Category: 7. Science

The early Universe continues to spring surprises on astronomers. In a recent study of dim, distant objects, astronomers at the University of Missouri found at least 300 of them that look way too bright. That means they’re forming stars much earlier than expected, or something else is going on. Whatever it is could affect our understanding of events in the infant cosmos. The astronomers used two of JWST’s powerful infrared cameras: the Near-Infrared Camera and the Mid-Infrared Instrument. Both are specifically designed to detect light from the most distant places in space, which is key when studying the early Universe.

“These mysterious objects are candidate galaxies in the early Universe, meaning they could be very early galaxies,” said Haojing Yan, an astronomy professor in Missouri’s College of Arts and Science and co-author on the study. “If even a few of these objects turn out to be what we think they are, our discovery could challenge current ideas about how galaxies formed in the early Universe – the period when the first stars and galaxies began to take shape.”

Early, IR-bright objects found the Ultra-deep Survey (UDS) regions of the sky, featuring multi-wavelength data taken by both Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. JWST, in particular, is sensitive to infrared light from very dim, distant objects in the early Universe.

Seeing into the Past

The big exploration challenge with the youngest objects in the Universe is that astronomers can’t just check them out quickly through a telescope and say, “Aha!” and explain what they’ve found. It’s not easy to study this epoch of cosmic history, thanks to distance and dimness. To determine exactly what these objects were, Yan and his colleagues had to take a step-by-step approach. It takes multiple observations in various wavelengths of light to confirm just where and when these things existed in cosmic history.

In particular, the team used something called the “dropout technique” to study each of the 300 galaxies in their sample. That method depends on observations of the same objects in different wavelengths of light. For example, a high-redshift galaxy (that is, one that is extremely distant) may appear in redder wavelengths of light. However, it disappears in observations at bluer wavelengths, according to team member Bangzheng “Tom” Sun. “This phenomenon is indicative of the “Lyman Break,” a spectral feature caused by the absorption of ultraviolet light by neutral hydrogen,” he said. “As redshift increases, this signature shifts to redder wavelengths.”

This technique works because light from very distant objects travels across incredible distances. Say that a galaxy in the very early Universe emits a great deal of ultraviolet light (UV). That indicates it could be a prodigious star-forming region, since young stars are especially bright in the UV. Or, it could have a very active central black hole. But, as its light travels through space, it gets stretched by the expansion of the Universe. To us here on Earth, those dim, distant objects look reddish and they disappear entirely in the UV. For these Lyman-break galaxies, a dropout in blue light means that they’re quite far away.

Proving the Break

Once Lyman-break galaxies are identified, it’s up to astronomers to figure out their exact distances. Are they at very great distances? (That is, at high redshift?) That’s when astronomers have to dissect their light. “Ideally this would be done using spectroscopy, a technique that spreads light across different wavelengths to identify signatures that would allow an accurate redshift determination,” Yan said.

To really dig into an object’s characteristics, astronomers can also do what’s called “spectral energy distribution fitting.” That’s a plot of energy emitted by an object versus the frequency or wavelength and allows the team to make useful estimates of the redshifts of their galaxy candidates. It’s particularly useful in measuring infrared light from distant objects because it can help identify regions where stars are forming or where hot young stars are starting to heat up their environments.

Probing the Earliest Epochs of Galaxy Formation

The result gives Yan and the team a chance to study these early galaxies in more detail and confirm their ages and stellar masses. “Even if only a few of these objects are confirmed to be in the early Universe, they will force us to modify the existing theories of galaxy formation,” he said. If these objects turn out to be early, bright star-forming galaxies, that could well change astronomers’ estimates of when and how star and galaxy formation began in the earliest epochs of cosmic history. The current thinking is that the first galaxies began to take shape somewhere between 200 to 600 million years after the Big Bang. The first galactic structures merged, pushed along by dark matter. How and when that began is still not clear, which is why there’s a wide range in timing. Recent observations by JWST revealed many bright, massive galaxies existing very, very early in cosmic history.

If these early objects observed by the Missouri team existed then – or began forming earlier – that would help astronomers tighten up that 200- to 600-million year range of suspected galaxy formation onset and pin down the existence of hot, young starbirth regions in the earliest galaxies. “One of our objects is already confirmed by spectroscopy to be an early galaxy,” Sun said. “But this object alone is not enough. We will need to make additional confirmations to say for certain whether current theories are being challenged.”

