JWST finds early galaxies were already seeding the universe with heavy elements

When the universe was still in its infancy—only 500 million years after the Big Bang, or about 3% of its current age—some of the universe's earliest stars and galaxies had already formed. Astronomers have long predicted that much of the gas surrounding these young galaxies must have remained relatively pristine, composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, the primordial ingredients available in the newborn cosmos. 

According to a study published by astronomers at the University of Arizona in Nature Astronomy, this picture is likely not correct. Instead, galaxies were already seeding the cosmos with heavy elements, such as oxygen and carbon, much earlier than astronomers expected. 

"We observed that heavy elements escaped from galaxies very, very early in cosmic time," said Yongda Zhu, first author of the paper and postdoctoral researcher at the U of A Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory. "Not only were the galaxies producing these elements, but they were also dispersing them, possibly seeding other galaxies."

How the universe got its elements

In the early universe, the cosmos barely contained anything other than hydrogen and helium, the two simplest elements at the very top of the periodic table. Over time, gravity pulled clouds of these simple elements together to form stars, where immense pressures and temperatures allowed nuclear fusion and other reactions to forge more complex, heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen. 

When stars burned out or ended their lives as supernovae, they shed these heavy elements into space, where they became the building blocks for future generations of stars, planets and, ultimately, life. Even the carbon in our bodies and the oxygen we breathe were forged in earlier generations of stars. 

Until now, however, it wasn't clear how and when heavier elements were transported from the earliest galaxies into the surrounding universe. 

Looking at early galaxies

Zhu's research centered on three early galaxies whose light has traveled for more than 13 billion years, showing them as they appeared about 500 million years after the Big Bang, during a cosmic period known as the Epoch of Reionization. 

At that time, the first generations of stars and galaxies were transforming the early universe by ionizing the hydrogen gas between them. This process, during which electrons were stripped from hydrogen nuclei, gradually brought an end to the cosmic "dark ages" by allowing ultraviolet light to travel more freely through the universe. 

"We used the galaxies themselves as background light sources," said Zhu. "As light from the galaxies traveled toward Earth, it passed through surrounding gas, and we were able to look at the light's absorption patterns to detect specific elements." 

Observations of these ancient galaxies were made possible only by the infrared capabilities of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which allowed researchers to observe galaxies as they appeared about 13 billion years ago. The nearly 30 hours of exposure provided enough light to detect faint absorption patterns in the spectra of these distant galaxies. 

Over the course of one long night, Zhu manually searched through publicly available JWST spectra from hundreds of galaxies and pinpointed three with absorption patterns indicating the presence of heavy elements, including carbon, oxygen and silicon. The absorption lines were "blueshifted" relative to the galaxies' redshift, indicating that the gas was moving outward from the galaxies and carrying oxygen, carbon and other heavy elements into intergalactic space. 

The chemical fingerprints of these infant galaxies closely resembled those of evolved galaxies billions of years later, providing evidence that even at cosmic dawn, galaxies were already producing and spreading heavy elements into the space around them. 

"Think of these elements, which originated from the galaxies' stars, as food dye dropped into a cup of water," said Zhu. "The color begins to spread through the water, and, in a similar fashion, these heavy elements from early galaxies began to escape into space and 'enrich' their surroundings."

Baryon cycling

The process by which galaxies exchange material is known as baryon cycling. It is one reason galaxies are not isolated systems, but interconnected parts of a larger galactic ecosystem. Material produced by one generation of stars can be recycled and redistributed through this galactic ecosystem.

The discovery of early baryon cycling may also help explain why astronomers have struggled to find the first generation of stars, known as Population III stars. These stars are thought to have been the very first stars formed from pristine gas containing only hydrogen and helium, before heavier elements had been produced and dispersed throughout the universe.

If galaxies were already enriching their surroundings only 500 million years after the Big Bang, truly pristine gas—and the Population III stars that formed from it—simply may not have been around long enough to be observed.

The Creation of the Cosmos

Scientists Create Largest-ever Cosmological Simulation, Opening New Window into Universe

"In simple terms, they built a virtual universe inside a supercomputer, starting from just after the Big Bang and following the pull of gravity step by step."

A Chinese-led international team has released the largest-ever cosmological simulation, named "HyperMillennium," offering scientists a powerful digital tool to explore cosmic evolution.

This simulation covers a vast cube with a side size of 12 billion light-years and uses 4.2 trillion virtual dark matter particles. By applying a technique called N-body numerical simulation, the team accurately recreated how large-scale structures in the universe evolved over 10 billion years. In simple terms, they built a virtual universe inside a supercomputer, starting from just after the Big Bang and following the pull of gravity step by step.

This virtual cosmos allows researchers to "rewind time" and study how galaxies and other cosmic features formed. By adding physical models of galaxy formation, the simulation produces a detailed catalog of galaxy positions, brightness and other key traits. This provides theoretical support for research into dark matter and dark energy, and also offers strong support for new-generation galaxy survey programs, such as the China Space Station Telescope and the European Space Agency's Euclid mission.

"The simulation was completed with high force resolution and time accuracy and also made a breakthrough in computational scale. It allows scientists to study extremely rare, massive cosmic structures in fine detail while maintaining strong statistical power," said Wang Qiao, a researcher at National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC).

Such large-scale simulations demand enormous computing resources, and the research team used self-developed software called PhotoNs, designed specifically for China's domestic supercomputers. After more than 10 years of work on algorithms and optimization, the team achieved efficient calculations using over 10,000 accelerator cards. The project consumed more than 100 million CPU core-hours and 10 million accelerator-card hours, and produced approximately 13 petabytes of raw and processed data.

Mike Boylan-Kolchin, a professor of the University of Texas at Austin, called the simulation a computational marvel that will help unlock secrets of dark energy and the early universe. He also noted that its unprecedented size and resolution make it a touchstone for research communities for years to come.

Volker Springel, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, said the simulation redefines the limits of numerical cosmology. He was "extremely impressed" by the team's effort in realizing such an incredibly large and highly accurate simulation, which allows for new high-precision tests of the standard cosmological model.

The first research paper stemming from this project was recently published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. As a demonstration of the power of the simulation, the team compared simulation results with real observations of Abell 2744, a famous galaxy cluster about four billion light-years from Earth. The match was remarkable, down to the pixel level, confirming that the standard cosmological model works even in extremely complex environments like colliding galaxy clusters.

