Category: 7. Science

In the icy high-altitude valleys of Ladakh, India, a natural hot spring in Puga valley may be holding secrets from the very dawn of life on Earth.

A team of Indian scientists has made a breakthrough discovery that could not only rewrite our understanding of how life may have originated on Earth and shedding light on how astrobiological process related to finding biosignatures of life on other planetary bodies like MARS may have occurred.

Till date Silica based origin of life theories are proposed globally and role of carbonates specifically Ca has been unexplored. Prior studies showed calcite can catalyse prebiotic reactions in laboratory settings.

Scientists from Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP) an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) observed rapid carbonate precipitation in the environment of Puga valley, a high-altitude valley in Ladakh, India, known for its geothermal activity and hot springs. This Project was executed under newly formed Earth and Planetary Exploration Group (EPEG) at BSIP.

Dr. Amritpal Singh Chaddha, Dr. Sunil Kumar Shukla, Dr. Anupam Sharma, Prof. M.G. Thakkar, Dr. Kamlesh Kumar hypothesised that the extreme environment of Puga could act as a real-world prebiotic reactor and preservation site and provide real world evidence of the phenomenon.

Conceptual model of travertine formation and geochemical record at the Puga hot spring, Ladakh.

In an interdisciplinary study, the team analysed the high-altitude hot spring travertine (calcium carbonate deposit) from Puga using a combination of techniques based on inorganic and organic geochemistry including microscopy, GC-MS-MS, Raman, XRD, IR, and stable isotope geochemistry.

These revealed preserved amino acid derivatives, formamide, sulphur compounds, and fatty acids encapsulated within calcite, supporting its role in concentrating and stabilizing organic precursors.

Lead author Dr. Chaddha says that the “Empirical evidences suggest that the natural travertine from the Puga Hot Spring in Ladakh can trap and preserve prebiotic organic molecules, highlightingCaCO3 as a potential natural template for origin-of-life chemistry under extreme Earth-like conditions”.

The study published in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry provides plausible mechanism of travertine formation and how organic molecules may have preserved and triggered life where there was presence of high UV in the early Earth environment.

The findings provide insight into how life may have originated on Earth, aiding future planetary exploration (e.g., Mars). It could aid to ISROs future space exploration missions where identification of true biosignatures is required for identifying life and its associated biogeochemical process. It also enhances understanding of natural biomolecule preservation mechanisms, which may influence the development of new materials and life-detection technologies in astrobiology and synthetic biology.

Calcium Carbonate as a Potential Template for the Origin of Life: Coupled Inorganic–Organic Geochemistry of Travertine Deposit from Puga Hot Spring, ACS Earth and Space Chemistry

Astrobiology,

The Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP) is chartered by the NASA Astrophysics Division to carry out science, research, and technology tasks that advance NASA’s science goals for exoplanets.

The ExEP Science Gap List is a compilation of “science gaps”, defined as either: 1) The difference between knowledge needed to define requirements for specified future NASA exoplanet missions and the current state of the art, or 2) Knowledge which is needed to enhance the exoplanet science return of current and future NASA exoplanet missions.

It is annually updated and input is solicited from the exoplanet community via ExoPAG. Current gaps are:

1) Spectroscopic observations of the atmospheres of small exoplanets,
2) Modeling exoplanet atmospheres,
3) Spectral signature retrieval,
4) Planetary system architectures: occurrence rates for exoplanets of all sizes,
5) Occurrence rates and uncertainties for temperate rocky planets,
6) Yield estimation for exoplanet direct imaging missions,
7) Intrinsic properties of known exoplanet host stars,
8) Mitigating stellar jitter as a limitation to sensitivity of dynamical methods to detect small temperate exoplanets and measure their masses and orbits,
9) Dynamical confirmation of exoplanet candidates and determination of their masses and orbits,
10) Observations and analyses of direct imaging targets,
11) Understanding the abundance and distribution of exozodiacal dust,
12) Measurements of accurate transiting planet radii,
13) Properties of atoms, molecules and aerosols in exoplanet atmospheres,
14) Exoplanet interior structure and material properties,
15) Quantify and mitigate the impacts of stellar contamination on transmission spectroscopy for measuring the composition of exoplanet atmospheres, 16) Complete the inventory of remotely observable exoplanet biosignatures and their false positives, 17) Understanding planet formation and disk properties.

