« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 10, 2025, 07:48:38 pm »
NBC News Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS' journey through our solar system, in photos Denise Chow Tue, December 9, 2025 at 5:25 PM EST 5 min read
A comet streaking across a star field above the International Gemini Observatory near La Serena, Chile. (NoirLab via AP file)
A mysterious interstellar comet has been taking a tour of our solar system in recent months, garnering intense interest from astronomers and space enthusiasts alike.
Comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third object ever confirmed to have entered our cosmic neighborhood from elsewhere in the galaxy, and the rare visit has been documented by a host of satellites, space telescopes, orbiters and even rovers.
The most recent photos of 3I/ATLAS, released last week, come from a Jupiter-bound spacecraft operated by the European Space Agency and from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The new images add to a growing collection that has fostered intrigue around the interstellar object (though there is no evidence that the object is alien technology, as some have wondered).
The comet reached its closest point to the sun at the end of October and will fly by Earth on Dec. 19, staying at a safe distance of about 170 million miles away.
Here are some of the best and most interesting photos of the comet captured so far.
This animation shows the observations of comet 3I/ATLAS when it was discovered on July 1. (ATLAS / University of Hawaii / NASA)
Comet 3I/ATLAS was first detected in July by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Rio Hurtado, Chile. The NASA-funded survey telescope (made up of two telescopes in Hawaii, one in Chile and a fourth in South Africa) is designed to scan for asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth.
When it was first spotted, the comet was about 420 million miles away.
Until now, the only other two objects confirmed to have entered our solar system from elsewhere in the galaxy were the cigar-shaped Oumuamua in 2017 and comet 2I/Borisov in 2019.
NASA’s SPHEREx observed 3I/ATLAS from Aug. 7 to Aug. 15. (NASA / SPHEREx)
NASA’s SPHEREx observatory (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) trained its eyes on Comet 3I/ATLAS from Aug. 7 to Aug. 15, providing scientists with new details about the object’s size, physical properties and chemical composition.
At the time, the comet was about 290 million miles away from the sun. The SPHEREx observations revealed the comet’s coma, a hazy cloud of gas and dust akin to an atmosphere that surrounds its nucleus. Researchers determined that the coma contained an abundance of ice water and carbon dioxide, similar to the chemistry of comets formed in our solar system.
A comet streaking across a star field above the International Gemini Observatory near La Serena, Chile. (NoirLab via AP file)
In late August, the Gemini South telescope in Chile captured what were the most detailed images of the comet at the time. The photos, released in September, showed an extended coma of dust and gas around the icy nucleus.
Astronomers suggested that 3I/ATLAS was becoming more active as it approached the sun, judging by the object’s lengthy tail, which appeared more elongated in the telescope’s images compared to previous sightings.
The European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter image of 3I/ATLAS as it passed close to Mars. (The European Space Agency)
The European Space Agency released new images of the comet in October, which were taken by a spacecraft in orbit around Mars. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, jointly operated by ESA and Russia’s Federal Space Agency, observed the comet for about a week beginning on Oct. 1.
The photos show a fuzzy white dot — the center of the comet — moving against a dark and starry expanse. When the images were taken, 3I/ATLAS was roughly 18.6 million miles from the orbiter.
3I/ATLAS, circled in the center, as seen by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft. This image was made by stacking a series of images taken Sept. 16 as the comet was zooming toward Mars. (NASA / Goddard / SwRI / JHU-APL)
After weeks of delays because of the government shutdown, NASA released a trove of 3I/ATLAS photos taken by various spacecraft from late September through mid-October.
The comet mostly appeared as an illuminated dot, but some images were detailed enough to pick up its tail as a faint, elongated smudge.
