Neurogenesis: The Comprehensive Guide to Neuroscience-Based Self-Improvement

Dr. Sydney Ceruto, PhD, Neuroscientist & Author, October 18, 2026

https://mindlabneuroscience.com/how-neurogenesis-works/

This is a selection of comments from this web page.

Key Takeaways (Index of post on website)

The Neurogenesis Process:   How Your Brain Builds New Neurons

Exercise:   The Most Potent Neurogenesis Catalyst

Stress:   The Neurogenesis Suppressor

The Hippocampus:   Neurogenesis Command Center

Dietary Factors:   Feeding Neurogenesis

Sleep:   The Neurogenesis Recovery Window

Environmental Enrichment:   Creating Neurogenic Environments

Age and Neurogenesis:   Debunking the Decline Myth

Neurogenesis and Mental Health:   Rewriting Emotional Circuitry

Clinical Applications:   Neurogenesis in Practice

Future Directions:   The Neurogenesis Frontier

If Your Brain’s Renewal System Needs Intervention How long does it take for new neurons to become 

functional?

Can you increase neurogenesis through lifestyle changes?

Does neurogenesis decline with age and can it be restored?

Can adults really grow new brain cells?

What type of exercise best promotes neurogenesis?

How does chronic stress damage the brain’s ability to produce new neurons?

Which foods support new brain cell growth?

Does neurogenesis slow down as you age?

From Reading to Rewiring

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Adult neurogenesis produces roughly 700 new hippocampal neurons daily, many integrating into existing circuits

Physical exercise increases neurogenesis through BDNF elevation and enhanced vascular supply

Chronic stress reduces new neuron production via cortisol-mediated suppression of neural stem cells

The dentate gyrus is the brain’s primary neurogenic niche, supporting pattern separation and memory formation

Environmental enrichment can restore neurogenesis rates even after prolonged stress or aging-related decline

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Flavonoids (polyphenolic compounds found in blueberries, dark chocolate, and green tea) exert potent neurogenic effects through multiple pathways. These compounds cross the blood-brain barrier and accumulate in neurogenic regions, where they enhance neural stem cell proliferation and support new neuron integration. Blueberry consumption specifically increases hippocampal BDNF levels and promotes the survival of newly generated neurons.

Neurogenesis-Supporting Nutrients:

Omega-3 fatty acids (DHA/EPA): 1-2g daily, enhances BDNF signaling
Flavonoids: 500-1000mg daily, reduces inflammation and supports stem cell activity
Curcumin: 500-1500mg daily, modulates inflammatory pathways
Magnesium: 400-600mg daily, supports NMDA receptor function and neuroplasticity
Vitamin D: 2000-4000 IU daily, regulates neural stem cell differentiation

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Social interaction represents another critical neurogenic factor. Isolation reduces neurogenesis, while rich social environments enhance stem cell activity through multiple pathways. Social engagement activates oxytocin signaling, which promotes BDNF production and supports new neuron survival. It also provides cognitive challenges that stimulate hippocampal circuits, creating demand for enhanced processing capacity.

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Older adults who maintain physically active lifestyles show neurogenesis rates comparable to sedentary individuals 20-30 years younger

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No Batteries, No Plugs: Scientists Create a Tiny Sensor That Powers Itself

By U. of Arkansas, Oct. 28, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/no-batteries-no-plugs-scientists-create-a-tiny-sensor-that-powers-itself/

Soldering a graphene-based sensor. 

Credit: Russell Cothren

Scientists have developed a tiny temperature sensor that harvests energy from magnetic fields near electrical wiring.

Electrical wiring produces weak electromagnetic fields that typically go unnoticed, but researchers have found a way to turn some of that energy into a power source for tiny electronic devices. Scientists at the University of Arkansas (U of A) and the University of Michigan have developed a graphene-based energy harvester capable of powering an ultra-low-power temperature sensor without a conventional battery.

The prototype operates using energy collected from its immediate surroundings, consuming power measured in nanowatts, or billionths of a watt. It represents another advance toward the team’s goal of developing autonomous sensors that could function unattended for decades.

Turning Electrical Wiring Into a Power Source

The technology captures energy from magnetic fields generated by electrical wiring carrying alternating current. In the United States, electricity typically operates at 60 hertz, meaning the current changes direction 60 times each second. The researchers designed their sensor to harvest energy from these low-frequency fields.

A graphene inductor collects the energy and sends an alternating electrical signal to a custom circuit, which converts it into direct current. That electricity charges capacitors that store energy for the sensor to use. Unlike a battery, a capacitor stores energy in an electric field rather than through chemical reactions.

“The inductor adds charge to these capacitors at a slow rate,” explained University of Arkansas physics professor Paul Thibado, “but it’s faster than the rate the sensor uses up the charges from the capacitors.”

Because the sensor consumes energy more slowly than the system replenishes it, the capacitors can maintain an electrical reserve. Thibado estimates that this stored energy could keep the device operating for at least 24 hours during a power outage, potentially extending to a week.

Building Sensors That Can Power Themselves

The new device is the second graphene-powered temperature sensor developed by the research team. Their earlier work demonstrated that graphene-based solar cells could supply enough electricity to operate temperature sensors, establishing another possible source of energy for autonomous electronics.

Graphene, a material consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms, has electrical properties that make it useful in energy-harvesting technologies. Thibado has investigated these properties for more than a decade and invented the graphene energy harvesters used in the team’s research.

The researchers ultimately want to combine several methods of collecting environmental energy, including sunlight, heat, sound, motion, and ambient electromagnetic fields. A sensor equipped with multiple harvesting systems could continue operating when one energy source becomes unavailable, reducing its dependence on any single power supply.

Applications Beyond Temperature Monitoring

Although temperature measurement provides a practical demonstration, the technology could eventually support sensors used in agriculture, environmental monitoring, medical tracking, wearable electronics, and supply chain management. These applications often require devices to operate in locations where replacing batteries is expensive, inconvenient, or impractical.

Thibado describes the long-term vision as “set it and forget it,” with sensors designed to operate for extended periods without routine battery replacement. Eliminating disposable batteries could also reduce maintenance demands and electronic waste, although decades of reliable operation have not yet been demonstrated.

