# 10 Interesting Scientific Discoveries for January 2026

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** John Michael Godier
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOZNdVwMs6g
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/42265

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

To usher in 2026, which no doubt will see a plethora of new scientific discoveries, here are 10 interesting recent scientific discoveries for January of 2026. Number 10, the exomoon nursery. One of the most elusive but fun searches going on in astronomy right now is the hunt for exomoons. As you probably know, hot on the trail of this work is Dr. David Kipping of the Cool Worlds channel and we seem tantalizingly close to a veritable discovery because let's face it, the solar system is full of moons and there isn't any physical objection to them and other star systems. So if you have planets, chances are you have moons, at least around gas giant planets. It's teasing out their tiny signal from our data sets that remains extraordinarily difficult. Well, we may have just found not an exomoon per se, but one or more that's in the process of forming. The exoplanet in question here is a gas giant known as CT hab. And researchers used the James Webb telescope to look in infrared at this gas giant. A task already difficult. Teasing out light from a planet, even a giant one, is a daunting task in itself. But here, they were also able to discern evidence of a debris disc around the planet. They were also able to identify chemicals in this debris disc including hydrogen cyanide, acetylene, and all sorts of carbon compounds, leading the researchers to conclude that this might be a moon building zone where new exomoons are actively forming from these materials. Number nine, fiber optic cables can detect earthquakes with high accuracy. This is an interesting case of a technology that is built for a specific purpose. In this case, the fiber optic cables that carry a lot of the world's internet traffic can also have a scientific application that has very little to do with the original intent of the technology. Researchers recently used a 15 km stretch of fiberoptic cable near Mendescino, California to measure a recent magnitude 7 earthquake in very high detail, showing that it had started, slowed, sped up in intensity and how fast the waves were propagating in a way normal seismographs can't do. Essentially, how this works is this. Fiberoptic cables are very environment sensitive. They don't like to be warped or bent or even vibrated too much. This creates noise in the line. But when that noise is being caused by an earthquake, it becomes data on that earthquake. A nuisance for a communications company becomes a boon for science. So all is not lost. But this is not a new idea. Oil companies use fiber optic cables as sensors for vibration, temperature, and pressure during underwater drilling. But this was the first time it's been used to detect a natural earthquake. Essentially, the optical cable in question was not currently in use. So, the company that owned it let scientists essentially shine a laser into it, and imperfections in the fiber would reflect signals, resulting in thousands of individual tiny seismometers over a very long baseline. While the experiment was being performed, which was over a long period of time, they caught this large earthquake. To have done this with traditional seismographs, you'd need the earthquake to happen right under a large amount of conventional seismographs, which is not feasible, but with a cable, it is. Ultimately, this may lead to improved earthquake warning systems using cable systems we already have. Number eight, chimpanzees are good at reasoning. Humans can reason. So, you hear a sound outside in the middle of the night that makes you initially think you are hearing a burglar that's messing around in the backyard. So, you get up to take a look out the window and see that it's a rampant wild elk that is not amused. Or perhaps it is with the elk-shaped topiary you trimmed your favorite shrub into. What you have done has changed your mind as more evidence and facts became apparent until you arrived at the truth of the matter. Based on new research, it appears that we aren't the only ones that do it on Earth. The chimpanzees do as well. This phenomenon is known as belief revision and shows an ability to reflect on one's owned thought processes and revise. This has been very useful in building human civilization. But a series of experiments done in Uganda demonstrated that if you take a group of boxes and put food in them, they found that the chimps would pick the box that showed to them which one appeared the most promising based on a carefully placed clue. Then they were shown a conflicting clue and they followed the rational choice model and started to account for the new information they were receiving and they did it quite consistently and quite well. The chimps were also noted to react

