Anything could be possible, huh? Scientists have discovered that communication is possible with people who are lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is a state where the person is aware that they are actually dreaming. Ph.D student Karen Konkoly and her colleagues have published a study in Current Biology that asked lucid dreamers questions to try two-way communication: 

They were studying rapid-eye-movement sleep, which is the stage of sleep where people dream most vividly. In REM sleep, "every muscle in your body is completely paralyzed, except you can twitch and you can move your eyes," Konkoly tells Scott Simon on Weekend Edition. "So if you become lucid in a dream and you want to communicate, then when people are dreaming, they just look left-right, left-right, really dramatically. And then we know that they're communicating out."

Lucid dreaming is not common. So to study it, researchers recruited people who had experience with it and also trained people to try to make lucid dreaming more likely.

Before the participants went to sleep, they were also trained on how to communicate their answers. Special sensors measured people's eye movements or experts would judge their facial movements.

For example, a typical question would be to ask what is 8 minus 6. A 19-year-old American man was able to respond by moving his eyes left-right, left-right — two times — to signal "2." Researchers asked the question again, and he moved his eyes the same way two times again.

Out of the 158 trials among 36 participants, about 18% of the time, they were able to give correct answers. In another 18%, it wasn't clear whether participants were responding or not. They were wrong 3% of the time. Most often, 61%, participants didn't respond at all.

Image via NPR 

Now this is a very expensive purchase. Honestly, when it comes to puzzles, I’m satisfied with the basic jigsaw puzzles we can find in stores, or the puzzle games that are freely available on the Internet. Chris Ramsay takes puzzle solving a step further by getting an expensive and elaborate puzzle worth more than my tuition for a semester! The puzzle was created by Labsterium, and Ramsay shares in the comments section of the video that it took him more than four hours to solve it. 

Take all the time to develop this one, Gamefreak. Pokemon Legends: Arceus, what seems to be an open world action based-RPG, has been revealed during the Pokemon company’s Pokemon Presents broadcast. The game will arrive in Early 2022 for Nintendo Switch: 

The game aims to "break new ground" for the Pokemon series, and features Rowlet, Cyndaquil, or Oshawott as partner Pokemon. The game will centre around the mythical Pokemon Arceus, but no further story details were given.

The player will travel out from the central Sinnoh Village to different areas of the region, using traditional Pokeballs to capture monsters. Rather than traditional capturing, however, the official website says you'll need to "observe them to learn their behavior, then carefully sneak up, aim your Poké Ball, and let fly!"

It's not the only new Pokemon game set in Sinnoh - remakes of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl will be released in late 2021.

image via the Nintendo America

The concept of multiverses isn’t just in fiction. Physicists believe that a multiverse has to exist in our universe today, because of how the different clusters of stars and galaxies are placed, what they are made of, and how they move.  Forbes details more reasons why scientists subscribe to this theory: 

While a variety of interpretations were initially suggested, they all fell away with more abundant evidence until only one remained: the Universe itself was undergoing cosmological expansion, like a loaf of leavening raisin bread, where bound objects like galaxies (e.g., raisins) were embedded in an expanding Universe (e.g., the dough).

If the Universe was expanding today, and the radiation within it was being shifted towards longer wavelengths and lower energies, then in the past, the Universe must have been smaller, denser, more uniform, and hotter. As long as any amount of matter and radiation are a part of this expanding Universe, the idea of the Big Bang yields three explicit and generic predictions:

a large-scale cosmic web whose galaxies grow, evolve, and cluster more richly over time,

a low-energy background of blackbody radiation, left over from when neutral atoms first formed in the hot, early Universe,

and a specific ratios of the lightest elements — hydrogen, helium, lithium, and their various isotopes — that exist even in regions that have never formed stars.

image via Forbes

Have you ever spotted your cat (or someone else’s, that’s also fine) staring into space for a long period of time? If you did, don’t worry, because that is not a sign that your feline companion can sense the supernatural.  In fact, there are four main reasons why cats stare off into space, as PopSugar details: 

