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The article I read about was about math problems that can't be answered.  One example is the  continuum problem, how it goes is that we know there are an infinite amount of whole numbers like 1, 2 or 127 but there are also an infinite amount of numbers that aren't whole and have a decimal like 1.2 or pi 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679

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Earths magnetic  field almost disappeared 565 million years ago. But Earths core saved it, as Earths liquid core began so solidify it strengthened the   magnetic field. The reason Earths magnetic field is so important is because It protects Earth from solar radiation.

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Credit: Shutterstock

Five hundred and sixty-five million years ago, Earth's magnetic field almost disappeared.

But a geological phenomenon might have saved it, a new study suggests. Earth's then-liquid core likely began to solidify around that time, which strengthened the field, the group reported yesterday (Jan. 28) in the journal Nature Geoscience. This is important because the magnetic field protects our planet and its inhabitants from harmful radiation and solar winds - streams of plasma particles thrown our way by the sun.

Scientists figured out what our planet's core was like back then by looking at crystals the size of grains of sand.

They picked up samples of plagioclase and clinopyroxene - minerals that were formed 565 million years ago - in what is now eastern Quebec, Canada. These samples contain tiny magnetic needles about 50 to 100 nanometers in size, which, in molten rock, orient themselves in the direction of the magnetic field at the time. [ Shine On: Photos of Dazzling Mineral Specimens]

"Those tiny magnetic particles are ideal magnetic recorders," said co-author John Tarduno, the chair of the Earth and Environmental Sciences department and a professor at the University of Rochester in New York. "When they cool, they lock in a record of Earth's magnetic field that's maintained for billions of years."

So, by sticking the crystals in a magnetometer, the researchers were able to figure out that the particles' charge was very low. In fact, 565 million years ago, Earth's magnetic field was over 10 times weaker than what it is today - the weakest ever documented.

Further, the measurements showed that the frequency of north and south pole reversals was very high. All of this suggests that " the field was extremely unusual," Tarduno told Live Science. "We were at this critical point where the dynamo almost collapsed completely." (The geodynamo is the process that maintains and grows the magnetic field.)

But then the geodynamo got a kick start once more - from the very core of our planet.

In Earth's early years, the core was all liquid. But at some point - guesses range from between 2.5 billion years to 500 million years ago - iron began to cool and freeze into a solid layer in the middle of the planet. As the inner core solidified, lighter elements like silicon, magnesium and oxygen were kicked out into the outer, liquid layer of the core, creating a movement of fluid and heat called convection. This movement of fluid in the outer core kept charged particles moving, creating an electrical current, which in turn created a magnetic field.

This convection drives and maintains the magnetic field even today. Earth's inner core is continuing to solidify and will do so for billions of years to come.

The researchers "present intriguing paleomagnetic measurements" that suggest a weak geodynamo existed 565 million years ago, which meant that the core was fully liquid, wrote Peter Driscoll, an earth and planetary scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., who was not a part of the research, in a commentary that accompanied the study. If their theory holds true, "the inner core may have occurred right in the nick of time to recharge the geodynamo and save Earth's magnetic shield."

Shortly after this time, the Cambrian explosion occurred and complex animals emerged across the planet. "One can speculate - and there have been some speculations - that a weaker magnetic field may have some relationship to these evolutionary events," Tarduno said. That is because a weaker field might allow more radiation to get through, which could cause DNA damage and higher mutation rates, which in turn, might have lead to more species evolving.

But this is mere speculation, Tarduno said. When Earth's magnetic field weakens a bit during events such as magnetic reversals ( where the north and south poles flip), for instance, there's no evidence that species are affected, he added.

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Earth's Magnetic Field Nearly Disappeared 565 Million Years Ago

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Five hundred and sixty-five million years ago, Earth's magnetic field almost disappeared. But a geological phenomenon might have saved it, a new study suggests. Earth's then-liquid core likely began to solidify around that time, which strengthened the field, the group reported yesterday (Jan. 28) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

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The article I read was about how MIT developed a laser that could make you hear things. The way this works is the laser tickles the water molecules in you ear so that you can hear things. It uses the water in the air to strengthen the sound. Currently this laser only works inside. MIT's next step will be to try it out doors and at a longer range.

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Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Imagine sitting down to dinner with a group of friends, when a laser tickles the water molecules inside your ear.

"You need to get home right away," your older child shouts. The younger one has fallen and cut their knee, and might need stitches.

You stand up, excuse yourself, and make for the exit. Your friends have no idea why, but assume you heard a message inaudible to the rest of them in the noisy room, transmitted into your ear by laser light.

That's the future scientists at MIT imagined when they developed a laser system for sending sound across a room using laser light.

Their method isn't the first to transmit sound waves using lasers. But it is the loudest. Their machine, described in a paper published on Jan. 25 in the journal Optics Letters, relies on wiggling a laser back and forth across the water molecules in the air by someone's ear. That wiggling motion (accomplished with a fast-twitching mirror) jolts the molecules into motion, causing them to bang against the surrounding air molecules and produce sound waves. [ What's That Noise? 11 Strange and Mysterious Sounds on Earth & Beyond]

Not that much water is needed.

"This can work even in relatively dry conditions because there is almost always a little water in the air, especially around people," research team leader Charles Wynn said in a statement. "We found that we don't need a lot of water if we use a laser wavelength that is very strongly absorbed by water. This was key because the stronger absorption leads to more sound."

Other methods now under development, they noted, produce clearer sounds. But those methods (like switching a laser on and off really fast to jiggle the water molecules) don't make sounds as loud as the wiggling method. (The researchers call it "sweeping" rather than wiggling.)

The point of all this is to send messages to individuals in a crowd without blasting them over loudspeakers.

"The ability to send highly targeted audio signals over the air could be used to communicate across noisy rooms or warn individuals of a dangerous situation such as an active shooter," the statement said.

In the paper, the researchers said that some laser-sound techniques are under development by the military.

One remarkable point is that the underlying concept here isn't very new. The paper notes that Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the first practical telephone, patented a device back in 1880 along with a partner named Charles Sumner Tainter that transmitted sounds via light.

Bell and Tainter's "photophone-transmitter" was a proposed "instrument for controlling a radiant beam and imparting to it a varying character, whereby in falling on an appropriate receiving-instrument the said beam may be made to produce sound."

In other words: Wiggle light over some material, and sound should emerge.

The key differences, of course, in the modern MIT system are that the receiver material is just ambient water vapor, and that the light is a precision laser. But the underlying concept is the same.

The next step for the MIT device, the researchers wrote, is to try it outdoors and at longer range.

Live Science contacted the authors to request more detail on what it's actually like to hear the laser-transmitted sounds, and will update this article if they respond.

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New MIT Laser Device Whispers Secret Sounds Into Your Ear

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Imagine sitting down to dinner with a group of friends, when a laser tickles the water molecules inside your ear. "You need to get home right away," your older child shouts. The younger one has fallen and cut their knee, and might need stitches. You stand up, excuse yourself, and make for the exit.

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I read an article about a drunk man that swallowed a live catfish. It turned out that the small bronze Cory catfish , catfish have amazing defense systems and the spines lodged venom into his throat. The catfish was stuck. The lesson I have learned from this is that small creatures that look innocent are not and are very incredible. Also, I will not be eating my Cory Catfish at my house.

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The bronze catfish skeleton, minus its tail, can now be found in the Natural History Museum Rotterdam alongside its amputated pectoral fin.

Credit: Benoist et al.

There are all sorts of drinking traditions. Some people sing songs as they down their alcohol. Others dance to thumping music. Somewhere in the vicinity of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, a group of young men, apparently inspired by the American television show "Jackass," got in the habit of capping off their boozing by swallowing live fish.

This, it turns out, is a bad idea. Especially in the event that the fish have evolved to fight back.

According to a recent case report published on Jan. 17 in the journal Acta Oto-Laryngologica Case Reports, the young men typically swallowed live goldfish out of their home aquarium - small, squishy creatures that don't put up much of a fight. The fun stopped on April 3, 2016, when one of the men tried to take their tradition a bit further by swallowing a bronze catfish ( Corydoras aeneus), a popular aquarium fish with some powerful natural defenses. [ 27 Oddest Medical Case Reports]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the night ended with the 28-year-old man in the emergency room, where puzzled doctors carefully removed the spiny fish from the man's throat.

Most animals know better than to eat bronze catfish, said Kees Moeliker, a director at the Rotterdam Natural History Museum who reviewed the catfish remains after doctors removed them from the man's throat. That's for a good reason: Their cute 2- to 3-inch bodies (5 to 8 centimeters) are defended with spines, mounted on their pectoral fins. When the fish get stressed out - say, for example, when they're being swallowed by a predator - those spines become erect and can pump venom into the mouths of their attackers.

Because of this, bronze catfish "don't have predators like birds and other fishes," Moeliker told Live Science. "Those who give it a try die, and natural selection does its work."

Indeed, in the man's case, it appears that he quickly realized that he had made a grave mistake, according to a video of the incident that was described by the case report authors. Unfortunately, the video was not available for Live Science to review or share. But the report includes a vivid description of what it showed. In the video, a crowd of men stood around drinking and shouting "grote vis, grote vis!" (Dutch for " Big fish! Big fish!") One guy, holding a glass of clear water with the live catfish in it, tips it back, attempting to swallow it whole. Four seconds later, he spit the water and the fish out into his hands, and threw it on the table, where it floundered, appearing "distressed" and "agonized," according to the report.

That might have been the end of it, if someone hadn't plucked the flopping catfish off the table and handed it to a third man, a 28-year-old whose trauma would become the subject of the case report. This unfortunate fellow swallowed some beer, and then dropped the still-living creature into his throat. [ 11 Weird Things People Have Swallowed]

A CT scan shows where the main body of the fish lodged itself.

Credit: Benoist et al.

Immediately, it was obvious something had gone wrong. The man tried to swallow more beer but couldn't. Ten seconds later, he was "gagging vigorously" and vomiting liquid. "In extreme distress," he shoved two fingers down his throat, trying to make himself gag but no luck. Someone administered what the doctors described as a "wrongly-applied Heimlich maneuver," which again failed to produce the fish. The man spewed some blood into a bucket, and then the camera switched off.

Even so, the man apparently waited "several hours" before going to the hospital, after trying but failing to dislodge the fish with "more beer, honey and ice cream."

When the man finally made it to the emergency room, doctors looked down his throat using a tool called a laryngoscope, and spotted what they described as "a fish-like structure," according to the report. [ Photos: The Freakiest-Looking Fish]

An image shows what that catfish looked like in the man's throat prior to removal.

Credit: Benoist et al.

"This is definitely in the top three of weirdest medical cases I've encountered," said case report co-author Dr. Linda Benoist, a medical resident at Rotterdam's University Medical Center who treated the patient. Benoist told Live Science that she had been aware that the fish-swallowing game was a "bizarre" tradition among some young people in the area.

The catfish, she said, was already dead when the patient arrived, pressed up against the entrance to the man's esophagus, at the bottom of his throat. (The fish had probably suffocated, Moeliker said, noting that a few swallows of beer do not contain enough water for a fish to breathe in).

The man needed surgery to remove the fish, with the surgeons paying very close attention to carefully remove the fish's spines from the delicate tissue in the throat. .

Fortunately, the procedure was a success. Though not much is known about the effects of bronze catfish venom on humans, it didn't appear to complicate the situation. As of the man's most recent follow-up with doctors, in March 2017, he is doing well.

The fish, meanwhile, ended up preserved at the Rotterdam Natural History Museum, which is right next door to the hospital. It joined an exhibit called "Dead Animal Tales" on dramatic collisions between animals and humans, Moeliker said.

Asked whether the drinking game is dangerous when only goldfish are involved, Benoist said, "I'm not an expert in goldfish swallowers, but I can imagine that fish species without [spikes] would slide easier into the stomach."

Still, the researchers did highlight some other case studies where people choked on live fish, including one instance where a fisherman attempted to kiss a fish but it slid into his throat. Live Science recommends eating fish dead and in bite-size pieces.

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A Drunk Man Swallowed a Live, Venomous, Spiny Catfish. Here's What Happened.

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There are all sorts of drinking traditions. Some people sing songs as they down their alcohol. Others dance to thumping music. Somewhere in the vicinity of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, a group of young men, apparently inspired by the American television show "Jackass," got in the habit of capping off their boozing by swallowing live fish.

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I read an article about how much calories ice bears have to take in everyday to survive. A scientist wanted ti determine how much energy the ice bears use while searching for prey. The data would help him predict how polar bears might survive as their habitat continues to warm. What the Scientist did to be able to determine how much energy they use was to make polar bears walk on a treadmill and measure the oxygen intake as they walk.

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The article I read about was about math problems that can't be answered.  One example is the  countinum problem, how it goes is that we know there are an infinite amount of whole numbers like 1, 2 or 127 but there are also an infinite amount of numbers that aren't whole and have a decimal like 1.2 or pi 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819 these are called integers. The question is are there any infinities larger than the set of integers but smaller than the set of real numbers? The continuum hypothesis says, no, there aren't.

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Austrian-born mathematician Kurt Godel at the Institute of Advanced Study.

Credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Mathematicians have discovered a problem they cannot solve. It's not that they're not smart enough; there simply is no answer.

The problem has to do with machine learning - the type of artificial-intelligence models some computers use to "learn" how to do a specific task.

When Facebook or Google recognizes a photo of you and suggests that you tag yourself, it's using machine learning. When a self-driving car navigates a busy intersection, that's machine learning in action. Neuroscientists use machine learning to "read" someone's thoughts. The thing about machine learning is that it's based on math. And as a result, mathematicians can study it and understand it on a theoretical level. They can write proofs about how machine learning works that are absolute and apply them in every case. [ Photos: Large Numbers That Define the Universe]

In this case, a team of mathematicians designed a machine-learning problem called "estimating the maximum" or "EMX."

To understand how EMX works, imagine this: You want to place ads on a website and maximize how many viewers will be targeted by these ads. You have ads pitching to sports fans, cat lovers, car fanatics and exercise buffs, etc. But you don't know in advance who is going to visit the site. How do you pick a selection of ads that will maximize how many viewers you target? EMX has to figure out the answer with just a small amount of data on who visits the site.

The researchers then asked a question: When can EMX solve a problem?

In other machine-learning problems, mathematicians can usually say if the learning problem can be solved in a given case based on the data set they have. Can the underlying method Google uses to recognize your face be applied to predicting stock market trends? I don't know, but someone might.

The trouble is, math is sort of broken. It's been broken since 1931, when the logician Kurt Gödel published his famous incompleteness theorems. They showed that in any mathematical system, there are certain questions that cannot be answered. They're not really difficult - they're unknowable. Mathematicians learned that their ability to understand the universe was fundamentally limited. Gödel and another mathematician named Paul Cohen found an example: the continuum hypothesis.

The continuum hypothesis goes like this: Mathematicians already know that there are infinities of different sizes. For instance, there are infinitely many integers (numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on); and there are infinitely many real numbers (which include numbers like 1, 2, 3 and so on, but they also include numbers like 1.8 and 5,222.7 and pi). But even though there are infinitely many integers and infinitely many real numbers, there are clearly more real numbers than there are integers. Which raises the question, are there any infinities larger than the set of integers but smaller than the set of real numbers? The continuum hypothesis says, no, there aren't.

Gödel and Cohen showed that it's impossible to prove that the continuum hypothesis is right, but also it's impossible to prove that it's wrong. "Is the continuum hypothesis true?" is a question without an answer.

In a paper published Monday, Jan. 7, in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, the researchers showed that EMX is inextricably linked to the continuum hypothesis.

It turns out that EMX can solve a problem only if the continuum hypothesis is true. But if it's not true, EMX can't.. That means that the question, "Can EMX learn to solve this problem?" has an answer as unknowable as the continuum hypothesis itself.

The good news is that the solution to the continuum hypothesis isn't very important to most of mathematics. And, similarly, this permanent mystery might not create a major obstacle to machine learning.

"Because EMX is a new model in machine learning, we do not yet know its usefulness for developing real-world algorithms," Lev Reyzin, a professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois in Chicago, who did not work on the paper, wrote in an accompanying Nature News & V iews article. "So these results might not turn out to have practical importance," Reyzin wrote.

Running up against an unsolvable problem, Reyzin wrote, is a sort of feather in the cap of machine-learning researchers.

It's evidence that machine learning has "matured as a mathematical discipline," Reyzin wrote.

Machine learning "now joins the many subfields of mathematics that deal with the burden of unprovability and the unease that comes with it," Reyzin wrote. Perhaps results such as this one will bring to the field of machine learning a healthy dose of humility, even as machine-learning algorithms continue to revolutionize the world around us. "

Editor's note: This story was updated on Jan. 14 at 2:15 p.m. EST to correct the definition of the continuum hypothesis. The article originally said that if the continuum hypothesis is true, then there are infinities larger than the set of integers but smaller than the set of real numbers. In fact, if the continuum hypothesis is true, then there are not infinities larger than the set of integers but smaller than the set of real numbers.

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Mathematicians Discovered a Computer Problem that No One Can Ever Solve

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Mathematicians have discovered a problem they cannot solve. It's not that they're not smart enough; there simply is no answer. The problem has to do with machine learning - the type of artificial-intelligence models some computers use to "learn" how to do a specific task.

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I read an article about how much mangroves we are losing over the past 50 years, and the loss rates are not going down. Mangroves are very important ecosystems in the world, because it also has the ability to capture carbon dioxide from the air,

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I read an article about the Large Hadron Collider, which is a particle accelerator that is really strong and can accelerate particles to 99.99 of the speed of light. The Large Hadron Collider took about $8 Billion to build and has made some big discoveries. The LHC is capable of creating 600 Million collisions per second, but the LHC shut down in December 2018 to go through two years of upgrades that will double the amount of collisions per second.

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I read a article about a maggot living in a woman's forehead. It's really gross. She had found the maggot when a large bump emerged on her forehead. Doctors took it out with petroleum jelly, it covered up the insect's breathing hole in her skin so it had to move closer to the surface making it easiest to extract. The fly was from her past South African trip and it was a Lund's Fly.

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The fly larva "punctum," or opening, is visible at the woman's hairline. The surrounding area is red and swollen.

Credit: BMJ Case Reports 2019

When a British woman returned from a visit to Uganda, she didn't realize that a live baby fly had hitched a ride home with her.

In fact, it wasn't until about nine days later that the 55-year-old woman noticed anything unusual at all, when a swollen lump developed on her forehead, according to a recent report of her case.

The woman went to the emergency room, where doctors diagnosed the lump as an infected insect bite and sent her home with antibiotics to treat it, the report said. [ 27 Oddest Medical Case Reports]

But three days later, the woman returned to the emergency room because her symptoms had worsened: The swelling on her forehead now extended to include more of her face and eyelids, and she experienced sharp, shooting pains in the area.

A closer exam of the lump revealed a small opening in its center, with some watery discharge coming out. As a precaution, the doctors admitted the woman to the hospital for more tests because they suspected her skin problem might be tied to her recent travels and could be a condition not commonly seen in England.

These hunches proved correct: The small opening in the skin was actually a breathing hole for a baby fly, or maggot, said lead case report author Dr. Farah Shahi, an infectious-disease specialist at York Teaching Hospital in the U.K., who was involved in the woman's treatment.

An ultrasound shows the fly larva (marked by 4 white X's) in the woman's skin

Credit: BMJ Case Reports 2019

To remove the maggot, doctors started by applying petroleum jelly to the opening, which is also called a "punctum." This blocks the insect's source of air, coaxing it to move closer to the surface of the skin so it's easier to remove.

Then, they were able to successfully remove the live maggot from the woman's forehead. The fly was identified as a Lund's fly ( Cordylobia rodhaini), a species native to the African rainforests that rarely infests people, according to the case report.

So, how did the fly wind up there? The woman likely came in contact with the insect when she wrapped her hair in a damp towel that had maggots on it, Shahi told Live Science. The towel had been hanging on an outdoor clothing line, and a fly could've laid its eggs on the towel, which hatched into maggots.

The forehead is considered an unusual site for a maggot to infest human skin, and there has been only one previous case in the U.K. of such an infestation, according to the report. Rather, skin infestations from the Lund's fly are more commonly found on the chest, back, stomach and thighs.

After four days in the hospital, the woman was sent home and her wound fully healed. She also found out that another person who traveled with her to Uganda had developed the same maggot infestation on his back when he returned home.

The case report was published online (Jan. 22) in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

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Cari Nierenberg, Live Science Contributor

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A Woman Returned from Vacation with a Fly Larva Living in Her Forehead

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When a British woman returned from a visit to Uganda, she didn't realize that a live baby fly had hitched a ride home with her. In fact, it wasn't until about nine days later that the 55-year-old woman noticed anything unusual at all, when a swollen lump developed on her forehead, according to a recent report of her case.

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The article I read was about snowflakes. In the article it talks about how a scientist puts the topic ' how no snowflakes are identical ' to the test. He created his own snowflakes or also known as ice crystals and grew two snowflakes in the exact conditions of humidity and temperature and got two identical look alike snowflakes. Outside the lab and in nature, identical snowflakes won't happen.

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The article I had read was about a piggy from a border. It talks about how the Germany is planning to build a wall to keep little piggies outta there. The danish piggies contain a deadly disease. Experts say the $12 Million wall is going to flop, and will not be effective at all. I really enjoyed reading this article because it reminded me of trump's "build a wall" plan.

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A wild boar walking through the forest.

Credit: Shutterstock

This little piggy went to market; This little piggy was denied entry at the Danish-German border and had to stay home.

That's because workers in Denmark began building a wall yesterday (Jan. 28) to secure the country's southern border from the specific threat of German wild boars. Officials hope the wall will help protect Denmark's sizable domestic pig population from the ravages of African swine fever (ASF) - a disease that's fatal to pigs but benign to humans - without impeding human travelers. While no cases of ASF have turned up in Denmark yet, wild boars in nearby Belgium have tested positive for the deadly fever as recently as September 2018. Germany, meanwhile, has a much larger wild boar population than Denmark, and that has some Danes concerned.[ 10 Deadly Diseases That Hopped Across Species]

The wall (actually an electric steel fence) will stand about 5 feet (1.5 meters) high and span 40 miles (64 kilometers) across the nation's border with Germany. While smaller critters like otters and foxes should still be able to slide through at small gaps scattered along the fence, larger boars will find themselves hamstrung, according to a statement from Denmark's Ministry of Environment and Food.

The project is estimated to cost about $12 million, which could be money well spent if the fence successfully prevents a swine fever outbreak from reaching Danish piggies. According to NPR, pigs outnumber humans by roughly 2 to 1 in Denmark (about 12 million pigs to just less than 6 million Danes), and the country makes about $5 billion a year from pork exports. A single confirmed ASF outbreak in Denmark could mean slaughtering entire herds of pigs and halting pork exports outside of Europe, NPR reported.

Still, the planned boar-der fence has its opponents. Some worry that the wall will be useless; according to a German agricultural minister quoted on the German news site Zeit Online, the ASF virus "spreads mainly through people - through animal transport, hunting trips, infected food," and won't likely be stopped by a low wall of steel.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, warn that the fence could endanger the migratory patterns of protected animals like the wild wolf, which just reappeared in Denmark after a 200-year absence, NPR reported.

Nevertheless, work on the wall has officially begun, and is scheduled to conclude in autumn 2019.

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Denmark Is Building a $12 Million Border Wall for Pigs

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This little piggy went to market; This little piggy was denied entry at the Danish-German border and had to stay home. That's because workers in Denmark began building a wall yesterday (Jan. 28) to secure the country's southern border from the specific threat of German wild boars.

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The article I read was about sleep. In the article it talks about how people who go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier live a better life with better mental health. It says that it is proven, people who are "night owls" are more prone to depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. It is also about how some people can not control when they wake up it is part of their genes, but no one is sure why it affects your mental health.

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Credit: Shutterstock

Ben Franklin may have had it partly right with his belief that "early to rise" makes one "healthy, wealthy and wise." Natural early risers may experience greater overall well-being and better mental health compared with night owls, a new study suggests.

But what Franklin likely didn't know is that your chronotype, or tendency to sleep and rise at a particular time, is heavily dependent on your genes - and there might not be much you can do to change it.

In the new study, published today (Jan. 29) in the journal Nature Communications, researchers identified 351 regions in the human genome associated with being an early bird, only 24 of which were known previously. Those people in the study with the most gene variants associated with early rising tended to go to sleep upward of a half hour sooner than others with fewer of these variants. [ 5 Surprising Sleep Discoveries]

What's more, the study found that these genomic regions were linked to the body's circadian clock and to the retina, supporting the theory that the brain's ability to detect light through the retina sets the body's clock to a 24-hour cycle of sleep and wakefulness.

"Part of the reason why some people are up with the lark while others are night owls is because of differences in both the way our brains react to external light signals and the normal functioning of our internal clocks," lead study author Samuel Jones, a research fellow studying the genetics of sleeping patterns at the University of Exeter Medical School in the U.K, said in a press statement.

The study tapped into genomic data from nearly 700,000 participants in a U.K.-based nonprofit health project called the U.K. Biobank and the U.S.-based private genome analysis company 23andMe. The 23andMe participants were asked via a health survey whether they were a "morning person" or a "night owl," or somewhere in between.

As such an answer could be subjective, the researchers validated their findings with information from wristband activity trackers worn by more than 85,000 individuals in the UK Biobank project, which revealed with no bias when they went to sleep and woke up.

The researchers found differences in sleep timing but not sleep quality. They also found no increased risk of obesity and diabetes among night owls, contrary to some earlier studies. But they uncovered an apparent causal link between being a night owl and being more prone to depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.

That is, through their statistical analysis, the researchers showed that the more of a night owl someone is, as defined by their genetics, the greater their risk of schizophrenia and the lower their wellbeing. This was not dependent on factors such as poor sleep quality or lack of sleep, they found.

The reason for this link between sleep timing and poor mental health remains unknown but perhaps is due to a combination of factors, said co-lead study author Jacqueline Lane, an instructor and researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Genomic Medicine. These factors could include unknown protections offered by the genes in early risers, or the physical stimulation of morning light that early risers receive, or societal advantages of feeling awake in the morning and midday in a culture dominated by a 9-to-5 work cycle, Lane said. [ The S cience of Jet Lag: 5 Surprising Findings]

"Our current study really highlights the need for further study of how chronotype is causally linked to mental health and, until these studies are done, we can only speculate on the mechanism," Lane told Live Science.

If you are a bona fide night owl who needs to function in an early-riser world, you aren't entirely out of luck, said Nancy Rothstein, a sleep consultant known as The Sleep Ambassador with a focus on business productivity.

Rothstein said you can better prepare for sleep by not consuming caffeine in the afternoon and by tuning out of technology at least an hour before going to bed, so that sweet sleep can arrive soon after you hit the pillow.

"Asking yourself to get to bed a few hours earlier is not always realistic," Rothstein told Live Science. "Your body clock needs to adapt to the change in timing. Fill the hour [before bed] with a shower, reading with a dim light, having a conversation, or doing some gentle stretching," Rothstein said. "Practice a simple mindfulness technique that gets you out of your head and into your breathing and body awareness."

Follow Christopher Wanjek for daily tweets on health and science with a humorous edge. Wanjek is the author of "Food at Work" and "Bad Medicine." His column, Bad Medicine, appears regularly on Live Science

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Being a Night Owl Really Can Hurt Your Mental Health

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Ben Franklin may have had it partly right with his belief that "early to rise" makes one "healthy, wealthy and wise." Natural early risers may experience greater overall well-being and better mental health compared with night owls, a new study suggests.

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I read an article about an Exomoon. An Exomoon is a moon that orbits outside of our solar system. It was really cool to read about because we are learning more about something that isn't in somewhere that we already know about. There are also such things as exoplanets.

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A moon that orbits a planet in our solar system in a moon. But a moon that orbits a planet outside our solar system? That's an exomoon.

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my article was about how being a night owl can really be bad for your mental health and well being.

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The article I read about was about math problems that can't be answered.  One example is the  countinum problem, how it goes is that we know there are an infinite amount of whole numbers like 1, 2 or 127 but there are also an infinite amount of numbers that aren't whole and have a decimal like 1.2 or pi 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190914564856692346034861045432664821339360726024914127372458700660631558817488152092096282925409171536436789259036001133053054882046652138414695194151160943305727036575959195309218611738193261179310511854807446237996274956735188575272489122793818301194912983367336244065664308602139494639522473719070217986094370277053921717629317675238467481846766940513200056812714526356082778577134275778960917363717872146844090122495343014654958537105079227968925892354201995611212902196086403441815981362977477130996051870721134999999837297804

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Austrian-born mathematician Kurt Godel at the Institute of Advanced Study.

Credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Mathematicians have discovered a problem they cannot solve. It's not that they're not smart enough; there simply is no answer.

The problem has to do with machine learning - the type of artificial-intelligence models some computers use to "learn" how to do a specific task.

When Facebook or Google recognizes a photo of you and suggests that you tag yourself, it's using machine learning. When a self-driving car navigates a busy intersection, that's machine learning in action. Neuroscientists use machine learning to "read" someone's thoughts. The thing about machine learning is that it's based on math. And as a result, mathematicians can study it and understand it on a theoretical level. They can write proofs about how machine learning works that are absolute and apply them in every case. [ Photos: Large Numbers That Define the Universe]

In this case, a team of mathematicians designed a machine-learning problem called "estimating the maximum" or "EMX."

To understand how EMX works, imagine this: You want to place ads on a website and maximize how many viewers will be targeted by these ads. You have ads pitching to sports fans, cat lovers, car fanatics and exercise buffs, etc. But you don't know in advance who is going to visit the site. How do you pick a selection of ads that will maximize how many viewers you target? EMX has to figure out the answer with just a small amount of data on who visits the site.

The researchers then asked a question: When can EMX solve a problem?

In other machine-learning problems, mathematicians can usually say if the learning problem can be solved in a given case based on the data set they have. Can the underlying method Google uses to recognize your face be applied to predicting stock market trends? I don't know, but someone might.

The trouble is, math is sort of broken. It's been broken since 1931, when the logician Kurt Gödel published his famous incompleteness theorems. They showed that in any mathematical system, there are certain questions that cannot be answered. They're not really difficult - they're unknowable. Mathematicians learned that their ability to understand the universe was fundamentally limited. Gödel and another mathematician named Paul Cohen found an example: the continuum hypothesis.

The continuum hypothesis goes like this: Mathematicians already know that there are infinities of different sizes. For instance, there are infinitely many integers (numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on); and there are infinitely many real numbers (which include numbers like 1, 2, 3 and so on, but they also include numbers like 1.8 and 5,222.7 and pi). But even though there are infinitely many integers and infinitely many real numbers, there are clearly more real numbers than there are integers. Which raises the question, are there any infinities larger than the set of integers but smaller than the set of real numbers? The continuum hypothesis says, no, there aren't.

Gödel and Cohen showed that it's impossible to prove that the continuum hypothesis is right, but also it's impossible to prove that it's wrong. "Is the continuum hypothesis true?" is a question without an answer.

In a paper published Monday, Jan. 7, in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, the researchers showed that EMX is inextricably linked to the continuum hypothesis.

It turns out that EMX can solve a problem only if the continuum hypothesis is true. But if it's not true, EMX can't.. That means that the question, "Can EMX learn to solve this problem?" has an answer as unknowable as the continuum hypothesis itself.

The good news is that the solution to the continuum hypothesis isn't very important to most of mathematics. And, similarly, this permanent mystery might not create a major obstacle to machine learning.

"Because EMX is a new model in machine learning, we do not yet know its usefulness for developing real-world algorithms," Lev Reyzin, a professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois in Chicago, who did not work on the paper, wrote in an accompanying Nature News & V iews article. "So these results might not turn out to have practical importance," Reyzin wrote.

Running up against an unsolvable problem, Reyzin wrote, is a sort of feather in the cap of machine-learning researchers.

It's evidence that machine learning has "matured as a mathematical discipline," Reyzin wrote.

Machine learning "now joins the many subfields of mathematics that deal with the burden of unprovability and the unease that comes with it," Reyzin wrote. Perhaps results such as this one will bring to the field of machine learning a healthy dose of humility, even as machine-learning algorithms continue to revolutionize the world around us. "

Editor's note: This story was updated on Jan. 14 at 2:15 p.m. EST to correct the definition of the continuum hypothesis. The article originally said that if the continuum hypothesis is true, then there are infinities larger than the set of integers but smaller than the set of real numbers. In fact, if the continuum hypothesis is true, then there are not infinities larger than the set of integers but smaller than the set of real numbers.

