World-First 'Super Alloy' Could Transform The Way Metals Are Made

09 July 2026, By D. Nield

https://www.sciencealert.com/world-first-super-alloy-could-transform-the-way-metals-are-made

The microstructural evolution of the alloy, heated for 32 hours (left) versus 64 hours (right). 

(Zhang et al., Science, 2026)

Metal alloys are used everywhere from aircraft to cutlery, making them an indispensable part of modern life.

Scientists are continuing to try to find ways to improve them – which often comes down to the way they're initially formed.

Steel is one of the classic alloy examples: mostly iron with a dash of carbon and other elements, making it much stronger and harder than iron on its own.

Now, an international team of researchers has come up with a new way of building alloys. The method, described in a new paper published in Science, promises to make metals that are several times stronger than the materials we rely on today.

The researchers prompted ordered atoms in their alloy. 

(Monash University/AI)

The trick is using lower, more controlled temperatures than is normal for alloy manufacturing, and letting the metal 'bake' for a specific period.

This leads to a more stable and ordered configuration of atoms, set in blocks known as grains, that are both smaller and more well-packed than usual.

"For more than a century, alloy development has focused on composition and processing," says materials scientist Jian-Feng Nie from Monash University in Australia.

"Our work suggests that how atoms organize during manufacturing may be just as important.

"The real significance is not just this particular alloy, but the demonstration that atoms can self-organize into defect-free structures in a bulk metallic material, meaning a large, continuous piece of metal, not a thin coating, film or microscopic sample."

The alloy was strongest after 32 hours of heating (panel C).

 (Zhang et al., Science, 2026)

That note on scaling is important – the idea of smaller, better-organized grains has been explored before, but scaling it up into something usable is challenging.

In the new study, the researchers mixed five metals together: hafnium, niobium, tantalum, titanium, and zirconium. After a brief high-temperature melting stage, the alloy was dropped to a relatively low 550 °C (1,022 °F) and left for several hours and even days.

At around 32 hours was when the researchers got their best result: a 'super alloy' called a Refractory High-Entropy Alloy (RHEAD).

It's two times stronger than steel, three times stronger than aluminum, and twice as strong as the same alloy made in a conventional way.

"By carefully controlling how the atoms organize during processing, we were able to create a highly connected structure with exceptional strength and stability," says materials scientist Yu Zhang from Chongqing University in China.

Both the choice of metals and the method of preparation create the conditions for the alloy atoms to organize themselves into repeating grain patterns, responding to the natural stresses between the mixed materials to create a structure free from defects.

That organization, plus the lack of defects and gaps between the recurring grains, is what gives the added strength.

Tests showed the new alloy achieved a compressive yield strength of more than two gigapascals while retaining its ductility, meaning it bends without breaking.

"If this concept can be applied more broadly, it could open the door to materials with properties that were previously considered unattainable, with implications for alloy design that could be applied across many systems and industries," says Nie.

"Instead of increasing alloy content to achieve better performance, we may be able to design internal structures that deliver superior properties with fewer alloying elements. That could lead to more efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective alloy production."

The researchers say their discoveries open up a wealth of possibilities for future manufacturing, in everything from aerospace to energy systems – and even technologies that haven't been imagined yet.

There's a lot more work to do though. Next, the team wants to understand not just what the atoms are doing in terms of rearranging themselves, but why they're doing it, which should enable this new technique to be expanded and refined.

"For more than a century, advances in alloys have come from altering the chemical composition and processing, guided largely by empirical trial and error," says Yiannis Ventikos, the Dean of Engineering at Monash University, who was not directly involved in the study.

"This research suggests we can actually engineer how atoms organize themselves, creating opportunities to develop materials with capabilities that were previously out of reach."

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Making the Invisible Visible: $100 Device Detects Cosmic Particles Passing Through You

By H. Douwes, U. of Delaware, July 10, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/making-the-invisible-visible-100-device-detects-cosmic-particles-passing-through-you/

Invisible particles from deep space are constantly passing through us, but a new pocket-sized detector is making them visible in real time. 

Credit: SciTechDaily.com

A pocket-sized particle detector is making cosmic ray physics accessible from classrooms to major experiments.

Particles from deep space are passing through the world around you right now. They leave no sound, taste, smell, or sensation, but with the right detector, their arrival can be counted one by one.

These particles begin with cosmic rays, energetic particles that can be produced by exploding stars and other extreme astrophysical events far beyond the solar system. When cosmic rays strike atoms high in Earth’s atmosphere, they set off a chain reaction that creates secondary particles. One important result is the muon, a tiny particle able to travel through the atmosphere and even reach below the ground.

University of Delaware physics professor Spencer Axani has built a way to bring that invisible particle rain into classrooms and research labs. His invention, CosmicWatch, is a compact muon detector that can be used by experienced scientists and high school students alike.

The device is about the size of a box of animal crackers and can be assembled from roughly $100 in electronic parts. When a muon passes through, CosmicWatch lights up, records the event and stores the data for later analysis.

Spencer Axani, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, is the inventor of CosmicWatch, a portable, low-cost particle detector that tracks muons, invisible particles that originate from space. The particles help scientists learn more about the universe’s most extreme phenomena. 

