Scientists have found a use for mosquitoes. Their proboscises have been turned into nozzles for 3D printers capable of printing lines thinner than a human hair. The "3D necro-printing" technology uses biodegradable material to create microscopic structures, such as scaffolds for cells.

So, while mosquitoes remain pests, their relatives are now working for science.

⚡️ - that's where these bloodsuckers belong

😡 - but I feel sorry for these little ones, they want to live too

#Science #3DPrinting #Biotechnology

Optical illusion: The image appears to show a single galaxy with a ring. In reality, these are two galaxies far apart. The light from the more distant one is bent by the gravity of the nearer one, forming a ring predicted by Einstein.

Image: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA

The best space photos of 2025 according to Reuters.

⚡️ - that's terrifyingly beautiful

Rats play Doom II no worse than you do

Hungarian programmer and neuroscientist Viktor Tóth taught rats to play the legendary shooter Doom II. His first steps involved creating a makeshift trackball for rodents, allowing them to move within the game. Sweetened water served as a reward for navigating corridors to the end or reaching specific locations.

In the latest version, the gaming system consists of 3D-printed parts. A curved AMOLED screen is installed, covering a 180-degree field of view, creating an immersive effect for the rats.

The main innovation is a special lever that rats can press with their paws to shoot in the game. After two weeks of training, the rats begin to distinguish virtual enemies, aim, and shoot them. They also learn to navigate carefully, avoiding obstacles and not bumping into walls, for which air currents are used as danger markers.

🤡 - Hah, always knew games were way too basic if even rats and monkeys can beat 'em

❤️ - Hmm, but these furry bros are pretty sharp, not gonna lie

The Internet Level: Light

Researchers at Tokyo Polytechnic University have achieved outdoor data transmission at speeds up to 3.48 Mbps using light. The core of this breakthrough is a new 8B13B line coding scheme, implemented on a programmable FPGA board and connected to a single-board Raspberry Pi computer.

Here’s what makes it special:

• Balanced signal – uses a return-to-zero code that maintains an equal number of 0s and 1s, preventing visible flicker and ensuring stable synchronization.

• Pulse-edge detection – the system relies on the leading edges of optical pulses, making it resistant to pulse width distortion.

• Works in daylight – maintains a stable connection at a distance of 3 meters even in bright sunlight exceeding 90,000 lux. The receiver uses multiple photodiodes and a narrowband optical filter to effectively suppress background light.

This approach is considered a promising alternative wireless technology — it doesn’t use radio frequencies and doesn’t congest the airwaves.

❤️ - Perfect for staying online if they ever decide to block the internet.

🤡 - Looks like a fun gadget for now, but will it ever go beyond a prototype into real industry use?

#TechNews #Innovation #Wireless #LiFi #TokyoTech #RaspberryPi

Fireproof Fabric Withstands 1500°C Welding Torch Flame

A Chinese scientist has developed a material that can withstand temperatures above 1500°C. In tests, a welding torch flame could not quickly burn through a sample or burn the researcher's protected hand.

Modern firefighting gear protects against second-degree burns for only about 18 seconds during a flashover. This new development could potentially extend that time to 30+ minutes.

Although the exact composition is not disclosed, experts suggest it may be based on aerogels—ultralight materials with exceptional thermal insulation. The main challenges now are to maintain breathability so firefighters don't overheat and ensure durability through repeated washing.

If these issues can be solved, the technology could revolutionize protection for extreme professions.

#Science #Technology #Safety #Innovation

On this day in 1942, legendary theoretical physicist, cosmologist, science communicator and author Stephen Hawking was born.

Doctors diagnosed him with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and gave him just a couple of years to live — yet, fortunately, he was able to continue his scientific work and lived to the age of 76. He even came close to fulfilling his dream of spaceflight, experiencing weightlessness despite his physical limitations.

Hawking proposed the theory of black hole radiation (Hawking radiation) and worked on the "theory of everything," striving to unite Einstein’s general relativity with quantum mechanics.

One of his books — A Brief History of Time — remained on The Sunday Times bestseller list for 237 weeks.

Extracting 98% of Gold from Old Phones in 20 Minutes

Scientists from China have developed a new method to extract gold from old devices in less than 20 minutes at room temperature.

The cost of this process is about one-third of current market prices for gold recovery. The method also achieves a gold leaching efficiency of over 98.2% and about 93.4% for palladium from old mobile phone processors and household appliance circuit boards.

Unlike traditional methods using toxic chemicals, the team developed a process based on a self-catalytic leaching mechanism. It uses an aqueous solution of potassium peroxymonosulfate and potassium chloride. Upon contact with gold or palladium, these metals themselves act as catalysts, triggering the production of highly active oxidants. These break the chemical bonds of the metal atoms, allowing them to dissolve. After leaching, the metals can be recovered to obtain pure gold.

Want to see what remains of a dead star? The Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed the expansion of Kepler's supernova remnant. Based on images taken between 2000 and 2025, astronomers have created an animation of the process.

The Kepler supernova remnant was once a white dwarf that exploded after exceeding its critical mass. In the video, the X-ray emission from the remnant is shown in blue and superimposed on optical images from the Pan-STARRS ground-based sky survey. The expansion is uneven — the lower part of the remnant expands fastest, at a speed of about 20.9 million kilometers per hour, while the leading edge of its upper part expands more slowly, at about 6.4 million kilometers per hour. The large difference in speed is due to the varying density of the interstellar medium.

