One Complex Emotion May Have a Powerful Effect on Your Mental Health

05 May 2026, By N-A. WILSON, THE CONVERSATION

https://www.sciencealert.com/one-complex-emotion-may-have-a-powerful-effect-on-your-mental-health

(Marco Bottigelli/Moment/Getty Images)

Words escape you. Your skin tingles. You are overwhelmed by how small and insignificant you really are, bursting with a feeling that is hard to define.

This is awe.

Awe is a complex emotional state we experience when the enormity of what we see or feel transcends what we understand. It can be positive or negative.

Astronauts report this feeling when confronted with the vastness of space and Earth's puny place within it.

This experience – sometimes known as the "overview effect" – can change forever how people who've seen Earth from afar think about life here.

"Hello, World", an incredible photo of Earth captured by Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman on April 2, 2026. Auroras are visible at the top right and bottom left. 

(NASA)



But you don't have to travel to the moon and back to experience awe.

Beautiful art, a walk in nature, or dancing in a crowd can give you this overwhelming, transcendent feeling.

Neuroscience suggests experiences of awe can be good for your mental health – when they're positive. So, when is awe good for us? And what exactly is going on in the brain?

Awe can be both positive and negative

Positive awe is what probably comes to mind when most people think of awe. If you've ever been moved by something immense and beautiful – such as a majestic mountain or sunset – you've likely experienced this sense of calm and wonder.

(Arnaud Mesureur/Unsplash)



However, psychologists sometimes describe awe as an experience at the boundary of pleasure and fear.

Both pleasure and fear can result in similar bodily arousal – racing heartbeat, goosebumps and chills – but the way we interpret this as an emotion will depend on the context. It can be the same when we experience something vast and overwhelming.

Negative awe may occur when we feel threatened or a lack of control, such as during an earthquake or terrorist attack.

Imagine standing in front of a tsunami and seeing it come towards you. You may feel powerless and filled with dread, while also overcome with a sense of insignificance in the face of nature's majesty and power. This is the complexity of awe.

Trying to make sense of the unexpected

Our brains are constantly making predictions and integrating our experiences into what we already know.

We tend to "filter out" sensory signals that match our expectations, to instead focus on being ready to respond to information that is surprising.

New information is processed by parts of the brain that help to fit it within our pre-existing understanding of the world, knowledge frameworks known as schemata (or schemas).

According to schema theory, we either assimilate this new information into an existing schema, or have to change the schema to fit the new knowledge.

Not all new experiences will evoke awe. It occurs when we experience both the inability to assimilate an experience into current knowledge and a sense of vastness.

For example, you might have a schema for "waterfall" – a mental framework of what you expect (rocks, water, beautiful).

But confronted by the roar of Victoria Falls, its size and velocity, the way the sun hits the spray, you experience awe; it's unlike any waterfall you have ever seen and is beyond your expectations.

Awe can make us feel small and insignificant in the face of something immense. 

(byronetmedia/unsplash)

What happens in the brain when we experience awe?

When we feel awe, activity decreases in the brain regions associated with internal or self-referential processing. This network is what drives our memory and understanding of our place in the world.

When activity in these regions decreases, there is a shift away from yourself towards processing external information. This may explain why you tend to "feel small" when you experience awe.

But positive and negative awe may have different effects on our nervous system.

Negative awe is associated with sympathetic nervous system activity, which drives our "fight or flight" response.

Positive awe, however, is associated with increased parasympathetic activity. This reduces heart rate and arousal, which is why we may feel calmer.

How awe can be good for us

If you're someone who seeks out experiences bigger than yourself – hiking for breathtaking views, enjoying meditation, art or losing yourself in the roar of a crowd – you probably already know awe can make you feel fantastic.

Now, research is exploring why. Emerging evidence suggests awe may be good for mental health and wellbeing in five ways:

improving your nervous system's ability to relax

diminishing self-focus

making us more likely to help other people

connecting us to others

increasing sense of meaning.

More work needs to be done before we can say whether awe results in long-lasting benefits. But purposefully seeking awe may help you feel less stressed, more satisfied, and happier.

Sharing awe-filled experiences can help us transcend ourselves and connect with others. 

(Danny Howe/Unsplash)

Finding awe in the everyday

What evokes awe will likely be different for different people. But we know some things are more likely to induce this complex feeling, such as experiences of art, music and natural environments that move us.

Many people also find awe in collective experiences, especially those involving shared music or movement, or religious rituals. These help us transcend ourselves and become part of something bigger.

Contemplating inspiring and complex "big" intellectual ideas by learning something new may also have this effect.

So, can you actively cultivate awe?

One way to start is by taking "awe walks". These involve walking with the intention of noticing beauty, vastness and wonder. Connecting with your own sense of spirituality – even if you are not religious – can also evoke awe.

In many cases, the vast and overwhelming experience of awe can start with simple acts of noticing.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Plant Seeds Do Something Incredible When The Sound of Rain Strikes

04 May 2026, By I. Farkas

https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-can-sense-the-sound-of-rain

(sbayram/iStock/Getty Images)

Plant seeds can sense the vibrations generated by falling raindrops and respond by waking from their state of dormancy to welcome the water, new research shows.

While the soothing pitter-patter of rainfall induces humans to snuggle up and settle down, it appears to do the opposite for rice seeds, causing them to germinate in 'anticipation' of the coming deluge.

