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The Changma Basin in northwest China’s Gansu province is famous for its many ancient bird fossils. Or, at least, pieces of fossils. Paleontologists have documented over 100 prehistoric avian dinosaur remains buried across the region, many resembling the digestive pellets regurgitated by owls living today. For years, researchers suspected that a similar predator was responsible for the fossil fragments, but lacked a convincing candidate.

Experts now have a plausible suspect. According to a study published today in the Annals of Carnegie Museum, a cousin of the fearsome Velociraptor stalked the Changma Basin around 120 million years ago. But with its long feathers and four “wings,” Jian changmaensis didn’t ambush its prey from high in the air like a falcon. Instead, it more likely swooped in like a flying squirrel.

“It’s the only dinosaur found at this site that wasn’t a bird, it was a carnivore, and it was much bigger than everything else that we’ve found there,” Jingmai O’Connor, a study co-author and Field Museum associate curator of fossil reptiles, explained in a statement.

Paleontologists theorized the dinosaur’s anatomy based on its upper arm fossil. Credit: O’Connor et al.

Named after a winged mythological creature from Chinese folklore, J. changmaensis belongs to a dinosaur subgroup known as microraptors. These feathered predators were speedy and small, often only about the size of a crow. J. changmaensis was comparatively large, however. While O’Connor’s team has so far only recovered a portion of its upper arm, they believe the dinosaur likely featured a roughly four-foot wingspan. That puts it at about the size of a barn owl.

Although larger than its fellow microraptors, paleontologists believe J. changmaensis physically resembled its relatives. This means the dinosaur likely featured both forearm wings as well as rudimentary “wings” on its hind legs. Microraptors couldn’t soar through the skies, but their feathers served a purpose

“Jian and the other microraptors probably weren’t capable of true, powered flight, but they could probably glide like a flying squirrel,” explained O’Connor.

Matt Lamanna, a study co-author and Carnegie Museum’s curator of vertebrate paleontology, said the team’s discovery offers “critical new insight” into the Changma region’s biological history while helping contextualize today’s avian dinosaur descendents.

“For decades, the Changma site has been renowned among paleontologists for its extraordinary bird fossils,” Lamanna added. “Now, with the discovery of Jian, we finally know what was eating them.”

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In another sign of their growing independence, eaglets Sandy and Luna appear to have spent their first night alone in the nest. According to Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV), parents Jackie and Shadow slept not too far away last night. The pair spent the night in the nearby roost tree. The chicks reportedly also told Fiona the squirrel to scram—just like mom. 

The eaglets are growing rapidly, so room in the roughly six-foot-wide nest in southern California is becoming a premium. Both chicks also need room for activities, as they practice their flapping and stomping.

On June 2, Sandy also branched for the first time. Branching is when an eaglet perches on the limb of a tree, and is an important developmental stage that usually occurs when chicks hit 9 weeks old. Once on the tree limb, the young birds can flap their wings, jump, and then land on a lower branch or back in their nest. Branching helps strengthen their flight muscles and helps them become more agile and better at landing ahead of fledging. 

Sandy and Luna are expected to fledged sometime in early July. All of their antics are available 24/7 with the FOBBV live cam.

Jackie and Shadow’s 2026 babies: Everything you need to know

It’s been another roller coaster nesting season for Jackie and Shadow, a pair of internet-famous bald eagle parents living in San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California. After two of their eggs were destroyed by ravens in January, Jackie and Shadow laid two new eggs that have successfully hatched.

Chick 1 hatched on April 4 at 9:33 p.m. PDT, while Chick 2 followed on April 5 at 8:30 a.m. Their large nest in Big Bear Valley east of Los Angeles is livestreamed 24 hours a day by nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV) and has captivated millions. 

On May 1, FOBBV announced the chicks’ names: Sandy and Luna.

How long will the chicks stay in the nest? 

Chicks usually stay in the nest until 10 to 14 weeks of age.

What challenges do the eaglets face?

Before leaving the nest, the chicks face threats from other birds of prey, including hawks, ravens, other eagles, and owls. Inclement weather can also present challenges for the chicks. In 2025, a March snowstorm resulted in the death of one of Jackie and Shadow’s three chicks.

During fledging, only 70 percent of eaglets survive. One of the greatest threats is from cars that can injure or kill the birds while they scavenge for food on roadkill. 

Who are Jackie and Shadow? 

The pair first got together in 2018 and successfully raised chicks in 2019 and 2022. However, their eggs failed to hatch in 2023 and 2024. Only 50 percent of eagle eggs successfully hatch, so this pair has already beaten the odds.

What happened to Jackie and Shadow’s 2025 eaglets?

In 2025, Jackie laid three eggs that all hatched in early March. On March 13, a strong snowstorm dumped up to two feet of snow and battered the nest with strong winds. Only two of the chicks were visible on the live cam when the storm passed by the next morning. FOBBV later confirmed the passing of one of the chicks. The two surviving chicks were later named Sunny and Gizmo after 54,000 names were submitted by fans.

What happens after chicks fledge? 

Young eagles usually fledge–or leave the nest and fly–when they can flatten their wings and have feathers capable of flight. This typically occurs when the birds hit 10 to 14 weeks of age. Males also tend to take their first flight a little sooner than females. 

According to FOBBV, fledglings from Southern California have been spotted as far south as Baja California, as far north as British Columbia, and as far east as Yellowstone National Park.

About 70 percent of bald eagles survive the fledgling stage. FOBBV does not tag their eagles, so it’s not possible to follow the chicks’ journeys after they flee the nest.

Can I help Jackie and Shadow?

Yes. Environmental groups are currently fundraising $10 million to protect Jackie and Shadow’s foraging area from development. Learn more at SaveMoonCamp.org.

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Stonehenge is so much more than just a monumental feat of ancient engineering—it’s also a logistical marvel. Multiple generations of Neolithic designers relied on communal teamwork and clever construction techniques to precisely place each of the site’s gigantic megaliths about 5,000 years ago. Two primary types of stone known as sarcens and bluestones make up the formation. Paleoarchaeologists previously traced most of the sarcens to about 15 miles away to present-day Marlborough, England, while many of the bluestones originated in Wales.

The famed Altar Stone is far more perplexing, however. The central, six-ton sandstone megalith likely came from a region in Scotland about 400 miles away. How a prehistoric society managed to scoot the boulder so far without complex tools or transportation methods has perplexed researchers for years.