According to the NAOC, the first batch of simulation data has already been released to the global scientific community through the National Astronomical Data Center, a platform for astronomy research, education and data-driven applications. (Xinhua)

Scientists Say Light Particles Traveling Through Brain Tissue Could Be Carrying Consciousness

For decades, our picture of the brain has been built on two pillars: the electrical nature of nerve impulses, recognized by the late 19th century, and chemical synaptic transmission via neurotransmitters, discovered in the mid-20th century. Together, they form the foundation of modern neuroscience. But a growing body of research is now pointing toward something else entirely, a so-called biofield, generated by neurons themselves, that may also be involved in how information moves through the brain.

A Third Pathway Nobody Saw Coming

The idea that the brain might emit light sounds, at first, like the kind of claim you’d find on a wellness blog. But the science behind it is more grounded than you might expect. Nervous tissue does, in fact, emit biophotons. That much has been established. What Pospíšil and Prasad are now arguing is that these biophotons, being light, theoretically carry the same quantum properties as any other photon, superposition, coherence, entanglement and all.

According a review article published in the journal Biophysics and Molecular Biology, authored by Pavel Pospíšil and Ankush Prasad from Palacký University in the Czech Republic, “biophotons might mediate ultrafast interactions between neurons occurring at the speed of light.” If that’s true, it would represent a fundamental shift in how we understand neural communication, not a replacement of the electrical-chemical model, but an addition to it. A hidden layer that has been there all along, just waiting for the right tools to detect it.

The Quantum Problem in a Warm, Messy Brain

Here’s where things get genuinely complicated. Quantum phenomena are notoriously fragile. Nearly all quantum science is conducted at temperatures close to absolute zero, precisely because thermal noise causes decoherence, a breakdown of the quantum state. The human brain, operating at temperatures nearing the triple digits in Fahrenheit and packed with chemical and structural interference, is about as far from a quantum laboratory as you can get.

The authors don’t shy away from this. They acknowledge that “any quantum-mediated signaling in neural tissue remains highly speculative and likely limited to very short distances.” Yet they also cite experimental studies showing that polarization-entangled photon pairs can retain their quantum correlations after passing through thin slices of brain tissue up to 400 micrometers thick. It’s a narrow finding, but it’s not nothing.

The middle step, keeping quantum information intact during transit through the brain, remains the hardest to crack. Encoding information into the quantum state of a biophoton is theoretically possible. Decoding it at the other end is theoretically possible. Surviving the journey in between? That’s the part no one has solved yet.

Consciousness, the Hard Problem, and Why This Matters

As reported by Popular Mechanics, the reason any of this carries such weight goes back to what scientists call the “hard problem” of consciousness. Neuroscientists can explain, in impressive detail, how the brain uses electrical and chemical signals to carry out biological functions and engage in both voluntary and involuntary reasoning. What they cannot explain is subjective conscious experience, the raw feeling of what it’s like to be you, reading this sentence, right now.

This gap is old. As far back as 1989, physicist Roger Penrose hypothesized that consciousness might have an undiscovered quantum element. The debate has never fully gone away, even as critics, including Stephen Hawking, have argued that combining two scientific mysteries (consciousness and quantum field theory) doesn’t produce a scientific certainty, and amounts to a kind of Holmesian fallacy.

According to Pospíšil and Prasad, the biofield hypothesis, while admittedly speculative, holds enough scientific merit to warrant serious investigation. They call for future research that moves “beyond purely correlative observations by identifying the conditions under which biophoton emission could meaningfully influence neural activity.” The tools to do it, they suggest, may already exist, photomultiplier tubes, charge-coupled device cameras, and advanced computational modeling could all contribute to testing these hypotheses more rigorously.

Whether light really is the missing piece of the consciousness puzzle remains an open question. The science is alive, and scientists are no longer willing to assume that neurons alone hold all the answers.

Was Life Seeded from Space? ‘Complete Set’ of DNA Ingredients Discovered on Asteroid

"Organic molecules delivered from extraterrestrial materials may have played a key role in supplying building blocks for life on Earth,” said one scientist."

Scientists have discovered all five nucleobases—the fundamental components of DNA and RNA—in pristine samples from the asteroid Ryugu, according to a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy. The finding strengthens the case that the ingredients for life are abundant in the solar system and may have found their way to Earth from space, according to a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy. 

Life as we know it runs on DNA and RNA, which are built from five chemical bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil. A team has now identified this “complete set” of nucleobases in rocks snatched from the surface of Ryugu in 2019 by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2, which successfully returned them to Earth the following year.

This discovery corroborates the results from another mission, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, which returned samples of the asteroid Bennu that also contained all five nucleobases. Both asteroids belong to the same “carbonaceous” (C-type) family of primitive carbon-rich rocks, though the samples contain different ratios of the five nucleobases. 

"The finding strengthens the case that the ingredients for life are abundant in the solar system and may have found their way to Earth from space..."

Taken together, the findings shed light on the origin of life on Earth and raise new questions about the odds that it exists elsewhere. 

“These findings suggest that nucleobases may be widespread in carbonaceous asteroids and, by extension, in planetary systems,” said Toshiki Koga, a postdoctoral researcher at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), in an email to 404 Media. 

“This means that some of the key molecular ingredients for life could be commonly available,” he added. “However, this does not imply that life itself is widespread, but rather that the chemical starting materials for life may be more common than previously thought.”

The emergence of life on Earth, also known as abiogenesis, remains one of the biggest mysteries in science. To untangle this enigma, scientists first need to figure out how our planet was initially enriched with the basic stuff of life—including water, amino acids, and the nucleobases that make up our genetic material.

One popular hypothesis suggests that asteroids bearing these biological building blocks pelted Earth as it formed more than four billion years ago. This idea has been supported by the presence of nucleobases in pieces of carbonaceous asteroids that have fallen down to Earth, such as the Murchison meteorite of Australia or the Orgueil meteorite of France. 

Meteorites, however, are not pristine as they become eroded by exposure to space and can also be contaminated by terrestrial material after landing on Earth. To get cleaner samples, scientists launched several spacecraft to grab samples directly from the source, beginning with Japan’s Hayabusa mission, which delivered several milligrams of dusty grains from asteroid Itokawa to Earth in 2010. 

Hayabusa-2 and OSIRIS-REx then obtained even larger samples from their targets, bringing back 5.4 grams from Ryugu and 121.6 grams from Bennu. Previous studies have already identified more than a dozen amino acids associated with life in both samples, as well as evidence that these asteroids were once altered by ice and water. 

