Category: 7. Science

Washington, D.C. — A multi-institutional team co-led by Carnegie Science’s Michael L. Wong and Caleb Scharf of the NASA Ames Research Center has received a prestigious $5 million, five-year NASA Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research (ICAR) grant to develop A.I. tools for enhancing the search for signs of life on other planets.

The cross-disciplinary project brings together experts in chemistry, geoscience, machine learning, and planetary science to address one of astrobiology’s biggest challenges—reliably distinguishing life from non-life in planetary data.

At the heart of the project is a massive, curated dataset. Carnegie researchers—including Wong, Anirudh Prabhu, Robert Hazen, and George Cody—will lead the effort to generate highly detailed profiles of at least 1,000 samples, ranging from meteorites to fossils to living organisms. They will employ a suite of advanced techniques to analyze the molecular and chemical signatures across this broad sample set.

“A.I. will help us identify patterns in these massive multidimensional datasets that no human, or team of humans, could sift through in one lifetime,” said Wong. “It’s a tool we can use to detect the subtle biosignatures we might otherwise miss in the noise. It may even help us illuminate the fundamental differences between life and non-life.”

Partner institutions across the U.S.—including NASA Ames Research Center, Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, Caltech, Howard University, Purdue University, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center—will provide additional instrumentation and laboratory expertise, transforming this effort into a national-scale, data-generation engine. Once the data collection is complete, the team will develop and train machine learning models on this expansive dataset to find patterns that consistently indicate life. 

“Carnegie has a rich legacy of planetary science and cosmochemistry,” noted Carnegie Science Earth and Planets Laboratory Director Michael Walter. “Few places are better equipped to handle such a wide range of Earth and planetary samples.”

This isn’t just about developing A.I. tools—it’s about putting that intelligence to work. Wong and his team will use their findings to recommend the most effective scientific instruments for future missions, ensuring we send the most promising tools to the most promising extraterrestrial locations in our search for life.

“For NASA, this is incredibly valuable,” says Scharf, “exploring Mars, or an icy moon in the outer Solar System, is hugely challenging and we’re going to need to rely more and more on intelligent machines that carry an optimal collection of tools to seek out other life.”

During data collection, the team aims to create an open-source sample library and data repository. This resource will enable future research by providing scientists with open access to these extremely rich datasets while building a shared foundation for life detection efforts across the planetary science community.

“We’re at the edge of a new era in astrobiology,” Wong concluded. “We’ve never had more data or more computing power. Now is the moment to bring it all together and finally ask—and maybe answer—the biggest question of all: Are we alone?”

Washington, D.C. — A multi-institutional team co-led by Carnegie Science’s Michael L. Wong and Caleb Scharf of the NASA Ames Research Center has received a prestigious $5 million, five-year NASA Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research (ICAR) grant to develop A.I. tools for enhancing the search for signs of life on other planets.

The cross-disciplinary project brings together experts in chemistry, geoscience, machine learning, and planetary science to address one of astrobiology’s biggest challenges—reliably distinguishing life from non-life in planetary data.

At the heart of the project is a massive, curated dataset. Carnegie researchers—including Wong, Anirudh Prabhu, Robert Hazen, and George Cody—will lead the effort to generate highly detailed profiles of at least 1,000 samples, ranging from meteorites to fossils to living organisms. They will employ a suite of advanced techniques to analyze the molecular and chemical signatures across this broad sample set.

“A.I. will help us identify patterns in these massive multidimensional datasets that no human, or team of humans, could sift through in one lifetime,” said Wong. “It’s a tool we can use to detect the subtle biosignatures we might otherwise miss in the noise. It may even help us illuminate the fundamental differences between life and non-life.”

Partner institutions across the U.S.—including NASA Ames Research Center, Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, Caltech, Howard University, Purdue University, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center—will provide additional instrumentation and laboratory expertise, transforming this effort into a national-scale, data-generation engine. Once the data collection is complete, the team will develop and train machine learning models on this expansive dataset to find patterns that consistently indicate life. 

“Carnegie has a rich legacy of planetary science and cosmochemistry,” noted Carnegie Science Earth and Planets Laboratory Director Michael Walter. “Few places are better equipped to handle such a wide range of Earth and planetary samples.”

This isn’t just about developing A.I. tools—it’s about putting that intelligence to work. Wong and his team will use their findings to recommend the most effective scientific instruments for future missions, ensuring we send the most promising tools to the most promising extraterrestrial locations in our search for life.