Many researchers have theorized that melting Ice Age glaciers likely helped passively shift the Altar Stone closer to southern England’s Salisbury Plain around 2500 BCE, shortening the transport distance for Stonehenge’s creators. But in 2024, a team at Curtin University used chemical analysis to determine that glaciers simply weren’t the only factor behind the megalith’s move. Now, that same team has combined ice-sheet modeling and mineral grain dating to more precisely locate the Altar Stone’s original home. Their findings, published today in the Journal of Quaternary Science, further underscore how humans played a huge part in getting their centerpiece to Stonehenge.

“Rather than being carried naturally by ice, the evidence points to a deliberate, carefully planned movement across a challenging and varied landscape,” Anthony Clarke, a geochemist and study co-author, said in a statement.

Although glaciers possibly transported many large rocks as far south as Dogger Bank in the North Sea, Clarke explained that geological modeling showed that “no viable glacial pathways” ever linked the Altar Stone’s source region to Stonehenge. This further underscores how Neolithic communities were necessary to move it to its final spot.

“Transporting a stone of this size over such a long distance would have required planning, coordination and a deep understanding of the landscape—not to mention tremendous determination,” he added.

While the exact methods remain a mystery, Clarke and colleagues believe the Altar Stone was almost certainly moved in stages, possibly through a combination of overland and river travel routes.

“The stone would still have needed to be moved hundreds of kilometers by people,” Clarke concluded.

The post Humans really did move Stonehenge’s six-ton centerpiece appeared first on Popular Science.

Giant scorpions the size of a baseball bat with pincers the size of a pencil once stalked what is now England and Wales. Praearcturus gigas is believed to be the largest scorpion to ever roam the Earth, and was discovered from fossils that have been tucked away in London’s Natural History Museum for more than 150 years. The findings are detailed in a study published in the journal Palaeontology.

Praearcturus gigas stalked the region’s floodplains about 415 million years ago, during the Early Devonian. Small plants and fungi had only recently begun to spread, and more complex land ecosystems like forests did not exist yet.

“When we think of giant arthropods, people often picture Carboniferous rainforests with giant millipedes or dragonfly-like insects from later in Earth’s history,” Dr. Richard J. Howard, a study co-author and the Curator of Fossil Arthropods at the Natural History Museum, said in a statement. “But Praearcturus lived at least 50 million years earlier, well before the evolution of trees, when life on land was only just getting started.”

Howard and the team believe that Praearcturus’ enormous size indicates that they had very little competition from other large predators roaming around. Praearcturus might have grown to three-feet-long with six-inch pincers simply because there weren’t any other large animals nearby, so it could dominate its environment in a way that wouldn’t be possible years down the road. 

Praearcturus gigas was first scientifically decided in 1871. Scientists originally thought it was some kind of giant crustacean, similar to a woodlouse. The fossils were very fragmented, and lacked key features (such as a tail) that help classify it. To get a better picture, the team compared their fossils with some more well-preserved specimens found in 1972 and 2010.

“Praearcturus has puzzled us palaeontologists for more than a century,” added Dr. Russell Garwood, a study co-author and palaeontologist at The University of Manchester. “By bringing together material from several collections and using cutting edge imaging techniques, we’ve been able to build a clearer picture of the animal than was previously possible, which is really exciting.”

The fossils hint that this giant scorpion may have lived in the water some of the time. Some specimens have flap-like structures on the abdomen that are similar to those found in modern crustaceans like lobsters. These flaps suggest Praearcturus may have been capable of moving between water and land. Their place in the wider arachnid fossil record shows that most scorpions are unusually abundant in rocks dating back to this time period, compared with other arachnid species. This supports the idea that Praearcturus may have lived in freshwater environments, where they are more likely to survive as fossils. Excitingly, it shows that Praearcturus lived at a pivotal moment in our planet’s history, when animals were first experimenting with living life outside the oceans.

Pincer of scorpion (about the size of today’s largest scorpion). Image: Natural History Museum.

“The boundary between land and sea was much less defined at this time,” said Dr. Greg Edgecombe, a study co-author and Natural History Museum researcher. “Praearcturus gives us a fascinating glimpse into how early animals adapted to these changing environments. It may even represent a lineage that returned to the water after earlier ancestors had already begun living on land.”

According to the team, a breakthrough like this shows how important discoveries are still being made from museum collections. It also challenges assumptions about why prehistoric arthropods reached such enormous sizes. Instead of being driven solely by environmental factors like oxygen levels, a lack of competition, and other ecological opportunities may have played a crucial role.

“Confirming that this animal is a scorpion fundamentally changes our understanding of how and when these creatures evolved to such extraordinary sizes,” said Howard. 

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If your dog stops mid-walk to chew on a patch of lawn, you’ve probably wondered whether something is wrong. Of the delicious food options available to them, why would they choose leafy, bitter grass? Many owners assume the worst: that the dog has an upset stomach and is eating grass to make itself throw up.

Dr. Melissa Bain doesn’t see it that way. “My dog enjoys it every day,” says Bain, a professor of clinical animal behavior at the University of California, Davis. “If we ever mow the grass, [he’ll] go out there and just start chomping on it.” To her, it reads as a snack, not a symptom.

The idea that dogs graze to purge a sick stomach is one of the explanations owners reach for most. But it’s not what the research shows.

Eating grass is normal dog behavior

Grass eating is extremely common. In a 2008 UC Davis study, 79 percent of owners whose dogs had daily access to plants said their dog ate them. A follow-up internet survey of more than 1,500 owners found that 68 percent of dogs grazed daily or weekly, and grass was by far the plant they ate most.

If a behavior turns up in roughly three out of four dogs, it’s hard to call it a sign of illness.

Most dogs don’t get sick from grass

If dogs really ate grass to purge, you’d expect them to look ill first and vomit afterward. Most don’t. 

The same 2008 study found that only about 9 percent of dogs seemed sick before grazing, and only around 22 percent regularly vomited after. 

Diet made no difference either. Whether dogs were fed raw food, kibble, or a vegetarian diet had no bearing on whether they ate grass. 

There’s nothing like fresh grass. Video: Dogs eating grass, JR videos

“There is no nutritional basis for that that we know of,” Bain says of the theory that grazing makes up for something missing in a dog’s food. It’s a normal behavior, she adds, and one she sees mostly in healthy animals.

Her interviews with owners point in the same direction. When Bain asked what a dog was doing right before it ate grass, the dogs that already seemed unwell were the ones more likely to throw up afterward. The dogs that seemed fine usually didn’t. So, when sickness does show up, it tends to come before the grass, not because of it. The vomiting looks like a side effect, not the goal.

A popular version of that idea is that dogs graze to flush intestinal worms out of their gut. But many of the dogs in the survey were on monthly heartworm medication, which also clears intestinal worms—so those dogs had nothing to flush out. They grazed anyway.