The collection and interpretation of this data over decades has provided scientists with information about the environment surrounding the star and helped them understand how remnants change over time.

Scientists disprove 70-year-old law of physics

Researchers at Cornell University have discovered that at extremely high deformation rates, reducing the grain size of metal — a classic method of strengthening — has the opposite effect: the material becomes softer. This contradicts Hall-Petch's law, according to which metal is stronger when its internal crystal structure is finer.

A laser micro-projectile impact testing setup was used for the experiments. Microparticles were accelerated to speeds exceeding 1,225 km/h and struck copper samples with different grain sizes. It turned out that larger grains provide greater hardness and better dissipate the impact energy.

At normal speeds, strength is created by the blocking of dislocations by grain boundaries. At ultra-high speeds, phonon braking of dislocations comes into play — their interaction with atomic vibrations, which leads to a different balance of properties.

The discovery will be useful for creating new protective materials.

#physics #discovery #disprove

A new quantum state has been discovered in which electrons defy the laws of physics

Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology studied a material composed of cerium, ruthenium, and tin (CeRu₄Sn₆) at temperatures below one millionth of a kelvin. Under these conditions, matter enters a state of quantum fluctuations, where electrons cease to behave as separate particles. Despite this, the researchers observed the emergence of an anomalous Hall effect — the deflection of charge carriers without any external magnetic field. This is a clear sign of a topological state.

The signal was strongest at the point of maximum quantum fluctuations and disappeared when suppressed by pressure or a magnetic field. The discovery shows that topological states, which are important for quantum technologies and electronics, can arise even when the description of the system by individual particles becomes invalid. This work paves the way for the search for new materials among many known quantum-critical compounds.

#quantum_mechanics #qm #discovery

A wormhole is no longer a tunnel between distant points in space

In a new study, scientists revisited the 1935 Einstein-Rosen bridge concept and concluded that it is no longer a tunnel in space, but a connection between opposite time vectors.

The work offers a new perspective on reconciling gravity with quantum mechanics. According to it, the bridge connects two states: one where time flows forward and a mirror image where it flows backward. This allows us to resolve the information paradox of black holes — information does not disappear without a trace but is preserved in the time-reversed component.

As a result, the Big Bang is reinterpreted. It may not have been the beginning, but rather a quantum "rebound" during the transition from a contracting universe to an expanding one, each with its own arrow of time. In this model, our universe could have originated inside a black hole from the previous cosmos. Hypothetical relics from that period, such as primordial black holes, may partially explain the nature of dark matter.

Carbon tubes, whose existence was thought to be possible only in laboratory conditions, have been found on the far side of the Moon.

In soil samples brought back from the far side of the Moon as part of China's Chang'e-6 mission in 2024, scientists discovered single-walled carbon nanotubes — strong, conductive structures that are important for modern electronics. Previously, it was thought that such nanotubes could not be created without human intervention.

Their formation on the Moon was the result of extreme conditions: micrometeorite impacts, volcanic activity, and solar wind evaporated carbon, while iron particles in the soil catalyzed the assembly of atoms into nanotubes during rapid cooling.

This discovery changes our understanding of the chemical activity of the moon and opens up prospects for the use of local resources. Future colonists may be able to produce components for sensors and batteries directly on the moon, without having to bring everything from Earth. In addition, the natural synthesis process may suggest new, cheaper methods for producing nanotubes on our planet.

Smart pants

Scientists from a research group at Fudan University in Shanghai have created flexible fiber chips as thin as a strand of hair by weaving complete electronic circuits into the thread.

Traditional microchips rely on rigid substrates. The new approach uses flexible substrates capable of accommodating complete electronic circuits. By rolling these substrates into thread-like fibers, fiber integrated circuits (FICs) are formed. The density of transistors in the fiber reaches 100,000 per centimeter. A meter-long thread can carry millions of transistors, approaching the power of classic processors. Each thread integrates resistors, capacitors, diodes, and transistors with high-precision connections. The system processes digital and analog signals and also supports neural computing for image recognition.

The chips have undergone extreme testing: 10,000 bends, 30% stretching, more than 100 washes, temperatures up to 100°C, and the pressure of the wheels of a 15.6-ton truck.

Scientists have biohacked vision: eye cells have learned to rejuvenate through genes

Life Biosciences is beginning the first clinical trials of its innovative ER-100 gene therapy. Unlike existing methods, which only slow down the progression of disease, this technology aims to restore lost vision by "resetting" the age of retinal neurons.

The method is based on a partial epigenetic reprogramming platform. Using three Yamanaka transcription factors (OSK cocktail), the drug acts on the biochemical markers of cells without changing the DNA itself. This allows the cellular aging clock to be literally rewound. The therapy is aimed at treating glaucoma and anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, conditions in which the ganglion cells of the retina, which connect the eye to the brain, die.

Last week, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved human trials. Previous preclinical studies in animals, including primates, have shown that injections of the drug restore cell structure and improve visual function. If the trials are successful, medicine will gain a way not only to alleviate symptoms, but to reverse the biological aging of tissues.