The Centre for the Universe hopes to usher in a new era of astrophysics.

Our understanding of the universe we live in is not complete. But it may soon see another revolution. The gaps in our knowledge are clearly defined. The technology is ready to be used to its full potential. Maybe all that we need is a capable team of researchers to break the mystery open and quite possibly change astrophysics and cosmology completely.

That dream team of skilled scientists has stepped up to tackle some of the universe’s deepest questions. The “Centre for the Universe” project based out of Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, will study a range of concepts in physics and astronomy including dark matter, dark energy, black holes, and the Big Bang.

The team of scientists announced their project on November 20. The Centre for the Universe, led by Dr. Neil Turok, will utilize data from the most advanced telescopes, as well as propose and exploit completely new techniques to study the universe. 

With the guidance of these new experiments and by creating an environment in which better theories can be conjured, Turok aims to improve upon existing explanations of the cosmos. 

Some current theories of the universe are becoming less plausible and are likely in need of a major shakeup. “What’s exciting to me is that the observations are pointing to some very simple phenomena, which are nevertheless profoundly paradoxical within our current conceptual frameworks,” Turok said.


Brains and Brawn

It’s not just the collaboration of skilled researchers and cutting-edge technology that make this project rather awe-inspiring. The technology that the Centre for the Universe will use to probe the mysteries of the universe is incredible in two ways.


First, the hardware is vastly more powerful than any equipment used in history. The Centre for the Universe will be working with upcoming technologies like the Hydrogen Intensity and Real-Time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX) and Square Kilometer Array telescopes, both of which provide a wider range and higher resolution of data analysis than previous instruments. 

HIRAX will feature about one thousand dishes that will look farther back in time than we have yet been able to, allowing us to analyze data from a few short billion years after the Big Bang. The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) boasts an incredibly large volume, covering vast areas of deserts in Africa and Australia, equipped with one of the most powerful computing systems ever designed.

 SKA’s size and raw power allow researchers to precisely measure tiny details that could make all the difference.

Similarly, the software is quite unique. The Centre is also working with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), which features software written from scratch, by cosmologists and for cosmologists.

 One of the most powerful supercomputers in Canada, which is run out of ordinary shipping containers with simple equipment developed by the cell phone industry, uses the software to survey radio signals one hundred times faster than any current or planned instrument.

 The software is capable of processing 13 terabits per second, comparable to the mobile data rate of every cell phone on Earth combined. Using incredibly simple and low-cost technology combined with revolutionarily powerful, specifically tailored software has set up researchers for groundbreaking discoveries.

The Dream Team

Neil Turok is among the world’s leading cosmologists with a body of work that cannot be listed with brevity. Some of his most notable work includes describing the birth of inflationary universes, conducted in part with Stephen Hawking, which later helped spark the idea of multiverses.

 Most recently, he has mathematically disproved a popular conjecture put forth by Hawking and others for how an inflationary universe might appear from nothing.

His current work focuses heavily on analyzing the physics of the very early universe, and how it can be studied through observations. 

Turok’s predictions about the correlation between the polarization and temperature of the cosmic background radiation have recently been confirmed, which has gotten us one step closer to understanding the birth of the universe.

Turok has assembled a team of high-powered researchers to work with him. There are already over 20 committed scientists with plans to expand. 

The Centre consists of professors at Perimeter Institute and nearby universities, and has just announced three new research fellowship positions named, with permission, in honor of Stephen Hawking, James Peebles, and Yakov Zel’dovich.

Among this team’s members are theoretical astrophysicist Ue-Li Pen and Perimeter faculty members William East and Kendrick Smith, the “top data analyst of cosmology worldwide,” according to Turok.

Pen, who is the Director of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, is one of the founders of CHIME. He works primarily with pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs), the latter of which is a bit of a mystery.


 FRBs are very quick but powerful spikes of radio waves that generally don’t repeat, which makes them hard to detect and even harder to determine what causes them. Pen aims to resolve some of these issues.

“I am in the camp of people who think these two phenomena [pulsars and FRBs] are related,” Pen said. “Fast radio bursts are distant flares that allow us to probe a million times more distant than pulsars. Pulsars have resulted in two Nobel prizes, so surely this new phenomenon has a lot of potential.”


William East joined Perimeter Institute just over a year ago on a fellowship similar to those just announced, but has recently been promoted to a faculty member. His research focuses on extreme gravity systems like black holes and neutron stars. The recent craze in this area of research has been on gravitational waves, but East wants to take it a step further.

