A mechanism for liver failure; LIGO black hole kick observed; primordial black hole explosions

This week, researchers reported on a new biopsy tool that can detect HPV-associated head and neck cancer up to 10 years before symptoms appear. Researchers developed a process to transform two-dimensional paintings into full-color, three-dimensional holograms, providing a new way to experience art in a gallery setting. And Chinese scientists designed a physical cassette capable of storing massive amounts of data encoded as DNA on a polyester-nylon tape substrate.

Pour one out for the liver

Hey, it’s the weekend, time to lounge around in comfortable trackwear and toss back a tall cold one, even though a new study by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and collaborators found that tall cold ones can disrupt the regenerative abilities of the only human organ that regenerates—the liver. Specifically, the study concludes that excessive alcohol consumption can trap liver cells in a state between their functional and regenerative modes, the result of inflammation that disrupts RNA splicing during the protein-making process.

Auinash Kalsotra, who co-led the study, says, “We knew that the liver stops functioning and stops regenerating in patients with alcohol-related hepatitis and cirrhosis, even when a patient has discontinued consuming alcohol, but we didn’t know why… The only real life-saving treatment option once a patient reaches the liver failure stage in those diseases is transplantation. But if we understood why these livers were failing, maybe we could intervene.” The researchers hope to use misspliced RNAs as diagnostic markers for disease and to develop treatments that curb liver inflammation.

Phenomenon observed

Thanks to advanced instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, astronomy and astrophysics are enjoying a renaissance of entirely new discoveries, often upending longstanding theories about the origin and evolution of the universe. This isn’t hyperbole—while Webb has revealed a proliferation of objects in the ancient universe called “little red dots,” which may be weird early galaxies or could instead be a newly theorized object called a “black hole star,” LIGO has been providing three-dimensional data on massive gravitational collisions with increasingly high resolution.

LIGO detects gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime that encode information about their sources. Usually, these sources are black holes. Since 2015, the observatory has recorded over 300 collisions of black holes. When a black hole pair merges, the newly combined object creates a massive recoil, emitting gravitational waves unevenly, an imbalance in which a black hole remnant blob kicks away at thousands of kilometers per second.

An international research team has made the first measurement of the speed and direction of a recoiling black hole that resulted from a merger detected in 2019. It kicked away at speeds more than 50 kilometers per second, escaping its globular cluster, and the researchers measured its recoil direction with respect to Earth.

Dr. Koustav Chandra, a researcher at Penn State, says, “This is one of the few phenomena in astrophysics where we’re not just detecting something—we’re reconstructing the full 3D motion of an object that’s billions of light-years away, using only ripples in spacetime. It’s a remarkable demonstration of what gravitational waves can do.”

Phenomenon theorized

There’s a longstanding theory that primordial black holes explode at the end of their lives. But this would only occur about once every 100,000 years. A new study by physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst finds that these may instead occur once every 10 years, and that there’s a better than 90% probability that such an explosion could be observed within the decade. The study recommends that astronomers begin preparing now to make the observation.

The detection of an exploding black hole would represent confirmation of the existence of primordial black holes, which physicists believe formed in the extraordinarily dense universe less than one second after the Big Bang. Unlike black holes in the contemporary universe, these were not formed by the collapse of a large object like a star, but by the very conditions that prevailed in the moments after the Big Bang.

The measurements of such an explosion would provide a definitive catalog of all existing subatomic particles, possibly including those that are completely unknown to science. Researcher Iguaz Juan says, “This would be the first-ever direct observation of both Hawking radiation and a PBH. We would also get a definitive record of every particle that makes up everything in the universe. It would completely revolutionize physics and help us rewrite the history of the universe.”

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