Lightning illuminates the cloud tops of Tropical Storm Erick as it stormed across the Pacific coast of central Mexico at approximately 3:38 a.m. local time on June 20 as the International Space Station orbited 258 miles above.
Floating 258 miles above, NASA astronauts on board the International Space Station have a view like no other and can therefore photograph Earth in unique ways.
Recently, the NASA Johnson Flickr page uploaded a dramatic set of photos showing the inside of a tropical cyclone. The picture was lit by thunder bolts.
Category 1 Hurricane Erick brought heavy rainfall to parts of southern and southwestern Mexico in June 2025. It caused flash floods and mudslides that left at least 23 dead, 28 injured, and two missing. The total damage was estimated at $250 million, according to Wikipedia.
The lightning dramatically illuminates Hurricane Erick for a unique photo.NASA
The awesome photos do not have an author ascribed to them, but we do know they were taken on June 20 at roughly 3.42 AM local time as Hurricane Erick stormed across the Pacific Ocean south of the Mexican state of Chiapas. The photos were uploaded just a few days ago.
Astronauts onboard the ISS have become prolific photographers, and while the identity of the photograph’s author is unknown, we do know it was shot on a Nikon Z9 with a Nikon 200mm f/2 VR attached, set at 1/125 of a second, f/2.0, and 12,800 ISO.
The photos were likely taken by one of the Expedition 73 Crew, which includes NASA flight engineers Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, and Jonny Kim. Out of the three, Nichole “Vapor” Ayers has proven to be the most accomplished photographer, having captured a spectacular image of a sprite — a rare form of lightning that shoots up from a thunderstorm — earlier this month.
Don Pettit, who is arguably the best photographer to ever visit space, mentioned last year that he was on a mission to capture a photo of a sprite directly from above. Along with fellow talented photographer and astronaut Matthew Dominick, the pair were shooting thousands of photos while flying over lightning storms in the hope that a sprite would shoot up toward them. Sadly, it hasn’t been accomplished yet.
As the study’s lead author Anita Lenneis, Ph.D., explains in a news release, “Our results found that how young people evaluated their own sleep was consistently linked with how they felt about their well-being and life satisfaction,” adding that when participants reported sleeping better than they normally did, for instance, they actually experienced more positive emotions and had a higher sense of life satisfaction the next day.
Moon enthusiasts, tonight is your night. After days of only slivers of light, there’s finally something to see on the moon’s surface.
See what’s happening tonight, July 28.
What is today’s moon phase?
As of Monday, July 28, the moon phase is Waxing Crescent. There’s still not much to see tonight, with only 9% of the surface visible to us on Earth (according to NASA’s Daily Moon Observation).
It’s the fourth day of the lunar cycle, and there are sights to see tonight. With the unaided eye, enjoy a glimpse of the Mare Crisium and the Mare Fecunditatis. Add binoculars or a telescope, and you’ll see the Endymion Crater too.
When is the next full moon?
The next full moon will be on August 9. The last full moon was on July 10.
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.
Egyptian physicist Kerolos Mousa played a role in a Harvard breakthrough using metasurfaces to control light at the photon level, which may pave the way for major advances in quantum technologies.
Kerolos Mousa, an Egyptian PhD student who hails from Minya, has contributed to a breakthrough in quantum physics at Harvard University, where a team of physicists developed a device capable of controlling the shape and path of individual photons with unprecedented precision.
The innovation is based on metasurface technology, engineered materials that can manipulate electromagnetic waves, and represents a major advancement in the way light is handled within miniature optical environments. Mousa led efforts to design the nanostructures critical to regulating photon behaviour.
The research, conducted at Harvard’s Applied Physics Lab and supported by leading US scientific institutions, was published in Nature, a top US science journal, and Science, a leading British publications. It was also featured on the university’s official channels.
The advancement is hoped to significantly impact fields such as quantum communication, quantum computing, and the development of next-generation smart optical devices.
New research by the University of Cambridge shows that the impact of deforestation for livestock farming on biodiversity is much greater than previously thought. The damage to nature is, on average 60% higher than previous local studies showed. Biodiversity offsets are often used worldwide, but the datasets used to calculate them paint too rosy a picture. This shows that the consequences of massive deforestation for beef, coffee, palm oil, and sugar are much more serious for unique plant and animal species than previously thought.
A closer look at the impact on biodiversity
The destruction of habitats in Colombia, a country rich in biodiversity, has led to significant losses of flora and fauna. A third of Colombia is covered by rainforest, home to thousands of unique plant and animal species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. The transformation of these natural habitats into agricultural land, particularly for livestock farming, threatens the delicate balance of ecosystems. Researchers at the University of Cambridge emphasize that the actual damage to biodiversity is often underestimated, as studies tend to focus on local effects without taking into account the larger regional context.