For More Information

Early Galaxies — or Something Else? Scientists Uncover Mysterious Objects in the Universe

On The Very Bright Dropouts Selected Using the James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam Instrument

What can parabolic flights teach scientists and engineers about electrolyzers and how the latter can help advance human missions to the Moon and Mars? This is the goal of a recent grant awarded to the Mars Atmospheric Reactor for Synthesis of Consumables (MARS-C) project, which is sponsored by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). The $500,000 award for this research is part of NASA’s TechLeap Prize program with the goal of testing experimental electrolyzer technology that can be used for future missions.

Parabolic flights are frequently used by NASA, research agencies, and academic institutions to simulate short-term microgravity for astronauts and scientific experiments. The simulations are conducted when the aircraft performs a bell-shaped curve by flying upward, then straight, then pitching downward, resulting in approximately 20 seconds of weightlessness for all passengers and experiments. It is estimated that each mission conducts between 15-20 parabolas, enabling consistent data and personal experience in weightlessness. The purpose of parabolic flights is to conduct Earth-based research that can’t be conducted in outer space or could serve as a precursor to a space-based experiment, as this study hopes to demonstrate.

“Humans have an intrinsic drive to push the boundaries of what’s possible,” said Kevin Supak, who is a Program Manager at the SwRI San Antonio office and project co-lead. “Exploring space catalyzes technological advancements that have far-reaching benefits in our daily lives—often unanticipated innovations arise as a direct result of overcoming the unique challenges of space exploration. Establishing permanent presences on other planetary bodies could pave the way for unprecedented scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs.”

This research comes after similar work conducted in 2024 by Subak and SwRI in collaboration with Texas A&M University using parabolic flights to test boiling liquids under reduced gravity environments. Also, like this most recent work, the 2024 research aimed to explore how liquids boiled on different planetary surfaces, especially with the Moon and Mars exhibiting one-sixth and one-third the gravity of Earth, respectively. One aspect of that study was to evaluate the rate and amount of boiling that occurred on different surfaces, including stainless steel and plastic.

As its name implies, electrolyzers use electric currents to separate liquid water into their molecular components of hydrogen and oxygen using a process called electrolysis. On Earth, electrolyzers are used for a myriad of industrial and commercial applications, including vehicle fuel, renewable energy, and fertilizer production. For space applications, electrolyzers are currently used on the International Space Station (ISS) to provide the rotating crew with breathable oxygen while venting the hydrogen into space.

Like the ISS, future crews on the Moon and Mars will require the appropriate infrastructure for producing breathable oxygen and learning how to use electrolyzers in those reduced gravity environments could prove valuable, as the ISS’ zero-gravity environment has demonstrated their efficiency and reliability. Also like the ISS, having an electrolyzer on the Moon or Mars would negate the need for oxygen resupplies from Earth. Additionally, while the ISS vents unused hydrogen into space, astronauts on the Moon and Mars could use this hydrogen for fuel on return trips back to Earth, also resulting in negating fuel resupplies from Earth.

“In a partial gravity environment, like the Moon or Mars, a reduced buoyancy effect on gas bubbles in an electrolyzer poses challenges that aren’t present on Earth,” said Supak. “We lack an understanding about chemical processes that leverage bubble nucleation in low gravity, which is the gap we aim to fill.”

How will electrolyzers contribute to future missions to the Moon and Mars in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Sometimes in science a negative result is just as important as a positive one. And sometimes data artifacts get the better of even the best space observatories. Both of those ideas seem to hold true for the James Webb Space Telescope’s recent observation of Epsilon Eridani, one of our nearest stars, and one that has decades worth of debate about whether there is a planet orbiting it or not. Unfortunately, while JWST’s NIRCam did find some interesting features, they were too close to a noise source in the telescope’s instruments to be definitively labeled a “planet”. Their results were recently published on arXiv, and while it may sound disappointing, this type of work is exactly how science progresses.

JWST’s observations, which were part of a program that provides defined time on the telescope to specific astronomical objectives, were intended to search for evidence of two planets orbiting Epsilon Eridani, a star located about 10.5 light years away and only about 400 million years old. The first planet, which was originally claimed in 2000 using radial velocity measurements of the star, was about Jupiter size, located about 3.5 AU from the star. Another, which has so far been unconfirmed, might be shepherding the dramatic rings that surround the star, and would be around 45 AU out from its host star.

