Lifeboat Foundation

Death might seem like a pure loss, the disappearance of what makes a living thing distinct from everything else on our planet. But zoom in closer, to the cellular level, and it takes on a different, more nuanced meaning. There is a challenge in simply defining what makes an individual cell alive or dead. Scientists today are working to understand the various ways and reasons that cells disappear, and what these processes mean to biological systems. In this episode, cellular biologist Shai Shaham talks to Steven Strogatz about the different forms of cell death, their roles in evolution and disease, and why the right kinds and patterns of cell death are essential to our development and well-being.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta.

“Kepler-51e has an orbit slightly larger than Venus and is just inside the star’s habitable zone, so a lot more could be going on beyond that distance if we take the time to look,” said Dr. Jessica Libby-Roberts.

How many exoplanets are in the cosmos and what can they tell us about planetary formation and evolution? This is what a recent study published in The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as an international team of more than 50 researchers announced the discovery of Kepler-51e, which is the fourth planet residing in the Kepler-51 system. This discovery holds the potential to expand our knowledge of exoplanets, specifically regarding their formation and evolution, as Kepler-51e challenges previous notions about low-density exoplanets, also called “puff planets” or “Super-Puffs”

“Super puff planets are very unusual in that they have very low mass and low density,” said Dr. Jessica Libby-Roberts, who is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University and second author of the study. “The three previously known planets that orbit the star, Kepler-51, are about the size of Saturn but only a few times the mass of Earth, resulting in a density like cotton candy.”

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Has human evolution come to a standstill? Advances in technology and medicine have radically changed the way we live, but could they be changing the course of our genetic future? The surprising truth behind how modern progress may be changing our biology — and what it means for our survival.

Thus, when one looks back in time, say by looking at light from a distant galaxy that has traveled billions of years to reach us, this is akin to “zooming out” on the hologram and making its details fuzzier in the process. This zooming out can continue until all the details of the hologram disappear altogether, which in the model of the universe suggested by Hawking and Hertog, would be the origin of time at the Big Bang.

“The crux of our hypothesis is that when you go back in time, to this earliest, violent, unimaginably complicated phase of the universe, in that phase you find a deeper level of evolution, a level in which even the laws of physics co-evolve with the universe that is taking shape,” Hertog said. “And the consequence is that if you push everything even further backward, into the Big Bang, so to speak, even the laws of physics disappear.”

A small group of ancient humans discovered in South Asia has the potential to change evolution as most people know it.

A new study by the University of Reading on human brain evolution has found that modern humans, Neanderthals, and other recent relatives evolved larger brains much more rapidly than earlier species. This challenges previous ideas, suggesting that brain size increased gradually within each ancient human species, rather than through sudden leaps between species.

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New research identifies ctenophores as the first animals to diverge, reshaping our understanding of evolution and key biological traits.

Researchers have found an ancient protein fold that might explain how life’s basic building blocks became the complex systems we see today.

This long-lost structure could help solve mysteries about early life and evolution.

Discovery of a lost protein fold.

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This video explores fascinating engineering solutions hiding in plain sight — ingenious designs that solve complex problems through elegant simplicity. From shoes that expand when stretched to windshields with hidden patterns, discover how everyday objects incorporate remarkable engineering innovations.

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