Credit: Jeffrey C. Chase



CosmicWatch was first designed as an affordable way to introduce students to particle physics. It has since found a second life in international astrophysics experiments, where its small size and low cost make measurements possible in places that would be harder to reach with conventional equipment.

“CosmicWatch detectors allow us to do far more physics at a dramatically lower cost, in a compact and portable form, opening the door to many new kinds of experiments and outreach opportunities,” Axani said.

Birth of a detector

Muons matter because they carry clues about the cosmic rays that created them. By measuring muons, physicists can infer the energy, mass, and direction of the original cosmic ray, helping them study powerful objects and events such as supernovae, gamma ray bursts, and blazars. Muon flux also helped provide one of the earliest experimental confirmations of Einstein’s theory of special relativity in the early 1940s.

Their usefulness is not limited to space. Because muons can pass through matter such as walls, rock, and human tissue without causing damage, they can be used to peer inside large structures that are otherwise difficult to examine. In 2016, muon technology helped reveal an unknown corridor inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The challenge has always been access. Many muon detectors are large, expensive, and difficult to move, which limits both classroom use and the range of experiments that can be attempted.

Doctoral students Masooma Sarfraz and Miles Garcia (center and right) examine data from CosmicWatch in the lab, while senior Collin Owens and Axani work on part of a future experiment that will incorporate the invention. 

Credit: Evan Krape and courtesy of Musarate Shams



“A typical undergraduate physics lab course uses a rack of electronics about the size of a small bookshelf to measure muons,” Axani said.

Axani created CosmicWatch in 2017 while he was a graduate student at MIT. At first, his goal was practical: build a small, low-power muon detector for the IceCube observatory in Antarctica. IceCube is a vast detector buried beneath the ice that studies neutrinos, another kind of subatomic particle. A muon detector helps IceCube scientists separate background particles from the neutrinos they are trying to detect.

The project changed direction when Axani realized that the same design could become an educational tool. A portable, inexpensive detector could let students handle real particle physics data without needing a full lab of specialized electronics.

After joining the UD faculty in 2022, Axani continued refining the device and recently released its third version. The upgrades, described in an October article in the Journal of Instrumentation, allow CosmicWatch to monitor its local environment, survive high radiation levels and collect data more quickly.

A shot from when the balloon used in Shams’s experiment burst. He recovered the CosmicWatch miles away from the launch site, and used the data to show how the flux of cosmic rays coming from outer space changes with altitude. 

Credit: Evan Krape and courtesy of Musarate Shams



“Even though I had studied cosmic rays, I didn’t fully appreciate the rich physics behind the working of these detectors to actually ‘see’ the world and atmospheric particle production,” said Masooma Sarfraz, a doctoral student in Axani’s lab and primary author on the journal article. “For a student like me who has been working on theoretical ideas, this was a perfect opportunity to dive into the experimental side. It also connects beautifully to my current broader research work with particle physics.”

The newest CosmicWatch is useful for calibrating large-scale detectors and is now being used in the NuDot experiment at UD and the Coherent CAPTAIN-Mills (CCM) dark matter detector in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Another version is being developed to measure primary cosmic rays aboard rockets and spacecraft.

Science in action

CosmicWatch remains a teaching tool at UD, where Axani uses it to introduce students to particle, nuclear, and astrophysics. Students build the detectors themselves, learn how high-speed electronics work, and then use the devices to run experiments they design.

UD physics professor Spencer Axani has invented a portable, low-cost detector that senses invisible particles from space called muons. Muons help scientists learn more about some of the most extreme phenomena in the universe, like exploding stars, gamma ray bursts and blazars. CosmicWatch is being used in international astrophysics experiments, and in high school and college classrooms across the country, introducing a new generation of scientists to the field of particle physics. 

Credit: University of Delaware

Musarate Shams, a doctoral student in the quantum science and engineering program, adapted his CosmicWatch by adding temperature and pressure sensors. He wanted to use it to investigate cosmic rays in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

In May, Shams sent the device up on a high-altitude balloon that climbed to 100,000 feet, near the edge of space. After studying the data, he was able to show how the flux of cosmic rays from outer space changes with altitude.

“It’s a very cool thing to build something in the lab in a couple of days that’s able to detect these cool particles from hundreds of light-years away,” he said.

CosmicWatch is also reaching classrooms beyond UD. Natasha Holmes, the Ann S. Bowers Associate Professor of Physics at Cornell University, has students in her introductory physics courses build the detectors and use them in experiments. For Holmes, the value is not just that students learn a concept, but that they work more like experimental physicists.

Doctoral student Musarate Shams used a CosmicWatch he built in an experiment investigating cosmic rays in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The detector was attached to a high-altitude balloon that rose to 100,000 feet above the Earth. 

Credit: Evan Krape and courtesy of Musarate Shams



“The students seem really excited about doing this thing that is more like what particle physicists and experimental physicists actually do,” she said. “They get to learn some coding with it, and sometimes they break the devices and then we have to talk to them about being careful with your equipment. It’s very different from a typical physics lab. We’ve had students say they’re doing ‘real science’ after using it.”

Worldwide physics

Axani estimates that thousands of CosmicWatch detectors have been built since the first version was released eight years ago. He hopes the number could grow into a global citizen science network, with people around the world measuring local muon rates and sending their data to a shared site online.