Now, following the discovery of all five nucleobases in the Bennu pebbles, Koga and his colleagues have found the complete set in Ryugu. The findings lend weight to the so-called “RNA world” model of abiogenesis. In this hypothesis, early life on Earth depended solely on RNA as a self-replicating molecule, laying the biological groundwork for later, more complicated systems that involved DNA and protein-based organisms. The extraterrestrial samples from Ryugu and Bennu provide evidence that at least some of the nucleobases that made up these early lifeforms came from outer space.

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Entire article available here.

Researchers Have Uncovered a Missing Piece in Life’s Origin Story

Deep beneath the ocean’s surface, mineral-rich hydrothermal vents may have hosted a critical chemical reaction that helped spark life on Earth.

Researchers at the University of Alberta report that they may have identified a missing piece in one of science’s biggest questions: how life first began on Earth.

Many scientists think life started deep on the ocean floor, near hydrothermal vents that release heat and mineral-rich fluids from beneath the crust. These environments could have supplied energy and raw materials for early chemistry. However, a major puzzle has remained. Without sunlight, how were essential nutrients, especially usable forms of carbon and nitrogen, produced in amounts sufficient to support the first living systems?

"Without sunlight, how were essential nutrients, especially usable forms of carbon and nitrogen, produced in amounts sufficient to support the first living systems?"

To investigate, Long Li and his colleagues in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences examined rock cores drilled about 200 meters into the oceanic crust in the South China Sea. Their analysis revealed signs of a process known as abiotic nitrogen reduction (ANR), in which minerals act as catalysts to convert nitrogen into chemically useful forms. The team concluded that this reaction likely generated nutrients needed for life to emerge.

One important product of this process is ammonium. Li explains that ammonium plays a central role in the abiotic synthesis of organic compounds, which are the molecular building blocks required for the development of the earliest life forms.

The study was conducted in partnership with researchers at the South China Institute of Oceanography and was published in Nature Communications.

Evidence from the Ocean Floor

“This definitely fills in the gap for the first-step reaction in the origin of life,” says Li. “People have searched for this reaction for a long time, but this is the first time we have convincing evidence to show it is occurring on Earth, and probably did occur on early Earth as well.”

"...minerals act as catalysts to convert nitrogen into chemically useful forms. The team concluded that this reaction likely generated nutrients needed for life to emerge."

Although ANR has been produced under controlled laboratory conditions, detecting it in natural ocean settings has been challenging.

According to the authors, modern biological activity alters nitrogen in seawater and sediments, making it difficult to separate abiotic signals from those created by living organisms. By studying deeply buried rock samples, the team was able to identify geochemical evidence consistent with a nonbiological nitrogen reduction process.

Implications for the Faint Young Sun Paradox

The findings may also help scientists address the “faint young sun paradox.” This long-standing problem asks how liquid water could have existed on early Earth when the young Sun emitted less energy. Climate models suggest that surface temperatures at the time should have been well below 0 C.

Despite those models, geological records show that liquid water was present at least 4.4 billion years ago. Li says this apparent contradiction can likely be explained by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia, which would have trapped heat in the atmosphere. Hydrothermal vents on the seafloor may have helped generate these gases, contributing both to a warmer climate and to the chemistry needed for life.

Li adds that the strength of the evidence from the South China Sea suggests this reaction was not limited to a single location.

“We definitely need more evidence to show that. But since the conditions for ANR are common in both modern and ancient oceans, we reasonably speculate that this could happen globally over Earth’s history.”

Scientists Discover DNA Is Already Organized Before Life Switches On

Life’s genetic blueprint isn’t born in chaos—it’s built in 3D with precision from the very first moments.

For many years, researchers believed that the DNA inside a newly fertilized egg began as a structural ‘blank slate’ – a loose, unorganized mass that would only take shape once the embryo started using its own genes. In this view, order emerged only after the genetic program switched on.

New findings published today (February 24) in Nature Genetics challenge that assumption. Professor Juanma Vaquerizas and his team report that the genome is far more organized at the very beginning than previously thought. They developed a powerful new method called Pico-C that allows scientists to examine the 3D structure of the genome in extraordinary detail. With this tool, the researchers found that long before the genome fully activates – a milestone known as Zygotic Genome Activation – an intricate 3D DNA scaffold is already forming. The way DNA folds in three dimensions is critical because it determines which genes can be turned on during development, ensuring cells work properly and reducing the risk of developmental disorders and disease.

“We used to think of the time before the genome awakens as a period of chaos,” explains Noura Maziak, lead author of the study. “But by zooming in closer than ever before, we can see that it’s actually a highly disciplined construction site. The scaffolding of the genome is being erected in a precise, modular way, long before the ‘on’ switch is fully flipped.”

Mapping the 3D Genome With Pico-C

The discovery was made using the fruit fly (Drosophila), a classic model organism in genetics. In the first hours after fertilization, a fruit fly embryo rapidly divides its nuclei, producing thousands of cells in a short time. This fast-paced developmental window makes it especially useful for studying how genomes are organized and regulated.

Using their ultra-sensitive Pico-C technique, the team charted the 3D arrangement of the fruit fly genome during these earliest stages. They found that DNA does not fold randomly. Instead, it forms loops and structures that follow a modular design, allowing specific regulatory signals to control distinct regions of the genome. This carefully arranged architecture ensures that genetic instructions are primed and ready to be activated at exactly the right moment.

In addition to delivering highly detailed 3D maps of DNA shape, Pico-C requires far smaller samples than conventional approaches – about ten times less material. This efficiency opens new possibilities for investigating how DNA folding influences gene regulation and how disruptions in this architecture may contribute to disease.

From Fruit Flies to Human Health

Although this genomic “blueprint” was first identified in fruit flies, its significance extends directly to human biology. In a companion study published in Nature Cell Biology, led by Professor Ulrike Kutay and colleagues at ETH Zürich in Switzerland, researchers applied the same high-resolution mapping approach to human cells.

They examined what happens when the molecular “anchors” that stabilize the genome’s 3D structure are removed. The outcome was dramatic. When this structural framework breaks down, human cells interpret the disruption as if they are under viral attack. This false alarm activates the innate immune system, potentially driving inflammation and disease.

“These two studies tell a complete story,” says Juanma. “The first shows us how the genome’s 3D structure is carefully built at the start of life. The second shows us the disastrous consequences for human health if that structure is allowed to collapse.”

Largest radio sky survey ever maps the universe in unprecedented detail

Scientists have unveiled an exceptionally detailed map of the sky in radio waves, taken with the Europe-wide telescope Lofar. The map reveals 13.7 million cosmic sources, and provides the most complete census yet of actively growing supermassive black holes.  