The research was published in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B, with MD Rezaul Kabir, a doctoral candidate in materials science and engineering at the University of Arkansas, serving as first author. The project also involves researchers at the University of Michigan, including electrical engineering and computer science professor David Blaauw, whose work focuses on low-power wireless sensors and embedded systems.

Commercial Development and Future Possibilities

NTS Innovations, a nanotechnology company, holds the exclusive license to commercialize the graphene energy-harvesting technology. The company has supported patent development, business planning, and efforts to identify potential customers and commercial partners.

More than 60 parties have expressed interest in testing the technology and exploring ways to integrate it into products. Ongoing discussions are helping establish practical requirements, including the minimum electrical power needed for different applications.

The researchers envision networks of self-powered sensors that can collect information for years with little human intervention. Combining graphene-based energy harvesting with electronics that consume extremely small amounts of electricity could help make that goal achievable, particularly as connected devices become more common in homes, industries, and environmental monitoring systems.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Experts Spent Decades Searching for the Secret to Happiness. Here’s What They Found

By Simon Fraser U., Oct. 28, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/experts-spent-decades-searching-for-the-secret-to-happiness-heres-what-they-found/

Scientists suggest that happiness is neither constant nor entirely determined by circumstances. Their findings reveal how everyday choices may shape long-term well-being.

 Credit: Shutterstock

After decades of studying happiness, some of the world’s leading researchers have changed how they live.

Some of the world’s leading happiness researchers have changed how they live because of what they have discovered. After decades of studying well-being, several have made a conscious effort to spend more time with family and friends, reflecting one of the strongest findings in happiness science.

Their insights come from a discussion involving 13 international experts with a combined 600 years of research experience. The conversation, which explored both scientific evidence and personal experience, led to a new paper published in the Journal of Happiness Studies.

Five Key Lessons From Happiness Research

The key takeaways:

Strong relationships are central to happiness. Social connections consistently emerge as powerful predictors of well-being. Several researchers have applied this finding by deliberately making more time for the people closest to them.

More money does not guarantee greater happiness. Financial security helps support a good life, but additional income generally has a smaller effect on happiness once essential needs are met.

Meaningful activities support well-being. Work and other pursuits can contribute to happiness when they provide purpose and reflect a person’s values.

Daily habits can help cultivate happiness. Researchers described using strategies supported by scientific evidence, including practicing gratitude, savoring positive experiences, volunteering, strengthening relationships, and becoming more socially involved.

Being happy does not mean always feeling good. Lasting well-being involves living according to personal values, building supportive connections, and adapting to difficulties rather than avoiding negative emotions altogether.

Why Relationships Matter So Much

“Happiness emerges from a symphony of factors, but if I had to pinpoint one secret to happiness, relationships with other people might be it,” says Lara Aknin, a professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University.

Aknin coauthored the paper with Harvard University’s Säde Stenlund and Kelsey O’Connor, a senior researcher at Luxembourg’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. She emphasizes that social connections are among the most consistently supported findings in happiness research.

“Having relationships is one of the most reliable predictors of happiness that has emerged from a robust body of evidence spanning the social sciences,” says Aknin.

“We know that having just one person you can count on is extremely consequential. Having more relationships and more communities that you feel a part of compounds that sense of well-being.”

How Much Control Do We Have Over Happiness?

Although genetics and life circumstances influence happiness, researchers emphasize that well-being is not necessarily fixed. People who generally consider themselves happy still experience setbacks, stress, and negative emotions. Their overall well-being can depend partly on how they respond to challenges and the activities they choose to pursue.

Some influential models of happiness have estimated that life circumstances, including where someone lives, employment, age, and relationship status, account for roughly 10% of happiness, while voluntary activities may contribute as much as 40%. These figures are model-based estimates rather than fixed proportions that apply to everyone, but they highlight the potential role of personal behavior.

“That leaves a lot of opportunity for people who may be more innately pessimistic to start practising research-backed strategies like meditation or gratitude that might help them see the world in a more positive way,” she says.

Happiness Research Is Still Evolving

The scientific study of well-being has expanded considerably since the 1970s, when the modern field began taking shape. What was once a relatively small area of research now encompasses numerous approaches to understanding happiness, life satisfaction, social relationships, and psychological health.

Aknin, who also coedits the annual World Happiness Report, says this expansion has brought challenges. As researchers pursue increasingly specialized questions, some early leaders worry that the field has become fragmented. Despite these differences, the scientists who participated in the discussion shared a commitment to rigorous research that can be translated into practical ways to improve people’s lives.

Why Happiness May Benefit More Than Just the Individual

The researchers also considered how personal well-being affects people’s willingness and ability to support others. Studies have linked happiness with positive outcomes beyond individual life satisfaction, including greater motivation to help other people.

“With many large and threatening realities taking place in the world right now, I sometimes worry that the pursuit of happiness can seem trite. But one reason I remain committed to the scientific study of happiness is that happiness in and of itself predicts a number of valuable outcomes, including the motivation to help other people,” she explains.

“When people feel they are doing well, they have the ability, the capability, and the motivation to engage in world affairs—to take care of the people they love and take care of their communities.”

Aknin describes generosity as a process that can benefit both those who give and those who receive. Supporting others can strengthen relationships and communities, creating opportunities for care and connection to spread.

“Generosity is not zero-sum.”

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

The Ocean’s Mysterious “Snow” Could Be Hiding a Powerful Climate Secret

BY U. OF CAL. - SAN DIEGO, OCT. 27, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/the-oceans-mysterious-snow-could-be-hiding-a-powerful-climate-secret/

Viscous marine snow particles (white) colonized by bacteria (orange) transport carbon to the deep ocean. 

Credit: Must credit Bryce Inman



A new imaging technique reveals how bacteria interact with the microscopic structure of marine snow.

A surprising property of the tiny particles sinking through the ocean could help determine how much carbon is stored in the deep sea. Scientists have discovered that the stickiness of marine snow affects how easily bacteria can break it down, potentially changing how much carbon reaches the ocean depths.

Researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Lincoln found that particularly gooey marine snow resists bacterial degradation. Their findings, published October 8 in Science, suggest that highly viscous particles can transport more than six times as much carbon to the deep ocean as less viscous particles.
The Ocean’s Never-Ending Snowfall

Marine snow consists of tiny clumps of dead plankton, waste, mucus, minerals, and other debris that continuously descend through the water column. As these particles sink, they carry carbon from the sunlit surface ocean toward deeper waters, where some of it can remain stored for hundreds or thousands of years.