Karl Stapelfeldt, Eric Mamajek

Comments: 55 pages, updated annually, this URL https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/programs/exep-science/
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Report number: CL#25-0091
Cite as: arXiv:2507.18665 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2507.18665v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.18665
Focus to learn more
Submission history
From: Eric E. Mamajek
[v1] Thu, 24 Jul 2025 04:15:37 UTC (2,763 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18665
Astrobiology, exoplanet, astronomy,

Most of the black holes we know of are in two categories. They are either supermassive, millions or billions of times the mass of the Sun, or stellar-sized, from a few times to a few tens of times our little star. There is an in-between category known as intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) that weigh from 100 or so to a few hundreds of thousands of times the mass of the Sun. Only a few of these IMBHs are known, and astronomers have now caught another one.

This one, NGC 6099 HLX-1, was first seen in 2009 when it suddenly became incredibly bright in X-rays. First NASA’s Chandra and then the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton tracked how this object changed, peaking in 2012. The observatories revealed that it is 40,000 light-years from the center of its galaxy, NGC 6099, located about 450 million light-years away in the constellation Hercules.

Supermassive black holes, sitting at the core of galaxies, are known to be active and emit a lot of X-rays. Finding one way off-center suggested the possibility of an IMBH. The X-ray data indicate that the object reached 3 million kelvins, consistent with a black hole ripping apart a star, something called a tidal disruption event.

“X-ray sources with such extreme luminosity are rare outside galaxy nuclei and can serve as a key probe for identifying elusive IMBHs. They represent a crucial missing link in black hole evolution between stellar mass and supermassive black holes,” lead author Yi-Chi Chang of the National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, said in a statement.

Hubble data revealed that NGC 6099 HLX-1 is surrounded by a cluster of stars, so there are plenty of opportunities for snacking. The peak was in 2012, and it has been declining all the way to the last observations in 2023, but optical and X-ray views do not overlap exactly. The disruption of the star might have created a plasma disk of variable luminosity, or the disk might flicker due to the IMBH eating some of the gas over time.

“If the IMBH is eating a star, how long does it take to swallow the star’s gas? In 2009, HLX-1 was fairly bright. Then in 2012, it was about 100 times brighter. And then it went down again,” explained study co-author Roberto Soria of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). “So now we need to wait and see if it’s flaring multiple times, or there was a beginning, there was [a] peak, and now it’s just going to go down all the way until it disappears.”

Understanding IMBHs could be crucial to understanding how supermassive black holes came to be. The team hopes to find more of these objects as they do something energetic, like ripping a star apart.

“So if we are lucky, we’re going to find more free-floating black holes suddenly becoming X-ray bright because of a tidal disruption event. If we can do a statistical study, this will tell us how many of these IMBHs there are, how often they disrupt a star, how bigger galaxies have grown by assembling smaller galaxies,” said Soria.

The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Consider the delicate web of fat in a Wagyu steak. The “marbling” that makes carnivore connoisseurs swoon is a visual heuristic for quality flavor.

Now, a new study suggests the very same marbling of fat inside our own muscles points to trouble.

This condition, known as intramuscular adipose tissue, or IMAT, has long been recognized by scientists as a strong indicator of poor health. It’s linked to a wide range of diseases: obesity, Type 2 diabetes, neuromuscular disorders (including Duchenne muscular dystrophy) and neurogenerative conditions such as ALS. In some cases, clinicians can even track the progress of a disease by the amount of fat in muscle tissue.

We wanted to understand the precise function IMAT might play on muscle health. Now, we have functional evidence that it is an active driver of declining muscle function.”