In the search for the first planet, Epsilon Eridani b, NIRCam saw a “blob” that looked very much like a planet, right where the researchers expected to find it. However, it was also very near a “hexpeckle”, an artifact of the corongraph that flooded the area of the planet with noise. Ultimately, they could not statistically say that a planet was definitively there, despite the promising “blob” of light, given the overwhelming noise from the instrument itself.

A tour of the Epsilon Eridani system. Credit – Paul Fellows YouTube Channel

The second potential candidate was much more convincingly ruled out. While the statistics weren’t enough to definitively rule out all planets, they were conclusive enough to say there are no Saturn-sized planets any further out the 16 AU from the star. In other words, there doesn’t appear to be a ring shepherd around Epsilon Eridani.

Peering at the dust disk itself, NIRCam found a faint signal on the “eastern” side of the star. That appears to be the side facing us directly, and therefore the signal is most likely just the dust from the disc scattering the light from the star rather than a planet, similar to how gas and dust can shroud stars themselves in some parts of space.

All of this work was done using a new technique for JWST called a “three-roll” observing strategy. So far during its observations, the telescope had “rolled” to two different angles to make sure it captured light coming from its observational target in slightly different ways. For these observations, it tried doing so a third time, and had a pretty significant gain in observational capacity as well. The authors suggest that the technique could improve JWST’s ability to see faint objects by between 20-30% than the traditional two-roll method.

A discussion of JWST’s instruments, including NIRCam. Credit – Launch Pad Astronomy YouTube Channel

While some might consider the lack of a definitive planet detection a bust, science still moves forward on constraints, and this observational effort by JWST did put some constraints both on the potential of a planet in the out reaches of Epsilon Eridani’s system as well as the size and location of the inner Jupiter-like planet candidate. But perhaps most importantly, it also opened up a new methodology to allow for increased observational capacity of faint objects in the future. Given JWST’s long operational life ahead, that is definitely worth celebrating.

Learn More:

J. Llop-Sayson et al – Searching for Planets Orbiting Epsilon Eridani with JWST/NIRCam

UT – Astronomers Try to Directly Observe Epsilon Eridani b. No Luck. Maybe Webb Can Find it?

UT – Only 10 Light-Years Away, there’s a Baby Version of the Solar System

UT – Webb Examined an Asteroid Belt and Found More Than it Bargained For

Around 12,000 years ago, a man was shot by an arrow with an exotic stone tip in what is now Vietnam. He survived the initial injury but likely succumbed to infection, a new analysis of his remains suggests.

The man’s well-preserved skeleton may be the earliest evidence of violence in Southeast Asia, the study authors claim, although some researchers say more evidence is needed to make that conclusion.

Newswise — El Capitan, the world’s fastest supercomputer, may be new to scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), but it’s already allowing them to explore physical systems in ways that weren’t possible before.

With the arrival of El Capitan, LLNL researchers are entering a new era of scientific simulation — one in which they can model extreme physical events with unprecedented resolution, realism and speed. From capturing the chaotic spray of molten metal to the turbulence of fluid flows, the exascale machine is revealing worlds that were previously beyond reach, and it’s doing so thanks to the close collaboration of hardware, software and science teams that makes LLNL uniquely equipped to lead in this space.

In one of the first examples of the new capability brought to bear by El Capitan — especially when it comes to how materials behave under extreme conditions — researchers used the machine to simulate what happens to a tin surface when it’s struck by powerful shock waves and high-speed impacts.

LLNL physicist Kyle Mackay and his team used the Lab’s ARES code — a sophisticated tool for modeling high-energy density physics and inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments — to run detailed simulations of the tin under stress.

“The shocks were strong enough to melt the metal and throw a spray of hot liquified tin, known as ejecta, ahead of the surface,” Mackay explained. “The simulation was noteworthy for its high fidelity, employing advanced physics models for mechanisms like surface tension, detailed equations-of-state and especially its sub-micron mesh resolution.”

The incredibly fine resolution the models achieved on El Capitan allowed the team to capture tiny features on the metal’s surface, like machining grooves and internal voids. These small details have a big impact on how much ejecta gets produced, but they’re usually missed in lower-resolution simulations. Even though the model covered just a few cubic millimeters of tin, the results were unprecedented, according to researchers.

“This could not have been done at this level of detail without the use of a machine like El Capitan,” Mackay said.