He is also developing a related detector that could help groups of satellites respond to their environment. For example, the detectors could warn satellites about solar flares, allowing them to power down when needed.

The project began as an educational outreach effort, but it has since moved into research, calibration work, and possible space applications.

“Although it started as an educational program, it’s found a use in a lot of different areas of physics,” Axani said. “It’s pretty cool.”

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Humans Have a 'Sixth Sense' You've Probably Never Heard Of – And It Appears to Be Key For Mental Health

11 July 2026,By F. MacDonald

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-sixth-sense-youve-probably-never-heard-of-in-humans-may-be-crucial-for-mental-health

(Yana Iskayeva/Moment/Getty Images)

We all know that humans have five senses. But a growing body of research shows we have a sixth one that almost nobody talks about – and it may be just as important for our wellbeing as any of the others.

It's called interoception: the body's ability to sense and interpret its own internal signals.

This sense detects things that seem 'invisible' but are happening constantly: your heart rate, your breathing, your hunger, the temperature running through your body.

"Although we don't take much notice of it, it's an extremely important sense as it ensures that every system in the body is working optimally," psychologists Jennifer Murphy of Royal Holloway University of London and Freya Prentice of University College London wrote in The Conversation in 2022.

"It does this by alerting us to when our body may be out of balance, such as making us reach for a drink when we feel thirsty or telling us to take our jumper off when we're feeling too hot."

So far, so simple.

But researchers are now beginning to realize that interoception goes beyond simply regulating our biological needs, and may play a part in a range of mental health conditions – including anxiety, depression, PTSD, and eating disorders.

It's still early days, but the general idea is that our awareness of things such as our muscle tension, breathing and heart rate can give us important clues about when a situation is 'safe' or 'unsafe'.

When interrupted, this process could contribute to mental health conditions.

(Maria Korneeva/Moment/Getty Images)



For example, someone with anxiety might be acutely aware of their heart rate in a situation such as a social interaction, which makes them feel uncomfortable in that situation.

Murphy and Prentice's 2022 analysis of 93 studies found that interoception differs significantly between men and women – with women showing lower accuracy on heart-based tasks in particular.

This may partly explain why conditions like anxiety and depression are more prevalent in women than men from puberty onward, they wrote for The Conversation, though they stressed that the relationship is complex and not fully understood.

But they're not the only ones exploring this link.

An experiment published in eBioMedicine this year looked at how hunger impacted mood, and showed that people with strong and accurate interoception experienced fewer mood swings than those with poor interoception.

"This does not mean they never felt hungry – they just seemed better at keeping their mood levels stable," medical psychologist and corresponding author Nils Kroemer from the University of Tübingen in Germany wrote for The Conversation.

One of the most striking pieces of evidence about interoception comes from research on people with anorexia nervosa by scientists at UCLA.

(Carlos Barquero/Moment/Getty Images)



The idea is that in people with anorexia, they have stopped being able to 'listen' to their own internal hunger signals.

By testing this interoception with an ingestible vibrating pill, the researchers were actually able to show that this was indeed the case – even after the patients put weight back on.

"People with anorexia nervosa do not simply ignore signals from the body," said Sahib Khalsa, the study's senior author and a neuroscientist at UCLA.

"Rather, their nervous system may process gut sensations differently, making those signals harder to detect, trust and learn from. Over time, that may contribute to the persistence of symptoms even after weight is restored."

However, not everyone is so convinced – an opinion published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2024 claimed "There is no such thing as interoception".

The authors, led by cognitive scientist Felix Schoeller from MIT, admitted their headline was designed to grab attention, but in reality they believe that researchers may be oversimplifying many different factors under the broad term of this interoceptive sixth sense.

"While the title of this article is intentionally provocative, it serves to highlight a critical issue in the field: namely that the term 'interoception' is often used in ways that belie the complexity and diversity of the phenomena it purports to describe," the team wrote.

And they may have a point. Barry Smith from the University of London claims humans actually have up to 33 different senses.

What we can say for sure is that humans are much more sensory than we give ourselves credit for. Even if we don't have a name for those senses as yet, they're already playing a bigger role in our wellbeing than we realize.

"Better understanding all the factors that affect interoceptive ability may be important for someday developing better treatments for many mental health conditions," wrote Prentice and Murphy.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

A 'War' Between Elephants And Humans Is Brewing in Southern Africa

10 July 2026, By C. Cassella

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-war-between-elephants-and-humans-is-brewing-in-southern-africa

(Steve Stringer Photography/Moment/Getty Images)

Which footprint is bigger? An elephant's or a human's?

It depends on how you measure it.

As humanity leaves its mark on more of the African savanna, we are increasingly stepping on the toes of wild elephants.

Researchers in the United States and Namibia are now warning that a 'turf war' is afoot.

In Namibia, Botswana, and portions of Angola and Zambia, the rapid overhaul of wild land over the past two decades has brought humans and elephants into ever more conflict.

It's endangering both us and them.

African elephant in the village of Ramotswa in Botswana. 

(poco_bw/iStock/Getty Images)



Using public records, researchers have identified three major factors driving the increase in human-elephant conflicts from 2004 to 2020.

The growth of human populations and the increase in human land use were the main factors at play, but climate-driven water deficits also played a smaller role.

If all three of these factors continue unchecked, machine learning algorithms predict future battles over land and resources will intensify in number and extent.