Observations of 3I/ATLAS from Sept. 28 to Oct. 10 from the PUNCH satellites in low-Earth orbit, when the comet was 231 million to 235 million miles away. (NASA / Southwest Research Institute)
Among the NASA missions that observed the comet relatively up-close were the sun-watching PUNCH satellites, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, the Lucy space probe, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission and the Perseverance Rover on the surface of Mars.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reobserved 3I/ATLAS on Nov. 30 with its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. (NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA) / M.-T. Hui (SAO) / J. DePasquale (STScI))
Late last month, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope tracked 3I/ATLAS when it was approximately 178 million miles away from Earth. Hubble’s instruments recorded the moving comet as a luminous point while the background stars appeared as streaks of light. NASA released the images on Thursday and said it intends to gather more data on 3I/ATLAS in the coming months as the comet moves out of the solar system.
The European Space Agency released new photos of 3I/ATLAS the same day, adding to our understanding of the interstellar object’s appearance, composition and behavior. The agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice — a spacecraft en route to Jupiter to study the planet and three of its large moons — gathered the data shortly before the spacecraft’s closest approach to the comet on Nov. 4, when it flew within about 41 million miles.
The photos from Juice showed the glowing halo of the comet’s coma and revealed the possibility that it has two tails. The first, the comet’s “plasma tail,” is made up of ionized or electrically charged gas and can be seen extending toward the top of the frame. The second, the comet’s “dust tail,” is made up of gas, dust and other tiny solid particles; it stretches to the lower left of the frame.
The European Space Agency expects to retrieve additional data from Juice’s science instruments in February.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 10, 2025, 07:30:48 pm »
Live Science This bright star will soon die in a nuclear explosion — and could be visible in Earth's daytime skies Ivan Farkas Tue, December 9, 2025 at 5:13 PM EST 6 min read
The star system GK Persei, home of an infamous nova explosion, seen by the Chandra X-ray telescope. An even brighter nova is due to erupt from V Sagittae in the next century. | Credit: NASA Goddard
An incredibly luminous star system that has long baffled astronomers could soon light up the sky with the nuclear brilliance of thousands of suns, new research suggests. When that happens, the results may be visible from Earth with the naked eye — in day or night.
The star system, called V Sagittae, is composed of a white dwarf — the dense core of a dead, sun-like star — and a more-massive stellar companion, located about 10,000 light-years away, in the constellation Sagitta, the arrow. The voracious white dwarf is gorging on material from its companion "at a rate never seen before," the team said in a statement.
These two stars are locked in an extraterrestrial tango so tight that they orbit each other in just 12.3 hours, swinging gradually closer with each orbit, according to the statement. Now, researchers have confirmed that the doomed dance will eventually end with the two stars crashing together and producing a supernova so bright it will be visible during the day.
"The matter accumulating on the white dwarf is likely to produce a nova outburst in the coming years, during which V Sagittae would become visible with the naked eye," Pablo Rodríguez-Gil, a professor at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands in Spain and co-author of the study, said in a statement.
Understanding the beast
An illustration of a nova: an explosion that occurs when a white dwarf star siphons too much material from its larger stellar companion. | Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick, M. Zamani
These data were gathered over a 120-day observation period by the X-Shooter spectrograph at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, situated at an altitude of 8,600 feet (2,600 meters) atop Cerro Paranal in Chile's Atacama Desert.
Spectrographs like X-Shooter collect incoming light from celestial objects and then separate that light into its constituent wavelengths. This provides a spectrum that reveals the object's chemical composition, since each atom and molecule absorbs and reflects a certain wavelength of light. For perspective, think of how a prism splits white light into its constituent colors to produce a rainbow.
This spectral data helped the researchers re-analyze V Sagittae's characteristics. Previously, in a study from 1965, astronomers calculated that its two stars were 0.7 and 2.8 solar masses, though this is a controversial conclusion.
To constrain stellar sizes, this more recent study considered factors like orbital period to suggest that the entire system may be below 2.1 solar masses, with both the white dwarf and its companion each weighing in at around 1 solar mass.
Phil Charles, a professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of Southampton and co-author of the study, described the confusion surrounding this "very important system." The uncertainty stems from V Sagittae's complicated, constantly fluctuating light emissions, which are "more likely due to fast outflows" rather than the stars' orbital motions, making it hard to pin down their sizes.
