Numlock News: February 6, 2026 • Michelangelo, Mantle, Freezers
By Walt Hickey
Have a great weekend!
Michelangelo
A sketch by the artist Michelangelo has sold for $23 million at auction, about 10 times the original estimate. The sketch features the foot of the Libyan Sibyl, a painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church. Done in red chalk, it’s believed to date to 1511 or 1512. It’s a remarkable discovery that really carries through to the modern day, and one that the artists of today might even find endearing; yes, even Michelangelo drew pictures of feet as commissions for his patrons in order to put a roof over his head, and eventually it paid off.
Freezer
Refrigeration typically requires the use of refrigerants, chemicals that can be dangerous for the environment if they were to escape. Researchers have been studying other alternative means of cooling, and some at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have published a paper in Nature describing the first elastocaloric device capable of reaching subzero temperatures. Instead of using a refrigerant, they use shape-memory alloys (SMA) that can release heat when compressed and absorb heat when relaxed. The nickel-titanium SMA used is fashioned into rods. Those tubes are compressed, causing them to heat up. Next, a salty liquid is pumped through, carrying that heat away. Then the tubes are released, cooling them down in a cycle that takes one second. The system was able to cool down a chamber to negative four degrees Celsius after an hour in real-world conditions, freezing a vial of water.
Laurie Winkless, IEEE Spectrum
Beats
A new study played Bach’s piano compositions to an audience of 49 sleeping newborns. Of the songs, 10 were the original melodies and four featured scrambled melodies and pitches. Monitoring the babies with electroencephalography, researchers were able to detect when the babies’ brainwaves showed signs of surprise. They found that the newborns exhibited signs of surprise when the rhythm changed unexpectedly. This shows that even two-day-old newborns can anticipate rhythmic patterns, meaning that you have absolutely no excuse to be clapping on the wrong beat at a concert; even babies know you’re off tempo.
Why So Sirius
SiriusXM has been great at signing a legion of successful podcasters to its portfolio, becoming the No. 1 network in terms of reach according to Edison Research. Podcast ad revenue for the company grew by 41 percent over the last year, which is solid. That said, the purpose of those podcast acquisitions — listeners hopefully being converted into actual subscribers for SiriusXM’s satellite radio platform and streaming app — sure looks to be a miss. In 2019, there were 34.9 million subscribers to SiriusXM. In 2025, that fell to 32.9 million, indicating that the push into podcasting has not staunched the move away from radio.
Game Time
A team of researchers monitored smartwatch data from 229 fans of the German Football Association’s Arminia Bielefeld team over a 12-week period, beginning 10 days before the 2025 DFB-Pokal Cup final and finishing 10 weeks after. Researchers found that the mean stress level of participants was 41 percent higher on the day of the cup final than it was on non-match days, with stress levels rising in the hours ahead of a match. The effect was more pronounced for in-person fans: the mean heart rate was 23 percent higher among fans watching in the Olympiastadion live compared to those watching on television or in public.
Deborah Kendall-Cheeseman, Scientific Reports
Quakes
Most earthquakes occur in the Earth’s crust, but a rare type occurs in the mantle. These continental mantle earthquakes don’t often cause much shaking or danger on the surface, but are still interesting. After all, it wasn’t even a sure thing that the mantle could support significant seismic activity in the first place, given its viscosity. The boundary between the crust and the mantle is the Moho, or the Mohorovičić discontinuity. Most earthquakes occur at a depth of six to 18 miles, but occasionally earthquakes have been found as much as 50 miles below the Moho, well into the mantle. A new analysis of 46,000 earthquakes since 1990 found a conservative estimate of 459 identified continental mantle earthquakes over the period.
Recovery
The asteroid impact that put a decisive end to the Cretaceous 66 million years ago wiped out 75 percent of species in the immediate aftermath and the subsequent winter. A new study published in Geology found that microscopic marine organisms rebounded incredibly quickly, all things considered. The study looked at evidence of planktic forams — tiny shelled organisms the size of a grain of sand that serve as a solid bellwether for the health of a marine ecosystem and the nutrients within it. The asteroid wiped out about 90 percent of the living planktic foram species. While previous studies suggested it took at least 30,000 years for the population to proliferate and 600,000 years for new forams to evolve, the new data found that the little organisms were back within 2,000 years of the impact.
Taylor Mitchell Brown, Science
This week in the Sunday Edition, I spoke to Barry Hertz, who wrote Welcome to the Family: The Explosive Story Behind Fast & Furious, the Blockbusters that Supercharged the World. I am on record as a big fan of the Fast and Furious franchise, I find it fascinating and one of the most interesting ongoing works in studio blockbuster narrative filmmaking, and I was super excited for this book.
Numlock Sunday: Barry Hertz on Welcome To The Family
We spoke about how these movies changed the industry, the behind-the-scenes fiascos that defined their production, and how these things actually got made.
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Anyone studying earth's mantle and hoping to make money off of that studying has a rocky future.
(Thank you, I'll be here all week, don't forget to tip your waiters and busboys).