But El Capitan doesn’t work alone. The breakthroughs emerging from these early simulations are the result of a tightly integrated effort, driven by the skilled researchers behind the algorithms, models and multiphysics codes that are specifically engineered to take advantage of the cutting-edge hardware, producing a set of tools that are useable by a larger community. At LLNL, teams of domain scientists, code developers and computing experts work tirelessly, side-by-side, to co-design these capabilities from the ground up.

“This isn’t about a machine, it’s about this combination of deploying and managing advanced hardware with having all these world-class experts in hardware, software and science all under one roof, which is standard operating procedure at LLNL,” said Weapon Simulation and Computing Associate Program Director Teresa Bailey. “This unique co-location and collaboration is what makes these kinds of advances possible.”

Peering into plasma: shock-driven fluid instabilities captured in striking detail

One of the most stunning early advances enabled by El Capitan came from a set of simulations of shock-driven fluid instabilities, the kind that occur when extreme forces act across material boundaries.

Using LLNL’s multiphysics code MARBL, a team led by Rob Rieben, and including Thomas Stitt, Aaron Skinner and Arturo Vargas, modeled the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability — a phenomenon that occurs when two fluids of different densities slide past each other under shear forces. The team replicated conditions from a previous laser experiment at the Omega laser facility, then scaled it into an ultra-high-resolution 3D simulation driven by El Capitan’s enormous horsepower.

The shockwave in the model interacted with a prescribed ripple — a perturbation at the interface of two materials — producing a swirling, turbulent vortex as the materials mixed. These chaotic flows are incredibly difficult to capture, but thanks to 107 billion quadrature points and more than 8,000 AMD GPUs on El Capitan, the team was able to model the entire structure in extraordinary detail.

The result was a time-lapse of fluid behavior under intense energy conditions, revealing intricate shear and shock patterns that mirror — and in some cases go beyond — what’s possible to observe in experiments.

“Experiments are the ultimate arbiter of physical truth but can be difficult to extract necessary data from,” said Rieben. “High-fidelity simulations let us probe aspects of an experiment in a virtual manner that would not be possible to access in a real experiment. El Captain is a powerful scientific instrument for exploring physics via simulation at fidelities never seen before.”

 

High-resolution turbulence reveals hidden dynamics in classic flow problem

Another high-resolution breakthrough used MARBL to simulate a classic but notoriously tricky problem in fluid dynamics: the lock-exchange. In this scenario, a heavy gas is held behind a barrier and then suddenly released into a lighter gas, triggering a rush of chaotic mixing, not unlike what happens during flows from volcanos, turbidity currents in the ocean or even flashover conditions in fires. Getting the physics right, especially the compressible turbulence that develops as the gases churn and interact with the container walls, requires precision, researchers said.

Jane Pratt and team ran a fully three-dimensional simulation using 1.8 billion quadrature points on El Capitan’s 288-petaFLOP (288 quadrillion calculations per second) companion system Tuolumne, which shares an architecture with El Capitan but is about 1/10^th the size.  What made the run remarkable wasn’t just the resolution, but the way the ALE-based code captured the decaying turbulence, offering a realistic depiction of how the turbulence interacts with shock waves.

“The lock-exchange problem is complicated because it involves a range of fluid instabilities interacting with layers of shear and with the walls, as gravity currents drive the turbulent entrainment of one fluid into another,” Pratt said. “In the incompressible limit, our MARBL simulations compare closely with laboratory experiments.”

“Using Tuolumne has allowed us to produce 3D simulations at extreme conditions that are difficult to simulate accurately because the flow conditions span a wide range of length and time scales,” Pratt continued. “In the well-mixed end state, we study the properties of a truly turbulent flow using the framework of a modern ALE code, providing an exciting demonstration of ALE capabilities for the broader turbulence community.”

Researchers said these kinds of early simulations run on El Capitan and Tuolumne help bridge the gap between theory, experiment and the real-world dynamics of extreme environments and hint at the kind of insight these next-generation machines are now putting within reach.

El Capitan transforms simulation and optimization workflows

In addition to allowing researchers to “zoom in” at much higher resolution, El Capitan makes it possible to simulate complex physical processes directly, rather than depending on simplified models to approximate them, Mackay said. By capturing the underlying physics in greater detail, researchers can reduce their reliance on assumptions — and even understand why certain models may fail under specific conditions — leading to more accurate and reliable predictions.