Daniel Kopinke, Ph.D., associate professor, department of pharmacology and therapeutics, UF College of Medicine

The study shows that intramuscular fat acts as a physical barrier, obstructing the traditional healing process and regeneration that typically follows a muscle injury.

Kopinke’s team developed a genetic model called mFATBLOCK that allowed researchers to damage the muscle while preventing the infiltration of IMAT.

When fat cells were present in the muscle, the muscle fibers were unable to properly form and grow. The fat tissue’s roadblock led to a disorganized and chaotic healing process that ultimately resulted in smaller, weaker muscle fibers.

“This directly translated to a loss of strength,” said Kopinke, whose background is a veritable scientific smorgasbord of developmental biology, mouse genetics, stem cell biology and muscle regeneration.

The muscle with fatty interlopers was not capable of producing the same amount of force as the healthy, unobstructed muscle.

One metaphor Kopinke’s students often reference is a forest fire. When everything is burned down and you’re seeking to encourage new trees to grow, a boulder is an impediment. Wherever there’s a boulder, a tree cannot properly germinate or grow.

Similarly, where space is occupied by fat cells, muscle fibers cannot grow. Notably, without any hampering of the fat cells’ growth, the fat tissue ultimately took up 12% of the whole muscle tissue.

This isn’t to say that individuals seeking to change their weight are out of luck. Much like weight gain, weight loss relies on an energy imbalance – in this case, expending more energy than is put into your body, often through diet and exercise.

Fortunately, the solution to reducing intramuscular fat is the same method for general weight loss: creating an energy imbalance. By expending more energy than consumed, the body is forced to shrink its fat cells, including those marbled within the muscle. This clears the path for muscle fibers to regenerate and grow.

“If you make the area that fat cells occupy in your muscles smaller, the muscle fibers would have more space to grow into,” Kopinke said.

“You can shrink your fat cells,” he added. “Based on everything we found, we would speculate that if you make the area that fat cells occupy in your muscles smaller, the muscle fibers would have more space to grow into.”

These findings could fundamentally shift the research area’s understanding of the role of fat in muscle disease and aging. It poses major implications regarding current therapies for severe muscle injuries and for chronic diseases like muscular dystrophy or age-related muscle loss. Now, experts may incorporate strategies on reducing or removing the physical blockage of fat, rather than solely promoting muscle growth.

“By clearing the path for muscle fibers to heal correctly, we may be able to restore function and improve strength in millions of people affected by these debilitating conditions,” Kopinke said.

While the idea of teleporting through walls may sound like something out of a movie, such phenomena actually occur in the atomic world. This phenomenon, called ‘quantum tunneling,’ involves electrons passing through energy barriers (walls) that they seemingly cannot surmount with their energy, as if digging a tunnel through them.

This phenomenon is the principle by which semiconductors, i. e., core components of smartphones and computers, operate, and is also essential for nuclear fusion, the process that produces light and energy in the sun. However, until now, while some understanding existed about what happens before and after an electron passes through a tunnel, the exact behavior of the electron as it traverses the barrier remained unclear. We know the entrance and exit of the tunnel, but what happens inside has remained a mystery.

Professor Kim Dong Eon’s team, along with Professor C. H. Keitel’s team at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, conducted an experiment using intense laser pulses to induce electron tunneling in atoms. The results revealed a surprising phenomenon: electrons do not simply pass through the barrier but collide again with the atomic nucleus inside the tunnel. The research team named this process ‘under-the-barrier recollision’ (UBR). Until now, it was believed that electrons could only interact with the nucleus after exiting the tunnel, but this study confirmed for the first time that such interaction can occur inside the tunnel.

Even more intriguingly, during this process, electrons gain energy inside the barrier and collide again with the nucleus, thereby strengthening what is known as ‘Freeman resonance.’ This ionization was significantly greater than that observed in previously known ionization processes and was hardly affected by changes in laser intensity. This is a completely new discovery that could not be predicted by existing theories.