"From our study we show that no one has yet been able to uniquely identify the orbital motion of each component, and hence we don't yet have a good measure of each star's mass." Charles told Live Science via email.
An orbiting nuke
The researchers also identified V Sagittae as a supersoft X-ray source (SSS), meaning it generates lower-energy X-rays compared with hard sources like active black holes and colliding neutron stars. Classical SSS are composed of an accreting white dwarf and a more massive star whose gas is overspilling and falling onto the white dwarf.
V Sagittae's prodigious gravitational appetite is causing a sustained thermonuclear reaction on the white dwarf's surface, turning it into an orbiting nuke and the brightest SSS in the galaxy, researchers said in a statement.
In fact, even during its fainter phases V Sagittae is 100 times brighter than other variable star systems. The speed of the infalling material in the white dwarf's accretion disk shifts dramatically and unpredictably, sometimes in just days, as it struggles to consume all the material it pilfers from its partner, the team said in a separate statement.
As a result, a significant amount of material has escaped and formed a ring, or halo, of gas that encircles both stars, composing a "circumbinary disk" with a radius that may span about two to four times the separation between the two stars.
A daytime supernova
V Saggitae's chaotic accretion and extreme brightness are signs of its imminent, violent death, which will be prefaced by an explosive appetizer, as it were, offering a promising scenario for hopeful stargazers: a nova explosion.
Novae occur when an accreting white dwarf engulfs too much material and then explosively ejects it from their surface. These stellar explosions do not destroy their white dwarfs but are nonetheless stunning, with the average nova shining hundreds of thousands of times as brightly as the sun. Since they do not destroy their white dwarfs, these novae can reoccur across thousands or millions of years.
Yet this spectacular sight will only be a prelude to the main event. When the stars spiral into each other and smash together, they'll produce a "supernova explosion so bright it'll be visible from Earth even in the daytime," adds Rodríguez-Gil.
This ultimately brilliant finale may occur as early as 2067, according to a 2020 study from Louisiana State University, which predicted V Saggitae's demise based on the decreasing orbital period of its stars. Charles concludes that if the "[observed] period decline continues then it must happen, but stellar evolution is hard to predict exactly, so that might easily change!"
So keep an eye tuned toward Sagitta for a nova and mark your calendars for the supernova that will spectacularly spell the end of one of our galaxy's most tantalizing star systems.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 10, 2025, 05:51:31 pm »
Popular Mechanics Animals Keep Evolving Into Crabs, Which Is Somewhat Disturbing Caroline Delbert Tue, December 9, 2025 at 2:42 PM EST 3 min read
Animals Keep Evolving Into Crabs, Which Is Weird Maarten Wouters - Getty Images
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
*Carcinization is the separate, five-time evolution of crabs.
*Parallel evolution isn’t unheard of by any means, but crabs have done it a lot.
*Their repeated similar evolution makes them interesting to scientists.
Current events may have us all feeling a little crabby, but this is extreme: People now feel fully betrayed by the long history of crabification (technically, “carcinization”) of different species over time. That means groups of crustaceans have evolved into crabs in five completely different contexts, giving rise to a meme that the long arc of history truly bends toward the crab.
BoingBoing shares a paper about carcinization, which sounds like something about prison at first blush. On second look, you’ll see it shares a root with carcinogen as well as cancer itself—both from the Greek root karkinos meaning crab. Borradaile coined the new word based on the established scientific usages.
So, how does carcinization happen? Well, that part is pretty simple. Animals that live in similar habitats face obstacles that can shuttle them all toward the same evolutionary advantages. Britannica cites the marsupials as a key example, where despite having one critical difference from their “placental” counterparts in other parts of the world, the marsupials often correspond very closely to these other animals.
Animals can evolve separately but end up evolving toward other species, too, or even spontaneously evolve the same characteristics in totally separate groups. Birds and bats can both fly using mechanical wings. Birds and mammals are both warmblooded, but both evolved from groups that were not.