The finding, discovered by MIT mechanical engineers Nicholas Makris and Cadine Navarro, offers the first direct evidence that seeds and seedlings can sense and respond to sounds in nature.

"What this study is saying is that seeds can sense sound in ways that can help them survive," explains Makris.

"The energy of the rain sound is enough to accelerate a seed's growth."

Artistic representation of a rice seed germinating in response to the acoustic vibrations caused by falling raindrops. 

(Cadine Navarro/MIT)



Plants don't have the same aural equipment we do to actually hear sounds, of course. But the study suggests that seeds respond to the same vibrations that can produce a sound experience in our human ears.

Across a series of experiments, the researchers submerged nearly 8,000 rice seeds in shallow tubs of water, at a depth of around 3 centimeters (1 inch), and exposed some of them to falling water drops over periods of six days.

They varied the height and size of each falling drop to simulate rainstorms of differing intensities, while also altering the positions of the seeds to determine how depth and distance influence germination.

A hydrophone recorded the acoustic vibrations produced by the drops, confirming that the experiment mimicked the vibrations produced by actual raindrops falling in nature – such as the driving downpours that can sometimes pelt Massachusetts' puddles, ponds, and wetlands.

For those suddenly craving the soothing sounds of a storm, the researchers uploaded the otherworldly percussion of a Massachusetts shower serenading a puddle, providing a rare human glimpse of a submerged seed's experience.

"It gives new meaning to the fourth Japanese microseason, entitled 'Falling rain awakens the soil,'" Makris says.

In their study, the researchers observed that seeds exposed to the falling drops germinated up to around 37 percent faster, compared with seeds that did not receive the simulated rainstorm treatment but were housed in otherwise identical conditions.

This adaptation appears to be facilitated by statoliths – gravity-sensing organelles that settle toward the bottom of certain plant cells, providing a sense of gravitational direction (gravitropism) to guide the downward growth of roots and the upward growth of shoots.

The sound waves produced by falling raindrops can impart enough force through water and possibly soil to jostle these statoliths and trigger seed growth.

Indeed, the highest increases in germination rates were observed in the seeds that experienced the highest levels of statolith displacement, due to proximity to the falling drops.

This suggests that seeds planted closer to the surface are likelier to respond, because they're at an optimal depth for absorbing moisture and growing.

Acoustic vibrations are most pronounced in submerged conditions. Since water is denser than air, pressure waves are magnified and travel more easily, making rain much louder underwater.

For perspective, the sounds of rain produced in a shallow puddle are in the range of hundreds of Pascals, while a typical human conversation at a distance of 1 meter (3.3 feet) may be in the range of 0.005 to 0.05 Pascals.

"So if you're a seed that's within a few centimeters of a raindrop's impact, the kind of sound pressures that you would experience in water or in the ground are equivalent to what you'd be subject to within a few meters of a jet engine in the air," says Makris.

The researchers believe that other types of plant seeds react to environmental sounds in similar ways, and ultimately chose rice because it shares similarities in gravitropism with many other plants.

Rice, an essential staple food for billions of people, also grows in underwater environments, making it perfectly suited for this experimental setup.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Shockingly Powerful Giant Octopuses Ruled the Seas 100 Million Years Ago

BY HOKKAIDO U. MAY 5, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/shockingly-powerful-giant-octopuses-ruled-the-seas-100-million-years-ago/

Ancient octopuses may have been giant predators that ruled the seas. Fossilized jaws show they had crushing bites and aggressive feeding habits, with some growing up to nearly 20 meters long. 

Credit: SciTechDaily.com

Giant, intelligent octopuses may have once ruled the ancient seas.

Modern octopuses are known for their intelligence and flexibility, living in reefs, squeezing into crevices, or drifting through deep ocean waters. However, new research suggests their earliest ancestors played a much more dominant role in marine ecosystems. A study led by Hokkaido University reports that the first known octopuses were massive predators that occupied the very top of the food chain, alongside large marine vertebrates. The findings were published in Science on 23 April 2026.

Because octopuses lack hard parts like bones or shells, they rarely leave behind fossils. This has made it difficult to trace their evolutionary history. To address this, researchers focused on fossilized jaws, which are more likely to be preserved, to better understand early octopus evolution.

Using high resolution grinding tomography and an artificial intelligence model, the team identified fossil jaws embedded in rock samples from the Late Cretaceous period, dating from 100 to 72 million years ago. These specimens, discovered in Japan and Vancouver Island, were preserved in calm seafloor sediments and retained detailed wear marks that provided insight into feeding behavior.

A sketch of the giant octopus. 

Credit: Yohei Utsuki, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Hokkaido University



Giant Predators with Powerful Jaws

The fossils came from an extinct group of finned octopuses called Cirrata. By studying the size, shape, and wear patterns of the jaws, researchers determined that these animals were active predators that likely crushed hard prey with strong bites.

“Our findings suggest that the earliest octopuses were gigantic predators that occupied the top of the marine food chain in the Cretaceous,” says Professor Yasuhiro Iba of Hokkaido University. “Based on exceptionally well-preserved fossil jaws, we show that these animals reached total lengths of up to nearly 20 meters, which may have surpassed the size of large marine reptiles of the same age.”

