Science roundup: a possible dark matter hint, entangled bosons and yeast bricks for Mars
Ars Technica rounded up September's most intriguing research findings, from a tentative dark matter signal at a US detector to evidence that ancient humans may have used psychoactive substances 25,000 years ago.
A hint of dark matter
Physicists working with the LUX-ZEPLIN detector, buried deep in a former gold mine in South Dakota, have recorded an unusual signal that could indicate a dark matter particle — a so-called weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) — striking a xenon nucleus. The results were presented at the TeV Particle Astrophysics conference in Japan and submitted for peer review to Physical Review Letters, but researchers stress the signal is far too weak to count as a confirmed discovery and could still turn out to be a statistical fluke. Two other detectors, XENONnT in Italy and the under-construction PandaX in China, continue collecting their own data.
Entangled bosons at the Large Hadron Collider
Physicists at CERN's ATLAS experiment reported in Physical Review Letters that they observed quantum entanglement between pairs of Z bosons — reportedly the highest-energy entanglement ever recorded. The team reconstructed the angles at which electrons and muons were emitted to infer the spins of the original Z bosons. Similar evidence was found for entangled quark pairs in 2023, suggesting large colliders could become tools for studying this fundamental quantum phenomenon.
Yeast bricks for homes on Mars
Engineers in Hong Kong have developed a mixture of simulated Martian rock, gelatin and a special yeast coated with mussel-like adhesive proteins. Described in the journal Chem Circularity, the material hardens into a light, porous foam after being 3D-printed under simulated Martian conditions, reaching a compressive strength of up to 12 megapascals — enough for a one- or two-story building on Earth, and potentially much taller structures on Mars, where gravity is three times weaker.
Psychoactive use in the Ice Age
Archaeologists from Griffith University, writing in Science Advances, examined two ancient forager skeletons from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi showing distinctive grooves in their teeth, evidence that people were chewing betel nuts as far back as roughly 25,000 years ago. The researchers suggest the nuts may have served both as a mild psychoactive and a natural painkiller for toothaches, though prolonged use gradually damaged the chewers' teeth.