They probably just like it

Once you set illness and diet aside, the explanation that’s left is appetite. “Most dogs eat grass because it is a food they enjoy,” says Carlo Siracusa, professor of clinical small animal behavior and welfare at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bain has noticed the same thing. Dogs tend to go for moist, long-stemmed grass, the tender kind that comes up early in the morning. They’re choosing what tastes good to them.

The behavior may be inherited from wild ancestors

Why dogs like grass in the first place is harder to answer. The 2008 study proposed that grazing is a normal behavior, possibly an instinct carried over from wild canid ancestors. 

Bain finds that idea convincing. One ecological version of that idea holds that grass once helped wild canids clear intestinal worms—the fibrous strands wrap around the worms and carry them out in the droppings. Bain points to wild-canid droppings to support this idea: They often hold long strands of plant material, sometimes with parasites tangled in it. But it isn’t proof, she says.

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A 2021 study of domestic cats had similar results: Very few cats looked ill before eating plants, and the behavior appeared normal and likely innate rather than a reaction to feeling sick. (Cats did vomit more often than dogs—up to a third of the time—which the authors say may reflect some gastric upset.) Why the instinct exists at all is still an open question.

When it’s worth a second look

Only rarely does grass-eating become a problem, Bain says—when it becomes compulsive. Siracusa says it can turn excessive enough to cause an intestinal obstruction. 

“I have seen this in anxious dogs, but it does not represent the norm,” he says. In nearly three decades of practice, Bain can remember only one dog whose grazing was truly compulsive, and that dog obsessively ate everything, not just plants.

What matters is the pattern. A dog that grazes constantly, looks sick before eating, or vomits regularly afterward is worth a trip to the veterinarian, since the underlying cause may be nausea or another gut problem. It’s also a good idea to keep grass-eating dogs off chemically treated lawns and away from plants that are toxic to dogs.

For most dogs, though, none of that applies. “Most owners should not be concerned if their dog eats grass,” Siracusa says. For a lot of dogs, grass is just the first snack of the day.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

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Despite significant medical advances, spinal cord damage remains one of the most difficult physical injuries to treat. Scarring frequently gets in the way of nerve fiber regrowth, while nerve cells usually cannot regenerate on their own. A possible solution? A fleet of stem cell-infused, injectable nanorobots that can help nerve cells regenerate. The tiny bots are detailed in a study recently published in the journal Nature Materials.

To build their new tools, a team at ETH Zurich in Switzerland engineered microscopic machines that combine living neural progenitor cells (NPCs)—specialized stem cells developed for the spine—with customized nanoparticles. These customized nanoparticles feature two layers—one that is sensitive to magnetic fields and another that translates them into electrical signals.

“We place a reservoir in the center where we trap the cells. Then we inject the nanoparticles and wait for the two components to bind,” Salvador Pané i Vidal, a study co-author and ETH Zurich roboticist, said in a statement.

Each nanorobot is about six micrometers wide, making them smaller than a red blood cell. However, the number of robots required to pull off a procedure is immense. Millions of nanobots are needed during animal trials. Even with such a high number, the initial experimental results are promising. In tests involving mice with severed spinal cords, nerve cells stimulated by the microrobots began reconnecting at the injury site within 28 days. By the end of the trial, the mice displayed major improvements in movement, gait, coordination, and exploratory behavior. 

Significantly more research is required before these nanobots are ready for primetime, but the team hopes to one day begin testing similar devices in humans. Before that, they need to determine the most effective magnetic fields and how long to apply them to patients. In the meantime, the overall design could also be applied to help treat regenerative issues in organs and wounds.

“The reproducible and scalable production of microrobots using our lab-on-a-chip system demonstrates that the platform’s application potential extends beyond basic research,” added Pané i Vidal.

The post Injectable nanorobots may help heal spinal injuries appeared first on Popular Science.

Consider three sources of opinions or habits:

• (A) Inherit - passed down via DNA or culture, mostly sit in background unquestioned, give assumptions for B,C.

• (B) Consider - personally think own thoughts, conscious or otherwise. Influenced by what hear, debates join.

• (C) Specialize - people sit at niches in a structure, learn skills to contribute there, defer to outputs from other niches. Hear, debate near niche. Different types of structures: hierarchies, professions, speculative markets.

Before big brains, A dominated most everything. Then with big brains, A dominated stuff that was pretty constant over space and time, while B dominated the rest. And as we learned more kinds of abstractions, we collected more kinds of A that could help with B. While C has long been a thing, the modern world arose mainly due to a huge increase in C, mostly in orgs, markets, and professional networks. As our lives started to change faster and to get more specialized, that also induced a big increase in B to help us adapt to local context.

Looking more particularly at morality, norms, and adjacent culture, we see a relatively sudden jump from A to B at the modernism transition ~1900. People felt morality should change as fast as other habits were changing, and youth movements led the charge. But people also rejected C on such topics; it felt important that everyone “think for themselves”.

In adjacent areas of policy, sometimes C has been deferred to, but the ideology of democracy opposes doing too much of this. Over the last half century, we’ve seen a general decline in respect for and deference to C sources, especially near morals and politics, plausibly due to a long slow drift toward forager styles.

Alas, our civilization now plausibly suffers maladaptive cultural drift, in part from this new habit of setting morals and norms via B instead of A. And our civilization will fall unless we somehow fix this. (Even if we make AGI.) Yes, some C-like structures often feed indirectly into this B, but they don’t seem very adaptive. But short of returning to a stable low-tech highly-fragmented pre-modern world, it seems quite hard to return to A. So key question is: can we find an adaptive-enough C to source our morals?

I’ve explored a number of possible options here. While none seem especially promising, at least there’s some hope. But in this post I want to note that all of them will require us to accept no longer sourcing our morals mainly via “thinking for ourselves”. Maybe some people can be fooled into seeing themselves as vibing their morals, but there will in fact have to be a big effective structure that sets and changes morals, where people specialize on their small part and while deferring to other parts.

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to Popular Science’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Marie Antoinette probably had braces

By Rachel Feltman

The idea of Marie Antoinette in orthodontic braces probably sounds like something out of my favorite Sofia Coppola film, but it’s not as anachronistic as it sounds. While I couldn’t find a definitive primary source on the subject, there are historical mentions of Marie Antoinette undergoing orthodontic treatment. And in some ways, it would be more surprising if she didn’t do a stint in braces: modern dentistry as we know it was essentially invented in France in the early 1700s, and by the time Marie and Louis got hitched, French people were practically known for having straight, pretty teeth. We know that Marie Antoinette was given an intense French makeover in all things before being shipped off to Versailles, so it’s plausible that she had a bit of dental work done, too. 