That crabs (both “true” and ersatz) have so densely but separately evolved the same form is highly unusual, even in a world full of these examples of strong parallel and convergent evolution. “The fact that a crab-like habitus did not evolve solely in ‘true’ crabs but also several times independently in the Anomura makes this process ideal for evolutionary research,” the researchers explain.
Crabs are like Charles Darwin’s isolated Galapagos Islands groups, but they formed spontaneously instead of being evolutionarily fenced in.
It’s not just superficial shape that unifies the five evolved crab forms. The paper details neurological commonalities, shared circulatory systems, and more, while also detailing the organ and systems that differ in shape and size.
Moreover, the crab-shapedness of the groups can make it hard to trace what came about from interacting internal systems as opposed to, well, the crab shell:
“Some of the internal anatomical characters studied herein are structurally dependent on the external characters of a crab-like habitus. Since morphological coherence can also exist between internal anatomical structures, the coherence chains which can be traced back to the external characters of a crab-like habitus are relatively complex in some cases (indirect coherences).”
But, of course, hermit crabs don’t have a “habitus,” the biological term for a body shape or casing type that affects your health or biology context. And, the researchers say, majestic and extremely spiky king crabs evolved from hermit crabs. The crab wonders may never cease.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 10, 2025, 05:25:43 pm »
Scientific American NASA’s JWST Spots Most Ancient Supernova Ever Observed Astronomers have sighted the oldest known stellar explosion, dating back to when the universe was less than a billion years old Clara Moskowitz Updated Tue, December 9, 2025 at 1:00 PM EST 2 min read
The James Webb Space Telescope has observed the oldest known supernova—the explosive death of a star that lived when the universe was only 730 million years old.
The ancient blast occurred when the cosmos was just 5 percent of its current age, and the supernova’s light has been traveling through space ever since. Astronomers were surprised to find that this primeval explosion strongly resembles today’s supernovae, which occur when massive stars run out of fuel for the nuclear fusion reactions that power them and then collapse under their own gravity.
Scientists had suspected that the universe’s earliest supernovae might look different because they represent the deaths of some of the first stars. Compared with today’s stars, they formed in a smaller, denser cosmos and contained lighter elements—mainly hydrogen, helium and trace amounts of lithium. And they were more massive than modern stars.
Astronomers first spotted this primordial supernova in March, thanks to a 10-second-long flash of high-energy light known as a gamma-ray burst. Such a burst can be caused by a collision between a black hole and a dense object called a neutron star or—as in this case—by the death of a large star.
A telescope that scans for ephemeral events in space called the Space-Based Multi-Band Astronomical Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) first detected the flash on March 14. That detection quickly set off a chain of observations around the world, including by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which pinpointed the flash’s location on the sky, the Nordic Optical Telescope on the Canary Islands, which suggested it was very far away, and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, which determined its age.
Because the object was so ancient, its light has been stretched as space has expanded over time. As a result, the light from the initial supernova that caused the gamma-ray burst was expected to become brightest a few months after the burst was sighted. The James Webb Space Telescope saw it in July, confirming that the flash was caused by a supernova, which has been designated GRB 250314A. The powerful observatory was also able to spot the galaxy that hosted the exploded star, although it appeared only as a small red smudge.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 10, 2025, 04:32:44 pm »
Live Science Gray hair may have evolved as a protection against cancer, study hints Victoria Atkinson Tue, December 9, 2025 at 12:20 PM EST
Hair may turn gray, in part, because the body is actively lowering its risk of cancer, an animal study finds. | Credit: Penpak Ngamsathain/Getty Images
Graying hair could be a sign that the body is effectively protecting itself from cancer, a new study suggests.
Cancer-causing triggers, such as ultraviolet (UV) light or certain chemicals, activate a natural defensive pathway that leads to premature graying but also reduces the incidence of cancer, the research found.
