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Plus, in this week's science news, we've learned that AI models will lie to us to achieve their goals. In fact, a new study has found that large language models can be convinced to lie to users when given coercive prompts by trainers.
North America's underside may be "dripping" down into mantle below.
(Image credit: Timothy Hodgkinson via Alamy)
Deep beneath the Midwest lies an ancient slab of Earth's crust, and it's sucking swaths of North America's present-day crust down into Earth's mantle. The pull of this slab has created giant "drips" that hang from the underside of North America to depths of about 400 miles (640 kilometers), according to new research.
The drips are located beneath an area spanning from Michigan to Nebraska and down to Alabama, but their presence appears to be affecting the entire continent.
People can live normal lives with atypical brains, but certain structures are essential.
(Image credit: flyparade via Getty Images)
There's a myth that humans use only 10% of their brains. However, while most of us do use all of our brains, that doesn't mean we need 100% of our brains to live. People who have survived strokes, traumatic brain injuries and brain surgery can, in some cases, function completely "normally," highlighting the human brain's staggering adaptability to damage. So, how much of our brains do we really need to survive?
The helmet was pieced together in 1939 from fragments found at the Sutton Hoo burial site in the east of England and is now an icon of Anglo-Saxon culture.
(Image credit: Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
The Sutton Hoo helmet, discovered in 1939, is one of the U.K.'s most iconic archaeological finds. The seventh-century helmet is a curious mix of Northern European and Roman styles, and its origins have been hotly debated.
Algorithms are the building blocks that, when layered together, form the cryptographic fortress that keeps out hackers. As quantum computers gain ascendancy, these bricks must change to keep our data secure.
(Image credit: Supertotto)
We are edging ever closer to a new age of quantum computing. Computers that harness the laws of quantum mechanics will perform calculations exponentially faster than the classical computers we have today. The technology has the potential to solve complex problems that have puzzled scientists for decades, but it could also cause significant problems for cybersecurity.
When quantum computers are first rolled out, most of us will still rely on classical computers and classical ways of encrypting sensitive information. Cracking this encryption is near impossible on a classical computer, but quantum computers may find it trivially easy, making everything from banking passwords to military secrets vulnerable to hackers.
Can we find new ways to keep our data secure?
Something for the weekend
If you're looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best long reads, book excerpts and interviews published this week.
At the heart of the Helix Nebula lies the remains of a dying star located 650 light-years from Earth. The star is gradually shedding its outer gas layers into the space that surrounds it, while stellar radiation causes this gas to glow like a giant ring. However, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected some peculiar X-ray emissions from the region. Scientists think these strange emissions may be the remnants of a celestial murder scene, indicating that the dying star may have gobbled up an orbiting planet that flew too close to its dying sun.
Pandora is the trending news editor at Live Science. She is also a science presenter and previously worked as Senior Science and Health Reporter at Newsweek. Pandora holds a Biological Sciences degree from the University of Oxford, where she specialised in biochemistry and molecular biology.
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