• 4 months ago
Did you catch the latest mind-blowing discoveries of 2023? One study revealed that octopuses might be smarter than we thought and even experience nightmares – how cool is that? Biologists also discovered that stressed plants emit ultrasonic clicks, which could revolutionize automated crop watering. On the cosmic front, new research suggests the universe might be older than we believed, while the James Webb Space Telescope found galaxies forming much earlier than expected. Plus, did you know aye-ayes use their long middle fingers to pick their noses and prehistoric Europe had turtles the size of rhinos? Finally, scientists created an AI to detect alien life and found evidence that gravitational waves warp space and time! Credit:
Big fossil turtle: Mike Beauregard - https://flic.kr/p/7amwhj, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Big_fossil_turtle.jpg
KimCureAll / Reddit
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Transcript
00:00Meet Costello. He's a Brazilian reef octopus, but Costello isn't a regular octopus. While watching him,
00:07scientists began to suspect that he might be experiencing nightmares. When he was sleeping,
00:12he was changing colors, making some wild movements, expelling water, and even releasing ink.
00:18They decided to study Costello for a while. His behavior during sleep resembled stress and fear.
00:25The study showed that he might see vivid dreams, which are, at times, spooky.
00:30Well, it's just one octopus. These cute underwater creatures are known for their intelligence and sometimes human-like behavior.
00:38So it's entirely possible that they see dreams just like we do. In Costello's case,
00:44he might be haunted by memories of tough times off the coast of the Florida Keys. Poor Costello has a rough past.
00:51He lost a tentacle to a predator before captivity, so maybe that's what he sees in his dreams.
00:57If proven true, this discovery could reshape how we perceive intelligence and awareness in both animals and humans.
01:06Well, it turns out plants can talk. Well, kind of.
01:11Scientists found out that plants actually make ultrasonic clicks when they're stressed.
01:16Imagine tomatoes and tobacco plants in a jam.
01:18They're making sounds like popping bubble wrap, but way too high for us to hear. These are called
01:24ultrasonic signals, and they might be their way of indicating stress.
01:29That would mean that plants can't communicate with each other, and stressed plants prefer to be drama queens and let
01:35everybody know about their troubles. They make around 30 to 50 pops and clicks per hour.
01:40Calm and healthy plants don't do nearly as much.
01:44And not only do plants talk, but even have their own language.
01:49They make different sounds depending on whether the plant is experiencing thirst or is bothered by a snipped stem or something else.
01:58Moreover, some of them are so dramatic that they start ringing alarms even before they show signs of dehydration,
02:04when they know they're getting close to it.
02:07Scientists aren't sure why they do that, though.
02:10They believe that it might involve cavitation, a term that means air bubbles dancing in the plant's plumbing.
02:16Plants that sing these symphonies include corn, wheat, grapes, and even cacti.
02:21That is quite a big discovery in agriculture.
02:25We could use it to check if our crops are thirsty and stuff like that.
02:29So now we'll be eavesdropping on plants and deciphering their secret language.
02:34Okay, time for some universal news.
02:36Recent studies are shaking up what we thought we knew about the universe's age.
02:40Our findings during the last decades showed that the universe must be around 13.7 billion years old.
02:47However, a new study shows that it might be almost twice as old, up to 26.7 billion years.
02:54Keep in mind that it's not proven, so for now, the official number stays the same.
03:00Scientists were using the time since the Big Bang and studying ancient stars to measure the universe's age.
03:06But some stars were playing hard to get, looking older than the universe itself.
03:11For example, the ancient star Methuselah, which is estimated to be around 14 billion years old,
03:17which would be older than our universe.
03:19Also, the James Webb Space Telescope caught galaxies looking super mature just a few hundred million years ago.
03:27All this poses some hard puzzles for astronomers.
03:31But this new hypothesis combines the expanding universe theory with something called the tired light theory.
03:38It suggests that light loses energy as it zips across cosmic distances.
03:43Combine this with the expanding universe theory, and bam!
03:47As the universe expands, the light loses energy,
03:51As the universe expands, the light loses energy,
03:54so we simply can't see all the super ancient stars that are very far away from us.