"We find that the area at high risk of human-elephant conflict increases by 33 to 100 percent by 2085," the international team concludes.

"Aggressive human land-use expansion leads to the most dramatic increases in conflict… "

The new information comes at a crucial time in elephant conservation for this region of southern Africa.

Just as populations of the African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) are finally recovering from decades of poaching, their habitats are shrinking.

African savanna elephants are a keystone species, meaning that on their broad shoulders rests the fate of numerous other animals in the savanna ecosystem.

Unfortunately, however, it seems that our encroaching roads and fences are funneling the megafauna straight to human communities.

In this unnatural setting, elephants are known to raid crops, injure people, destroy infrastructure, and hurt livestock.

This can be devastating for local communities, and it has, at times, led to the culling of wild elephants. What's more, it undermines local support for elephant conservation.

"These trends, alongside the potential of growing climate pressures to further escalate conflict, present critical challenges for resource managers in the region," write the study authors, led by Evan Patrick from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The team includes researchers from the University of Namibia and the nation's Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism.

In this nation, the most common form of human-elephant conflict is elephant crop raiding.

Warning traffic sign for elephants on gravel road in Namibia. 

(Gunter Lenz/imageBROKER/Getty Images)



Because farming is so important to the region, the study authors point out that aggressive encounters with elephants "can result in economic damages that outweigh local benefits from trophy hunting."

The 'war' that is brewing between elephants and humans is heating up in Namibia's Zambezi region in particular.

This wet landscape is located in the nation's eastern panhandle, and it is very attractive to expanding farming interests.

It is also a functional corridor between core elephant reserves, where these large creatures are protected by law.

African elephant walking through human spaces.

 (poco_bw/iStock/Getty Images)



In some regions, communal land management is self-governed and self-organized. This was intended so that on ancestral lands, the local people hold common property rights over wildlife and tourism operations.

Subsistence farming, however, remains a key livelihood strategy for many of these residents, bringing them head-to-head with elephants.

In the current study, human-elephant conflicts were assessed across 38 communal conservancies that have rapid population growth, with a combined population of nearly 150,000 people.

Using this data, future estimates consistently projected "a trend of increasing overlap and discord between elephants and human populations."

Today in southern Africa, nearly 300,000 elephants are protected by conservation efforts, but that success story may be at risk.

Without proactive intervention, the turf war between elephants and humans is projected to rapidly increase through the end of the century, conclude Patrick and colleagues.

Still, they argue, the fact that land use is the number one factor leading to human-elephant conflict should empower local decision-makers.

When planning for the future, leaving space for elephants could mitigate future damage, support coexistence, the researchers say, and "protect human livelihoods and at-risk species into the coming decades."

It's not too late to leave some parts of the savanna untrampled. We need to be careful where we step next.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

The “Hobbits” Mysteriously Disappeared 50,000 Years Ago – Scientists Have Revealed What Happened to Their Home

By N. Scroxton, G. van den Bergh, M. Gagan, and M. R. Puspaningrum, July 10, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/the-hobbits-mysteriously-disappeared-50000-years-ago-scientists-have-revealed-what-happened-to-their-home/

Homo floresiensis skull. 

Credit: Shutterstock

A long drought on Flores may have helped drive Homo floresiensis and its prey away from their cave refuge.

For more than a million years, a small human relative survived on the volcanic island of Flores in Indonesia. Then, about 50,000 years ago, Homo floresiensis (also known as “the hobbit” thanks to its small stature) vanished, leaving one of the most intriguing mysteries in human evolution.

New evidence points to a possible culprit: a severe drought that began roughly 61,000 years ago and lasted for thousands of years. In our new study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, we built the most detailed climate record yet for the area where these ancient hominins lived.

The results reveal an ecosystem that shifted from relative abundance to growing stress. As rainfall declined, H. floresiensis and one of its main food sources, a pygmy elephant, appear to have been pushed away from their usual refuge. That movement may have brought the hobbits into contact with the much larger Homo sapiens.

View of the Wae Racang river looking upstream from Liang Bua towards Liang Luar. 

Credit: Garry K. Smith



An island with deep caves

The discovery of H. floresiensis in 2003 changed our thinking on what makes us human. These diminutive small-brained hominins, standing only 1.1 meters tall, made stone tools. Against the odds, they reached Flores seemingly without boat technology.

Bones and stone tools from H. floresiensis were found in Liang Bua cave, hidden away in a small valley in the uplands of the island. These remains date to between 190,000 and 50,000 years ago.

Today, Flores has a monsoonal climate with heavy rainfall during wet summers (mostly from November to March) and lighter rain during drier winters (May to September).

However, during the last glacial period, there would have been significant variation in both the amount of rainfall and when it arrived.

To find out what the rains were like, our team turned to a cave 700 meters upstream of Liang Bua named Liang Luar. By pure chance, deep inside the cave was a stalagmite that grew right through the H. floresiensis disappearance interval. As stalagmites grow layer by layer from dripping water, their changing chemical composition also records the history of a changing climate.

Our caving team in the deep, brooding interior of Liang Luar in 2006. 

Credit: Garry K. Smith



Paleoclimatologists have two main geochemical tools when it comes to reconstructing past rainfall from stalagmites. By looking at a specific measure of oxygen known as d18O, we can see changes in monsoon strength. Meanwhile, the ratio of magnesium to calcium shows us the total rainfall amount.