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to picking up a box upon hearing that there was something inside and initially assuming it was an apple, but instead finding it was a rock. And from that point on, there was no fooling them with that trick. Now, lots of life on Earth is rational. You don't get very far without it. Even amiebas show it. But they don't show the ability to change their thinking when presented with different evidence. The experiments ultimately show that chimpanzees have complex awareness above much of the animal kingdom and can reflect and adjust as needed. It would not surprise me if this is also found with some of the other primates such as the gorillas. We already know they have complex brains and thinking. Number seven, the largest stars yet seen. The search for the almost fabled population 3 stars has taken a turn towards them actually having existed as per predictions that they must have. These were the earliest stars in the universe forming from the primordial hydrogen and helium accumulating in galaxies after the big bang. These stars were always suspected of being huge, living fast and dying young with none now known to exist or can still form in the universe. But they were crucial to forming the first elements heavier than lithium and a tiny bit of burillium after the big bang. But now there may be further evidence. There have been hints before now that these kinds of stars did indeed exist. The James Webb telescope looking at the most distant galaxies in the universe that we can see and by proxy the earliest as we see galaxies has been looking for evidence of population 3 stars. Some of these galaxies observed so far as show some chemical evidence that seems to point to population 3 stars being the cause, but there is an anomaly. The stars doing this must have been far larger than we thought was possible. The problem comes in that there was a suspected upper limit on how large stars could get that put it about 120 solar masses. And there is another aspect of this that shows up later in this list with dark matter. But there were some ideas that postulated population 3 stars that could have exceeded this without collapsing into black holes. But a recent observation of the galaxy GS3073 upends this by having found unusually high amounts of nitrogen in the galaxy's chemical signatures, supporting that the stellar physics of population 3 stars could support much larger than expected stars. But it's a lot more, up to 10,000 times the size of the sun. But there is some push back to this finding in that it's also expected that population 3 stars would form and exist in pristine environments made up of only elements that the big bang formed. Yet GS3072 with its nitrogen appears to be chemically mature. So it doesn't really match the environment where scientists were expecting population 3 stars. Only further research will resolve this. Number six, the fossilized sea turtle stampede. This is a strange one. Climbers discovered an unusual fossil layer in Italy preserved in the limestone near the coast that dates from about 83 million years ago in the Cretaceous period that consists of a huge number of strange indentations in what used to be sediment on a very shallow seabed near shore. The astute climbers noticed it was weird, took pictures of the formation, and showed them to a geologist, and he was able to gain permission for a team to go in and study these weird fossils in depth. They literally found a snapshot of what was probably a single day long, long ago, where something left those marks in the sediment. And the fossil record indicates that there really was only one possibility. Sea turtles flapping around, not unlike what species are still around today. But something was really off about this site because for those prints to have been preserved, the sediment would have needed to be buried almost immediately as in what might happen in an earthquake. So the hypothesis is this. The turtles were peacefully just enjoying their shallow water feeding zone or just hanging around minding their own business and doing what they do. Then the earthquake hit and scared the everliving be Jesus out of the turtles. And the ensuing utter panic caused a turtle stampede, presumably towards shore or out to sea. And the paddle prints from what must have been unreal chaos were quickly buried by the earthquake to be fossilized. All at a time when Earth was not as it is today, but instead it was a dinosaur planet and giant marine reptile planet. one of the most dangerous environments you can think of in the history of planet Earth regarding getting eaten by something

