« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 16, 2025, 05:45:07 pm »
AL.com The key role Huntsville is playing in first manned Moon mission in 50 years Scott Turner Mon, December 15, 2025 at 3:41 PM EST 3 min read
Marshall Space Flight Center is playing a critical role in keeping the first manned moon mission in 50 years on target.
Roger Baird, associate director at Marshall, told those attending the Redstone Arsenal update last week at the Von Braun Center the launch window for Artemis II opens in less than eight weeks. Artemis II will ferry Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency around the moon.
“We’re very excited about the Artemis II target of February 2026,” Baird said.
Baird said Marshall has been involved with critical tests and reviews in keeping the lunar mission on schedule.
“Marshall leads the development, integration and operation of SLS (Space Launch System), ensuring this powerful system is ready for the challenges of crewed missions beyond earth orbit,” he said. “Artemis I, which was launched a year ago, was a successful test flight. The lessons we learned are getting us closer to returning astronauts to the moon. It’s been an exciting and busy year for SLS as we prepare for the upcoming Artemis II launch with our teams fully focused on ensuring a safe and successful flight for the crew.”
Marshall teams were involved in the stacking of solid rocket boosters and the assembly of the launch vehicle – named Integrity by the crew – this year.
“We powered up the vehicle, tested its systems and uploaded flight software for the onboard computers, ensuring every component is ready for launch,” Baird said. “Preparing the team is just as important as preparing the hardware.”
Baird said crews have been running full mission simulations for pre-launch, launch and ascent scenarios and managing challenging anomalies along the way.
“With that preparation on the way, we’re moving into the final steps before launch, performing the final integrated vehicle tests in the vehicle assembly building at KSC (Kennedy Space Center),” he said. “We’ll do a countdown demonstration test and roll out to Launch Pad 39B early next year for tanking tests and final launch preparations.”
A budget for NASA introduced by the [Sleezebag] Administration earlier this year left the Artemis program beyond the Artemis II mission in doubt. But Congress later restored funding for the program in the Big Beautiful Bill through Artemis V. The Artemis III mission would be the first to land astronauts on the moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972, with the U.S. in a race with China to return humans to the moon.
During confirmation hearings earlier this month, President Donald [Sleezebag]’s on-again nominee to lead the space agency, Jared Issacman, affirmed his commitment to the budget passed by Congress and the Artemis program. His confirmation is expected to be voted on by the end of the year.
“America will return to the moon before our great rival,” he said. “And we will establish an enduring presence to understand and realize the scientific, economic and nation security value on the lunar surface. Along the way we will pioneer the next giant leap in capabilities to extend America’s reach even further into space.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX won the crew lunar lander contract with Starship, but the mega rocket remains in flight testing. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is working on its Blue Moon landers. It is preparing to launch a prototype next year.
Isaacman said during the hearing that NASA will go with the first company capable of delivering U.S. astronauts to the lunar surface.
“The best thing for SpaceX is a Blue Origin right on their heels, and vice versa,” he said.
Baird said SLS remains on a steady production cadence for Artemis II, III, IV and V.
He also said Marshall will play a key role in the launch and landing of Artemis III and beyond.
“When the next astronauts land on the moon, they’ll do it in industry-led human landing systems managed at Marshall,” Baird said. Baird said Marshall is partnering with industry “to develop landers to safely transport crews to and from the lunar surface and prepare for future missions to Mars.”
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 16, 2025, 05:40:24 pm »
Slash Gear All About The World's Largest Aircraft Carrier (And How Many Planes It Can Hold) Joseph Chidi Mon, December 15, 2025 at 9:45 AM EST 4 min read
The USS Gerald R. Ford on the sea - Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
Since 1911, when Eugene Burton Ely, the renowned American aviator, became the first person to take off from and land on a naval vessel, the use of aircraft carriers in naval warfare has become much more organized and mainstream. Today, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), is 1,100 feet long, weighs over 100,000 tons, and can carry more than 75 aircraft at a time.
The ship carries a wide range of aircraft, including a squadron of F/A-18F Super Hornet two-seat fighters and three squadrons of F/A-18E Super Hornet single-seat fighters. While the Ford cannot currently operate the latest fifth-generation fighters, the F-35C, reports suggest that it will eventually be retrofitted to handle the technology and intelligence these modern aircraft demand.