“For NASA, this is incredibly valuable,” says Scharf, “exploring Mars, or an icy moon in the outer Solar System, is hugely challenging and we’re going to need to rely more and more on intelligent machines that carry an optimal collection of tools to seek out other life.”

During data collection, the team aims to create an open-source sample library and data repository. This resource will enable future research by providing scientists with open access to these extremely rich datasets while building a shared foundation for life detection efforts across the planetary science community.

“We’re at the edge of a new era in astrobiology,” Wong concluded. “We’ve never had more data or more computing power. Now is the moment to bring it all together and finally ask—and maybe answer—the biggest question of all: Are we alone?”

Coronal loops are arches of plasma that follow the Sun’s magnetic field lines, often preceding solar flares that trigger sudden releases of energy associated with some of these magnetic field lines twisting and snapping. This burst of energy fuels solar storms that can impact Earth’s critical infrastructure. Astronomers at the Inouye observe sunlight at the H-alpha wavelength (656.28 nm) to view specific features of the Sun, revealing details not visible in other types of solar observations.

“This is the first time the Inouye Solar Telescope has ever observed an X-class flare,” says Cole Tamburri, the study’s lead author who is supported by the Inouye Solar Telescope Ambassador Program while completing his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). The program is funded by the NSF and is designed to support Ph.D. students as they create a well-networked cohort of early-career scientists at U.S. Universities, who will bring their expertise in Inouye data reduction and analysis to the broader solar community. “These flares are among the most energetic events our star produces, and we were fortunate to catch this one under perfect observing conditions.”

The team — which includes scientists from the NSO, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and CU — focused on the razor-thin magnetic field loops (hundreds of them) woven above the flare ribbons. On average, the loops measured about 48 km across, but some were right at the telescope’s resolution limit. “Before Inouye, we could only imagine what this scale looked like,” Tamburri explains. “Now we can see it directly. These are the smallest coronal loops ever imaged on the Sun.”

The Inouye’s Visible Broadband Imager (VBI) instrument, tuned to the H-alpha filter, can resolve features down to ~24 km. That is over two and a half times sharper than the next-best solar telescope, and it is that leap in resolution that made this discovery possible. “Knowing a telescope can theoretically do something is one thing,” Maria Kazachenko, a co-author in the study and NSO scientist, notes. “Actually watching it perform at that limit is exhilarating.”

While the original research plan involved studying chromospheric spectral line dynamics with the Inouye’s Visible Spectropolarimeter (ViSP) instrument, the VBI data revealed something unexpected treasures — ultra-fine coronal structures that can directly inform flare models built with complex radiative-hydrodynamic codes. “We went in looking for one thing and stumbled across something even more intriguing,” Kazachenko admits.

Theories have long suggested coronal loops could be anywhere from 10 to 100 km in width, but confirming this range observationally has been impossible — until now. “We’re finally peering into the spatial scales we’ve been speculating about for years,” says Tamburri. “This opens the door to studying not just their size, but their shapes, their evolution, and even the scales where magnetic reconnection — the engine behind flares — occurs.”

Perhaps most tantalizing is the idea that these loops might be elementary structures — the fundamental building blocks of flare architecture. “If that’s the case, we’re not just resolving bundles of loops; we’re resolving individual loops for the first time,” Tamburri adds. “It’s like going from seeing a forest to suddenly seeing every single tree.”

The imagery itself is breathtaking: dark, threadlike loops arching in a glowing arcade, bright flare ribbons etched in almost impossibly sharp relief — a compact triangular one near the center, and a sweeping arc-shaped one across the top. Even a casual viewer, Tamburri suggests, would immediately recognize the complexity. “It’s a landmark moment in solar science,” he concludes. “We’re finally seeing the Sun at the scales it works on.” Something made only possible by the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope’s unprecedented capabilities.

The paper describing this study, titled “Unveiling Unprecedented Fine Structure in Coronal Flare Loops with the DKIST,” is now available in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are some of the most powerful signals in the universe. They can emit as much power in a few milliseconds as our Sun does in several days. Despite their strength, we still don’t have a definitive answer to what causes them. That is partly because, at least for the ones that only happen once, they are really hard to point down. But a new extension to the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) might provide the resolution needed to determine where non-repeating FRBs come from – and its first discovery was one of the brightest FRBs of all time, which helped researchers track it with an unprecedented level of precision, as described in a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

CHIME has been in operation since 2018, but it only recently completed it’s new “Outrigger” extension earlier this year. The Outriggers, in this case, are miniaturized versions of the main telescope in British Columbia (about 66 km away from the main array), West Virginia, and California. These distances allow the system to create a very long baseline interferometer (VLBI), which is capable of analyzing differences in the signals received between the four stations to localize the sources of the FRBs they’re searching for.

