Life/death Archives - Attention to the Unseen

Is life just different?

From elsewhere — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:36:46 +0000

Philip Ball writes: In 1993, a team led by the planetary scientist Carl Sagan tentatively concluded that there is life on Earth. Not much of a deduction, you might think — except that the researchers confined their evidence to observations made by the Galileo spacecraft, which had flown past our planet three years earlier on a looping journey to Jupiter. So great is the transformative power of life that its presence can be detected just from the light and radio...

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What Ukrainian war widows know about love and loss

From elsewhere — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 23:50:54 +0000

Julie Reshe writes: ‘I died along with him in Huliaipole.’ This is how Tetiana Vatsenko-Bondareva, a Ukrainian widow, describes the day her husband was killed on the battlefield. ‘At first, you don’t understand anything – just an abyss, no time, no space, nothing at all. There is just some kind of existence,’ explained another war widow, Oleksandra Kolestyk. I first heard these words as figures of speech, the language of grief stretching beyond the limits of ordinary expression. Little did...

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What people regret most as death approaches

From elsewhere — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:36:06 +0000

Science Norway reports: Few people regret something they did. Many regret what they did not do. When researchers speak with people nearing the end of their lives, the answers they receive are surprisingly similar. The dreams I never pursued. The talents I never got to use. The journeys I never took. The relationships with other people that I let fade away. The decisions I was too afraid to make. When death draws near and people are asked what they regret...

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Neuroscience needs to stop treating the brain as if it is a computer

From elsewhere — Thu, 28 May 2026 00:03:07 +0000

Àlex Gómez-Marín writes: What is a brain? The question might seem obvious, but it is not trivial. Neuroscience has progressed in the past century, with the development of sophisticated techniques to measure and manipulate brain cells, neural circuits and even animal behaviours. Yet how the brain actually works still eludes us. In The Brain, In Theory, neuroscientist Romain Brette deconstructs the predominant model of the brain, which treats the organ like a computer. He concedes that engineering metaphors can be...

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When Attenborough was welcomed by the mountain gorillas

From elsewhere — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 01:26:39 +0000

David Sillito writes: It is the most memorable moment of Sir David Attenborough’s broadcasting career. A short sequence of his encounter with a group of playful mountain gorillas in a forest clearing in Rwanda. “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know,” he tells the camera, as a female gorilla observes him from just a few feet away. The footage for his 1979 Life on Earth series...

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Ed Yong talks about the extraordinary sensory worlds of animals

From elsewhere — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:47:46 +0000

Inside Climate News executive editor Vernon Loeb speaks with Ed Yong, Pulitzer-winning science journalist and author of An Immense World, about the extraordinary sensory worlds of animals.

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We’re finally learning what it’s like to die. And it’s not as bad as you think…

From elsewhere — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 01:03:08 +0000

Nate Scharping writes: The last words Steve Jobs, the legendary Apple founder, spoke were simple: “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.” Their mystery is enticing – what did Jobs, the digital prophet who brought us the smartphone, see as he neared death? We’ll never know. But stories of near-death experiences (NDEs) tantalise the living, and something unique seems to be happening inside our brains as we sense death approaching. Despite NDE testimonies, the moments surrounding death largely remain a mystery...

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All living things emit a visible light that vanishes at death, surprising study says

From elsewhere — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 02:05:05 +0000

Science Alert reports: Life truly is radiant, according to an experiment conducted by researchers from the University of Calgary and the National Research Council of Canada. An extraordinary experiment on mice and leaves from two different plant species has uncovered direct physical evidence of an eerie ‘biophoton’ phenomenon ceasing on death, suggesting all living things – including humans – could literally glow with health, until we don’t. The findings might seem a little fringe at first glance. It’s hard not...

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Life on Earth probably needed supplies from space

From elsewhere — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 01:14:34 +0000

University of Bern: Earth is so far the only known planet on which life exists—with liquid water and a stable atmosphere. However, the conditions were not conducive to life when it formed. The gas-dust cloud from which all the planets in the solar system formed was rich in volatile elements essential for life, such as hydrogen, carbon and sulfur. However, in the inner solar system—the part closest to the sun, where the four rocky planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars...

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Here’s how the first proteins might have assembled, sparking life

From elsewhere — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 01:31:51 +0000

Science reports: Life today depends on proteins, cellular workhorses that do everything from flex muscles to ferry oxygen. And proteins, in turn, depend on RNA, which carries the recipes for making them and also helps with their assembly. In modern cells, large protein-based enzymes help connect RNA snippets to amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Then, the RNA- and protein-based cellular machine called the ribosome stitches the amino acids together into a protein chain, reading the correct sequence from...

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