The newly released Lofar Two-metre Sky Survey (LoTSS-DR3) marks a major milestone in radio astronomy and international scientific collaboration. The results are described in a scientific paper in is the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

"This data release brings together more than a decade of observations, large-scale data processing and scientific analysis by an international research team,” says Timothy Shimwell, lead author and astronomer at Astron and Leiden University, Netherlands.

By observing the sky at low radio frequencies, the survey reveals a dramatically different view of the universe than that seen at optical wavelengths. Much of the detected emission arises from relativistic particles moving through magnetic fields, allowing astronomers to trace energetic phenomena such as powerful jets from supermassive black holes and galaxies undergoing extreme star formation across cosmic time.

“This map gives us a new look at the radio sky and at the history of the universe, and it almost makes you dizzy. Everywhere, Lofar sees traces of supermassive black holes, and now we have the opportunity to discover how much these active black holes have influenced the history of the universe”, says Cathy Horellou, astronomer at Chalmers. 

Thanks to its remarkable detail, the survey has also exposed rare and elusive objects, including merging clusters of galaxies, faint supernova remnants, and flaring or interacting stars. The survey is already enabling hundreds of new studies across astronomy, offering fresh insights into the formation and evolution of cosmic structures, how particles are accelerated to extreme energies, and cosmic magnetic fields, while also making publicly available the most sensitive wide-area radio maps of the universe ever produced.

“Lofar can also measure polarisation very precisely. That means we can detect magnetic fields even in regions of the universe that are nearly empty”, says Cathy Horellou.

Transformative discoveries

While the scientific exploitation is only just beginning, the scale, sensitivity and resolution of the survey are already transforming radio astronomy, enabling new discoveries across a wide range of cosmic environments. 

“We can study a diverse population of supermassive black holes and their radio jets at different stages of their evolution, showing how their properties depend not only on the black hole itself, but also on the galaxy and environment in which it resides,” says Martin Hardcastle of the University of Hertfordshire, UK. 

The survey has also delivered robust measurements of star formation rates in millions of galaxies, showing how these rates vary with galaxy properties and across cosmic time. The data are being carefully searched for rare astrophysical phenomena, for example transient and variable radio sources, previously unknown supernova remnants, some of the largest and oldest known radio galaxies, and radio emission consistent with interactions between exoplanets and their host stars.

Technical innovation 

Processing the data required the development of new techniques that accurately correct for severe distortions caused by the Earth’s ionosphere, and multiple high-performance computing systems. 

“The volume of data we handled - 18.6 petabytes in total - was immense and required continuous processing and monitoring over many years, using more than 20 million core hours of computing time,” says Alexander Drabent of Thuringian State Observatory, Germany.

John Conway is professor of radio astronomy at Chalmers and director of Onsala Space Observatory.

“The survey is now open to everyone to explore. It is a gold mine for astronomers who want to understand the history of the universe, and it will stimulate completely new ways of digging into data using the latest in machine learning and AI”, he says.

More about the research

The survey is presented in the paper "The LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey VII. Third Data Release", T. W. Shimwell et al. in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Beyond 'survival' of the fittest: Evolution works in teams

Survival of the fittest. Nature red in tooth and claw. The common view of natural selection is based solely on the individual: A trait allows an organism to out-compete its rivals and is thus passed down to its offspring. To suggest otherwise can provoke the ire of certain segments of the scientific community, acknowledged Binghamton University Associate Professor Emerita of Biological Sciences Anne Clark.

But a bibliometric review of 280 scientific studies shows that natural selection can occur on multiple levels of biological organization simultaneously, and not just in social species. Clark is a co-author of the article "Abundant empirical evidence of multilevel selection revealed by a bibliometric review," which recently appeared in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

"The idea of looking at selection at multiple levels is to measure whether a trait is adaptive for individuals within a group," explained Clark, a behavioral ecologist. "And does the frequency or existence of that trait within a group change the way the group functions in comparison with other groups?"

The studies examined by the researchers spanned more than a century, covering everything from viruses to human beings. All attempted to account for multilevel selection (MLS), which provides a broader view of natural selection than individual benefit.

So, how does MLS work? Imagine that there are two human tribes. In one, members are solely focused on their individual success. In the other, members are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole; however, this altruism may cost them time and resources that they could expend on their own children and personal survival.

Which tribe is more likely to survive a crisis, such as an attack from another group? The second. Paradoxically, the willingness for an individual to sacrifice for the group can lead to better survival outcomes. That doesn't mean that everyone in a group will become self-sacrificing, but that groups with self-sacrificing individuals may have a survival advantage, Clark explained.

To take a broader view, individuals not only live in communities but are communities. We are composed of trillions of cells, which comprise our tissues and organs, along with the bacteria in our microbiome and the viruses that afflict us. We live in families, neighborhoods, and countries, as well as ecosystems that bring us into contact with other species.

Since 1988, Binghamton University has been a center for foundational work on MLS theory, especially through the research of Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences David Sloan Wilson and Clark. Review co-author Omar Tonsi Eldakar, now of Nova Southeastern University in Florida, received his Ph.D. at Binghamton in Wilson's lab for his studies of group selection in the wild. In addition to Clark and Eldakar, review co-authors include lead author César Marin, a soil mycorrhizal ecologist; behavioral ecologist Conner Philson; and evolutionary biologist Michael Wade.

Why does multilevel selection remain controversial? Clark pointed to scientific culture. Since the 1960s, key scientists have observed that claims of group benefits weren't subject to rigorous measurement and shouldn't be taken seriously. Some scientists openly banned discussion of group selection in their classrooms, calling it naïve; others claimed that it was exceedingly rare or another term for kin selection.

"If you measure the average increase in the frequency of a trait over generations and then say it's favored by natural selection, you're not wrong," Clark said. "But if I ask you: 'What's the mechanism for the slow increase in that trait over here and the rapid increase over there?' You're not going to be able to tell me. Whereas, if you had looked at different levels, you might see that group competition is more important in one place, or cooperation within groups in another."

Layers of community

So, how does MLS work? Imagine that there are two human tribes. In one, members are solely focused on their individual success. In the other, members are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole; however, this altruism may cost them time and resources that they could expend on their own children and personal survival.

Which tribe is more likely to survive a crisis, such as an attack from another group? The second. Paradoxically, the willingness for an individual to sacrifice for the group can lead to better survival outcomes. That doesn't mean that everyone in a group will become self-sacrificing, but that groups with self-sacrificing individuals may have a survival advantage, Clark explained.

To take a broader view, individuals not only live in communities but are communities. We are composed of trillions of cells, which comprise our tissues and organs, along with the bacteria in our microbiome and the viruses that afflict us. We live in families, neighborhoods, and countries, as well as ecosystems that bring us into contact with other species.