The USS Gerald R. Ford is the first and only operating carrier of its kind, but other Ford-class carriers, the USS Enterprise and the USS John F. Kennedy, are being constructed at the time of this writing. The Ford's manufacturer, Huntington Ingalls, projects that the ship will save the US Navy up to $4 billion. The Ford-class carriers were created to support and ultimately replace the Nimitz carriers that will begin retiring in 2026.
Can't talk about the USS Gerald R. Ford without mentioning EMALS
The USS Gerald R. Ford beside the USS Harry S. Truman at sea - Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
Older aircraft carriers, such as those in the Nimitz Class, used steam-powered catapults for launching aircraft. The Nimitz's A4W Westinghouse steam-powered reactor, however, takes up a lot of space inside carriers, and that's just one of its demerits. The reactor design also requires more operation personnel, demands more maintenance, and still produces 25 percent less thermal power than the twin A1B reactors used in the USS Gerald R. Ford.
As such, the most important innovation in the USS Gerald R. Ford is the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS). EMALS uses stored energy from power sources in the ship and converts it to adjustable frequency through a power-conversion subsystem. This controlled, adjustable energy is then used to drive the Linear Induction System (LIM), which creates electromagnetic forces that act on a shuttle attached to the aircraft, launching it along the flight deck.
EMALS also makes for smoother takeoffs as it can modify the power from the ship's propulsion to a broader aircraft range, including lightweight unmanned vehicles and heavy strike fighters, making military operations more adaptable and flexible. Other advantages of this new technology are reduced costs from lower maintenance requirements and reduced manning, more reliable maintenance software, and better living conditions for sailors aboard Ford-class carriers.
What other revolutionary tech makes the Gerald R. Ford special?
Front view of the USS Gerald R. Ford in a dry dock - Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
Apart from EMALS, Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) is another new system in the first Ford-class carrier; it is used to catch and decelerate aircraft landing on the carrier deck. AAG uses electromechanical energy absorption, unlike the traditional hydraulic arresting gear used in Nimitz carriers (Mk-7 Mod 4 and Mk-7 Mod 3). This allows it to recover both heavy strike jets and light unmanned aircraft with smoother, more controlled deceleration, reducing stress on airframes. According to the Navy, AAG will "provide higher safety and reliability margins."
The Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE) system represents another important technological innovation. The carrier possesses 11 weapons elevators that use electromagnetic/motor-driven systems (instead of older hydraulic systems) to move bombs, missiles, and other ordnance from storage magazines to the flight deck. This allows more efficient weapons handling, as the Advanced Weapon Elevators significantly increase the ship's weapons-throughput capacity while reducing the number of sailors needed to move ammunition.
The Gerald R. Ford is powered by two AB1 nuclear reactors, which can serve the power needs of every household in, say, Syracuse, New York. This power reserve enables the carrier to use EMALS and other such power-intensive tech. Lastly, the Ford's Dual Band radar, a modern radar system comprising the S-Band Volume Surveillance Radar and the X-band AN/SPY-3 Aegis radar can detect hostile aircraft and respond with Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) for interception.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 16, 2025, 05:33:47 pm »
Live Science Fingerprint of ancient seaborne raider found on Scandinavia's oldest plank boat Dani Leviss Mon, December 15, 2025 at 3:30 PM EST 4 min read
The Hjortspring boat is now on display at the National Museum of Denmark. | Credit: Boel Bengtsson; CC BY 4.0
A sea raiders' boat that sank off the coast of Denmark 2,400 years ago has been hiding a fingerprint, as well as several chemical clues that are now helping researchers uncover just where these raiders came from millennia ago, a new study finds.
The vessel, known as the Hjortspring boat, is the oldest known wooden plank boat in Scandinavia, and is currently on display at the National Museum of Denmark. But its origins have long been an enigma.
"Where these sea raiders might have come from, and why they attacked the island of Als has long been a mystery," Mikael Fauvelle, an archaeologist at Lund University who analyzed the boat, said in a statement.
About 2,400 years ago, about 80 sea raiders on an armada including this boat and three others attacked the island of Als, off the coast of what is now Denmark. But the raiders lost. In giving thanks for their victory, the people on Als sank the boat as an offering along with the attackers' weapons and shields.
The sinking of the boat in the fourth century B.C. helped preserve it over the centuries, as water is a low-oxygen environment. After its discovery in the 1880s, the boat was later excavated from the bog of Hjortspring Mose in the 1920s (earning the ship its name).
"But at the time, we lacked the modern scientific methods that we needed to answer the mystery of where these attackers came from," Fauvelle said in a video about the research.