In March, CHIME was able to capture a dream test case. A FRB named FRB20250316A, but colloquially named “radio-brightest flash of all time” (RBFLOAT), assumedly because the researchers were thirsty while trying to come up with a catchy name for their discovery, legitimately lived up to its name of being one of the brightest FRBs of all time. It also happened to come from a galaxy in our galactic neighborhood – NGC 4141, about 130 million light years away.

Fraser discusses FRBs, and what makes them so puzzling.

Given the new location information afforded by the CHIME’s new VLBI features, the researchers were able to narrow down this single burst to a more specific area than just a galaxy. They found it just outside of a star forming region on one of the galaxy’s spiral arms. Even more impressively, they narrowed it down to an accuracy of just 42 light years. That level of accuracy, given the 130 million light year distance, is impressive for any signal, but even more impressive for one that only lasted for a few milliseconds.

That precise localization allowed the researchers to take a look at the area using other observational resources both prior to the burst and after it. The Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT) and the Coddenham Observatory didn’t see any signs of a optical signal before the RBFLOAT signal, nor were any signals found after the event by Keck, Gemini, or MMT. CHIME itself also didn’t find another signal, despite monitoring the area for over 200 hours.

Since RBFLOAT lacked a repeating signal, it puts it into a category of single-burst FRBs, that might have a distinct cause from the less common repeating one that have typically been located with such precision. While single-burst FRBs are more common, given their transient nature it has been difficult to determine where precisely they came from, and therefore narrow down what might be causing them.

Video talking about Chime and it’s Outriggers and how they can revolutionize FRB astronomy. Credit – Caltech Astro Seminars YouTube Channel

Magnetars are a typical suggested cause, according to one theory at least. However, the RBFLOAT signal very clearly came from outside of an active star-forming region, where most magnetars would be expected. This could have been caused by the magnetar being gravitationally flung out of the nearby region or it could have formed there itself. Or this particular FRB could have been caused by something completely different.

Ultimately, even the researchers aren’t sure yet. But this particular discovery is a case study in how CHIME’s new Outrigger extensions will help locate and isolate even one-off FRBs. As the number of detections increases, patterns are more likely to emerge, and that’s when researchers might finally be able to answer the question of what causes the most powerful signals in the universe.

Learn More:

Eureka Alert / Northwestern University – ‘Root beer FLOAT’ burst’s home is located with extraordinary precision

The Chime / FRB Collaboration et al – FRB 20250316A: A Brilliant and Nearby One-off Fast Radio Burst Localized to 13 pc Precision

UT – Astronomers Detect Most Distant Fast Radio Burst Ever

UT – Fast Radio Bursts are Helping to Locate the Universe’s Missing Matter

What leads to lower atmospheric CO2 during ice ages is a question that has puzzled scientists for decades, and it is one that UConn Department of Marine Sciences Ph.D. student Monica Garity and coauthors are working to understand. By looking at patterns of carbon storage in the deep ocean, the researchers shed new light on this decades-old question. Their results are published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 

The ocean is central to Earth’s carbon balance, acting as both a sink and source of carbon for the atmosphere. To better understand the role of the ocean in past atmospheric CO2 changes, the researchers looked back 150,000 years and tracked ocean carbon storage trends as large continental ice sheets advanced and retreated over the course of the last two ice ages. Garity explains that much of the existing research on the ice ages focuses on the end portion, called termination, rather than the processes causing ice to build up at the beginning, called inception.  

“One of the main things we’re looking at is if there is a consistent set of feedbacks that occurs during glacial inception and termination,” says Garity. “We know that there are probably several different feedbacks working in tandem to achieve the lower atmospheric CO2 that we see during ice ages, but identifying these mechanisms is challenging.” 