We paired these measurements for the same samples, precisely anchored them in time, and reconstructed summer, winter, and annual rainfall amounts. All this provided unprecedented insight into seasonal climate variability.

We found three key climate phases. It was wetter than today year-round between 91,000 and 76,000 years ago. Between 76,000 and 61,000 years ago, the monsoon was highly seasonal, with wetter summers and drier winters.

Then, between 61,000 and 47,000 years ago, the climate turned much drier in summer, similar to that seen in Southern Queensland today.

The hobbits followed their prey

So we had a well-dated record of major climate change, but what was the ecological response, if any? We needed to build a precise timeline for the fossil evidence of H. floresiensis at Liang Bua.

The solution came unexpectedly from our analysis of d18O in the fossil tooth enamel of Stegodon florensis insularis, a distant extinct pygmy relative of modern elephants.

The jawbone and ridged molar of an adult Stegodon florensis florensis, the large-bodied ancestor of Stegodon florensis insularis. Scale bar is 10 cm. 

Credit: Gerrit van den Berg



Juvenile pygmy elephants were one of the hobbits’ key prey, as revealed by cut marks on bones in Liang Bua.

Remarkably, the d18O pattern in the Liang Luar stalagmite and in teeth from increasingly deep sedimentary deposits at Liang Bua aligned perfectly. This allowed us to precisely date the Stegodon fossils and the accompanying remains of H. floresiensis.

The refined timeline showed that about 90% of pygmy elephant remains date to 76,000–61,000 years ago, during the strongly seasonal “Goldilocks” climate. This may have been the ideal environment for the pygmy elephants to graze and for H. floresiensis to hunt them. But both species almost disappeared as the climate got drier.

The decline in rainfall, pygmy elephants, and hobbits all at the same time indicates that dwindling resources played a crucial role in what appears to be a progressive abandonment of Liang Bua.

As the climate dried, the primary dry-season water source, the small Wae Racang river, may have dwindled too low, leaving the Stegodon without fresh water. The animals may have migrated out of the area, with H. floresiensis following.

Cross-section of the precisely dated stalagmite used in this study, showing growth layers. The graph shows the improved timeline for Stegodon fossils in two excavation sectors at Liang Bua. 

Credit: Mike Gagan

Did a volcano contribute too?

The last few Stegodon fossil remains and stone tools in Liang Bua are covered in a prominent layer of volcanic ash, dated to around 50,000 years ago. We don’t yet know if a nearby volcanic eruption was a “final straw” in the decline of Liang Bua hobbits.

The first archaeological evidence attributed to Homo sapiens is above the ash. So while there is no way of knowing if H. sapiens and H. floresiensis crossed paths, new archaeological and DNA evidence both indicate that H. sapiens were island-hopping across Indonesia to the supercontinent of Sahul by at least 60,000 years ago.

If H. floresiensis were forced by ecological pressures away from their hideaway towards the coast, they may have interacted with modern humans. And if so, could competition, disease, or even predation then have been decisive factors?

Whatever the ultimate cause, our study provides the framework for future studies to examine the extinction of the iconic H. floresiensis in the context of major climate change.

The underlying role of freshwater availability in the demise of one of our human cousins reminds us that humanity’s history is a fragile experiment in survival, and how shifting rainfall patterns can have profound impacts.

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

A Human Habitat at The Bottom of The Ocean Is Now Operational. Take a Look Inside

10 July 2026, By J. Cockerill

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-human-habitat-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-is-now-operational-take-a-look-inside

Vanguard is a subsea human habitat installed at Tennessee Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. 

(Brendan Hall/DEEP)

Do you really, really, really like the ocean?

Do you like it so much that you would spend multiple days living on the seafloor in a structure that is part laboratory, part dormitory, and part diving vessel?

Soon, a crew of 'aquanauts' will do exactly that, inhabiting the first iteration of Vanguard, a short-term stay subsea habitat designed by ocean engineering company DEEP.

In many ways, life inside Vanguard is like being in a spaceship. 

(Brendan Hall/DEEP)



This is not the first time humans have experimented with ocean-floor living, but it's the first time DEEP – a private company founded in 2021 – has enabled it.

Vanguard is a pilot for their much more ambitious project, Sentinel, which the company claims will enable "both short-term and semi-permanent deployments anywhere on the continental shelf" by 2027.

Vanguard, which has been installed on a fixed platform at Tennessee Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, 17 meters (56 feet) underwater, can house up to four crew members at a time.

ScienceAlert spoke to DEEP's director of scientific research, Dawn Kernagis, who will be one of Vanguard's first crew members.

As a NASA-trained 'aquanaut', Dawn Kernagis (bottom right, with SCUBA tank visible) is no stranger to undersea living. 

(NASA)



Kernagis's research focus is human physiology in extreme environments, especially as it relates to the brain and nervous system.

She was previously a crew member on NASA's NEEMO 21 undersea habitat mission, so she is no stranger to undersea living.

For scientists, spending continuous time at depth for research does offer some perks.

"We want to expand subsea habitation for broader humanity," – Dawn Kernagis, DEEP director of scientific research

For instance, bringing samples to the surface has always been a bugbear for marine biologists: the rapid change in pressure wreaks havoc on a specimen.