Scale makes a difference
Traditionally, studies on biodiversity loss have focused on small, local areas, which gives an incomplete picture of the real impact. A recent study conducted in Colombia covered 971 bird species in 13 biogeographical regions and showed that biodiversity losses on a pan-Colombian scale are approximately 60% greater than local studies suggest. This is because local studies overlook the complexity of ecosystems and the interconnections between species. The findings demonstrate that it is crucial to consider the spatial structure and scale of ecosystems when assessing the impact of land use. The study reveals that six to seven biogeographical regions need to be sampled before estimates approach the pan-Colombian value for species with low, medium, and high sensitivity to habitat conversion.
How living dikes bolster biodiversity while matching traditional strength
In the GREEN+ spotlight, we highlight an important development in the green transition. This time: the rise of living dikes as a response to rising sea levels.
Biological homogenization and reduced diversity
Land conversion erodes habitat complexity, reduces microclimate variability, and limits niche availability and dispersal potential in the remaining natural habitats. Habitat conversion results in biotic homogenization, with increasing compositional similarity between spatially distinct communities. This process of biotic homogenization, in which ecosystems become increasingly similar, reduces overall biodiversity and makes ecosystems more vulnerable to disturbances. The loss of biodiversity is not evenly distributed; regions with high beta diversity, i.e., a large variation in species between different locations, experience more than twice as severe local effects. This emphasizes the need to implement protection strategies that take into account the unique characteristics of different biogeographical regions.
The role of biodiversity offsetting
Biodiversity offsetting is used worldwide, whereby damage to nature in one area is compensated for by protecting or restoring nature elsewhere. However, the datasets currently used for this offsetting paint too rosy a picture of the actual situation. Current methods for biodiversity offsetting are often based on local studies and do not sufficiently take into account the spatial scale and complexity of ecosystems. This leads to an underestimation of the actual impact of land use changes and makes offsetting less effective. There is a need for better monitoring programs with embedded spatial structures and measurement methods tailored to the regional scale of policy relevance. Implementing effective protection across landscape-wide biogeographical variation, combining important area-based targets and measures aimed at maintaining system integrity, is crucial.
Implications for policy and consumers
The findings of the study have important implications for policymakers and consumers. Governments need to develop policies that take into account the spatial scale of biodiversity loss and prioritize the protection of intact ecosystems. Consumers can play a role by making more conscious choices about products that are produced in a sustainable manner and by supporting companies that are committed to biodiversity conservation. Consumers must be aware of the ecological costs of their consumption patterns and be willing to make changes to reduce their impact on nature. The researchers hope that their findings will lead to better policies and more conscious choices, both by governments and consumers, so that biodiversity protection can be addressed more effectively.
A look to the future
The challenges of biodiversity conservation require a multidisciplinary approach, bringing together science, policy, and public awareness. Future studies on biodiversity loss must consider the spatial scale and recognize the complexity of ecosystems and the interconnections between species. By better understanding the ecological costs of land-use changes, we can develop more effective strategies to protect biodiversity and create a more sustainable future. The study is dedicated to the many Colombian environmental leaders who have been murdered since fieldwork began in 2012, highlighting the urgency of the situation.
Revolution in agriculture: plants grow without sunlight
Scientists have developed a pioneering farming method that makes traditional photosynthesis obsolete.
Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.
Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth
The explosive submarine Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption of January 2022 is famous for its large volcanic plume that lifted nearly 60 kilometers into the mesosphere and for its tsunami that caused fatalities as far away as Peru. The eruption’s boom was heard even as far as Alaska (10,000 kilometers away), and the barometric pressure disturbances of this boom were tracked globally as it continued to circle the earth.
Using records from a large number of barometric and water well monitoring stations across China (see figure above), He et al. [2025] demonstrate a strong correlation between the boom’s pressure pulse and ground water levels. High permeability reservoirs displayed an immediate response. The responses in low permeability aquifers were, however, more muted. This work is notable in that it highlights a clear coupling between strong atmospheric pressure events to pressures within confined aquifers.
Citation: He, A., Liu, Y., Zhang, F., Zhang, H., Singh, R. P., & Wang, Y. (2025). Large-scale groundwater system characterization using pressure responses to barometric perturbations caused by the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 130, e2025JB031616. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JB031616
A new study suggests arachnids originated in the sea, not on land. This discovery comes from a well-preserved fossil that is 500 million years old. Image via Mark Vihtelic/ Unsplash.
Did arachnids originate in the sea?
We’re used to seeing spiders, scorpions and other arachnids hiding in holes or crawling through branches and leaves. But on July 22, 2025, a team of scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom said arachnids likely evolved in the sea. The researchers analyzed an exquisitely preserved fossil of a now-extinct marine creature with an exoskeleton: Mollisonia symmetrica. Arachnids share a similar body structure with this fossil, but the key lies in their unique brain and nervous system.
The researchers published their study in the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology on July 22, 2025.
A challenging theory
Until now, the widely accepted belief has been that arachnids came from a common ancestor that lived on land. From this common ancestor, arachnids began to evolve and diversify. However, a new analysis of a magnificently preserved fossil of a marine animal challenges that idea. The study suggests that arachnids might have begun their evolution in the sea. Before this discovery, the previous fossil record suggested that arachnids lived and diversified exclusively on solid ground.