Recently, the researchers decided to take a fresh look at the boat. Before it was put on display in the museum, the boat had been chemically preserved. So, the team sifted through archives and old records in multiple museums in an effort to uncover parts of the boat that had been left untouched.
Finally, they found several fragments of caulking tar and rope, including a piece of tar that had the ancient fingerprint of someone who likely helped repair the vessel, a finding that Fauvelle called "really fantastic."
"This remarkable fingerprint provides a direct link to the ancient seafarers who used this boat," the researchers wrote in the study, which was published on Dec. 10 in the Journal PLOS One.
A caulking fragment (left) from Hjortspring boat that shows a fingerprint, and the high-resolution x-ray tomography scan (right) of the fingerprint region. | Credit: Photography by Erik Johansson; 3D model by Sahel Ganji; CC BY 4.0
To study the caulking tar, the researchers used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, techniques that examine the chemical makeup of samples. They found that the waterproof tar was a mixture of animal fat (likely tallow) and pine pitch, a sticky and stretchy substance also known as resin.
"This suggests the boat was built somewhere with abundant pine forests," Fauvelle said in the statement.
The new finding throws cold water on an old idea that the boat originated near modern-day Hamburg, Germany, as previous analyses had found that the vessel carried wood containers that looked like ceramics from the Hamburg region. It now appears that the boat may have come from much farther away in the Baltic Sea region, which has pine forests.
"Pine forests only existed in certain parts of northern Europe at this time," Fauvelle said in the video, adding "we suggest that they came from somewhere along the coast of the Baltic to the east of the modern day island of Rügen [in Germany]."
If this idea is accurate, it suggests that the attackers sailed a great distance over open sea for the raid, Fauvelle said.
Cordage, or rope fragments from the Hjortspring boat. | Credit: Mikael Fauvelle; CC BY 4.0
Researchers also used carbon dating to study rope from the boat. Analyzing the lime bast cordage, which comes from the inner bark of trees, the team confirmed the boat's previously determined timeline of between 400 B.C. and 101 B.C., which falls in the pre-Roman Iron Age of Scandinavia. The researchers carbon dated the boat to between 381 and 161 B.C., which is the first direct date from the boat's material. The researchers also worked with rope makers to create replicas of the cordage and study the rope-making process.
Using X-ray tomography to scan the caulking and cordage in sections, the team made digital 3D models, which enabled them to study the fingerprint. Analyzing the print's ridges didn't narrow down the sex or identity of who made the print, however.
Going forward, Fauvelle hopes to extract human DNA from the tar to learn more about the people who made and used the boat. Understanding faraway raids such as this one could help explain ancient maritime warfare and Iron Age trading systems.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 16, 2025, 05:27:12 pm »
Popular Mechanics Archaeologists Were Excavating an Ancient Site—And Discovered a Cube-Shaped Skull Darren Orf Tue, December 16, 2025 at 8:00 AM EST 3 min read
Archaeologists Discovered a Cube-Shaped Skull Paul Campbell - Getty Images
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
*Artificial cranial deformation is a uniquely human practice that dates back thousands of years, and has been practiced—at one time or another—in nearly every corner of the world.
*Typically, head binding of infants is intended to mold the skull into a cone-like shape, but a surprising discovery from the Balcón de Montezuma archaeological site in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas reveals a cube-shaped version of cranial deformation.
*Archaeologists investigated whether this individual migrated from a people group further south, but isotope studies of the skull’s teeth suggested the person lived their entire life in the region.
Nearly every corner of the world contains archaeological evidence of the ancient practice of artificial cranial deformation. The Huns of Central Asia are a well-known example, but so are the Hirota people of ancient Japan, the Maya of Central America, and even members of the peasant class in Toulouse, France, around the end of the 19th century. Today, some cultures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Vanuatu in the South Pacific still practice the tradition.
Most of these examples—both historical and contemporary—form pointed skulls by binding an infant’s head while the skull bones fuse (typically up until the age of two). It’s not incredibly common to see a cube-shaped skull, but the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) recently reported one such discovery in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas near the Balcón de Montezuma—an archaeological site occupied by various ethnic groups between 650 B.C.E and 1200 C.E.
One of these communities, around the year 400 C.E., contained roughly 90 houses and a variety of artifacts. As the archaeologists sifted through these finds, they discovered what appeared to be a parallelepiped, or cube-shaped, skull. Artificial skull deformation was a common practice among the Maya, but hasn’t been documented in this particular site.
