Category: 7. Science

On June 23, 2025, planetariums around the world, including the historic Prague Planetarium, joined together to unveil the first images captured by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

What is it?

Inside the domed theater of the planetarium, with its state-of-the-art LED display that makes images crisper than those of most other planetariums, audiences gathered beneath projections of the cosmos.

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province. The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency. (Photo by Zhang Bin/Xinhua)

HUAILAI, Hebei, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) — China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive landing and takeoff test for its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province.

The test, completed on Wednesday, represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and also marks the first time that China has carried out a test of extraterrestrial landing and takeoff capabilities of a manned spacecraft, the China Manned Space Agency said.

The lunar lander, named Lanyue, which means embracing the moon, consists of both a landing module and a propulsion module. It is a newly developed spacecraft designed to support crewed missions to and from the moon.

It will be used to transport two taikonauts between the lunar orbit and the lunar surface — and will carry a lunar rover and other scientific payloads. After landing, the lander will serve as a life-support center, an energy center and a data center, offering assistance and serving as a base for the taikonauts’ stay and activities on the moon’s surface.

Noting that the test was complex with a long cycle and technical challenges, the space agency said the success represents a breakthrough in research and development in terms of China’s manned lunar exploration program.

China aims to land its astronauts on the moon before 2030, with the purpose of conducting scientific exploration. ■

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency. (Photo by Han Qingce/Xinhua)

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency. (Photo by Zhang Bin/Xinhua)

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency. (Photo by Liu Yongjing/Xinhua)

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency. (Photo by Zhang Bin/Xinhua)

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency. (Photo by Liu Yongjing/Xinhua)

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency. (Photo by Zhang Bin/Xinhua)

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency. (Photo by Zhang Bin/Xinhua)

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency. (Photo by Zhang Bin/Xinhua)

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency. (Photo by Liu Yongjing/Xinhua)

A study by the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry has revealed a startling truth: earthquakes power deep underground life by generating chemical energy that sustains microbial ecosystems in Earth’s crust.

Scientists simulated faulting in quartz-rich rocks under lab conditions, both cracking and grinding, to study how seismic activity might affect buried environments. Their experiments showed that these tectonic movements split water molecules into hydrogen gas and hydrogen peroxide, both vital for microbial life.

The compounds produced during faulting kickstart iron redox cycling, a process that produces a steady electron flow used by subterranean microbes. In rock fissures filled with microbial communities, the energy yield was up to 100,000 times higher than traditional geologic energy sources like serpentinization or radiolysis.

Researchers describe this as a natural “underground power grid” where seismic motion is converted into chemical energy. Iron cycles between its ferrous and ferric states, creating a self-sustaining energy loop that fuels life without the need for sunlight.

The implications stretch far beyond Earth. If earthquakes power deep underground life here, similar tectonic or ice cracking activity on other planets or moons might fuel alien microbes in the same way. Places like Mars or Europa could host oxidant-rich zones where microbial life thrives without the need for light or surface warmth.

With this discovery, researchers now aim to identify other oxidant producing environments both on Earth and beyond. The presence of fault induced hydrogen and redox cycling could become a key indicator for life in extreme or unexplored habitats. This breakthrough challenges long held assumptions about energy availability in the deep biosphere and provides fresh leads for future space missions.

Appearing as a smooth disc in earlier images, this faint galaxy has now been revealed to contain at least 15 massive, star-forming clumps.

That’s far more than scientists thought possible for a galaxy at such an early time in the Universe’s history.

Our impact on space science

We played a key role in this international research.

Emeritus Professor Ian Smail from the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy in our top-rated Physics Department co-authored this study.

He contributed his experience of studying the formation of young galaxies using a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.

This technique uses massive galaxy clusters as natural magnifying glasses, making distant galaxies look up to 100 times brighter and larger.

Pioneered in part by our researchers, gravitational lensing has helped reveal details in galaxies that would otherwise be too fine and too faint to study.

Challenging established theories

The Cosmic Grapes galaxy was observed using data from two of the world’s most advanced observatories: the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The findings show that this galaxy not only rotates but contains far more structure than current theories predict.

It may represent a whole population of similar galaxies whose complexity is hidden by current telescope limits.

As a result, scientists may need to rethink how galaxies formed and evolved in the early Universe.

Image – Near-infrared images taken by JWST of the galaxy cluster “RXCJ0600-2007,” which causes a powerful gravitational lensing effect. Unprecedented high-resolution observations unveiled the structure of a distant galaxy in the early universe — composed of more than 15 compact star-forming clumps arranged like a “bunch of grapes” (zoom-in panel). The image represents the intrinsic view of the galaxy after correcting for gravitational lensing distortion. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Fujimoto et al.)

(Yicai) Aug. 7 — Chinese researchers have developed two advanced DNA editing tools that could lead to breakthroughs in crop breeding and new treatments for cancer and genetic diseases.

A team led by Gao Caixia at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences created the tools to enable large-scale chromosomal rearrangements in both plant and human cells, according to a recent paper published in Cell, a US-based journal.

