took place on December 18, when DECam ran for five consecutive nights as part of the Asteroid-Mass Primordial black hole Microlensing (AMPM) survey.

For about 60 minutes, the light of a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud grew in brightness when its neighboring light sources did not.

Microlensing events are rare, but not unknown. Previous microlensing events have been attributed to stellar-mass black holes, tiny, dim stars and their attendant worlds, or rogue exoplanets drifting through space untethered from a star.

To find whether Phoebe could be a black hole, the researchers had to first rule out glitches in the instrument, stellar flares, contamination from other stars, and stellar fluctuations.

Then, they had to model different microlensing scenarios: a free-floating exoplanet in the Milky Way; a free-floating exoplanet in the Large Magellanic Cloud; and a primordial black hole in the Milky Way's extended dark matter halo, away from the concentration of matter in the galactic plane.

According to their calculations, the lensing body, Phoebe – whatever it is – is five orders of magnitude more likely to belong to the Milky Way's dark matter halo than to known stellar populations in either galaxy.

The preferred explanation is that Phoebe is a primordial black hole, about three times the mass of the Moon, located around 59,630 light-years away.

That doesn't rule out a rogue exoplanet in the Milky Way's halo. In fact, the rogue exoplanet is still firmly on the table, given that, observationally at least, rogue exoplanets are far more likely to exist and be detected.

But, in the Milky Way's halo, which is only sparsely populated at best, a black hole is far more likely than a rogue exoplanet, which are generally thought to be more populous in regions of space that have a lot of stars.

The discovery lands smack-bang amid another debate.

In February 2026, astronomers in the US and Japan, analyzing data from the Subaru Telescope, identified 12 microlensing candidates toward Andromeda that, they said, could be due to primordial black holes.

Then, a different team from the University of Warsaw, Poland, reanalyzed the same data and uploaded their rebuttal in March, finding that every one of the events could be attributed to normal, known stars.

Related: LIGO May Have Detected The First Primordial Black Hole, Scientists Say

This new discovery is grist for this debate.

Key and her colleagues say their finding supports the original interpretation of the Subaru data that the events are consistent with primordial black holes.

Which means only one thing. We're going to need a more sensitive telescope.

"Our detection motivates the Roman and Vera C. Rubin Observatory microlensing programs to support high cadence, sit-and-stare observations to boost the sensitivity to low-mass microlenses," the team writes in their paper.

We can't wait.

The preprint is available on arXiv.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

The key to heart health isn't cutting down on pasta or potatoes, new evidence suggests; it's not even a low-fat diet.

The research suggests the focus of healthy eating shouldn't necessarily be on what's being excluded from your diet (for example, reduced carbs or lowered calories).

Instead, the emphasis should be on what you're actually putting into your body, and the quality of those ingredients.

A study that tracked nearly 200,000 men and women in the US for around 30 years found that some low-fat and low-carb diets are better for heart health than others.

What separates them?

The key was the quality of the food itself, not the quantity of carbs or fats.

The research, led by public health researchers at Harvard University, suggests that if a diet contains too many processed foods and animal proteins or fats, or if it otherwise lacks in adequate vegetables, fruits, whole grains, healthy fats, or essential macronutrients, it may not benefit cardiovascular health as much in the long run, even if it is low carb or low fat by definition.

"Our findings highlighted that it's not simply about cutting carbs or fat, but it's about the quality of foods people choose to construct those diets," concluded Harvard epidemiologist Zhiyuan Wu, who led the research, published in February.

"Focusing only on nutrient compositions but not food quality may not lead to health benefits."

Participants in the study who ate healthy, varied diets with adequate macronutrients showed higher levels of 'good' cholesterol in their blood, as well as lower levels of fats and inflammatory markers compared to those who ate diets lacking in those essentials.

They also had a significantly lower risk of developing coronary heart disease, the most common cause of heart attacks.

"These results suggest that healthy low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets may share common biological pathways that improve cardiovascular health," explained Wu.

"Focusing on overall diet quality may offer flexibility for individuals to choose eating patterns that align with their preferences while still supporting heart health."

