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The business end of the University of Rochester's Omega laser. (credit: Lawrence Livermore National Lab)

Last month, we reported on a small but enduring mystery in cosmology: why is there so much of one isotope of lithium around? Both ⁶Li and ⁷Li should have been produced when the first atoms formed after the Big Bang. But how much of them should have been made.

The question comes down to basic nuclear physics. When two hydrogen atoms collide under pressure, what is the probability that they will make helium? That sort of physics also applies to collisions between other elements, some of which produce lithium. It is an astonishing achievement that cosmologists can, from basic physics, predict the relative fractions of hydrogen and helium produced in the Big Bang. It is just as astonishing that we can look back in time and measure these fractions and know that cosmologists have it almost exactly right.

Almost. These calculations fall flat when it comes to lithium. They suggest there should be much more ⁷Li than we observe in the Universe and a lot less ⁶Li. Does that mean the estimates are wrong, or is there a real discrepancy? New experiments indicate that when it comes to ⁶Li, the problem seems to be with the Universe and not our calculations.

Twitch has been expanding its content horizons beyond games for a while now (did you marathon Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting?), but now the Amazon-owned site will be hosting some of its parent company's content. According to a report from Deadline, Amazon will stream the pilots of new shows including a reboot of superhero show The Tick and a comedy titled I Love Dick on Twitch for 24 hours on August 31.

Prime Video subscribers will have access to the new shows on Amazon on August 19, but the pilots will also be available on Twitch for one day at the end of this month. Amazon has tested original content with Prime Video subscribers in the past, tracking how well the shows are received. It's likely Amazon wants to do the same with this Twitch integration, seeing how much interest that community has for new shows. However, it's currently unclear if the Twitch community's reaction to the pilots will have any effect on the fate of the shows.

It's also just another way for Amazon to test out non-gaming content on Twitch. In October 2015, Twitch launched its Creative channel, where artists can show off their work by airing episodes of classic shows including Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting and Julia Child's The French Chef. Twitch has a very established community that, until recently, only used the platform for gaming content. Finding out what strikes a chord with these users could help Amazon create more Twitch-only content that's not solely focused on gaming.

(credit: David Goehring)

The food preferences of toddlers are a mind-boggling enigma. On the one hand, kids under two years old are the most likely age group to accidentally poison themselves—by deciding it’s a great idea to guzzle detergent, for instance. Yet, when parents try to coax them into ingesting nutritious, non-lethal options, tots may cook up a fit.

According to a new study, toddlers may actually have some logic to their apparent dietary madness—at least a little logic, that is. By watching toddlers react to people’s food preferences, researchers found that the little ankle-biters seem to make generalizations about good eats and who will like them based on social identities. Toddlers expected people in the same social groups to like the same foods and appeared puzzled if that wasn’t the case. But if one person expressed a dislike for a food first, toddlers seemed to expect that everyone would follow suit regardless of social identities.

The findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that toddlers soak up social information about food choices and may be particularly sensitive to any signal that a food is bad or perhaps dangerous. Though more study into toddlers’ gut feelings on foods are necessary, the authors speculate that campaigns to improve kids’ diets may be better served by including social aspects of eating rather than just nutrition information.

(credit: Comcast)

Comcast should discontinue its claim that Xfinity service "delivers the fastest Internet in America," the National Advertising Division (NAD) recommended today. Comcast should also discontinue certain ads where it claims to have the "fastest in-home Wi-Fi," the group said.

For its fastest Internet claim, Comcast relied on crowdsourced data from the Ookla Speedtest application. An "award" provided by Ookla to Comcast relied only on the top 10 percent of each ISP's download results.

"Although Xfinity offers a variety of speeds at a range of prices and tiers, Comcast’s advertising does not limit its claims to a particular tier," the NAD's announcement said. "NAD determined that the claims at issue in both print and broadcast advertising reasonably conveyed a message of overall superiority—that regardless of which speed tier purchased by a consumer, in a head-to-head comparison, Xfinity would deliver faster speeds."

(credit: Deep Space Industries)

Asteroid mining is the ultimate high-risk, high-reward business. While there are undoubtedly billions—some argue trillions—of dollars' worth of valuable minerals and metals in near-Earth asteroids, a host of questions remain about the practicality of harvesting them. How much technology is required to identify asteroids and extract the materials? How difficult will it be to return them to Earth or other desired destinations? And how much will the upfront costs be?

A few companies, such as Planetary Resources, have begun to try to answer these questions, and it seems the initial responses aren't entirely positive. The venture has decided to put its initial focus on Earth observation rather than deep space asteroid mining. But another asteroid company, Deep Space Industries, appears to be pressing ahead. On Tuesday, that company announced its intent to fly the world’s first commercial interplanetary mining mission, Prospector-1.

Under the company's new timeline, Deep Space Industries plans to launch the Prospector-X mission in 2017 into low-Earth orbit as a technology test bed for further development of low-cost exploration spacecraft. Then, "before the end of this decade," the company would launch Prospector-1 to rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid and investigate its value as a source of mineral resources.