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no matter where you were, ocean or land. Well, at least no nearby turtle fossils were found. So, there's that. Maybe they made it. Anyway, that's just all I got for this entry. Moving on. Number five, cave artists were concerned with cave acoustics. I can't help but be mesmerized by cave paintings. Tens of thousands of years old works of art that caves such as Chauvet Cave in France exhibit representing the silent words of people long ago. Still people like us but living in a very different alien landscape than we know today. They remind one of sacred places and very probably were. But sacred places usually aren't complete without the sounds of humans. And we know that the humans of those days had music as evidenced by artifacts of ancient flutes. not unlike ones still made today. And now there is evidence that the cave painters were in some cases deliberately choosing spaces that resonate sound particularly well. Researchers have long known that areas of caves with paintings have weird resonances if you sing in them. The echoes giving the effect of the cave singing back to you. An effect no doubt the humans that painted those caves were well aware of. A new study by the Art Soundscapes Project seems to compellingly show that yes, the cave painters were specifically choosing areas of the cave for their acoustics to the point that it validates some reports going back to the 80s that cave painting specialists can locate painted areas of caves just by singing or going to where they hear these kinds of resonant chambers. This is not that surprising of a result. It's been suspected for a while, and there was a long history of humans worldwide identifying places with weird acoustics, even creating to this very day indoor spaces that are designed for good acoustics. But there are examples of past humans also deliberately doing that. Even the earliest humans could hear this effect as well. Now, the debate moves to what all this actually sounded like. what kind of music, chanting, sounds other than perhaps flutes would have been performed in these caves and that may largely be lost to history. But maybe there are clues we might find. But given that some of those paintings also evoke movement as a kind of protocine really makes me wonder what that sounded like. I do not think their world was any less complex on the audiovisisual aspect than our own technological one is. Number four, the brightest star flare. The brightest flare ever seen coming from a super massive black hole has been reported. This flare of light was so powerful that the only way it could have been created is by the black hole completely devouring a huge star in a massive tidal disruption event. The galaxy in question and the super massive black hole is an active galactic nucleus about 20 billion lightyear away. And it helps explain why active galactic nuclei are really variable and see outbursts. They are eating stars, but this is one of the biggest ones seen so far. Known as Superman for its power, it was spotted in 2018, but was misleadingly bright. So, it was assumed the burst originated much closer than it actually did. But upon follow-up observations, it was clear it had to have been very distant and thus extraordinarily powerful. This conjures up images of a very powerful and high energy environment. Not only is there an accretion disc around the super massive black hole, there are actually stars within the disc like this and in this case 30 times more massive than the sun that are slowly getting torn apart until they reach a critical distance from the event horizon and start to become shredded by the black hole they are slowly falling into. In short, the flash is in some way the start of a giant star being spaghettified as it falls into a hungry super massive black hole at the center of a galaxy. Number three, the fungus that makes frogs leap further. There currently is an ongoing pandemic among species of frogs caused by the kitrred fungus that in one species of Australian frog latoria verui alpena that can during infections cause them to leap about 25% further than they normally would when healthy. This effect takes a while, up to 6 weeks after infection, for the symptom to show, which is really strange because most of the time when frogs of any species get sick, they tend to get lethargic as their immune systems fight the infection and it drains the animal of energy. Not here. Rather, this particular species does not have a strong immune response to this specific infection, and thus they never slow down while sick. Instead, it's thought