The scientists successfully engineered a 315-kilobase DNA rearrangement that enabled rice plants to survive herbicide treatment without damage. They also achieved a much larger 12-megabase inversion at sites associated with human diseases.

While genome editing has made major strides in recent years, challenges remain in achieving precise, large-scale modifications in complex organisms. Existing tools often suffer from inefficiency, limited editing range, and the presence of “scars” — unwanted DNA fragments left behind after editing, the paper said.

To overcome these obstacles, the team enhanced the existing Cre-Lox system, a genetic engineering platform developed in the 1980s. They built a high-throughput engineering platform and introduced a novel approach by targeting asymmetric Lox sites instead of the traditional symmetrical sequences. This significantly improved editing precision and reduced the risk of unintended genetic changes, lowering DNA reversal by a factor of 10.

The researchers also used an artificial intelligence-informed model to create AiCErec, a recombinase engineering method that boosts the DNA recombination performance of the Cre recombinase enzyme by 3.5 times.

To address the issue of post-editing scars, the team developed Re-pegRNA, a cleanup technique using specially designed pegRNAs to remove residual sequences after DNA recombination.

This pioneering research not only addresses long-standing limitations of the Cre-Lox system but also paves the way for more precise genome engineering in a variety of organisms, the team concluded.

Editor: Emmi Laine

George E. Smith’s collaboration with Willard Boyle at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, led to the invention of the charge coupled device (CCD) in October 1969. Over an hour’s brainstorming session, in which they set out to design a memory device, the two engineers came up with an idea about how to move electrons between capacitors in a semiconductor. Owing to the dynamic and research-focused nature of Bell Labs, the idea was implemented in silicon just a week after it was conceived (W. S. Boyle and G. E. Smith Bell Syst. Tech. J. 49, 587–593; 1970), and proved ideally suited to capturing images. Boyle and Smith shared half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit — the CCD sensor”.

The invention was subsequently part of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and other space missions, transforming their ability to photograph astronomical objects, and was incorporated into many other applications including television cameras, medical radiography and digital consumer products. CCDs detect light using the photoelectric effect: the emission of electrons when light hits a material. They are sensitive to wavelengths between 300 and 1,000 nanometres. Absorbed photons liberate electrons, so they drift under the influence of whatever electric fields are present.

The challenge for CCD designers is to manipulate such fields to ensure that these photoelectrons are collected efficiently and stored without loss during exposure. Once the shutter closes and the read-out begins, this charge then needs to be converted to a voltage signal and digitized with as little extra noise as possible. The genius of the CCD design is that the same structures that the device uses to collect light also transfer the photo-generated charge to a measurement amplifier at the edge of the detector once the exposure has finished.

Will AI jeopardize science photography? There’s still time to create an ethical code of conduct

Smith was born in White Plains, New York, in 1930. After four years in the US Navy, he studied physics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia before gaining his PhD at the University of Chicago, Illinois, in 1959. He then moved to Bell Labs, and worked under Boyle, studying the electronic properties of semi-metals and low-temperature electronic technologies, before Boyle made him head of the new device concepts group.

At the time they invented CCDs, exploiting the earlier Bell Labs invention of metal–oxide–semiconductor capacitors, Smith was working on a videophone based on a silicon-diode-array camera tube. It was never developed because of the difficulties of manufacturing chips with one million perfect diodes, but his exploration of digital imaging helped the Bell team to realize the potential of CCDs for that purpose.

The expanding Universe — do ongoing tensions leave room for new physics?

By Catarina Demony

LONDON (Reuters) -New research shows that Britain’s King George IV, who ruled for a decade until 1830, personally profited from enslaved labour on Grenadian plantations, a finding that experts say heightens pressure on the monarchy to confront its historical links to slavery.

Independent scholar Desirée Baptiste uncovered a 1823-24 document at the National Archives in London revealing a 1,000-pound ($1,330.60) payment – equivalent to around 103,132 pounds today – from two Crown-owned estates in Grenada where hundreds of enslaved people laboured in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The funds were paid into King George IV’s private coffers, and contributed to his “lavish lifestyle”, said Baptiste, a researcher on colonialism and transatlantic slavery who has roots in Grenada and shared her findings with Reuters.

Baptiste’s research was verified by University of Manchester professor Edmond Smith and Dr. Nick Draper, founder of University College London’s Legacies of British Slave-ownership project.

Smith, who is supervising a PhD study on the royal family’s role in slavery, said as more evidence is uncovered the monarchy’s profits from slavery will become clearer. He said this payment “might well just be the tip of the iceberg”.

Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

King Charles has backed the study led by Smith, following a 2023 Guardian report revealing that in 1689 King William III received 1,000 pounds in shares in the Royal African Company, which trafficked thousands of enslaved Africans to the Americas.

“This evidence fits with long-term patterns of colonial exploitation by the British royal family, including repeated efforts to find novel income streams from colonies in the Caribbean,” Smith said.

King Charles expressed sorrow over slavery in a speech to Commonwealth leaders in 2022. But Baptiste said no British monarch has publicly acknowledged the Crown once owned and profited from enslaved people in the Caribbean.