“The ultimate goal is to completely understand dynamical space-time,” East said. “I think in the next few years a lot of this work is going to be guided by the gravitational wave observations.”

Cosmology data analyst Kendrick Smith brings yet another interesting element to the team. With a Ph.D. in both physics and mathematics, he provides an incredibly powerful and unique combination of expertise to the project.


 His research focuses on studying the cosmic microwave background left behind by the Big Bang, and he has also recently joined the CHIME and HIRAX projects. His expertise in data analysis is allowing the Centre for the Universe to make important contributions in interpreting the information gathered by the CHIME experiment.


 The software he will be using is expected to make a major leap in our knowledge of fast radio bursts by detecting many more of these events.

“Only 25 FRBs have been found since their initial discovery in 2007, but CHIME is so powerful that it should find around 10 per day!  We hope that this huge increase in statistics will solve the mystery of what causes fast radio bursts,” Smith said.

Solving The Universe’s Deepest Mysteries

When asked what he would personally like to see accomplished through the Centre for the Universe, Turok did not miss a beat.

“I want to understand the Big Bang,” he said.

The beginning of the universe involved the laws of physics taken to their absolute extreme. Physicists know that both gravity and quantum mechanics were involved, but these two theories famously disagree with each other. 

This is a fairly major problem in theoretical physics, which is exciting to researchers. Advancements have been made in both theories since their conception, and Turok believes it is time for a new comprehensive theory to marry the two.

“What’s most exciting to me is that this new way of studying gravity in combination with quantum mechanics is pointing us to new and better ways to describing the Big Bang itself,” he said. “My sense is that the whole field is ready for major advances.”

The Centre for the Universe expects to work with CHIME, HIRAX, SKA and other telescopes to study gaps in our knowledge of dark energy and dark matter as well.

“These phenomena are probably clues toward new laws of physics, but we don't yet understand them in enough detail to elucidate their fundamental nature,” Smith said. “There are many fronts where we can hope to make progress: new experiments to take more precise measurements, new statistical and computing techniques, and new insight from theoretical physics.”

Black hole enthusiasts can expect to hear from the Centre for the Universe in May 2018 following a conference on “black hole superradiance.” Theoretical calculations predict that through this effect, we might be able to find a completely new particle around the horizons of black holes called axions.

 One of the pioneers of this approach is another young member of Perimeter’s faculty, Asimina Arvanitaki. She is a physicist renowned for her creative style of dreaming up novel experiments, opening the door to new ways of detecting previously invisible types of dark matter particles.

Interesting work has already begun at the Centre for the Universe, and we’ll see a great deal more as new technologies become available. The magnitude of potential is truly astonishing, and spirits are high for the hope of ushering in a new era of astrophysics.

“People have said quite recently that anything doable has basically been done already, and that there’s nothing much else we’ll ever understand. We are excited about the prospects of proving them to be so, so very wrong,” Turok said.

The first precise measurements of a black hole’s magnetic field find it lacking the power to launch material at near-light speed.

Black holes are known for their extreme behavior — in particular, the high-speed jets of matter they launch into space. These jets have long fascinated astronomers, who believe they are associated with the black hole’s magnetic field. But new measurements of the magnetic field around a black hole have found that it’s surprisingly weak — which means astronomers may need to rethink the mechanism behind the jets. 

The measurements were taken by a team of astronomers from the University of Florida (UF) with the Canarias InfraRed Camera Experiment (CIRCE) on the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), a 10.4-meter telescope in the Canary Islands and the current record-holder as the world’s largest single-aperture telescope. 

Using CIRCE, an infrared camera built by UF for the massive GTC, they observed jet activity from V404 Cygni, a nine-solar-mass black hole about 8,000 light-years away, during a burst in jet activity in 2015 that lasted just a few weeks.

 Their results, published in Science earlier this month, are the first precision measurements of a black hole’s magnetic field ever taken — and they show that V404 Cygni has a magnetic field about 400 times weaker than expected. 

That poses a challenge for the theories currently used to explain the jets as a result of interactions between the black hole’s magnetic field and matter in its accretion disk — the swirling disk of gas and dust created as matter is trapped by the black hole’s gravity and falls inward.

 This disk lies outside the event horizon, rendering it visible to astronomers and allowing them to spot the black hole via its light. “Our surprisingly low measurements will force new constraints on theoretical models that previously focused on strong magnetic fields accelerating and directing the jet flows,” said UF professor and study co-author Stephen Eikenberry in a press release. “We weren't expecting this, so it changes much of what we thought we knew.”