The findings are based on the self-reported diets of participants, who were all health professionals, so they may have had higher health awareness and better access to health care than the general population.

Related: This Diet Change Cuts Over 300 Calories a Day, Without Decreasing Meal Size

That's somewhat limiting; however, the length of follow-up in the study is impressive, amounting to more than 5.2 million person-years.

The findings join growing evidence suggesting that eating fewer processed foods and more whole grains and vegetables is generally best for a wide range of health outcomes.

Strict diets that count calories, carbs, or fats may not be necessary.

"This study helps move the conversation beyond the long-standing debate over low-carbohydrate versus low-fat diets," said Yale University cardiologist Harlan Krumholz, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

"The findings show that what matters most for heart health is the quality of the foods people eat. Whether a diet is lower in carbohydrates or fat, emphasizing plant-based foods, whole grains, and healthy fats is associated with better cardiovascular outcomes."

The study was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

A diet designed for weight loss could offer a different bonus benefit, according to a new review.

Researchers from the University of Coimbra in Portugal looked at dozens of previous studies analyzing this diet and its relationship to neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease.

If you're on the ketogenic (or keto) diet, you'll be prioritizing fats and proteins, while cutting down on carbohydrates – and it turns out, at the same time you could be protecting your brain from disease.

The team also looked at research relating to the keto diet more generally, trying to pin down the effects of the high-fat, dairy-rich diet on the body's metabolism – how it stores and uses energy in the form of glucose (sugar).

Problems with processing glucose underpin several brain diseases, and the team concluded that the keto diet has real potential as a way of targeting these conditions.

They also acknowledge there are several challenges with using the diet as a treatment method.

"The ketogenic diet has emerged as a metabolically oriented strategy with potential preventive and therapeutic relevance in neurodegenerative diseases," write the researchers in their published paper.

"While preclinical studies have demonstrated encouraging results, significant gaps remain in understanding long-term effects, safety, and practicality of [the ketogenic diet] in clinical settings."

The keto diet works by getting the body to burn fat for energy rather than glucose (which we get mainly from carbohydrates). Biologically, this is known as a metabolic state called ketosis, where fat molecules called ketones are used instead of glucose.

It means weight can rapidly be lost, and the keto diet is actually prescribed for treating epilepsy in some cases.

As the researchers here summarize, there are multiple mechanisms through which it might protect against neurodegenerative conditions too.

Brains running on empty could use ketones as an alternative, emergency energy source, for example, as has been demonstrated in studies of Alzheimer's – thus going some way to restoring neuron stability and functionality.

Ketones have also been shown to reduce inflammation in mice models of Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis, boost an important cellular clean-up process called autophagy, and promote gut bacteria associated with better brain function.

Add all of that up, and there's plenty of evidence that the keto diet – and the metabolic changes that it brings about – can target some of the processes thought to contribute to several devastating brain diseases.

"The ketogenic diet may serve as a complementary metabolic intervention that supports disease-specific treatments by enhancing metabolic resilience and contributing to symptom management," write the researchers.

It's not quite as simple as using the keto diet with people at high risk of neurodegenerative problems, however. Most of the reviewed studies involved animals rather than people, so further investigation is required in terms of clinical trials.

The keto diet is also one of the most difficult to stick to, so getting patients to follow it might be a problem. It also tends to come with a variety of unpleasant side effects: it's been linked to constipation, insomnia, and high cholesterol in some people, for instance.

Past studies have found that the keto diet might cause harm in the longer term, and increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. These downsides need to be weighed against any benefits that come along with the keto diet.

What this new review does is give us a 'state of play' in terms of scientific understanding right now. The multiple studies that were looked at offer solid evidence that following a keto diet and having better brain health are connected – though their results shouldn't be considered in isolation.

Related: Keto Diet May Have a Surprising Bonus Benefit, Mouse Study Suggests

"This review underscores the potential of [the ketogenic diet] for treating neurodegeneration on the basis of current scientific evidence while highlighting the need for further research to optimize its application and address existing gaps," write the researchers.

The research has been published in Translational Neurodegeneration.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

A diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) comes with a wave of uncertainty about how the condition will progress.