“The most surprising finding perhaps was the extent of wear on the jaws,” says Iba. The fossils showed heavy chipping, scratching, cracking, and polishing, all evidence of powerful biting.

“In well-grown specimens, up to 10% of the jaw tip relative to the total jaw length had been worn away, which is larger than that seen in modern cephalopods that feed on hard-shelled prey. This indicates repeated, forceful interactions with their prey, revealing an unexpectedly aggressive feeding strategy.” These results point to ancient octopuses as strong, active hunters that consumed plentiful prey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2VARSAoztg&t=2s

Digital fossil-mining of an octopus jaw fossil that enabled precise visualization of its fine structures by using zero-shot learning AI.

 Credit: Shin Ikegami, Kanta Sugiura, Yasuhiro Iba, Jörg Mutterlose, Yusuke Takeda, Mehmet Oguz Derin, Aya Kubota, Kazuki Tainaka, Harufumi Nishida

Evolutionary Impact and Behavioral Complexity

This discovery reshapes scientific understanding of early octopus evolution. The fossils push back the earliest record of finned octopuses by about 15 million years and extend the broader octopus timeline by roughly 5 million years, placing their origins around 100 million years ago.

Another notable finding was uneven wear on the jaws. In the two species studied, one side of the biting surface showed more wear than the other, suggesting these animals may have favored one side when feeding. This type of asymmetry, known as lateralization, is linked in modern animals to advanced neural processing. The findings indicate that early octopuses may already have exhibited complex, intelligence-related behavior.

For many years, scientists believed ancient marine ecosystems were dominated by vertebrate predators, with invertebrates occupying lower positions in the food chain. These results challenge that view by showing that giant octopuses were an exception, rising to the highest level of the food web and competing with large vertebrates.

“This study provides the first direct evidence that invertebrates could evolve into giant, intelligent apex predators in ecosystems that have been dominated by vertebrates for about 400 million years. Our findings show that powerful jaws and the loss of superficial skeletons, common characteristics of octopuses and marine vertebrates, were essential to becoming huge, intelligent marine predators” says Iba.

Future Discoveries and Ecosystem Insights

This research opens new possibilities for reconstructing ancient marine ecosystems in greater detail. By combining digital fossil mining with artificial intelligence, scientists expect to uncover many more hidden fossils.

The Life of Earth

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Psychology says people who let dirty dishes pile up instead of washing them immediately aren’t being lazy

D. Moran, May. 02, 2026

https://spacedaily.com/d-psychology-says-people-who-let-dirty-dishes-pile-up-instead-of-washing-them-immediately-arent-being-lazy-theyve-reached-a-level-of-daily-depletion-where-one-more-small-task-feels-heavier/

There’s a particular argument that has played out in millions of households, in roughly the same form, for as long as people have been living together.

One person looks at the sink full of dishes and feels a small surge of irritation. Why hasn’t this been dealt with? It would take ten minutes. The other person, the one who left the dishes there, is sitting on the couch, not because they don’t see the dishes, but because the gap between seeing them and being able to summon the energy to wash them feels, in this moment, larger than they can cross.

The first person reads the pile as a character flaw. Laziness. Inconsideration. A failure to notice or care. The second person experiences it as something else entirely. They’re not lazy. They’re depleted. And the pile is sitting there because something else, often invisible to everyone in the household, has already taken what it would have cost to clean up.

I’ve been watching this dynamic up close in my own home since my daughter was born. My wife and I are both, by temperament, the kind of people who keep a clean kitchen. The dishes always got done before we became parents. Now, sometimes, they don’t. And the reason isn’t that we’ve gotten lazy. The reason is that a baby has been added to our lives, and our daily energy budget hasn’t expanded to match what the day now requires. The dishes are, on the harder days, the most honest piece of information in the house.

This is a piece about reading that information correctly, in your own life and in the lives of the people you live with.

Why the small task is the one that breaks

There’s a body of psychological research, going back to the late nineties, on something called ego depletion or decision fatigue. The original work was led by social psychologist Roy Baumeister, and the basic finding was that self-control and decision-making seem to draw from a limited pool of mental energy. Use that pool too much, and the next decision, even a small one, becomes harder than it should be.

Some aspects of Baumeister’s original ego-depletion model have been challenged in replication studies. But the core observation that people make worse decisions and resist tasks more when their cognitive resources are depleted has held up in multiple frameworks. A widely cited paper on the construct, published in the journal Innovation in Aging, defined decision fatigue as a state in which depleted internal resources lead to procrastination, avoidance, and a reluctance to engage with tasks that require any further self-regulation.

In plainer language, after enough small drains on your willpower, you stop being able to do small things.

This is the part most people misunderstand. The dishes don’t take much. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. On a normal day, with a normal energy reserve, you wouldn’t think twice about doing them. The reason they go undone isn’t that they’re hard. It’s that they’re being asked of someone whose budget for “one more thing” has already gone to zero earlier in the day, and not necessarily for visible reasons.

If you’ve ever looked at a small task and felt, for no clear reason, like it was an immense ask, you weren’t being dramatic. You were registering an honest signal about the state of your inner battery.

The invisible drain most households don’t see

A lot of the depletion in modern households doesn’t come from the visible chores. It comes from what researchers now call the mental load.