But this challenge is a welcome one, as it will finally help astronomers begin to unravel the poorly understood magnetic fields around these exotic objects, even if they turn out too weak to launch jets and other activity. “This discovery puts us one step closer to understanding how the universe works,” added lead author Yigit Dalilar. 

A closer look

V404 Cygni is classified as a microquasar, or a stellar-mass black hole that behaves similarly to the bright, monster-sized supermassive black holes that reside in the centers of galaxies. Quasars are the brightest objects in the universe, and they arise from the radiation emitted by an accretion disk surrounding a black hole weighing millions of times the mass of our Sun. These objects launch jets many light-years long, but because they are so big, changes in the jets and disk often occur over periods of months or more.


Microquasars are scaled-down versions of quasars — and that scaling applies to timescales as well. While microquasars are dimmer and have much smaller disks and jets, they also show changes over much shorter periods of time: weeks, days, or even hours. Studying Milky Way microquasars like V404 Cyngi allows astronomers to make observations they can then extrapolate to the much larger, more distant quasars.

The V404 Cygni system, located in the constellation Cygnus, has undergone bursts of activity before. Previous outbursts occurred in 1956 and possibly 1979, as well as 1989 — its last outburst until 2015. V404 Cygni’s disk comes from its nearby K-giant companion star; the black hole and its 0.7-solar-mass companion orbit each other closely, with a period of just under 6.5 days. 

In addition to capturing the black hole’s 2015 activity in infrared light, astronomers also watched V404 Cygni in X-ray, optical, and radio wavelengths. Studying its outbursts in so many wavelengths will further help astronomers to piece together a complete picture of this black hole, and ultimately reveal the secrets of its big brothers inside quasars as well.

Tabby’s Star — the informal name for the star KIC 8462852 — has been popping up in astronomical news for quite some time now. This famously and mysteriously dimming star has been the subject of extensive observations and extreme speculation, as astronomers sought to determine just why it undergoes random periods of dimming and brightening without a clear cause. 

And speculate astronomers did, considering mechanisms for the brightness variations that ranged from transiting planets to an “alien megastructure” encircling and harnessing power from the star. Now, following the collection of data funded by a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $100,000 from more than 1,700 contributors, the most likely explanation has been confirmed … and it’s not aliens. 

Instead, the solution is much more mundane: “Dust is most likely the reason why the star’s light appears to dim and brighten,” Tabetha Boyajian, an assistant professor in physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University and the star’s discoverer, said in a press release. The data, collected between 2015 and 2017 and showing four dips in brightness of 1-2.5 percent, is available in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

Though the explanation of circumstellar dust seems likely, it was nonetheless elusive until the most recent data was considered. The problem is, dust should be bright at some wavelengths (infrared) and dim at others (visible), and whatever is around Tabby’s Star didn’t show the expected infrared excess. 

How do you rule out an alien megastructure, though? 

Catching those dips as they occurred was the key to unlocking this star’s mystery. “We were hoping that once we finally caught a dip happening in real time we could see if the dips were the same depth at all wavelengths.

 If they were nearly the same, this would suggest that the cause was something opaque, like an orbiting disk, planet, or star, or even large structures in space,” said Jason Wright of Penn State, one of more than 200 researchers associated with the data-collection campaign. 

After studying the four dips — named Elsie, Celeste, Scara Brae, and Angkor by crowdfunding supporters — the researchers found that the dimming was much more pronounced at some wavelengths, and less intense at others. That’s the opposite of what’s expected from something solid: 

“The new data shows that different colors of light are being blocked at different intensities. Therefore, whatever is passing between us and the star is not opaque, as would be expected from a planet or alien megastructure,” said Boyajian.

The wild speculation behind Tabby’s Star may be coming to an end, but the campaign that led to it signals the beginning of something new in the field of astronomy.

 Rather than isolated, small observing projects performed by professional astronomers, citizen scientists and globe-spanning data collection campaigns are now playing a bigger and more central role in astronomy than ever before. The star itself was identified from Kepler data via the citizen science project Planet Hunters, which is still active. 

Boyajian emphasized the importance of citizen science in the star’s discovery and study. “If it wasn't for people with an unbiased look on our universe, this unusual star would have been overlooked,” she said, adding that “… without the public support for this dedicated observing run, we would not have this large amount of data.”

