Week in Science: Most massive black hole merger ever seen

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July 18—This week, ChatGPT is changing the words we use. Plus, a deadly bacterium is moving northwards along beaches, and the largest black hole merger ever seen. All that and more below! —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

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Monster Black Hole Merger Is Most Massive Ever Seen A U.S. gravitational wave detector spotted a collision between fast-spinning "forbidden" black holes that challenge physics models Jonathan O'Callaghan, Nature magazine

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ChatGPT Is Changing the Words We Use in Conversation Words frequently used by ChatGPT, including "delve" and "meticulous," are getting more common in spoken language, according to an analysis of more than 700,000 hours of videos and podcasts Vanessa Bates Ramirez

Where Did Bird Flu Go? Bird flu was nearly everywhere in the U.S.—in chickens, cows, pet cats and even humans. Cases have gone down, but experts warn that it hasn't disappeared Meghan Bartels

We're Light-Years Away from True Artificial Intelligence, Says Murderbot Author Martha Wells Today's large language models are hardly related to the kinds of machine intelligence we see in science fiction, according to Martha Wells, author of the Murderbot Diaries series Clara Moskowitz

New Grok 4 Takes on 'Humanity's Last Exam' as the AI Race Heats Up Elon Musk has launched xAI's Grok 4—calling it the "world's smartest AI" and claiming it can ace Ph.D.-level exams and outpace rivals such as Google's Gemini and OpenAI's o3 on tough benchmarks Deni Ellis Béchard

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Deadly Bacteria May Be Moving to a Beach Near You Illnesses from stealthy pathogens known as Vibrio are advancing northward along numerous coasts, potentially ruining your summer vacation Kyle Brumfield

Texas Failed to Spend Millions in Federal Aid for Flood Protection Many states, including Texas, have not used billions of dollars from FEMA intended to reduce damage from flooding and other disasters Thomas Frank, Mike Lee, E&E News

Marjorie Taylor Greene Plans Probe into Geoengineering Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has said she will hold a hearing on geoengineering as conspiracy theories have swirled around cloud seeding after the recent floods in Texas Kevin Bogardus, E&E News

China Is Putting Data Centers in the Ocean to Keep Them Cool China is pulling ahead of the rest of the world in sinking data centers that power AI into the ocean as an alternate way to keep them cool You Xiaoying

DeepMind's AlphaGenome Aims to Decode DNA's 'Dark Matter' This AI system can analyze up to one million DNA letters at once, predicting how tiny changes in noncoding regions trigger everything from cancer to rare genetic disorders—and potentially revolutionizing personalized medicine Deni Ellis Béchard

Combatting Toxic Stress with Science Better assessment of stress and tailored approaches to combat it could give clinicians the tools they need to fend off lasting damage to health Lynne Peeples, Nature magazine

A Longevity Expert Breaks Down the Science and Hype of Biological Aging Tests Super Agers author Eric Topol unpacks the rise of biological age tests—from organ clocks to immune system clocks—and how they might revolutionize early diagnosis of disease Lauren J. Young

Mysterious Antimatter Physics Discovered at the Large Hadron Collider The LHCb experiment has observed a new difference between matter and antimatter in particles called baryons Clara Moskowitz

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