"When a sample gets brought to the surface, it decompresses. So now, whatever the molecular signature is, whatever the cell signature is [that you're looking at in the sample], it's really related to that decompression process, right? So you're not really seeing what that sample was like at depth," Kernagis explained.

"We're really excited about being able to revisit a lot of that science, and create this new opportunity for being able to process samples in near-real time, at depth."

Vanguard is also equipped with sensors that take continuous measurements of underwater conditions, even when humans aren't present.

Those pressure conditions are a big part of human life aboard Vanguard, too, where inhabitants will essentially be living in a pocket of submerged air, at almost the same pressure as the surrounding ocean.

Essentially, Vanguard is one big decompression chamber that controls the internal pressure, and its inhabitants, saturation divers.

"It's like you've been SCUBA diving for a really long time, and your tissues and your blood gets saturated with nitrogen, the inert gas that you're breathing," Kernagis said.

"That kind of diving has been around for a long time… essentially, once you're saturated, you could stay down there for weeks, months at a time."

The surface buoy provides air, power, and satellite comms to the crew below via an umbilical cable.

 (Brendan Hall/DEEP)



Crew members can leave the habitat on an 'umbilical' – a cord that pumps air from the Vanguard's supply, rather than a SCUBA tank – which allows for dives outside the structure lasting several hours, rather than the typical 60-minute limit to traditional recreational diving.

When they first arrive at Vanguard, transported via mini-submersibles, the crew and the habitat itself are 'compressed', with pressure controlled to match conditions outside. But after the crew enter, the vessel is closed off, and its contents, air and crew included, go through a gradual decompression.

"You're essentially 'ascending'… you're still on the bottom but the pressure inside that vessel is being reduced until it gets to the equivalent of the pressure we're living at here on the surface," Kernagis explained.

After a night of decompression, Vanguard is re-compressed to pressure just above the levels outside, and then the divers can jump right back in the ocean via the habitat's 'moon pool': a kind of downwards doorway open directly to the seafloor.

Crew members can enter and exit the vessel via a 'moon pool', which, at pressure, is open to Vanguard's interior. Roger Garcia, DEEP's habitat operations director, demonstrates. 

(Brendan Hall/DEEP)



Crew members will be in contact with an onshore base 24/7, via satellite communications. A generator on a buoy at the surface provides power; fresh water is supplied to a tank, not recirculated. Sewage and wastewater are captured and removed.

Habitats like Vanguard have great scientific potential, but there are many other possible applications.

DEEP's project partners offer some hints at other commercial interests: the Unique Group, for instance, is a subsea tech and engineering company that services the oil and gas, renewable energy, and defense sectors, while Bastion Technologies services American aerospace, oil and gas, and defense industries.

"There's a long history of using subsea habitats on the defense side of things," Kernagis said.

"One of the things we're really interested in looking at is human machine teaming. So, for example, how do divers in the water intersect with robots, whether there's autonomous underwater vehicles or remote underwater vehicles."

Another of DEEP's partners, Triton Submarines, is more focused on the recreational and commercial side of undersea living, which hints at the potential tourism applications of DEEP's technology.

"We want to expand subsea habitation for broader humanity," Kernagis told ScienceAlert.

She lists artists, historians, students and educators as potential future inhabitants.

"I think also politicians, that would be great, right? To give them that exposure of what's beneath the surface of the ocean."

For now, however, Vanguard's primary purpose is scientific research, to monitor the reef in which it is situated, and the crew who inhabit it.

"We're really working hand-in-hand with the National Marine Sanctuary to make sure that it's not just us putting the habitat down, but they're also seeing the maximum use of that habitat for science and restoration purposes," Kernagis said.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Scientists Discover 73 Volcanic Calderas Hidden Across The Ocean Floor

07 July 2026, By M. Starr

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-discover-73-volcanic-calderas-hidden-across-the-ocean-floor

Deep beneath the ocean waves, dangers lurk.

Not from cryptic monsters like the kraken, but from powerful forces reshaping the ocean floor itself.

Most of Earth's volcanic activity takes place underwater. Yet the scars those volcanoes leave behind have remained largely hidden.

Now, through an AI-assisted search of the seafloor, a team led by volcanologist Andrea Verolino of Paris-Saclay University in France has identified 73 previously unknown volcanic calderas hidden beneath Earth's oceans.

Calderas are vast crater-like depressions left when a volcano empties enough of its underground magma chamber for the ground above to collapse in on itself. Some are long extinct, but others mark volcanic systems that could erupt again.

The global distribution of previously documented calderas.

 (Verolino et al., Commun. Earth Environ., 2026)

"Our dataset," writes the team in an early-access paper published in Communications, Earth & Environment, "fills a major observational gap and provides a reproducible, upgradeable framework for submarine volcano characterization, underscoring the need to incorporate submarine calderas into future global volcanic assessments."

Most of Earth's volcanic activity takes place beneath the sea, where tectonic plates are constantly pulling apart, colliding, and sliding beneath one another. These restless boundaries allow magma to rise toward the surface, building volcanoes across the ocean floor.

Most of that submarine volcanic activity consists of relatively gentle basaltic eruptions along spreading ridges – but every now and then, things get a little bit more dramatic.

