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Retraction to: Nature Communications https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17687-3, published online 25 August 2020

i didn't hear it anywhere, so thought it to be news-worthy

[edit] As noted below by Neuromancer49, there's a new published version with corrections. Published: 19 December 2024

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-55384-7

Google has made an eyebrow-raising claim, saying that its new quantum chip may be tapping into parallel universes to achieve its results.

The search giant recently unveiled a new quantum computer chip, dubbed Willow, which — on a specific benchmark, at least — the company says can outperform any supercomputer in the world.

"Willow’s performance on this benchmark is astonishing," Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven wrote in a blog post announcing the chip. "It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10²⁵ or 10 septillion years."

"This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe," he argued. "It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch."

Deutsch is a physici

This is a rather detailed investigation by folks at WSJ into the business endeavors of David Sinclair, renowned celebrity scientist at Harvard Medical School (and kind-of a known fraudster among the field)

It's... interesting to say the least. Not strictly science-science per-se, but I hope this is informative to at least some of you. Personally as someone interested in aging research, I find it valuable to see what all the snake oil salesmen are doing so I know what not to get too mentally engaged in...

Link is de-paywalled. Original link at WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/david-sinclair-reverse-aging-failed-business-8bc4a43d

A blog report by scientific misconduct sleuth Leonid Schneider, with references to a lot of other bonkers things Sinclair did: https://forbetterscience.com/2024/12/13/schneider-shorts-13-12-2024-most-lying-deceiving-person-in-the-world/

A shared meal, a kiss on the cheek: these social acts bring people together — and bring their microbiomes together, too. The more people interact, the more similar the make-up of their gut microorganisms is, even if individuals don’t live in the same household, a study shows.

The study also found that a person’s microbiome is shaped not only by their social contacts but also by the social contacts’ connections. The work is one of several studies that raise the possibility that health conditions can be shaped by the transmission of the microbiome between individuals, not just by diet and other environmental factors that affect gut flora.

What if we shared our microbiomes under the moonlight

Associated research article (open access): Beghini, F., Pullman, J., Alexander, M. et al. Gut microbiome strain-sharing within isolated village social networks. Nature (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08222-1

**Another relevant research article cited by the news (also open acc

I've seen a few complaints over the past few weeks about there being a lot of psuedoscience, and there has been a fair amount of reports.

I figured it would be a good idea to update the rules on the sidebar to clearly lay out what is and isn't allowed.

I think a tagging system might help to keep down on the spam and elevate real scientific sources. These are just a draft and more rules could be added in the future if they are needed.

Current draft (work in progress, add suggestions in comments):

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

Submission Rules:

1. All posts must be flagged with an appropriate tag and must be scientific in nature. All posts not following these guidelines will be removed.
2. All posts must be peer reviewed and published in a reputable journal, unless flagged as news or discussion. No pseudoscience.
3. No self-promotion, blogspam, videos, or memes. See list of unapproved sources below.

Comment Rules:

1. Civility to