Scientists estimate that marine snow transports more than 10 gigatons (11 billion U.S. tons) of carbon away from the surface each year. However, only about 2 gigatons (2.2 billion U.S. tons) reach depths where the carbon can remain stored for extended periods. Much of the sinking material is broken down or recycled before reaching those depths.

The new research identifies particle viscosity, a measure of resistance to flow, as an important factor in this process. Marine snow particles vary in composition and consistency, and those differences influence how bacteria colonize and consume them.
Scientists Find a Way to See Inside Marine Snow

Understanding these interactions required a technique that had previously been unavailable: directly observing individual living bacteria as they navigate the microscopic structure of mucus.

“Observing individual bacteria interacting with the physical structure of mucus had never been possible,” said Bryce Inman, who began investigating the problem in 2021 while working as a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps Oceanography.

After four years of unsuccessful attempts, Inman and his colleagues, including Scripps microbiologist and professor emeritus Farooq Azam, developed a working approach in 2025. By combining 3D confocal microscopy with specialized fluorescent molecules, they could map the intricate physical structure of marine snow and track how bacteria interacted with it. The imaging technique is described in a companion study published in Nature Communications.

Why Stickier Marine Snow Carries More Carbon

The images showed that bacteria colonize less viscous regions near the surface of marine snow particles more easily than the thicker, more resistant material inside. These internal regions present a physical barrier that bacteria must gradually break down before penetrating farther into the particle.

“Bacteria can latch on to less viscous portions of each particle, but cannot reach more viscous regions until they break it down,” Inman explained. “Think of it like a worm in an apple: the flesh is easy to penetrate, but the core is tough to chew through”

Laboratory experiments confirmed that more viscous marine snow takes longer for bacteria to degrade and fragment. Computer simulations further suggested that these resistant particles can sink to greater depths before breaking apart. Together, the findings indicate that viscosity can substantially influence how much carbon escapes recycling in shallower waters and reaches the deep ocean.

What Ocean Slime Could Reveal About Other Ecosystems

The newly developed imaging method could also help researchers investigate interactions between bacteria and mucus in other environments. Similar relationships occur in coral reefs, kelp forests, plant root systems, and the digestive tracts of humans and other animals.

“Mucus, slime, whatever you want to call it, has a surprising amount of structure,” Inman said. “There are bulges, crevasses, all this sort of structure to it that we really had no idea about at a scale smaller than bacteria. This is the first time we’re really examining this physical habitat.”

By making these microscopic environments visible, the technique could support research into how bacteria colonize mucus, interact with its physical structure, and influence processes ranging from ocean carbon storage to coral reef recovery and human health.

The Life of Earth

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Astronomers Discover a Giant New Dwarf Planet Candidate Hiding Beyond Pluto

28 Oct. 2026, By M. STARR

https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-discover-giant-new-dwarf-planet-candidate-hiding-beyond-pluto

An artist's impression of an icy world surrounded by debris in the outer Solar System. 

(Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)

The far reaches of the Solar System are largely a mystery to humanity.

This region represents a sort of liminal interstice – an anti-Goldilocks zone too cold and too dark for both our close-range Solar System observatories and the powerful space telescopes with long-range vision that extends billions of light-years into space.

For many years, scientists have reconstructed the space beyond Pluto from breadcrumbs – scattered discoveries and indirect clues gleaned from the motion of those objects we have actually detected.

Now, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is poised to blow it all wide open.

Researchers have just announced a spectacular new discovery – the telescope's first candidate dwarf planet, a large object in the Kuiper Belt some 600 to 1,500 kilometers (373 to 932 miles) across.

Here's the really amazing part. The object, named 2026 ED138, may have been right under our noses all along. Its entire orbit lies within Pluto's range of distances from the Sun – yet we've only just discovered it.

And it may be one of the largest objects discovered yet in trans-Neptunian space, potentially reaching a size comparable to Makemake and Haumea.

"My first reaction was one of excited disbelief," says astrophysicist Matthew Holman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who made the discovery.

"Objects like this are very rare, so I immediately started checking whether I or the code had done something wrong."

A mosaic of Rubin's ED138 discovery images.

 (NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA; 

Image Processing: M. Jurić/UW, D. de Martin & M. Zamani/NSF NOIRLab)

Everything we have managed to learn so far about the Solar System beyond Neptune (about 30 astronomical units from the Sun) indicates that there's a lot more out there than meets the eye.

In trans-Neptunian space lies the Kuiper Belt – a vast field of icy objects that extends out to about 55 astronomical units; and much farther beyond that, the hypothetical Oort Cloud, which may extend tens of thousands of astronomical units into space.

We've detected thousands of trans-Neptunian objects, from dwarf planets to small, icy bodies, while comets plunging toward the inner Solar System offer glimpses of material from even more distant regions.

However, directly observing the objects out there is extraordinarily difficult.

At such enormous distances from the Sun, they receive very little sunlight to reflect, making them extremely faint at optical wavelengths. They're also bitterly cold, emitting only a feeble thermal glow in the far infrared.

And they're not stationary. As they travel around the Sun, their positions against the background stars gradually change. Unless a telescope is looking in the right place at the right time, an object can easily escape detection.

The final nail in the coffin is orbital misbehavior. The larger objects closer to the Sun orbit more or less in a flat plane – but beyond Neptune, things can get more chaotic. Many trans-Neptunian objects orbit the Sun at weird angles, dramatically expanding the area of sky astronomers need to search.

This is where the Vera C. Rubin Observatory comes in.

Equipped with the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy, Rubin is designed to repeatedly survey enormous swathes of the southern sky, capturing objects too faint for many previous surveys to detect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-itfmt0IRQ

Rubin's 3.2-gigapixel camera can image an area of sky equivalent to around 40 full moons in a single exposure.

By returning to the same regions again and again, astronomers can identify faint points of light that change position against the background stars, revealing objects moving through the Solar System.

It saw first light in June 2025 – and by March 2026, ED138 had wandered into its field of view.

On 13 October 2026, Holman was analyzing Rubin observations using software developed with colleague Kevin Napier when something unusual caught his attention.

The telescope had recorded a large, previously unknown object moving through the Kuiper Belt.

The team traced it through 30 detections across 20 nights of Rubin observations, dating from 4 March to 11 July 2026.