What’s the next chapter in the story of Tabby’s Star? While astronomers have ruled out aliens and highlighted the case for circumstellar dust as the cause of the star’s mysterious dimming, it’s now time to narrow down the type and cause of that dust.

 Boyajian believes that source could be exocomets, the signature of which have been successfully spotted around other stars, but it’s not the only explanation. 

Still others believe that maybe nothing is actually blocking the star at all, and it just brightens and dims on its own — a possibility not ruled out by this new data. While an alien civilization may not be lurking around this otherwise unremarkable star, KIC 8462852 will continue to retain some of its mystery a little longer.

What if I meet a really cute guy on Tinder, and want to hook up?

I'm going to be 22 next month and I've never been kissed. In the past, it worried me a little, but now that I'm interested in hooking up, I feel like that's something I need to do first. What if I meet a guy at a bar or party and he tries to kiss me? I'm terrified that he'll know I've never been kissed before. Or if I meet a really cute guy on Tinder, and want to hook up, wouldn't it be weird to have my first kiss and lose my virginity at the same time? Please help me.

Last thing first: Yes, it could be a little weird—by which I mean more stressful than necessary—to have your first kiss and lose your virginity on the same night. You’re going through some absolutely normal anxieties, so why not take it a bit slower? Run a marathon the day you take your first step? Perform surgery your first day of pre-med? I’m teasing—but, really, you’ve waited this long. What’s the rush?

So what if you’re 22? Give yourself some time. Process one thing at a time.

Fact: Every virgin feels like they’re the only virgin in the world. Here’s another fact: according to the CDC, almost 18 percent of men ages 20 to 24 haven’t had vaginal intercourse. So you aren’t alone. It may feel like everyone but you is getting naked on the first Tinder date, but it’s not true. Besides, you are always in control of your own timeline, no matter what anyone else is doing. This goes especially for dating: You don’t get into bed because someone expects you to. You sleep with someone because you want to and choose to.

Sure, you might meet a guy and feel totally comfortable and excited to have sex right away. But you can also absolutely meet a guy on Tinder, kiss him, and let that be it. You can meet a guy on Tinder and make out a little. Or get handsy. Fool around. Or not. Make it to second or third base—and stop there too. There's no right or wrong way to have sex as long as it feels right to both of you. You set your own limits. And if a guy just sees you as a potential conquest, then, ew. You don’t owe any guy anything. And any guy who can’t wait a while for sex is an ass who’s unworthy of your time, much less your body.

As for whether or not a guy will know that you’ve never been kissed? I think you are seriously overestimating the sexual intelligence of the average male who is just going to be so psyched to kiss you that they won’t really notice many other details. Most guys will be too worried about what you think of them. The easiest way to kill the nerves is to say something as simple as, “That was nice.” And he’ll be so busy appreciating your compliment and thinking he’s Casanova that he won’t even remember any awkwardness.

Bottom line: Take your time. Feel free to kiss nine or ninety-seven guys before you find the one you want to have sex with. Don’t rush it—and not because of some old-fashioned morality, or because that’s the statistical average for some other group of people. My advice: Don’t do anything if it scares you more than it turns you on. Find a partner you trust (if only for that one date). Don’t let anyone else pressure you to move faster than you want.

My boyfriend gets a lot of attention on social media because he posts about his celebrity friends, but he's never posted about me. I feel envious of friends who have boyfriends who post about them from time to time. I am also jealous of the attention that my boyfriend receives from other women who may not know or care that he has a girlfriend. Why should these women care when he never posts about me? It is weird to ask someone to post about you and my boyfriend ignores my hints. We go on vacations together, take photos together and attend events together but he has never once thought that he should associate himself with me on social media. If he attends an event with someone else, he will post about it. We’ve been together for about three years now and I play an active role in his life outside of social media but it stings when I open an app and see another post about someone else. 

 Your relationship sounds like every other relationship in the social media era—only on steroids. Any reader who’s ever felt a pang of jealousy on social media has got to feel where you’re coming from.

Lately, social media-inspired relationship anxiety has gone viral—for completely rational reasons. And it’s only reasonable to be feeling all the anxieties every other couple is having about this stuff, and perhaps feeling it all more acutely. You’re living the extreme version of living in public, dating an Insta influencer with famous friends. You know lots of people are watching him closely, including a lot of women, and they’re not seeing him with you, so who knows what assumptions they’re making, or how people see him in the world.

I could just say “shrug it off” because, really, who cares what other people think? But the way we present our selves to the public is important, social media is evolving fast, and there are hardly any rock-solid rules for any of this. And you do need to talk this out with your boyfriend.

