{"id":214232,"date":"2025-12-28T08:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T08:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/214232\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T08:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T08:08:08","slug":"scientists-may-have-spotted-light-from-the-first-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/214232\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists May Have Spotted Light from the First Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to a special holiday edition of the Abstract! It\u2019s been an incredible year for science, from breakthroughs in life-saving organ transplants<\/a>\u00a0 to the discovery of 3I ATLAS<\/a>, the third known interstellar object. But we can\u2019t cover everything, so to cap off 2025 I\u2019m pulling together a grab-bag of my favorite studies from the past year that fell through the cracks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, a bitter feud that has divided dinosaur lovers for decades finally came to an end in 2025, proving at last that tyrannosaurs come in size small. Then: ye olde American cats, the search for the very first stars, and humanity\u2019s chillest invention.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens<\/a> or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Vindication of Nanotyrannus<\/p>\n

Zanno, Lindsay E. et al. \u201cNanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus coexisted at the close of the Cretaceous.\u201d Nature.<\/a><\/p>\n

Griffin, Christopher T. et al. \u201cA diminutive tyrannosaur lived alongside Tyrannosaurus rex.\u201d Science.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

For decades, a tiny tyrannosaur has inspired big debates. The remains of this dinosaur were initially judged to be a juvenile tyrannosaur, until a team in the 1980s suggested they might belong to a whole new species of pint-sized predator called Nanotyrannus\u2014sort of like a T. rex shrunk down to the size of a draft horse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This argument has raged ever since, causing bad blood between colleagues and inspiring a longstanding quest to reveal this dinosaur’s true identity. Now, in the closing months of 2025, peace has at last been brokered in these bone wars, according to a pair of new studies that cement Nanotyrannus as a distinct lineage of predators that coexisted alongside heavyweight cousins like T. rex.<\/p>\n

\u201cNanotyrannus has become a hot-button issue, and the debate has often been acrimonious,\u201d said researchers led by Lindsay Zanno of North Carolina State University in an October study<\/a>. \u201cOver the past two decades, consensus among theropod specialists has aligned in favor of Nanotyrannus lancensis representing a juvenile morph of Tyrannosaurus rex.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The only evidence that could shatter this consensus would be \u201ca skeletally mature specimen diagnosable\u201d as Nanotyrannus, the team continued. Enter: \u201cBloody Mary,\u201d the nickname for a near-complete tyrannosaur skeleton found unearthed in Montana in 2006. After a scrupulous new look at the specimen, Zanno’s team concludes that it demonstrates \u201cbeyond reasonable doubt that Nanotyrannus is a valid taxon.\u201d<\/p>\n

These results were reinforced by another study<\/a> earlier this month that argues that Nanotyrannus was \u201ca distinct taxon\u2026that was roughly coeval with Tyrannosaurus rex and is minimally diagnosable by its diminutive body size,\u201d according to researchers led by Christopher Griffin of Princeton University.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nanotyrannus supports the hypothesis that dinosaurs may have been flourishing in diversity at the end of the Cretaceous era\u2014right before they got punched by a space rock. In addition to confirming the existence of a new tyrannosaur, the new studies \u201cprompts a critical reevaluation of decades of scholarship on Earth\u2019s most famous extinct organism,\u201d meaning Tyrannosaurus rex, said Zanno\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

In other words, tyrannosaurs of all sizes were running around together at the end of the Cretaceous period. While T. rex will always reign supreme as the tyrant king of its time, we also salute this new dinosaurian dauphin.<\/p>\n

In other news\u2026<\/p>\n

I can haz seas-burger?<\/p>\n

Welker, Martin H. et al. \u201cExploring the Arrival of Domestic Cats in the Americas.\u201d American Antiquity.<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1559, a Spanish colonial fleet was dashed to pieces by a hurricane in Florida. Among the many casualties of this disaster were a cat and a kitten, whose remains were found centuries later in the lower hull of a galleon shipwreck at Emanuel Point, near Pensacola.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These felines \u201care, most likely, the earliest cats in what is now the United States,\u201d according to a study from April filled with fascinating facts about the fallen felines. For example, the adult cat ate like a sailor, devouring nutritious fish and domestic meat (like pork or poultry), with few signs of rodents in its diet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This suggests the cat \u201cwas so effective at controlling rat populations that such prey was an insufficient food source,\u201d said researchers led by Martin Welker of the University of Arizona.<\/p>\n

It seems that cats have been impressing people with their legendary hunting prowess for centuries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The study also includes some fun passages about the prized role of cats as pest control on these European ships, including this excerpt from a marine treatise from 1484:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf goods laden on board of a ship are devoured by rats, and the owners consequently suffer considerable damage, the master must repair the injury sustained by the owners, for he is considered in fault. But if the master kept cats on board, he is excused from the liability.\u201d<\/p>\n

A resolution for 2026: Bring back cat-based legal exemptions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The search for the ur-stars<\/p>\n

Visbal, Eli et al. LAP1-B is the First Observed System Consistent with Theoretical Predictions for Population III Stars. The Astrophysical Journal Letters.<\/a><\/p>\n

For generations, astronomers have dreamed of glimpsing the very first stars in the universe, known as Population III. This year, these stellar trailblazers may have finally come into view, thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope and the natural phenomenon of gravitational lensing, which can magnify distant objects in space.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lensed light from an ancient galaxy called LAP1-B, which traveled more than 13 billion years before it was captured by JWST, contains the expected low-metal signatures of Population III stars,\u00a0 according to a December study.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstanding the formation and properties of the first stars in the Universe is currently an exciting frontier in astrophysics and cosmology,\u201d said researchers led by Eli Visbal of the University of Toledo. \u201cUp to this point, there have been no unambiguous direct detections of Population III (Pop III) stars, defined by their extremely low metallicities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe argue that LAP1-B is the first Pop III candidate to agree with three key theoretical predictions for classical Pop III sources,\u201d the team added. \u201cLAP1-B may only represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of the study of Pop III stars with gravitational lensing from galaxy clusters.\u201d<\/p>\n

JWST continues to be a JW-MVP, and it will be exciting to see what else it might spy next.<\/p>\n

A swing-kle in time<\/p>\n

Norton, M., Kuhn, J. \u201cTowards a history of the hammock: An Indigenous technology in the Atlantic world.\u201d postmedieval.<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s close out this wild year with some rest and relaxation in the most soothing of all human creations: the hammock. In a study published last month, researchers meditated on the history of these sleepy slings, from their Indigenous origins in the Americas to their widespread adoption by European mariners and settler-colonists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The work is full of interesting ruminations about the unique properties and its multifaceted purposes, which ranged from rocking newborn babies to sleep at the dawn of life to comforting the ailing in the form of death beds and burial shrouds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hammock facilitated transitions between life stages like birth, puberty, leadership, and death,\u201d said researchers Marcy Norton of the University of Pennsylvania and John Kuhn of SUNY-Binghamton. But it also facilitated more quotidian shifts in the body: sleep, dreaming, entering hallucinogenic states, and healing.\u201d<\/p>\n

What better way to celebrate this weird liminal week, suspended between the past and the future, than an ode to this timeless technology of transitions. It\u2019s been so much fun hanging out with you all in 2025, and I look forward to swinging into a New Year of all things Abstract.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading and have a Happy New Year! See you next week.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to a special holiday edition of the Abstract! It\u2019s been an incredible year for science, from breakthroughs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-214232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}