{"id":6239,"date":"2026-06-28T11:27:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T04:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/?p=6239"},"modified":"2026-06-28T11:27:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T04:27:19","slug":"scientists-think-theyve-uncovered-the-15-million-year-old-origin-of-laughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/?p=6239","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Think They\u2019ve Uncovered the 15-Million-Year-Old Origin of Laughter"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that yucked it up, went interstellar, controlled the weather, and sang our praises.First, the sounds of ape laughter have been gracing our planet for 15 million years. Then: a visit from a cosmic elder, a meteorological martial art, and bops by blowhards.\u00a0As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.\u00a0A history of hominids in hystericsDe Gregorio, Chiara et al. \u201cRhythm and timing in laughter reveal that human vocal plasticity falls on a hominid continuum.\u201d Communications Biology.You\u2019ve heard about getting the last laugh, but who got the first one? Scientists have now determined that laughter, a behavior common to all great apes, may have initially appeared in chortling primate ancestors that lived 15 million years ago, according to a new study that analyzes the evolutionary roots of getting the giggles.In addition to being the best medicine, laughter plays an outsized role in human cultures and interpersonal relationships. The fact that all other great apes, from bonobos to gorillas, also enjoy a good chuckle suggests that this form of vocal expression has broad benefits and potentially deep evolutionary origins.To probe the history of hilarity, scientists analyzed recordings of laughter from four orangutans, two gorillas, three bonobos, four chimpanzees, and four human children during bouts of playtime, roughhousing, and tickling.\u00a0The results revealed that the isochronous nature of laughter\u2014meaning clear sound intervals like \u201cha ha ha\u201d\u2014was likely present in the last common ancestor of the Hominid family, which contains all great apes including extinct relatives such as Neanderthals.\u201cWhile all major branches of the Hominid family have evolved distinct call repertoires shaped by their species-specific socio-ecologies, one vocalization has been conserved across species and age-sex classes: laughter,\u201d said researchers led by Chiara De Gregorio of the University of Warwick.The team\u2019s analysis reveals that \u201cgreat apes have been laughing in a recognizable way to modern humans for at least 15 million years\u201d and that apes that are more closely related to humans have more complex and variable laughs similar to our own diversity of guffaws, cackles, and snorts.To sum up: lol\u2026lmao.\u00a0\u00a0In other news\u2026A long time ago in a star system far, far away\u2026Cordiner, Martin et al. \u201cIsotopic Evidence for a Cold and Distant Origin of 3I\/ATLAS.\u201d Nature.The interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS caused a sensation last summer when it was first discovered streaking through the solar system, partly because it revived the debate over whether these objects from other star systems could be alien handiwork.While the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that 3I\/ATLAS is not an extraterrestrial spaceship, it is nonetheless unlike any comet seen in human history. Scientists have revealed that the comet is by far the oldest object ever detected in the solar system, having \u201caccreted as long ago as 12 billion years, following a period of intense, early star formation,\u201d according to researchers led by researchers led by Martin Cordiner of the Catholic University of America.\u00a0\u00a0In other words, 3I\/ATLAS is nearly three times older than the solar system, formed when the observable universe was only a third of its current size. The age is based on the comet\u2019s ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D\/H), which was measured by the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever launched.\u00a0JWST revealed a \u201csurprisingly high\u201d ratio of deuterium enrichment, about 30 times the level of solar system bodies, with the exception of Venus. \u201c3I\/ATLAS thus represents a preserved fragment of an ancient planetary system,\u201d concluded the team.\u00a0So long to this primordial pilgrim, and may it live to be 13 billion.\u00a0I have a black belt in hurricane deflectionHuang, Qin et al. \u201cWeather Jiu-Jitsu: Prospects for atmospheric nudging to defuse the impact of catastrophic weather extremes.\u201d PLOS Water.Finally, we have an answer to the age-old question: Can we use martial arts to control the weather? In a new study, scientists propose the concept of \u201cweather jiu-jitsu,\u201d which uses gentle atmospheric \u201cnudges\u201d to redirect potentially catastrophic weather events, such as hurricanes, heat waves, or droughts.\u201cImagine harnessing the power of nature to help steer hurricanes away from land, redirect atmospheric rivers to spread their rain safely and evenly, or defuse extreme weather patterns like heatwaves, freezes, or prolonged droughts before they take hold,\u201d said researchers led by Qin Huang of Arizona State University. \u201cIt\u2019s a vision where we partner with Earth\u2019s own forces to create resilience, rather than reacting to disasters.\u201dConceptual illustration of weather jiu-jitsu. Image: Qin Huang, Moyan Liu, Upmanu Lall, CC-BY 4.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/)Weather jiu-jitsu involves seeding clouds with particles to influence weather outcomes, but it differs from existing methods by opting for light touches in advance of a developing weather event, as opposed to the heavier lift of weakening an event that is already ongoing.The team\u2019s models suggest this method could have nudged Hurricane Sandy well away from New York City in 2021, warmed Texas by about 18 degrees Fahrenheit during its deadly 2021 freeze, and reduced the rainfall that caused widespread flooding in California from 2022 to 2023 by about 5 percent.\u00a0That said, the study emphasized that the technique is only a proof-of-concept and it will take far more research to determine if it would be useful in the real world. In the meantime, let\u2019s try some other martial arts-inspired approaches and figure out how to crane-kick a tornado or karate-chop a heat dome.I bet you think this song is about MEGolubickis, Marius et al. \u201cAre societies becoming more self-centric? Evidence from five decades of popular music spanning three continents.\u201d PLOS One.While the Song of Summer 2026 has yet to be determined, odds are that it will be singularly self-absorbed. That\u2019s the hook of a study that discovered popular music has shown \u201ca significant increase in self-focused language over time in individualistic societies\u201d such as the United States or Germany, while no comparable trend was observed in more collectivistic societies such as Japan or Hong Kong.Mean use of first-person singular pronouns as a function of Year and Country\/Region. Image: Golubickis et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/)Scientists led by Marius Golubickis of United Arab Emirates University analyzed the lyrics of top 10 hits from 1970 to 2019 by quantifying the use of the plural pronouns like \u201cwe\u201d and \u201cus\u201d compared with the first-person singular pronouns like \u201cI\u201d and \u201cme\u201d (check out the full list here). The results revealed that while \u201cWestern societies exhibited a clear increase in self-focused language over time, East Asian societies showed relative stability.\u201dThis all checks out with my go-to playlist for narcissists, featuring \u201cI Me Mine\u201d by the Beatles, \u201cMe Myself and I\u201d by De La Soul, and, of course, \u201cME!\u201d by Taylor Swift.Thanks for reading! See you next week.
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Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that yucked it up, went interstellar, controlled the weather, and sang our praises.First, the sounds of ape laughter have been gracing our planet for 15 million years. Then: a visit from a cosmic elder, a meteorological martial art, and bops by blowhards.\u00a0As always, for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[676],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}