If the idea of 18th century orthodontia makes you want to put your head between your knees, you’re not wrong. The hardware designed by Pierre Fauchard, called a bandolet or bandeau, used a horseshoe-shaped piece of metal that pressed against the inside or outside of the dental arch. Dentists would manually tie individual teeth to the appliance using either silk threads or thin metal wires. That is, admittedly, pretty identical to how braces work today—they exert constant pressure on teeth to help move them into new positions, then hold them there while everything settles into place. But modern braces are designed to move teeth more effectively and with as little pain as possible, and the bandeau was much more of a blunt instrument. 

For a fun French dental bonus fact, I dug into the weird social history of smiling on the eve of the Revolution. Check out this week’s episode to learn more! 

FACT: One woman’s cells have fueled most medical research for decades 

Featuring Hari Kondabolu and Dr. Priyanka Wali

Today’s special guests are comedian Hari Kondabolu and physician-slash-comedian Priyanka Wali. Together they host the podcast Health Stuff, where they dive into everything from earwax to sleep hygiene.

On this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing, Hari and Priyanka share the story of Henrietta Lacks. While being treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins in the 1950s, this African American mother of five unknowingly—and involuntarily—changed the course of medical history. Cancer cells from one of her biopsies were sent off for research without her knowledge or consent. Unlike other cancer cells in the lab, hers kept doubling instead of dying off. They were the first human cells that were discovered to multiply easily in a lab setting, making them perfect for studying the impact of various drugs, hormones, viruses, and toxins. While the cell line that originates from Henrietta Lacks’ tissues—called the HeLa line—has been used in research that’s saved countless lives over the decades, they also serve as a reminder of the entrenched racism of our medical system.

Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about Henrietta’s story. And for a deeper dive, check out “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” 

FACT: It’s possible that neanderthals knew how to treat cavities 

By Rachel Feltman

Surprise, more teeth! Scientists recently reported that a 59,000-year-old tooth—a neanderthal molar, to be precise—could conceivably have been drilled to treat a cavity. They came to that conclusion by tinkering with three modern teeth, AKA subjecting them to the horrors of prehistoric dental treatment, to show that the ancient chomper showed signs of the same. 

Unsurprisingly, not everyone is 100 percent convinced by the experimental evidence. But even if hominids weren’t drilling cavities that long ago, there’s good reason to believe we’ve been at it for longer than you might guess. A couple of teeth from the Stone Age (about 13,000 years ago) show less ambiguous signs of dental drilling, and dentistry has been a flourishing (if often misguided) practice for thousands of years. Many of our ancient ancestors even wore dental bridges made out of gold and other precious metals—so grills have a long, proud history. 

The post Marie Antoinette probably got braces to straighten her teeth appeared first on Popular Science.

A rare meteorite discovered in the Sahara Desert proves that our solar system almost had at least one extra planet. In a study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, astronomers say the chunk of space rock known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12774 once belonged to a protoplanet possibly as large as Mars. That is, until a cosmic crash likely blew it to smithereens. 

The solar system includes eight known planets (sorry, Pluto). Barring interstellar catastrophe, this number will remain the same until the sun finally dies about 5 billion years from now. However, this total planetary count was never a guarantee.The solar system’s earliest era featured multiple embryonic protoplanets that had the potential to grow together into additional cosmic neighbors.

The remnants of these long gone celestial bodies are scarce, but traces still exist. That said, astronomers didn’t expect to find protoplanetary evidence in a meteorite like NWA 12774. Discovered in 2019, NWA 12774 is an angrite—one of the oldest known types of volcanic rock that was formed during the solar system’s era about 4.56 billion years ago. They’re also very rare. Of the roughly 80,000 meteorites discovered on Earth so far, only 68 are angrites.

A slice of NWA 12774. The green circle is an olivine crystal, a magnesium-rich mineral. Credit: John Kashuba

Unlike rocky planets such as Mars and Earth, angrites do not have a lot of silicon dioxide. Because of this, astronomers have long assumed that angrites always originated in asteroids no larger than about 124 miles wide. NWA 12774 blows this theory apart..

While analyzing the meteorite, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder detected clinopyroxene, a mineral crystal that exists throughout Earth’s mantle and crust. NWA 12774’s clinopyroxene was also heavy in aluminum, which directly points to formation under massive amounts of pressure underground. The team then calculated the conditions necessary to create an angrite like NWA 12774, and settled on at least 17.5 kilobars of pressure. To put that in perspective, the pressure experienced at the bottom of the roughly 35,875-foot-deep Mariana Trench is barely one kilobar.

Small asteroids simply don’t possess the conditions needed to generate a rock like NWA 12774. What’s more, the angrite’s sharp crystalline edges also indicate that it formed at comparatively shallow depths in its host body. Based on all of these factors, astronomers now believe NWA 12774 once belonged to a young protoplanet with a radius anywhere from 621 to 2,050 miles wide. This means that instead of an asteroid, the angrite may have existed inside something as big as Mars.

“It’s incredible to think there was once a world this large,” Aaron Bell, a UC Boulder earth scientist and study co-author, said in a statement. “We only know it existed because a few fragments of it happened to land on Earth. These meteorites preserved evidence of a completely different pathway through which early planets developed.”

Although it’s unclear how the protoplanet met its demise, some type of crash between early solar system denizens is definitely a possibility. Regardless, the ramifications are huge for astronomers’ understanding of our cosmic neighborhood’s history.

“The materials that formed the angrite parent body are fundamentally different from the ingredients of Earth and Mars,” explained Bell. “It points to a distinct and separate evolutionary path in planetary formation in the early history of our solar system.”

The post Rare meteorite proves our solar system almost had an extra planet appeared first on Popular Science.

North Carolina’s blueberries may have a beetle problem. For the first time, scientists in the Tarheel State have documented the presence of Prionus imbricornus eating blueberry bushes. This longhorn beetle and its larvae can chomp their way through the state’s valuable blueberry fields. The findings are described in a study published this week in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management. 

Blueberries are native to North Carolina, but were not cultivated until 1935. The state is the sixth largest blueberry producer in the United States, and the blueberry industry is valued at roughly $70 million. Protecting the plants from pests is crucial, as blueberries are considered one of North Carolina’s most valuable and desirable crops. 

Several species including the blueberry maggot (Rhagoletis mendax), plum curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar), and cranberry fruitworm (Acrobasis vaccinii Riley) can threaten blueberry crops. The long-horned beetle P. imbricornus may now join their ranks. P. imbricornus is known for their long antennae and are considered wood-boring beetles. The adult females typically lay their eggs in the soil near the roots of hardwood trees. The larvae then eat and destroy the roots. These larvae can grow up to five inches long and potentially kill trees, since the adults don’t feed. 

