A Massive Observation
According to new observations, the heaviest neutron star is 20,000 light-years away from Earth and weighs 2.35 times as much as our sun. The record-holder owes its success to gas falling from a nearby orbiting star, reports Ken Croswell for Science News. What goes on in the hidden interiors of these dense and massive stars remains a mystery. Physicists have wondered if their cores consist of squishy and exotic “quark” matter, but new data released last year casts doubt on that model, as Jonathan O’Callaghan reported for Quanta.
Look Who’s Talking
In the largest study of its kind, researchers proved that “baby talk” is much the same everywhere. Spanning 18 languages and six continents, the new research confirmed that adults adopt a sing-songy voice called “parentese” when singing or speaking to babies, reports Oliver Whang for The New York Times. Parentese is thought to make it easier for babies to learn language. When babies imitate the sounds they hear, they’re using vocal learning — an ability possessed by only a few species, notably humans and songbirds. In 2018, researcher Erich Jarvis chatted with Jordana Cepelewicz for Quanta about his work on vocal learning in songbirds and why it could help reveal how the human capacity for language evolved. |
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