ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• The light-bending dance of binary black holes
• Scientists generate human-monkey chimeric embryos
• How many T. rexes were there? Billions
• Bearded dragon embryos become females either through sex chromosomes or hot temperatures
• Baked meteorites yield clues to planetary atmospheres
• Self-assembling nanofibers prevent damage from inflammation
• Entropy measurements reveal exotic effect in 'magic-angle' graphene

The light-bending dance of binary black holes Posted: 15 Apr 2021 02:07 PM PDT A pair of orbiting black holes millions of times the Sun's mass perform a hypnotic pas de deux in a new NASA visualization. The movie traces how the black holes distort and redirect light emanating from the maelstrom of hot gas - called an accretion disk - that surrounds each one.

Scientists generate human-monkey chimeric embryos Posted: 15 Apr 2021 11:29 AM PDT Investigators have injected human stem cells into primate embryos and were able to grow chimeric embryos for a significant period of time -- up to 20 days. The research, despite its ethical concerns, has the potential to provide new insights into developmental biology and evolution. It also has implications for developing new models of human biology and disease.

How many T. rexes were there? Billions Posted: 15 Apr 2021 11:26 AM PDT With fossils few and far between, paleontologists have shied away from estimating the size of extinct populations. But UC Berkeley scientists decided to try, focusing on the North American predator T. rex. Using data from the latest fossil analyses, they concluded that some 20,000 adults likely roamed the continent at any one time, from Mexico to Canada. The species survived for perhaps 2.5 million years, which means that about 2.5 billion lived and died overall.

Bearded dragon embryos become females either through sex chromosomes or hot temperatures Posted: 15 Apr 2021 11:18 AM PDT Bearded dragon embryos can use two different sets of genes to become a female lizard -- one activated by the sex chromosomes and the other activated by high temperatures during development, researchers report.

Baked meteorites yield clues to planetary atmospheres Posted: 15 Apr 2021 08:41 AM PDT In a novel laboratory investigation of the initial atmospheres of Earth-like rocky planets, researchers heated pristine meteorite samples in a high-temperature furnace and analyzed the gases released. Their results suggest that the initial atmospheres of terrestrial planets may differ significantly from many of the common assumptions used in theoretical models of planetary atmospheres.

Self-assembling nanofibers prevent damage from inflammation Posted: 14 Apr 2021 05:24 PM PDT Biomedical engineers have developed a self-assembling nanomaterial that can help limit damage caused by inflammatory diseases by activating key cells in the immune system. In mouse models of psoriasis, the team showed that their nanofiber-based drug could effectively mitigate damaging inflammation as effectively as a gold-standard therapy.

Entropy measurements reveal exotic effect in 'magic-angle' graphene Posted: 07 Apr 2021 10:57 AM PDT Most materials go from being solids to liquids when they are heated. One rare counter-example is helium-3, which can solidify upon heating. This counterintuitive and exotic effect, known as the Pomeranchuk effect, may now have found its electronic analogue in a material known as magic-angle graphene, say researchers.

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