“Not only was intentional cranial deformation identified for the first time for this type of site, but also a variant with respect to the models recognized in Mesoamerica, not reported, until now, in the area,” biological anthropologist Jesús Ernesto Velasco González said in a translated press statement. Velasco González noted that similar deformations occurred at the El Zapotal archaeological site in Veracruz, located further south along the Gulf of Mexico, so scientists tried to piece together potential migration leaks. However, those didn’t quite pan out.
“Stable oxygen isotope studies in collagen and bioapatite samples from bone and teeth, a technique used to infer the geographic origin of the second individual's skeletal remains, indicate that he was born, lived, and died in this part of the mountains,” Velasco González said in a press statement. “Therefore, the results rule out a direct mobility relationship with the groups of El Zapotal or those further south.”
The reasons why the people of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica—or any people, for that matter—practiced skull formation are almost as varied as the people groups themselves. Sometimes it was a marker of social hierarchy, sometimes it was a religious rite, and sometimes it was just for aesthetics. Although the health effects are debated, it’s largely believed that this practice doesn’t decrease the size of the skull, and as such, health impacts are mostly negligible (though some research has asserted that the practice could impact cognitive or memory function).
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 16, 2025, 04:49:21 pm »
Nautilus How Christianity Redrew Ancient Nubian Tattoos Molly Glick Mon, December 15, 2025 at 3:02 PM EST 4 min read
Tattooing on individual M-046, a 17 to 21-y-old female from the Meroitic period. Credit: From Austin, A., et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025).
Over the past 5,000 years, tattoos have served as symbols of identity and life experiences, among other traditions—they’ve even been used to treat ailments including arthritis. Scientists have unearthed evidence of tattoos on human remains from more than 50 archeological sites around the world, from ancient Peru to China. These include locations in the Nile River Valley in northeastern Africa, which the Nubian people have called home for millennia.
Researchers have studied ancient Nubian tattoos since the 19th century, but more recent technologies that capture images in wavelengths invisible to the naked eye have illuminated intriguing new details from these markings. Now, researchers based in the United States and United Kingdom have harnessed these tools and traced how the rise of Christianity in the Nile River Valley influenced tattooing practices by the seventh century A.D.
The team surveyed 1,048 samples of human remains spanning 350 B.C. to 1400 A.D. from three sites located in the north of modern-day Sudan. At one site, known as Kulubnarti, Christian-era remains mostly from 650 to 1000 A.D. had “remarkable skin preservation” that the authors wrote “allows a more detailed determination of the significance and ubiquity of tattoo practices,” according to a paper published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Kulubnarti sat near what’s now the Egyptian border and served as a genetic and cultural melting pot.
ANCIENT INK: A reconstruction of markings found on the forehead of a 3-year-old female from the Kulubnarti site that date back to around 657 to 855 A.D. From Austin, A., et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025).
The researchers identified tattoos on remains from 27 individuals, the majority of whom were under 11 years old and from the Kulubnarti site. More than one in five people from this site had tattoos, which were primarily located on the forehead, cheeks, or temples, and incorporated patterns of dots and dashes that often formed diamonds or squares. They may have been formed with a single puncture from a knife, instead of needles, as was a common practice in the region during the pre-Christian period. During that time, dotted diamond patterns across people’s bodies and crisscrossed patterns on people’s hands appeared to be common in Nubian tattoo art.
The Kulubnarti remains revealed that, as Christianity arrived in the region, tattooing “focused on highly visible locations on the face and used tools, patterns, and techniques that could be employed quickly,” the authors noted. Because young Nubian children were the most common recipients of tattoos, it may have been tricky to keep them still and apply particularly intricate designs. These shifts could have transpired as early as the seventh century A.D. The Kulubnarti markings examined in the new paper may be the oldest recorded examples of the Christian tattoo traditions now practiced in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt—there, cross tattoos on the forehead often “mark Christians permanently as believers,” the authors wrote.
It’s also possible that the tattoos were used in medicinal contexts. Due to their positioning on the head and their prevalence among young children, among other factors, the authors suggested that they were used to treat headaches or high fevers—common symptoms of malaria, a condition that has been documented in that region for centuries and is currently most severe in children under 5 years old. Ethnographic research from the 20th century has also highlighted various medicinal applications of tattoos in North Africa.
The authors hope more researchers take a close look at ancient tattoos, which can be easy to miss without the right techniques—this team was the first to identify these markings on remains of people from Kulubnarti. Even more millennia-old markings may be hiding in dig sites and anthropological research collections, waiting to be discovered.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 16, 2025, 04:43:04 pm »
Futurism 3I/ATLAS Still Showing Strange Protrusion as It Approaches Earth Victor Tangermann Mon, December 15, 2025 at 3:11 PM EST 3 min read
Over a month after its perihelion, or closest pass of the Sun, observations still clearly show 3I/ATLAS' "anti-tail."
