Category: 7. Science

One of three rockets for the TOMEX+ mission sits on a launcher at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. U.S. citizens in the mid-Atlantic region may catch a weather-permitted glimpse Tuesday night of NASA’s launch of its mission to launch a TOMEX+ sounding rocket in its second attempt, according to NASA. Photo by Danielle Johnson/NASA

Aug. 26 (UPI) — NASA has set Tuesday for its next launch attempt of its TOMEX+ sounding rocket mission to take a peak at the Earth’s atmosphere.

U.S. citizens in the mid-Atlantic region may catch a weather-permitted glimpse Tuesday night of NASA’s launch of its mission to launch a TOMEX+ sounding rocket in its second attempt, according to NASA.

The live-streamed launch is targeted in a window anywhere from 10:30 p.m. EDT to 3:30 a.m.

On Wednesday, NASA announced its TOMEX+ plan that looks to study the turbulence where Earth’s atmosphere ends and outer space begins.

Tuesday’s launch attempt comes after repeated other launch attempts.

Sounding rockets are those that can be aimed to reach the Earth’s mesopause, an area of the atmosphere that’s too high for weather balloons and too low for traditional satellites to reach.

A new study explains how tiny water bugs use fan-like propellers to zip across streams at speeds up to 120 body lengths per second.

The researchers then created a similar fan structure and used it to propel and maneuver an insect-sized robot.

The discovery offers new possibilities for designing small machines that could operate during floods or other challenging situations.

“Scientists thought the bugs used their muscles to control the fans, so we were surprised to learn that surface tension actually powers them,” says Saad Bhamla, one of the study’s authors and associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Instead of relying on their muscles, the insects about the size of a grain of rice use the water’s surface tension and elastic forces to morph the ribbon-shaped fans on the end of their legs to slice the water surface and change directions.

Once they understood the mechanism, the team built a self-deployable, one-milligram fan and installed it into an insect-sized robot capable of accelerating, braking, and maneuvering right and left.

The study appears in the journal Science.

Because contact with water triggers a mechanical response (opening the bug’s fans), the researchers suggested that the findings open the door to designing more energy-efficient and adaptive microrobots for use in rivers, wetlands, or flooded urban areas.

The research team, which included the University of California, Berkeley, and South Korea’s Ajou University, studied the millimeter-sized Rhagovelia. The water bug glides across fast-moving streams thanks to their fan-like propellers. The team found that the structures passively open and close 10 times faster than the blink of an eye.

The structures allow the bugs to execute sharp turns in just 50 milliseconds, rivaling the rapid aerial maneuvers of flies. In addition, the insects can produce wakes on the surface of the water that resemble the vortexes produced by flying wings.

Victor Ortega-Jimenez, a former Georgia Tech research scientist and the study’s lead author, first saw the ripple bugs during the pandemic while working at Kennesaw State University.

“These tiny insects were skimming and turning so rapidly across the surface of turbulent streams that they resembled flying insects,” says Ortega-Jimenez, assistant professor in Berkeley’s integrative biology department.

“How do they do it? That question stayed with me and took more than five years of incredible collaborative work to answer it.”

The next step was creating a robot inspired by the water striders. Ajou University Postdoctoral Researcher Dongjin Kim and Professor Je-Sung Koh solved a mystery of the fan’s design when they captured high-resolution images using a scanning electron microscope.

“Our robotic fans self-morph using nothing but water surface forces and flexible geometry, just like their biological counterparts. It’s a form of mechanical embedded intelligence refined by nature through millions of years of evolution,” says Koh, a senior author of the study.

“In small-scale robotics, these kinds of efficient and unique mechanisms would be a key enabling technology for overcoming limits in miniaturization of conventional robots.”

For example, the researchers say the findings lay the foundation for future design of compact, semi-aquatic robots that can explore water surfaces in challenging, fast-flowing environments.

Support for this research came from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency.

Source: Georgia Tech

We’re on day three of the lunar cycle, a series of eight unique phases of the moon’s visibility. The whole cycle takes about 29.5 days, according to NASA, and these different phases happen as the Sun lights up different parts of the moon whilst it orbits Earth. 

So let’s see what’s happening with the moon tonight, Aug. 26.

What is today’s moon phase?

As of Tuesday, Aug. 26, the moon phase is Waxing Crescent, and only 11% will be lit up to us on Earth, according to NASA’s Daily Moon Observation.

There’s still not enough of the moon lit up to see anything on its surface, so keen moon gazers will need to wait a few more days before it is bright enough to see anything.