A landmark 2019 study by psychologists Lucia Ciciolla and Suniya Luthar, published in the journal Sex Roles, gave one of the first quantitative looks at this. They asked mothers about the cognitive and emotional management of their households, things like remembering schedules, anticipating needs, planning the week, monitoring the kids’ wellbeing. Their finding was striking. Mothers overwhelmingly reported being the primary captain of household management, and the more cognitively responsible they felt, the lower their personal wellbeing and relationship satisfaction.

A more recent 2024 paper in the Archives of Women’s Mental Health extended these findings. Researchers at the University of Southern California found that mothers spent roughly twice as much time on cognitive household labor as fathers, and that this invisible cognitive work, far more than the physical chores themselves, predicted increased stress and depression risk.

Why is the cognitive load so much heavier than the physical one? Because cognitive labor doesn’t end. Anyone who has cooked dinner knows that the dinner ends. The mental work of running a household, the constant background process of remembering, planning, anticipating, monitoring, never gets to clock off. It’s running while you’re at your job. It’s running while you’re trying to relax. It’s running while you’re trying to sleep.

By the time the visible task arrives, the dishes, the laundry, the email that needs replying to, the person being asked to do it has already been doing dozens of invisible cognitive tasks all day. The pile in the sink isn’t the start of their workload. It’s the part you can finally see.

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

This Tiny Creature Survived a World of Dinosaurs and Changed What Came Next

BY U. OF WASHINGTON, MAY 3, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/this-tiny-creature-survived-a-world-of-dinosaurs-and-changed-what-came-next/

An illustration of Cimolodon desosai on the tree with a fruit in its mouth. It was about the size of a golden hamster, the researchers said. It likely scampered on the ground and in the trees and ate fruits and insects. 

Credit: Andrey Atuchin

This tiny dinosaur-era mammal may hold the secret to surviving Earth’s worst extinction.

Mammals lived alongside dinosaurs for millions of years until a catastrophic event 66 million years ago wiped out about 75% of life on Earth. Even after this mass extinction, some species endured. Among the survivors were small, rodent-like mammals from the genus Cimolodon. These animals belonged to a group known as multituberculates, which first appeared during the Jurassic Period and survived for more than 100 million years before eventually disappearing. By studying them, scientists gain insight into how early mammals made it through the extinction and later evolved into the wide range of species seen today.

New Species Found in Baja California

Researchers led by the University of Washington have identified a previously unknown species within this genus using a fossil discovered at a site in Baja California. The fossil is estimated to be about 75 million years old. The new species, named Cimolodon desosai, was roughly the size of a golden hamster. Scientists believe it moved both on the ground and in trees and likely fed on fruits and insects.

The findings were published April 22 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

A Common Mammal With Survival Advantages

“The genus Cimolodon was a pretty common mammal during the Late Cretaceous, the last epoch of the Age of Dinosaurs. Cimolodon fossils have been found throughout western North America, from western Canada down through Mexico,” said senior author Gregory Wilson Mantilla, a UW professor of biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum. “This new species, Cimolodon desosai, was ancestral to the species that survived the extinction event. It and its descendants were relatively small and omnivorous — two traits that were advantageous for surviving.”

Rare Fossil Provides More Complete Picture

The fossil was first discovered in 2009 by Wilson Mantilla and his team. Unlike many similar finds, which often consist only of teeth, this specimen included a broader set of remains. The researchers recovered teeth, a skull, jaws, and parts of the skeleton, including a femur and an ulna.

“It’s very hard to find fossils at this site compared to other areas,” Wilson Mantilla said. “At first, my field assistant found just a little tooth poking out. If he had just found that, I would have been over the moon. But then when we looked inside the crack of the rock, we could see there was more bone.”

Because the team uncovered more than just teeth, they were able to better estimate the animal’s size, body structure, and movement. These details also provide a clearer picture of the environment it lived in and improve understanding of the multituberculate group overall.

Advanced Imaging and Identification

To study the fossil in detail, the researchers used digital imaging and micro-computed tomography, or micro-CT, to produce high-resolution images. They then compared the teeth of C. desosai with those of related species in the Cimolodon genus to confirm it represented a new species.

“That far back in time everything is named based on their tooth characteristics,” Wilson Mantilla said. “If you find a skeleton that’s missing teeth, sometimes it’s hard to attach it to a name.”

Naming the Species and Acknowledgments

The new species was named after Michael de Sosa VI, the field assistant who first noticed the fossil. De Sosa died while the team was still analyzing the specimen.

“He was a great field assistant, and he was like a little brother to me,” Wilson Mantilla said. “It’s a great specimen to be associated with.”

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

'Negative Time' Really Does Exist, New Experiments Suggest

04 May 2026, ByH. Wiseman, The Conversation

https://www.sciencealert.com/negative-time-really-does-exist-new-experiments-suggest

(shaunl/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

As Homer tells us, Odysseus made an epic journey, against the odds, from Troy to his home in Ithaca. He visited many lands, but mostly dwelt with the nymph Calypso on her island.

We can imagine that his wife, Penelope, would have asked him about that particular time. Odysseus might have replied, "It was nothing. In fact, it was less than nothing. Negative five years I dwelt with Calypso. How else could I have arrived home after only ten years? If you don't believe me, ask her."