1. They're trying to let more light into their eyes.
2. If you've ever taken a picture of your cat in dim lighting with the camera flash on, you've probably noticed that their eyes stand out and even look ghostly. "The pupils should constrict when light is shined in the eye, so that's a normal response," Dr. Zimmerman told POPSUGAR. The glowing you see is caused by a layer of tissue in the eye called the tapetum lucidum, which captures light, even the tiniest amount, and brings it back through the retina. "Theirs are actually pretty large because they're nocturnal animals," she added. To engage the tapetum lucidum at its highest capacity, especially at night, cats will widen their eyes to let in as much light as possible. But while widened, staring eyes are normal, bulging eyes are not. "Make sure the eyes aren't pushed out," Dr. Zimmerman said. "This could be a sign of things like a mass behind the eye."
3. Their ocular anatomy and feline instincts cause them to be extremely observant.
4. Cats are visual hunters and curious by nature, which means they're observant at all times, equally during the day and the night. "Due to wild ancestors like lions and panthers, domestic cats have nocturnal instincts," Dr. Gutierrez explained. Their extensive field of vision spans 20 degrees more than ours, so it's more than just the wall in front of them that they're fixating on. Cats pick up on a lot through their peripheral, including things like shadows and tiny bugs we wouldn't be able to see unless we had six to eight times more rod cells. According to Dr. Gutierrez, a cat staring into space is simply an alert one who's gathering information about their environment.
5. They pick up on every little noise, even when we think it's dead silent.
6. Dr. Zimmerman made sure to remind us that a cat's sense of hearing is just as important and powerful as their eyesight. Our perception of silence is a lot different from a cat's — in fact, the end of our perception is right around the beginning of theirs. So if your cat is staring blankly into the distance, it usually means they're fixating on a noise or echo they heard, and they're trying to figure out where it came from. Cats can hear about 1.5 octaves higher than we can, and can detect variances in sound, even something as minor as the wind outside, or your pillow falling on the floor in the middle of the night. But if you notice that your cat startles easily during their state of concentration, it could mean they're having trouble hearing. "If there's heavy debris or puss in the ear and ear cleaner is not solving the problem, you may want to contact your veterinarian. Sometimes ear infections can happen," Dr. Zimmerman said.
7. 4. They had too much catnip.
8. Catnip can have a sedative effect, so if a cat has indulged in too much catnip, you can usually tell by simply looking at their eyes. This often translates to a fixed, relaxed gaze at seemingly nothing. The reaction varies from cat to cat, and shouldn't be cause for major concern. "There is some research in which that catnip produces a certain relaxation in some, and even hyper salivation and excessive drooling in others," said Dr. Gutierrez — both of which are normal.

image via PopSugar 

These deepfake videos of Tom Cruise look so realistic that people would not know they’re computer-generated. Where could you find these videos, you ask? Well, you can watch them on TikTok! The videos, which can be found under the handle @deeptomcruise, were just made from sample footages of the actor and technology: 

 In a series of tweets, Rachel Tobac, the CEO of SocialProof Security, warns that deepfakes like @deeptomcruise threaten to further erode public trust in a world where media literacy is poor and people already can't agree on what's true or false. Like the black and gold dress, where one person might notice giveaways that the Tom Cruise videos are synthesized, another might not know the signs of a fake and swear up and down that they're real.

"Just because you feel you can personally tell the difference between synthetic & authentic media, it doesn’t mean we’re good to go," she says. "It matters what the general public believes."

Deepfakes are especially dangerous because video is widely considered indisputable evidence. A prominent individual could be deepfaked into performing a hate crime, or a person who legitimately committed an unjust act could use deepfakes to craft an alibi.

image via Wikimedia Commons

Well, at least they’re not just thrown away after use! Indian startup Phool collects flowers offered by Hindu worshippers and recycles them into incense sticks. Watch as Business Insider gives an insight into the company’s process. With the huge number of Hindu worshippers who offer flowers at temples every day, it’s wonderful to know that all of them get recycled into something useful again! 

