Halloween is approaching, which means that the time has come as well as possible for scary stories. But since our site introduces you to the latest in science, technology and technology, then there will be horror stories on scientific and pseudo-scientific topics. Sit back, dim your light sources, and dozens of the most up-to-date scientific stories and events await you.
Space madness
Scientists continue to actively develop technologies and prepare for manned flights to Mars and its possible further colonization. Most recently, US President Barack Obama announced that the government is working closely with the private space sector to implement these plans by the 2030s. However, the results of one of the latest studies may put an end to all these dreams and hopes.
As part of a laboratory experiment, scientists exposed mice to a special type of charged particles (the same particles will affect astronauts in deep space flights). The result was disastrous.
Exposure to the particles led to inflammation of the rodents' brains, which subsequently escalated into dementia, loss of cognitive abilities and, ultimately, a decrease in the conditional threshold of "fear of extinction." The loss of the “fear of disappearing”, in turn, can lead to a feeling of constant anxiety, which eventually spills over into real madness.
Six months after the laboratory experiments, signs of "space madness" were still observed in the test rodents. At the moment, scientists do not know how to completely protect people from the effects of these harmful cosmic particles.
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Spider virus
The most common targets of the newly discovered WO virus are bacteria that usually live inside insects (in particular spiders). The virus, which is a bacteriophage, has one very interesting feature. One third of its DNA fully matches the characteristic of the Black Widow spider toxin. Scientists wonder how part of an animal's DNA could become part of the virus's own genome.
As a rule, viruses remain within the same biological boundaries, infecting only a certain type of organism. Scientists speculate that the virus's genetic code has mutated, allowing it to infect a completely different species than it originally did. The principle of infection with the WO virus is as follows. It enters the body, infects bacteria, which in turn envelop the cell membranes of spiders. Somehow, a virus mixed with the spider's DNA breaks out of this biological barrier and gains direct access to toxins. As a bonus, the virus is able to bypass the host's immune system without any problems.
What we end up with is a rapidly mutating virus, completely immune to the host's immune system, and possessing the killer genome of black widow toxin. And the fact that the target of this virus is not the human body is not at all reassuring. After all, no one yet knows what this virus will be able to mutate into in the future.
Second rift
For many years, seismologists have been saying that the famous San Andreas tectonic fault, near the west coast of the United States, is ripe for a catastrophic earthquake of magnitude 8 or higher on the Richter scale. Now scientists say that they have found an explanation for why this fault was "silent" for so long. It turns out that there is a second fault almost parallel to it, which, perhaps, does not allow a real disaster to begin.
The Salton Trough is 56 kilometers long. Its discovery allowed us to present a complete picture of the possible danger to the region, including the entire territory of Los Angeles.
Despite the fact that the new fault may reduce some of the stress that San Andreas is experiencing, which, in turn, could explain its relative stability, scientists are already sounding the alarm and talking about "a significant increase in the level of danger and catastrophic consequences according to computer models." …
Killer machine
Despite some clear benefits from the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the future, a group of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University decided to show the world what the world hopes to never see in this very future. Scientists have trained an advanced neural network to kill anything that gets in its way.
Fortunately, they did all of this in a virtual environment designed specifically for this purpose. The car was taught to play computer shooter Doom 1993 release. A trained neural network moves in this virtual world in the same way as a human player does. In addition, she knows some feature of the game engine of this game. As you might have guessed, it didn't take long for the machine to learn to dominate all the opponents in this game.
The most interesting thing is that the training took place "by the carrot and stick method." For kills, the car was encouraged, and for misses and insufficient damage to opponents "perished". The researchers resorted to this method because the neural network initially decided that the optimal strategy for winning was endless shooting and "mowing" everything that moved in its field of view. Fortunately, the current version of the system is only capable of playing games.
Karolinska Butcher
Paleontologists from North Carolina State University recently discovered a previously unknown species that turned out to be older than dinosaurs and is a distant ancestor of today's crocodiles.
Despite the fact that it became extinct more than 230 million years ago, the fact that such an animal once walked the Earth can cause some tremors, and even especially impressionable can dream of nightmares. Judge for yourself. They nicknamed him Carnufex carolinensis ("Carolina Butcher"). It was a huge crocodile, 3 meters tall. Height, not length, is not indicated here by mistake. The thing is that this creature walked on two legs, like a man.