Quantum particles, it turns out, are just as wily as Odysseus, as we have shown in an experiment published in Physical Review Letters.

Not only can their arrival time suggest that they dwelt with other particles for a negative amount of time, but if one asks those other particles, they will corroborate the story.

Photons dwelling with atoms

Our experiment used photons – quantum particles of light – and the against-the-odds journey they must undertake to pass straight through a cloud of rubidium atoms.

These atoms have a "resonance" with the photons, meaning the energy of the photon can be transferred temporarily to the atoms as an atomic excitation. This allows the photon to "dwell" in the atomic cloud for a time before being released.

For this resonance to be effective, the photon must have a well-defined energy, matching the amount of energy required to put a rubidium atom into an excited state.

But, by a form of Heisenberg's famous uncertainty principle, if the energy of the photon is well defined then its timing must be uncertain: the pulse of light the photon occupies must have a long duration. This means we can't know exactly when the photon enters the cloud, but we can know on average when it enters.

If a photon like this is fired into the cloud, the most likely outcome is that its energy will be transferred to the atoms, and then re-emitted as a photon travelling in a random direction. In such cases, the photon is scattered, and fails to arrive at its Ithaca.

Photon arrival times

But if the photon does make it straight through, a strange thing happens.

Based on the average time when the photon enters the cloud, one can calculate the expected average time it would arrive at the far side of the cloud, assuming it travels at the speed of light (as photons usually do).

Researchers directed a laser toward a cloud of rubidium atoms in a series of new experiments.

 (Михаил Руденко/iStock/Getty Images Plus)



What one finds is that the photon actually arrives far earlier than that. In fact, it arrives so early it appears to have spent a negative amount of time inside the cloud – to exit, on average, before it enters.

This effect has been known for decades and was observed in a 1993 experiment. But physicists had mostly decided not to take this negative time seriously.

That's because it can be explained by saying that only the very front of the long-duration pulse makes it straight through the atomic cloud, while the rest is scattered. This leads to a successful (non-scattered) photon arriving earlier than would be naively expected.

Asking the atoms

However, Aephraim Steinberg, one of the authors of that 1993 paper, was not so quick to accept this dismissal of the negative time as an artefact.

In his laboratory at the University of Toronto, he wanted to find out what happened if one queried the rubidium atoms in the cloud to find out how long the photon had spent dwelling among them as an excitation.

After an initial experiment with inconclusive results, he asked me, as a quantum theorist, for help in working out what to expect.

When we talk of querying the atoms, what this means in practice is continuously making a measurement on the atoms while the photon is passing through the cloud, to probe whether the photon's energy is currently dwelling there.

But there is a subtlety here: measurements in quantum physics inevitably disturb the system being measured.

If we were to make a precise measurement of whether the photon is dwelling in the atoms, at each instant of time, we would prevent the atoms from interacting with the photon.

It is as if, merely by watching Calypso closely, we would stop her getting her hands on Odysseus (or vice versa). This is the well known quantum Zeno effect, which would destroy the very phenomenon we want to study.

Our experiment

The solution is to make, instead, a very imprecise (but still very accurately calibrated) measurement. That is the price paid to keep the disturbance negligible.

Specifically, we fired a weak laser beam – unrelated to the single photon pulse – through the cloud of atoms, and measured small changes in the phase of the beam's light to probe whether the atoms were excited.

Any single run of the experiment gives only a very rough indication of whether the photon dwelt in the atoms, but averaging millions of runs yields an accurate dwell time.

Amazingly, the result of this weak measurement of dwell time, when the photon goes straight through the cloud, exactly equals the negative time suggested by the photons' average arrival time.

Prior to our work, no-one suspected that these two times, measured in entirely different ways, would be equal.

Crucially, the negative value of the weakly measured dwell time cannot be explained by imagining that only the front of the photon's pulse gets through, unlike the time inferred from the arrival time.

So what does this all mean? Is a time machine just around the corner?

Sadly, no. Our experiment is fully explained by standard physics.

But it does show that negative dwell time is not an artefact. However paradoxical it may seem, it has a directly measurable effect on the atomic cloud that the photon traverses.

And it reminds us that there are still lands to discover on the odyssey that is quantum research.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Ancient Roman Ship Coating Reveals Secrets Hidden for 2,200 Years

By Frontiers, May 2, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/ancient-roman-ship-coating-reveals-secrets-hidden-for-2200-years/

View of the excavation of the bow area of the Ilovik-Paržine 1 shipwreck. In the foreground, the cargo of logs and amphoras can be seen. Archaeologists are working near the structure of the bow complex. 

Credit: Adriboats © L. Damelet, CNRS/CCJ

A new study of a 2,200-year-old Roman shipwreck reveals that ancient sailors used sophisticated organic coatings to waterproof their vessels.

Since the earliest seafaring journeys, people have needed ships that could resist saltwater, stay watertight, and endure damage from marine organisms such as worms. Despite this long history, research into non-wood materials used in ship construction received little attention until the mid-20th century, and waterproofing materials remain poorly studied today.

A new study published in Frontiers in Materials focuses on the protective coating of the Roman Republic shipwreck Ilovik–Paržine 1, which sank about 2,200 years ago off the coast of present-day Croatia. Researchers from France and Croatia analyzed the ship’s surface layers to better understand ancient waterproofing methods.