P. Imbricornis larva. The larva, which can grow up to five inches long, feed on the roots of blueberry bushes. Image: Matt Bertone/NC State.

North Carolina is the first state to report that P. imbricornus is actively feeding on blueberry bushes. However, reports of unidentified larvae from the Prionus beetle genus feeding on and damaging blueberry bush roots go back to 2010. In the 16 years since, identifying the specific species responsible has been difficult since the larvae live near the roots of the plants. Different types of longhorn beetle larvae also look very similar, and not identifying a species can harm efforts to combat harmful bugs. 

“Before now, researchers often just assumed the species of Prionus on their commodities based on adult identification,” Kenneth Geisert, a study co-author and NC State graduate student, said in a statement. “If that guess was incorrect, it could mean using a treatment strategy that did not line up with the problem and incorrectly associating species and their hosts.”

For example, P. imbricornus attacks roots, but another longhorn beetle species may go after a tree’s dead branches or trunk. 

“Without knowing which species of beetle you’re dealing with and their ecology, incorrect management can cause adverse effects on non-target insects,” Geisert added.

For this study, the team used a series of black panel traps scented with sex pheromones to attract and gather adult beetles. The traps were placed at six farms across Pender, Sampson, Bladen, and New Hanover counties. The team then used a technique called genetic barcoding on the larvae to analyze small, standardized segments of their DNA to identify the species. They then compared the unknown larval sequences with the same genetic segments from known Prionus adults.

They matched the P. imbricornus with 98 to 99 percent accuracy. According to the team, this result is both good and bad news for farmers.

“On one hand, it’s very important that we know which species we’re dealing with,” said Lorena Lopez, a study co-author and entomologist at NC State. “On the other, North Carolina was the first state to ever report Prionus infestation in blueberries, and there are no insecticides currently labeled against this pest in blueberries.”

To address this shortfall, Lopez has begun insecticide trials. Pinpointing effective insecticides and timing during P. imbricornis reproductive cycles can potentially limit larval development. Fewer larvae could help prevent major root damage and provide blueberry farmers with an effective management tool to protect their crops. 

The post A ‘mystery beetle’ is devouring North Carolina’s precious blueberries appeared first on Popular Science.

CEO Blue Origin Dave Limp gives LC-36 updates. Now that they’ve had access to the pad and integration facility they can share a bit of good news. The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower ...

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It’s four in the morning and you wake from a dream. It wasn’t a nightmare exactly, but it was vivid and unsettling—a circus of imagery in which the other commuters stuck in gridlock beside you were all octopi  or your feet were transformed into a pair of horse hooves while going through airport security. 

Maybe you don’t often remember your dreams but this one, this episode that fused the mundane with the outlandish, it sticks. Even days later, you can still see those tentacles gripping the steering wheels or feel the awkwardness of your gait running to catch your flight. 

It couldn’t have been that joint you smoked before bed, could it? Science says maybe.

How weed effects sleep cycles

Reports of vivid dreams are “very well known” in cannabis and neuroscience research, says Andrew Kesner, assistant professor of psychology at Indiana University in Indianapolis. But “we still don’t really know the neurobiology of dreaming and what sort of features make you remember your dreams better or worse.”

What researchers do know is how consuming weed alters sleep patterns. 

Cannabinoids are found naturally in the brain in a non-psychoactive form called endocannabinoids. Endocannabinoids control our sleep/wake cycle, aka our circadian rhythms, by modulating and maintaining the brain’s biological balance through an abundant receptors neuroscientists call CB1. 

“When people fall asleep, the brain makes its own cannabinoids that increase and decrease throughout the sleep-wake cycle, and throughout the day,” explains Kesner.

Marijuana contains a different form of cannabinoid than the one naturally produced by the brain, THC or tetrahydrocannabinol. THC also works on the brain’s CB1 receptors but, unlike endocannabinoids, it is psychoactive, meaning it makes users feel high by producing feelings like euphoria and paranoia. 

Blooming cannabis plant ready to be harvested into various THC-based products. Image: Sunan Wongsa-nga / Getty Images Sunan Wongsa-nga

When you smoke weed before bed, the THC added to the brain’s natural endocannabinoids sends the brain’s CB1 receptors into overdrive. And when those CB1 receptors are in overdrive, they change the way you sleep.

Natural sleep in healthy adults begins with a short period of nodding off followed by a stage of “slow-wave” sleep, that deep sleep from which it’s hard to wake someone up. Cycles of lighter sleep punctuated by bouts of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep follow, growing longer and longer throughout the night. 

“REM sleep is classically the time when you’re dreaming,” says Kesner, when “your brain acts like it’s awake but the brain stem paralyzes your body so you can’t act out your dreams.” 

Consuming THC appears to suppress REM sleep: It causes it to arrive later in the sleep cycle and to make up less of the overall percentage of sleep. THC also causes more frequent interruptions to REM sleep. That, says Kesner, may be the origins of its reputation for causing weird dreams. 

“We know if you wake someone up in REM sleep, that’s when they have the highest chance to remember their dreams,” he explains. So, while there’s no evidence that dreams under the influence of THC are any different than THC-free dreams, the ability to remember them more easily may make the sleeper believe they are more bizarre or intense. 

According to one recent study, a dreamer is also likely to feel more rested following a night of vivid dreams, which may be one reason why many people feel smoking a joint or eating a gummy helps them to sleep.

Dreams are slippery suckers

Anything more is hard to say for sure.

“It’s possible that the THC could be making dreams more intense by changing cortical activity [the way the brain functions], making them wonkier and maybe adding some variability to what you’re dreaming about,” Kesner continues. But the huge variability among individuals in both sleep and the effects of THC use makes objectively studying weed-induced dreams “kind of a nightmare”—pun not intended. 

Researchers still don’t even know exactly what dreams are or why they happen—though there’s a good chance that it may be the brain coming up with different learning scenarios, according to Kesner. Someone who plays with puppies all day may, for example, dream that night about being chased by wolves. That way, if it ever happens in real life, the dreamer is better prepared to react to them. 

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Whether the weed was smoked or taken in edible form is probably also important; THC immediately affects the brain when smoking while edibles take time for the body to metabolize. One study in which participants reported weird dreams after smoking weed before bedtime, therefore, may have had to do more with the way REM sleep “rebounds,” or immediately returns to longer and more robust natural cycles, when the brain experiences THC withdrawal than with THC’s psychoactive effects. 

It’s well documented, says Kesner, that chronic THC users experience more intense REM sleep after they stop using it. The same might happen in occasional users, whose REM sleep could theoretically become more intense as the acute effects of weed wears off during the night. In other words, you don’t sleep as well while weed’s psychoactive THC is bouncing around your brain but it becomes much more restorative as soon as its effects wear off. 