This research is significant as it is the first in the world to elucidate the dynamics of electrons during tunneling. It is expected to provide an important scientific foundation for more precise control of electron behavior and increased efficiency in advanced technologies such as semiconductors, quantum computers, and ultrafast lasers that rely on tunneling.

Professor Kim Dong Eon stated, “Through this study, we were able to find clues about how electrons behave when they pass through the atomic wall,” and added, “Now, we can finally understand tunneling more deeply and control it as we wish.”

Meanwhile, this research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea and the Capacity Development Project of the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology.

Colorectal cancer is among the most prevalent and lethal malignancies worldwide, with liver metastases occurring in nearly one-third of patients and accounting for a major share of cancer-related deaths. Traditional research has primarily focused on single genes or pathways, limiting our understanding of the metastatic process and hampering therapeutic progress. The emergence of high-throughput “omics” technologies now allows researchers to probe cancer’s complexity at multiple molecular levels. By analyzing DNA, RNA, proteins, metabolites, and microbes, scientists can capture a multidimensional view of tumor evolution and host interaction. Owing to these unresolved clinical challenges, an integrated multi-omics perspective is urgently needed to guide future discoveries in colorectal cancer liver metastasis (CRLM).

The team of Chongqing University Cancer Hospital published a sweeping review (DOI: 10.20892/j.issn.2095-3941.2025.0066) in Cancer Biology & Medicine, synthesizing the latest research on multi-omics in colorectal cancer liver metastasis (CRLM). The article explores how six omics disciplines—genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and microbiomics—contribute unique but complementary insights into the mechanisms, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of CRLM. This cross-disciplinary overview not only catalogs scientific advances but also advocates for a unified omics approach to tackle one of colorectal cancer (CRC)’s deadliest outcomes.

The review highlights how each omics layer uncovers distinct dimensions of CRLM. Genomic studies reveal key mutations like TP53, KRAS, and SMAD4, and show that metastatic lesions harbor more genetic instability than primary tumors. Epigenomic analyses identify DNA methylation changes and histone modifications—such as hypermethylated TPEF or altered H3K27me3—that could serve as early indicators or drug targets. Transcriptomics brings attention to noncoding RNAs and microRNAs like miR-122, circRNA_0001178, and lncRNA-SNHG15 as potential drivers or markers of metastasis. Proteomic data show structural protein shifts, such as increased ECM proteins and EMT regulators like THBS1, which facilitate invasion. Metabolomic findings reveal how altered pathways, including cholesterol or succinate metabolism, may foster immune exhaustion and resistance. Meanwhile, microbiomics links species like Fusobacterium nucleatum to immunosuppressive microenvironments and therapy response. Crucially, integrated multi-omics studies identify patterns missed by individual layers—for instance, how SMAD4 mutations activate STAT3 signaling to blunt chemotherapy efficacy. Together, these findings present a rich, multidimensional framework for decoding CRLM.

Dissecting cancer through a single lens is no longer enough. By integrating data across the genome, transcriptome, proteome, and beyond, we gain a panoramic view of how colorectal cancer evolves and spreads. This multi-omics synergy opens up new avenues for discovering actionable biomarkers, designing personalized treatments, and ultimately improving survival for patients facing liver metastasis.”

Dr. Yan Li, senior author of the review

The implications of this multi-omics paradigm are far-reaching. Clinicians could one day tailor treatment plans using personalized omics profiles, while non-invasive liquid biopsies may track disease progression through cfRNA or methylation markers. Targeting metabolic or microbial factors—like modulating gut microbiota or inhibiting cholesterol-related pathways—could boost immunotherapy outcomes. Although technical and clinical hurdles remain, the review strongly advocates for integrating omics in both research and practice. As these methods mature, they promise to reshape how colorectal liver metastasis is detected, treated, and prevented—moving precision medicine from concept to clinic.