Now, new research points to a potential mechanism and treatment target for those who are most severely affected.

MS damages nerve cells, stripping away their protective covering that keeps nerve signals firing.

The new study, from researchers in the Netherlands, suggests that in the most severe cases of MS, an immune cell usually in charge of repairing damaged tissue and clearing away waste becomes overloaded with fat droplets.

Known as "foamy microglia", these cells have been spotted in MS patients before, but it wasn't clear exactly what they were doing.

According to the findings from this latest study, they could be key drivers of MS at its worst.

MS is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system becomes overactive, mistakes its own cells as foreign, and starts causing damage through inflammation. But these foamy microglia suggest there's also more to the story.

"We found that patients with large numbers of these foamy microglia had a more severe disease course more frequently," says molecular physiologist Daan van der Vliet, from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"It does not appear to be simply about the inflammatory response alone."

The team analyzed post-mortem brain tissue from 28 people with secondary progressive MS, where the disease has progressed to the point where cognitive and physical function are declining.

This tissue was compared against samples from 10 donated brains from people without the disease.

Using a combination of profiling techniques, the researcher created a map of proteins, fats, and active genes for the brain regions affected by MS lesions.

These lesions form when the fatty, protective coating around nerve fibers, known as myelin, is attacked by immune cells that have become too aggressive.

Not only was there a link between more foamy microglia and MS progression, but the researchers also found that the microglia were changing the mode of inflammation around the lesions – they had a different molecular signature in terms of proteins and enzymes.

The researchers suggest that as microglia arrive to try and repair the damage done to neurons, they get clogged up with fats (beginning with myelin) and become overwhelmed, which in turn, makes the inflammation worse.

"These cells are probably trying to do something good: clearing up damage," says van der Vliet.

"But they become overloaded, so to speak. As a result, they can no longer effectively contribute to repair."

The researchers also used a mouse model of MS, blocking one of the enzymes most active in foamy microglia. Tissue healing improved in these mice, further emphasizing the connection between these immune cells and worse MS progression.

We're still in the early stages of this research, and clinical trials with MS patients will be needed to see if the foamy microglia link holds up.

Researchers will also need to look at how these lesions that aren't repaired continue to develop over time.

However, these are promising findings in terms of figuring out why some people with MS live relatively normal lives for decades, while others become paralyzed sooner or develop more severe symptoms at a young age.

The study team is hopeful that the findings could help develop new MS treatments that target fat metabolism in cells.

There's also the potential, along with other lines of research, to identify more severe cases of MS at an earlier stage.

The researchers found signs of fats associated with foamy microglia floating around in cerebrospinal fluid, which they say could be measured as a marker of the disease.

Related: Scientists Identify Specific Bacteria Linked to Multiple Sclerosis

"That opens the possibility of developing biomarkers in the future that could help doctors identify earlier which patients are at risk of rapid decline – and which treatment would suit them best," says van der Vliet.

The research has been published in Nature Neuroscience.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

On a stormy Monday in March, 1827, the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven passed away after a protracted illness.

Bedridden since the previous Christmas, he was ravaged by jaundice, his limbs and abdomen swollen, and every breath a struggle.

As his associates sorted through personal belongings, they uncovered a document Beethoven had written a quarter of a century earlier – a will beseeching his brothers to make details of his condition known to the public.

Today it is no secret that one of the greatest musicians the world has ever known was functionally deaf by his mid-40s.

It was a tragic irony Beethoven wished the world understood, not just from a personal perspective, but a medical one.

The composer would outlive his doctor by nearly two decades, yet close to two centuries after Beethoven's death, a team of researchers set out to fulfill his testament in ways he would never have dreamed possible, by genetically analyzing the DNA in authenticated samples of his hair.

Watch the video below for a summary of the research:

"Our primary goal was to shed light on Beethoven's health problems, which famously include progressive hearing loss, beginning in his mid- to late-20s and eventually leading to him being functionally deaf by 1818," biochemist Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany explained in a press statement in 2023, when the results were unveiled.

The primary cause of that hearing loss has never been known, not even to his personal physician Dr Johann Adam Schmidt.