NASA has spotted strange stripes in a particular section in Arctic Siberia in a series of satellite images. Taken with the Landsat 8 satellite, the images show the land on both sides of the Markha River rippling with stripes. The stripes are most pronounced in winter, with the white snow contrasting with the dark rippling pattern. But why is it there? Live Science offers an explanations: 

One possible explanation is written in the icy ground. This region of the Central Siberian Plateau spends about 90% of the year covered in permafrost, according to NASA, though it occasionally thaws for brief intervals. Patches of land that continuously freeze, thaw and freeze again have been known to take on strange circular or stripy designs called patterned ground, scientists reported in a study published in January 2003 in the journal Science. The effect occurs when soils and stones naturally sort themselves during the freeze-thaw cycle.

Image via Live Science

I believe the first question we should really ask here is- would you visit your ex in your dreams? If you would, then we should proceed to knowing if and how you could say hello to your ex in the dreamscape. Surprisingly, there are ‘astral realm’ travel tutorials on YouTube. Vice’s Dominique Sisley attempted to visit her ex-boyfriend in her dreams, and here’s her experience: 

It sounds easy enough, so I close my eyes and think about how I’d like to appear. I have nothing to say to this ex-boyfriend, and I’m confident he won’t enjoy my visit, so I try to keep my messaging upbeat and inoffensive. Just a quick cameo, maybe; a passing hello and some generic well wishes.

“Universe,” I say out loud, to no one, “please pass on my apologies for being a selfish brat during our relationship. Also, please throw in some warm regards for these unprecedented times.”

I wonder for a moment whether creeping into someone’s mind while they sleep, without their consent, is an act of abuse. But I quickly swat the idea off. It’s just an experiment, after all: according to an increasing number of YouTube influencers, visiting people’s dreams is both easy and fine. So I go ahead with it and send him a message the next morning to check in. “Bit of a weird one, but did you have any strange dreams last night?” I ask, as casually as possible. He doesn’t reply.

Image via Vice 

Hey, at least you can get cash by trading in the clothes you’ll never wear again! For Days is a startup company that aims to incentivize people to part with clothes responsibly through their system called “Closet and Credit.” The zero-waste fashion brand, under this system, will give its customers store credit for giving up their old clothes. The clothes will either be resold or recycled, as Fast Company detailed: 

You get $10 for filling up a “clean out crap” bag with clothes from other brands; you earn more for sending back For Days garments. It’s all part of founder Kristy Caylor’s vision of creating a “closed-loop” system in the fashion industry.

Caylor founded For Days three years ago as a kind of experiment in rethinking how consumers shop for clothes. In the current system, most of us buy garments without thinking about what happens to them at the end of their life cycle. As a result, millions of tonnes of clothes end up in landfills every year. For Days started with a very different model. Its subscription program sent customers a set of T-shirts that they could wear as long as they wanted, then swap them for new ones, knowing that the old ones would be recycled.

Image via Fast Company 

A piece of graffiti along the rolling clouds at Edvard Munch‘s ‘The Scream’ has puzzled art historians for a century. Now, that mystery has been resolved as the message has been deciphered. The sentence, which read, “Can only have been painted by a madman,” was thought to be added after 1893 by a disgruntled onlooker or Munch himself. The answer to the mystery of who wrote the secret message was settled by modern technology, as My Modern Met details: 

Using infrared photography to compare handwriting to Munch's letters and journals, experts at the National Museum of Norway claim the words are in fact the artist's own.