Ultimately, there probably is no “one-size-fits-all for what cannabis does to sleep or how it affects dreams,” Kesner concludes. As of now, there’s simply not enough data to come to any meaningful verdict. THC or not, dreams are, by their very nature, weird.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

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Morningstar ignores SpaceX largest current business and vastly underestimates all of its future businesses. They come up with a valuation only half of the IPO and even achieving AI data centers in space is not worth the full IPO valuation. They value an AI data center in space scenario as only worth $1.3 trillion. The ...

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When it comes to reproduction, animals will pull out all the stops to attract a mate. Sending out noisy mating calls, showing off colorful wings, inflating a throat pouch, and shaking a literal tailfeather all ensure that the next generation of a species happens. Some insects will go as far as making themselves look like an entirely different living thing—leaves. 

Usually used as a means of camouflage, male katydids appear to use their leafy disguise to amplify mating calls and make themselves more attractive to the opposite sex. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and offer one of the first demonstrations of how leaf mimicry enhances a male katydids’ sexual signals. 

To shield themselves from predators, various species of katydids have evolved wings with structures that look like leaves. Panama’s leaf-masquerading katydids (Arota festae) will even change from green to hot pink in order to better mimic leaves. What’s been less clear to entomologists is whether or not these leaf-mimicking structures play a role in katydid mating. 

This new study looked at a species called Viadana brunneri from Barro Colorado Island, Panama. To attract mates, katydids create songs by rubbing together specialized structures on their wings. In many tropical species like V. brunneri, the portion that mimics leaves makes up the majority of their wing’s surface area.  

Most of the wing structure is devoted to helping male katydids look more like a leaf. Image: Christian Ziegler.

Previously, scientists believed physical adaptations for survival and for attracting mates can function in conflict with one another, particularly if they are physically connected. A male peacock’s flashy tail feathers may help it attract a female, but it also makes it easier for predators to find them. Male katydids, on the other hand, are able to use the acoustic properties of the structures that they use for defense to their reproductive advantage. They are a rare example of how an adaptation for self-defence and reproduction can work together without necessarily putting the animal in jeopardy. 

The team performed a series of bioacoustic, behavioral, and biophysical experiments, showing that these leafy structures on their wings make them more attractive to females, while also helping conceal them. After removing the leafy portions of a male V. brunneri’s wings, the pitch became higher and the volume of their songs also changed. The team then played these calls for females who preferred the lower pitch calls from males with their leafy wing sections still intact. 

While male katydids do all the singing, females indicate their interest by replying to the song with clicks. The insects produce short, sporadic and infrequent calls, possibly for only two seconds in a single night. They perform these calls in ultrasounds, which our ears can’t pick up. They also found that the leafy portions of the male katydid wing will vibrate to amplify their songs, making them more detectable to females. 

“Our study provides a rare example of natural and sexual selection acting in harmony, producing traits that simultaneously improve survival and mating success,” Dr. Benito Wainwright, a study co-author and evolutionary biologist at the University of St Andrews, said in a statement. “We are now extremely excited to start exploring how such an interesting interaction evolved in katydids.” 

The post Big wings and sweet songs: The mating lives of Panama’s katydids appeared first on Popular Science.

The wreck of an American submarine from World War II has been found off the coast of Matsua Island, Japan. The USS Herring (SS-233) currently rests over 300 feet down in the Pacific Ocean, where it is sitting upright and “maintains a high degree of integrity,” according to United States Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC). The discovery was announced exactly 82 years after the vessel sank, based on evidence collected from an international team of researchers. 

Herring’s final mission

The Herring was first launched from Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine on January 15, 1942, and officially commissioned on May 4, 1942. The vessel completed eight war patrols in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans during the war. Herring sank seven enemy ships, including four Japanese cargo ships during what would be the submarine’s final patrol. 

Herring was last seen by the crew of the USS Barb during the evening of May 31, 1944. The submarines met to determine who would patrol areas off the Kurile Islands, an archipelago east of Japan. Early on June 1, 1944, Barb’s crew recorded hearing the sound of weapons designed to attack a submarine from a ship or aircraft called depth charges exploding in the distance. 

Japanese historical records also confirm that Herring was struck in two direct hits during a counterattack by a shore battery. The strikes ultimately sank Herring and the vessel was presumed lost when Herring failed to report to Midway on July 13, 1944. The sinking killed all 83 crewmembers.

USS Herring Memorial statue at the Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama. Image: Ron Buskirk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Ron Buskirk A protected final resting place

In 2017, a joint expedition between Russian Geographic Society (RGS) and the Russian Military reported a submarine wreck in the area. Based on its location and appearance, the RGS reported that the wreckage was Herring. A subsequent joint expedition returned to the wreck in 2022 to document its status and honor the lost crew. The expedition team also placed a plaque on site. The data collected and shared by the RGS was analyzed by two U.S. volunteer researchers and one researcher in Japan. NHCC confirmed the wreckage on June 1, 2026–82 years to the day after Herring is believed to have sunk.

Importantly, the wreckage shows battle damage around the submarine’s conning tower. This tower is a raised platform from which an officer can conn (conduct or control) a vessel. This damage, along with evidence of grounding at the submarine’s bow, correlates with the historical record of the Herring’s sinking.

The wreckage is currently protected by U.S. law and under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Navy. The Navy allows some non-intrusive activities on sunken military craft, but any activity that may disturb the sunken vessel must be coordinated with NHHC.

“Most importantly, the wreck represents the final resting place of Sailors who gave their lives in defense of the nation and should be respected by all parties as a war grave,” the NHHC wrote in a press release.”

The post Lost WWII submarine discovered off the coast of Japan appeared first on Popular Science.

Alaska’s Arctic rivers have a big, orange problem. Previously clear rivers are turning a cloudy orange color due to iron particles, and it’s more than unsightly. The particles can suffocate fish and choke insects, threatening the food web and ecosystem as a whole. 

Scientists have long pointed to previously frozen soil beginning to thaw as the potential culprit behind the contamination of rivers in northern Alaska’s remote Brooks Range, and a study recently published in the Communications Earth & Environment proves it. The research also shows two distinct ways that this thawing soil is rusting the rivers and can help scientists predict where the damage is likely to spread next. 

“You’d think if any ecosystem could hide from the effects of warming and big human footprints, it’d be this one. But it’s not so,” Tim Lyons, a study co-author and biogeochemist at the University of California, Riverside, said in a statement. “There is no safe place.”

Researcher sampling rusty Alaskan river water. Image: Tim Lyons/UCR. From thawing permafrost to orange water

Permafrost is rock or soil that contains ice that has been frozen for two or more years. Alaska is warming two to three times faster than the global average, melting some of the permafrost that has been frozen for thousands of years. That thawing permafrost is already threatening the Tracy Arm Fjord, a popular destination for Alaskan cruises. 