El Capitan’s power also speeds up the process of running many different simulations at once — a method called ensemble generation. These kinds of studies, used to optimize designs or test how sensitive a system is to small changes, used to take months. Now, thanks to El Capitan, they can be done in mere days, or even hours. To illustrate the difference, Mackay used the analogy of designing a car engine.

“Imagine you’re limited to running just one simulation per day and modeling only features larger than one inch due to limited computing power — you’d need to make numerous assumptions about what’s occurring within the car’s engine, slowing the optimization process significantly,” he explained.

Thanks to El Capitan’s 20-fold increase in computing power over its predecessor, Sierra, researchers can now run simulations much more frequently — in this hypothetical scenario, every hour instead of every day — and examine features at scales twenty times smaller.

“This allows for faster achievement of optimal designs and greater confidence in anticipated performance,” Mackay explained.

For more on El Capitan, visit https://www.llnl.gov/news/highlights/el-capitan-high-performance-computing.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has turned its attention to towering sand formations called megaripples at a site named Kerrlaguna on Mars. These windblown features, standing up to a metre tall, are providing new insights into how wind shapes the red planet today and could even help prepare for future human missions to Mars.

While Mars might seem like a frozen, static world, its landscape is actually being constantly reshaped by powerful winds. As NASA puts it, “On Mars, the past is written in stone, but the present is written in sand.” This poetic description captures exactly what Perseverance has been studying lately, massive sand formations that tell the story of modern Martian weather.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie over a rock nicknamed “Rochette,” on September 10, 2021, the 198th Martian day, or sol of its mission (Credit : NASA/JPL Caltech)

After completing investigations at a geological contact zone called Westport, Perseverance attempted to climb steep slopes to reach a new rock exposure named Midtoya. However, the combination of treacherous terrain and rocky, unstable soil proved too challenging, forcing the rover team to retreat to smoother ground. The effort wasn’t wasted though since Perseverance managed to study fascinating spherule rich rocks that had tumbled down from above, including a distinctive helmet shaped rock dubbed “Horneflya” that captured public attention online.

The rover then moved to Kerrlaguna, where the steep slopes give way to a field of megaripples. These aren’t your typical beach type sand ripples, they’re massive windblown formations that can tower up to one meter high. While that might not sound enormous, imagine sand dunes the height of a tall person scattered across an alien landscape.

The science team decided these features deserved a detailed mini-campaign of study. Usually, Perseverance focuses on ancient rocks that preserve evidence of Mars’ distant past, but understanding the planet’s current environment is equally important. These megaripples offer a window into how wind and weather continue to shape Mars today.

The Kerrlaguna feature on Mars is located in the Jezero Crater (Credit : NASA)

Nearly a decade ago, Perseverance’s predecessor, the Curiosity rover, studied an active sand dune in Gale crater and took a famous selfie there. However, the megaripples at Kerrlaguna appear inactive and dusty, representing a different type of Martian sand formation that’s common across the planet’s surface. These older, immobile features could reveal new insights about how wind and even trace amounts of water interact on modern Mars.

This self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the “Big Sky” site, where its drill collected the mission’s fifth sample of Mount Sharp (Credit : NASA)

During its investigation, Perseverance deployed multiple scientific instruments to thoroughly analyze the megaripples. Using SuperCam, Mastcam-Z, and MEDA instruments, the rover characterised the surrounding environment, measured the size and chemistry of individual sand grains, and looked for any salty crusts that might have developed over time.

This research serves a dual purpose beyond pure scientific curiosity. Understanding Martian soil composition and behaviour could prove crucial for future human missions to the red planet. Astronauts will likely need to use local Martian resources to help them survive, making detailed knowledge of soil properties and composition invaluable for mission planning.

The Kerrlaguna investigation also serves as preparation for a more ambitious study planned at Lac de Charmes, a location further along Perseverance’s route that features an even more extensive field of larger sand formations. By studying these windblown features grain by grain, Perseverance continues to unlock the secrets of how Mars behaves today, complementing its discoveries about the planet’s ancient past and helping pave the way for humanity’s eventual arrival on one of our nearest planetary neighbours.

Source : To see the world in a grain of sand: Investigating megaripples at Kerrlaguna on Mars

Astronomers have spotted the brightest fast radio burst yet coming from a nearby galaxy. Observations of this phenomenon, a powerful flash of radio waves that lasts only about a millisecond, could shed light on one of the most mysterious cosmic phenomena ever studied.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, were first discovered in 2007, but their exact sources remain unknown. Since their identification, astronomers have been tracing the bursts’ origin in the hopes of gathering clues about what unleashes them and sends them across the cosmos.