Every single one of these systems can change over time in response to stimuli, shifting and adapting in response to one another. Groupings can also influence individual success; consider, for example, the case of a family struggling with systemic poverty, or the impact of a troubled neighborhood on the individuals within it.

But it's not just a matter of conscious altruism. In the 1970s, Wade—the final author on the review—conducted seminal research on group selection in flour beetles, a popular "model species" for evolutionary research. Wade created a population of groups, allowed the beetles to reproduce within each group, and selected the smallest or largest groups (in different treatments of the experiment) as "parents" for the next generation of groups. Group size diverged between the two treatments over the generations, demonstrating that group-level selection had occurred. But altruism within groups was not involved; for smaller group sizes, cannibalism of eggs evolved within the group.

Cancer is another interesting example, as are viral illnesses. On one hand, cancer cells no longer cooperate with the rest of the body, subverting the communal good for their individual benefit. But the situation isn't so cut-and-dry.

"In some cases, cancer cells act as a cooperative group in their own right; the ways they spread are strategic," Clark said. "You can also get competition between diseases for host resources."

But what happens within a host is not the whole story; the host's environment is critical, too. If a communicable disease exists in a host population with frequent and predictable contacts, rapid growth with damage to a host may evolve, because this will not stop the host from passing it on.

However, such diseases would soon die out in populations of more isolated individuals; in the second scenario, more benign versions would have the advantage, because longer surviving hosts would give the host—and its virus or bacteria—time to find another host. Thus, selection within hosts may favor disease organisms that reproduce faster, but selection between the groups of disease organisms defined by each host may be in the exact opposite direction.

"Multilevel selection complicates the picture because you have to consider all the places where selection could be occurring, and it's possible that selection on one level is headed in a different direction than selection on another level," Clark said.

Real-world applications

There is a real benefit to having a fuller picture of natural selection, particularly in medicine and agriculture. The role that widespread antibiotic use plays in shaping a bacterial arms race is a well-known example.

Another example involves chickens. In one famous study, the agricultural scientist William Muir focused on selecting for egg productivity of hens housed in battery cages. In one experiment, he selected the most productive hen within each cage to breed the next generation of hens (within-group selection). The result? A hyper-aggressive strain of hens that achieved their productivity at the expense of others, resulting in a decline in productivity at the cage level.

In a parallel experiment, Muir selected the most productive cages and used all the hens within the cages to breed the next generation of hens (group-level selection). The result? A docile strain of hens that didn't interfere with each other and achieved a 160% increase in productivity at the cage level in five generations. Based on this and other experiments, group-level selection has become standard practice in animal and plant breeding.

We can also apply the theory to ourselves, keeping Muir's chicken experiments in mind: Are we creating situations that reward competitive or even selfish behaviors? Consider a classroom that grades students on how many questions they ask, penalizing those who are quiet or slow to raise their hands. In that case, the class has selected for rapid responders rather than innovators or deep thinkers, Clark noted.

"We've been encouraged to think about our classroom as a set of diverse individuals. What are we rewarding at the classroom level, and what aren't we rewarding?" she said. "If we looked at different levels, we would understand mechanisms and what's really going on under the hood."

Scientists just mapped the hidden structure holding the Universe together

 

Astronomers have produced the most detailed map yet of dark matter, revealing the invisible framework that shaped the Universe long before stars and galaxies formed. Using powerful new observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the research shows how dark matter gathered ordinary matter into dense regions, setting the stage for galaxies like the Milky Way and eventually planets like Earth.

Scientists have produced the most detailed map ever created of dark matter that runs throughout the Universe, revealing how it has influenced the formation of stars, galaxies, and planets.

The research, which includes astronomers from Durham University in the UK, provides new insight into how this unseen substance helped draw ordinary matter together, forming galaxies such as the Milky Way and eventually planets like Earth.

The findings are based on new observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) and are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The international study was led jointly by Durham University, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

How Dark Matter Shaped the Universe We See Today

The newly created map confirms earlier studies while revealing finer details about the relationship between dark matter and the normal matter that makes up everything we can see, touch, and interact with.

At the beginning of the Universe, both dark matter and ordinary matter were likely spread thinly across space. Scientists believe dark matter began clumping together first. Its gravity then pulled in normal matter, creating dense regions where stars and galaxies could begin to form.

This process set the overall pattern for how galaxies are distributed across the Universe today. By allowing galaxies and stars to form earlier than they otherwise would have, dark matter also helped create the conditions needed for planets to develop. Without this early influence, the elements required for life may never have formed within our galaxy.

Research co-lead author Dr. Gavin Leroy, in the Institute for Computational Cosmology, Department of Physics, Durham University, said: "By revealing dark matter with unprecedented precision, our map shows how an invisible component of the Universe has structured visible matter to the point of enabling the emergence of galaxies, stars, and ultimately life itself.

"This map reveals the invisible but essential role of dark matter, the true architect of the Universe, which gradually organizes the structures we observe through our telescopes."

Detecting the Invisible Through Gravity

Dark matter cannot be seen directly because it does not emit, reflect, absorb, or block light. It also moves through ordinary matter without interacting with it, much like a ghost.

Its presence is detected through gravity. The new map shows this effect with greater clarity than ever before. One key piece of evidence is how closely maps of dark matter line up with maps of normal matter.

According to the researchers, Webb's observations show that this alignment is not accidental. Instead, it reflects dark matter's gravitational pull drawing normal matter toward it throughout the history of the Universe.

Research co-author Professor Richard Massey, in the Institute for Computational Cosmology, Department of Physics, Durham University, said: "Wherever you find normal matter in the Universe today, you also find dark matter.

"Billions of dark matter particles pass through your body every second. There's no harm, they don't notice us and just keep going.

"But the whole swirling cloud of dark matter around the Milky Way has enough gravity to hold our entire galaxy together. Without dark matter, the Milky Way would spin itself apart."

Webb's Deep View of the Cosmos

The map covers a region of sky about 2.5 times the size of the full Moon, located in the constellation Sextans.

Webb observed this area for approximately 255 hours and identified nearly 800,000 galaxies, many of them seen for the first time. To locate dark matter, the team measured how its mass bends space, which in turn bends the light traveling to Earth from distant galaxies -- as if that light had passed through a warped windowpane.

The resulting map includes roughly ten times more galaxies than earlier ground-based maps of the same region and twice as many as those produced using the Hubble Space Telescope. It reveals new concentrations of dark matter and provides a much sharper view of areas previously observed by Hubble.

