your science briefing for 03.26.2025

There may be way more humans than we think on Earth, a trap to thwart AIs that won't take no for an answer, the race to weaponize space is on, again, and more...

While our natalist billionaires are obsessed with reversing falling birth rates across the world for less than noble reasons, to the point that it’s getting a little disturbing, a new study says that we may be severely underestimating the human population. Instead of there being around 8.2 billion of us, the real number is at least hundreds of millions off and could be as much as a little over a billion… (ScienceAlert)

As we age, the flow of cerebral fluid tends to slow down, making the cleanup of debris in our brain more difficult to clean. The debris, which are generally proteins created as byproducts of our normal waking function, is attributed to dementia and Alzheimers in older adults, and one longstanding goal of many researchers is to find a way to flush more of them out naturally. A new experiment stimulating blood vessel growth in the lymph nodes of mice seems to show a lot of promise… (WashU)

AI crawlers trying to ingest the internet, and contributing the death of the web as we know it, generally don’t take no for an answer because, well, frankly, their owners just don’t want to. So, Cloudflare, a massive web infrastructure provider, decided to stop them by creating a labyrinth on nonsense links and facts for them to pursue forever, leading them away from the actual content of the websites… (Ars Technica)

Everything old is new again, as the U.S. Space Force is talking about reviving a Cold War initiative known as Brilliant Pebbles, and more commonly mocked as Star Wars. According to this proposal, we would launch a massive constellation of lasers or KKV batteries to orbit the planet, knocking out any incoming ICBM. Which sounds great in theory, but in reality is a bit like saying that you’re planning to travel to the ends of the Earth for a bucket of unicorn blood because none of the technologies in question are even remotely proven, and the only space laser ever launched very quickly failed in its initial test mission... (TWZ)

In yet another stark demonstration of why it’s so difficult to have good faith debates on social media, a new study shows that headlines and posts promoting partisan rage and conflict, especially with demeaning language, gets as many as 57% more shares per insult or ragebaiting. And given that shares, likes, and comments drive what goes viral, and virality equals big paydays, every single incentive we have means a political content creator pretty much has no choice but to keep doubling down on culture wars and lean into polarization. R.I.P. civility, viva la ad revenue shares… (PsyPost)