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From Simons Science News (find original story here). Alice and Bob, beloved characters of various thought experiments in quantum mechanics, are at a crossroads. The adventurous, rather reckless Alice jumps into a very large black hole, leaving a presumably forlorn Bob outside the event horizon — a black hole’s point of no return, beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape. Conventionally, physicists have assumed that if the black hole is large enough, Alice won’t notice anything unusual as she crosses the horizon....

NEW YORK CITY—More than 100 countries have signed on to the Copenhagen Accord—the nonbinding agreement to combat climate change hastily agreed to this past December at a summit of world leaders. As signatories, the countries agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions to keep global average temperatures from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius. The countries that have signed up to date represent more than 80 percent of the global emissions of such heat-trapping gases....

Health-related headlines often cite coffee as either a caffeinated curse or cure-all, with lines such as ‘x cups of coffee a day could lower or raise your risk of disease y’. But a new study into the caffeine and caffeoylquinic acid (CQA) content of various European coffees has again shown the huge variety in what ‘a cup of coffee’ means chemically, and how easy it can be for pregnant women to exceed the recommended 200mg of caffeine a day....

For tens of millions of years—a mere sliver of astronomical time—the night sky above Earth may have been a bit more populous than it is today. For that brief period, our planet may have had not one but two moons, which soon collided and merged into our familiar lunar companion. No one would have been around to see the second moon—the lunar merger would have occurred nearly 4.5 billion years ago, shortly after Earth had formed....

Americans have long been proud of our federalism, the way that we divide governmental power between the states and national government. As former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy famously explained, the framers of the U.S. Constitution “split the atom of sovereignty” creating “two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other.” In theory, this political invention serves to preserve liberty while bringing the government closer to the people....

Forming a grammatically correct sentence may seem to require advanced cognitive skills, but it turns out that our creative language capacity might rely on a less sophisticated system than is commonly thought. A recent study suggests that our ability to construct sentences may arise from procedural memory—the same simple memory system that lets our dogs learn to sit on command. Scientists distinguish between procedural memory, which is relevant for learning skills such as how to swim, and declarative memory, which stores knowledge, including facts and memories of events, such as one’s birthday, says Victor S....

The Physician John P. A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, as told to Brooke Borel. Credit: Bud Cook The answer to questions about human life isn’t a certain thing, like measuring how a stone drops to the ground in exactly so many seconds. If it were, it probably would not be life. It would be a stone. Within biomedicine, it’s tricky finding out if an effect is real—there are different standards across different fields....

Theoretical physics has been in crisis mode ever since 1974, when Stephen Hawking argued that black holes destroy information. Hawking showed that a black hole can evaporate, gradually transforming itself and anything it consumes into a featureless cloud of radiation. During the process, information about what fell into the black hole is apparently lost, violating a sacred principle of physics. This has been an open problem for more than 45 years, but the pieces started falling into place in 2019 through research that I was involved in....

If we could somehow make our own cells do our bidding, they might manufacture insulin, attack tumors and do other helpful things. But hijacking a cell is not easy. Current methods entail penetrating the cell walls with a virus, which tends to inflict permanent damage. In 2009 researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology solved this problem, by accident. The researchers were playing around with a method of implanting cells with large molecules and nanomaterials using a microscopic water gun....

“The ancient Hawaiians were astronomers,” wrote Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s last reigning monarch, in 1897. Kilo hk, or “star watchers,” were among the most esteemed members of Hawaiian society. Sadly, all is not well with astronomy in Hawaii today. Protests have erupted over construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), a giant observatory that promises to revolutionize humanity’s view of the cosmos. At issue is the TMT’s planned location on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano revered by some Hawaiians as the piko, or “umbilical cord,” that connects the Hawaiian Islands to the heavens....