Research co-lead author Dr. Diana Scognamiglio, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: "This is the largest dark matter map we've made with Webb, and it's twice as sharp as any dark matter map made by other observatories.

"Previously, we were looking at a blurry picture of dark matter. Now we're seeing the invisible scaffolding of the Universe in stunning detail, thanks to Webb's incredible resolution."

Instruments and Future Exploration

To improve distance measurements for many of the galaxies in the map, the research team used Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

Durham University's Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy contributed to the development of MIRI, which was designed and managed through launch by JPL. The instrument is especially effective at detecting galaxies hidden behind thick clouds of cosmic dust.

The team plans to expand their work by mapping dark matter across the entire Universe using the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid telescope and NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. These future observations will help scientists better understand dark matter's basic properties and how it may have evolved over cosmic time.

The region of sky analyzed in this study will serve as a reference point, allowing future dark matter maps to be compared and refined with greater precision.

The latest research was funded by NASA, the RCUK/Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), RCUK/STFC Central Laser Facility at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales.

Astrophysicists discover largest sulfur-containing molecular compound in space

In the heart of our galaxy, scientists discovered the first sulfur-bearing six-membered ring molecule hiding in an interstellar cloud. Credit: MPE/ NASA/JPL-Caltech

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), in collaboration with astrophysicists from the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA, have identified the largest sulfur-bearing molecule ever found in space: 2,5-cyclohexadiene-1-thione (C₆H₆S). They made this breakthrough by combining laboratory experiments with astronomical observations. The molecule resides in the molecular cloud G+0.693–0.027, about 27,000 light-years from Earth near the center of the Milky Way.

With a stable six-membered ring and a total of 13 atoms, it far exceeds the size of all previously detected sulfur-containing compounds in space. The study is published in Nature Astronomy.

Significance of the discovery for astrochemistry

"This is the first unambiguous detection of a complex, ring-shaped sulfur-containing molecule in interstellar space—and a crucial step toward understanding the chemical link between space and the building blocks of life," says Mitsunori Araki, scientist at MPE and lead author of the study.

"The discovery suggests that many more complex sulfur-bearing molecules likely remain undetected—and that the fundamental ingredients of life may have formed in the depths of interstellar space, long before Earth came into existence."

Until now, astronomers had only detected small sulfur compounds—mostly with six atoms or fewer—in interstellar space. Large, complex sulfur-containing molecules were expected, particularly due to sulfur's essential role in proteins and enzymes, yet these larger molecules had remained elusive. This gap between interstellar chemistry and the organic inventory found in comets and meteorites had been a central mystery in astrochemistry.

The newly discovered C₆H₆S is structurally related to molecules found in extraterrestrial samples—and is the first of its kind definitively detected in space. It establishes a direct chemical "bridge" between the interstellar medium and our own solar system.

How the molecule was detected

The team synthesized the molecule in the lab by applying a 1,000-volt electrical discharge to the evil-smelling liquid thiophenol (C₆H₅SH). Using a self-developed spectrometer, they precisely measured the radio emission frequencies of C₆H₆S, producing a unique "radio fingerprint" with more than seven significant digits. This signature was then matched to astronomical data from a large observational survey led by CAB, collected with the IRAM 30m and the Yebes 40-meter radio telescopes in Spain.

"Our results show that a 13-atom molecule structurally similar to those in comets already exists in a young, starless molecular cloud. This proves that the chemical groundwork for life begins long before stars form," says Valerio Lattanzi, scientist at MPE.

Implications for the origins of life

The discovery suggests that many more complex sulfur-bearing molecules likely remain undetected—and that the fundamental ingredients of life may have formed in the depths of interstellar space, long before Earth came into existence.

Complex building blocks of life form spontaneously in space, research reveals

 

Challenging long-held assumptions, Aarhus University researchers have demonstrated that the protein building blocks essential for life as we know it can form readily in space. This discovery, appearing in Nature Astronomy, significantly raises the statistical probability of finding extraterrestrial life.

In a modern laboratory at Aarhus University and at an international European facility in Hungary (HUN-REN Atomki), researchers Sergio Ioppolo and Alfred Thomas Hopkinson conduct pioneering experiments. Within a small chamber, the two scientists have mimicked the environment found in giant dust clouds thousands of light-years away. This is no easy feat.

The temperature in these regions is a freezing -260° C. There is almost no pressure, meaning the researchers must constantly pump out gas particles to maintain an ultra-high vacuum. They are simulating these conditions to observe how the remaining particles react to radiation, exactly as they would in a real interstellar environment.

The discovery is significant because it suggests that these essential molecules are far more abundant in the universe than previously believed...

"Eventually, these gas clouds collapse into stars and planets. Bit by bit, these tiny building blocks land on rocky planets within a newly formed solar system. If those planets happen to be in the habitable zone, then there is a real probability that life might emerge," Ioppolo explains...

"These molecules are some of the key building blocks of life," explained co-author Professor Liv Hornekær, the InterCat center leader. "They might actively participate in early prebiotic chemistry, catalyzing further reactions that lead toward life."

"That said, we still don't know exactly how life began. But research like ours shows that many of the complex molecules necessary for life are created naturally in space."...

"We've already discovered that many of the building blocks of life are formed out there, and we'll likely find more in the future."

"We already know from earlier experiments that simple amino acids, like glycine, form in interstellar space. But we were interested in discovering if more complex molecules, like peptides, form naturally on the surface of dust grains before those take part in the formation of stars and planets," says Ioppolo.

Peptides are amino acids bonded together in short chains. When peptides bond with one another, they form proteins, which are essential for life as we know it. Looking for the precursors to proteins is therefore vital in the search for the origin of life, Ioppolo explains.

The two researchers placed glycine in the chamber, irradiated it with cosmic ray analogs produced by an ion accelerator at HUN-REN Atomki, and analyzed the results.

"We saw that the glycine molecules started reacting with each other to form peptides and water. This indicates that the same process occurs in interstellar space," Hopkinson says. "This is a step toward proteins being created on dust particles, the same materials that later form rocky planets."

Where stars are born

Ioppolo, Hopkinson, and their colleagues at Aarhus University study and mimic the giant dust clouds between the stars because these are the birthplaces of new solar systems.

"We used to think that only very simple molecules could be created in these clouds. The understanding was that more complex molecules formed much later, once the gases had begun coalescing into a disk that eventually becomes a star," Ioppolo explains. "But we have shown that this is clearly not the case."

The discovery is significant because it suggests that these essential molecules are far more abundant in the universe than previously believed.