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that the increase in leap distance may be an adaptation to entice a mate for one last attempt at reproduction before the infection either gets more severe or death ensues. Here there is a clue. A handful of other frog species when infected with the same pathogen increase their mating calls. Again, indicative of one last try at reproduction. And oddly, the pathogen may not object to this as exposure to other frogs favors transmission, which means that at some point, this pathogen may promote this kind of behavior due to the evolutionary advantage of it for its own ends as a kind of death symbiosis of sorts. Number two, self-destructing plastic. One of the biggest problems environmentally today is the prevalence of plastics. Whether it's bottles or microlastics, the stuff is everywhere now and has been for some time. This has led to a search for ways to make plastics that degrade and disappear after a time to varying success. But there may now be a breakthrough involving plastics that actually mimics DNA's chemistry in a sense and can be formulated to break down after a determined period of time into harmless chemicals already present in the environment naturally. In short, just as food often has a use by date before it goes bad, plastics may someday have this too. Use whatever is in this before this date before this packaging is otherwise going to go away. and your refrigerator may become drenched in expired milk. This involves a process in organic chemistry, which plastics are, that causes natural polymers to break down in reactions called nucleophilic attacks that sever the polymer chains. This is possible in the plastics we currently use, but requires a lot of energy to do it. And when you add synthetic additions to new plastics that mimic what happens in nature, the result is a plastic that breaks down faster than normal and could be used to put used by dates on plastics. This should allow both easier recycling or if not, the plastic simply dissolves in the landfill into harmless natural chemicals or those that can be more easily reused and recycling. Number one, hints of dark matter stars. The hunt for dark matter currently covers a number of different fronts. From the search for particles that do not strongly interact to many other areas where the fingerprint of dark matter may hide. One such area that may prove to be particularly fruitful is that of the area of dark matter stars. Stars not driven by nuclear fusion. But in an earlier, far denser time in the universe, it may have been possible to drive a dark star by dark matter annihilation and sustain that star without the accumulated material needed for nuclear fusion that may still be detectable very distantly looking into the past with very large telescopes like James Web. These are not normal stars. However, these stars can be really massive to a point, and as long as they're kept fed from the outside with more dark matter, gravity being what it does, they won't run out of fuel and go supernova like normal early giant stars would, but only to a point. Because general relativity takes over at some point, and if there's too much dark matter, no matter what, it collapses into a black hole, which would be about 100 to 10 million times the mass of the sun. A lot of uncertainty there as this is driven by still shadowy dark matter if this happens at all. This is an interesting concept because there is a mystery about the early super massive black holes in the universe. They seem to have formed really early in the universe without a ready mechanism to do so from normal matter. It should have taken longer yet those black holes exist. This is not a problem if there was a dark mattercaused black hole already there to seed them initially. It's simply not possible to go from a black hole made from formerly normal matter of say 100 solar masses to one of a billion solar masses so rapidly. But it's the case nonetheless with a pre-existent dark matter-caused black hole. However, it then makes sense. But once a black hole, it's a black hole like any other. It just started with dark matter. But that's not the only mystery this might solve. The web telescope also revealed another group of mysteries involving what are known as little red dots and blue monsters. These are extraordinarily distant objects we see from the early days of the universe and they are believed to be compact early galaxies, but that may not actually be the case. These were initially thought to be galaxies that have been reported as being too early for what we know of the universe's age. There wasn't enough time for them to form, but they may instead be dark stars. According to new work and evidence, dark matter is predicted

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to have been able to do this earlier. The key here is that dark stars are not normal stars and should absorb certain wavelengths of light whereas normal stars should not. Now, however, from web data, there are early indications of these objects doing that. The problem is that a compact galaxy of many normal stars would appear to do this as well. So this finding is preliminary and unclear, but the hint is there. Only more observations will tell, but if this can be nailed, it will be a completely different indicator of the existence of dark matter other than what suggested dark matter in the first place, which is the gravitational behavior of galaxies and galaxy clusters. This would be independent, but that's only part of the recent developments. Dark stars still do not shed light on what dark matter is, at least initially. But another finding might. The leading hypothesis for dark matter is another class of non-interactive particle, not unlike the nutrino, but accounting for much more mass. If so, though, the particles should occasionally self annihilate and produce a gammaray. That should leave a glow in the galaxy. But evidence is now showing something like this going on at the galactic center, but now also from the galactic halo, the outer part of the Milky Way. But there are also dwarf galaxies that do not seem to show this. So again, only further study will tell. But it does seem that science is moving closer to at least having multiple indicators that dark matter is real above and beyond the evidence previously known. Thanks for listening. I'm science fiction author and futurist John Michael Godier. Still stuck on the earthquake turtle stampede. You know, it's always the turtles. Who could forget the Tannis fossil site of the perhaps aptly named Hell Creek Formation, where it appears to be a preserved remnant of the day the dinosaur asteroid hit and left tsunami evidence that included a fossil of a turtle that appears to have been impaled on a stick. Not good. But on that note, do check out my books at your favorite online book retailer and subscribe to my channels for regular in-depth explorations into this horrifying planet in which we live.