“In archaeology little attention is paid to organic waterproofing materials. Yet they are essential for navigation at sea or on rivers and are true witnesses of past naval technologies,” said first author Dr. Armelle Charrié, an archaeometrist at the Laboratory of Mass Spectrometry of Interactions and Systems in Strasbourg. “Studying the coatings, we found two different kinds on this vessel: one made of pine tar, also called pitch, and the other of a mixture of pine tar and beeswax. Analysis of pollen in the coating made it possible to identify the plant taxa present in the immediate environment during the construction or repairs of the ship.”

Resin and wax

Discovered in 2016, the wreck and its cargo have been examined several times. This study is the first to combine pollen data with molecular analysis to identify both the composition of the coating and the surrounding vegetation at the time it was produced and applied. The research was carried out through a collaboration between the Croatian Conservation Institute’s Department for Underwater Archaeology and the ADRIBOATS program at Aix-Marseille University in France.

“Some regions throughout the Adriatic have particular characteristics that led local populations to develop a specific shipbuilding style,” said Charrié. “Only studies like ours offer an overview of these traditions, which bear witness to genuine know-how and diverse traditions.”

The team used structural, molecular, and pollen-based techniques, including mass spectrometry, to identify and measure the components of the organic mixtures.

Analysis of 10 coating samples revealed their biological origins. The molecular “fingerprint” pointed to compounds typical of pine, showing that heated conifer resin or tar, known as pitch, was the primary ingredient. One sample differed, containing a blend of beeswax and tar. This mixture – known to Greek shipbuilders as zopissa – is more flexible and easier to apply when heated.

Trapped in pitch

Because pitch is sticky, it can capture and preserve pollen from nearby plants. By studying these microscopic grains and their abundance, researchers could estimate where the materials were produced and later reapplied during repairs.

The pollen data showed a wide range of environments. These included Mediterranean and Adriatic coastal areas and inland valleys, with holly oak and pine forests, as well as matorral – a type of Mediterranean shrubland – where olive and hazel trees grow. Alder and ash indicated vegetation near rivers and shorelines, while smaller amounts of fir and beech pointed to mountainous regions typical of the northeastern Adriatic, including areas near Istria and Dalmatia.

The findings also suggest the ship received four to five separate coating applications over time. The stern and central sections shared the same material, while three distinct layers were identified at the bow. This pattern indicates repeated repairs using resources gathered from different parts of the Mediterranean.

Earlier studies of the ship’s ballast linked its construction to Brundisium, now Brindisi, on Italy’s southeastern coast. The pollen evidence supports this, suggesting some coatings were applied in that region. Other layers, however, appear to have been added along the northeastern Adriatic coast, where the wreck was eventually found.

“While it seems obvious that ships sailing long distances need repairs, it’s simply not easy to demonstrate this,” concluded Charrié. “Pollen has been very useful in identifying different coatings where the molecular profiles were identical.”

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Enormous Prehistoric Insects Puzzle Scientists

By Arizona State U. May 2, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/enormous-prehistoric-insects-puzzle-scientists/

Giant prehistoric insects may not have depended on high oxygen levels after all. Scientists now think something else must explain their massive size.

 Credit: SciTechDaily.com

The true reason ancient insects grew so huge just got a lot more mysterious.

Three hundred million years ago, Earth looked nothing like it does today. The continents were joined into a single landmass called Pangaea. Around the equator, vast coal-swamp forests dominated the landscape. Oxygen levels in the atmosphere were much higher than they are now, and wildfires occurred frequently.

Life was thriving in every environment. Oceans were filled with fish, while land was home to amphibians, early reptiles, crawling arthropods, and even giant cockroaches. Above it all, insects ruled the skies, and some reached extraordinary sizes.

Giant Dragonflies and Griffinflies

Among these flying insects were mayfly-like species with wingspans of 17 inches (45 cm) and dragonfly-like giants stretching up to 27 inches (70 cm). These massive insects, often referred to as “griffinflies,” were first identified from fossil impressions preserved in fine-grained sedimentary rock in Kansas nearly a century ago.

For many years, scientists believed these enormous insects could only exist because atmospheric oxygen levels were about 45% higher than today. That long-standing explanation is now being challenged by new research.

Comparison of an extinct griffinfly alongside one of the largest living dragonflies, the giant petaltail. (Griffinfly Credit: Estelle Mayhew, adapted from image by Aldrich Hezekiah. Giant petaltail 

Credit: Estelle Mayhew)



The Oxygen Theory of Insect Size

In the 1980s, scientists developed methods to reconstruct the composition of ancient atmospheres. These techniques revealed a period of elevated oxygen levels around 300 million years ago.

A 1995 study published in Nature connected this oxygen-rich period to the presence of giant insects. Researchers proposed that larger insects required more oxygen, and that higher oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere made their size possible.

This idea was based on how insects breathe. Instead of lungs, insects rely on a tracheal system, a network of branching air tubes that extend throughout the body and end in tiny structures called tracheoles. Oxygen moves through these tracheoles by diffusion, traveling down concentration gradients to reach the flight muscles.

Because diffusion becomes less efficient over longer distances, scientists reasoned that today’s lower oxygen levels would not support insects of such massive size. In other words, giant flying insects were thought to be impossible under modern atmospheric conditions.