Then, they looked further back – and found the object hiding in archival observations from the Dark Energy Camera, dating all the way back to February 2016.

For a decade, evidence of this distant world had been sitting in astronomical images, just waiting for someone to come along and find it.

And it wasn't limited to just one observation. The Dark Energy Camera had also snapped the object in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2023.

Those archival observations were a gift – extending the observational record back years and allowing the researchers to characterize ED138's orbit.

According to the Minor Planet Center, ED138 takes around 281 years to complete one orbit of the Sun, coming to a distance of 36.86 astronomical units from the Sun at perihelion and 49.04 astronomical units at aphelion.

Pluto, for context, orbits between 29.6 and 49.08 astronomical units from the Sun. ED138's average orbital distance is around 42.95 astronomical units, slightly farther out than Pluto's, due to its more distant perihelion.

Since ED138 hangs out in Pluto's range, you might be wondering how it has evaded astronomers.

Well, its orbit is also tilted by around 24.5 degrees relative to the plane of the Solar System – a striking example of the orbital shenanigans that can make trans-Neptunian objects so difficult to find.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GScw6xLHPp4

To make matters worse, ED138 was hiding against the densely populated backdrop of the Milky Way, where myriad stars made it even harder to pick out.

The object's exact size, however, remains a mystery.

Astronomers can estimate its diameter from its brightness and distance, but there's a catch. A smaller object with a highly reflective, icy surface can appear just as bright as a much larger object with a darker surface.

Without knowing how reflective ED138 is, researchers can only estimate that it measures somewhere between 600 and 1,500 kilometers across.

At those dimensions, however, it's likely to be massive enough for its own gravity to pull it into a roughly spherical shape – one of the defining characteristics of a dwarf planet.

Further observations, particularly at infrared wavelengths, will help astronomers pin down its size and assess whether it meets the criteria for dwarf planet status – whereupon, no doubt, it will be given a catchier name than ED138.

And ED138 is likely just the beginning.

Over the decade-long survey it commenced in June 2026, Rubin is expected to discover thousands of previously unknown objects in the outer Solar System, helping astronomers piece together its history and evolution – and perhaps even revealing worlds larger and stranger than anything we've found so far.

Among the tantalizing possibilities is the hypothetical Planet Nine, a massive but undiscovered world whose gravitational influence has been proposed to explain the unusual orbits of some distant trans-Neptunian objects.

Rubin could be the thing that lifts the curtain on the Planet Nine mystery – revealing whether those strange orbits are indeed caused by a prodigal planet or a swarm of rocks in a planet-shaped trenchcoat.

Either way, we're poised for a bold new era of Solar System discovery.

"Rubin will image the whole southern sky again and again for ten years," Holman says, "so any others hiding in the places earlier surveys skipped are now within reach."

The Life of Earth

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2.8 Million Eels Have Gathered Around a Single Deep-Sea Mountain Off The Coast of Australia

28 Oct. 2026, By M. STARR

https://www.sciencealert.com/millions-of-mysterious-deep-sea-eels-caught-gathering-off-the-coast-of-tasmania

Basketwork eels gathering in extraordinary numbers around Patience Seamount, south of Tasmania, in footage captured in 2007.

 (CSIRO)

Every year, hundreds of meters below the waves in the cold, dark waters off southeast Australia, a wondrous gathering takes place.

Around a lonely mountain south of Tasmania called Patience Seamount, millions of eels converge, transforming a normally quiet patch of the deep sea into a seething morass of writhing, sinuous bodies.

These deep-sea creatures are basketwork eels (Diastobranchus capensis), and scientists believe they're gathering for one of the most important events of their lives – reproduction.

Now, a study led by marine scientist Ben Scoulding of Australia's CSIRO has quantified the astonishing scale of this mysterious congregation for the first time.

At its peak, Scoulding and his colleagues have determined, the gathering could contain as many as 2.8 million eels, collectively weighing more than 3,500 metric tons (3,860 US tons).

Yet one enormous question lingers: Why, of all the relatively similar nearby mountains under the ocean, do the eels choose this one?

"That's one of the biggest unanswered questions," Scoulding told ScienceAlert.

"Patience is one of around 120 seamounts in the Huon and Tasman Fracture marine parks south of Tasmania, and although nearby seamounts have similar depths and broad environmental characteristics, they don't support the same aggregation of eels.

"At this stage, we have some good hypotheses, but we don't yet have a definitive answer."

Basketwork eels swimming above the seabed at Patience Seamount during a 2025 survey. 

(CSIRO)



Teasing apart the true scale of the annual basketwork eel aggregation at Patience Seamount is the work of decades.

Unusual numbers of the eels in the area had been reported by commercial fisheries since at least the 1980s and 1990s, but it wasn't until 2007 that a deep-sea camera survey finally captured the extraordinary gathering on film.

The seamount lies within the Huon Marine Park, established in 2007 as an expansion of an earlier marine reserve created in 1999 to protect the region's fragile deep-sea ecosystems.

As part of a 2007 expedition to survey the seabed and marine life in and around the marine park, CSIRO scientists towed a camera behind a research vessel – like the bear going over the mountain – to see what they could see.

In contrast to the bear, however, they saw much more than the other side of the mountain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FVpEeGuZbw

In the permanent darkness deep beneath the waves, the water column roiled with eels.

Subsequent surveys shed further light. The eels inhabit the seamount year-round, but their numbers peak in the southern autumn months, from March to May. Eels caught during this peak have been found in advanced spawning condition – both male and female – strongly indicating a reproductive reason for the eel jamboree.

It is, by all accounts, spectacular.

"Although seamounts are well known as hotspots where fish can aggregate, it's unusual to find millions of fish concentrated around a single feature. Patience Seamount itself is relatively small, covering only about 2 square kilometers [0.8 square miles], yet it consistently supports an enormous seasonal aggregation over many months," Scoulding said.

"Seeing so much biomass concentrated on such a small deep-sea feature is rare, and the scale, persistence, and likely reproductive nature of the aggregation make it one of the most remarkable fish aggregations documented in the deep ocean."

But observing an extraordinary eel swarm is one thing. Working out just how many are there is not as simple.

A 2021 paper on the aggregation used hydroacoustic measurements and on-camera eel counts to estimate that tens of thousands of eels may have been present during an April 2015 aggregation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EKK-u6XvuU

Scoulding and his colleagues wanted to address the question with intent and precision.