Astronomers observed FRB 20250316A, nicknamed “RBFLOAT” for “Radio Brightest FLash Of All Time,” on March 16.

The signal was traced to the galaxy NGC 4141 about 130 million light-years away from Earth. The details of the detection, made with the FRB-hunting Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, and its newly operational, smaller array of telescopes, called Outriggers, were published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“With the CHIME Outriggers, we are finally catching these fleeting cosmic signals in the act — narrowing down their locations not only to individual galaxies, but even to specific stellar environments,” said lead study author Amanda Cook, a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the Trottier Space Institute and Physics Department at McGill University, in a statement.

After the burst was detected, scientists used the James Webb Space Telescope to zoom in on where it originated. The observations add evidence to a leading theory that magnetars, or the highly magnetized remnants of dead stars, could be a source of fast radio bursts. A study about Webb’s follow-up observations was also published on Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“This was a unique opportunity to quickly turn JWST’s powerful infrared eye on the location of an FRB for the first time,” said Peter Blanchard, lead author of the Webb study and research associate in the Harvard College Observatory at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, in a statement. “And we were rewarded with an exciting result — we see a faint source of infrared light very close to where the radio burst occurred. This could be the first object linked to an FRB that anyone has found in another galaxy.”

The new insights from both studies could also be used to help astronomers solve another key mystery surrounding fast radio bursts by determining whether they have a repetitive pattern, like a cosmic heartbeat, or whether there are different flavors of radio bursts that release a singular bombastic signal before falling silent.

A CHIME in the nick of time

The CHIME radio telescope near Penticton, British Columbia, at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, has enabled astronomers for the past seven years to spot thousands of fast radio bursts when they arrive at Earth after traveling across the cosmos.

Work was completed earlier this year to get Outriggers up and running at sites in British Columbia, West Virginia and California with the goal of tracing fast radio bursts to their specific locations with enhanced precision. The Outriggers combine pinpointing capabilities with a large field of view, said Wen-fai Fong, coauthor on the CHIME study and associate professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

Astronomers had their chance to test the array’s “game-changing” capabilities in March, just a couple of months after the Outriggers came online, Fong said.

The RBFLOAT released as much energy as the sun produced in four days — but in less than a second.

The Outrigger telescopes enabled the team to pinpoint the fast radio burst’s point of origin to a region measuring about 45 light-years across, an area smaller than a cluster of stars. The precision of the location is like spotting a quarter from about 100 kilometers (62 miles) away, Cook said.

Prior to the Outrigger telescopes’ capability to triangulate a fast radio burst to its source, “it was like talking to someone on the phone and not knowing what city or state they were calling from,” said study coauthor Bryan Gaensler, dean of the University of California, Santa Cruz science division.

“Now we know not only their exact address, but which room of their house they’re standing in while they’re on the call.”

Zooming in on a galactic arm

Follow-up observations made with the 6.5-meter MMT telescope in Arizona and the Keck II telescope’s Cosmic Web Imager in Hawaii revealed that RBFLOAT came from the spiral arm of a galaxy, which is full of star-forming regions. But it originated near, and not inside, a star-forming region.

Some previous fast radio bursts appear to have come from magnetars, or highly magnetized rotating neutron stars that release radio waves. Scientists have long hypothesized that neutron stars, ultradense core remnants left behind after massive stars explode, might be the origin of fast radio bursts.

Magnetars typically form when gravity triggers a gigantic star to collapse on itself. And star-forming regions are where young magnetars can be found.

The fact that the burst was traced to a region outside a star-forming clump could suggest that the “magnetar was kicked from its birth site or that it was born right at the FRB site and away from the clump’s center,” said study coauthor Yuxin (Vic) Dong, graduate student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the department of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University.

Webb’s powerful gaze

Blanchard’s team used the Webb telescope to search for a signal in infrared light that may have originated at the same cosmic location as RBFLOAT.

Webb’s data revealed an object, named NIR-1, which could be a massive star or a red giant — a sun-like star at the end of its life that has brightened significantly. Neither star is considered a candidate for the direct cause of a fast radio burst. But an unseen companion like a neutron star could be siphoning material away from the larger star — and that may have been enough to release a burst of radio waves, Blanchard said.