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There’s no doubt that SpaceX’s Starlink internet service has connected the world like never before — but at what cost? Astronomers have long voiced concerns about Starlink’s satellite constellation interfering with observations of the universe, and a new survey by Curtin University confirms those fears.

An analysis of 76 million images from a prototype station for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope found Starlink satellite emissions affected up to 30% of images in some datasets; such interference could affect research outcomes that depend on that data.The survey identified more than 112,000 radio emissions from 1,806 Starlink satellites, and found that uch of the observed interference is not intentional.

“Some satellites were detected emitting in bands where no signals are supposed to be present at all, such as the 703 satellites we identified at 150.8 MHz, which is meant to be protected for radio astronomy,” study lead Dylan Grigg, a Ph.D. candidate at Curtin University, said in a statement.

Grigg noted these unintended emissions might come from onboard electronics. “Because … they’re not part of an intentional signal, astronomers can’t easily predict them or filter them out,” he said.

While the International Telecommunication Union does regulate satellite emissions to protect astronomical observations, current rules “focus on intentional transmissions and do not cover this type of unintended emission,” said Steven Tingay, a Curtin professor and executive director of the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy.

However, it’s not only Starlink satellites that are the problem. The study team’s survey focused on Starlink because it currently has the most extensive constellation, with more than 7,000 satellites deployed at the time of the survey, but other satellite networks can “leak” unintended transmissions, too.

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“It is important to note that Starlink is not violating current regulations, so is doing nothing wrong. Discussions we have had with SpaceX on the topic have been constructive,” said Tingay. “We hope this study adds support for international efforts to update policies that regulate the impact of this technology on radio astronomy research that are currently underway.”

The team’s research was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Now a team of researchers from the Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries (N3AS), including several from UC San Diego, have shown, through theoretical calculations, how collapsing massive stars can act as a “neutrino collider.” Neutrinos steal thermal energy from these stars, forcing them to contract and causing their electrons to move near light speed. This drives the stars to instability and collapse

Eventually the collapsing star’s density becomes so high that the neutrinos are trapped and collide with each other. With purely standard model interactions, the neutrinos will be mostly electron flavor, the matter will be relatively “cold,” and the collapse will likely leave a neutron star remnant. However, secret interactions that change neutrino flavor radically alter this scenario, producing neutrinos of all flavors and leading to a mostly neutron “hot” core that may lead to a black hole remnant.

Fermi National Accelerator Lab’s upcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) might be able to test these ideas, as might future observations of the neutrinos or gravitational waves from collapsing stars.

The study, published June 18, 2025 in Physical Review Letters, was led by UC San Diego researchers Anna M. Suliga, Julien Froustey, Lukáš Gráf, Kyle Kehrer and George Fuller, as well as collaborators from other institutions. Their research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation (PHY-2209578 and PHY-2020275), the Department of Energy (DE-AC02-07CHI11359), and the Heising-Simons Foundation (2017-228).

Scientists have achieved the lowest quantum computing error rate ever recorded — an important step in solving the fundamental challenges on the way to practical, utility-scale quantum computers. In research published June 12 in the journal APS Physical Review Letters, the scientists demonstrated a quantum error rate of 0.000015%, which equates to one error per 6.7 million operations. This achievement represents an improvement of nearly an order of magnitude in both fidelity and speed over the previous record of approximately one error for every 1 million operations — achieved by the same team in 2014. The prevalence of errors, or “noise,” in quantum operations can render a quantum computer’s outputs useless. This noise comes from a variety of sources, including imperfections in the control methods (essentially, problems with the computer’s architecture and algorithms) and the laws of physics. That’s why considerable efforts have gone into quantum error correction. While errors related to natural law, such as decoherence (the natural decay of the quantum state) and leakage (the qubit state leaking out of the computational subspace), can be reduced only within those laws, the team’s progress was achieved by reducing the noise generated by the computer’s architecture and control methods to almost zero.

Full research : Scientists achieve quantum computer error rate of 0.000015% that could lead to practical, utility-scale quantum computers that are both smaller and faster.