"What nobody knew was how large the aggregation was, how long it persisted, or how many eels were actually involved," he said. "One of the main aims of our study was to answer those questions."

Between 2023 and 2025, the researchers conducted a series of surveys around Patience Seamount, using sonar to map the enormous concentrations of fish in the water.

But there was a complication. Basketwork eels aren't the only fish that gather around Patience Seamount. Orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus) also congregate there, and sonar alone can't distinguish between the two.

So the team combined their acoustic measurements with underwater camera footage, which allowed them to work out how much each species was contributing to the sonar signal.

Their findings revealed an aggregation of jaw-dropping proportions. At its largest, the swarm extended roughly 3 kilometers long, 2 kilometers wide, and 150 meters above the seafloor (1.9 miles long by 1.2 miles wide, and 492 feet high).

A sonar cross-section of Patience Seamount showing a dense aggregation of fish extending above the seabed. The colors indicate the strength of the acoustic reflections, not individual species. 

(CSIRO)



The researchers estimated that the biomass of basketwork eels increased from around 750 metric tons in March to more than 3,500 metric tons in May.

"The sheer size of it was remarkable. Estimating that there could be up to 2.8 million eels and more than 3,500 tons of biomass concentrated around a single seamount really highlights just how extraordinary Patience Seamount is," Scoulding said.

And, he noted, by combining their new data with previous surveys, the researchers were able to document the aggregation's presence from December to August.

"The thing that surprised me most was the persistence of the aggregation. We knew it existed, but we didn't expect it to be present for so much of the year."

The composition of the gathering also changes throughout the year. At some times, orange roughy make up a substantial proportion of the fish; at others, basketwork eels overwhelmingly dominate.

The two species even seem to prefer different parts of the mountain. Orange roughy tend to gather around the steeper upper slopes, while basketwork eels prefer the deeper, flatter terrain around its base.

What makes Patience Seamount so attractive to the eels, however, remains unclear. One possibility, the researchers noted, is its proximity to the continental shelf, which may influence fish movement or the currents flowing around the mountain.

Whatever the reason, the gathering underscores the importance of protecting these remote deep-sea habitats.

Basketwork eels scattered across the seabed at Patience Seamount, photographed by a deep-towed camera in April 2025.

 (Scoulding et al., R. Soc. Open Sci., 2026)



Patience Seamount was once subjected to bottom trawling, but scientists are now seeing encouraging signs of recovery, including rebuilding orange roughy populations and the return of living corals to previously trawled areas.

And there is still much to learn about the eels themselves. Scoulding and his team found further evidence that they're gathering to reproduce, including females carrying advanced eggs and sporting empty bellies.

This introduced an unexpected wrinkle to the research. The eels may stop feeding as they prepare to spawn – and an eel that isn't hungry is unlikely to take the bait. From among the writhing mass of eels deep below their boat, the researchers only managed to catch seven.

And they have yet to establish exactly when and where spawning takes place.

Understanding that process – and how the aggregation changes from year to year – could help scientists determine what these fascinating animals need to thrive.

"Because the aggregation occurs within a protected marine park, it provides a rare opportunity to revisit the site every few years and see how the population changes through time," Scoulding said.

"If the ecosystem continues to recover from historical fishing impacts, we may see further increases in the size of the aggregation."

The Life of Earth

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Scientists Discover Mysterious 150,000-Year-Old Bone From an Extinct Human Relative in Chinese Cave

BY CHINESE ACAD. OF SCI. HEADQUARTERS, OCT. 27, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-discover-mysterious-150000-year-old-bone-from-an-extinct-human-relative-in-chinese-cave/

The Penghu 1 jawbone was discovered off Taiwan and previously identified as Denisovan through ancient protein analysis. Although not part of the new Bianfu Cave study, this fossil provided additional evidence of the geographic range and physical characteristics of these ancient human relatives. 

Credit: Chun-Hsiang Chang, Jay Chang

A search through more than 60,000 bone fragments uncovered the first confirmed Denisovan radius, a forearm bone offering rare clues to how these ancient human relatives were built.

A forearm fragment from a cave in southwest China combines features resembling those of Neanderthals and modern humans, yet it belonged to neither. Proteins preserved in the bone identify its owner as Denisovan, part of an ancient human group recognized through genetic evidence.

The fragment is the first, and so far only, confirmed Denisovan radius, one of the two long bones in the forearm. Denisovans are thought to have lived across much of Asia, but their fossil record is sparse, particularly for bones below the skull. That scarcity has left researchers with little evidence of the physical traits that helped them adapt to different environments.

The radius is among five remains from Bianfu Cave in Yunnan Province that a new study identified as Denisovan. Dating to the late Middle Pleistocene, the fossils fill a longstanding gap in the group’s known distribution in southwest China. Professor Qiaomei Fu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) led the research in collaboration with multiple institutions. The findings were published in Nature on September 9.
Neanderthal and modern human traits combined

Cataloged as BFD771, the radius fragment preserves the end nearest the elbow. Its large dimensions at that end resemble Neanderthal radii, as does the likely inward orientation of its radial tuberosity, the bony projection where the biceps muscle attaches. Its overall external shape, however, is closer to that of modern humans. So is the geometry of a cross section through the middle of its neck, the narrowed region near the elbow end. The researchers interpret this combination as evidence of distinctive mechanical demands and behavioral adaptations in Denisovans, differing from those inferred for Neanderthals and modern humans.

The geographical location of the Bianfu Cave and the morphology of the two human teeth and three newly discovered Denisovan bones. 

Credit: IVPP

Two skull fragments, BFD767 and BFD769, provided another anatomical comparison. Both are pieces of parietal bones, which form part of the top and sides of the skull. Their skull vault thickness patterns most closely resemble those of Homo heidelbergensis and late Middle Pleistocene archaic Homo from East Asia.

Bone shape narrows the search

Finding these bones required narrowing a collection of more than 60,000 fragments. Researchers increasingly use Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry, or ZooMS, to screen large fossil collections by examining protein signatures. The technique requires minimally invasive sampling and is simple, fast, and relatively inexpensive. Even so, hominin fossil recovery rates at sites such as Denisova Cave and Baishiya Karst Cave have been just 0.1%. Applying ZooMS to every fragment from Bianfu Cave would have been costly and inefficient.

