The Verge of Merging.
Mirror life, unfortunately.
“It’s the first thing I read every morning.” — Annie Lamont, co-founder of Oak HC/FT, a leading venture capital firm.
1. The New York Times:
When a group of astronomers set out two years ago to map parts of the ancient cosmos, they had hoped to find galaxies that contained two black holes. The universe did them one better: They found a galaxy with three. It’s the first time scientists have found evidence of a young galaxy that hosts a trio of active supermassive black holes, according to a paper published yesterday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Two of them are so close together that they appear to be on the verge of merging. Virtually all the massive galaxies astronomers have studied have black holes at their centers, said Hannah Ubler of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the lead author. Some pairs and triplets have been observed in nearby galaxies, but never a triplet so far from Earth. Their distance, which is more than 12.5 billion light-years away, dates them to within roughly one billion years of the Big Bang. (Sources: nytimes.com, aanda.org. The joke is that Goldman Sachs advised on the merger.)
2. Skip this one. Trust me:
Mirror life is a hypothetical form of life built from biomolecules with the opposite chirality—or molecular orientation—of those used by all known life on earth. Although mirror life does not yet exist, scientific advances have produced mirror-image biomolecules and components that could serve as the building blocks of mirror organisms, and some laboratories have articulated the goal of constructing a viable mirror cell. Experts estimate that mirror life could become a reality within the next few decades. The reversed molecular orientation of mirror life could enable mirror bacteria to escape immune detection and cause fatal infections, resist degradation, avoid natural predators, and proliferate throughout natural ecosystems. Even a small initial population of mirror organisms could potentially spread widely, causing irreversible biological disruption. Mirror life is a governance challenge without precedent; even earlier crises, such as pandemics and widespread conflict, do not compare with the potential catastrophic effects of the creation of mirror life. Despite the almost incomprehensible risks that might result from mirror life’s creation, some scientists may nonetheless pursue it. Actors might be motivated to pursue the creation of mirror life if they reject the scientific concerns about its dangers, believe that risks can be controlled, or assume that mirror life could function as a controllable biological weapon. Action to prevent the development of mirror life must occur before the first mirror organism exists because the first successful experiment might also mark the point at which containment and defense become impossible. (Source: rand.org)
3. thesciverse.org:
The standard picture of brain aging goes something like this: starting in your 30s, neurons gradually die, connections slowly weaken, and cognitive performance edges downward decade by decade. Decline is real but incremental. There is no specific moment when the brain tips from one state to another.
A study just published in Science has challenged that picture with some of the most detailed data ever collected on the aging human brain.
Researchers at UC San Diego analyzed nearly 320,000 individual cells from the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for learning and memory, collected from 40 people ranging from age 20 to 95. They did not just look at which genes were active. They mapped the three-dimensional physical structure of the genome inside each cell, tracking how the architecture of DNA itself changes across the human lifespan.
What they found was not a slow, steady decline. It was a discrete biological transition.
Between approximately age 50 and 75, the hippocampus undergoes what the researchers describe as a coordinated immune overhaul. The protective microglia that have lived in the brain since before birth begin to disappear. Replacing them are cells that carry inflammatory signatures the brain was never designed to tolerate. At the same time, the physical structure of the genome across multiple cell types begins to loosen and unravel. The support cells that nourish neurons go into what the researchers call an energy crisis.
All of this happens in a relatively compressed window. Not gradually over seven decades. Around 50. (More on this from Eric Topol. Sources: tehsciverse.org, science.org, substack.com)