His native element was not water, but a solid surface, on which he walked and destroyed everyone who came in his way. With razor-sharp teeth and the incredible stamina and agility of its modern descendants, Carnufex was most likely one of the most dangerous predators in the food chain until the dinosaurs.
a guest
Professor Jonathan Allen faced a rather unexpected problem when he discovered some incomprehensible swelling of the skin on the inside of his cheek. Further more. The person found that this swelling from time to time passes into other zones. Ultimately, while taking the mock exam, the professor felt the swelling move to the front of the gum. Looking in the mirror, Allen noticed that there was a tiny worm under the thin skin.
As luck would have it, Allen was an expert in invertebrate biology and an inquisitive person. He independently removed a live worm from his gum and after research found that only 13 (including this) similar cases of infection with this parasite were noted throughout the United States. The professor wrote a scientific work about his uninvited guest, and nicknamed the worm "Buddy".
Eerie "singing" of Jupiter
The Juno spacecraft is currently on a 20-month mission to collect scientific data on Jupiter. At its closest approach to the gas giant, Juno recorded the faint radio waves emitted by the planet's aurora borealis with an instrument developed at the University of Iowa.
University engineers created sound files based on this data. Any space horror sound engineer would be proud of this result. Either increasing or decreasing in tonality, sounds reminiscent of squeals, turning into almost perceptible human voices, can cause goosebumps even among the hardest lovers of "Aliens".
There is also a scientific background to this. These radiations, the strongest of their kind in the solar system, are generated by electrons of unknown origin, and scientists hope, sooner or later, to unravel the mystery of their source.
Ghost machine
Surely many of you felt as if someone was watching you. And at that moment, you may even have realized that this is most likely a game of your imagination, and you are sure that there is no one next to you, but at the same time the feeling that someone is following you did not become less stressful. It is possible that scientists have found an explanation for why this happens, and even how this feeling can be reproduced on purpose.
The researchers conducted an experiment. They invited 12 volunteers who somehow felt the same feeling. It turned out that all 12 people had damaged parts of the brain responsible for self-perception. This led scientists to hypothesize that such people had their own body positional signals misinterpreted by their brains. To confirm this hypothesis, scientists decided to use a robotic hand with fingers, which she led along the backs of people, repeating the movements of their own fingers at that moment.
Participants in the experiment did not feel anything unusual at first. The movement of the robot's finger was exactly the same as that of the human finger. But as soon as the movement of the robot's finger diverged in synchronization with the movement of the human fingers, a powerful outburst of fear seized them. At this moment, people began to feel that someone was standing behind them. Some were so scared that they asked to stop the experiment immediately.
Zombie
Scientists recently discovered a special aspect of the interaction between a parasitic wasp species and a certain type of spider. The fact that wasps can use spiders as a living incubator for their larvae has been known to science for a long time, but recently researchers have learned that wasps, in addition, are able to turn spiders into real controlled zombies.
It happens like this. The female wasp lays eggs on the abdomen of the spider. Once the egg hatches, the larva invades the spider's nervous system, feeds on its blood, and releases chemical compounds into the circulatory system that literally turn the spider into an unconsciously controlled worker to build a durable wasp nest.
The modified composition of the web allows it to reflect ultraviolet light (instead of absorbing it), which in turn increases its efficiency in catching prey. As soon as the spider completes the tasks set by the wasp, as gratitude, the latter eats it, and then repeats the whole process again, but with a new spider.
Hurricane Matthew's face
Hurricane Matthew hit in early October. This storm was the first to receive the fifth power category since 2007 (when Hurricane Felix did things). Matthew has caused catastrophic destruction and has already taken hundreds of lives with him. The Haitians were the hardest hit. There, according to various estimates, from 500 to 1300 inhabitants died from it.
Matthew hit Haiti on October 4. At that moment, a NASA weather satellite was over this region, which took the photo you can see above. Only the blind will not see that the shape of the hurricane resembles the structure of a grinning skull. The picture is completed by an ominous red "eye" in the image, literally nicknamed the eye of the storm.
Coincidence? Definitely. Creepy? We will leave the answer to this question for you.
NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK