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Mathematicians Discovered a Computer Problem that No One Can Ever Solve

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Mathematicians have discovered a problem they cannot solve. It's not that they're not smart enough; there simply is no answer. The problem has to do with machine learning - the type of artificial-intelligence models some computers use to "learn" how to do a specific task.

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This article is about many reasons that sea levels are rising all over the world. It also explains why the sea levels in different places don't rise at the same rate.

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Explainer: Why sea levels aren't rising at the same rate globally

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The ocean is rising all over the world. The rise seems speedier in some places. What gives? Many factors, it turns out, affect where - and why - the tide gets high.

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The article I read was about a man who had a tradition of swallowing goldfish. In the article it said that the man got drunk and took the fish swallowing too far. He swallowed a live bronze catfish that had poisonous spines that impaled hais throat. Luckily the docters were able to remove the fish from his throat...

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The bronze catfish skeleton, minus its tail, can now be found in the Natural History Museum Rotterdam alongside its amputated pectoral fin.

Credit: Benoist et al.

There are all sorts of drinking traditions. Some people sing songs as they down their alcohol. Others dance to thumping music. Somewhere in the vicinity of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, a group of young men, apparently inspired by the American television show "Jackass," got in the habit of capping off their boozing by swallowing live fish.

This, it turns out, is a bad idea. Especially in the event that the fish have evolved to fight back.

According to a recent case report published on Jan. 17 in the journal Acta Oto-Laryngologica Case Reports, the young men typically swallowed live goldfish out of their home aquarium - small, squishy creatures that don't put up much of a fight. The fun stopped on April 3, 2016, when one of the men tried to take their tradition a bit further by swallowing a bronze catfish ( Corydoras aeneus), a popular aquarium fish with some powerful natural defenses. [ 27 Oddest Medical Case Reports]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the night ended with the 28-year-old man in the emergency room, where puzzled doctors carefully removed the spiny fish from the man's throat.

Most animals know better than to eat bronze catfish, said Kees Moeliker, a director at the Rotterdam Natural History Museum who reviewed the catfish remains after doctors removed them from the man's throat. That's for a good reason: Their cute 2- to 3-inch bodies (5 to 8 centimeters) are defended with spines, mounted on their pectoral fins. When the fish get stressed out - say, for example, when they're being swallowed by a predator - those spines become erect and can pump venom into the mouths of their attackers.

Because of this, bronze catfish "don't have predators like birds and other fishes," Moeliker told Live Science. "Those who give it a try die, and natural selection does its work."

Indeed, in the man's case, it appears that he quickly realized that he had made a grave mistake, according to a video of the incident that was described by the case report authors. Unfortunately, the video was not available for Live Science to review or share. But the report includes a vivid description of what it showed. In the video, a crowd of men stood around drinking and shouting "grote vis, grote vis!" (Dutch for " Big fish! Big fish!") One guy, holding a glass of clear water with the live catfish in it, tips it back, attempting to swallow it whole. Four seconds later, he spit the water and the fish out into his hands, and threw it on the table, where it floundered, appearing "distressed" and "agonized," according to the report.

That might have been the end of it, if someone hadn't plucked the flopping catfish off the table and handed it to a third man, a 28-year-old whose trauma would become the subject of the case report. This unfortunate fellow swallowed some beer, and then dropped the still-living creature into his throat. [ 11 Weird Things People Have Swallowed]

A CT scan shows where the main body of the fish lodged itself.

Credit: Benoist et al.

Immediately, it was obvious something had gone wrong. The man tried to swallow more beer but couldn't. Ten seconds later, he was "gagging vigorously" and vomiting liquid. "In extreme distress," he shoved two fingers down his throat, trying to make himself gag but no luck. Someone administered what the doctors described as a "wrongly-applied Heimlich maneuver," which again failed to produce the fish. The man spewed some blood into a bucket, and then the camera switched off.

Even so, the man apparently waited "several hours" before going to the hospital, after trying but failing to dislodge the fish with "more beer, honey and ice cream."

When the man finally made it to the emergency room, doctors looked down his throat using a tool called a laryngoscope, and spotted what they described as "a fish-like structure," according to the report. [ Photos: The Freakiest-Looking Fish]

An image shows what that catfish looked like in the man's throat prior to removal.

Credit: Benoist et al.

"This is definitely in the top three of weirdest medical cases I've encountered," said case report co-author Dr. Linda Benoist, a medical resident at Rotterdam's University Medical Center who treated the patient. Benoist told Live Science that she had been aware that the fish-swallowing game was a "bizarre" tradition among some young people in the area.

The catfish, she said, was already dead when the patient arrived, pressed up against the entrance to the man's esophagus, at the bottom of his throat. (The fish had probably suffocated, Moeliker said, noting that a few swallows of beer do not contain enough water for a fish to breathe in).

The man needed surgery to remove the fish, with the surgeons paying very close attention to carefully remove the fish's spines from the delicate tissue in the throat. .

Fortunately, the procedure was a success. Though not much is known about the effects of bronze catfish venom on humans, it didn't appear to complicate the situation. As of the man's most recent follow-up with doctors, in March 2017, he is doing well.

The fish, meanwhile, ended up preserved at the Rotterdam Natural History Museum, which is right next door to the hospital. It joined an exhibit called "Dead Animal Tales" on dramatic collisions between animals and humans, Moeliker said.

Asked whether the drinking game is dangerous when only goldfish are involved, Benoist said, "I'm not an expert in goldfish swallowers, but I can imagine that fish species without [spikes] would slide easier into the stomach."