"Eventually, these gas clouds collapse into stars and planets. Bit by bit, these tiny building blocks land on rocky planets within a newly formed solar system. If those planets happen to be in the habitable zone, then there is a real probability that life might emerge," Ioppolo explains.

"That said, we still don't know exactly how life began. But research like ours shows that many of the complex molecules necessary for life are created naturally in space."

A universal reaction

It might seem like a minor discovery that peptides form naturally from the simplest amino acids in space. However, the chemical process through which amino acids bond is universal. This suggests that the same reaction likely occurs with other, more complex amino acids as well, explains Hopkinson.

"All types of amino acids bond into peptides through the same reaction. It is therefore very likely that other peptides naturally form in interstellar space as well," says Hopkinson. "We haven't looked into this yet, but we are likely to do so in the future."

Amino acids and peptides are not the only building blocks essential to life; membranes, nucleobases, and nucleotides are necessary as well. Whether these also form naturally in space remains unknown, but Ioppolo, Hopkinson, and their colleagues at the Center for Interstellar Catalysis are working hard to find out.

"These molecules are some of the key building blocks of life," explained co-author Professor Liv Hornekær, the InterCat center leader. "They might actively participate in early prebiotic chemistry, catalyzing further reactions that lead toward life."

"There's still a lot to be discovered, but our research team is working on answering as many of these basic questions as possible," Ioppolo says. "We've already discovered that many of the building blocks of life are formed out there, and we'll likely find more in the future."

Scientists Suddenly Can’t Explain How Stellar Winds Spread the Seeds of Life Throughout the Cosmos

 

New observations from scientists at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology have cast doubt on the long-held idea that light from dying stars propels ‘seeds of life’ molecules like oxygen and carbon throughout the cosmos.

The new study, which found that the propulsive power of starlight and stardust emitted by red giant stars was insufficient to allow the seeds of life molecules to escape their host star’s gravitational pull, has resulted in a new astronomical mystery for scientists to solve.

“We thought we had a good idea of how the process worked,” explained Chalmers astronomer Theo Khouri, the joint leader of the study detailing the newly discovered mystery. “It turns out we were wrong. For us as scientists, that’s the most exciting result.”

Seeds of Life Findings Create All New Stardust Mystery

Although researchers have yet to find irrefutable evidence of life beyond Earth, most agree that the seeds of life molecules needed for Earth’s biological life to exist and thrive were born in the heart of stars. For the last several decades, most scientists have been relatively confident that these molecules and other critical life-supporting elements have been propelled by stellar winds aboard grains of dust into the depths of the cosmos, where they could seed the formation of new planets, and, potentially, life.

Described as the “cooler cousins” of the Sun, red giants lose massive amounts of material through the phenomenon of stellar winds. Although likely critical for the theoretical spread of life throughout the cosmos, the team said the exact mechanism that drives these winds “has remained uncertain.”

To better understand the process, the Chalmers scientists focused on a red giant star, R Doradus, only 180 light-years away in the constellation Dorado. Although the cosmically close dying star once had a relatively similar mass to the Sun, R Doradus now loses about one-third of Earth’s mass every decade.

The research team said this process is characteristic of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, which “lose their outer layers to interstellar space,” via stellar winds made of gas and dust. When our sun reaches the end of its life, billions of years from now, it is expected to turn into this category of dying stars.

“R Doradus is a favourite target of ours – it’s bright, nearby, and typical of the most common type of red giant,” Khouri explained.

World’s ‘Best’ Telescopes Shed Light on Stellar Winds

The first step in the process involved measuring starlight reflected by tiny grains of stardust surrounding R Doradus. Due to the minute amount of light that the team was hoping to detect, they were granted access to the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument mounted on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Very Large Telescope VLT) in Chile.

“Using the world’s best telescopes, we can now make detailed observations of the closest giant stars,” Khouri said.

After successfully analyzing polarized light at different wavelengths, the team made several discoveries. For example, SPHERE detected light signatures consistent with dust grains surrounding the star. The Chalmers team said the data also revealed the size and composition of the grains were “consistent with common forms of stardust,” including silicates and alumina.

Next, the researchers combined the real-life telescope data with computer simulations designed to model the interaction between stardust and starlight. Study co-author Thiébaut Schirmer said these comparisons represented the first stringent tests intended to confirm whether grains of dust that include seeds of life molecules “can feel a strong enough push from the star’s light.”

Results Show Light is Not Enough, but Opens “Exciting Alternatives” to Explore

After comparing the data, the team said the push from starlight was “not enough” to push the stardust grains into interstellar space. That’s because most of the grains surrounding R Doradus were only about one ten-thousandth of a millimeter across. The research team said this made the grains “too small for starlight alone” to propel them into interstellar space.

“Dust is definitely present, and it is illuminated by the star,” Schirmer explained. “But it simply doesn’t provide enough force to explain what we see.”

While the new findings seem to contradict the traditional explanation, the team said their research points to “more complex processes” behind the phenomenon. Study co-author and Chalmers professor Wouter Vlemmings agreed, noting that even though the simplest explanation appears incorrect, their findings have uncovered “exciting alternatives to explore” moving forward.

One possible explanation for the dispersal of such molecules involves images of enormous convective bubbles rising and falling over R Doradus’ surface, previously captured by the same team. Vlemmings suggested that it’s possible these stellar pulsations could enhance the push of starlight enough to drive the seeds of life into interstellar space. The scientist also suggested that something unexpected, such as dramatic episodes of stardust formation, might combine with the other phenomena, which “could all help explain how these winds are launched” into the cosmos.

The study “An empirical view of the extended atmosphere and inner envelope of the asymptotic giant branch star R Doradus” was published in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

NASA completes cosmic map of the Big Seed's sprouting

NASA’s SPHEREx Observatory Completes First Cosmic Map Like No Other

Those measurements will offer insights into an event that took place in the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang seed. In this moment, called inflation, the universe expanded by a trillion-trillionfold. Nothing like it has occurred in the universe since, and scientists want to understand it better. The SPHEREx mission’s approach is one way to help in that effort. 

Launched in March, NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope has completed its first infrared map of the entire sky in 102 colors. While not visible to the human eye, these 102 infrared wavelengths of light are prevalent in the cosmos, and observing the entire sky this way enables scientists to answer big questions, including how a dramatic event that occurred in the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang influenced the 3D distribution of hundreds of millions of galaxies in our universe. In addition, scientists will use the data to study how galaxies have changed over the universe’s nearly 14-billion-year history and learn about the distribution of key ingredients for life in our own galaxy.  

