Science news this week: James Webb telescope finds a never-before-seen substance, China’s ‘Great Green Wall’ grows faster than natural trees, and a Medici murder mystery is solved
The space telescope detected a characteristic absorption line in the spectra of these worlds’ atmospheres, revealing the distinctive trace of a unique and unknown molecule. It’s not clear what the molecule might be, and the mystery is made even more compelling by the fact that the atmospheres of Pluto and Titan are very different.
China’s ‘Great Green Wall’ grows faster than natural forests
The San Jacinto and southern San Andreas faults have reached their highest levels of tectonic stress in 1,000 years.
(Image credit: Pedro Pardo via Getty Images)
China is no stranger to engineering projects designed to improve our environment; We recently covered the Asian powerhouse’s efforts to tame nature Creation of atmospheric rivers, the world’s largest dam and water transfer. But this is hardly China’s only effort towards carving out its natural environment, with the country having planted more than 66 billion trees along its northern borders to halt the progress of the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts.
Now, new research has revealed a surprising information about the trees in this “Great Green Wall”: They are growing significantly faster than in natural forests. Exactly why this remains a mystery, but, as Live Science contributor brian owens Turns out, this may be due to trees’ rapid response to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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AI is getting better at solving captchas. Does this mean that CAPTCHAs are obsolete?
(Image credit: KosminXP Kosmin via Getty Images)
Are you a robot? This used to be a question that only humans could answer – by clicking on strings of traffic lights or garbled and grainy characters, or a fully automated public Turing test (CAPTCHA) to tell computers and humans apart. But what will happen now that autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents can pass some of these tests without being detected? Have they made captcha obsolete?
Researchers analyzed the remains of brothers Giovanni and Francesco de Medici for evidence of malaria.
(Image credit: Courtesy of University of Pisa)
The Medici family ruled Renaissance Tuscany with an iron fist, pursuing their cruel ambitions by means so secret that the name of their most famous advisor, Niccolo Machiavelli, became synonymous with fraud.
So, when two brothers from a notorious family died under mysterious circumstances, it was believed for 500 years that they were murdered, possibly by arsenic poisoning. Now, science has revealed the real culprit behind the medieval cold case, and it’s not what we expected.
Japan has devised a creative strategy to curb antibiotic resistance. Should America also follow suit?
(Image credits: Nicoletta Lenise (left and right panels); Getty Images (center panel); edited by Live Science)
Antibiotic resistance is a growing threat in the US, with more than 2.8 million Americans developing antimicrobial-resistant infections each year. Solutions to this worrying trend could be very complex – such as moving agricultural systems away from excessive reliance on antibiotics, or stopping the rapid spread of superbugs through international travel.
But stopping doctors from overprescribing antibiotics is one of the easiest strategies in the fight against this “silent” pandemic.” And it turns out that Japan has already fought it with some success, reducing antibiotic overuse with an innovative new policy. To investigate further and ask what notes the US should take, Live Science’s health editor Nicoletta Lanez visited japan and reported on his investigation.
something for the weekend
If you’re looking for things to keep yourself busy over the weekend, here’s a crossword, an interview and a quiz, as well as our best expert opinion pieces we’ve published this week.
The ‘Bow and Arrow’ galaxy shows its highly unusual shape in radio wavelengths.
(Image credit: Hota, Dabhade and Ghosh et al and RAD@Home Collaborative)
If you ask me, it looks like a rusty anchor or a blurry deep sea fish. But whichever way you look at it, the newly discovered “Bow and Arrow” galaxy – or, more formally, the Rad-Bow-and-Arrow Radio Galaxy (RAD-Barg) – is an oddball compared to any other record.
The galaxy’s unique structure is likely the result of gravity turning RAD-BAARG into a funhouse mirror version of its former form as it falls into a nearby galaxy cluster. A shock front from this dip engulfs the galaxy as it moves through the hot gas.