The researchers looked at sediment cores taken from deep in the Atlantic Ocean, in an area called the Brazil Margin. Garity explains that these cores were taken in the 1990s, and they have been dated so the researchers can simply take scoops from the parts of the cores that correspond to the timeframe in question. Within the sediment are the shells of tiny protists called foraminifera which record the chemistry of the ocean at the time they were alive. They analyzed the foraminifera for stable isotopes and metal ratios, including boron and calcium. The ratio of boron to calcium in the foraminifera can be used to reconstruct past carbonate ion concentration in the ocean which is inversely related to the carbon content.  

A large quantity of the tiny shells was needed to make the measurements, says Garity, especially for samples from the deepest cores, where there are fewer microfossils. To do this, the researchers first freeze-dry the samples and then wash the sediment over very fine sieves.  

“It’s a lot of standing over the sink washing the mud out, and then we have all of these tiny foraminifera left in the sieve. We look under the microscope and pick a very specific kind out of the many different species present in each mud sample. The species we use is a very reliable recorder of the past ocean chemistry and is the best for the type of analysis we are doing,” says Garity.  

This method is a fascinating way to look into the past and see ocean acidification in action. When ocean carbon storage increases the water becomes more acidic and the foraminifera can dissolve, says Garity.

“It is pretty cool when you’re washing samples, and you can tell what interval you’re going through as the foraminifera get more and more sparse.”  

The researchers saw carbonate ion decline in the deepest Atlantic 115,000 years ago during the initial drop in atmospheric pCO2, indicating there was increased carbon storage during the early stages of glacial inception. Garity says this was an exciting find. 

“In this paper, we show that the deep Atlantic is tied to atmospheric CO2 trends, where we see a decline in atmospheric CO2 and a buildup of carbon in the Atlantic during each stage of glacial inception. Then, during terminations, when atmospheric CO2 increases, we see a release from the Atlantic,” says Garity. “This is the first time that we’re showing that there’s increased carbon storage in the Southern Ocean sourced waters during glacial inception.” 

Garity points out that this work has obvious implications for today’s changing climate. More carbon in the atmosphere means more carbon entering the ocean, but the processes happening today are occurring on an accelerated time scale relative to those of the past. 

Future directions for this project include creating more records at different locations throughout the ocean, says Garity. 

“It would be great if we could get another southern source water B/Ca record for glacial inception, because having one is great, but we want to try to verify that the same trend is happening in other Atlantic locations.” 

Garity says the help from co-authors and NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) students Hope Jerris and Jacquelyn McBride helped make this work happen. Garity will soon be finishing her PhD, and Jerris is hoping to continue similar work in a Ph.D.

“The more we can understand climate in the past, the more we can try to understand how climate will change in the future,” says Garity. “This is just another puzzle piece to figuring out the decades-long mystery of the ice ages.” 

Scientists have created a toxin-free nonstick coating that can replace Teflon, which contains “forever chemicals” that have been linked to numerous health conditions. The alternative, which is made with a flexible silicone polymer, is much safer and better for the planet.

According to New Atlas, University of Toronto engineers used polydimethylsiloxane as a non-PFAS alternative in cookware because of its biocompatibility, thermal stability, and flexibility. The material is commonly used in cleaning solutions, contact lenses, medical devices, and water-repellent coatings. It’s a great candidate to replace per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, but according to professor Kevin Golovin, it doesn’t “perform quite as well.”

Luckily, the team found a way to change that.

To boost the performance of PDMS, it used a technique called nanoscale fletching, which adjusts some of the molecules in PFAS to make them less harmful. Specifically, the engineers replaced the long PFAS chains with several fluorinated chemical groups, which consist of a carbon atom bonded to three fluorine atoms. According to the findings, which were published in the journal Nature Communications, “a single -CF3 group is the least toxic of any PFAS.”

Bonding the short-chain PFAS molecules to PDMS resulted in a more flexible repellent material with less fluorine content, which is part of what makes forever chemicals so persistent in the environment.

“While we did use a PFAS molecule in this process, it is the shortest possible one and therefore does not bioaccumulate,” Golovin said, per a news release. “What we’ve seen in the literature, and even in the regulations, is that it’s the longest-chain PFAS that are getting banned first, with the shorter ones considered much less harmful. Our hybrid material provides the same performance as what had been achieved with long-chain PFAS but with greatly reduced risk.”

PFAS are rightfully called forever chemicals because they do not break down easily and can persist in the environment for thousands of years, per the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. In the meantime, they bioaccumulate in soil, water, and living organisms — including humans — putting ecosystems and human health in jeopardy.

