Tag: science

Bermuda Mystery Surfaces with Discovery of Massive Underground Structure, Revealing a New Deep-Earth Anomaly

A new seismic analysis has revealed an unusually thick structure beneath Bermuda, a geological oddity that defies conventional models and may rewrite scientists’ understanding of how the island chain emerged.

The unusual feature consists of a 12.4-mile-thick layer of rock beneath the crust, located within the tectonic plate beneath Bermuda. Scientists have never detected such a thick layer of rock under similar tectonic conditions, where the mantle is typically found.

Bermuda Mystery

The 181-island chain of Bermuda has long puzzled geologists. The oceanic crust beneath the islands sits at a higher elevation than the surrounding seafloor due to a mysterious swell. Typically, volcanic activity would account for such uplift, yet geologists believe the region hasn’t experienced an eruption in 31 million years—a discrepancy that has fueled decades of speculation.

The newly discovered structure may help resolve that puzzle. Despite the extreme age of Bermuda’s last known eruption, the massive rock layer suggests that ancient volcanic activity could have injected a significant volume of mantle material into the crust. That slab now appears to be pushing the ocean floor upward by nearly 1,700 feet relative to nearby areas.

Similar mantle quirks may explain the formation of other islands worldwide. At certain locations known as mantle hotspots, rising plumes of hot material generate volcanic activity that builds islands from below—Hawaii being a prime example. In most cases, however, the crust eventually moves away from the hotspot, causing the uplift to subside over time.

Bermuda’s uplift, persisting for more than 31 million years, defies that pattern. What exactly is occurring beneath the island remains the subject of active debate.

Imagining the Bermuda Rock

The team behind the discovery, spread across multiple U.S. institutions, including Yale and Smith College, reported their findings in a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters. They relied on seismic data to make their discovery, drawing from a seismic station located on Bermuda, which collected the data by observing large earthquakes occurring at great distances from the island. 

These observations allowed scientists to image the Earth below Bermuda to a depth of 31 miles. Changes in the signal received as the tremors reached Bermuda enabled the teams to identify the anomalous rock layer, which varied in density, thereby altering the seismic waves.

Earlier research on Bermuda’s geology revealed that the archipelago’s ancient lava was low in silica, indicating that it was produced from high-carbon rock. Further analysis of the material’s zinc content revealed that the lava originated deep in the mantle. Geologists believe that the rock originally entered the mantle during the formation of the Pangea supercontinent some 900 to 300 million years ago.

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Health Canada says drag performances promote science and vaccination

What began as a routine Access to Information request quickly spiralled into something stranger and more wasteful than expected.

When Health Canada was asked for all invoices tied to Public Service Pride Week 2025, their response seemed straightforward on the surface. A hundred dollars for rainbow lanyards, another hundred for intersex-inclusive progress flag sticks, a $560 charge to raise and lower a flag, and over $800 for another flag-raising ceremony.

But buried in the paperwork was something far more revealing.

Invoices show that Brookfield Global Integrated Solutions, a Carney-adjacent facilities management giant, billed taxpayers $1,550 plus HST just to raise a Pride flag on August 14. Then take it down for a Truth & Reconciliation flag on September 27. Then take it down again on October 16 — complete with new anchors and eyebolts for next year.

The revolving door of symbolic flag choreography, all at the taxpayers’ expense, was becoming clear.

Even more striking was Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada’s choice of “science outreach.” During federal service Pride Week, the agencies quietly hired a group called Science is a Drag™ — yes, that is a real trademark. According to invoices, the troupe cost taxpayers over $2,500. Their pitch? To use drag performances to promote ‘science literacy and public health.’

Health Canada’s justification reads like a government committee’s fever dream: drag “aligns with the mandates of Health Canada and PHAC by using performance as an innovative, culturally relevant way to promote science literacy.” In practice, this meant federal employees were invited to a glitter-powered show discussing mental health, STI prevention, and vaccination — delivered by cross-dressing performers in sequins and six-inch heels.