As part of Norwegian Expressionism, Munch painted several versions of The Scream. The painting with the hidden message is the original, dating to 1893. According to the artist, he got the idea for the haunting image when he experienced a hallucination on a sunset walk. The feeling of pain which radiates from the central figure was quite disconcerting to audiences when the painting was first exhibited. Suggestions were made that the work indicated the artist's mental state. For this reason, scholars have wondered if an anonymous hand had carved the message calling Munch a “madman.”

image via My Modern Met

Initially, I wasn’t sure if I really believed the existence of this one. Then I saw the photo, and it’s the stuff you’d see in your nightmares. A fisherman from Indonesia discovered this mutant fish or baby shark with human-like facial features. Just look at its eyes! The fisherman, Abdullah Nuren, found the creature inside a mother shark he cut open: 

Nuren said that two of the baby pups looked like their mother, while the third had two large eyes under its snout that made it look like a surprised human face. But instead of throwing this mutant fish back into the ocean and apologizing to whatever god he clearly angered, Nuren took the baby shark home so that his family could preserve it. That’s right, Nuren wants to keep this thing. Like, around the house. Open mouth agape, with giant eyes staring at his every movement. Good luck sleeping, Nuren!

[...]

Twitter user @MaouNoah has pointed out that this mutant fish has likely been affected with Cyclopia, which happens when the genes that divide the eyes and face get mutated. Instead of the face becoming symmetrical, the face shows abnormalities, like what is happening with this baby shark. @MaouNoah also shared an image of another similar mutant shark, showing there are different levels of severity. The photo features a shark with one eye, but with two pupils. The user also says that few fetuses with Cyclopia survive the pregnancy.

Image via Daily Mail

Well, it’s a rare spectacle to witness indeed. A dolphin ‘stampede’ was captured on camera just off the coast of California. The dolphins were seen rising up from the water really, really fast as they swam in huge flocks. Don’t worry, because unlike human stampedes, no dolphin was seen hurt by the other dolphins. 

(via Flipboard) 

Image screenshot via Flipboard

Our ancestors really did live like Tarzan! New findings suggest our ancient ancestors really swung from tree to tree. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, resolved a debate over our ancestors’ ability for brachiation (the ability to swing from tree limbs only using one's arms). The research pointed out the possibility that great apes, the last common ancestor of hominids, climbed and swung in trees: 

"Our findings support the view that humans and chimpanzees evolved from an ancestor that had similarities to modern apes in their locomotor adaptation," lead author Thomas C. Prang, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University, tells Inverse.

esearchers used a sample of 400-plus specimens, encompassing both living primates and ancient hominoid fossils.

First, researchers analyzed the ancient hand bones of Ardipithecus ramidus, which believers of the disputed hypothesis use to support their idea regarding a quadrupedal last common ancestor. Ardipithecus ramidus is a human ancestor that lived nearly 4.4 million years ago. Our understanding of it is predominantly linked to a partial skeleton found in 2009, nicknamed 'Ardi.'

The initial interpretation of this hand suggested the last common ancestors of humans and chimpanzees used a form of locomotion called "above-branch clambering," Prang explains.

Image via Inverse 

ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) YouTuber Sarah Toth is not like the usual ASMRtists. She strips her videos of the pretense that ASMR videos are known for. Toth greets her viewers, tells some small anecdotes, and shares her wide-ranging experiences of trauma, from heroin addiction to suicide attempts. These additions make her videos more authentic and personal: 

Whether its a whispery tarot-reading, a haircut simulation, or a “mom tucking you in” roleplay, her frank familiarity gives viewers the impression that they’re building a relationship of trust, in spite of the hundreds of thousands of viewers live-commenting on the video.

Toth offers her life story for every viewer, in all its grit, ugliness, and triumph. Her approach is a crucial one when it comes to addressing addiction, according to her throngs of commenters.

While many ASMRtists will receive outpouring adoration from fans with insomnia or loneliness (ASMR is believed to promote relaxation and sleep), Toth operates in different margins with higher stakes. The comment-section seems less like the usual trolling clusterfuck and more like the safe space of an AA meeting. “I hope she feels as good about herself as she makes me feel about myself. I adore her,” says one viewer. “I’m going to get clean like her someday.”

Image via Mic