An unprecedented eruption of black holes; the strength of memories; bugs on the menu

This week, researchers reported discovering a megacity of spiders in a sulfur cave on the border between Albania and Greece, and experts say you must personally live there. Economists are growing increasingly nervous about the collapse of the trillion-dollar AI bubble. And a new study links physical activity levels to the risk of digestive system cancer.

Additionally, astronomers have reported the most massive and most distant black hole flare ever observed; researchers have determined why emotional memories are more vivid; and scientists are once again exploring farmed insects as a food source – this time, for long interplanetary missions:

A big black hole now bigger

Good news for melanoheliophobes: it’s far more likely that you’ll be trapped in a black hole’s accretion disk and accelerated to relativistic speeds, becoming pure energy and projected, than falling into and beyond the event horizon, disappearing from the universe forever. I mean, it obviously happens, but it turns out to be surprisingly difficult for a black hole to eat stuff, much like a guy eating at the table who keeps knocking everything down with his elbows. But when will they do it? It’s called a black hole flare, and it’s like throwing a cow into a shark tank.

A new study from the California Institute of Technology reports a massive flare observed by researchers at the Zwicky Transient Facility in 2018, which astronomers now consider to be the most powerful and distant black hole flare on record. The supermassive black hole belongs to the category of active galactic nuclei, estimated to be 500 million times the mass of the sun. It is the first AGN observed consuming a supermassive star.

At its peak, the eruption emitted the equivalent of 10 trillion suns. The AGN is 10 billion light years away; Due to both distance and the time dilation effect of massive gravitational objects, astronomers continue to observe the flare slowly diminishing at a rate of a quarter.

Why emotional memories are more vivid

Psychological experiments have suggested that people remember emotional events more vividly than neutral events. But the true neural underpinnings of this phenomenon are not well understood. A University of Chicago study now suggests that emotional experiences increase communication between networks across brain regions.

The researchers took a smart, cost-effective approach, reanalyzing publicly available data from previous studies to identify the mechanisms that make emotional memories more vivid. During these studies, participants watched films and listened to stories while researchers recorded their brain activity via functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Jadyn Park, first author of the article, said: “Some scenes were more emotionally exciting than others, like when a character tries to hide a dead body and gets caught in the act. We used behavioral ratings, pupil size, and AI model ratings to measure how arousing each scene was. »

They discovered that emotional memory emerges from the coordinated interaction of multiple systems rather than from an isolated network.

Yuan Chang Leong, lead author of the paper, says: “It is more like an orchestra, where different sections work together to create a unified performance, with the excitement serving as the conductor who coordinates their activity. This perspective suggests that whether we remember an emotional memory depends not only on the strength of activity in a given region, but also on how effectively different systems communicate and share information. »

Salt, fat, acid, chitin

Science writers have insisted for years that insects are the “food source of the future” and tend to ignore the fact that no matter the first paragraph they write, the reader’s mind instantly jumps to Joe Rogan as the host of “Fear Factor,” forcing contestants to swallow large insects in exchange for money. Even in this European Space Agency article on eating insects, the phrase “attractive option” appears in the first paragraph, like you’re looking for aphids or something in the refrigerator.

But OK, if you apply cold, Vulcan logic to the constraints of resources available within a large population, yes, insects are nutrient-dense and easy to cultivate, and from that perspective you could argue that they are an “attractive option.” And certainly no one is talking about eating a roast, hissing cockroach; it is possible that in the future, inputs such as high-protein flour made from farmed insects will find their place. Thus, a newly formed team at ESA is exploring insects as a food source for long interplanetary space missions.

Åsa Berggren, professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, says: “Insects seem to adapt quite well to space environments. They have a good ability to withstand physical stress… These small animals are also very good at converting materials that we humans cannot eat, into their own growth and providing us with nutritious food. »

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