As the ice-filled permafrost begins to thaw due to climate change, it can turn into mud that can’t support the weight of the soil or vegetation above it. This can threaten human-built infrastructure such as homes, pipes, and roads. It can also expose iron particles from rocks that turn rivers orange, a process called rusting. 

Rusting has severe ecological consequences. The fine iron particles can stay suspended in water for over 60 miles, smothering algae, disrupting insect populations, and clogging fish gills. These changes may already be affecting salmon in Alaska and Canada who rely on the gravel riverbeds for spawning and rely on algae as food during early life stages.

A top-down, fool’s gold problem

For this new study, the team looked at a wide regional view of the roughly 600-mile Brooks Range. They then zoomed in on a specific river system, followed by an even closer look at one creek. This top-down approach helped them to connect the bigger regional patterns to specific, on-the-ground processes.

“At middle, more heavily forested elevations, there isn’t much going on. But at the higher and lower elevations we could see distinctly different phenomena,” said Roman Dial, a study co-author math and biology professor emeritus at Alaska Pacific University.

At the higher elevations, the problem begins in the rocky ground containing pyrite, aka fool’s gold. Since the ground was frozen for many years, water and air didn’t affect the pyrite. Yet the rising temperatures have started to melt the ground, kicking off a process called acid rock drainage. The minerals and rocks are exposed to oxygen and water and degrade the water quality. 

“When pyrite meets water, it comes apart. It breaks down into iron and sulfur, creating sulfuric acid as well as sulfate and other toxic metals,” said Lyons. “When the iron-rich water mixes with more oxygen, the iron turns into rust-like particles that color the water and stain the bottom sediments orange.”

It’s an entirely different story at the lower elevations. The landscape is covered with wetlands that are changing shape and expanding downward as the permafrost melts. In these more soggy places, the soils are low in oxygen. So instead of breathing in oxygen, the microbes in the water (mostly bacteria) are taking in iron. 

“When we breathe, oxygen goes in and gets converted to the carbon dioxide that we exhale,” Dial said. “Similarly, microbes are consuming iron in the lowland soils and converting it into a water-soluble form that seeps into streams and results in rusting as it meets oxygenated surface water.”

Taken together, both acid rock drainage and microbes breathing in more iron help explain why orange waters are appearing across such large and remote regions across northern Alaska, closely tracking to areas where permafrost is thawing.

The direct link

The team also found a delayed effect that could help predict future contamination. During the summer, the active, top layer of soil thaws to its deepest point. It then refreezes before the winter. The iron released during one summer thaw can become trapped and then flushed into rivers the following year.

By studying long-term ground temperature data and stream chemistry, this lag can be used to anticipate increases in metal levels.

“That means we can use ground temperatures to help predict water quality in the future,” added study co-author and University of Alaska ecologist Paddy Sullivan. In 2019, Sullivan first noticed the dramatic river changes that looked “like sewage” during fieldwork in the region.

Since mines typically control the waters near them to minimize pollution, the team partnered with scientists at the Red Dog zinc mine in northwest Alaska. The scientists there have long-term temperature records from boreholes that are drilled deeply into the earth and from chemistry sampling in stream water. Linking the underground measurements with changes in the stream’s chemistry directly connected the thawing permafrost to the rusting rivers.

While this problem is difficult to contain and manage, predicting where the contamination may pop up next could help pinpoint and protect critical habitats. This forecasting is especially important for communities that depend on these waters and the fishing living there for food and cultural practices.

“There’s no fixing this once it starts,” Lyons said. “But we can give people downstream a heads up and work hard to protect the places that are still safe and less vulnerable to the rusting.”

The post The mystery of Alaska’s orange rivers is finally solved appeared first on Popular Science.

How do you determine how many months or years animal mothers nurse their babies? If you’re not in a rush and can observe this dynamic, you could supposedly stick around to see when the baby, mother, or both decide that they’re done. However, that could take years. A team of researchers investigating breastfeeding in orangutans recently opted for a different, perhaps surprising strategy—searching for particular proteins in poop. 

In a preliminary study published in the journal Communications Biology, researchers searched for milk‑specific proteins in the feces of wild Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) living in the Danum Valley Conservation Area, in the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. These proteins prove that he or she is continuing to drink breast milk.The practice of recognizing particular proteins in feces is called fecal proteomics and it can help scientists better understand what animals are consuming.

“Orangutans have a slow life history with one of the longest interbirth intervals and the lowest reported infant mortality rates among primates or even mammals,” the team wrote in the study. “Breastfeeding is a key factor in their life history because it possibly promotes offspring health and increases maternal interbirth intervals.”

The team gathered fecal samples for over two and a half years, and found milk‑specific proteins in all the 20 samples from orangutans less than six and a half years old. This indicates that the young great apes were continuing to breastfeed until they were at least that age. 

According to the team, these results are “consistent with the behavioral evidence as having one of the longest breastfeeding periods in mammals.”

What’s more, “milk intake was significantly correlated with higher levels of biological defense and probiotic bacterial proteins.”

In other words, the more milk a young orangutan drinks, the more probiotic intestinal bacteria it has and the sturdier its biological protections are. Such consistent and enduring breastfeeding probably helps the very high survival of orangutan babies and plays a role in their slow reproductive approach. 

Unfortunately, Bornean orangutans are critically endangered, and the paper highlights why their populations don’t rebound quickly after a decrease. Safeguarding what’s left of their rainforest habitats is crucial. 

The post Orangutan poop holds surprising clues about how long they breastfeed appeared first on Popular Science.

The opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) has a weird double life. The plant’s seeds give a tasty, nutty flavor to bagels, breads, and cakes in bakeries around the world. But the plant’s seed pods also give the class A drug heroin its numbing and euphoric effects. 

That’s because the seed pods exude a milky substance called latex, which is rich in natural chemicals called opiates, such as morphine. Dried-out poppy latex is called opium, and the chemicals it contains can be used as medical-grade painkillers or processed to make street drugs like heroin. 

This doesn’t mean that your next deli bagel is going to send you into a stupor, because processed poppy seeds are carefully washed of any residual latex. But the washing process isn’t so thorough as to remove all traces of opiates from your body. Here’s why anyone in a job that requires random drug tests should try their next bowl of porridge without adding any black little poppy seeds. 

Processing a poppy plant

The round structure that sits on top of a poppy plant’s stem is called a capsule. This is a pod that contains hundreds of tiny poppy seeds. The plant produces opiates, like morphine, codeine, and thebaine, within the capsule to help it grow. These are contained in the milky latex, which will drip from the pod if it’s broken or cut. 

