Point of insight: the ancestral home of languages and the germ of solar flares

The ancestral home of the Indo-European languages is located in Russia, an international team of researchers has found out. In addition, Russian physicists have created a device that will help identify the germ of solar flares, engineers have developed an ultra-fast line for sorting garbage, and archaeologists have found a rare pectoral icon. At the same time, European astrophysicists "caught" the most powerful neutrino particle. About it - in a selection of the most interesting science news, prepared by "Izvestia".

A new device for studying the Sun developed in Russia

Specialists of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FIAN) created a device complex, which will help to determine the germ of flares on the Sun. It will study the star in the terahertz range of electromagnetic radiation. The equipment this year will be delivered to the International Space Station, where it will be used to conduct measurements for at least three years.

- The experiment will allow to find and study the characteristics of energy release processes, which are largely responsible for the formation of solar flares- said the project leader, head of the laboratory of solar physics and cosmic rays FIAN Vladimir Makhmutov.

Vladimir Makhmutov, Head of the Laboratory of Solar and Cosmic Ray Physics at FIAN

Photo: IZVESTIYA/Andrei Ershtrem

The research will be the first of its kind in the world. As a result, the data that scientists will begin to receive in the first half of 2026, will help to give better forecasts of space weather and magnetic storms on Earth.

Artificial intelligence was assigned the task of garbage sorting

Russia has developed an automatic sorting machine for household waste. It is a conveyor belt with a complex of smart devices and sensors equipped with machine vision and artificial intelligence. During the movement of garbage, the system recognizes the shape, color and material from which objects are created, distinguishes the components and shoots them off with air into a separate compartment.

- Even separately collected waste is subject to additional sorting. They must be sorted by class and color. At a large waste-sorting complex, an average of 3 tons of plastics are carried on the conveyor belt per hour, and one employee takes away only 40 kg of film and 100 kg of plastic bottles during the same hour," Anton Stepanov, one of the developers, a research engineer at the NTI Competence Center "Wireless Communications Technologies and the Internet of Things" on the basis of Skoltech, told Izvestia.

Photo: STI Project Support Fund

According to the engineers, the recognition accuracy is 90%. Now the equipment processes 12 classes of waste: cardboard, glass, films and different types of plastic. The technology will make it possible to extract at least 5 million tons of useful materials from 60 million tons of solid municipal waste generated in Russia annually.

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The ancestral home of Indo-European languages has been found in Russia

An international team of scientists, including a group of Russian specialists, has published the results of a study concluding that the ancestral home of the Indo-European languages spoken by almost half of the world is in modern Russia.

Specialists examined the genomes of about 400 representatives of the "Yamnaya" culture. It was spread between 3300 and 2600 years in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian seas. Its peculiarity is the burial of the dead in separate pits that were dug under the mounds, for which it got its name.

Photo: RIA Novosti/Alexei Danichev

"Pit culture is like an indicator whose spread can be linked to the spread of Indo-European languages," explained one of the leaders of the research, geneticist from Harvard Medical School in Boston (USA) David Reich.

He explained: it was previously thought that the area from where Yamniki began its rapid spread around the world was Anatolia, a region in what is now Turkey. However, experts have identified an older group that gave rise to this Anatolian branch as well. The group lived in the Caucasus and the Lower Volga region. These people spoke the earliest Indo-European languages.

European scientists caught the fastest neutrino

Astrophysicists from Europe announced that they managed to register the most powerful neutrino in the history of observations. The discovery was made with the Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT), a neutrino telescope located in the Mediterranean Sea.

The event itself occurred two years ago. However, it took about a year to identify it in the data stream, and another year to verify the result.

- We needed to make sure it was not something strange or unusual with the telescope- said one of the authors of the discovery, a physicist from the University of Aix-Marseille in France, Pascal Coyle.

Photo: REUTERS/Paschal Coyle

As the scientists explained, the telescope recorded not the neutrino itself, but the muon - a particle that was formed by the collision of the neutrino and one of the molecules that make up our planet. The energy of the muon was estimated at 120 PeV (peta-electronvolt), that is,¹⁰¹⁵ electronvolts.

The source of high-energy neutrinos can be extreme astrophysical processes. Such as the ejection of jets by black holes, gamma-ray bursts, or supernova explosions. There are hypotheses that suggest the cause could be the decay or annihilation of dark matter particles.

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An ancient icon from the pectoral ring was discovered in Vologda.

A pectoral icon, which was cast in the period of XV-XVI centuries, was discovered by specialists of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences during excavations on the territory of the Vologda Kremlin.

As archeologists assume, the icon could have been lost during the construction of the fortress. It began in the time of Ivan the Terrible, who chose Vologda as one of the main strongholds in the north of the Russian Empire.

Photo: press service of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The find is a rectangle with sides of about 4 and 5 centimeters. It is a rare type of Orthodox icons fixed on a ring and worn on the finger. The icon depicts the subject "The removal from the cross and the position in the tomb".

- The icon is most likely not an original casting, but a secondary reproduction of a metal double-leaf icon-encolpy: this is evidenced by unsawn moldings and protrusions on the places where the original had a hinged mount, - said the scientists in an official press release.

It is possible that the image was used as a matrix for castings, or it was a production defect, the experts added.