What began as tinnitus in his 20s slowly gave way to a reduced tolerance for loud noise, and eventually a loss of hearing in the higher pitches, effectively ending his career as a performing artist.

For a musician, nothing could be more ironic. In a letter addressed to his brothers, Beethoven admitted he was "hopelessly afflicted", to the point of contemplating suicide.

It wasn't just hearing loss the composer had to deal with in his adult life. From at least the age of 22 he is said to have suffered severe abdominal pains and chronic bouts of diarrhea.

Six years before his death the first indications of liver disease appeared, an illness thought to have been, at least in part, responsible for his death at the relatively young age of 56.

In 2007 a forensic investigation into a lock of hair believed to belong to Beethoven suggested that lead poisoning could have hastened his death, if not have been ultimately responsible for the symptoms that claimed his life.

Given the culture of drinking from lead vessels and medical treatments of the time that involved the use of lead, it's hardly a surprising conclusion.

This latest study, published in March 2023, debunks the theory, however, revealing that the hair never came from Beethoven in the first place, but rather an unknown woman.

More importantly, several locks confirmed as far more likely to be from the composer's head indicate his death was probably caused by a hepatitis B infection, exacerbated by his drinking and numerous risk factors for liver disease.

"We cannot say definitely what killed Beethoven, but we can now at least confirm the presence of significant heritable risk, and an infection with hepatitis B virus," explained Krause.

"We can also eliminate several other less plausible genetic causes."

As for his other conditions?

"We were unable to find a definitive cause for Beethoven's deafness or gastrointestinal problems," Krause said.

In some ways, we're left with more questions on the life and death of the famous classical composer.

Where did he contract hepatitis? How did a lock of woman's hair pass as Beethoven's own for centuries? And just what was behind his gut pains and hearing loss?

Given the team was inspired by Beethoven's desire for the world to understand his hearing loss, it's an unfortunate outcome. Though there was one more surprise buried among his genes.

Further investigation comparing the Y chromosome in the hair samples with those of modern relatives descending from Beethoven's paternal line point to a mismatch.

This suggests extramarital sexual activity in the generations leading up to the composer's birth.

Related: Beethoven Really Did Have Lead Poisoning, But That Didn't Cause His Death

"This finding suggests an extrapair paternity event in his paternal line between the conception of Hendrik van Beethoven in Kampenhout, Belgium in c.1572 and the conception of Ludwig van Beethoven seven generations later in 1770, in Bonn, Germany," said Tristan Begg, a biological anthropologist now at the University of Cambridge in the UK.

It could all be a little more than a younger Beethoven bargained for, considering the fateful request he put to paper.

Never would he have dreamed of the secrets that were being preserved as his friends and associates clipped the hair from his body in the wake of that somber stormy Monday night in 1827.

This research was published in Current Biology.

An earlier version of this article was published in March 2023.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

This Week In Science: A sleep apnea pill has been fast-tracked for FDA approval; the earliest evidence of surgical anesthetic detected on tools from more than 600 years ago; strange spacetime 'crystals', and much more!

Nightly Sleep Apnea Pill Fast-Tracked For Approval After Latest Trial Success

A nightly pill to treat sleep apnea is on the fast track for FDA approval, after promising results in a recent phase 3 clinical trial.

By week 26, almost 42 percent of participants taking the drug had moved into a lower severity category – and nearly 18 percent stopped experiencing obstructive sleep apnea altogether.

Read the full story here.

Ming Dynasty Surgeons Used Poison as an Anesthetic, Ancient Tools Reveal

Early surgeons used toxic compounds as anesthetic, according to a new chemical analysis of 600-year-old medical tools in China.

"This is the first time humanity has found direct chemical evidence of anesthetics on ancient surgical tools, proving that our ancestors already knew how to safely alleviate patients' pain with highly toxic herbs," says Congcang Zhao of Northwest University in China.

Read the full story here.

A Dazzling Meteor Just 'Video Bombed' a Volcanic Eruption

In a stunning coincidence, a livestream video of a volcano erupting in the Philippines captured a dazzlingly bright meteor on Monday.

Whatever this fireball was, it probably wasn't burning space junk. Such human-made objects tend to leave unruly trails of sparkling debris, whereas meteors, which are comparatively denser, typically streak right through Earth's atmosphere.

