404 Media

2025-10-18 13:00:51

Scientists Discover Rogue Star-Eating Black Hole Far From Home

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that mounted a defense, felt out of place, found new life, and resurrected the gods of yore.

First, a tale of pregnant stinkbugs, parasitic wasps, and fungi weapons that is fit for a rebooted Aesop fable. Then, a fast food stop for an errant black hole; a new cast of worms, mollusks, and “tusk-shells” from the deep sea; and a friendly reminder to REPENT, SINNERS, or suffer divine wrath.

I also wanted to give another quick shoutout to my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, which is now out in the wild. And if you’d like to keep up with news about the book, alien lore, and my other goings-on, subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.

And now, to the science!

Painting eggs (with protective fungi)

Nishino, Takanori et al. “Defensive fungal symbiosis on insect hindlegs.” Science.

For years, scientists assumed that the weird lumps on the hindlegs of some female stinkbugs were used as auditory organs to perceive sound. A new study reveals that the function of these “tympanum” organs is, in fact, way weirder: They are miniature fungi farms that the “gravid” (pregnant) females use to culture “hyphae” (fungal filaments) to grow anti-wasp coatings for their eggs.

“To address the question of the function of the tympanum, we investigated the Japanese dinidorid stinkbug Megymenum gracilicorne and discovered that this stinkbug’s hindleg organ is not auditory but a previously unknown type of symbiotic organ,” said researchers led by Takanori Nishino of the University of Tsukuba.

“We observed that the gravid females laid eggs in a row, and when each egg was deposited, the females rhythmically scratched the fungus-covered hindleg organ with the tarsal claws of the opposite hindleg and rubbed the egg surface, smearing the fungi onto the eggs,” the team said. “Within a few days, the fungal hyphae grew to cover the entire egg mass. On hatching, the hyphae attached to the body surface of newborn nymphs, although the fungi were subsequently lost as the nymphs molted and grew.”
Image: Nishino, Takanori et al.
Don’t you just love the smell of fungus-covered eggs in the morning? Probably not, and that’s the point. Parasitic wasps like to go around ovipositing (laying their young) inside the eggs of other bugs, but the team discovered they were repeatedly thwarted by the stinkbug shield.

“In the experimental arena, the female wasps approached both the fungus-removed eggs and the fungus-covered eggs,” the researchers said. “Immediately after antennal drumming on the egg surface, the female wasps only oviposited on the cleaned eggs… It is notable that wasps still approached egg masses fully covered by fungal hyphae, despite showing intense self-grooming, which suggested that the hyphae were adherent.”

That’s what these wasps get for trying to mooch off stinkbug eggs: a faceful of sticky fungal goo that’s going to take some very intense self-grooming to remove. To that end, the team concluded that “the fungi selectively cultured on the female’s hindleg organ of M. gracilicorne are transferred to eggs to act as a physical defense against parasitic wasp attack.”

As the old adage goes, never judge a stinkbug by her conspicuous tympanal organs.

In other news…

Who left a supermassive black hole all the way over here?

Sfaradi, Itai et al. The First Radio-Bright Off-Nuclear TDE 2024tvd Reveals the Fastest-Evolving Double-Peaked Radio Emission.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

When stars wander too close to black holes, they are torn apart by extreme tidal forces, producing radiant light shows called tidal disruption events (TDEs). Astronomers have witnessed these events countless times near the central nucleus of distant galaxies, which are occupied by supermassive black holes, but a team has now captured an unprecedented glimpse of an “off-nuclear” TDE far from the galactic core.

The event, called AT 2024tvd, involved a black hole with a possible mass of up to 10 million Suns. While it’s a pretty typical enormous black hole, what’s weird is that it was spotted eating a star about 2,600 light years from the nucleus of a distant galaxy, which produced the unusual TDE. Scientists have seen a few dim hints of these off-nuclear events, but this is the first to be clearly captured in bright radio waves.

“AT 2024tvd is the first radio-bright, bona fide off-nuclear TDE, and it is also the TDE with the fastest evolution observed to date,” said researchers led by Itai Sfaradi of the University of California, Berkeley.

The team speculate that the black hole might have been gravitationally kicked into the galaxy after a dust-up with other, bigger black holes elsewhere. While that sounds like a tumultuous backstory, at least this black hole was able to grab a stellar bite along the way.

Here be mollusks, worms, and chitons

Senckenberg Ocean Species Alliance (SOSA). Ocean Species Discoveries 13–27—Taxonomic contributions to the diversity of Polychaeta, Mollusca and Crustacea. Biodiversity Data Journal.

Meet the newest invertebrates on the deep-ocean block in a study that identified 14 previously unknown species from remote marine regions around the world. These taxonomic newcomers include the carnivorous sombrero-shaped mollusk Myonera aleutiana, the gummy-bear-esque worm Spinther bohnorum, and the aptly nicknamed “tusk shell” (it looks like a tusk) Laevidentalium wiesei.

“Despite centuries of exploration, marine invertebrate biodiversity remains notably under-described,” said researchers with theSenckenberg Ocean Species Alliance (SOSA), an international collaboration that was “founded to help meet this challenge.”
Ferreiraella charazata. Image: Senckenberg Ocean Species Alliance
While all of the newly identified species are fascinating, I have a selfish soft spot for Ferreiraella charazata (no relation to me, or any of the two million Ferreiras in the world). This deep-sea chiton species belongs to a broader genus established by researcher A.J. Ferreira several decades ago.

The new Ferreiraella chiton was found in some sunken wood two miles under the sea and is described as having a “very large girdle” and “epibiotic tubeworms on its tail valves,” bringing extra pizazz to the family name.