Still, the researchers did highlight some other case studies where people choked on live fish, including one instance where a fisherman attempted to kiss a fish but it slid into his throat. Live Science recommends eating fish dead and in bite-size pieces.

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A Drunk Man Swallowed a Live, Venomous, Spiny Catfish. Here's What Happened.

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There are all sorts of drinking traditions. Some people sing songs as they down their alcohol. Others dance to thumping music. Somewhere in the vicinity of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, a group of young men, apparently inspired by the American television show "Jackass," got in the habit of capping off their boozing by swallowing live fish.

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The article I read was about how the Earth's magnetic field almost disappeared 565 million years ago. The Earth's magnetic field is really important because it protects us from solar radiation. According to studies a geological phenomenon may have saved the magnetic field. I really liked this article because it taught me about something I didn't even know could happen

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Credit: Shutterstock

Five hundred and sixty-five million years ago, Earth's magnetic field almost disappeared.

But a geological phenomenon might have saved it, a new study suggests. Earth's then-liquid core likely began to solidify around that time, which strengthened the field, the group reported yesterday (Jan. 28) in the journal Nature Geoscience. This is important because the magnetic field protects our planet and its inhabitants from harmful radiation and solar winds - streams of plasma particles thrown our way by the sun.

Scientists figured out what our planet's core was like back then by looking at crystals the size of grains of sand.

They picked up samples of plagioclase and clinopyroxene - minerals that were formed 565 million years ago - in what is now eastern Quebec, Canada. These samples contain tiny magnetic needles about 50 to 100 nanometers in size, which, in molten rock, orient themselves in the direction of the magnetic field at the time. [ Shine On: Photos of Dazzling Mineral Specimens]

"Those tiny magnetic particles are ideal magnetic recorders," said co-author John Tarduno, the chair of the Earth and Environmental Sciences department and a professor at the University of Rochester in New York. "When they cool, they lock in a record of Earth's magnetic field that's maintained for billions of years."

So, by sticking the crystals in a magnetometer, the researchers were able to figure out that the particles' charge was very low. In fact, 565 million years ago, Earth's magnetic field was over 10 times weaker than what it is today - the weakest ever documented.

Further, the measurements showed that the frequency of north and south pole reversals was very high. All of this suggests that " the field was extremely unusual," Tarduno told Live Science. "We were at this critical point where the dynamo almost collapsed completely." (The geodynamo is the process that maintains and grows the magnetic field.)

But then the geodynamo got a kick start once more - from the very core of our planet.

In Earth's early years, the core was all liquid. But at some point - guesses range from between 2.5 billion years to 500 million years ago - iron began to cool and freeze into a solid layer in the middle of the planet. As the inner core solidified, lighter elements like silicon, magnesium and oxygen were kicked out into the outer, liquid layer of the core, creating a movement of fluid and heat called convection. This movement of fluid in the outer core kept charged particles moving, creating an electrical current, which in turn created a magnetic field.

This convection drives and maintains the magnetic field even today. Earth's inner core is continuing to solidify and will do so for billions of years to come.

The researchers "present intriguing paleomagnetic measurements" that suggest a weak geodynamo existed 565 million years ago, which meant that the core was fully liquid, wrote Peter Driscoll, an earth and planetary scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., who was not a part of the research, in a commentary that accompanied the study. If their theory holds true, "the inner core may have occurred right in the nick of time to recharge the geodynamo and save Earth's magnetic shield."

Shortly after this time, the Cambrian explosion occurred and complex animals emerged across the planet. "One can speculate - and there have been some speculations - that a weaker magnetic field may have some relationship to these evolutionary events," Tarduno said. That is because a weaker field might allow more radiation to get through, which could cause DNA damage and higher mutation rates, which in turn, might have lead to more species evolving.

But this is mere speculation, Tarduno said. When Earth's magnetic field weakens a bit during events such as magnetic reversals ( where the north and south poles flip), for instance, there's no evidence that species are affected, he added.

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Earth's Magnetic Field Nearly Disappeared 565 Million Years Ago

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Five hundred and sixty-five million years ago, Earth's magnetic field almost disappeared. But a geological phenomenon might have saved it, a new study suggests. Earth's then-liquid core likely began to solidify around that time, which strengthened the field, the group reported yesterday (Jan. 28) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

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the article I read was about how volcano's can cause tsunami's, a lot like the volcano that erupts in Anak Kratakau, that causes tsunami's in the Sandu Strait.  Rocks tumble from the volcano, into the water that caused a huge wave in Indonesia, no one has been able to go to the volcano but they have satellites looking at it from above

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Indonesia tsunami: How a volcano can be the trigger

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The lack of major earthquake tremors in the Sunda Strait tsunami meant that many did not flee in time.

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I'm sure many of you have heard about a particular wall being built in North America, but that is not the only wall being built. Halfway around the world, Denmark is building a 12 million dollar wall, for the pigs. A fatal decease, African Swine Fever, is being passed to the piggy's, which is only benign to humans. The wall will detain the risk of pigs passing the decease to others by imprisoning them in Denmark.

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Scientist cloned the fist animal, a tadpole, in 1952. The fist mammal, a sheep, was cloned in 1996 and than, in 2005, the first dog was cloned. People were cloning their dogs before the dog died, and then they would have a copy of their first dog when the original dog did die. Although the DNA of the clones were the same as the original dog's, the clone was not always identical. But there is still a very good chance it will be.

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Science News Explores publishes news from all fields of science for students from middle school and up, with resources for parents and educators.

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Daily discoveries, groundbreaking research and fascinating science breakthroughs that impact you and the wider world, reported by our expert journalists.

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