It’s easy to see why you’d feel jealous or protective: If women follow him because he’s hot and charming and don’t know he’s got a girlfriend, why wouldn’t they flirt online or slide into his DMs? If he won’t publicly acknowledge your relationship when he’s exposing so much else of his life, why wouldn’t you worry about what that might say about how he sees you?

On that note, I think the core issue here is not that your boyfriend won’t post your photo on social media. The problem is that you’ve been dating this guy for three years and you still don’t know why he’s keeping your relationship so private. That’s not a communication problem. That’s a lack-of-communication problem.

How do you get some answers? I get the sense that you haven’t actually talked this out. You only say your boyfriend “ignores my hints.” So stop hinting. (Hints are like passive-aggressive wishes and just as likely to improve your life.) Then start talking. And start asking questions.

Start simple: Why doesn’t he post your photos? You can be empathetic but direct at the same time. Does he think his Insta-celebrity is partly based on the image of himself as a desirable single guy—and does he think he’d be less popular if he was hashtagged in a relationship? Does he think his young female friends might not like him as much if he was part of a couple? Does he just like to separate his public self from who he is in private? Or, and I hate to say it, is he keeping you a secret so he can flirt or fool around behind your back? On the other hand, maybe he knows you might get trolled or stalked if he made you a part of his social life—and he’s trying to respect and protect your privacy.

When something’s really bothering you, you’ve got to be clear. You can’t just hope that he’ll sense why you’re upset, or pick up the clues you’re dropping. I know it’s awkward, particularly because whatever he’s doing on Instagram is working and you surely respect that he’s worked hard to become so popular, but you’re not an anonymous follower or fan. You’re his girlfriend. Tell him what you wrote to me: That you’ve noticed he never posts about you and you don’t understand why. You deserve an explanation. If he’s a good boyfriend, he’ll care about how you feel and he’ll try to make you feel more comfortable. Just don’t hide your feelings. Or, to put this in social media language, you stop subtweeting your relationship, and move this conversation over to direct messages.

My boyfriend’s mother died recently and I have no idea how to console him. We haven't been together all that long but I really like him a lot. He told me to move on and forget about him since we won't be able to see each other for a long time or be able to talk, since he'll want space and stuff. I told him I wasn't going anywhere and when he needed to talk I'd be there. But I don't know what else to do.

It sounds like you’re being extremely empathetic and supportive at an extremely difficult moment. That’s great. But I also think you’ve got to listen when someone tells you what he wants.

When you’re dating someone who’s grieving, it’s natural to put your own feelings on a back-burner, and get lost in all the particulars of how your partner’s life is changing. It can be so easy to overthink a relationship in the middle of a crisis like this. So I’m going to keep my advice here short and simple.

As a general rule, I believe this: If someone says they need time to themself, believe them. If someone tells you they needs space, give it to them. You haven’t been dating long. He knows himself better than you. And you’ve said the exact right thing: You’re still there if he ever changes his mind.

Maybe he just needs some time to clear his head. But he has other people in his life who can be there for him—and he has told you that he does not want you around. Believe him. Yes, it's possible he genuinely cares for you and is pushing you away because he knows he can't put forth the effort needed for a relationship when he's grieving, but that's not what he said. He didn’t ask for a little time to himself. He asked you to move on. Please don’t sit around waiting. Grief-stricken or not, it still sounds like a break up, and the best thing you can do is be compassionate and treat it like one.

• South Korean tech giant LG Electronics said Thursday it will showcase three new "concept robots" at next week's consumer electronics show in Las Vegas
• A McKinsey report released in November said that up to 800 million workers could be affected globally by automation and the rise of artificial intelligence
• Tech companies are testing robots to carry out various tasks that could affect the services industry, which employs nearly 50 percent of the global workforce, according to the International Labour Organization

A Korean tech giant on Thursday announced new robots that take aim squarely at the jobs of many services industry workers around the globe.

There have long been predictions that advances in artificial intelligence and automation could end up eliminating millions of jobs over time, and tech companies have been testing robots to carry out a variety of tasks — from working in a pizza parlor to making deliverie  that could greatly affect the services industry in the future.

For its part, South Korean giant LG Electronics is the latest company that is planning to sell robots to solve tasks currently completed by humans.

On Thursday, LG said it will showcase three new "concept robots" at the global consumer electronics show, CES, in Las Vegas next week. Those robots are designed for commercial use at hotels, airports and supermarkets, according to the company. An LG spokesman later told  that the robots are still "concept" products and that they are "a long way from ready to go public."

