your science briefing for 03.27.2025

The potential family of black holes at the heart of our galaxy, how undead cells could help save lives, why some faithful don't apologize to their mortal peers, and more...

Our galaxy, like every other galaxy we know of so far, has a supermassive black hole at its core. We even have a picture of it. Yes, it’s blurry, but you try to take an image of an object spinning fast enough to warp and stretch space and time from about 26,670 light years away. It might also have thousands of of siblings, creating giant, short-lived stars as it was being born, stars that would have imploded into a swarm of black holes that now prowl the center of the Milky Way… (Universe Today)

A somewhat controversial idea that keeps popping up in neurobiology is that of brain cells dedicated to a specific concept, person, or thing. Why is it so controversial? We haven’t seen this happen in any other animal whose brains we studied, and we’re not entirely sure how precise they are, nor have we seen them outside of a few studies in very small patient groups as a side effect of trying to treat their epilepsy. But if those “concept neurons” do exist, and they really are unique to humans, they could explain why our intelligence manifests so differently than that of other species… (Salon)

According to the 1999 blockbuster hit The Mummy, death is only the beginning. Okay, it’s actually not because after death, the cells in organism’s body start to disintegrate, starved of nutrients and detecting that communication with the cells around them is not happening anymore. But for some cells, the death of the organism around them is more of an unpleasant hiccup as they try to rebuild and keep going. Now, this isn’t a permanent state, and they do eventually succumb. At the same time, their resilience could be very useful for a wide variety of medical applications… (ZME)

It’s one thing to feel like you have a relationship with an immaterial entity which has an enormous influence on your life. It’s another to use your conviction that this entity has forgiven you for something you did wrong to justify not apologizing to actual flesh and blood humans to whom you owe an apology. Yet, it seems to be exactly what happens when the resolution to a conflict is mostly in the thoughts of the faithful instead of the material world in which we actually have to live… (PsyPost)

Thanks to generative AI, a new business model is taking over Instagram: generating a barrage of images and videos meant to shock and disgust. Why? It’s to get viewers to share links or leave comments, then monetize the resulting engagement because the algorithm thinks that any attention that generates sharing and comments is good. It’s yet another groan-inducing low for the brainrot content farms that exist as part of the exponentially growing scam and bot machine killing the web… (404 Media)