The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is expected to make its closest approach to Earth mere days from now, coming within just 167 million miles — a significant gulf, but a mere stone’s throw on the cosmic scale.
It’s an exciting moment that’ll give astronomers an unprecedented chance to point both ground- and space-based telescopes at the unusual visitor. They’ve been following the object, which is broadly believed to be a comet, for months now as it screams through the solar system.
Ever since NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope first gazed upon the object on July 21, scientists noticed a strange protrusion jutting out of the object, a second tail that counterintuitively points directly at the Sun, not away from it like the characteristic tails of familiar solar system comets.
This “anti-tail” could be the result of “enhanced mass loss in the Sun-facing side,” as Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb told Futurism earlier this year, which causes larger fragments to be broken off. These larger fragments are less susceptible to being affected by the Sun’s radiation pressure, causing them to move more slowly and accumulate on the Sun-facing side.
Over a month after its perihelion, or closest pass of the Sun, observations still clearly show 3I/ATLAS’ anti-tail, as Loeb noted in a new update on his blog. A December 13 image taken by the Teerasak Thaluang telescope in Rayong, Thailand “shows a prominent anti-tail, uncommon for comets, pointing in the direction of the Sun,” he wrote.
Judging by the “thousands of images” taken since Hubble’s July observations, which show 3I/ATLAS’ anti-tail, Loeb argued that it’s “not a perspective effect,” but a “real physical jet.”
“Its nature is a mystery because gas and micrometer-dust particles are expected to be pushed away from the Sun by solar radiation pressure and the solar wind, creating the appearance of a tail — as routinely seen in solar-system comets,” Loeb wrote.
As he tends to do, Loeb argued that there’s still a chance we could be looking at an alien spacecraft instead of a natural comet. He posited that the anti-tail could be a “swarm of objects that lag behind 3I/ATLAS because of its non-gravitational acceleration away from the Sun,” as he detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper.
However, others aren’t convinced of such a possibility, arguing the object’s two tails are nothing out of the ordinary, even despite 3I/ATLAS’ interstellar origins.
“It’s ejecting dust particles towards the Sun, because the day side of the nucleus is the hot side,” UCLA astronomy professor and comet expert David Jewitt told Sky and Telescope last month.
“All these things are consistent with a comet nucleus of typical size or smaller, sublimating in sunlight and blowing out dust particles,” he added. “Nothing really shocking there.”
In a September 29 blog post, Pennsylvania State University astronomer Jason Wright also criticized Loeb’s unusual conclusion that 3I/ATLAS could be an alien spacecraft, pointing out several previous observations of “similar sunward enhancement” caused by large, ejected dust grains that “don’t get swept up by the solar wind on the Sun-facing side of a comet.”
European Space Agency scientists have also suggested the secondary, observed tail could be a “dust tail” made up of tiny solid particles, which are typical for solar system comets.
Even Loeb himself is leaving every possibility open, authoring two other papers suggesting the anti-tail is the result of the “scattering of sunlight by fragments of ice shed from the sun-facing side of 3I/ATLAS.”
“These tiny ice particles evaporate before they get pushed back significantly by the solar radiation pressure and so they never appear as a conventional cometary tail,” he wrote in his latest blog.
Nonetheless, Loeb argued that we should be ready to expect the unexpected.
“By recognizing anomalies, we can learn something new,” he concluded. “By ignoring them, we remain ignorant.”
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on December 16, 2025, 04:34:24 pm »
Scientific American RNA May Be Common throughout the Cosmos, New Study Suggests New experiments show how RNA might form not just on Earth but on other rocky planets, too Jonathan O'Callaghan Updated Mon, December 15, 2025 at 3:00 PM EST 5 min read
An artist’s impression of a single strand of ribonucleic acid, or RNA, a molecule thought to be an important precursor for life’s origins on Earth.
How life begins remains an unsolved question. One key component might be RNA, a molecular cousin of DNA found in every form of life on Earth, and now scientists say they have shown how it could have formed on our planet eons ago. But not everyone is convinced, and RNA is possibly just one of many molecules that could give rise to life on different worlds.
In a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, astrobiologist Yuta Hirakawa and his colleagues describe how the conditions on Earth about 4.3 billion years ago might have been perfect for life to arise. In their experiment, they showed that, following a large impact on Earth, RNA and subsequently life could have formed.