Submarine calderas can generate enormous eruptions, tsunamis, shock waves, ash plumes, and tremendous amounts of steam as they explode deep under the ocean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAYEndrV8zc

The 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai event, an explosive eruption from an undersea caldera in the Tongan archipelago, was something of a wake-up call. It produced atmospheric pressure waves that reached space, widespread tsunamis, and damage thousands of kilometers away.

If we don't know where submarine calderas are, we can't know which ones deserve closer monitoring. Yet before this survey, fewer than 30 had been documented beneath the oceans.

To address this gap in our knowledge, Verolino and his colleagues adapted an algorithm that was originally trained to detect impact craters on Mars, and applied it to bathymetric maps – those that record the topography of the seafloor.

The algorithm initially flagged 87,435 possible formations.

Most of those were false alarms. By applying a series of filters and then manually inspecting the remaining candidates, the researchers narrowed their final list down to 78 likely calderas.

A map showing the new calderas. 

(Verolino et al., Commun. Earth Environ., 2026)

Five of the candidates were already recognized as submarine calderas, lending confidence that the method can successfully identify real examples.

This means that the researchers found 73 possible calderas that we didn't know about before. If confirmed, their discovery would more than triple the number of known submarine calderas – and the algorithm may be refined to find even more in the future.

The discoveries also reveal where submarine calderas are most likely to occur.

Eight of the newly found features were at mid-ocean ridges at the boundary between two tectonic plates.

Nine were identified in volcanic arcs.

And a whopping 61 were found in interior tectonic settings, such as seamount chains, rather than at tectonic boundaries.

The researchers also highlighted seven of the newly identified calderas as especially worthwhile targets for future exploration because their location, water depth and shape suggest they could be important for understanding submarine volcanic hazards.

It's important to note that the paper did not assess whether any of these calderas are currently active.

However, several recent studies have found that even volcanoes we think are extinct may be quietly refilling with magma and may become active in the future.

So it's important to know where these locations are and make a closer examination of the ones that could cause the most disruption.

"This study lays a critical foundation for evaluating submarine volcanic risks and improving global preparedness," the researchers write.

"Our aim is not to produce a complete global inventory of submarine calderas, but to establish a transparent and reproducible framework that yields a conservative baseline dataset, which can be expanded as higher-resolution bathymetry and future studies become available."

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Octopus Brains Defy a Long-Held Rule About Why Animals Evolve Intelligence

09 July 2026, By J. Cockerill

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-size-of-cephalopod-brains-seems-curiously-related-to-their-habitat

(Eric VOLTO/500px/Getty Images)

Biologists have long believed that having a large brain, relative to your body, might go hand-in-hand with being part of a particularly social species.

This is called the social brain hypothesis, and it holds up pretty well for a particular branch of the animal family tree: ours.

We share this branch with a number of other social animals: hoofed herd animals like sheep and goats; pack carnivores, like wolves and lions; whales; dolphins; bats; primates; and possibly birds too.

All of these animals tend to follow the relationship described in the social brain hypothesis: Bigger social circles correlate with bigger brains, specifically with the mammalian neocortex.

But a few other, very different kinds of animals, on a very different branch of the tree, are also known for the size of their brains, and the complexity of their behaviors: cephalopods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st8-EY71K84

These include squids, octopuses, and cuttlefish, none of which are particularly known for their social skills.

In fact, many cephalopods are actively hostile towards other members of their group, and only a few (mainly squid) are known to gather in larger groups at all. Even then, it's sometimes a bit of a bloodbath.

Cephalopods also die shortly after laying eggs, which means they don't even have the kinds of parenting behaviors that underlie the most basic of social structures.

In which case, why are their brains so darn big?

The authors of a new study published in iScience propose that cephalopods may be evidence that something else is the dominant driver of brain size.

They refer to the cultural brain hypothesis, first introduced in a 2018 paper by economic psychologist Michael Muthukrishna and colleagues.

Muthukrishna, who is based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, is also a principal investigator on this new research.

The giant cuttlefish that aggregate for breeding in the Spencer Gulf in Australia are some of the only cephalopods known to have large social gatherings. Here, one male fights off another. 

(wildestanimal/Moment/Getty Images)

In the new study, the researchers point out that the social brain hypothesis is held up only by correlation, which doesn't necessarily explain the mechanisms behind it.

"Correlations suggest possible factors in brain evolution, but by themselves they cannot tell us how or why brains evolved, nor disentangle cause from consequence among multiple confounding variables," first author and anthropologist Kiran Basava and team write in the new paper.

In other words, there are limits to what the social brain hypothesis can tell us.

"For decades the main story of why brains got big has been a social one where bigger brains evolve to manage bigger, more complex groups," Muthukrishna says.

"Cephalopods reveal that there's another path to bigger brains. They're often solitary, short-lived, sometimes even cannibalistic, and yet have large brains and intelligent behavior."

The cultural brain hypothesis proposes that "brains have been selected for their ability to store and manage information, acquired through asocial or social learning".

In other words, large social groups may indeed be one of the pressures that favor a larger brain in animal evolution.

But it's not necessarily the only one.

"Scientific dogma always needs to be questioned." – octopus psychologist Jennifer Mather

In the new paper, researchers identified that habitat, not sociality, is more likely to be a key selection pressure for the larger brains we see in cephalopods.

