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Category: evolution

Discovery of young eclipsing binary system offers insight into early stellar evolution

An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new pre-main-sequence eclipsing binary system. The newfound binary, designated MML 48, consists of two young low-mass stars. The finding will be published in the upcoming issue of the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.

Stellar systems showing regular light variations due to one of the stars passing directly in front of its companion are known as eclipsing binaries (EBs). In these systems, the orbit plane of the two stars lies so nearly in the line of sight of the observer that the components undergo mutual eclipses. EBs can provide direct accurate measurement of the mass, radius and effective temperature of stars; therefore, they are essential for testing and calibrating theoretical stellar-evolution models.

Astronomers are especially interested in finding new young EBs. This is due to the fact that such binaries constrain pre-main-sequence (PMS) stellar evolution models in the regime when the temperatures, luminosities, and radii of stars are changing rapidly as they settle onto the main sequence (MS).

How evolution explains autism rates in humans

A paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution finds that the relatively high rate of autism-spectrum disorders in humans is likely due to how humans evolved in the past. The paper is titled “A general principle of neuronal evolution reveals a human accelerated neuron type potentially underlying the high prevalence of autism in humans.”

Astronomers capture breathtaking first look at a planet being born

WISPIT2b, a gas giant forming around a young Sun-like star, has been directly imaged for the first time inside a spectacular multiringed disk. Still glowing and actively accreting gas, the planet offers a unique opportunity to study planetary birth and evolution.

An international team of astronomers, co-led by researchers at University of Galway, has made the unexpected discovery of a new planet.

Detected at an early stage of formation around a young analog of our own Sun, the planet is estimated to be about 5 million years-old and most likely a gas giant of similar size to Jupiter.

Less is more: Gene loss drives adaptive evolution of a pandemic bacterium

A study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution reveals a surprising evolutionary insight: sometimes, losing genes rather than gaining them can help bacterial pathogens survive and thrive.

The study was conducted by a group of scientists and coordinated by Jaime Martínez Urtaza, from the Department of Genetics and Microbiology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB); Yang Chao and Falush Daniel, from the Shanghai Institute of Immunity and Infection, Chinese Academy of Science; and Wang Hui, from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

When we think of evolution, we often imagine organisms changing or gaining to adapt, such as growing wings, developing resistance, or evolving new behaviors. Across the tree of life, both spontaneous mutations and gene acquisition are classic tools of adaptation. However, in this study, researchers went down a lesser known and scarcely explored evolutionary path, the one of gene loss.

Revolutionary Model Reveals How Real Universe Structure Affects Cosmic Evolution

For nearly a century, cosmologists have relied on a simplified model of the universe that treats matter as uniform particles that don’t interact with each other. While this approach helped scientists understand the Big Bang and the expansion of space, it ignores a fundamental reality, that our universe is anything but uniform. Stars cluster into galaxies, matter collapses into black holes, and vast empty voids stretch across space, all constantly interacting through gravity and other forces.

How the distinctive folds in the brain cortex, seen in humans, whales, other animals, form

One of the defining features of humans is our brain’s remarkable capacity for language, planning, memory, creativity, and more. These abilities stem not just from our large brain size, but also from the folded structure of the brain’s outer layer, the cerebral cortex.

A new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, offers insight into how these wrinkles form, pointing to a range of contributing factors—including the number of early-stage , how they migrate during development, and the specific types of cells involved.

These findings may help guide future research into brain development, evolution, and health.

Asteroid Bennu Is A “Frankenstein’s Monster” Of Material From The Inner Solar System, Outer, And Beyond

Ryugu is another asteroid for which we have a sample, collected by the Hayabusa-2 mission. Despite their differences, Ryugu and Bennu also share similarities, and Ryugu, too, had plenty of organic materials, simply not as much of them.

Bennu’s parent body seems to have formed from a really different set of materials from across the Solar System, and it might have formed further away from the Sun, too.

“We’re looking at unique snapshot of the outer solar system at the birth of our Sun,” said Professor Sara Russell, planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum, and co-author on the paper. “Some of these grains have survived billions of years of solar system evolution almost untouched and can tell us more about the environment in which planets were born.”

A new perspective on how cosmological correlations change based on kinematic parameters

To study the origin and evolution of the universe, physicists rely on theories that describe the statistical relationships between different events or fields in spacetime, broadly referred to as cosmological correlations. Kinematic parameters are essentially the data that specify a cosmological correlation—the positions of particles, or the wavenumbers of cosmological fluctuations.

Changes in cosmological correlations influenced by variations in parameters can be described using so-called differential equations. These are a type of mathematical equation that connect a function (i.e., a relationship between an input and an output) to its rate of change. In physics, these equations are used extensively as they are well-suited for capturing the universe’s highly dynamic nature.

Researchers at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, the Leung Center for Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics in Taipei, Caltech’s Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, the University of Chicago, and the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa recently introduced a new perspective to approach equations describing how cosmological correlations are affected by smooth changes in kinematic parameters.

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