When is the next full moon?

The next full moon will be on Sept. 7. The last full moon was on Aug. 9.

What are moon phases?

According to NASA, moon phases are caused by the 29.5-day cycle of the moon’s orbit, which changes the angles between the Sun, Moon, and Earth. Moon phases are how the moon looks from Earth as it goes around us. We always see the same side of the moon, but how much of it is lit up by the Sun changes depending on where it is in its orbit. This is how we get full moons, half moons, and moons that appear completely invisible. There are eight main moon phases, and they follow a repeating cycle:

Mashable Light Speed

New Moon – The moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).

Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).

First Quarter – Half of the moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-moon.

Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.

Full Moon – The whole face of the moon is illuminated and fully visible.

Waning Gibbous – The moon starts losing light on the right side.

Last Quarter (or Third Quarter) – Another half-moon, but now the left side is lit.

Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.

A deep sea worm that inhabits hydrothermal vents survives the high levels of toxic arsenic and sulfide in its environment by combining them in its cells to form a less hazardous mineral. Chaolun Li of the Institute of Oceanology, CAS, China, and colleagues report these findings in a new study published August 26^th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology.

The worm, named Paralvinella hessleri, is the only animal to inhabit the hottest part of deep sea hydrothermal vents in the west Pacific, where hot, mineral-rich water spews from the seafloor. These fluids can contain high levels of sulfide, as well as arsenic, which builds up in the tissues of P. hessleri, sometimes making up more than 1% of the worm’s body weight.

Li and his team investigated how P. hessleri can tolerate the high levels of arsenic and sulfide in the vent fluids. They used advanced microscopy, and DNA, protein and chemical analyses to identify a previously unknown detoxification process. The worm accumulates particles of arsenic in its skin cells, which then react with sulfide from the hydrothermal vent fluids to form small clumps of a yellow mineral called orpiment.

The study provides new insights into the novel detoxification strategy that P. hessleri uses for “fighting poison with poison,” which enables it to live in an extremely toxic environment. Previous studies have found that related worms living in other parts of the world, as well as some snail species in the west Pacific, also accumulate high levels of arsenic, and may use this same strategy.

Coauthor Dr. Hao Wang adds, “This was my first deep-sea expedition, and I was stunned by what I saw on the ROV monitor—the bright yellow Paralvinella hessleri worms were unlike anything I had ever seen, standing out vividly against the white biofilm and dark hydrothermal vent landscape. It was hard to believe that any animal could survive, let alone thrive, in such an extreme and toxic environment.”

Dr. Wang says, “What makes this finding even more fascinating is that orpiment—the same toxic, golden mineral produced by this worm—was once prized by medieval and Renaissance painters. It’s a curious convergence of biology and art history, unfolding in the depths of the ocean.”

The authors note, “We were puzzled for a long time by the nature of the yellow intracellular granules, which had a vibrant color and nearly perfect spherical shape. It took us a combination of microscopy, spectroscopy, and Raman analysis to identify them as orpiment minerals—a surprising finding.”

The authors conclude, “We hope that this ‘fighting poison with poison’ model will encourage scientists to rethink how marine invertebrates interact with and possibly harness toxic elements in their environment.”

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: http://plos.io/4ks3PKo

Citation: Wang H, Cao L, Zhang H, Zhong Z, Zhou L, Lian C, et al. (2025) A deep-sea hydrothermal vent worm detoxifies arsenic and sulfur by intracellular biomineralization of orpiment (As₂S₃). PLoS Biol 23(8): e3003291. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003291

Author countries: China

Funding: This work was supported by grants from Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42476133 to H.W.), Science and Technology Innovation Project of Laoshan Laboratory (Project Number No. LSKJ202203104 to H.W.), National Key RandD Program of China (Project Number 2018YFC0310702 to H.W.), Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42030407 to C.Li), and the NSFC Innovative Group Grant (No. 42221005 to M.X.W.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Asteroid Ryugu is proving to be one of the most scientifically valuable time capsules in the solar system.

A recent study of microscopic grains collected from Ryugu by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft found the tiny space rock harbors minerals that formed long before Earth itself — minerals that have been preserved in pristine condition for billions of years.

The first bodies to form in the Solar System acquired their materials from stars, the presolar molecular cloud and the protoplanetary disk. Asteroids that have not undergone planetary differentiation retain evidence of these primary materials; however, geologic processes such as hydrothermal alteration can dramatically change their compositions and chemistry. In new research, scientists analyzed the elemental and isotopic compositions of samples from asteroid Bennu to uncover the sources and types of material accreted by its parent body.

