Welcome to this week’s roundup of science stories making waves around the world. From a 600-million-year-old “cyclops” ancestor that may explain why your eyes look the way they do, to the largest 3D map of the universe ever made, this week’s stories span 600 million years of biology, the slow tearing apart of a continent, brain-inspired computing, and a literary discovery hidden inside an Egyptian mummy. Let’s dive in.
1. A 600-million-year-old “cyclops” may have given us our eyes
Researchers at Lund University and the University of Sussex have proposed a striking new origin story for vertebrate vision. According to their work, all backboned animals — including humans — descend from a tiny, worm-like creature that lived nearly 600 million years ago and had a single light-sensitive “median eye” on top of its head. The team argues that this filter-feeding ancestor lost its earlier paired eyes during a sedentary phase, then later rebuilt vision from the leftover median eye when it became active again. That detour, they say, explains why our retinas develop from the brain rather than the skin, unlike the eyes of insects and squid. Most surprising of all: the remains of that ancient cyclops eye are still inside us today, as the pineal gland that controls our sleep–wake cycle.
Think About It: Why might losing an organ and then re-evolving a similar one (rather than keeping the original) leave behind clues in modern anatomy?
Image credit: ScienceDaily / Bruno Frías Morales (CC BY) — view source image
Originally reported by: ScienceDaily / Lund University
2. East Africa is splitting apart faster than we thought
A new study from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, published in Nature Communications, has found that the Turkana Rift in Kenya and Ethiopia has reached a stage scientists call “necking” — the moment just before a continent fractures completely and ocean water begins to flood in. The crust beneath the rift, which is normally about 35 km thick, has thinned to just 12.7 km along its central axis. This is the first time that necking has been measured in an active rift, rather than studied only in the frozen geology of ancient breakups. Full separation between the African and Somali plates is still millions of years away, but the discovery places East Africa firmly on the road to becoming a new ocean. The Turkana region has also produced about a third of all hominin fossils found in Africa.
Think About It: How might the slow splitting of a continent shape the climate, ecosystems and human history of the regions on either side?
Image credit: ScienceDaily — view source image
Originally reported by: Columbia Climate School / Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
3. A brain-inspired chip could cut AI energy use by 70%
The energy cost of artificial intelligence is becoming a serious problem, and researchers at the University of Cambridge may have part of the answer. In a paper published in Science Advances, they describe a new type of “memristor” — an electronic component that mimics how brain synapses store and process information at the same time. By doping hafnium oxide with strontium and titanium and growing it in two carefully controlled layers, the team created a device whose switching current is around a million times lower than conventional memristors. Crucially, it produces hundreds of stable, distinct conductance levels — exactly what is needed for analogue, brain-like computing. The researchers estimate that neuromorphic chips built this way could cut AI energy consumption by as much as 70%, although the manufacturing process still has to be reconciled with standard semiconductor temperatures.
Think About It: Why does mimicking the brain’s design potentially make computers more energy efficient than the way we build them today?
Image credit: ScienceDaily / University of Cambridge — view source image
Originally reported by: University of Cambridge
4. Graphene oxide kills bacteria — but leaves human cells alone
Researchers at KAIST in South Korea have worked out exactly why graphene oxide is so good at killing bacteria — including drug-resistant superbugs — without harming human tissue. Writing in Advanced Functional Materials, the team showed that the oxygen-rich groups on graphene oxide latch on to a phospholipid called POPG, which sits in bacterial cell membranes but is essentially absent from human cells. That selective binding rips bacteria apart while leaving our own cells untouched. Even better, the antibacterial effect survives repeated washing, which is why the technology has already been spun out into more than 10 million graphene-coated toothbrushes and Olympic uniform fabrics. As antibiotic resistance worsens, materials that target bacteria by their unique chemistry — rather than overwhelming them with drugs — could become an important new line of defence.
Think About It: Why is targeting a molecule that bacteria have but human cells don’t a smarter strategy than developing yet another antibiotic?
Image credit: ScienceDaily — view source image
Originally reported by: KAIST / EurekAlert
5. The largest 3D map of the universe is now complete
After five years of patient observing from a mountaintop in Arizona, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has finished its planned survey — and the results are bigger than anyone expected. The team had hoped to map 34 million galaxies and quasars; instead, they recorded 47 million, plus more than 20 million stars in our own Milky Way. That makes DESI’s catalogue six times larger than every previous spectroscopic galaxy survey combined. The point of all this counting is to study dark energy, the mysterious force that drives the accelerating expansion of the universe. Early DESI results have already hinted that dark energy may not be a fixed “cosmological constant” but might be evolving over time — a finding that, if confirmed, would reshape physics. Full results from the five-year dataset are expected in 2027, with observations continuing through 2028.
Think About It: Why might the discovery that dark energy changes over time be more important than finding a new planet or a new particle?
Image credit: Berkeley Lab / NOIRLab — view source image
Originally reported by: Berkeley Lab
6. Homer’s Iliad found inside a Roman-era Egyptian mummy
In an extraordinary crossover between archaeology and classical literature, a team led by the University of Barcelona has discovered a fragment of Homer’s Iliad tucked inside a 1,600-year-old mummy in Egypt. The papyrus, placed on the abdomen of a Roman-era body during embalming, contains lines from the famous “Catalogue of Ships” in Book II — the long list of Greek forces sent against Troy. It is the first time a Greek literary text has ever been found used as part of a mummification ritual. The find comes from Tomb 65 in Sector 22 of the ancient site of Oxyrhynchus, long known as a goldmine of papyrus discoveries. The team, led by Maite Mascort and Esther Pons, also found other tombs containing mummies with golden tongues, a feature thought to help the dead speak in the afterlife.
Think About It: What might this tell us about how Greek literature spread, and how literate ordinary people in Roman Egypt might have been?
Image credit: University of Barcelona — view source image
Originally reported by: University of Barcelona
From the deepest history of the eye to the deepest map of the universe, this week’s stories show science working at every scale at once. Which one surprised you most? Share this roundup with a curious student, a colleague, or anyone who likes a good “did you know” — and we’ll see you again next week.
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