The team instead developed a “morphological pre-screening + ZooMS identification” strategy, first examining bone shapes to select 22 potential hominin remains. ZooMS then confirmed that the two parietal fragments and the radius fragment belonged to hominins, the group that includes humans and our extinct close relatives. The combined approach substantially improved screening efficiency and provides a repeatable method for searching other Paleolithic sites with abundant bone fragments.

BFD767 and BFD771 came from Layer 7, dated to approximately 148,000 to 134,000 years ago. That layer also contained four hominin teeth, two of which the researchers included in the study: a lower fourth premolar, YHB3518, and a lower second molar, YHB3075. The other skull fragment, BFD769, came from the older Layer 9, dated to approximately 167,000 to 150,000 years ago.

Proteins identify five Denisovan remains

Identifying the bones as hominin remains did not reveal which ancient human group they belonged to. To find out, researchers analyzed proteins preserved in three bones and two teeth, recovering 6 to 16 proteins from each specimen. Protein fragments in the tooth enamel also indicated that both teeth belonged to males.

All five fossils carried the Denisovan-specific protein variant COL1A2 R996K. Additional variants in the teeth supported this identification and helped distinguish the fossils from other ancient human groups, including Homo erectus.

The researchers also constructed evolutionary trees using the recovered protein sequences. All five specimens clustered with the Denisovan specimen Denisova 3, with 100% posterior probability, providing strong support for their identification.

These findings make Bianfu Cave the richest known source of Denisovan fossils outside Denisova Cave. Dating to a glacial period known as Marine Isotope Stage 6, the remains suggest that the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau’s relatively warm climate and abundant food resources may have provided a favorable habitat for Denisovans.

The birth of modern Man

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Tiny Magnets Implanted in Muscles Are Giving Prosthetic Hands a Remarkable New Ability

BY SANT’ANNA SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDIES, PISA, OCT. 26, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/tiny-magnets-implanted-in-muscles-are-giving-prosthetic-hands-a-remarkable-new-ability/

Graphical representation of the technology developed in the study. 

Credit: Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna

Tiny magnets implanted in muscles are helping a prosthetic hand feel like it is opening and closing naturally.

You can close your eyes, make a fist, or reach for an object without ever needing to look at your hand. That seemingly effortless ability depends on a hidden sense called kinesthesia, which tells the brain how muscles and limbs are moving. After an amputation, this vital stream of sensory information is disrupted, making even simple movements with a prosthetic hand more difficult and less intuitive.

Now, researchers led by the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, in collaboration with Cleveland Clinic, have uncovered new clues about how the brain interprets these movement signals. Their findings, published in Science Advances, suggest that the brain perceives finger movements as coordinated patterns rather than isolated actions. The discovery could help scientists develop prosthetic hands that not only move more naturally but also restore the feeling of movement itself.

The team compared data from the world’s only two neural-machine interfaces designed to restore this sense in upper limb prostheses. Despite their different designs, both produced sensations of coordinated finger movements, suggesting that the brain organizes incoming muscle signals into grasp patterns known as “synergies.”

Implanted Magnets Create Movement Sensations

Vibrating a muscle can make someone feel that a limb is moving. But applying vibration from outside the body also stimulates the skin, mixing sensory signals in ways that can complicate feedback from a prosthesis.

Sant’Anna’s myokinetic kinesthetic interface (MKkI) targets the muscles through small magnets implanted in the remaining forearm. The magnets generate vibrations within the muscles without directly stimulating the skin. Researchers connected this bidirectional interface to the Mia Hand, a robotic hand developed by Sant’Anna spin-off company Prensilia.

Myokinetic Kinesthetic Interface. 

Credit: Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna



A 34-year-old Italian participant tested the system for six weeks. He experienced sensations of his hand opening and closing, with fingers appearing to move together in patterns closely resembling natural movement.

“The myokinetic kinesthetic interface is unique because it uses a simple, minimally invasive implant to stimulate muscles without touching the skin. This approach may be the key to better understanding how human motor control works but also how to restore movement sensation after amputation,” says Federico Masiero, Ph.D., the study’s first author. A former Ph.D. student at Sant’Anna, Masiero is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) of the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Different Interfaces Reveal A Shared Pattern

The sensations reported in the Italian trial resembled those experienced by participants using a kinesthetic feedback system developed at Cleveland Clinic. That system combines surgical nerve redirection with robotics, whereas Sant’Anna’s approach uses implanted magnets. Both selectively vibrate deep muscles to generate movement sensations.

Across the two systems, users felt coordinated finger actions rather than isolated movements. Both teams also observed that some sensory information was processed without users immediately becoming consciously aware of it. The findings suggest that muscle feedback may be organized into coordinated movement patterns at a more subconscious level than previously understood.

“The ability to compare independently generated data from two very different interfaces makes these findings especially compelling,” says Professor Paul Marasco, Ph.D., who coordinated the study at Cleveland Clinic. “It gives us a stronger foundation for designing therapies and devices that work with the nervous system in a more natural way, with the ultimate goal of improving outcomes for patients.”

Understanding that organization could help researchers deliver feedback that better matches how the brain handles movement. Beyond prosthetics, the findings may eventually inform stroke rehabilitation, epilepsy, and pain treatment, although those applications remain possibilities for future research.

Combining Prosthetic Control With Sensation

The next challenge is to use the implanted magnets for control and sensation at the same time. Building on earlier research, the team plans to track the magnets’ positions to control the prosthesis while simultaneously applying vibrations to the same magnets to provide movement feedback.

The longer-term goal is a permanent implant that can be studied beyond the initial six-week trial. Together with the teams’ previous collaborative studies, this work lays a foundation for combining intuitive control with natural grasp sensations in a new generation of more human-like prosthetic hands.

“Our solution was implemented as a preliminary demonstrator: the implant was designed to last six weeks, a period we considered sufficient for an initial verification of the interface’s usefulness and effectiveness. The results were very promising and prompted us to explore a permanent implantable solution, which will allow us to study the interface over much longer periods and with a larger number of participants,” says Professor Christian Cipriani, who created the interface and coordinated the study.

