Unprecedented: Scientists Have Built Miniature Brains That Experience The Passage Of Time - ScienceAlert

Mount Sinai brain and cardiovascular tissue models launched toward the International Space Station aboard SpaceX CRS-35. The experiments will examine tissue function, genetic susceptibility and biological changes associated with spaceflight. Published miBrain research and a separate circulation preprint provide the groundwork; results from this mission remain ahead. Human brain tissue and beating cardiovascular organoids are headed into orbit to face an unusual laboratory test. Their destination is the International Space Station, where weightlessness and radiation exposure could reveal vulnerabilities difficult to study on Earth. The Mount Sinai investigations are traveling aboard SpaceX CRS-35, which launched October 13. They bring together researchers in stem cell biology, neuroscience, surgery and cardiovascular science at the Icahn School of Medicine. One project uses a personalized brain tissue model called miBrain. The other places cardiovascular organoids inside microfluidic chips, miniature devices that manage fluid around living tissue. The mission builds on established laboratory work, including a 2025 paper in PNAS introducing miBrain.

Microblazars have eluded scientists for nearly 35 years A giant star and stellar-mass black hole orbit each other in this artist’s depiction. The black hole tears material off the star (inset), creating a jet that points toward Earth (left). An invisible jet pointing in the opposite direction may boost particles to extreme energies in the molecular cloud on the right.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Isaiah Santistevan led the development of three-dimensional simulations exploring how a nuclear device could deflect or disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. Credit: Blaise Douros/LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.

Milky Way’s first microblazar candidate sits 12,000 light-years away, offering a rare ground-level lab for studying relativistic jetsA black hole 12,000 light-years away is firing a jet of plasma almost directly toward Earth. At that distance, no known or expected danger to Earth has been identified by the researchers or the institutions involved. What astronomers have actually found is rarer and more interesting than a threat. Researchers have identified IRAS 18293-0941 as a compelling candidate for the Milky Way’s first microblazar, a class of object that gives astrophysicists a close-up laboratory for studying some of the most violent physics in the galaxy. What Astronomers FoundThe discovery centers on a binary system whose black hole expels plasma jets at close to three-quarters the speed of light, pointed almost directly toward Earth. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a black hole that completes a full orbit roughly every 11.38 days. Material drawn from the companion star feeds the black hole, and some of that matter gets expelled outward as opposing jets traveling at approximately three-quarters the speed of light. Terminology matters here.

Forests that stood on Mozambique's coast thousands of years ago now lie beneath shallow seas, and they have become fish-filled "peat reefs" with marine life comparable to coral reefs, researchers report in Scientific Reports. A team from the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory, led by Mario Lebrato, documented the submerged peat in the Bazaruto Archipelago in the Western Indian Ocean. BCSS, founded in 2017, describes itself as Africa's first permanent ocean observatory. Working with universities and institutions in the U. K., U. S. and Canada, the team believes it has carried out the first ecological study of peat reefs anywhere in the tropics. Old forests, new seafloorRadiocarbon dating shows the peat formed between about 300 and 5,000 years ago, and chemical analysis indicates it came mostly from coastal land plants and trees. Some samples contain up to 40% organic carbon by dry weight. Lebrato said the coastline has very little natural hard seabed, mostly shifting sand. As rising seas expose the old peat layers, they create rare solid habitat where marine life can settle, hide and feed.