It’s also possible that the infrared light that Webb detected was a reflection of a flare caused by the same object that released the radio burst, such as a magnetar.

“Whether or not the association with the star is real, we’ve learned a lot about the burst’s origin,” Blanchard said. “If a double star system isn’t the answer, our work hints that an isolated magnetar caused the FRB.”

To repeat or not to repeat

Studying the immediate surroundings where both repeating and non-repeating fast radio bursts occur can help astronomers determine what causes the signals to repeat in the first place, Fong said.

While many fast radio bursts are known to repeat pulsations over several months, the RBFLOAT did not release any repeat signals in the hundreds of hours after it was initially observed.

RBFLOAT is the first non-repeating burst to be localized to such precision, said Sunil Simha, coauthor on the CHIME study and a Brinson postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics and the University of Chicago’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Department.

“Since this represents the first non-repeating FRB with its local environment fully mapped out, it remains to be seen if others will follow suit, or if this was an oddball,” Fong said.

The results of both studies provide insight into the question of whether all fast radio bursts eventually repeat, said Liam Connor, assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard University. Connor has studied the phenomenon before but was not involved in either study.

“Before detecting FRB 20250316A, CHIME had been unknowingly monitoring the source every day for seven years, because CHIME sees the whole Northern Sky once per day,” Connor wrote in an email. “Somehow, zero bursts were detected in thousands of transits, until one of the brightest events of all time suddenly went off. If all FRBs are repeaters, then clearly some are extremely sporadic and unpredictable.”

Previously, cataclysmic theories, like the collision of massive objects, have been ruled out for repeating fast radio bursts since the source would be destroyed while producing the first burst, Dong said.

“We can reopen the door to those more explosive theories for RBFLOAT and its kin,” she said.

Simha wants to build a database that shows where fast radio bursts have originated, which could reveal what may be responsible for creating them — and if they are all created equally. More data could show if there are multiple ways to produce fast radio bursts, Blanchard said.

The CHIME telescope and its Outriggers continue monitoring the sky to see whether other non-repeating fast radio bursts release another signal. The telescope array is anticipated to help localize hundreds of fast radio bursts a year. And the team will continue to monitor RBFLOAT in case it has another outburst.

“Alternatively, maybe we never detect another burst from this source, and start to see additional seemingly one-off bursts, potentially in similar environments,” Cook wrote in an email. “Then we’re trying to solve the mysteries of the origins of at least two different populations. In either case, we are really excited to uncover the mysteries the universe has in store for us.”

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A brief flare lit up Saturn during a home telescope recording session in Hampton, Virginia a few weeks ago. The flash appeared between 9:00 and 9:15 UTC. If it marks a real strike, it would be the first time anyone has captured an impact on Saturn on video.

The moment is unconfirmed, and that uncertainty matters. A single bright frame can come from sensor noise, a satellite crossing the field, or an artifact of processing, so independent recordings are essential.

The Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory (PVOL) team issued a public call for observers who filmed Saturn that morning to share their footage for cross checks.

What the video shows

The recording was made by Mario Rana of NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, who is an experienced astrophotographer and frequently contributes to community imaging projects. 

However, one detection does not make a case. Confirming an impact requires the same flash in separate videos, ideally from widely spaced locations, or the presence of a short lived atmospheric mark that rotates with the planet.

Volunteers often use DeTeCt, a free tool developed within the planetary imaging community, to scan video for transient flashes on the giant planets.

This has flagged several Jupiter impacts for follow up since 2010. Cross validation is the guardrail against fooling ourselves with a once-off blip.

Estimating Saturn’s impact size

Large objects are rare visitors. A 2025 analysis that combined outer solar system dynamics with observed small body populations estimated Saturn’s impact rate by objects at least 1 kilometer across at about 3.2 × 10⁻³ per year. That is roughly one event every 3,125 years.

This number highlights why patient, distributed watching is needed to catch even a single confirmed strike.

“These new results imply the current-day impact rates for small particles at Saturn are about the same as those at Earth,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Smaller projectiles are far more common, and Saturn’s rings have acted like an enormous detector for them. 

What makes Saturn tricky

Saturn is a gas giant with no solid surface to scar. Its upper layers are mostly hydrogen and helium that can swallow energy without leaving long lasting marks.