A single poppy pod typically holds hundreds of tiny poppy seeds. Video: Poppy Seed Harvest!, @Freedom_Flare

During harvesting, poppies that have died and dried out are mechanically harvested, removing the above-ground portion of the plant. Crushing, sieving, or other cleaning techniques separate the seeds from the seed capsules. The seeds that later end up on our bagels and breads are washed seeds, meaning they are carefully cleaned after being separated from their seed capsules to remove any opiate-containing latex. 

This process means there isn’t any risk of getting high from washed poppy seeds. However, drug tests are incredibly sensitive, and these washed seeds may still trigger a positive result from trace chemicals. 

Urbah Viqar, a doctor at Central and Northwest London NHS Foundation Trust, says that if you eat “one to two teaspoons” of poppy seeds, then you could return a positive opiate result. Given that some poppy seed bagel recipes recommend sprinkling a teaspoon of seeds on a single bagel, these breakfast treats should be treated with caution if you might be tested for drugs. 

Importantly, opiates like morphine stay in your system for several days, so avoiding poppy seeds for a while before a drug test is a good idea, Viqar says. Some companies have developed low-opiate poppy seed blends to allow bagel enjoyers to get their fix without risks. 

But this isn’t the whole story. If you eat unwashed poppy seeds, the effects are radically different. 

Yes, you get high off unwashed poppy seeds

In 2023, Viqar heard reports that men were reporting to their family doctors complaining of constipation. These patients, mainly from the local Indian Punjabi community, weren’t blocked up by a lack of fiber. Instead, their symptoms were a consequence of their unwashed poppy seed addiction. 

Viqar explains that in some communities, unwashed poppy seeds have been a traditional remedy for generations. Without washing, the seeds retain the opiate-rich latex released during harvesting. As a result, consuming them can make you feel sleepy and relaxed. 

But opiates are, of course, highly addictive. Viqar and her colleague Noah Stanton, who is also a doctor at Central and Northwest London NHS Foundation Trust, wrote a review summarizing the cases of 16 men, nearly all from the Indian Punjabi community, who had become addicted to unwashed poppy seeds. 

“They start with a very small amount, maybe they’re just taking half a teaspoon,” explains Viqar. Many of the men would grind the seeds and consume them as a dry powder, or mixed with water, or brew them as tea. 

The effects of the unwashed seeds are milder than a powerful opioid like heroin, but that made the patients’ addiction more “insidious,” says Stanton. “It took place over a much more gradual time period,” he adds. The unwashed seeds produce a drowsy, sedative effect. 

But by the time Viqar and Stanton saw them, some of the men had seriously ramped up their poppy habit. Two men, who had each been consuming unwashed poppy seeds for over 15 years, were taking 20 tablespoons of seeds every single day. That dose would contain enough opiates to make someone without a strong tolerance overdose, said Viqar. 

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The risks of too many poppyseeds

An opiate overdose would likely slow breathing until the heart stopped. Viqar wasn’t able to point to any cases she was aware of where people had died from unwashed poppy seeds, but said that there was little research into what a safe limit might be. 

“You don’t know how much is a safe amount, how much is a lethal amount,” she explained. Long-term addiction could also impact a patient’s social life and relationships, said Stanton. Several of the men in the study worked with heavy machinery, which tends not to play well with opiate-related drowsiness. 

Both Viqar and Stanton said that better regulation was badly needed. Unwashed poppy seeds can be purchased in bulk in the United Kingdom and the United States at low prices. Awareness among clinicians would also help, they added. Drug screening questionnaires regularly ask about alcohol and drug consumption. A new question to add to the list, Viqar says, is “Have you ever used poppy seeds?”

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Can poppy seeds actually make you fail a drug test? appeared first on Popular Science.

Miami Beach, FL, USA, 2nd June 2026, CyberNewswire

Dinosaur enthusiasts with deep pockets will have their chance to buy one of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever discovered. Meet Gus, a 12.5-foot tall skeleton that took paleontologists three years to excavate. Auction house Sotheby’s values the specimen at $20–30 million, the highest estimate ever placed on a dinosaur.

Late cattle rancher Gary “Gus” Licking found Gus on his land in South Dakota. For years, Licking came across teeth and small bone fragments on his ranch, and realized more bones may be lurking beneath the soil. To find out, he recruited Thomas Heitkamp and his team from Theropoda Expeditions.

Licking suggested that the team start digging in a 6,500-acre parcel of land. And that’s exactly where Gus was found in 2021. Licking died only one year into the excavation, so he never got to see the complete specimen. The team named the T. rex “Gus” in his honor.

“This specimen took three years to excavate—with the team sometimes working for weeks straight without finding a thing,” Heitkamp said in a press release. “The site was a complex fossil bed and preserved many fossils of the flora and fauna that comprised the larger Cretaceous ecosystem. We documented each stage with quarry maps, inventories, and collection data. In the end, our diligence paid off and we were delighted to discover what turned out to be a huge and incredibly complete T. rex specimen.”

In addition to the three summers it took to excavate, the team also had three years of lab work. In the lab, they carefully extracted the fossil from the rock before the bones could be prepared, cleaned, and identified. 

The skeleton is made up of 183 fossil bones representing 82 percent of all of the dinosaur’s bones, including a well preserved skull, furcula (wishbone), and a completely represented pelvis. Its body is roughly 38-feet long and its skull alone is over four-feet long.

“It really does feel like tackling the world’s hardest puzzle, except we have to find all the pieces first,” said Heitkamp. “All those bones separated for 67 million years that we can now, almost magically, fit back together. There’s something deeply satisfying about that.”

Gus will be up for auction on July 14 during Sotheby’s Natural History auction. The fossil will also be on display to the public at Sotheby’s galleries in New York City beginning on July 1.

“For me the added bonus was knowing that Gus was just one of the many pieces of history hidden in the land that Gary and I loved to share,” added Licking’s wife, Dana. “It will be exciting to see how many others will get to enjoy this spectacular discovery.”

The first T. rex to be auctioned off was a specimen named Sue. Now on display at the Field Museum in Chicago, she was sold for over $8 million in October 1997. Ever since, dinosaur auctions like these have courted controversy. Some critics say that fossils kept in private collections are lost to science. They also believe it encourages finding complete or marketable fossils over scientific study, and could lead to incomplete research.

There’s also the question of the fees private landowners may receive, meaning that the person with the largest bank account may receive favorable access over scientists. Some countries including South Africa, Brazil, and Canada have gone as far as to place heavy restrictions on significant fossils wherever they are found.

The post This T. rex could be yours for $30 million appeared first on Popular Science.