Old-world solutions to new-world problems

Shibasaki, Shota et al. “Fear of supernatural punishment can harmonize human societies with nature: an evolutionary game-theoretic approach.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.

Here’s an out-of-the-box idea to save the environment: Bring back vengeful gods and spirits. In a truly delightful study, scientists explore the benefits of perceived supernatural punishment on the preservation of natural ecosystems with mathematical game theory outlined in the following illustration:
A visual summary of the game theory approach. Image: Shibasaki, Shota et al.
“Japanese folklore includes episodes where spirits of nature (e.g., mountains and trees) punish or avenge people who develop or overuse natural resources,” said researchers led by Shota Shibasaki of Doshisha University. “Similarly, the Batak people of Palawan Island in the Philippines believe in the forest spirits that punish people who overexploit or waste forest resources. Itzá Maya, Guatemala, also views forest spirits as punitively protecting local forests against exploitation.”

This is the most galaxy-brained math paper I’ve ever read. Ultimately, the results suggest that “supernatural beliefs could play an important role in achieving sustainability.” So let’s break out the talismans and start casting eco-friendly spells because I, for one, welcome our divine treehugging overlords.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

Ocean Species Discoveries 13–27 — Taxonomic contributions to the diversity of Polychaeta, Mollusca and Crustacea

Despite centuries of exploration, marine invertebrate biodiversity remains notably under-described. The majority of species in major marine groups are still unnamed, limiting our ability to understand and conserve ecosystems facing rapid environmenta…

^{Senckenberg Ocean Species Alliance (SOSA) (Pensoft Publishers)}

404 Media

2025-08-27 15:00:09

Scientists Make Breakthrough in Solving the Mystery of Life’s Origin

🌘
Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.

Scientists have made a major breakthrough in the mystery of how life first emerged on Earth by demonstrating how two essential biological ingredients could have spontaneously joined together on our planet some four billion years ago.

All life on Earth contains ribonucleic acid (RNA), a special molecule that helps build proteins from simpler amino acids. To kickstart this fundamental biological process, RNA and amino acids had to become attached at some point. But this key step, known as RNA aminoacylation, has never been experimentally observed in early Earth-like conditions despite the best efforts of many researchers over the decades.

Now, a team has achieved this milestone in the quest to unravel life’s origins. As they report in a study published on Wednesday in Nature, the researchers were able to link amino acids to RNA in water at a neutral pH with the aid of energetic chemical compounds called thioesters. The work revealed that two contrasting origin stories for life on Earth, known as “RNA world” and “thioester world,” may both be right.

“It unites two theories for the origin of life, which are totally separate,” said Matthew Powner, a professor of organic chemistry at University College London and an author of the study, in a call with 404 Media. “These were opposed theories—either you have thioesters or you have RNA.”

“What we found, which is kind of cool, is that if you put them both together, they're more than the sum of their parts,” he continued. “Both aspects—RNA world and thioester world—might be right and they’re not mutually exclusive. They can both work together to provide different aspects of things that are essential to building a cell.”

In the RNA world theory, which dates back to the 1960s, self-replicating RNA molecules served as the initial catalysts for life. The thioester world theory, which gained traction in the 1990s, posits that life first emerged from metabolic processes spurred on by energetic thioesters. Now, Powner said, the team has found a “missing link” between the two.

Powner and his colleagues didn’t initially set out to merge the two ideas. The breakthrough came almost as a surprise after the team synthesized pantetheine, a component of thioesters, in simulated conditions resembling early Earth. The team discovered that if amino acids are linked to pantetheine, they naturally attach themselves to RNA at molecular sites that are consistent with what is seen in living things. This act of RNA aminoacylation could eventually enable the complex protein synthesis all organisms now depend on to live.

Pantetheine “is totally universal,” Powner explained. “Every organism on Earth, every genome sequence, needs this molecule for some reason or other. You can't take it out of life and fully understand life.”

“That whole program of looking at pantetheine, and then finding this remarkable chemistry that pantetheine does, was all originally designed to just be a side study,” he added. “It was serendipity in the sense that we didn't expect it, but in a scientific way that we knew it would probably be interesting and we'd probably find uses for it. It’s just the uses we found were not necessarily the ones we expected.”

The researchers suggest that early instances of RNA aminoacylation on Earth would most likely have occurred in lakes and other small bodies of water, where nutrients could accumulate in concentrations that could up the odds of amino acids attaching to RNA.

“It's very difficult to envisage any origins of life chemistry in something as large as an ocean body because it's just too dilute for chemistry,” Powner said. For that reason, they suggest future studies of so-called “soda lakes” in polar environments that are rich in nutrients, like phosphate, and could serve as models for the first nurseries of life on Earth.

The finding could even have implications for extraterrestrial life. If life on Earth first emerged due, in part, to this newly identified process, it’s possible that similar prebiotic reactions can be set in motion elsewhere in the universe. Complex molecules like pantetheine and RNA have never been found off-Earth (yet), but amino acids are present in many extraterrestrial environments. This suggests that the ingredients of life are abundant in the universe, even if the conditions required to spark it are far more rare.

While the study sheds new light on the origin of life, there are plenty of other steps that must be reconstructed to understand how inorganic matter somehow found a way to self-replicate and start evolving, moving around, and in our case as humans, conducting experiments to figure out how it all got started.

“We get so focused on the details of what we're trying to do that we don't often step back and think, ‘Oh, wow, this is really important and existential for us,’” Powner concluded.

🌘
Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.

Thioester-mediated RNA aminoacylation and peptidyl-RNA synthesis in water - Nature

Aminoacyl-thiols reacting selectively with RNA diols over amine nucleophiles and demonstration of chemically controlled formation of peptidyl-RNA in water at neutral pH suggest an important role for thiol cofactors before the evolution of enzymes.

^Nature