Read the full story here.

This Plant Summons Wasps When Under Attack, And We Finally Know How

New experiments have revealed how bean plants can attract predatory wasps to defend them from hungry caterpillars.

Common bean plants, the study found, have receptors that recognize and react to inceptin, a peptide that occurs commonly in caterpillar 'spit'. When caterpillars chew at a bean plant's leaves, it triggers a wave of immunological responses in the plant, which release volatile compounds that start 'advertising' fresh caterpillar on the wasp menu.

Read the full story here.

A Common Vitamin Helps Cancer Defend Itself – But Could Also Let Us Fight It

Vitamin B2 has been found to play a key role in how cancer defends itself – but it might also be something we can target to fight the disease.

The tests also revealed that the compound roseoflavin could potentially work to disrupt this cancer cell shield. It's very early days, but this suggests a way to target cancer cells without interfering with vitamin B2 in healthy cells.

Read the full story here.

Spacetime 'Crystals' Could Collapse Into Tiny Black Holes, Wild Paper Explains

A wild new paper explains how bits of spacetime could actually 'crystallize' – and these crystals could then collapse into tiny black holes.

"This spacetime crystal is a very peculiar and fascinating object," says physicist Daniel Grumiller of the Technical University of Vienna in Austria.

"It is a kind of intermediate state, an unstable point that can evolve in two different directions. It may simply dissolve again, leaving behind ordinary spacetime filled with freely moving particles.

"But if a tiny amount of energy is added, the evolution takes a completely different path: the inconspicuous spacetime crystal turns into a black hole."

Read the full story here.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

If you've ever tried to overhaul a garden, you know you're bound to find broken bits of pottery and long-forgotten statuary swallowed by vines.

But for one couple, that imitation of archaeological discovery turned into the real thing.

At first glance, the marble slab etched in Latin – including the phrase "spirits of the dead" – might have looked like a mass-produced facsimile designed to lend a garden a little decorative gravitas.

But for anthropologist Daniella Santoro, who lives with her husband Aaron Lopez in a historic home in New Orleans' Carrollton neighborhood, the object – found half-buried in the undergrowth – set off some spidey senses.

For a moment, she feared they might have uncovered an old grave.

"The fact that it was in Latin that really just gave us pause, right?" Santoro told the Associated Press.

"I mean, you see something like that and you say, 'Okay, this is not an ordinary thing.'"

Instead of ignoring the instinct, Santoro reached out to experts.

Among those who examined the inscription were archaeologist Susann Lusnia of Tulane University and anthropologist D. Ryan Gray of the University of New Orleans, who shared the find with other colleagues.

It didn't take long for the researchers to recognize what the couple had found.

The Latin text begins Dis Manibus – "to the spirits of the dead" – a common dedication on Roman funerary tablets.

In Roman funerary practice, Dis Manibus was a standard dedication to the spirits of the departed, often carved at the top of tombstones. Thousands of such inscriptions survive across the former Roman Empire.

Further translation revealed that the stone commemorated a Roman soldier, a Thracian named Sextus Congenius Verus.

Commissioned by his heirs, Atilius Carus and Vettius Longinus, the grave marker records that he died at 42, after 22 years of military service – some 1,900 years before Santoro and Lopez found his grave marker in an overgrown garden, half a world away.

Intriguingly, this was not the first record of the stone. Early in the 20th century, it had been documented as part of the collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia, Italy, a port town where the grave marker once stood in a small cemetery.

The museum was heavily damaged during Allied bombing in 1943 and 1944, and numerous artifacts were lost or displaced. Across Europe, wartime bombing and looting displaced countless cultural artifacts, many of which remain unaccounted for decades later.

The grave marker was among those later listed as missing. Its exact measurements, as recorded by the museum, matched those of the tablet found in Santoro and Lopez's garden.

Exactly how the stone traveled from wartime Italy to suburban Louisiana remained an equally fascinating saga.

According to Erin Scott O'Brien, the Carrollton house's former owner, the tablet had been on display in a cabinet containing other heirlooms in the Gentilly house of her grandfather, Charles Paddock Jr., a soldier stationed in Italy during WWII.

