Welcome to the Abstract, a weekly column from 404 Media about new, mind blowing scientific studies, explained in a way normal people can understand and hopefully tell their friends about.
Scientists have been busy this week announcing findings about real big-ass jets, scuba-diving lizards, and Assisted Sexual Recruits (you’ll see). Here are some of the studies that stood out to me.
The World-Vaporizing Cosmic Jet that Stretches for 23 Million Light Years
Black hole jets on the scale of the cosmic web. Nature, Oei, M.S.S.L et al.
Our main story last week was about the Sun’s belches, which are definitely impressive (and a little scary) on human scales. But there are things in the universe that can outbelch the Sun trillions of times over, destroying everything in their path with jets made of light and particles that blaze out across millions of light years.
These pyrotechnic objects, known as active galactic nuclei (AGN), sit at the core of galaxies, and are powered by intense interactions between a central supermassive black hole and a disk of gas and dust that forms around it. As material is pulled toward the black hole, tidal forces funnel gargantuan amounts of energy into massive world-vaporizing jets that form on opposite sides of the AGN, perpendicular to the disk’s plane.
This week, scientists announced the discovery of the biggest jets ever spotted, which stretch across an unprecedented 23 million light years. That is the equivalent of lining up 140 Milky Way galaxies side-by-side, and it crushes the previous record-holder of 16 million light years.
The team gave the jet structure a fittingly gnarly name: Porphyrion, after a Greek mythological giant born of blood spilled from his father’s castration. Even though Porphyrion is at a very safe distance of seven billion light years from Earth, it is extremely luminous. It is also so big that it approaches the scale of structures in the cosmic web, which is a vast network of dark matter threads that connect the universe. For this reason, Porphyrion opens a window into the transport of energy into the cosmic web through these types of huge AGN-powered jets.
“When sustained for megayears”—meaning millions of years—”high-power jets from supermassive black holes become the largest galaxy-made structures in the Universe,” said Martijn Oei of Caltech and colleagues in the new study. “By pumping electrons, atomic nuclei, and magnetic fields into the intergalactic medium, these energetic flows affect the distribution of matter and magnetism in the cosmic web and could have a sweeping cosmological influence if they reached far at early epochs.”
“How jets can retain such long-lived coherence is unknown at present,” the researchers noted, before concluding that “the discovery of Porphyrion highlights the importance of black hole energy transport in the cosmic web at large.”
In other news:
The Lost Isle of Moo-Deng-Sized Hippos
Moo Deng, the unbearably cute baby hippo and internet sensation, has gone viral again, but this is actually not the only news from the tiny hippo beat this week. There was also a study published about the tiny hippos, along with wee little elephants, that roamed the Mediterranean island of Cyprus before the arrival of humans 14,000 years ago.
The Cypriot pygmy hippopotamus (Phanourios minor) was about the size of a dog, and the Cyprus dwarf elephant (Palaeoloxodon cypriotes) was about as big as a pony. Both evolved to be smaller than their mainland relatives due to insular dwarfism, a phenomenon that often causes isolated populations, particularly on islands, to shrink in size (my favorite example is Europasaurus, a miniature sauropod dinosaur).
Amazingly, these diminutive hippos and elephants were the largest animals on Cyprus at the time—that is, until humans showed up. After the arrival of hunter-gatherers, the dwarf animals rapidly vanished. In their new study, authors led by Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University bolster the case that humans hunted them to extinction.
“Given the island’s small size and relatively simple megafauna assemblage (two species), we have provided some of the first evidence for the mechanisms allowing Palaeolithic societies to drive large megafauna species to extinction soon after first contact,” the team said. “Our results therefore provide strong support for the hypothesis that Palaeolithic peoples were at least partially responsible for megafauna extinctions globally during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene.”
This Lizard Uses a Bubble to Scuba-Dive
Somebody please write a children’s story about the water anole, the only known vertebrate aside from humans that can scuba-dive. Lindsey Swierk of Binghamton University observed these Costa Rican lizards using air bubbles as underwater breathing apparatus as a means of avoiding predators. Look at this one rocking the bubb!
Image: Lindsey Swierk
“These lizards dive underwater when threatened and, while underwater, rebreathe a bubble of air over their nostrils,” Swierk wrote in the study. “This study provides evidence that vertebrates can use bubbles to respire underwater and raises questions about adaptive mechanisms and potential bio-inspired applications.”
Top Marks for Top Quarks
Quantum entanglement is so weird that it even unsettled Albert Einstein, a guy with a pretty high threshold for freaky shit, who famously described it as “spooky action at a distance.” This phenomenon occurs when the quantum states of particles become eerily synced up, no matter how far apart they are in space.
Scientists with the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN announced this week that they have achieved quantum entanglement with “top quarks,” the most massive elemental particles, for the first time, offering a new glimpse of this mysterious process. “The observed result…constitutes the first observation of entanglement in a pair of quarks and the highest-energy observation of entanglement so far,” the team said.
“Assisted Sexual Recruits” Are Fortifying Coral Reefs Against Heat Waves
Climate change is particularly devastating to coral reefs, which are vital hotspots of biodiversity around the world’s oceans. To help corals endure extreme temperatures and avoid bleaching, scientists with the nonprofit SECORE International experimented with breeding new corals for more resilient and genetically diverse reefs.
Their work is paying off: Juvenile corals derived from assisted reproduction—which are delightfully known as “Assisted sexual Recruits”—withstood an intense Caribbean marine heatwave in 2023.
“Assisted sexual recruits had significantly lower prevalence of bleaching impacts…than conspecific coral populations,” said Margaret Miller and colleagues in the new study. “As coral reefs throughout the globe are subject to increasingly frequent and intense marine heatwaves, restoration activities that include sexual reproduction and seeding can make an important contribution to sustain coral populations.”
Talk about a coral relief!
Thanks for reading! And happy autumnal equinox to all who celebrate.