Insect flight muscle, captured in fine detail with an electron microscope, showing the air-filled tracheoles that supply oxygen directly to the cells. 

Credit: Antoinette Lensink

New Study Challenges the Long-Held Explanation

A new study published in the latest issue of Nature offers a different perspective. Led by Edward (Ned) Snelling of the University of Pretoria, the research team used high-power electron microscopy to examine how body size relates to the number of tracheoles in insect flight muscles.

The researchers found that tracheoles occupy only about 1% or less of the flight muscle in most insect species. This pattern also appears to hold when applied to the massive griffinflies that lived 300 million years ago, including those measuring 2 feet and larger.

These findings suggest that insect flight muscles are not limited by atmospheric oxygen levels. Because tracheoles take up so little space, insects could potentially increase their number without major structural constraints.

Insect flight muscle (left) compared against mammalian cardiac tissue (right), contrasting the different size and space needed to accommodate the oxygen-supply structures of insects (tracheoles; profiles outlined in yellow) versus mammals (capillaries). 

Credit: Antoinette Lensink and Edward Snelling



Evidence From Modern Animals

“If atmospheric oxygen really sets a limit on the maximum body size of insects, then there ought to be evidence of compensation at the level of the tracheoles,” said lead author Edward (Ned) Snelling, associate professor, and Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Pretoria. “There is some compensation occurring in larger insects, but it is trivial in the grand scheme of things.”

Researchers also compared insects to vertebrates. In birds and mammals, capillaries in heart muscle occupy about ten times more space than tracheoles do in insect flight muscle.

“By comparison, capillaries in the cardiac muscle of birds and mammals occupy about ten times the relative space than tracheoles occupy in the flight muscle of insects, so there must be great evolutionary potential to ramp up investment of tracheoles if oxygen transport were really limiting body size,” said Professor Roger Seymour of Adelaide University.

A Mystery Still Unresolved

Some scientists argue that oxygen might still limit insect size in other parts of the body or earlier stages of oxygen transport. Because of this, the idea that oxygen constrains maximum insect size has not been completely dismissed.

However, the new findings clearly show that oxygen diffusion within flight muscle tracheoles is not the limiting factor. Researchers will need to investigate other explanations for why insects once grew so large.

Possible factors include increased predation by vertebrates or physical limits related to the strength of the insect exoskeleton. For now, the reason behind the rise and disappearance of giant insects remains an open and intriguing question.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Why Your Dreams Feel So Real Sometimes and So Strange Other Times

BY IMT SCHOOL FOR ADV. STUDIES LUCCA, MAY 2, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/why-your-dreams-feel-so-real-sometimes-and-so-strange-other-times/

Dreams may feel random, but new research shows they are shaped by a powerful mix of personal traits and real-life experiences. 

Credit: SciTechDaily.com

Dreams are shaped by your personality, experiences, and even global events. Your brain transforms everyday life into vivid, often surreal stories while you sleep.

Why do some dreams feel vivid and lifelike while others seem disjointed or hard to understand? A new study from researchers at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca offers answers, showing that both personal traits and shared life experiences shape what we dream about.

Large Study Tracks Dreams and Daily Experiences

Published in Communications Psychology, the study examined more than 3,700 descriptions of dreams and waking experiences from 287 participants ranging in age from 18 to 70. Over a two-week period, participants recorded their experiences each day. Researchers also collected detailed data on sleep patterns, cognitive abilities, personality traits, and psychological characteristics.

AI Analysis Reveals Patterns in Dream Content

The team used advanced natural language processing (NLP) methods to analyze the meaning and structure of dream reports. This approach allowed them to study dreams in a systematic and measurable way. The results show that dreams are not random or chaotic. Instead, they reflect a complex interaction between internal factors such as mind-wandering tendencies, interest in dreams, and sleep quality, and external influences, including major societal events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

How the Brain Reworks Reality During Sleep

By comparing descriptions of daily life with dream reports, researchers found that the brain does not simply replay waking experiences. Instead, it reshapes them. Familiar settings like workplaces, hospitals, or schools are not reproduced exactly. They are transformed into vivid scenes that often combine different elements and shift perspectives in unexpected ways.

This process suggests that dreams actively reconstruct reality. The mind blends memories with imagined or anticipated experiences, creating new scenarios that can feel immersive or even surreal.

Personality and Life Events Influence Dream Style

Dream experiences vary widely from person to person. Individuals who tend to mind-wander more often reported dreams that were fragmented and constantly shifting. In contrast, those who believe dreams are meaningful and important described richer and more immersive dream environments.

The study also explored how large-scale events affect dreaming. Data collected during the COVID-19 lockdown by researchers at Sapienza University of Rome, and later compared with findings from the IMT School team, showed that dreams during that period were more emotionally intense and frequently included themes of restriction and limitation. Over time, these patterns became less pronounced, suggesting that dream content changes as people psychologically adapt to major life events.

Dreams Reflect a Dynamic Mental Process

“Our findings show that dreams are not just a reflection of past experiences, but a dynamic process shaped by who we are and what we live through,” explains Valentina Elce, researcher at the IMT School and lead author of the paper. “By combining large-scale data with computational methods, we were able to uncover patterns in dream content that were previously difficult to detect.”