The researchers behind the study tracked the fate of the stem cells responsible for producing the pigment that gives hair its color. In mouse experiments, they found that these cells responded to DNA damage either by ceasing to grow and divide — leading to gray hair — or by replicating uncontrollably to ultimately form a tumor.
The findings, reported in October in the journal Nature Cell Biology, underline the importance of these sorts of protective mechanisms that emerge with age as a defense against DNA damage and disease, the study authors say.
Graying hair as cancer defense
Healthy hair growth is dependent on a population of stem cells that constantly renews itself within the hair follicle. A tiny pocket within the follicle contains reserves of melanocyte stem cells — precursors to the cells that produce the melanin pigment that gives hair its color.
"Every hair cycle, these melanocyte stem cells will divide and produce some mature, differentiated cells," said Dot Bennett, a cell biologist at City St George's, University of London who was not involved in the study. "These migrate down to the bottom of the hair follicle and start making pigment to feed into the hair."
Graying occurs when these cells can no longer produce sufficient pigment to thoroughly color each strand.
"It's a sort of exhaustion called cell senescence," Bennett explained. "It's a limit to the total number of divisions that a cell can go through, and it seems to be an anti-cancer mechanism to prevent random genetic errors acquired over time propagating uncontrollably."
When the melanocyte stem cells reach this "stemness checkpoint," they cease to divide, meaning the follicle no longer has a source of pigment to color the hair. Ordinarily, this occurs with old age as the stem cells naturally reach this limit. However, Emi Nishimura, a professor of stem cell age-related medicine, and colleagues at the University of Tokyo were interested in how this same mechanism operates in response to DNA damage — a key trigger for cancer development.
In mouse studies, the team used a combination of techniques to track the progress of individual melanocyte stem cells through the hair cycle after exposing them to different harmful environmental conditions, including ionizing radiation and carcinogenic compounds. Intriguingly, they found that the type of damage influenced how the cell reacted.
Ionizing radiation caused the stem cells to differentiate and mature, and ultimately activated the biochemical pathway responsible for cell senescence. As a result, the melanocyte stem cell reserves were rapidly depleted over the hair cycle, thus halting the production of further mature pigment cells and leading to gray hair.
Meanwhile, by essentially switching off cell division, this senescence pathway prevented the mutated DNA from passing into a new generation of cells, thus lowering the likelihood of those cells forming cancerous tumors.
Exposure to chemical carcinogens — such as 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene (DMBA), a tumour initiator widely used in cancer research — appeared to bypass this protective mechanism. Instead of switching on senescence, it toggled on a competing cellular pathway.
This alternative chemical sequence blocked cell senescence in the team's mouse studies, enabling the hair follicles to retain their stem cell reserves and the ability to produce pigment, even after DNA damage. That meant that the hair retained its color, but in the long term, the unchecked replication of damaged DNA led to tumor formation and cancer, the team said in a statement.
These findings reveal that the same stem cell population can meet opposite fates depending on the type of stress they're exposed to, lead study author Nishimura said in the statement. "It reframes hair graying and melanoma [skin cancer] not as unrelated events, but as divergent outcomes of stem cell stress responses," Nishimura added.
The next step will be to translate this understanding into human hair follicles, to see whether these observations in mice carry over to people, Bennett said.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 10, 2025, 03:54:02 pm »
Reuters Chinese astronauts install debris protection aboard space station By Eduardo Baptista Tue, December 9, 2025 at 12:04 PM EST 2 min read
BEIJING, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Chinese astronauts have installed protection against "space junk" aboard the permanently inhabited station Tiangong, according to China's manned spaceflight authorities, a month after a docked vessel was damaged for the first time.
Early last month, a tiny piece of debris travelling at high velocity cracked the window of the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft's return capsule, right before the vessel was set to leave Tiangong carrying a trio of Chinese astronauts back to Earth.
The damage was deemed severe enough that China's space authorities made the unprecedented decision to delay the return and then send the crew back on the only other available vessel, the Shenzhou-21, which triggered the country's first emergency launch mission as the Shenzhou-21 crew was left without a flightworthy vessel for 11 days.