03:59Which is why we could make a mistake in calculating our universe's age.
04:04The new model also pushes back when galaxies started forming.
04:08It suggests that those early galaxies spotted by the Webb Telescope took way longer to form than we originally thought.
04:15This study is a serious shake-up in the scientific community.
04:18If we made such a huge mistake in calculations, we'd have to rethink the very fundamental astrophysics principles.
04:25That would be a giant leap, and we'd have to make a huge makeover of almost everything.
04:31Which is why we need to be very cautious about it.
04:34So, while scientists test this new theory, we just have to wait for the results.
04:39Now these aren't the only space news.
04:42The new AI technology is already being actively used for scientific research.
04:47Each time, AI is helping us to look for signs of extraterrestrial life.
04:52Researchers in SETI created machine learning algorithms that would help us sift through the cosmic noise faster and more efficiently.
05:00When you point a radio telescope at the stars, it's like turning into a celestial radio station that's full of different signals.
05:07We catch everything from pulsars to radio galaxies and earthly interference.
05:13Obviously, it would be pretty hard to identify a potential signal from extraterrestrials in all this mess.
05:20For over 60 years, scientists had to do all this manually.
05:24It was a daunting task to scan the skies and explore countless stars and radio frequencies.
05:29But now, AI came to help.
05:32The algorithms are trained to recognize and distinguish known interference patterns,
05:36like those from mobile phones and electronic devices, amidst the cosmic data.
05:41They spot anything deviating from known patterns, the potential needle in the haystack.
05:47And we've already had some breakthroughs here.
05:50The astronomers caught 8 signals that didn't fit known patterns.
05:54While not confirmed as extraterrestrial life, they show that there's a great potential for future research.
06:02Going back to animals, this time we're visiting prehistoric Earth.
06:06Imagine turtles so massive they make today's turtles look like tiny toys.
06:11Recently, scientists stumbled upon the fossilized remains of one of these giants.
06:15It's a sea-dwelling titan that cruised the European waters about 80 to 70 million years ago.
06:21The discovery was accidental.
06:23A hiker in northern Spain stumbled upon fragments of this creature near the Pyrenees Mountains.
06:29This turtle was roughly the size of a rhino, around 30 feet in length.
06:33Just to give you an idea, this creature would be about the size of an average car.
06:39It shows that extreme sizes were more common before an extinction event.
06:43The turtles we know now, of smaller, still substantial sizes, dominated afterward.
06:49But the ancient oceans were filled with giant turtles munching on mollusks and jellyfish.
06:55This discovery also challenges the idea that gigantic turtles were exclusive to North America.
07:01The existence of this turtle proves that these colossal reptiles were hanging out in European waters too.
07:07So this might be just the tip of an iceberg.
07:09And you'll want to steer around that one too.
07:14And finally, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has made a great discovery.
07:19It detected a crucial carbon compound in space.
07:22It's called methylcation.
07:24And this tiny molecule, even if it might seem insignificant,
07:28could help us unlock the secrets of interstellar organic chemistry.
07:32Carbon is incredibly important.
07:35Carbon molecules are building blocks that construct everything from stars to planets to, well, us.
07:42It's the key ingredient for life.
07:44And scientists are eager to understand how it shaped our existence on Earth,
07:48and if it could do the same elsewhere in the universe.
07:52And methylcation plays a very important role in the creation of complex carbon-based molecules.
07:59That's why it's very cool that we discovered methylcation, even if it's very far away.
08:05NASA scientists found it in a young star system.
08:08This system is chilling about 1,350 light-years away from us, in the Orion Nebula.
08:14The star in this system, which is smaller and a bit weaker than our Sun,
08:18is bombarded by intense ultraviolet light from nearby hot young massive stars.
08:24You'd think such strong UV radiation would destroy complex organic molecules.
08:30But the research team believes that it might actually kick-start the formation of these carbon compounds.
08:37Maybe stronger stars and their insane radiation levels actually work as energy sources for life.
08:43They set off a chemical chain reaction, which results in complex carbon stuff like plants and animals.
08:49Seems like we found yet another puzzle piece.
08:57That's it for today.
08:58So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:03Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

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