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Scientists Discovered an Amazing Practical Use For The World's Leftover Coffee Grounds

26 Oct. 2026, By T. KOUMOUNDOUROS

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-discovered-an-amazing-practical-use-for-the-worlds-leftover-coffee-grounds

(matusgajdos17/500px/Getty Images)

Charred coffee grounds could make concrete up to 30 percent stronger, scientists in Australia have found.

Their clever recipe could solve multiple problems at once.

Each year, the world produces about 10 billion kilograms (22 billion pounds) of coffee waste, most of which ends up in landfills.

"The disposal of organic waste poses an environmental challenge as it emits large amounts of greenhouse gases, including methane and carbon dioxide, which contribute to climate change," explained RMIT University engineer Rajeev Roychand when the research was first published in 2023.

With a booming construction market globally, there's an ever-increasing demand for resource-intensive concrete, causing another set of environmental challenges.

Watch the video below for a summary of the study:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NVpvjgH2-c

"The ongoing extraction of natural sand around the world – typically taken from river beds and banks – to meet the rapidly growing demands of the construction industry has a big impact on the environment," said RMIT engineer Jie Li.

"There are critical and long-lasting challenges in maintaining a sustainable supply of sand due to the finite nature of resources and the environmental impacts of sand mining. With a circular-economy approach, we could keep organic waste out of landfill and also better preserve our natural resources like sand."

Organic products like coffee grounds can't be added directly to concrete because they leak chemicals that weaken the building material's strength.

Global demand for sand is increasing, and so are its environmental impacts. (Pixabay/Pexels)



So using low energy levels, the team heated coffee waste to over 350 °C (around 660 °F) while depriving it of oxygen.

This process is called pyrolysis. It breaks down the organic molecules, resulting in a porous, carbon-rich charcoal called biochar that can form bonds with and thereby incorporate itself into the cement matrix.

Roychand and colleagues also tried pyrolyzing the coffee grounds at 500 °C, but the resulting biochar particles were not as strong.

Scanning electron microscope images of the surface structures on the pyrolyzed coffee grounds. 

(Roychand et al., Journal of Cleaner Production, 2023)



The researchers cautioned that they still need to assess the long-term durability of their cement product.

They're now working on testing how the hybrid coffee-cement performs under freeze/thaw cycles, water absorption, abrasions, and many more stressors.

The team is also working on creating biochars from other organic waste sources, including wood, food, and agricultural.

"Our research is in the early stages, but these exciting findings offer an innovative way to greatly reduce the amount of organic waste that goes to landfill," said RMIT engineer Shannon Kilmartin-Lynch.

"Inspiration for my research, from an Indigenous perspective, involves Caring for Country, ensuring there's a sustainable life cycle for all materials and avoiding things going into landfill to minimize the impact on the environment."

In 2024, RMIT and Macedon Ranges Shire Council poured a world-first real-world trial: a footpath in Gisborne, Victoria, made with the coffee biochar concrete alongside a wood-chip-biochar section and a standard-concrete control section.

Later that year, Victoria's Big Build used coffee-biochar concrete for a footpath on the Pakenham Roads Upgrade – the first major infrastructure project to use it – with contractor BildGroup estimating the job diverted roughly 140,000 coffees' worth of grounds from landfill and saved more than 3 metric tons (3.3 US tons) of sand.

In early 2025, the RMIT team picked up the People's Choice Problem Solver Award at Universities Australia's Shaping Australia Awards, and said they were working with a commercialization partner to build a business case to bring the material to market.

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The World's First Corporate Psychopath May Have Just Been Identified

25 Oct. 2026, By P. Dockrill

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-worlds-first-corporate-psychopath-may-have-just-been-identified

(Alexander Krivitskiy/Unsplash)

There's something about psychopaths that gives them an edge.

Research suggests people with the darkest of impulses can be remarkably adept at climbing the corporate ladder, often ending up in places of great power.

But how far back does this creepy phenomenon of corporate psychopathy go?

According to organizational behavior researcher Clive Roland Boddy of Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, the roots of corporate psychopathy can be identified as far back as 400 years ago – to the very dawn of modern corporate capitalism.

In a new study published in the Asian Journal of Business Ethics, Boddy suggests that Jeronimus Cornelisz – a mutinous merchant shipwrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629 in the infamous Batavia disaster – fits the bill as history's earliest identifiable corporate psychopath.

"What makes this case remarkable is that when we analyzed Cornelisz using a modern management psychopathy framework, he displayed every major characteristic associated with corporate psychopaths," Boddy says.

"The same playbook we see in toxic workplaces today appears in this case from 1629. He removed opponents, rewarded loyalists, created fear, manipulated followers, and pursued power at any cost."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlB1pFwGhA4

The Batavia was a ship of the Dutch East India Company, often considered the world's first multinational corporation.

The vessel ran aground on its maiden voyage, striking a coral reef in the Houtman Abrolhos islands, near Western Australia, on 4 June 1629.

As many as 250 survivors were stranded in the shipwreck and were ferried to a nearby island that came to be known as Batavia's Graveyard (now called Beacon Island).

After Batavia's merchant commander and captain sailed to Indonesia for help, taking with them dozens of senior crew, Cornelisz – who had already planned out a mutinous theft of treasure on the ship prior to the shipwreck – assumed leadership of the remaining survivors, ranking as the most senior corporate executive left behind.

As history records, what followed was a chilling series of events that Boddy argues bear all the hallmarks of psychopathic leadership.

This included ordering groups of people onto other islands, ostensibly to find water, but potentially to thin the numbers of survivors competing for limited resources.

A replica of the Batavia.

 (ADZee/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)



Cornelisz also replaced lawful council members with his own hand-picked colluders, making them sign oaths of allegiance.

"Thereafter, Cornelisz's group gradually revealed themselves as mutineers and callous murderers, and gathered the treasure, water and remaining supplies from the shipwrecked boat, within Cornelisz's tent, aiming to keep it for themselves and become pirates," Boddy writes.

Later, the self-styled 'Captain General' Jeronimus Cornelisz is thought to have orchestrated the systematic murder of roughly 100 of the remaining survivors, in a cold bid to diminish the number of people who needed to be fed and watered, and to maximize his control over those who still lived. Women were also subjected to rape and sexual enslavement.

After a series of battles between the mutineers and soldiers, Cornelisz was ultimately captured and tried. He, along with his fellow ringleaders, confessed to murder, rape, and mutiny. As punishment, their hands were severed, and they were executed by hanging.