The entire saga, unprecedented for China's rapidly advancing space programme, highlighted the risks posed by space junk to countries aiming to explore, and eventually colonise, the reaches beyond Earth.
The disintegration of old, defunct satellites, mishaps with active ones and anti-satellite weapon tests can create vast fields of space debris that remain in orbit for years.
To prevent a repeat of last month's emergency, two members of the Shenzhou-21's three-person crew went on a spacewalk on Tuesday, installing the debris protection using Tiangong's robotic arm, according to a statement from the China Manned Space Engineering Office.
The astronauts also inspected and photographed the damaged window of the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft, which is still docked at Tiangong, waiting to be sent back uncrewed to a landing site in China after which it will be further examined.
The vessel's cracked window could be reinforced by the Shenzhou-21 crew on future spacewalks, according to CMSEO.
(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista;Editing by Alison Williams)
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 10, 2025, 03:41:11 pm »
USA TODAY NASA rover detects electric discharges like 'mini-sonic booms' on Mars Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY Tue, December 9, 2025 at 11:22 AM EST 4 min read
Three Martian dust devils can be seen near the rim of Jezero Crater in this short video made of images taken by a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover on Sept. 6, 2025.
One of NASA's robotic rovers on Mars has for the first time ever detected electrical sparks igniting within small dusty tornadoes whirling on the planet's surface.
While scientists have long theorized that the phenomenon is possible, they've never had proof.
Until now.
Perseverance, the six-wheeled vehicle that has been wandering the rugged terrain of Mars for years, managed to capture dozens of audio recordings of the discharges and their shockwaves within the mini-twisters. The shockwaves are not unlike what NASA referred to in a Dec. 3 blog post as "mini-sonic booms" – a reference to the brief, thunder-like noises that occur when a spacecraft, aircraft or space rocks travel faster than the speed of sound.
“We got some good ones where you can clearly hear the ‘snap’ sound of the spark,” Ralph Lorenz, a Perseverance scientist who co-authored a recent study on the phenomenon, said in a statement.
What's more, the discovery, published Nov. 26 in the journal Nature, "dramatically changes our understanding of Mars" ahead of future astronaut missions to the planet, NASA said in the blog post.
Want to learn more about Martian dust devils, or listen to a sampling of the audio of electrical sparks? Here's everything to know.
What causes Martian dust devils to form?
Dust devils, more officially known as convective vortices, are common features on the surface of Mars that have been regularly observed for decades.
These swirling features are formed by rising and rotating columns of warm air that pick up dust as they begin to spin. Because the Martian atmosphere is so thin, being caught in such a dust devil would feel like being hit by a gust of wind – albeit a dirty one, according to NASA.
Perseverance, which has imaged dusty whirlwinds many times since 2021, famously used its SuperCam microphone to record the first sounds of a Martian dust devil.
But just because dust devils are common doesn't make them easy to capture. Scientists can’t predict when they’ll appear, and when they do, they only last about 10 minutes, so Perseverance routinely monitors in all directions for them.
Mars rover detects electric sparks in mini-twisters
Decades before NASA's Perseverance rover even arrived on the red planet, scientists had suspected that swirling dust devils, similar in a sense to tornadoes, could generate enough friction to set off an electrical charge.
The phenomenon, called the triboelectric effect, is not unlike when someone walks on a carpet in socks and touches a metal doorknob to produce a spark, NASA explained.
“On Mars, the thin atmosphere makes the phenomenon far more likely, as the amount of charge required to generate sparks is much lower than what is required in Earth’s near-surface atmosphere,” Baptiste Chide, a member of the Perseverance science team and a planetary scientist at L’Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie in France, said in a statement.
But it wasn't until Perseverance spent years collecting audio of electrical discharges in dust devils that the phenomenon could actually be confirmed. Since 2021, the rover's SuperCam instrument has recorded the sounds of 55 distinct electrical events, 16 of which took place as dust devils passed directly overhead the robot.
