thedebrief.org

3 weeks ago | thedebrief.org | Ryan Whalen

A new AI model has revolutionized the dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls, revealing they may be older than previously thought and aligning some fragments with their presumed time of authorship. While the Dead Sea Scrolls are immensely important documents to historical and biblical studies, the dating of the individual scrolls has remained elusive until international researchers developed Enoch, a new date prediction AI model, which has helped change our understanding of the materials’ age.

3 weeks ago | thedebrief.org | Ryan Whalen

Astronomers have revealed the detection of extreme nuclear transients (ENT), a newly identified class of cosmic events that represent the most energetic explosions ever observed. Researchers at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy (IfA) made the explosive discovery, witnessing enormous stars, each with masses at least three times that of the Sun, straying too close to the destructive pull of supermassive black holes.

3 weeks ago | thedebrief.org | Micah Hanks

Researchers surveying the island nation of Tonga in the South Pacific have made a surprising discovery: a massive 1,200-ton out-of-place boulder that mysteriously made its way to an unlikely location thousands of years ago. Martin Köhler, a PhD candidate with the University of Queensland’s School of the Environment, said the odd discovery was made while he and other researchers were exploring the southern side of the island of Tongatapu.

3 weeks ago | thedebrief.org | Ryan Whalen

Many small red dwarf stars inhabit the Milky Way galaxy, with the lower-mass ones unlikely to support planet formation. Yet somehow, the tiny red dwarf TOI-6894 defies expectations after astronomers recently discovered a gas giant in its orbit. At just 20% of the mass of Earth’s Sun, researchers didn’t expect to find an exoplanet gas giant, TOI-6894b, as they scoured data from the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).

3 weeks ago | thedebrief.org | Micah Hanks

Scientists have revealed a novel means of tracking everything from wildlife to illicit substances using environmental DNA detectable in the air around us. The findings, outlined in a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, show that tracking virtually anything using environmental DNA can be achieved as simply as capturing this ever-present genetic material from the air using a vacuum.