your science briefing for 04.07.2025

How to very literally risk your life for a viral stunt, more mysteries from JWST surveys of early galaxies, why even wealthy Americans are dying younger, and more...

People have done a lot of things to go viral, often risking life and limb for a stunt that could go viral, make them a household name, and bring them a lot of money quickly along with new opportunities. And YouTuber Mykhailo Polyakov — an American from Arizona with a very Ukrainian name and father — is exactly the kind of person to do that, sneaking onto North Sentinel Island to leave a Diet Coke and a coconut in trying to lure the mysterious, notoriously hostile native tribe isolated for tens of thousands of years and could be wiped out by outsiders’ germs. And while clout on social media is pretty valuable today, it’s also worth noting that the last unwanted visitor to the island was killed and displayed as a warning… (Global News)

When stars under a few solar masses die, they become white dwarves. They’re very hot and very dense, roughly the size of Earth but tip the scales at between a fifth and a little over the mass of the Sun, and surface temperatures up to 100,000 degrees. If they somehow manage to accrete enough plasma to reach 1.4 solar masses, which is called the Chandrasekhar Limit, they will detonate as a supernova. And just 150 light years away, a pair of white dwarves seems ready to do exactly that: steal each others’ mass to detonate as a repeated Type I supernova… (Warwick U)

Politicians may deny climate change, regressive voters may mock it as a conspiracy theory by unnamed “elites” out to control their lives. But insurance companies which have to deal with the cleanup from the increasing and more intense storms certainly aren’t wondering if it’s happening. If anything, they’re warning businesses and banks that if average global warming hits 3 °C, they will simply no longer be able to operate and cover the damage of doubling down on fossil fuels. And facing ever worse storm forecasts, they’re no longer mincing their words… (The Guardian)

Live fast, die young, early galaxies… do it well? In a surprise from the latest survey of galaxies at the dawn of the universe as we know it by JWST, astronomers are seeing star formation end in one only 700 million years after the Big Bang. This seems way too early for the galaxy to go dark, leading scientists to ask if this is an anomaly or if the lifetime of galaxies that don’t undergo major collisions is just shorter and we are missing something in our models… (Geneva U)

extra: Thanks to JWST and new generations of telescopes, one of the things we’re realizing is that our model of the universe is not as solid as we thought. As a result, it seems like our universe is broken. Well, at least from the standpoint of mathematics and theoretical predictions, as new observations fail to give us a clear picture.

Speaking of living fast and dying young, a new study shows that despite spending far more on healthcare than any other wealthy nation, Americans are dying younger and have a lower quality of life. This works even when you compare wealthy Americans in no way limited by the kind of care they can afford. Rather than matching their wealthy counterparts in Europe, they die at about the same age as poor Europeans. It seems like having middleman vacuuming up trillions in complex codes and fees, hasn’t been delivering that innovation and exceptional care we keep being promised by insurance and pharma oligopolies fighting against public healthcare… (ArsTechnica)