The potential for electrical discharges means Mars' atmosphere can activate chemical reactions that destroy organic molecules on the planet's surface and alter the overall chemical makeup of the atmosphere. That means proof of the electrical discharges should help scientists better understand Mars' potential to be habitable while also helping NASA prepare for future human missions to the red planet, according to the agency.
Listen to the sounds of electrical discharges in Martian dust devils
What to know about NASA's Perseverance rover
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is seen in a "selfie" that it took over a rock nicknamed "Rochette", September 10, 2021
NASA's Perseverance rover, along with Curiosity, is one of the agency's two car-sized robots exploring the Martian surface for signs that the planet was once habitable.
Scientists believe the geology of Mars may hold valuable clues about past ancient life, and so the robotic vehicles, controlled remotely from Earth, have slowly navigated the rocky terrain to scoop up and collect intriguing samples. In fact, in September, NASA officials confirmed that one of the rovers’ finds contained a potential biosignature.
After launching in 2020, Perseverance made a 200-day, 300-million-mile journey to reach Mars' Jezero Crater in February 2021. At the end of 2024, after years in the trenches of Jezero, Perseverance summitted the steep Martian crater to begin the next leg of its journey exploring the rim.
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 10, 2025, 03:30:19 pm »
Space 1st human missions to Mars should hunt for signs of life, report says Mike Wall Tue, December 9, 2025 at 11:01 AM EST 3 min read
Illustration of astronauts exploring Mars. | Credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings
The first astronauts to set foot on Mars should hunt for signs of past or present Red Planet life.
That's the overarching conclusion of an in-depth report about human Mars exploration from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that came out today (Dec. 9).
The National Academies prepared the report for NASA, which wants to send astronauts to the Red Planet as soon as the mid-2030s. The document offers recommendations for how the agency can maximize the science gains of its planned crewed Mars campaign.
Those recommendations are extensive and detailed. For example, the report lays out 11 science objectives that such a campaign should pursue, with the search for signs of life (as well as indications of "indigenous prebiotic chemistry" and a broad assessment of habitability) at the top of the list.
The other 10 objectives, listed in order of descending priority, are:
Characterize Mars' water and carbon dioxide cycles
Map Martian geology in detail
Determine how the Martian environment affects the physical and psychological health of astronaut explorers
Figure out what starts and drives Martian dust storms
Determine the availability and accessibility of Martian resources that could "support permanent habitation"
Discover if exposure to the Martian environment affects DNA and reproduction
Learn about the population dynamics of microbes on Mars, and if microbial species from Earth could adversely affect astronauts' health and performance on the Red Planet
Determine how Martian dust affects astronauts and their hardware
Learn how the Martian environment affects a transplanted ecosystem of Earth microbes, plants and animals
Gain a better understanding of the Martian radiation environment and how it may affect crewmembers and their missions
"A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars" also proposes four possible three-mission campaigns, the top-ranked of which could achieve all 11 of the above objectives.
That campaign would send all three missions to "a low- to mid-latitude site with near-surface glacier ice and diverse geology," the report states. "The search for prebiotic chemistry and life would focus on near-surface niche environments, such as geologically recent transiently habitable zones, and/or ice, including layered ice."
Another possible campaign would target the deep subsurface, establishing a powerful drilling operation that could get 1.2 to 3 miles (2 to 5 kilometers) beneath the red dirt, where pockets of liquid water are thought to exist.
Both of those proposed campaigns would feature an initial 30-sol crewed surface mission, an uncrewed cargo delivery flight and then a 300-sol astronaut mission on the surface. (One sol, or Martian day, is slightly longer than an Earth day — about 24 hours and 40 minutes.) So would a third proposed campaign, though a fourth would launch three crewed 30-sol missions to three different sites on the Red Planet.
