Science news this week: The world’s oldest mummy, and an ant that mates with clones of a distant species

This week’s science news is stuffed with a menagerie of weird and wonderful animal discoveries. Topping the list are Iberian harvester ants (Messor ibericus), which mate with the male ants of a distantly related species (Messor structor) to procreate.

That’s odd enough on its own, but now scientists have discovered that the harvester ants don’t even need nearby M. structor colonies to achieve this — in a bizarre first, they simply clone the males when they need them.

It’s a “science fiction” feat that has led to the naming of an entirely new reproductive method. With this system, called “xenoparity,” the ants blur the lines between species in a completely unprecedented way.

And that’s far from the only fascinating news from the animal world this week. We also learned that the ancestors of ostriches and emus arrived on the six landmasses they call home today via flight.

Meanwhile, a jaguar was recorded smashing the record for the species’ longest documented swim; scientists got insight into how pachycephalosaurs grew their built-for-smashing heads; and an adorable, never-before-seen bearded snailfish was snapped swimming in the depths off California’s coast. The iconically grumpy-looking Pallas’s cat has also been found in a new range, having tripped a camera trap (and posed just in time) for a photo in the eastern Himalayas.

Solar activity rises, defying expectations

If the above stories didn’t rock your world, this one will certainly set off geomagnetic storms in the sky above it: This week, NASA scientists announced that the sun’s activity is set to rise in the coming decades, likely sending more dangerous space weather our way.

That comes as a big surprise, as sunwatchers mostly expected our star to cycle through a period of low activity in the years ahead. But observations of an unusually hyperactive sunspot cycle have upended those predictions. The upshot is that more powerful X-class solar flares and coronal mass ejections will be hurled at Earth. That could prove problematic, given our increasing reliance on satellites and the growing “second space race” to colonize the skies, the moon and even Mars.

Discover more space news

—New report warns that China could overtake the US as top nation in space — and it could happen ‘in 5-10 years,’ expert claims

—There’s a 90% chance we’ll see a black hole explode within a decade, physicists say

—Scientists measure the ‘natal kick’ that sent a baby black hole careening through space for the first time

Life’s Little Mysteries

Chatbots are infamous energy guzzlers, with their rapid rollout and adoption in the past few years leading them to suck up increasingly large shares of electricity from power grids. With their energy consumption expected to skyrocket even higher, we looked into why the greedy bots require so much power and what can be done about it.

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World’s oldest mummies discovered

When you think of mummies, your mind will likely travel to Egypt and the roughly 4,500-year-old preserved bodies sealed inside its elaborate tombs. But the discovery of some 10,000-year-old dried human remains deposited in dozens of ancient graves in Southeast Asia and China shows that the world’s oldest known mummies were from a different part of the world.

The remains were smoke-dried over a fire before burial. The ancient practice, which is still performed today, went beyond mere preservation and was likely freighted with spiritual and cultural significance. The scientists who found the mummies also believe they could support a “two-layer model” of migration across Southeast Asia, since the funeral ritual of ancient hunter-gatherers who arrived in the region 65,000 years ago was distinct from the burial rites of Neolithic farmers who arrived 4,000 years ago.

Discover more archaeology news

—1,900-year-old ‘treasure’ found in Roman-era family’s scorched house in Romania

—Anthropologist claims hand positions on 1,300-year-old Maya altar have a deeper meaning

—1,900-year-old oil lamp that provided ‘light in the journey to the afterlife’ found in Roman cemetery in the Netherlands

Also in science news this week

—RFK’s handpicked advisers are coming for the childhood vaccine schedule. Here’s what to know.

—AI could use online images as a backdoor into your computer, alarming new study suggests

—Diagnostic dilemma: A knife broke off in a man’s chest, and he didn’t notice it for 8 years

—Scientists develop ‘full-spectrum’ 6G chip that could transfer data at 100 gigabits per second — 10,000 times faster than 5G

Science Spotlight

They arrive as brief flashes in the cosmic dark, powerful jolts of energy that discharge more energy in a few milliseconds than the sun does over an entire year. Yet as much as scientists have puzzled over what processes could be causing these fast radio bursts (FRBs), they still do not fully know what the pulses are.

What is apparent is that FRBs are produced through completely unexpected processes, and far more often than expected. And that makes them very useful to astronomers. In this week’s Science Spotlight, we investigated how scientists are using FRBs to create the ultimate map of our universe.

Something for the weekend

If you’re looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best interviews, polls and science histories published this week.

— ‘We certainly weren’t exceptional, but now we’re the only ones left’: In new PBS series ‘Human,’ anthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi explores how humans came to dominate Earth [Interview]

—Science history: A tragic gene therapy death that stalled the field for a decade — Sept. 17, 1999 [Science history]

— If tiny lab-grown ‘brains’ became conscious, would it still be OK to experiment on them? [Poll]

Science in pictures

The James Webb Space Telescope has gifted us with a deluge of stunning space images since it first came online in 2022, and this week we covered the release of one of its best yet.

Soaring like a rocky mountain against a starry blue sky, the image spotlights Pismis 24, a stellar nursery at the core of the Lobster Nebula. The craggy spires of gas and dust in the foreground span multiple light-years in height, and are being actively sculpted by the radiation of nearby baby stars. It’s a breathtakingly gorgeous scene, and contains two of the brightest stars in our entire Milky Way, measuring 74 and 66 times the size of our sun.

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