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House Democrat Files Impeachment Articles Against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Turning ‘His Back on Science’

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who is running for Senate, filed articles of impeachment on Wednesday against Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying he has turned “his back on science.”

“Today, I formally introduced articles of impeachment against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. RFK Jr. has turned his back on science and the safety of the American people. Michiganders cannot take another day of his chaos,” the Michigan Democrat wrote in a statement.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for HHS, dismissed the articles of impeachment as a political ploy.

“Secretary Kennedy remains focused on the work of improving Americans’ health and lowering costs, not on partisan political stunts,” Nixon said.

Stevens is the second Democrat to recently move to impeach a Trump cabinet official; Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) just filed articles of impeachment against Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Thanedar has cited the Trump administration’s strikes against vessels that were allegedly taking part in drug trafficking.

“Pete Hegseth has been using the United States military to extrajudicially assassinate people without evidence of any crime,” said Thanedar.

He added, “Former military attorneys have come out and asserted that his conduct constitutes war crimes. We cannot allow his reprehensible conduct to continue, which is why I have filed these articles to impeach him.”

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Moving Objects without Touching Them: Scientists Invent Chip that Generates Acoustic Waves as “Invisible Grabbers”

Virginia Tech University Scientists have invented a novel electronic chip that generates acoustic waves capable of moving objects without touching them, like “invisible grabbers.”

Although other methods for moving objects without touching them already exist, the new approach is the first to generate waves directly on the chip capable of manipulating individual objects or fluids without direct contact.

The research team behind the new design believes their acoustic wave-generating chip could benefit scientific and manufacturing processes that rely on moving objects without physical contact, including micro robotics, nanoengineering, and customized drug manufacturing.

According to a statement detailing the acoustic wave-generating chip, Virginia Tech University Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Zhenhua Tian and his team were intrigued by the idea of generating acoustic waves capable of moving objects without touching them. However, when evaluating previous approaches, the team found that the actual generation of the waves was acting as a limiting factor in the approach’s practical applications.

For example, the current standard for producing acoustic waves on electronic chips is an interdigital transducer (IDT). But according to the research team, IDTs do not produce “highly customizable curved and overlapping waves” needed to trap and move objects, including fluids, without touching them.

“Think of it like trying to move a ping pong ball with the flat of your hand; you can roll it along a surface, but you can’t pick it up and freely move it,” they explained.

Funded by a 2024 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Tian and his team worked to develop a chip that can generate crisscrossing acoustic waves, which can be tuned to work together like invisible grabbers. This meant reimagining the wave transmitter’s shape and redesigning the electrodes that create the energy waves emanating from the chip.

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Scientists Discover Monkeys Can Keep a Beat—Challenging a Major Theory of Human Evolution

For decades, scientists believed that humans and a handful of musical birds held a near-exclusive claim to one of the most culturally defining abilities on Earth: the ability to move in time with a beat.

However,  a surprising new study now suggests that our sense of rhythm may not be as uniquely human as once thought.

In a series of experiments, macaque monkeys were observed spontaneously tapping along to music, locking onto rhythms even when it offered them no reward.

Published in Science, the study reveals that monkeys can not only perceive a steady beat in real music, but can also anticipate future beats and adjust their tapping accordingly—all skills once thought to emerge primarily in vocal-learning species such as humans and songbirds.

This unexpected finding challenges a long-standing hypothesis about the origins of musicality and opens a brand-new window into how the building blocks of rhythm may have evolved.

“Synchronizing movements to music is a hallmark of human culture, but its evolutionary and neurobiological origins remain unknown,” the researchers write. “Here, we demonstrate that macaques can synchronize to a subjective beat in real music and even spontaneously do so over alternative strategies.”

A new challenge to a long-held theory

For years, the dominant explanation for why humans can keep a beat has been the “vocal-learning hypothesis.” The theory proposes that rhythmic synchronization evolved as a side effect of complex vocal learning. Under this view, species like humans, parrots, and songbirds can lock onto a beat because they possess advanced vocal-mimicry abilities, while most mammals—including our closest primate relatives—cannot.

However, this new study’s findings disrupt that clean evolutionary story.