The steps the team has outlined suggest “that RNA is an intrinsic outcome of planets everywhere,” says Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (FfAME) in Florida, a co-author of the paper. And that, in turn, “would imply that there’s life everywhere.” Unlike proteins, which carry out most chemistry in modern cells, and DNA, which stores genetic information, RNA can do a bit of both—one reason it has long been considered a promising candidate for life’s first molecule.
Led by Hirakawa—who now works at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokosuka, Japan—the research team sought to recreate conditions that prevailed on our planet when RNA presumably first formed. They began by preparing test tubes containing an aqueous mix of materials similar to those thought to have been common on early Earth, which they then heated and allowed to dry. The mixtures included a chemical soup of ribose sugar, nucleobases, a reactive source of phosphorus and minerals of a compound called borate.
The heating and drying process would have been “ubiquitous on early Earth,” Hirakawa says. “So this reaction must have occurred.” The outcome of the experiment was the formation of RNA-like molecules, which, with minimal further chemical reactions, could become RNA proper. The team says this shows RNA could form naturally near the dawn of our planet.
Lee Cronin, an expert in prebiotic chemistry at the University of Glasgow, who was not involved in the paper, says he is uncertain about its findings because human input was required to acquire and mix the various components. “The fact they have reverse engineered the synthesis of RNA under the right conditions doesn’t say anything,” he says. “The justification of plausibility is false.”
One of the key findings in the paper is that the compound borate doesn’t inhibit the formation of life’s precursor materials, as previously thought, but actually aids the production of RNA. “Borate is very important to stabilize the sugars, which are unstable molecules,” Hirakawa says, noting as well that borate reactions can form ribose phosphate and dehydrated phosphate, two key molecules for RNA’s subsequent synthesis. “The biggest finding of my research is that borate facilitates these reactions.”
Researchers have also detected borate on Mars, raising the possibility that life could have arisen independently on the Red Planet, Benner says. “The early Earth atmosphere was not all that different from what Mars is now,” he says.
That said, the research team’s hypothesis still requires some heavy-handed external influence. Namely, a large object slamming into Earth would be the most obvious way to deliver RNA’s precursors. They calculate that something about the size of the asteroid Vesta, which is located in the asteroid belt, should have sufficed. This impactor would have been separate from and much smaller than the Mars-sized object that is thought to have caused the formation of the moon by impacting Earth. The known physics of planet formation strongly suggest that midsize impacts like the one proposed in the new study were relatively common in Earth’s early epochs.
This means, Benner says, that it’s likely that other rocky planets also had impact events that could have led to similar conditions. “The argument is: the impact history is universal,” he says. “As a planet is accreting a little part of its orbit around a star, it’s going to clean up its area,” acquire RNA’s precursors and presumably cook up RNA. And if that scenario is true, he says, it “means life is everywhere, including in billions of other stars like the sun [in the Milky Way that] almost certainly have rocky planets.”
The most notable input from the putative large impact, the team says, would’ve been molecules necessary for converting ribose, a sugar, into ribose phosphate.
A recent analysis of samples of the asteroid Bennu, scooped up by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2020 and returned to Earth in 2023, also revealed the presence of ribose on that asteroid. The finding further suggests that ribose was present on the early Earth, says Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University, who led the ribose finding and was also a co-author of the new paper, because Bennu is indicative of the same sort of primordial material that would have initially formed our planet. “So Bennu-like meteorites should have provided building blocks of life to prebiotic Earth,” he says.
Cronin, however, says that Benner and the new study still relies on human input to produce RNA, even if it seems like it has been the result of a natural process. And even with all the right ingredients, the chances of actually producing RNA are exceedingly low without human input, he says, akin to drawing a royal flush in a poker game. “The mathematical likelihood of finding RNA elsewhere in the universe is basically zero,” Cronin concludes.
Instead, he says, many other molecules besides RNA could be ingredients of life on other worlds. “RNA is a super boring molecule,” he says. “There’s nothing special about it, and there are loads of alternatives that could do its job.”
The role of borate in the process, though, is “super interesting,” Cronin adds. The researchers’ “borate work is tremendous,” he says. “It shows how odd things can create molecules we didn’t think of.”
Some civilian workers got in among the research patients today and became so hysterical I felt compelled to have them nerve stapled. The consequence, of course, will be another public relations nightmare, but I was severely shaken by the extent of their revulsion towards a project so vital to our survival.
~CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Personal Diaries
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