“It’s incredible how much information SPHEREx has collected in just six months — information that will be especially valuable when used alongside our other missions’ data to better understand our universe,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We essentially have 102 new maps of the entire sky, each one in a different wavelength and containing unique information about the objects it sees. I think every astronomer is going to find something of value here, as NASA’s missions enable the world to answer fundamental questions about how the universe got its start, and how it changed to eventually create a home for us in it.” 

Circling Earth about 14½ times a day, SPHEREx (which stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) travels from north to south, passing over the poles. Each day it takes about 3,600 images along one circular strip of the sky, and as the days pass and the planet moves around the Sun, SPHEREx’s field of view shifts as well. After six months, the observatory has looked out into space in every direction, capturing the entire sky in 360 degrees. 

Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the mission began mapping the sky in May and completed its first all-sky mosaic in December. It will complete three additional all-sky scans during its two-year primary mission, and merging those maps together will increase the sensitivity of the measurements. The entire dataset is freely available to scientists and the public.  

“SPHEREx is a mid-sized astrophysics mission delivering big science,” said JPL Director Dave Gallagher. “It’s a phenomenal example of how we turn bold ideas into reality, and in doing so, unlock enormous potential for discovery.”  

Superpowered telescope 

Each of the 102 colors detected by SPHEREx represents a wavelength of infrared light, and each wavelength provides unique information about the galaxies, stars, planet-forming regions, and other cosmic features therein. For example, dense clouds of dust in our galaxy where stars and planets form radiate brightly in certain wavelengths but emit no light (and are therefore totally invisible) in others. The process of separating the light from a source into its component wavelengths is called spectroscopy.  

And while a handful of previous missions has also mapped the entire sky, such as NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, none have done so in nearly as many colors as SPHEREx. By contrast, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can do spectroscopy with significantly more wavelengths of light than SPHEREx, but with a field of view thousands of times smaller. The combination of colors and such a wide field of view is why SPHEREx is so powerful. 

“The superpower of SPHEREx is that it captures the whole sky in 102 colors about every six months. That’s an amazing amount of information to gather in a short amount of time,” said Beth Fabinsky, the SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “I think this makes us the mantis shrimp of telescopes, because we have an amazing multicolor visual detection system and we can also see a very wide swath of our surroundings.” 

To accomplish this feat, SPHEREx uses six detectors, each paired with a specially designed filter that contains a gradient of 17 colors. That means every image taken with those six detectors contains 102 colors (six times 17). It also means that every all-sky map that SPHEREx produces is really 102 maps, each in a different color.  

The observatory will use those colors to measure the distance to hundreds of millions of galaxies. Though the positions of most of those galaxies have already been mapped in two dimensions by other observatories, SPHEREx’s map will be in 3D, enabling scientists to measure subtle variations in the way galaxies are clustered and distributed across the universe.  

Those measurements will offer insights into an event that took place in the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang. In this moment, called inflation, the universe expanded by a trillion-trillionfold. Nothing like it has occurred in the universe since, and scientists want to understand it better. The SPHEREx mission’s approach is one way to help in that effort.

Quantum clues to consciousness: New research suggests the brain may harness the zero-point field

 

The resonant interaction of the brain with the omnipresent zero-point field (ZPF) gives rise to synchronized brain activity exhibiting the key features of self-organized criticality. These activity patterns are characteristic of conscious states. Credit: Joachim Keppler

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What if your conscious experiences were not just the chatter of neurons, but were connected to the hum of the universe? In a paper published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, the research presents new evidence indicating that conscious states may arise from the brain's capacity to resonate with the quantum vacuum—the zero-point field that permeates all of space.

More specifically, it is argued that macroscopic quantum effects are at play inside our heads. This insight results from a synthesis of brain architectural and neurophysiological findings supplemented with quantitative model calculations. The novel synthesis suggests that the brain's basic functional building blocks, cortical microcolumns, couple directly to the zero-point field, igniting the complex dynamics characteristic of conscious processes.

Self-organized criticality in the brain

Neuroscientists have long observed that conscious states are linked to synchronized brain activity in the beta and gamma ranges. These patterns display the hallmarks of self-organized criticality, a delicate balance where the brain operates in the vicinity of a critical point of a phase transition.

In this regime, sensory inputs can trigger large neuronal avalanches that are thought to underlie conscious perception. When consciousness fades, such as under anesthesia, this critical balance disappears. The big question has been: What keeps the brain tuned to this critical state?

Resonance in microcolumns

The answer lies in quantum electrodynamics (QED), the fundamental theory of electromagnetism. In this theory, the vacuum is not empty but filled with a fluctuating ocean of energy known as the electromagnetic zero-point field (ZPF). QED-based model calculations demonstrate that specific frequencies (modes) of the ZPF can resonate with glutamate, the brain's most abundant neurotransmitter. The resonant interaction takes place in microcolumns, cortical units made up of about 100 neurons bathed in a glutamate pool.

It is precisely this interaction that turns out to be crucial for self-organized criticality. On the one hand, resonant glutamate-ZPF coupling results in the formation of coherence domains where a large number of molecules vibrate in unison. These domains are protected by energy gaps, making quantum coherence surprisingly stable in the warm, noisy brain.

On the other hand, the coupling leads to the excitation of specific ZPF modes and the generation of intracolumnar microwave fields that modulate ion channels, fine-tune neuronal firing rates, and maintain the excitatory-inhibitory balance essential for critical dynamics.

Conscious awareness arises from resonant brain-ZPF coupling

The implications are profound. If the model proves to be correct, consciousness arises not merely from electrochemical signaling but from a bottom-up orchestration involving the brain's resonant coupling to the ZPF. In this view, awareness is tied to the selective excitation of ZPF modes, reflected in the brain's critical dynamics.

During periods of unconsciousness, a pronounced deviation from critical dynamics is observed, implying that the coupling of the brain to the ZPF is disrupted and the ZPF, the hidden orchestrator of brain activity, is disengaged.

Experimental horizons and outlook

The model opens up intriguing avenues for empirical testing. By smart, systematic manipulations of conditions in the cerebral cortex, researchers can explore whether the brain harnesses the ZPF and whether consciousness truly depends on resonant brain-ZPF interaction. Such experiments could break new ground in neuroscience and shed light on long-standing metaphysical questions about the nature of awareness.

In conclusion, the model adds a fresh dimension to the search for a theory of consciousness, one that unites neuroscience with foundational physics. For centuries, consciousness has been humanity's deepest mystery. Is it purely emergent from neural networks, or does it connect to something more fundamental? These new findings suggest that the ubiquitous ZPF holds the key to the understanding of consciousness.