Best of Last Week – Alien spacecraft theory, moving closer to teleportation and lasting impact of high-fat diet

November 12, 2018 by Bob Yirka
quantum
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

It was a big week for space science as astronomer peers pushed back against a Harvard team's 'alien spacecraft' theory—Shmuel Bialy and Avi Loeb made headlines by suggesting that 'Oumuamua, the first extra-solar object ever spotted, could possibly be an alien spacecraft. Others did not agree. And another team of astronomers at Johns Hopkins University found an elusive star with origins close to the Big Bang—they suggest it could be among the oldest in the universe. Also, a team at MIT suggested that existing laser technology could be fashioned into Earth's 'porch light' to attract alien astronomers by focusing it through a telescope and pointing it toward the sky.

It was a big week for technology news, as well, as a team at Carnegie Mellon University developed a new model that enables object detection in 4K and 8K video using GPUs. And a team with members from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences described new methods and technologies that could bring complex quantum teleportation on step closer by using quantum systems more complex than two-dimensionally entangled qubits. Also, a team of engineers at MIT announced that they had developed a see-through film that rejects 70 percent of incoming solar heat. And a collaboration between MIT's Plasma Science & Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems resulted in a faster, cheaper path to fusion energy using high-temperature superconductors.

In other news, an international team of researchers reported that an ancient DNA analysis yielded unexpected insights about the peoples of Central and South America, such as genetic exchanges between people living in North and South America. And a team at Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute announced that they had solved a century-old neuroscience mystery. They also found that the answer could lead to an epilepsy treatment

And finally, if you are one of the millions of people around the world putting off cutting fats and sugars from your diet, you might want to check out a study done by a team from Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center—they found that a high-fat diet has lasting effects on the liver, including permanent damage.

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