The first one is a server robot that can deliver food and drinks to customers at hotels and airport lounges. It can essentially replace the work done by the waitstaff and be able to do it around the clock.

Second is a porter robot that can handle check-in and check-out services at hotels and carry luggage to rooms. The hotel industry is already experimenting with replacing humans with machines. For example, there are hotels in Japan that are staffed by robots.

Finally, LG's third new robot is made to work with customers at a supermarket, telling them the price of products and then guiding them through the aisles.

If popularized, such technologies would likely be bad news for many of those working in the services industry.

The International Labour Organization said as of May that nearly 50 percent of the global workforce is employed by the services sector. That includes trade, transportation, accommodation, food and other administrative and business services.

Meanwhile, a report released by McKinsey & Company last November suggested that by 2030, as many as 800 million workers globally could be replaced by robots. Even if automation adoption is slower, as many as 400 million people could still be affected, the report said.

This is not the first time that technological developments are displacing labor markets. In the manufacturing sector, for example, companies introduced conveyor belts and assembly lines at factories in the early 20th Century that brought down labor costs and temporarily put people out of work.

According to McKinsey, new technologies often create more jobs than they destroy, sometimes in areas that "cannot be envisioned at the outset." To do that, displaced workers need to acquire new skills.

But not everyone is convinced by the argument that automation will create enough new jobs — especially to service and program AI and robots. The former president of Google China told that robots are "clearly replacing people jobs. They're working 24 by 7. They are more efficient. They need some programming. But one programmer can program 10,000 robots."

• Atkins has picked actor Rob Lowe, who played a health-obsessed character in "Parks and Recreation," as its newest spokesman.
• The carb-cutting company is one of a number of companies, including Weight Watchers, to try to attract people who want to be healthier instead of simply shedding pounds.
• Weight Watchers spokeswoman Oprah Winfrey says on the company's website: "WW Freestyle is not a diet. It's a way of living."

Atkins wants you to think lifestyle, not diet, this new year.

The brand that popularized cutting carbs to lose weight wants to tap the growing number of Americans who say they're focused on improving their health instead of simply shedding pounds. These so-called lifestylers are people who may buy Atkins' shakes and bars but don't necessarily follow the plan, said chief marketing officer Scott Parker.

Atkins picked actor Rob Lowe, who portrayed health-obsessed Chris Traeger on NBC's "Parks and Recreation," as the face of its latest campaign. He's the first male to represent the brand and someone who has managed his weight with Atkins for years. The ads tout the program as one that's "not measured in pounds or ounces," a departure from traditional diet marketing.

Atkins, which was acquired last summer by Conyers Park Acquisition to form Simply Good Foods, has already been trying to revamp its image to attract more people. It has added a plan that allowed 40 grams of carbs per day, in addition to the classic 20-grams-per-day regimen. Last month, it introduced a 100-carb-per-day option in its latest book "Eat Right, Not Less."

"I think this is the final step, where we bring in Rob as a spokesman who hasn't had a weight issue or hasn't lost weight but will say it's absolutely critical to his energy level and vitality," Parker said. "This is the final bold step, and I think it makes sense with the steps we've taken in the last three years."

Atkins is one of several traditional diet brands that have tried to reinvent themselves. Weight Watchers introduced a program last month called WW FreeStyle that's more flexible than previous programs. Spokeswoman Oprah Winfrey says on the company's website: "WW Freestyle is not a diet. It's a way of living."

Wall Street has rewarded Weight Watchers' efforts. Shares skyrocketed 300 percent last year and received another boost Tuesday when DJ Khaled became its first "social media ambassador."

January has historically been a rough month for the company even though it's prime health season with people focused on their newly minted New Year's resolutions. Over the past 10 years, Weight Watchers has been one of the worst performers of health and fitness related stocks, seeing an average return of minus 10 percent in January and trading negative 60 percent of the time, according to Kensho.

Yet even as these brands pivot, they still haven't entirely dropped the word "diet" and their promises to help customers lose weight. They're still sprinkled into web materials, alongside more on-trend buzzwords.

Nutrisystem's South Beach Diet website advertises losing weight within weeks. It's packaging takes a slightly different approach, saying it's "designed for clean eating and optimal health."

Atkins has also redesigned its packaging on its bars and shakes to make the brand imagery "more contemporary," Parker said. Its efforts are all aligned with the goal of casting a wider net beyond dieters.