Baptiste’s research, from her independent study ‘Slaves the Property of His Majesty: George IV and Grenada’, comes amid growing global momentum for reparations for slavery, especially across the Caribbean and Africa. However, some European leaders have been accused of being opposed to even opening the conversation.

($1 = 0.7515 pounds)

(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Nia Williams)

SpaceX will launch its 100th mission of the year today (Aug. 7), and you can watch the action live.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 of Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet satellites is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida today, during a 27-minute window that opens at 10:01 a.m. EDT (1401 GMT).

ESA’s Hera mission has captured images of asteroids (1126) Otero and (18805) Kellyday. Though distant and faint, the early observations serve as both a successful instrument test and a demonstration of agile spacecraft operations that could prove useful for planetary defence.

Hera is currently travelling through space on its way to a binary asteroid system. In 2022, NASA’s DART spacecraft impacted the asteroid Dimorphos, changing its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos. Now, Hera is returning to the system to help turn asteroid deflection into a reliable technique for planetary defence.

Hera enters the asteroid belt

Hera launched from Earth on 7 October 2024 and flew past Mars in March 2025, where it used the planet’s gravity to alter its trajectory and align it for arrival at the Didymos binary asteroid system in late 2026.

On 11 May 2025, as Hera cruised through the main asteroid belt beyond the orbit of Mars, the spacecraft turned its attention toward Otero, a rare A-type asteroid discovered almost 100 years ago.

From a distance of approximately three million kilometres, Otero appeared as a moving point of light – easily mistaken for a star if not for its subtle motion across the background sky.

Hera captured images of Otero using its Asteroid Framing Camera – a navigational and scientific instrument that will be used to guide the spacecraft during its approach to Didymos next year. But this wasn’t just a sightseeing exercise.

Giacomo Moresco, Flight Dynamics Engineer at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, explains that the goal of the observations was to test the camera in conditions similar to those expected during Hera’s first sighting of Didymos.

“Didymos will also be a tiny, faint point of light among the stars when it first appears,” says Moresco. “The spacecraft will need to identify Didymos as soon as possible and keep the asteroid in the centre of the camera’s field of view as it approaches.”

An operational challenge

“The Hera spacecraft is performing very well,” notes Moresco. “So, we can use the cruise phase to test procedures and carry out other activities that will help us prepare for arrival, such as attempting to observe nearby asteroids.”

To carry out the observations, ESOC’s Flight Dynamics and Mission Analysis teams first compared Hera’s trajectory against those of hundreds of thousands of known asteroids. They found that Otero, thanks to its well-known orbit and relative brightness, was the best candidate.

ESA’s Hera spacecraft observes asteroid (1126) Otero

It then took Hera’s Flight Dynamics and Flight Control teams just a couple of weeks to prepare and execute the necessary spacecraft slews and observation sequences – a feat of flexibility and technical execution for a deep space mission.

Hera tracked Otero for three hours, capturing one image every six minutes. By aligning the star fields across frames, the team was able to create a time-lapse that highlighted the asteroid’s relative motion.

A useful technique for planetary defence

While science was not the primary objective of these observations, the operational lessons are significant. The successful observations of Otero demonstrate how a spacecraft in deep space can rapidly execute a precise observation of a new object.

This capability could be very useful for planetary defence. Earlier this year, astronomers around the world pointed their most powerful telescopes at the newly discovered asteroid 2024 YR4, a near-Earth object that raised concern due to its small chance of Earth impact in 2032, which has since been ruled out.

If a spacecraft like Hera had been in a suitable location, a similar operation may have enabled an impromptu observation of the asteroid. This could have given astronomers more information about its orbit and helped them to assess the hazard that it posed to Earth.

More recently, in July, astronomers confirmed the discovery of just the third object of interstellar origin passing through our Solar System. The object, named 3I/ATLAS, will pass close to Mars later this year, and the scientific community is currently assessing whether any spacecraft at the Red Planet may be able to observe it at the time.

Asteroid (1126) Otero: image processing 

“By demonstrating that we can safely and efficiently command Hera to observe a new target on short notice, we are building confidence for the mission’s science phase, while also demonstrating a potential framework for rapid-response observations of interesting objects in deep space,” says Moresco.

Pushing the limits



Asteroid (18805) Kellyday

“On 19 July, we pointed Hera’s camera towards another asteroid, (18805) Kellyday.”

“Kellyday appeared roughly 40 times fainter than Otero,” says Moresco. “So, these observations really pushed the limits of Hera’s faint object detection and of our image processing capabilities. But nonetheless, we spotted it!”

“These results are very encouraging for the performance of the camera during the approach to Didymos.”

Hera’s journey through the asteroid belt is a far cry from those seen in science fiction: there is no dodging and weaving through a chaotic and dense field of debris.

But each faint, fleeting glimpse of a rocky world helps Hera prepare for arrival at Didymos and Dimorphos next year.

There, Hera will explore the aftermath of the DART spacecraft’s impact, turn the asteroids into two of the best studied in the Solar System, and help make asteroid deflection a well-understood and reliable method of planetary defence.