Two adult macaques, previously trained to tap in time with metronomes, were introduced to something far more complex: real music. Unlike metronomes, songs lack clean, repeating onsets and pose a much greater cognitive challenge. Yet the macaques learned to extract and follow the beat—sometimes even preferring to tap in sync with the music despite easier options.

The findings suggest that rhythm perception and synchronization may exist on a continuum across species—one that doesn’t require advanced vocal mimicry as a prerequisite.

How do you teach a monkey to “feel” the beat?

In the study, researchers placed monkeys in front of a screen equipped with an infrared tap sensor and an audio playback system. Once they initiated a trial by touching a holding bar, a song would start, prompting them to start tapping.

Three musical excerpts with well-established human tapping consensus were used, each presented at a distinct tempo. To earn a reward, the monkeys needed only to maintain consistent intervals between taps—not to tap at any particular phase relative to the music.

This distinction is crucial: the monkeys were never trained to tap on the beat. Yet, that’s exactly what they did.

Even more impressively, when the researchers shifted the onset of the song’s audio—misaligning the cue that normally triggered tapping—the monkeys’ taps shifted accordingly.

In humans, this kind of “phase shift” response indicates genuine beat tracking rather than a rote reaction to visual signals. In the monkeys, the same behavior suggested they were following something in the music itself.

“The monkeys were never trained or rewarded to produce a particular phase,” researchers wrote. “Despite this, both monkeys produced a consistent tapping phase for all three musical exercises.”

To test whether monkeys were really hearing and responding to rhythm—rather than simply learning a behavior—the researchers introduced scrambled music.

They chopped the original songs into tiny 30-millisecond fragments and rearranged them, destroying the temporal structure while preserving the same acoustic frequencies. The result was a burst of noise with no beat.

When listening to scrambled music, the monkeys still tapped consistently to receive rewards—but their taps no longer aligned with the audio, suggesting that synchronization emerged only when the stimulus contained meaningful rhythmic structure.

“With the exception of one scrambled song for each animal, the tapping phase distributions now did not differ between the original 0 and π versions of these scrambled stimuli… indicating that although monkeys were perfectly capable of ignoring the auditory stimulus,” the researchers explained. “They chose to synchronize to some feature in the stimulus when the temporal structure was informative.”

This was one of the clearest signs that macaques weren’t just performing a trained behavior—they were actually listening.

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Cleaning the Augean Stable of University-Based Scientific Research

Science’s reputation has taken a pretty strong hit in recent years – and it’s not undeserved. 

All throughout Covid, a class of people who should have known better revealed themselves as Quislings to their field as they publicly embraced politically and socially fashionable positions on supposed mitigation measures incongruent with long–held scientific consensuses despite often finding such measures risible at the pandemic’s start. Then, not having embarrassed themselves enough with Vonnegutesque absurdity, many went on to position once rudimentary components of mammalian reproductive biology as questions more complex than the development of multicellular life or the rise of human consciousness and best outsourced to the wisdom of gender theorists, confused teenagers, and the aptly named clownfish.

Consequently, many normal people stopped trusting “The Science” and became more skeptical of science as a whole. They started questioning what they had been told about psychotropic drugs. Worrying about the safety of vaccines went mainstream. Concerns about our diet partly gave rise to a movement and a Presidential commission.

Furthermore, many aspects of the scientific enterprise came under increased scrutiny, the most prominent perhaps being the US government’s role in funding scientific research, large portions of which seemed ideologically motivated.

A 2024 report from Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) highlighted $2.05 billion from the National Science Foundation that appeared to go to STEM-based DEI projects. Later, NSF grants for such projects, along with those examining the effects of alleged misinformation, were targeted by efforts aimed at reducing government waste, as were payments for indirect costs to the institutions of those receiving grants from the National Institutes of Health.

