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Why alien languages could be far stranger than we imagine
Nikhil Mahant
Aeon·2025
Imagining how aliens might communicate prepares us for first contact and illuminates the nature of our own languages
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View paper →Spin precession frequencies of a test gyroscope around a naked singularity and quasi-periodic oscillations
Tehreem Zahra, Mubasher Jamil, Mustapha Azreg-Aïnou
arXiv·2025
Various studies show that the gravitational collapse of inhomogeneous matter clouds leads to naked singularity formation. We investigate here the spin precession frequency of a test gyroscope attached to a stationary observer in a rotating naked singularity spacetime. In the weak field limit, Lense-Thirring precession for rotating naked singularity and geodetic precession in the asymptotic limit for null naked singularity are found to be equal to that of a Kerr black hole and a Schwarzschild black hole, respectively. In addition, we can distinguish a rotating naked singularity and a Kerr naked singularity for an observer in the equatorial plane using spin precession. To this end, we have found the constraints on the parameters of rotating naked singularity by employing the Monte Carlo Markov Chain simulation and using the observation from five quasi-periodic sources within the relativistic precession model. Our analysis shows that the measurement of spin parameter estimate for GRO J1655-40 is in disagreement with the value found from the continuum-fitting method, while for XTEJ1859+226 and GRS 1915+105, it is inconsistent with spectral analysis results.
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View paper →Social dynamics of hyperbole – social media sentiment analysis for hype detection in emerging technologies: a conceptual approach
Kolja de Cuveland, Elisa Choi, Minsoo Shin
Technology Analysis & Strategic Management·2025·1 citations
No abstract available
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View paper →Dark Matter Velocity Distributions for Direct Detection: Astrophysical Uncertainties are Smaller Than They Appear
Dylan Folsom, Carlos Blanco, Mariangela Lisanti, Lina Necib, Mark Vogelsberger, Lars Hernquist
arXiv·2025
The sensitivity of direct detection experiments depends on the phase-space distribution of dark matter near the Sun, which can be modeled theoretically using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way-like galaxies. However, capturing the halo-to-halo variation in the local dark matter speeds -- a necessary step for quantifying the astrophysical uncertainties that feed into experimental results -- requires a sufficiently large sample of simulated galaxies, which has been a challenge. In this work, we quantify this variation with nearly one hundred Milky Way-like galaxies from the IllustrisTNG50 simulation, the largest sample to date at this resolution. Moreover, we introduce a novel phase-space scaling procedure that endows every system with a reference frame that accurately reproduces the local standard-of-rest speed of our Galaxy, providing a principled way of extrapolating the simulation results to real-world data. The predicted speed distributions are consistent with the Standard Halo Model, a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution peaked at the local circular speed and truncated at the escape speed. The dark matter-nucleon cross section limits placed by these speed distributions vary by ~60% about the median. This places the 1-sigma astrophysical uncertainty at or below the level of the systematic uncertainty of current ton-scale detectors, even down to the energy threshold. The predicted uncertainty remains unchanged when sub-selecting on those TNG galaxies with merger histories similar to the Milky Way. Tabulated speed distributions, as well as Maxwell-Boltzmann fits, are provided for use in computing direct detection bounds or projecting sensitivities.
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