Light behaves differently underwater. It shifts with depth, bends through murky currents, and separates into distinct wavelengths that change from surface to seafloor. For fish, those subtle differences are not just background noise. They are cues.
A slender reptile slips beneath damp leaf litter in Taiwan’s mountain forests, rarely seen and often mistaken for a snake. For more than a century, scientists have argued over what, exactly, it is.
A new study from researchers at the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute argues that the universe’s earliest growth spurt may not need the extra theoretical add-ons that many cosmologists have relied on for decades. Instead, the team says that rapid early expansion, known as inflation, could emerge from a more complete version of gravity itself.
Working with light particles called photons, the researchers developed a way to sift out meaningful quantum signals even when they are buried under heavy optical noise. Their results, published in Science Advances, point to a simpler, more energy-efficient route for preserving quantum information in messy, real-world conditions.
A jawbone discovered in Egypt is changing the way scientists think about the origins of the ape family tree. The specimen, which is thought to be about 17 or 18 million years old, was found in the Wadi Moghra region of northern Egypt. According to the researchers who worked on it, it could help fill a long-standing gap in the understanding of the evolution of modern-day apes.