The function, utility, and integrity of the peer-review process and peer-reviewed journals likewise came under scrutiny. At the start of the year, Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist and biostatistician best known now as one of the primary co-signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, wrote of how publication in a peer-reviewed journal became a stamp of approval that even shoddy research can enjoy if dragged across the right finish line, how publication in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal became a surrogate for article quality, and how the desire to get published in the right journal can motivate all sorts of questionable behaviors on the part of researchers. In October, Anna Krylov, a University of Southern California chemistry professor and prominent critic of DEI’s infiltration of STEM, lambasted the prestigious Nature Publishing Group for using its publications to further DEI-related goals through its publication policies and the threat of censorship. 

Similarly, the competence and basic integrity of researchers, perhaps especially those in academia, came into question with some critics, such as the authors of a recent report from the National Association of Scholars, blaming the replication crisis plaguing modern science on ineptitude, irresponsibility, and statistical tomfoolery.

Subsequently, it seems that some have come to question whether we should have academic science at all.

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How Epstein Channeled Race Science and ‘Climate Culling’ Into Silicon Valley’s AI Elite

ewly released Jeffrey Epstein files reveal that an apocalyptic worldview – blending racial hierarchy, genetic “optimisation” and even climate-driven population culling – was circulating inside the elite, founder-linked networks shaping Silicon Valley’s rise.

These ideas appear most starkly in the convicted sex offender’s private exchanges with the AI theorist Joscha Bach, and sit alongside the longtermist and transhumanist philosophies championed by other influential figures in the same circles.

Joscha Bach, whose work on cognitive architectures and machine consciousness has shaped advanced AI research and influenced figures such as Elon Musk, appears in the documents engaging Epstein in sweeping discussions about race, hierarchy, genetic engineering and the supposed ‘utility’ of mass death, including under conditions of climate stress.

Meanwhile, another philosopher whose ideas underpin much of modern longtermism and whose work helped shape Silicon Valley’s early thinking on artificial general intelligence, Nick Bostrom, moved through the same intellectual and institutional ecosystem.

His published arguments on eugenics, selective population strategies and existential “optimisation” reveal a parallel strand of thinking within that milieu, financed and legitimised by many of the same networks.

Both men were also financed by Epstein.

Taken together, the Bach correspondence and the longtermist ideas circulating in this environment show that human hierarchy, population thinning and genetic destiny were not fringe provocations, but part of the ambient intellectual air inside the circles designing the next generation of AI.

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Acoustic Levitation Breakthrough Uses Sound to “Float” Multiple Objects in Midair

Austrian scientists working to perfect acoustic levitation have broken through a critical barrier by using electrical charges, allowing them to lift several objects simultaneously while maintaining their separation.

The researchers behind the breakthrough suggest that their new approach will offer researchers in micro robotics, materials science, and other emerging fields that rely on creating dynamic structures from small building blocks an unprecedented capability of simultaneously manipulating several objects in mid-air without them clumping together.

Scott Waitukaitis, now an assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), began evaluating acoustic levitation in 2013 when the technology was still in its nascent phases.

“While acoustic levitation was being used in acoustic holograms and volumetric displays, it was essentially geared toward applications,” the professor explained in a statement detailing the ISTA team’s work. “I had the impression that the technique could be used for much more fundamental purposes.”

A central limitation to expanding acoustic levitation beyond these applications is a phenomenon the team called “acoustic collapse.” Although individual particles can be levitated and manipulated in mid-air with sound, the ISTA team said that when researchers tried to levitate multiple particles simultaneously, they tend to “snap together like magnets in mid-air.”

“This ‘acoustic collapse’ occurs because the sound scattering off the particles creates attractive forces between them,” they explain.

When hunting for solutions, Sue Shi, a PhD student in the Waitukaitis group and the first author of the study, said they initially tried to separate levitated particles individually so they would form into repetitive patterns.

“Originally, we were trying to find a way to separate levitated particles so that they would form crystals,” Shi explained.

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The Oldest Known Eclipse Record is Shedding Light on Early Celestial Mysteries, Revealing the Location of a Misplaced Ancient Chinese City

Using ancient Chinese records, scientists have calculated Earth’s variable rotational speed back to 709 BCE, based on the earliest datable total solar eclipse.

