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Does the Universe Contain Negative-Mass Particles?

The mainstream of cosmology asserts that 84% of the matter in the Universe is invisible, labeled as “dark matter”. The total matter which accounts for attractive gravity amounts to 32% of the cosmic mass-energy budget, while the remaining 68% — in the form of “dark energy”- induces repulsive gravity. The ordinary matter that we are made of, makes only 5% of the cosmic budget. We are made of rare materials in the cosmic context!

Since the dark matter and dark energy components are invisible, we had not observed them directly but only inferred them indirectly through their gravitational influence. This is all fine as long as gravity is the curvature of spacetime, as formulated by Albert Einstein in 1916. Despite the overwhelming consensus of the mainstream, the nature of dark matter and dark energy remains unknown following a century of unsuccessful searches. Is it possible that these constituents are fictitious “ghosts” that do not actually exist, but were imagined because Einstein’s equations fail to describe gravity correctly on cosmic scales?

I spent the day today brainstorming through this possibility along the following lines.

Huge Psilocybin Dose Has Incredible Effect on Elderly Dementia Patient

Dementia is a degenerative disease that no known drug can completely stop or reverse, despite decades of tests.

Now, a historically vilified psychedelic is emerging as a possible new avenue for controlling Alzheimer’s symptoms.

Neuroscientists around the world are starting to investigate if psilocybin – the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms – can help protect the aging brain.

Eroding a virtue: AI trains people to expect instant answers — and that’s bad news for patience

Patience is a virtue that researchers have linked to many parts of well-being. But it’s also something that needs a bit of practice and training – and can be undermined by instant, easy gratification.

Cosmic acceleration holds up as new analysis rebuts slowdown claim

Our universe’s expansion is still accelerating despite recent claims suggesting otherwise, an international team of astrophysicists says.

They refuted a study published last year claiming the growth of the universe is slowing and insist there is no flaw in the widely accepted theory that a mysterious force known as dark energy is driving the expanding cosmos.

The researchers, who include two Nobel laureates and represent institutions worldwide, say the debate that followed last November’s revelations was the result of a scientific misunderstanding rather than a cosmic grenade threatening to blow apart everything we know about the universe.

Silver nanoparticles pave the way for precise DNA cutting and joining

DNA is composed of long chains that act as the blueprint for living organisms. In genetic engineering, scientists cut DNA at specific sites and join the resulting fragments to other DNA sequences, enabling applications such as advanced crop breeding, treatment of genetic diseases, and the generation of animal models for drug discovery.

Assembling short DNA fragments requires overhanging sequences, known as sticky ends, to facilitate efficient binding. However, generating sticky ends requires precise cutting at targeted sites, which remains challenging with current technologies.

A Japanese research group has developed a silver nanoparticle-based technology to precisely cut and join DNA at targeted sites, achieving two to five times higher DNA assembly efficiency than conventional restriction enzyme methods. These findings were published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

Annual global migration has nearly tripled since 2000, reshaping where and how people move

Global migration has risen sharply from approximately 13 million people per year in 2000 to around 35 million people per year in 2023. This is according to a new dataset on human migration published in Nature by researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), IIASA and the University of Hong Kong.

This rise in migration outpaces global population growth, showing a true per capita increase in human mobility. The trend is contrary to previous research efforts to quantify global migration flows.

Using deep learning, the researchers built the first dataset of migration flows between all countries for the period 1990–2023, offering a far more detailed picture of global movement than traditional data, which is highly fragmented.

Russian satellites linked to mysterious GPS disruptions across several countries

Since 2019, GPS signals across Europe, Greenland and Canada have experienced a huge spike in sudden, widespread signal blackouts. These have resulted in disruptions and degraded performance in navigation systems that airplanes and ships rely on to travel safely.

Some causes are known, such as military jamming on the ground, but others have been a total mystery. A new paper published on the arXiv preprint server points an accusatory finger at Russia, claiming that a constellation of Russian satellites is likely responsible for many of these interference events, which have been blasting out waves of radio static from space.

The study focuses on how these events affected the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) that GPS relies on. The researchers studied 75 separate days on which at least one major interference event occurred.

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