ScienceDaily: Quirky - November 08, 2023
Top quirky research news
French love letters confiscated by Britain finally read after 265 years
Over 100 letters sent to French sailors by their fiancées, wives, parents and siblings -- but never delivered -- have been opened and studied for the first time since they were written in 1757-8.
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450-million-year-old organism finds new life in Softbotics
Researchers have used fossil evidence to engineer a soft robotic replica of pleurocystitids, a marine organism that existed nearly 450 million years ago and is believed to be one of the first echinoderms capable of movement using a muscular stem.
Studies of geologic faulting on icy moons aid exploration of extraterrestrial watery worlds
Earth and space scientists document and reveal the mechanisms behind strike-slip faulting on the largest moon of Saturn, Titan, and Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede.
Want the secret to less painful belly flops? These researchers have the answer
Researchers investigated belly flop mechanics and found surprising insights about air-to-water impacts that could be useful for marine engineering applications. They set up a belly flop-like water experiment using a blunt cylinder but added an important vibrating twist to it.
Researchers have discovered several factors that affect field mouse behavior using seeds from dwarf bamboo plants, a plant that flowers once in a century. Their findings not only suggest the previously underappreciated role of mice in the forest ecosystem, but also show that they store small sasa seeds for later use. These challenge a previously held model of mouse behavior.
Two fins are better than one: Fish synchronize tail fins to save energy
They say two heads are better than one. But in the world of fish, it appears two fins are better than one. Researchers have produced a theoretical model that demonstrates the underlying mechanisms behind how fish will synchronize their fin movements to ride each other's vortices, thereby saving energy.
Mystery resolved: Black hole feeding and feedback at the center of an active galaxy
Almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. An international research team has recently observed the Circinus galaxy, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, with high enough resolution to gain further insights into the gas flows to and from the black hole at its galactic nucleus.
Long-distance weaponry identified at the 31,000-year-old archaeological site of Maisières-Canal
The hunter-gatherers who settled on the banks of the Haine, a river in southern Belgium, 31,000 years ago were already using spearthrowers to hunt their game. The material found at the archaeological site of Maisières-Canal permits establishing the use of this hunting technique 10,000 years earlier than the oldest currently known preserved spearthrowers. This discovery is prompting archaeologists to reconsider the age of this important technological innovation.
Rats have an imagination, new research suggests
Researchers have developed a novel system to probe a rat's thoughts, finding that animals can control their brain activity to imagine remote locations.
Chimpanzees use hilltops to conduct reconnaissance on rival groups, study finds
Research on neighboring chimpanzee communities in the forests of West Africa suggests a warfare tactic not previously seen beyond humans is regularly used by our closest evolutionary relatives.
New observations down to light-year scale of the gas flows around a supermassive black hole have successfully detected dense gas inflows and shown that only a small portion (about 3 percent) of the gas flowing towards the black hole is eaten by the black hole. The remainder is ejected and recycled back into the host galaxy.
Learning to forget -- a weapon in the arsenal against harmful AI
With the AI summit well underway, researchers are keen to raise the very real problem associated with the technology -- teaching it how to forget.
When massive stars or other stellar objects explode in the Earth's cosmic neighborhood, ejected debris can also reach our solar system. Traces of such events are found on Earth or the Moon and can be detected using accelerator mass spectrometry, or AMS for short.
How 'blue' and 'green' appeared in a language that didn't have words for them
A new study suggests the way a language divides up color space can be influenced by contact with other languages. Tsimane' people who learned Spanish as a second language began to classify blue and green into using separate words, which their native tongue does not do.
Hebrew prayer book fills gap in Italian earthquake history
The chance discovery of a note written in a 15th century Hebrew prayer book fills an important gap in the historical Italian earthquake record, offering a brief glimpse of a previously unknown earthquake affecting the Marche region in the central Apennines.
In a surprising finding, light can make water evaporate without heat
At the interface of water and air, light can, in certain conditions, bring about evaporation without the need for heat, according to a new study.
Giant dinosaur carcasses might have been important food sources for Jurassic predators
Carnivorous dinosaurs might have evolved to take advantage of giant carcasses, according to a new study.
Where is a sea star's head? Maybe just about everywhere
A new study that combines genetic and molecular techniques helps solve the riddle of sea star (commonly called starfish) body plans, and how sea stars start life with bilateral body symmetry -- just like humans -- but grow up to be adults with fivefold 'pentaradial' symmetry.
The remains of an ancient planet lie deep within Earth
The remnants of an ancient planet that collided with Earth to form the Moon lie deep within the earth, according to a new model.
Sperm adjust their swimming style to adapt to fluctuating fluid conditions
Sperm can modulate their energetics by regulating their flagellar waveform -- how the sperm oscillate their tails -- in order to adapt to varying fluid environments, potentially optimizing their motility and navigation within the reproductive tract, according to new research.
Reverse engineering Jackson Pollock
Researchers combined physics and machine learning to develop a new 3D-printing technique that can quickly create complex physical patterns -- including replicating a segment of a Pollock painting -- by leveraging the same natural fluid instability that Pollock used in his work.
Sunflowers famously turn their faces to follow the sun as it crosses the sky. But how do sunflowers 'see' the sun to follow it? Plant biologists show that they use a different, novel mechanism from that previously thought.
Study uncovers hundred-year lifespans for three freshwater fish species in the Arizona desert
New study finds some of the oldest animals in the world living in a place you wouldn't expect: fishes in the Arizona desert.