“We found that Bennu has an elemental composition that very closely matches the Sun,” said LLNL scientist Greg Brennecka.

“That means the material recovered from Bennu is a great reference for the starting composition of the entire Solar System.”

“It is remarkable that Bennu has survived so long without seeing high temperatures that would ‘cook’ some of the ingredients.”

Scientists are still studying how planets form, and learning the initial composition of the Solar System is like obtaining the list of ingredients to bake a cake.

“With that ingredients list, we now have a better idea of how those elements all came together to form the planets in our Solar System, and, eventually, Earth and its living inhabitants,” Dr. Brennecka said.

“If we are to learn about our origins, the starting point is the composition of the Solar System.”

By returning a pristine sample to Earth and avoiding any contamination from our planet, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission opened up new opportunities.

“The amount of information you can obtain from returned sample material in the laboratory is incredible,” said LLNL scientist Quinn Shollenberger.

“We simply cannot answer the big ‘origins’ questions without having the sample on Earth.”

“One of our goals is to determine what elements in the periodic table, and in what proportions, the Solar System started with. Bennu allows us to find this out,” said LLNL scientist Jan Render.

To obtain these results, the researchers crushed the asteroid material into a fine powder and dissolved it in acid.

Then, they fed it into a suite of mass spectrometers, which provided the concentrations of most elements in the periodic table.

From there, the scientists have been separating the sample by element, and, so far, they have been able to analyze isotope ratios of several elements.

“One perk of working at a national laboratory is the amazing analytical capabilities that we have at our disposal and experts in utilizing state-of-the-art machinery,” said LLNL scientist Josh Wimpenny.

“Having these capabilities all in one place is very unique, and we get better use out of these precious materials.”

“We traced the origins of these initial materials accumulated by Bennu’s ancestor,” said Dr. Ann Nguyen, a researcher at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

“We found stardust grains with compositions that predate the Solar System, organic matter that likely formed in interstellar space, and high temperature minerals that formed closer to the Sun.”

“All of these constituents were transported great distances to the region that Bennu’s parent asteroid formed.”

The findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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J.J. Barnes et al. The variety and origin of materials accreted by Bennu’s parent asteroid. Nat Astron, published online August 22, 2025; doi: 10.1038/s41550-025-02631-6

A groundbreaking study led by Vera Korasidis, Lecturer in Environmental Geoscience at the University of Melbourne, has unveiled a remarkable picture of Earth’s ancient polar forests that once supported thriving dinosaur populations.

During the Early Cretaceous period, some 130 to 110 million years ago, what is today southern Victoria lay well within the polar circle, shrouded in months of darkness each winter.

Yet, despite these extreme conditions, the region hosted vibrant, cool-temperate rainforests. “What is now Victoria was located within the polar circle … and was shrouded in darkness for months,” Korasidis explained. Towering conifer trees formed the forest canopy, while the ground below was dominated by primitive ferns, mosses and liverworts.

Drawing on nearly 300 fossil pollen and spore samples from 48 sites across Victoria, researchers have reconstructed these lost ecosystems in extraordinary detail. Their work reveals lush river-crossed forests teeming with life. Small herbivorous ornithopods grazed on foliage, while carnivorous theropods prowled the undergrowth–dinosaurs uniquely adapted to months without sunlight.

A dramatic transformation unfolded around 113 million years ago with the arrival of flowering plants. This botanical revolution altered the structure of the forests, driving many understorey ferns to extinction. By 100 million years ago, the landscape featured open conifer-dominated canopies, with flowering plants flourishing alongside ferns and mosses on the forest floor.

The study not only brings to life the lost world of polar dinosaurs but also carries urgent lessons for today. As Korasidis noted, these ancient ecosystems demonstrate how plant and animal life respond to rapid climate and environmental shifts. For a world now facing accelerating global warming, biodiversity decline, and ecosystem disruption, the story of Earth’s polar forests serves as both a scientific marvel and a sobering warning.

The slender crescent moon will be positioned close to the bright star Spica at sunset on Aug. 27, but you’ll have to be quick to catch a glimpse of the cosmic duo before they follow the sun below the horizon!

Look to the west as the sun sets on Aug. 27 to find the 18%-lit waxing crescent moon a little over 15 degrees above the western horizon, with Spica — the brightest star in the constellation Virgo — positioned less than 6 degrees to the right of the lunar disk. Remember, the width of your middle three fingers held at arm’s length accounts for roughly 5 degrees in the night sky.