{"id":856219,"date":"2026-08-15T14:12:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T14:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/856219\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T14:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T14:12:16","slug":"this-week-in-science-ai-agents-come-to-an-agreement-gemstones-on-mars-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/856219\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in Science: AI Agents Come to an Agreement, Gemstones on Mars, And More!"},"content":{"rendered":"

We know you’re all incredibly busy, so each week, we round up the science stories you need to know about.<\/p>\n

This Week in Science: AI got a little more organized, dolphins were caught teaching fishing behavior, and a first-of-its-kind allergy treatment showed promise.<\/p>\n

First up: 1,000 AI Agents Started Agreeing Without Anyone Telling Them To<\/a><\/p>\n

Also this week:<\/p>\n

Read on below, and make sure you also check out our TWIS video<\/a>!<\/p>\n

1,000 AI Agents Started Agreeing Without Anyone Telling Them To\"1,000<\/p>\n

(Just_Super\/iStock\/Getty Images Plus)<\/p>\n

Imagine filling a virtual room with 1,000\u00a0artificial intelligence<\/a>\u00a0(AI) agents and asking each one to choose between two meaningless options.<\/p>\n

There is no right answer. They receive no reward for agreeing, no instruction to cooperate, and no help from a leader. Yet some of today’s most capable AI agents can still end up making the same choice.<\/p>\n

That is more than a curious experiment. It suggests large groups of AI agents may be able to coordinate without central control \u2013 potentially forming collectives larger than\u00a0informal human groups<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a new study published in\u00a0Science Advances<\/a>, researchers show how this spontaneous consensus emerges \u2013 and why it could be useful or dangerous.<\/p>\n

Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

‘Very Unexpected’: NASA Rover Zapped a Rock on Mars And Found a Gemstone Surprise\"'Very<\/p>\n

When NASA’s Perseverance rover used its laser to tease apart some pale rocks lying around in Jezero Crater in 2025, scientists did not expect anything out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n

Little did they know what was in store.<\/p>\n

The rocks contained something never before found on\u00a0Mars<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a mineral that, here on Earth, can constitute literal treasure.<\/p>\n

The mineral was corundum, the crystalline material that forms rubies and sapphires. And there was even a whiff of chromium, which gives rubies their distinctive reddish-pinkish hues.<\/p>\n

Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Incredible Footage Shows Dolphins Hunting With Shells Off The East Coast of Australia \u2013 And Possibly Passing The Skill on\"Incredible<\/p>\n

A dolphin surfaces with a shell on its ‘nose’. (University of the Sunshine Coast)<\/p>\n

Dolphins off the coast of Queensland, Australia, have been captured on film using a rarely-sighted technique known as ‘shelling’ to hunt their prey.<\/p>\n

Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus<\/a>), also known as ‘buthu’ in the Indigenous Butchulla language, are intelligent animals known for their tool use.<\/p>\n

But very few people have ever seen the dolphins’ shelling in action, let alone caught it on camera.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

The new videos, captured at Hervey Bay, were presented by researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast in a study published in\u00a0Marine Mammal Biology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“The second I saw that shell in the air, I immediately knew what was happening,” behavioral ecologist Alexis Levengood told ScienceAlert.<\/p>\n

Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The World’s Vegetables Are Vanishing, And It’s Quietly Wrecking Our Diets\"The<\/p>\n

(mr_morton\/E+\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Most of us aren’t eating anywhere near enough vegetables, and we’re suffering the health consequences.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, we’re also growing fewer and fewer varieties of vegetables, adding to the declining diversity in our diets.<\/p>\n

A new report published in\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>\u00a0by an international team of nutrition, agriculture, and botany experts suggests embracing vegetable biodiversity could be key to improving our own health, and that of our planet.<\/p>\n

Agriculture scientist Maarten van Zonneveld, who led the research while working at the World Vegetable Center, says our existing approaches to agriculture are not enough to solve the world’s nutrition problems.<\/p>\n

“The solution isn’t simply to grow more vegetables \u2013 it’s also to grow more kinds of vegetables,” he\u00a0says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First-of-Its-Kind Trial Against Food Allergies Yields ‘Exciting’ Results\"Microbes<\/p>\n

(Mypurgatoryyears\/iStock\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Researchers have come a long way in developing treatments for food allergies, with\u00a0oral immunotherapies<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0skin patches<\/a>\u00a0both helping desensitize kids to peanuts, protecting them if they were to ingest small amounts.<\/p>\n

Another potential way to retrain the immune system is through the gut, which houses a vast collection of\u00a0bacteria and other microbes<\/a>\u00a0that can either help or hinder health.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0new trial<\/a>, scientists gave 15 adults with peanut allergies capsules containing\u00a0fecal microbiota<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 essentially, carefully processed communities of gut bacteria extracted from healthy donors’ poop.<\/p>\n

This technique, called fecal microbiota or\u00a0fecal matter transplant<\/a>\u00a0(FMT), is a promising therapy that aims to ‘reset’ the gut microbiome.<\/p>\n

In human trials, it has helped\u00a0alleviate depression<\/a>, inflammatory bowel disease, type 2\u00a0diabetes<\/a>, and more (though it\u00a0doesn’t work for everyone<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Research also shows that treating mice\u00a0with a cultured selection of gut bacteria<\/a>\u00a0suppresses their food allergies.<\/p>\n

Now we have some human data suggesting that poop transplants may help in a similar way.<\/p>\n

Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pinot Noir Might Be Doomed as Droughts Become More Frequent\"Red<\/p>\n

(Yulia Shaihudinova\/Moment\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

As Western Europe nears the end of its\u00a0hottest summer on record<\/a>, growers across the world’s most famous wine regions are\u00a0starting their harvests early<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 provided their grapes weren’t\u00a0already burnt<\/a>\u00a0in the heat of fires and drought.<\/p>\n

All evidence suggests wine regions\u00a0in Europe<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0across the world<\/a>\u00a0are going to continue to be hit with hotter, drier weather.<\/p>\n

A recent study by\u00a0viticulture<\/a>\u00a0experts from institutes across France, Germany, and Argentina assessed how well two of the most popular wine grape cultivars \u2013 Pinot noir and Chardonnay \u2013 might fare as drought becomes more prevalent as\u00a0climate change<\/a>\u00a0progresses in the coming years.<\/p>\n

Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube<\/p>\n

ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Don’t miss a story, subscribe here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Related News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We know you’re all incredibly busy, so each week, we round up the science stories you need to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[426381,254,64,63,162,128,107249],"class_list":["post-856219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-allergy-treatment","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dolphins","tag-science","tag-science-advances"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}