Related: 'Mammoth' Bones Kept in a Museum For 70 Years Turn Out to Be An Entirely Different Animal

Paddock Jr. and his wife died in the 1980s; when O'Brien moved into the home in the early 2000s, her mother gifted her the stone.

"We planted a tree and said this is the start of our new house. Let's put it outside in our garden," O'Brien told Preservation in Print. "I just thought it was a piece of art. I had no idea it was a 2,000-year-old relic."

More than 80 years have passed since the museum that once held the relic was devastated by war, and the principal players in the drama are dead.

It's likely we'll never know the true story of how Paddock came into possession of the stone, but perhaps what really matters is that it's finally returning home – to the land of the empire Sextus Congenius Verus so faithfully served.

The FBI's Art Crime Team is coordinating its repatriation to the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia.

An earlier version of this article was published in February 2026.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

An ancient giant – as massive as nine elephants – has emerged from Thailand.

The dinosaur, named Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, lived more than 100 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous.

It was a sauropod, sporting a lengthy tail, a long neck, and a prodigious appetite for plants, à la the on-again off-again Brontosaurus.

It likely weighed up to 28 tons and stretched some 27 meters (89 feet) long.

That's truly immense – more than 10 tons more massive than the hugely famous (and famously huge) Dippy the Diplodocus.

And it makes Nagatitan the largest dinosaur ever discovered in Southeast Asia.

Yet Nagatitan would have been only modestly mammoth compared with Patagotitan, a sauropod thought to have weighed approximately 70 tons and which may have been the largest land animal to ever walk the Earth.

Nagatitan has also been bestowed with an interesting etymology.

"Naga" refers to mythological water serpents frequently featured in Asian and Buddhist mythos. "Titan" derives from the Titans, or elder deities of Greek myths.

"Chaiyaphumensis" comes from the Chaiyaphum province of Thailand, where the bones were found.

As described in a recent paper published by a collaboration of researchers from Thailand and University College London (UCL), the remains of Nagatitan were discovered in 2016 on the edge of a dried pond in northeastern Thailand.

To tease out fine details and safely study bones across institutions, the researchers used a surface-scanning technique to create three-dimensional models.

"The material was studied both in Thailand and at UCL – 3D scanning and printing has meant that we can study the specimen and collect data without having to travel," says Paul Upchurch, paleobiologist at UCL and one of the study's co-authors.

In relation to other dinosaur fossils, it presented a fairly comprehensive collection of bones that exhibited a few morphological differences from those of other known sauropods.

The fossil find included eight vertebrae, five ribs, parts of the pelvis, a humerus, and a femur, along with some indeterminate fragments.

The dinosaur appears to be somewhat of an endling. The researchers have dubbed it "the last titan" because it was found in the Khok Kruat Formation, the youngest dinosaur-fossil-bearing stratigraphic region in Thailand.

The Khok Kruat Formation preserves a diverse array of fossils, including sharks, turtles, pterosaurs, ancestral crocodiles, and fearsome, predatory theropods, including an 8-meter-long shark-toothed predator.

In the Early Cretaceous, this area may have hosted shrublands and savannas, cut through by a meandering river system. As flying reptiles swiftly swooped up fish from the currents, Nagatitan could have dipped its long neck to gulp vast mouthfuls of water.

A product of their environment, as creatures usually are, sauropods seemed to have adjusted well to rising temperatures, despite their size. Perhaps they evolved their large surface area to dissipate heat.

The landscape then shifted dramatically, ending the dinosaurs' reign in Southeast Asia.

Related: Giant Dinosaurs Were Riddled With a Devastating Disease, Fossils Show

"Younger rocks laid down towards the end of the time of the dinosaurs are unlikely to contain dinosaur remains because the region by then had become a shallow sea," explains Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, a paleontologist at UCL, and first author of the study.

"So this may be the last or most recent large sauropod we will find in Southeast Asia."

Nagatitan isn't just an important 'last' – it's an exciting first for its discoverers, too.

"I've always been a dinosaur kid," says Sethapanichsakul.