They compiled comparative data about the brain size of 79 cephalopod species, along with details about their ecology, behaviors, and sociality.

Those that live on the sea floor, and in shallower habitats, tended to have larger brains.

The results suggest that ecological factors are a primary selection pressure for larger brains, in environments where animals can access a lot of food, and encounter comparatively more complex landscapes.

Anyone who has seen a benthic, shallow-water octopus in action will know this theory describes them well.

Their soft molluscan bodies, freed from the structure of an exterior shell, can take on an endless variety of shapes (and degrees of leg co-ordination) to make use of what's around them.

They can hunt many different kinds of prey, fit in many different kinds of crevasses, use many different kinds of tools. They spend most of their lives flying solo – though sometimes they will team up with other animals in their vicinity.

And, they have really big brains relative to their body size.

Meanwhile, cephalopods that do display social behaviors – squid, bobtail squid, and cuttlefish – did not necessarily have larger brains the more social they were. This suggests the social brain hypothesis does not apply here.

"This should remind us that scientific dogma always needs to be questioned, and that once again it shows that cephalopods don't follow the predictable evolutionary paths," octopus psychologist Jennifer Mather from the University of Lethbridge, who co-led the study, says.

Of course, this research still ultimately relies on correlation. But it does suggest there's more to brain size than a species' level of sociality.

"Our research started with a mathematical model we built years ago to explain human brain evolution that predicted a second path to big brains," Muthukrishna says.

"Solitary animals could evolve large brains if their environment was rich and complex enough to reward learning. Octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish let us test that prediction and the data fit. It turns out there's more than one path to evolving intelligence."

The Life of Earth

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Humans And Neanderthals Shared a Culture For 20,000 Years, Cave Discovery Suggests

08 July 2026, By D. Nield

https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-and-neanderthals-may-have-shared-a-culture-for-20000-years

(Emissary_Filmworks/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

We know from the traces left behind in our DNA that Homo sapiens met and mingled with Neanderthals long before our species eventually came to dominate.

Now a new cave excavation points to an even closer relationship between these groups, which appears to have lasted for many thousands of years.

Experts from Türkiye, France, and Japan have been digging down into layers of sediment in the Üçağızlı II Cave in northern Türkiye, part of the Levant region that acted as a corridor for early modern humans to spread to Eurasia from Africa.

They found evidence of Neanderthals (starting from around 77,000 years ago) and modern humans (starting from around 59,000 years ago) living in the same location – but even as the inhabitants of the cave changed, a lot of the stone tools, hunting techniques, and collected objects stayed the same.

Some of the shells discovered at the site.

 (Baykara et al., PNAS, 2026)



It suggests some elements of a common culture between the groups that may have spanned as many as 20,000 years.

"Our findings indicate a deep level of cultural interaction," says anthropologist Naoki Morimoto from Kyoto University in Japan.

"These two distinct but closely related human groups were not just adapting to the same environment: they were probably sharing symbolic preferences."

The researchers used a technique known as optically stimulated luminescence, which estimates when grains of sediment were last exposed to sunlight, to date the items found in the cave.

In terms of a shared culture, the most notable discoveries were Columbella rustica snail seashells. These would have had no value as food, so must have been ornamental – and although these shells had previously only been associated with H. sapiens, it turns out that Neanderthals collected them too.

The site of the archaeological excavations. A distant view of the Üçağızlı II Cave in southern Türkiye. 

(Kyoto University / Naoki Morimoto)



The implication is that these two species were in direct contact, sharing knowledge and traditions over the centuries.

"Our findings suggest shared behaviors between Neanderthals and modern humans that extended beyond subsistence to include nonutilitarian behaviors within the specific geographic and temporal context studied here," write the researchers in their published paper.

Other discoveries in the cave sediment included teeth, a jawbone, engraved artifacts, and animal remains: including deer, goats, and wild boars.

"Our findings indicate a deep level of cultural interaction." – anthropologist Naoki Morimoto

The researchers didn't actually find Neanderthal and early modern human remains together in the same sediment layer (time period), but considering that these communities were hunting the same animals and collecting the same shells, the researchers suggest they were in regular contact.

"Although we cannot yet prove direct contact, the remarkable continuity in technology, hunting practices, and the transport of bead-seashells is consistent with the idea that these populations interacted and shared cultural traditions over time," archaeologist İsmail Baykara from Gaziantep University in Türkiye told Katie Hunt at CNN.

Peering back this far in time is of course tricky, but studies are regularly appearing that tell us more about the Neanderthals and how they lived – and how they went extinct too.

A lot of recent research indicates that Neanderthals and early modern humans interacted a lot more than may have been assumed in the past.

Despite the significance of the region in the history of human expansion, the fossil findings from the Levant are actually relatively scarce. This new analysis provides some much needed insight into a critical moment for our ancient ancestors.

A similar sort of "behavioral uniformity", in terms of tools and traditions, has been spotted by researchers once before, backing up the Neanderthal and H. sapiens theory developed in this study – though more digging will be needed to develop the idea further, and to map where and when these cultural crossovers might have happened.

"Our findings are consistent with a recent proposition – albeit one derived from an earlier timeframe (~100 ka) than that of our site – that a uniform culture could have existed across different human species in the Levant during the Late Pleistocene based on archaeological evidence," write the researchers.

The birth of modern Man

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