It’s a regrettable truth that there is never ever adequate time to cover all the fascinating clinical stories we encounter monthly. In the past, we’ve included year-end roundups of cool science stories we (nearly) missed out on. This year, we’re try out a regular monthly collection. June’s list consists of the results from the Muon g-2 experiment, re-creating the dish for Egyptian blue, embedding coded messages in ice bubbles, and why felines appear to have a significant choice for sleeping on their left sides.

Re-creating Egyptian blues

Artists in ancient Egypt were especially keen on the color called Egyptian blue– considered the world’s earliest artificial pigment– given that it was a low-cost replacement for more expensive products like lapis lazuli or blue-green. Archaeologists have actually puzzled over precisely how it was made, especially provided the broad variety of colors, from deep blue to gray or green. That understanding had actually long been forgotten. Researchers at Washington State University have actually lastly prospered in recreating the dish, according to a paper released in the journal npj Heritage Science.

The interdisciplinary group created 12 various prospective dishes utilizing differing portions of silicon dioxide, copper, calcium, and salt carbonate. They warmed the samples to 1,000 ° Celsius (about what ancient artists might have attained), differing the time in between one and 11 hours. They likewise cooled the samples at various rates. They examined the samples utilizing microscopy and other contemporary methods and compared them to the Egyptian blue on real Egyptian artifacts to discover the finest match.

Their samples are now on display screen at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. Apart from its historic interest, Egyptian blue likewise has remarkable optical, magnetic, and biological residential or commercial properties that might show helpful in useful applications today, per the authors. It may be utilized for counterfeit-proof inks, given that it releases light in the near-infrared, and its chemistry is comparable to high-temperature superconductors.

npj Heritage Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/ s40494-025-01699-7 (About DOIs).

World’s tiniest violin

It’s an old joke, perhaps going back to the 1970s. Whenever somebody is grumbling about a concern that appears unimportant in the grand plan of things, it’s custom to rub one’s thumb and forefinger together and state, “This the world’s smallest violin playing just for you.” (In my snarky circles we utilized to state the violin was “playing ‘My Heart Bleeds for You.'”Physicists at Loughborough University have actually now made what they declare truly is the world’s tiniest violin, simply 35 microns long and 13 microns broad.

There are numerous lithographic approaches for developing patterned electronic gadgets, such as photolithography, which can be utilized either with a mask or without. The authors count on scanning probe thermal lithography rather, particularly an advanced nano-sculpting maker they called the NanoFrazor. The primary step was to coat a little chip with 2 layers of a gel product and after that put it under the NanoFrazor. The instrument’s heated suggestion burned the violin pattern into the gel. They “developed” the gel by liquifying the underlayer so that just a violin-shaped cavity stayed.

Next, they soaked a thin layer of platinum and rinsed the chip with acetone. The resulting violin is a tiny image instead of a playable small instrument– you can’t even see it without a microscopic lense– however it’s still a remarkable accomplishment that shows the abilities of the laboratory’s brand-new nano lithography system. And the entire procedure can take as low as 3 hours.

Muon g-2 anomaly no more?

The Muon g-2 experiment(noticable “gee minus 2”)is developed to search for enticing tips of physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. It does this by determining the electromagnetic field(aka the magnetic minute )produced by a subatomic particle called the muon. Back in 2001, an earlier run of the experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory discovered a minor inconsistency, meaning possible brand-new physics, however that questionable outcome disappointed the important limit needed to declare discovery.

Physicists have actually been making brand-new measurements since in hopes of solving this abnormality. In 2021, we reported on information from the upgraded Muon g-2 experiment that revealed “excellent agreement” with the disparity Brookhaven tape-recorded. They enhanced on their measurement accuracy in 2023. And now it appears the abnormality is extremely near being dealt with, according to a preprint published to the physics arXiv based upon analysis of an information set triple the size as the one utilized for the 2023 analysis. (You can see a video description here.)

The last Muon g-2 outcome remains in arrangement with the 2021 and 2023 outcomes, however far more exact, with mistake bars 4 times smaller sized than those of the initial Brookhaven experiment. Integrate that with brand-new forecasts by the associated Muon g-2 Theory Initiative utilizing a brand-new ways of computing the muon’s magnetic minute, and the disparity in between theoretical forecast and experiment narrows even further.

While some have actually stated triumph, and the Muon g-2 experiment is finished, theorists are still sounding a note of care as they look for to more improve their designs. Fermilab is constructing a brand-new experiment developed to hunt for muon-to-electron conversions. If they discover any, that would certainly make up brand-new physics beyond the Standard Model.

arXiv, 2025. DOI: 10.48550/ arXiv.2506.03069 (About DOIs).

Message in a bubble

Forget sending out messages in a bottle. Researchers have actually found out how to encode messages in both binary and Morse code in air bubbles caught in ice, according to a paper released in the journal Cell Physical Science. Caught air bubbles are normally formed like eggs or needles, and the authors found that they might control the sizes, shapes, and circulation of those ice bubbles by differing the freezing rate. (Faster rates produce egg-shaped bubbles, slower rates produce needle-shaped ones, for instance. )

To encode messages, the scientists designated various bubble sizes, shapes, and orientations to Morse code and binary characters and utilized their freezing technique to produce ice bubbles representing the wanted characters. Next, they took a picture of the ice layer and transformed it to gray scale, training a computer system to determine the position and the size of the bubbles and translate the message into English letters and Arabic characters. The group discovered that binary coding might save messages 10 times longer than Morse code.

Someday, this freezing technique might be utilized for brief message storage in Antarctica and comparable really cold areas where conventional details storage techniques are tough and/or too expensive, per the authors. Qiang Tang of the University of Australia, who was not included in the research study, informed New Scientist that he did not see much useful application for the development in cryptography or security, “unless a polar bear may want to tell someone something.”

Cell Physical Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/ j.xcrp.2025.102622 (About DOIs).

Felines choose to sleep on left side

The Internet was produced felines, particularly YouTube, which includes countless videos of differing quality, recording the insane shenanigans of our furry feline buddies. Those videos can likewise serve the interests of science, as evidenced by the global group of scientists who evaluated 408 openly readily available videos of sleeping felines to study whether the cats revealed any choice for sleeping on their ideal or left sides. According to a paper released in the journal Current Biology, two-thirds of those videos revealed felines sleeping on their left sides.

Why should this behavioral asymmetry hold true? There are most likely different factors, however the authors assume that it has something to do with cat understanding and their vulnerability to predators while sleeping (typically in between 12 to 16 hours a day). The best hemisphere of the brain controls in spatial attention, while the ideal amygdala is dominant for processing risks. That’s why most types respond more rapidly when a predator approaches from the. Since a feline’s left visual field is processed in the dominant ideal hemisphere of their brains, “sleeping on the left side can therefore be a survival strategy,” the authors concluded.

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