PFAS are used in everything from fast food wrappers to nonstick pans and have been linked to reproductive disorders, cancer, lower immunity, and much more, according to Johns Hopkins. Reducing or eliminating these chemicals will go a long way to improve health and clean up the planet, and removing them from cookware is a great place to start.

That’s the goal of the research team, but for now, it is hoping to pair up with manufacturers of nonstick coatings to help launch the new material on a commercial scale. The PDMS coating received a grade of 6 from the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, which makes it competitive with traditional PFAS-based coatings.

“The holy grail of this field would be a substance that outperforms Teflon but with no PFAS at all,” Golovin said. “We’re not quite there yet, but this is an important step in the right direction.”

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Ocean methane does not get a free pass to the sky. A new peer reviewed study shows how a tiny partnership on the seafloor moves electrons between cells to keep much of that gas in check.

Most of the methane made in marine mud never reaches the air thanks to microbes that feed on it without oxygen.

This living filter, known to scientists for years, is now clearer in how it works, as shown by lab measurements of electron sharing within the partnership, and the work was led by Hang Yu of Peking University.

Seafloor microbes stop methane

Methane is a strong heat trapping gas, yet marine sediments act like a sink that disables most of it before it escapes.

A comprehensive review places this process, called anaerobic oxidation of methane, at the center of the ocean’s methane budget.

At the core of this process are anaerobic methanotrophic archaea that remove methane where oxygen is absent. They partner with sulfate reducing bacteria that breathe sulfate, a common salt in seawater, instead of oxygen.

These partners often gather in tight clusters in the seabed. They build a team where one group starts the chemistry and the other finishes it.

How two microbes split the job

The archaea strip electrons from methane, which leaves them with a problem because those electrons must go somewhere.

Their bacterial partners accept the electrons and use sulfate as the final electron sink, a classic redox reaction that keeps both partners running.

“These microbial partnerships act as natural sentries, playing a crucial role in limiting the release of methane into the ocean and atmosphere,” said Yu. His team followed that thought by asking how the electrons actually move from cell-to-cell.

Samples came from methane seeps near the Mediterranean, the Guaymas Basin, and the California coast. The researchers then tested the communities under controlled conditions in the lab.

Microbes move methane electrons

The group pressed intact cell clusters onto microelectrodes and tracked electrical signals.

Those signals revealed a single, repeatable redox feature in each community and showed that electrons moved across gaps of about 0.0002 inch between electrodes.

Signals weakened after heating or oxygen exposure and survived chemical fixation that preserves proteins. That pattern points to proteins as the main path for charge movement, not simple dissolved chemicals.

Using a generator collector setup, the team watched electrons leave one electrode and arrive at another only when the test voltage matched the redox feature of the cells.

That behavior confirms that electrons can hop across several cell lengths, enough to connect methane oxidation in the archaea to sulfate reduction in the bacteria.

Why redox conduction matters

The simplest explanation is a chain of bound cofactors in proteins carrying charge through the community.

The best candidates are multiheme cytochrome c, protein wires that pass electrons one heme at a time along and between cells.

Other ideas have been on the table, including conductive carbon made by these microbes.

One earlier work reported amorphous carbon associated with these consortia, suggesting a different route for charge flow.

Freshwater relatives of these methane eaters also point to cytochromes.

A 2023 study showed that Candidatus Methanoperedens can ship electrons to metals and electrodes using multiheme cytochromes, a parallel that supports the new marine findings.

How models can improve

This work closes a long standing gap by providing direct measurements of electron movement in these seafloor partnerships.

It ties a well known ecological service to a specific molecular system rather than a vague exchange of intermediates.

It also explains why the partnership is so tight. If electrons move over only tiny distances, on the order of hundredths of a thousandth of an inch, cells need to stay close to keep the handoff efficient.

A tighter link between mechanism and ecology helps with prediction. Models of methane cycling can now include protein based electron transport rather than assuming invisible chemical shuttles do the job.

How microbes control methane

Nature already runs methane control at the seabed. Understanding the electron’s plumbing hints at ways to support the same chemistry in engineered systems, like bioreactors that treat methane rich waste streams or safeguard well leak sites.

There is no silver bullet. These communities grow slowly and depend on the local chemistry, so translating a lab finding into field practice will take careful trials.

Even so, clarity matters. Knowing that protein based redox conduction connects the partners sets a target for future monitoring and design.

The study is published in Science Advances.

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