ATLANTA—Scientists and public health authorities are expressing alarm about an extraordinary surge in bird flu infections among humans. The H7N9 bird flu virus, which has sickened and killed several hundred people in China for the past four winters, had seemed over the past couple of years to be diminishing as a threat. But a resurgent wave of activity this winter has produced more than a third of all infections recorded since the first human case was hospitalized in February 2013....

By Helen Shen of Nature magazine Human sperm have been caught twirling in an elaborate dance. A new three-dimensional imaging technique has revealed spiraling movements that had previously only been inferred from two-dimensional data. The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes the first large-scale, high-resolution recordings of human sperm in three dimensions, tracking more than 1,500 cells over several hours. Human sperm have eluded such detailed observation in the past....

TOKYO (Reuters) - A magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit off eastern Japan on Saturday morning, the Japan Meteorological Agency said, with minor tsunami of up to 20 cm but no reports of damage along the northeast coast that was ravaged by the catastrophic March 2011 tsunami. No irregularities were reported at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was damaged in the 2011 disaster in the worst nuclear accident since Ukraine’s Chernobyl in 1986....

Dear EarthTalk: Do you have current facts and figures about how much rainforest is being destroyed each day around the world, and for what purpose(s)? —Teri, via e-mail Pinning down exact numbers is nearly impossible, but most experts agree that we are losing upwards of 80,000 acres of tropical rainforest daily, and significantly degrading another 80,000 acres every day on top of that. Along with this loss and degradation, we are losing some 135 plant, animal and insect species every day—or some 50,000 species a year—as the forests fall....

Editor’s note: The online version of this story was posted on January 7. When Nintendo’s Wii game console debuted in November 2006, its motion-sensing handheld “Wiimotes” got players off the couch and onto their feet. Now Microsoft hopes to outdo its competitor by eliminating the controller altogether: this past January it revealed details of Project Natal, which will give Xbox 360 users the ability to manipulate on-screen characters via natural body movement....

Music affects people deeply. At every stage of life, a large body of research shows, it has a profound impact on behavior and cognition. A new concert hall-cum-laboratory will be the first dedicated facility to examine music’s effect on the brain. The Large Interactive Virtual Environment (LIVE) Lab at McMaster University in Ontario, which opened this fall, will be an experimental space for neuroscientists, physiologists and psychologists to test hypotheses about performance, audience dynamics and musical improvisation....

Sandy writes: “Have you studied whether raw mushrooms are safe to eat? I’ve heard a few well-known doctors say there are toxic compounds in them that are destroyed by cooking. I’ve been avoiding raw mushrooms at the salad bar for some time now. What say you?” Prior to getting Sandy’s email, I was eating raw mushrooms in blissful ignorance, completely unaware of their toxic potential. Having now educated myself, I’m ready to answer Sandy’s question and let you know whether you have anything to fear from eating raw mushrooms....

Relics: Travels in Nature’s Time Machine by Piotr Naskrecki. University of Chicago Press, 2011 Take a photo safari through the world as it used to be, as revealed by living organisms little changed from their ancient ancestors. Naturalist and photographer Piotr Naskrecki gives creatures ranging from horseshoe crabs on the eastern shores of the U.S. to three-toed sloths in the forests of Guyana their due. Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas That Animate Great Magic Tricks by Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham....

Like a sudden forest fire with no traceable origin, depression often flares up for no apparent reason. Sometimes, though, one can identify a catalyst—the lightning bolt that delivered the spark. On its own no single misfortune can fully explain why and how someone develops depression, and depression sometimes arises and lingers largely irrespective of events or circumstances outside the mind. But some painful experiences—such as the death of a loved one, divorce and abrupt unemployment—can trigger individual episodes of depression, especially the very first incidence....

The religious find strength through God; this we know. But a new study conducted by Prof. Malt Friese and Michaela Wanke suggests that even non-believers can get in on the action. In a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, they present evidence showing how and why prayer might increase anyone’s ability to resist temptation. Though we can all agree that to do so requires self-control, the authors propose that the source of such control might not be supernatural....