It's a gruesome, violent episode of history. In many ways, a story of shipwrecked villainy that feels distant to today's world.

And yet Boddy says Cornelisz basically exemplifies all the worst tendencies of psychopathic leaders in the modern era.

"Corporate psychopaths are found to exhibit a common modus operandi involving the establishment of control, a cowed workforce, and the formation of a climate of fear, marked by abuse, bullying and yelling," he writes.

"Cornelisz exhibited all of these in extremity. Cornelisz also utilized the tactics and strategies that are still used by corporate psychopaths, including presenting a grandiose image, replacing boards of directors with personal appointees, using divide-and-conquer techniques to divide and confuse potential opposition, and using fear and dark humor as a means of control."

According to Boddy's own research into corporate psychopathy, founded on the theories of American psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley, Cornelisz demonstrated all 10 characteristics of corporate psychopathy.

These are: superficial charm and apparent intelligence; untruthfulness and insincerity; cheating personality; extreme egocentrism; lack of remorse; emotional shallowness; unresponsiveness to personal interactions; irresponsibility and refusal to accept responsibility; calm, poised and apparently rational behavior; lack of self-blame and self-insight.

More than just a history lesson, the case of Cornelisz demonstrates that corporate psychopaths have been with us since modern capitalism was invented, Boddy argues.

And while the world might have changed since the dark days of the Batavia, psychopaths haven't.

"They utilize a similar modus operandi across the centuries and are motivated by greed, self-aggrandizement, and the desire to hurt, dominate, and control others," he writes.

"They adopt a strategy involving their ascension to power, the removal of potential opposition, the ruthless treatment of others, and the establishment of a climate of fear to quell potential opposition.

"Destruction follows in their wake, and they negatively impact the careers, lives, and fortunes of those around them, including investors, colleagues, subordinates, and other leaders."

The birth of modern Man

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Miniature Ball Lightning Created in a Lab Could Help Solve a Centuries-Old Mystery

24 Oct. 2026, By M. Starr

https://www.sciencealert.com/miniature-ball-lightning-created-in-a-lab-could-help-solve-a-centuries-old-mystery

A digital illustration of a ball of electricity.

 (Vladlen Tian/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

When you picture lightning, it tends to be fairly straightforward – a jagged gash of light that splits the sky, disappearing in less time than it takes to blink.

But for centuries, a strange picture of a more eerie form has emerged.

Thousands of records and eyewitness accounts have told of balls of lightning hovering above the ground before disappearing in a pop like soap bubbles.

This fleeting phenomenon is all but impossible to study – and reports vary wildly in descriptions of its size, its hue, and even its behavior, making it one of the most peculiar mysteries in atmospheric science.

But if you can't catch ball lightning in a field, physicist Chuliang Zhou and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have reasoned, maybe we can learn more by reproducing something like it in a lab.

"Here we report the first controlled generation of a macroscopic, long-lived soliton driven by relativistic terahertz electromagnetic fields," the researchers write in a paper published in Nature Photonics.

"This work establishes a laboratory-accessible platform for investigating optical soliton physics, advanced energy storage mechanisms, and the long-standing scientific puzzle of ball lightning."

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

A soliton is essentially a single, self-contained wave that keeps its shape and structural integrity through a delicate balance of physical forces.

They can form in plasma, water, light, potentially even some biological membranes – basically any medium where competing physical effects can balance to sustain a stable wave.

Some theories suggest that ball lightning is a kind of electromagnetic soliton, trapping energy in a shell of plasma.

To find out whether they could make this kind of soliton, the researchers turned to a very, very pointy piece of tungsten.

OK, it was a little more complicated than that – but the tungsten needle, with a tip just 100 nanometers across, was instrumental. A human hair, for context, measures between 80,000 and 100,000 nanometers across.

The researchers fired an ultrashort laser pulse at the needle, generating a powerful electromagnetic wave that traveled along its length.

When the wave reached the tip, its energy became concentrated into an extraordinarily intense electric field that stripped electrons from atoms in a waiting cloud of argon gas, creating a superheated bubble of ionized argon – plasma.

It flickered into existence as a tiny ball of light.

A schematic of the experimental setup, field map, and simulations (top) and images showing the formation and expansion of the tiny plasma ball (bottom).

 (Zhou et al., Nat. Photon., 2026)

The fragile, luminous sphere started as a pinprick around 80 micrometers across, then expanded to a larger pinprick several hundred micrometers over the next 100 nanoseconds.

That might not sound like a long time, but it's vastly longer than the electromagnetic pulse from which it was born. And rather than simply dissipating like an ordinary cloud of hot plasma, the sphere maintained its structure as it expanded.

The researchers tracked this expansion and analyzed the wavelengths of light the sphere emitted as it cooled, comparing their observations with theoretical models and computer simulations.

This expansion, the researchers found, matched the theoretical predictions for an electromagnetic soliton.

This suggests that electromagnetic energy remained trapped within the plasma, helping sustain the glowing orb even as it expanded.

By contrast, their simulations of the thermal expansion in ordinary plasma produced a much faster, more diffuse process.

But a tiny dot of light in a carefully controlled laboratory experiment is far from the wild atmospheric conditions where ball lightning is typically reported.

The tiny plasma ball photographed through six different wavelength filters, revealing how its light changed as it expanded and cooled. 

(Zhou et al., Nat. Photon., 2026)

So, the researchers used their theoretical models to see how the phenomenon might behave at larger scales, driven by lower-frequency electromagnetic radiation.

Their calculations suggested that electromagnetic solitons driven by microwaves, rather than terahertz radiation, could theoretically grow to meters across and persist for seconds.

That's much closer to some of the eyewitness reports of how mysterious balls of lightning behave.

It's far from a definitive explanation for ball lightning – but solving meteorological mysteries isn't the only potential application for these tiny fireballs.

The ability to trap electromagnetic energy in a stable, localized structure could also open new avenues for energy-storage technologies and studying how light interacts with matter under extreme conditions.

"Our controlled laboratory approach to spatiotemporal characterization under tunable conditions provides a systematic pathway to decode the century-old enigma of ball lightning formation," the researchers write.

"By unifying extreme field photonics, plasma science, and atmospheric geophysics, our findings redefine terahertz-driven platforms as discovery engines for both applied technologies and unresolved natural phenomena."

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