New Delhi: Scientists at the University of York have discovered that dark matter may not be as invisible as we thought. Dark matter is a mysterious substance that makes up about 25 percent of our universe, but until now, scientists believed it was invisible. It has mass, but doesn’t interact with regular matter and passes right through it. Yet we know about dark matter because we know it has a gravitational pull, and it is the reason galaxies stay in place.
Now, a new study from the University of York, published in Physics Letter B journal on 7 October says that this dark matter could slightly change the colour of light that passes through it, leaving a faint red or blue “fingerprint”. The paper proposes that dark matter influences light indirectly—through a chain of interactions with other particles, such as the Higgs Boson or top quark.
If true, this finding could completely change how we search for the universe’s missing mass. Until now, we haven’t even looked for dark matter on telescopes because it was thought to be invisible. If these red and blue colour traces do exist, next-generation telescopes might be able to spot them, giving us the first direct clues about dark matter’s true nature.
The ‘voices’ in your head
A new study by psychologists in the University of New South Wales in Sydney investigated why some people with schizophrenia hear voices—and they might have found an answer. The ‘voices’, the study claims, is actually the person talking to themself in their head, except their brain is unable to recognise it. Published in the Schizophrenia Bulletin journal on 21 October, this new study conducted EEG scans and analysed brain waves of patients with schizophrenia for this analysis.
Normally, when someone talks to themself—either out loud or in their head—their brain is able to predict and recognise the sound of their own voice. It also automatically reduces the volume of other voices around so that you can hear yourself better. This is why often when you’re ‘thinking out loud’, you tend to zone out of conversations with other people.
But, in patients with schizophrenia, the brain has difficulty recognising the person’s own voice. So when someone’s internal voice is talking, the brain categorises it as just another outside voice, and it thinks, “Oh, someone else is speaking.”
It confirmed a long-standing theory that these voices were just one’s own voices misrepresented by the brain. It also helped researchers understand these biological markers of schizophrenic activity, which can help them develop targeted treatments.
Reflecting sunlight may not reduce global warming
Scientists have, for years, proposed to reflect the Sun’s rays away from the Earth to cool temperatures. The concept is called stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), and it involves spraying tiny particles that are reflective in nature into our atmosphere. These particles would then reflect solar rays back to space, and cool down our planet. This proposal has even been modelled before by climate scientists as a potential solution for global warming, although never done in real life.
But if you think it sounds too good to be true then you are right, because a new paper by Columbia University says that this concept would be really difficult to carry out. Published in the Scientific Reports journal on 21 October, the paper lays out the real-time challenges of SAI, not just in reducing global temperatures but also in its affects on other atmospheric processes.
The kinds of aerosols—mainly suplhate particles—injected into the stratosphere would end up having chain reactions and impacting the atmosphere. For example, global jet streams which carry our flights, monsoon systems which carry our rainfall, and other essential weather phenomenon would be impacted. This impact would then affect agriculture and economy, and these are just the predictable consequences of such an action. In conclusion, this quick fix to global warming is unlikely to work.
Running can counter-act mental health impact of high-fat food
Running is beneficial not only for physical health but also mental health, according to a new study by Irish researchers. They found that voluntary running can help balance out the mood-damaging effects of a high-fat and high-sugar diet, by conducting experiments on rats. The study was published on 21 October in the Genomic Press.
The study was meant to understand how guts, hormones and brain activity were connected: They fed rats unhealthy, rich foods and noticed that these foods disrupted certain mood-regulating hormones, like anserine and deoxynosine.
This led to feelings of anxiety and depression-like feelings in rats, but then when the rats exercised by running, these feelings reduced a little. Exercise was found to rebalance some of these mood-regulating hormones, and also balance insulin and other compounds in the body. This shows that physical activity can counter balance unhealthy eating in more ways than one.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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