That makes a fleeting flash, or subtle changes in cloud texture, the most likely signs of a hit.

A flash near the planetary limb is even harder to confirm because of contrast, limb darkening, and edge processing artifacts.

Without second and third recordings, the community will treat it as an intriguing candidate and nothing more.

Why impacts on Saturn matter

Studying collisions on gas giants helps scientists estimate how often stray objects move through the outer Solar System.

Each confirmed flash provides a real data point to compare against computer models, tightening estimates of how frequently Saturn, Jupiter, and even Earth get struck.

These events also give insight into the composition and behavior of the impactors themselves. By measuring the brightness and duration of a flash, researchers can approximate the size, speed, and structure of the object.

This adds detail to our understanding of the populations of comets and asteroids that share space with the giant planets.

Citizen scientists to the rescue

Amateur observers hold much of the leverage here. Videos recorded that morning using modest telescopes and planetary cameras can carry the precise frames needed to confirm or rule out an impact.

If you captured Saturn that day, keep the original videos and processing logs, and check PVOL’s news feed for submission instructions and contact details for Delcroix, who aggregates potential witnesses for coordinated analysis.

Time stamps in universal time, the exact observing location, and the optical setup are crucial context for any evaluation.

Learning from Jupiter

Jupiter has been the training ground for this kind of citizen science.

In 2010, a small meteoroid, about 8 to 13 meters (26 to 43 feet) in diameter, produced a two second flash that was caught independently by two observers and later analyzed with professional facilities.

Most confirmed Jovian flashes leave no obvious aftermath, a pattern documented in professional and citizen science studies that calibrated light curves to estimate impact energies and sizes.

That record explains why a lack of visible debris on Saturn would not, by itself, disprove a strike.

What comes next

As the videos trickle in, coordinated teams check for the same flash at the same time and location on Saturn’s disk. They also look for telltale processing artifacts that could mimic a pulse of light.

There is already an important update from the DeTeCt project. After scanning additional submissions, the team reported no corroborating detections and concluded there was no impact on Saturn from the July 5th observation.

Even a null result sharpens methods, improves software, and strengthens the network that will catch the next real event.

The study is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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A team of paleontologists from New Zealand and Australia has described a new extinct shelduck species from Holocene fossil bone deposits on the Rēkohu Chatham Islands.

Named the Rēkohu shelduck (Tadorna rekohu), the new species inhabited the Chatham Islands, an isolated archipelago 785 km east of mainland New Zealand.

“This archipelago comprises the main Chatham Island, as well as Rangihaute Pitt, Maung’ Re Mangere, Tapuaenuku Little Mangere, Hokorereoro South East Islands, and various islets,” said University of Otago’s Dr. Nic Rawlence and his colleagues.

“The islands were completely submerged during the Late Miocene to Early Pliocene.”

“Subsequent tectonic activity caused the island archipelago to re-emerge less than 3 million years ago.”

According to the team, the ancestors of the Rēkohu shelduck arrived on the Chatham Islands around 390,000 years ago during the Late Pleistocene.

“While this may seem like a short period of time, it is long enough to impact the species,” Dr. Rawlence said.

“In that time the Rēkohu shelduck evolved shorter, more robust wings and longer leg bones indicating it was going down the pathway towards flightlessness.”

“These changes were due to a range of factors, such as an abundance of food, lack of ground-dwelling predators, and windy conditions, so flying was not the preferred option.”

“In a case of use it or lose it, the wings start to reduce,” said Dr. Pascale Lubbe, also from the University of Otago.

“Flight is energetically expensive, so if you don’t have to fly, why bother.”

“The longer leg bones are more robust to support more muscle and create increased force for take-off — necessary when you have smaller wings.”

The researchers used ancient DNA and analyzed the shape of the bones to determine the Rēkohu shelduck is most closely related to the pūtangitangi paradise shelduck (Tadorna variegate) from New Zealand.

The Rēkohu shelduck spent more time on the ground than its cousin and became extinct prior to the 19th century.

“The presence of Rēkohu shelduck bones in early Moriori midden deposits suggests its extinction was due to over-hunting prior to the later European and Māori settlement of the islands in the 19th century,” the scientists said.

Their paper was published in the July 2025 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

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Nicolas J. Rawlence et al. 2025. Ancient DNA and morphometrics reveal a new species of extinct insular shelduck from Rēkohu Chatham Islands. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 204 (3): zlaf069; doi: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlaf069