2026-09-15の世界

Have you ever wondered what happens inside an animal's brain while it moves freely outdoors? Until now, scientists could either record detailed brain activity in a lab or watch natural behavior outside, but never both at once. A team at Cornell University, led by research associate Zifang Zhao with senior scientists Azahara Oliva and Antonio Fernandez-Ruiz, has solved this problem. They built a tiny device called WILD, short for Wireless, Interactive, Lightweight Datalogger. WILD weighs less than a U.S. dime and is shaped like a tiny chef's hat. It can record brain signals continuously for three to nine hours, and even longer when set to save power. The device also tracks movement, vocalizations, and eye movements, and can use light or electrical pulses to change brain activity. Testing WILD on mice in a natural field enclosure north of Cornell's campus, researchers recorded the first-ever field observations of 'place cells,' brain cells that activate as an animal explores its surroundings. Oliva explained that scientists could previously record neural activity in the lab or record behavior in nature, but now they can do both together. The study was published on September 10, 2026, in the journal Nature Methods. Other teams are already testing WILD on birds, bats, and monkeys.

Can two space telescopes see farther together than either one alone? NASA scientists just proved they can. A team combined the visible-light vision of the Hubble Space Telescope with the infrared eye of the James Webb Space Telescope to study trans-Neptunian objects, tiny icy bodies orbiting the sun far beyond Neptune. Together, the telescopes found 27 new objects, some of the smallest and faintest ever directly seen. The tiniest one measures only about 3 miles, or 5 kilometers, across. One object was so dim that spotting it was compared to seeing a firefly on the moon from Earth. The research was led by Anastasia Morgan, a PhD candidate at Northern Arizona University, and Marielle Eduardo, a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria in Canada. Scientists had expected to find fewer small objects than large ones, but instead, both the 'hot' and 'cold' populations of these distant worlds showed surprisingly similar sizes. Northern Arizona University astronomer David Trilling said these objects still carry a signature of where they were born, even though their orbits have since been scrambled. The two related studies were published on September 8, 2026, in The Astronomical Journal, offering new clues about how our solar system first formed.

Could a fossilized pile of dinosaur poop hold one of the best-preserved feathers ever found? Scientists say yes. In 2016, David DeMar Jr., a research scientist at the University of Washington's Burke Museum, was collecting fish fossils in Montana's Hell Creek Formation when he noticed a small, dark reddish-brown rock about half the size of a golf ball. Looking closer with a hand lens, he spotted a tiny fossil feather. The rock turned out to be a coprolite, or fossilized feces, likely left by a large meat-eating dinosaur. Inside, researchers also found fish scales and leg bones from a hesperornithiform, an extinct diving bird related to modern loons. These are the first-ever feathers found from this bird group. Two of the feathers had a modern, square-shaped shaft with a sponge-like center, a combination never seen before in feathers from the age of dinosaurs. Lead researcher Jingmai O'Connor said studying the discovery felt like being a detective, piecing together clues from an unexpected source. The fossil is about 66 million years old, from just before the asteroid impact that ended the age of dinosaurs. The findings, published on September 10, 2026, in the journal Current Biology, may help explain why some ancient birds survived that disaster while others did not.

Why do bats live for decades without getting cancer as often as other small mammals? Scientists say the answer is hidden in their immune systems. A team led by Elise Lauterbur at the University of Vermont and Juan 'Manny' Vazquez at Penn State studied the genomes of eight closely related bat species in the genus Myotis, including the little brown bat, which can live up to 34 years, far longer than similar-sized mice. The researchers found that bat cells react to damaged DNA in an unusual way. Instead of trying to repair the damage, as most mammal cells do, bat cells simply destroy and replace themselves. This strategy lowers the risk that harmful mutations will build up and eventually cause cancer. A similar trick has also been seen in elephants, naked mole rats, and bowhead whales. The bats also carry extra copies of certain immune genes, giving them a hidden arsenal of defenses against fast-changing viruses. One researcher said that age-related muscle loss, metabolic disorders, and cancer are all conditions that bats have evolved to handle. The study, published on August 26, 2026, in the journal Nature, could one day help scientists design new treatments for cancer and aging in humans.