There is some commonality across all the proposed campaigns. For example, according to the report, no matter how NASA's crewed Mars plans take shape, the agency should aim to build a science lab on the Red Planet's surface, haul Mars samples home from every astronaut mission and set up a recurring "Mars Human-Agent Teaming Summit" to maximize and coordinate the efforts of robotic missions, astronauts and artificial intelligence.
In addition, the report notes, a concerted search for Mars life will be constrained by current "planetary protection" guidelines, which aim to minimize the chances that our exploration efforts contaminate other worlds with Earth microbes or bring alien life to our shores.
Therefore, the document states, "NASA should continue to collaborate on the evolution of planetary protection guidelines, with the goal of enabling human explorers to perform research in regions that could possibly support, or even harbor, life."
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 10, 2025, 03:04:54 pm »
AFP CERN upbeat as China halts particle accelerator mega-project Agnès PEDRERO Tue, December 9, 2025 at 1:25 AM EST 3 min read
CERN Director General Fabiola Gianotti speaks during an interview with AFP on the Future Particle Collider near Geneva (Elodie LE MAOU)
The chief of the CERN physics laboratory says China's decision to pause its major particle accelerator project presents an "opportunity" to ensure Europe's rival plan goes ahead.
Ten years ago, China announced its intention to build the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), which at 100 kilometres (62 miles) long would be the world's largest particle accelerator.
But Beijing recently put the project on ice, CERN's director-general Fabiola Gianotti told a small group of journalists at a recent briefing.
China's CEPC would be way bigger than CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) -- currently the world's largest, whizzing particles into each other at phenomenal speeds.
The 27-kilometre proton-smashing ring running about 100 metres (330 feet) below the border between France and Switzerland, has, among other things, been used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
Dubbed the God particle, its discovery in 2012 broadened science's understanding of how particles acquire mass.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research whose main offices also straddle the border near Geneva, seeks to unravel what the universe is made of and how it works.
The LHC is expected to have fully run its course by around 2040, and CERN is considering building a far larger collider to allow scientists to keep pushing the boundaries of knowledge.
- Search for dark matter -
The planned Future Circular Collider (FCC) would be a ring with a circumference of 91 km and an average depth of 200 metres.
Scientists believe that ordinary matter -- such as stars, gases, dust, planets and everything on them -- accounts for just five percent of the universe.
The FCC will try to reveal what makes up the other 95 percent of the energy and matter in the universe -- so-called dark matter and dark energy, which scientists have yet to observe directly.
The gigantic project, costing around $17 billion, has not yet received the green light from CERN's 25 member states.
But the CERN Council, its decision-making body, "issued a very positive opinion on November 7" regarding the feasibility study, which includes geological, territorial, technological, scientific, and financial aspects, announced Gianotti.
"If all goes well, the project could be approved in 2028," she added.
The FCC, which could become operational by the end of the 2040s, is considered excessive by its opponents, especially if China was doing similar research in a similar-sized ring at a cheaper price.
But China's halt gives CERN a clear run.
- Window of opportunity -
"The Chinese Academy of Sciences, which filters projects, has decided to give the green light to a smaller, lower-energy collider, rather than the larger CEPC, which is in direct competition with CERN," said Gianotti.
In China, Wang Yifang, head of the Institute of High Energy Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, confirmed to AFP that the CEPC was not included in the next five-year plan.
"We plan to submit CEPC for consideration again in 2030, unless FCC is officially approved before then, in which case we will seek to join FCC, and give up CEPC," he said.
For Gianotti, "this is an opportunity: firstly, because if the Chinese project had been approved, it would likely have started much sooner than the FCC."
"It's also interesting to know that, if the FCC is approved, the Chinese would abandon their project to come and work with us," added the Italian, whose five-year term finishes at the end of December.
Gianotti will be succeeded by British physicist Mark Thomson.
But China's decision has provided an argument for the Co-cernes collective, which brings together local opponents of the FCC who fear the effects of the massive digging project.
If a super collider was of "real scientific interest, China would undoubtedly not have abandoned it," it says.
And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?
~Sister Miriam Godwinson 'We must Dissent'
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