"This study doesn't just establish a new species but also fulfils a childhood promise of naming a dinosaur."

This research was published in Scientific Reports.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.

It's hard to imagine pregnancy care without the ultrasound.

Since the 1950s, this incredible technology has provided an essential snapshot into the womb.

Now, scientists are taking it up a notch by trying to provide a continuous window of imaging.

In the coming years, new inventions may allow prospective parents and their physicians to monitor a developing fetus for hours on end, without the need for a traditional handheld ultrasound device or a sonographer standing by.

That sounds like sci-fi, but the proof of concept already exists.

Scientists at the University of California San Diego, Stanford, and Oxford have now invented a wearable ultrasound patch, called UPatch.

Mariana Tome, study co-author and obstetrics doctor at the University of Oxford, thinks the invention could "transform pregnancy care".

"This is the kind of technology obstetrics has been waiting for," she claims.

Like a handheld ultrasound, UPatch sends high-frequency sound waves inside the body to bounce off structures.

The returning echoes are then read by special software to capture a real-time view of what's going on inside the body.

UPatch sticks to the skin of the abdomen, where it 'reads' the echoes of red blood cells deep within the vessels of a developing fetus.

It can even accurately measure anatomical features of the fetus, such as the head circumference, abdominal circumference, or femur length, thereby providing an estimated weight.

Most impressively, UPatch does all this autonomously, without the need for a trained sonographer on hand.

The patch needs to be connected to a bulky backend powering system, and it doesn't work when a mother is walking or moving too much, but it is technically hands-free.

"Babies in the womb still cannot be monitored reliably, which is a major gap in maternity care worldwide, with huge implications. Solutions are needed urgently," says Antoniya Georgieva, a reproductive health researcher at Oxford.

"The UPatch technology opens the possibility of monitoring the most important signals of fetal health over much longer periods, gain essential new knowledge of how babies' oxygen supply and wellbeing adapt inside the womb, and ultimately helping clinicians identify problems earlier."

When researchers tested the patch on 62 pregnancies within a clinical setting, it performed on par with current ultrasound devices.

For one participant, the patch even noticed a dangerous change in blood flow to the fetus, signaling preeclampsia.

"Following the detection of compromised fetal health using the UPatch, the preeclamptic participant underwent intensive monitoring and the baby was delivered by Cesarean section four days later," write the study authors.

During pregnancy, ultrasounds are regularly recommended to monitor the health of both the mother and the child.

In higher-risk pregnancies, where patients are kept in the clinic for longer periods of time, ultrasounds are done multiple times a week.

Each one of those scans, however, takes time and requires a sonographer to use a handheld device to focus on parts of the uterus.

UPatch allows patients to be monitored in bed for hours, without the need for a clinician to move the device's focus or interpret the results in real time.

If UPatch is used in conjunction with classical imaging techniques, then perhaps pregnancy outcomes could be greatly improved, its inventors argue.

"This technology could expand access to prenatal imaging in healthcare deserts and low-resource settings, where shortages of trained sonographers often delay care for high-risk pregnancies," says Tom Park, the main engineer who designed and fabricated UPatch.

After comparing the patch to current ultrasound devices, the researchers then tested the patch continuously for between 1 and 6 hours in 52 pregnant women, including those affected by preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, hypertension, or poor fetal growth.

The findings reveal differences between short-term fluctuations in ultrasound readings and longer-term changes that require closer monitoring.

Researchers hope the device can help clinicians more readily detect signs of sustained fetal distress, so they can intervene sooner.

The flexible patch is designed with electrodes and an acoustic lens, so that when it wraps around an expectant mother's abdomen, it provides a window to the entire uterus while sitting, standing, or lying down.

Related: Yawning Is So Contagious You Can Catch It Before You're Born, Study Suggests

It can even provide details on how blood flow rates in the umbilical artery compare to those in the fetus's brain.

"This work shows how advances in soft electronics, ultrasound engineering, and clinical science can come together to address one of the most important unmet needs in pregnancy care," says senior author and engineer Sheng Xu from Stanford.

The study is published in Nature Biotechnology.

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don't miss a story, subscribe here.