Welcome to Discover Daily , by Perplexity , your AI-curated digest of breakthroughs in tech , science and culture . I'm Sienna . Today we're exploring how water may have existed in the early universe , potentially changing our understanding of cosmic evolution . But first let's look at what else is happening .
Anthropic has reached a staggering $61.5 billion valuation after closing a $3.5 billion funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners . This represents more than a threefold increase from its previous $18 billion valuation just last year .
The funding round attracted a diverse group of high-profile investors , including Salesforce Ventures , cisco Investments , fidelity Management and Research Company and others . Amazon remains a major supporter , having previously committed $4 billion to the company .
Anthropic plans to use the funds for global expansion , particularly in Asia and Europe , and to deepen its research in areas like mechanistic interpretability and alignment . And to deepen its research in areas like mechanistic interpretability and alignment .
Anthropic's latest AI model , claude 3.7 Sonnet , introduces hybrid reasoning capabilities , allowing users to choose between quick responses and in-depth step-by-step thinking . The model excels in coding , instruction following and multimodal understanding .
Its predecessor , claude 3.5 Sonnet , offers advanced features like content recommendations and automatic summarization , while outperforming competitors in various benchmarks . Moving on to the world of cryptocurrency , the US Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a landmark statement declaring that meme coins generally do not constitute securities under federal law .
This marks a significant shift in cryptocurrency regulation . The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance defined meme coins as cryptoassets inspired by internet memes , characters , current events or trends , aimed at attracting enthusiastic online communities for purchasing and trading .
Key characteristics include being primarily purchased for entertainment and social interaction , having limited functionality and exhibiting significant market price volatility . As a result of this determination , individuals involved in offering or selling meme coins are not required to register their transactions under the Securities Act of 1933 .
But the SEC included several important caveats . The guidance does not apply to products labeled as meme coins that attempt to evade securities laws , and fraudulent conduct related to meme coins may still be subject to enforcement or prosecution under different laws .
In response , sec Commissioner Carolyn Crenshaw issued a dissenting statement expressing concerns about the regulatory implications of this decision .
She argued that meme coins could potentially meet the criteria for securities under the Howey Test , a legal framework established by the Supreme Court to determine if a transaction qualifies as an investment contract , and warned that the SEC's current stance could create a regulatory loophole . Now let's dive into our main story of the day .
A new study published in Nature Astronomy suggests that water may have first formed in the universe just 100 to 200 million years after the Big Bang . This challenges our understanding of cosmic evolution and suggests that conditions for life may have existed far earlier than previously thought .
And suggests that conditions for life may have existed far earlier than previously thought . According to the study , the first water in the universe likely formed during the explosions of the earliest most massive stars , known as Population III stars .
These cosmic events occurred when the universe was only about 5% of its current age , a time so distant that the light from those regions is significantly redshifted as it reaches us . These primordial supernovae were crucial nucleosynthetic engines forging heavy elements like oxygen that were essential for water formation .
While the overall amount of water produced was modest , it became highly concentrated in dense molecular cloud cores . This discovery has implications for the formation of habitable worlds and the potential for life much earlier in cosmic history .
Recent simulations suggest that planetesimals , the building blocks of terrestrial planets , could have formed around low-mass stars in the debris of the first cosmic explosions just 200 million years after the Big Bang .
These early planet-forming bodies orbited their stars at distances similar to Earth's orbit around the Sun , with temperatures that could potentially support liquid water , placing them in the Goldilocks zone , where life as we know it could potentially exist . They contained water mass fractions only a few times less than those found in our solar system today .
This indicates that habitable worlds may have emerged among the first generation of stars , even before the formation of the first galaxies .
The presence of water-rich environments so early in cosmic history expands our understanding of when and where life could potentially have originated in the universe , pushing back the timeline for possible habitable conditions by billions of years .
The study employed advanced numerical simulations to model two types of primordial supernovae a core collapse supernova from a star 13 times the mass of the sun , and a pair instability supernova from a star 200 times the mass of the sun .
These simulations demonstrated that as supernova ejecta expanded and cooled , oxygen reacted with hydrogen to form water vapor in the growing debris halos . Scientists are now looking at developing methods to detect water signatures from the early universe , potentially using next-generation telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter Array or the Square Kilometer Array .
They're also exploring how early water formation influenced the chemical and structural development of the first galaxies and examining the potential for early habitable environments and their implications for the emergence of life in the universe . That's all for today's Discover Daily . Before we conclude , some news from Perplexity .
Our new deep research feature , launched earlier this month , now analyzes hundreds of sources in minutes . Think of it as deploying a personal research team through our web and mobile platforms . This cutting-edge tool combines autonomous reasoning with rapid processing to deliver exhaustive reports on specialized topics .
Deep research excels at expert-level tasks across various domains , from finance and marketing to product research , and is available on our desktop and mobile apps . I'm Sienna and I'll see you tomorrow for more cutting-edge insights from the world of science and technology . Stay curious .