The team’s work sought evidence to support the recently developed reconstruction of the solar cycle stretching back to the 8th century BCE. To do so, they analyzed descriptions of the solar corona produced in the ancient Chinese Lu Duchy’s capital, Qufu, which provided new information about the Earth’s rotational speed over time, as revealed in a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Eclipse Records of the Lu Duchy Court

Written in the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Lu Duchy court, it is reported that on July 17, 709 BCE, “the Sun was totally eclipsed.”

Ancient Chinese rulers filled their courts with ancient astronomers, tasked not with understanding the physical nature of the universe but with interpreting the signs and portents the night skies might hold. Notable astronomical events, such as auroras and eclipses, were believed to provide insight into whether cosmic forces approved of an emperor’s decision-making. The scrutiny placed on interpreting the meaning of these events led China to keep the ancient world’s best astronomical records.

A later addendum to the record in the first century CE states that the eclipse “penetrated the center of the Sun, and it was completely yellow above and below.” However, there is no documented provenance to support the claim that this quote originated with a witness to the event.

“What makes this record special isn’t just its age, but also a later addendum in the ‘Hanshu’ (Book of Han) based on a quote written seven centuries after the eclipse,” explained lead author Hisashi Hayakawa, Assistant Professor from the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research and Institute for Advanced Research at Nagoya University. 

“It describes the eclipsed Sun as ‘completely yellow above and below.’ This addendum has been traditionally associated with a record of a solar corona,” Hayakawa continued. “If this is truly the case, it represents one of the earliest surviving written descriptions of the solar corona.”

Locating Qufu from an Eclipse

The work not only revealed information about the Earth and Sun, but also about the geography of ancient China. Where the Lu Court at Qufu was believed to reside at the time would not have had the view of the eclipse described in the annals. The implication, therefore, is that earlier historical research obviously must have had the city’s location wrong. 

Matching historical sources and modern archaeology to discern the actual location was a task unto itself. Eventually, the researchers pinpointed a new site some 8 kilometers from the previously purported location of Qufu. With his PhDs in both solar physics and Asian history, Hayakawa was uniquely suited to the task.

“This correction allowed us to measure the Earth’s rotation during the total eclipse accurately, calculate the orientation of the Sun’s rotation axis, and simulate the corona’s appearance,” Hayakawa said.

Our planet has not always rotated at the same speed. At the time of the observation, 2,700 years ago, due to a variety of factors, including the Moon’s pull on the tides, it rotated faster than it does today. By correlating the revised location of Qufu with the date, the researchers were able to accurately measure the Earth’s rotational speed between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE.

“This new dataset fixes coordinate errors in previous Earth rotation studies. Additionally, it improves the accuracy of dating and reconstructing historical astronomical events,” Mitsuru Sôma, coauthor from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, said.

“This unique historical addendum for the possible solar coronal structure is critical for providing a spot reference on solar activity reconstructions from tree rings and ice cores, as well as providing independent validation of solar activity models,” explained Mathew Owens, coauthor and professor of Space Physics at the University of Reading.

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New Theory Suggests We’ve Been Wrong About Black Holes for 60 Years

How confusing inevitability with reality built decades of paradox.

What if general relativity never actually tells us that black holes already exist, but only that their formation is inevitable in an infinite future we can never observe? In a new theory, Daryl Janzen, a physicist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, questions whether we’ve mistaken mathematical inevitability for physical reality, and shows how much of our black hole story rests on that quiet leap.

Black holes are among the most captivating and scientifically intriguing phenomena in modern physics, inspiring both scientists and the public alike.

But do they really exist? What if they are only ever forming, never formed?

Just imagine — what if the whole edifice of black hole physics is built on an invalid logical inference that’s gone unnoticed (or unacknowledged?) for the better part of a century?

Inevitability is not actuality — that’s obvious enough. Yet for sixty years physicists have ignored relativity’s most basic rule, and we’ve taken for granted that the latter is implied by the former. Like fools walking around imagining we’re all dead because someday we’ll die, they look at the evidence that nothing can stop black holes from collapsing toward their horizons and imagine that a process which remains forever incomplete has already come to its end.

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