AI Opens New Possibilities for Dream Research

The study also highlights the growing role of artificial intelligence in understanding dreams. NLP models were able to capture the meaning and structure of dream reports with accuracy comparable to human independent evaluators. This opens the door to new ways of studying consciousness, memory, and mental health on a larger scale and with greater consistency.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Chuck's picture corner to Many 2 2026

Happy 'Naked gardening Day'.

I won't be participating. It's currently a rainy 6c at the moment, and temps are predicted to be below average every day for the next 2 weeks here in Cardinal. Lots more rain this week. After tonight's low of 1c I'll be putting seedlings out in the barn where they will have more space and harden off.

Ps. part of my picture corner strategy is to keep a personal record of the climate as told by the plants in the yard, this year is a fair bit colder than many.

shrubs in front starting to leaf out

lots of these guys about

tulips coming along

peonies opening their first leaves

this day lily variety is often used in commercial parking lot plantings, it flowers (yellow) all season long and is very hardy.

These orange daylilies are what I call ditch lilies they like wet in spring and dry in summer.

These raspberries (gifted from friends) are going crazy, I only got a few berries last year the year I planted them. The berries are great tasting.

daffodils still waiting to open.

another day is done

another rabbit looking for a place to nest on the other side of the yard.

sedum, close to the hot pavement of the driveway

another sedum beside the driveway pavement

this guy is 3 years old and not growing all that well

this is a very old variety of forsythia, I once worked for the head of Ottawa's experimental farm where the 'Ottawa' forsythia variety was born, (under his watch) they flower much more prolifically. 

The gang

the large leaf popular is leafing out

the moon is up early today

and so another day ends.

Enjoy the Day

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Large Twin Study Reveals a Surprise About Narcissism

01 May 2026, By C. Cassella

https://www.sciencealert.com/large-twin-study-reveals-a-surprise-about-narcissism

(Karen Moskowitz/The Image Bank/Getty Images)

It's entirely normal and healthy to be a little self-involved from time to time. But for some individuals, a preoccupation with the self can become excessive, impacting daily life and relationships in pathological ways.

Narcissistic personality disorders are rare, yet their traits have long fascinated scientists.

Despite decades of research, it remains unclear what causes a grandiose view of the self and a strong sense of entitlement, whether it be family history, early childhood experiences, or a bit of both.

It's the classic nature-versus-nurture debate, and twin studies are among the best ways to untangle the complex knot of contributing factors.

Now, data from a large and extended twin family study in Germany suggests that narcissistic tendencies are impacted by genetics more than a shared family environment.

The findings challenge existing psychoanalytical explanations, which argue that 'cold', critical parenting, or praise that sets unrealistic expectations in childhood, play strong roles in driving the development of narcissistic personality traits.

"Narcissism runs in families," the researchers conclude, "but mainly due to genetics."

Their study considered the life experiences, personality traits, and genetics of more than 1,300 pairs of twins, plus their parents, partners, and any non-twin siblings in their families.

Each participant took a personality test, where they were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements.

Adult participants were asked to rank, on a scale of 1 to 9, how much they agreed with statements like "I tend to want others to admire me"; "I tend to want others to pay attention to me"; and "I tend to seek prestige and status."

Younger participants ranked on a scale of 1 to 5 how much they agreed with things like "I am really a special person" and "I am good at getting people to do things my way."

Ultimately, parents and children were similar in their narcissism scores, but the authors of the study say this association was "entirely genetically driven".

Shared environmental factors, like parenting styles or socioeconomic status, played only a "minor role".

A Narcissus painting by Caravaggio. Narcissism gets its name from the Greek hero Narcissus, who was obsessed with his own reflection.

 (Public Domain)



There are different types of narcissism, but traits often include an extreme sense of self-importance, a need for admiration and attention, and an inability to fully connect and empathize with others.

Psychologists often explain these traits by arguing that they cover up for insecurity or low self-esteem, developed during childhood. Treatment often includes 'talk therapy', aka psychotherapy. But perhaps these traits have less to do with learned behaviors than is assumed.

There needs to be a "fundamental shift in the search for the sources of narcissism – with regard to genetics, relevant environmental factors, and the interplay of genes and environments," write the authors of this new twin study, led by psychologist Mitja Back from the University of Münster.

To the team's knowledge, no genome-wide association studies have ever included measures of narcissism. This means we have little way to say how genetic variants may impact narcissistic traits.

A twin study from 1993 included just 175 pairs of twins, and it found that genetic heritability was estimated to be around 60 percent.

But this new study is much larger. It reveals that genetics and individual environmental factors (experiences not shared by both twins) each explain 50 percent of the variance in narcissistic traits.

For instance, interactions with peers at school during childhood are formative influences but often differ greatly between siblings.

In contrast, there was no evidence that shared environmental experiences, such as the home environment, were tied to narcissism. This could imply that parenting styles may not be a strong driving factor, after all – as long as they treat their kids the same way.

Further research needs to tease apart these various nuances.

"More detailed knowledge of genetic and environmental factors and their interplay that drive individual differences in narcissism will further transform our understanding of narcissism," the authors conclude.

"This will be essential for developing more effective means for dealing with narcissistic individuals in applied contexts, such as in psychotherapy, the workplace, and everyday life."

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/