Marine arthropods such as Mollisonia symmetrica are sea creatures with exoskeletons. Mollisonia symmetrica lived half a billion years ago. Fortunately, a Mollisonia fossil from the Burgess Shale formation of the Canadian Rockies has remained almost intact all this time. It has allowed scientists to perform a detailed analysis of its body structure and the fossilized features of its brain and central nervous system.
Meanwhile, spiders and scorpions have existed for about 400 million years, undergoing relatively few changes. So researchers have been able to make precise comparisons between the fossil and various modern-day arachnids and other animals living on Earth today.
An unexpected discovery
Until now, scientists thought the extinct Mollisonia symmetrica represented an ancestral member of a specific group of arthropods known as chelicerates. These animals lived during the Cambrian Period (between 540 and 485 million years ago) and included the ancestors of today’s horseshoe crabs.
Physically, Mollisonia had a body divided into two parts. First, it had a rounded front carapace, or hard upper shell. And second, it had a segmented trunk ending in a tail-like structure. This body structure resembles that of a scorpion.
In addition, the front part of Mollisonia functioned like the head of a spider: it had organized nerves controlling its limbs. Its small brain also sent signals to a pair of fang-like claws. This structure supports the idea that it was closely related to arachnids.
But what surprised researchers most was discovering that the neural structures in Mollisonia’s fossilized brain were not organized like those of horseshoe crabs, a marine animal. Instead, they mirrored the arrangement found in modern spiders and their relatives.
Arachnids’ brains
Spiders have a distinct brain that sets them apart. Imagine the brains of crustaceans, insects, centipedes and horseshoe crabs, but inverted! That is, the rear part of the brain is in front, and vice versa. According to the lead author of the study and Regents Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Arizona, Nicholas Strausfeld:
It’s as if the Limulus-type brain [a genus of horseshoe crab] seen in Cambrian fossils, or the brains of ancestral and present days crustaceans and insects, have been flipped backwards, which is what we see in modern spiders.
A side-by-side comparison of the brains of a horseshoe crab (left), the Mollisonia fossil (center) and a modern spider (right). The study found the organization of Mollisonia‘s 3 brain regions (green, magenta and blue) are inverted when compared to the horseshoe crab. Instead, its brain resembles the arrangement found in modern spiders. Image via Nick Strausfeld/ University of Arizona.
How to be sure?
To carry out the study, Strausfeld spent quite some time at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, where the Mollisonia fossil is. There, he took dozens of photographs using different lighting angles, varying intensities, polarized light and magnifications.
The researchers need to rule out the possibility that the similarities between Mollisonia’s brain and that of spiders were due to convergent evolution. As in, that they didn’t evolve similar traits but separately, due to similar environmental situations. So co-author David Andrew – formerly a graduate student in Strausfeld’s lab and now at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania – conducted a statistical analysis. He compared 115 neural and anatomical traits across both extinct and living arthropods.
The results placed Mollisonia as a sister group to modern arachnids. This supports the hypothesis that this ancient creature belongs to the evolutionary lineage that gave rise to today’s spiders, scorpions, solifuges, vinegaroons and other arachnids. According to co-author Frank Hirth from King’s College London:
This is a major step in evolution, which appears to be exclusive to arachnids. Yet already in Mollisonia, we identified brain domains that correspond to living species with which we can predict the underlying genetic makeup that is common to all arthropods.
Unfortunately, other arthropods similar to Mollisonia are not preserved well enough for detailed analysis of their nervous systems. But if they shared the same unique brain structure, their descendants could have formed divergent land-dwelling lineages that now make up various branches of the arachnid tree of life.
Advanced imaging techniques allowed the research team to identify key anatomical features in the fossilized remains of the Mollisonia specimen. Image via Nick Strausfeld/ University of Arizona.
Why an inverted brain?
According to co-author Frank Hirth of King’s College London, this discovery could represent a key step in evolution. Studies on modern spider brains suggest this inverted nervous system organization enables more direct connections between control centers and the circuits that execute movement. And this possibly explains the remarkable agility of spiders and other arachnids.
This design likely gives them stealth in hunting and speed in pursuit. And, in the case of spiders, it gives them refined coordination for spinning webs and capturing prey. Strausfeld explained:
The arachnid brain is unlike any other brain on this planet. And it suggests that its organization has something to do with computational speed and the control of motor actions.
The first creatures to colonize land were probably arthropods similar to millipedes – and possibly some insect ancestors – an evolutionary branch of crustaceans. He added:
We might imagine that a Mollisonia-like arachnid also became adapted to terrestrial life, making early insects and millipedes their daily diet.
Being able to fly gives you a serious advantage when you’re being pursued by a spider. Yet, despite their aerial mobility, insects are still caught in their millions in exquisite silken webs spun by spiders.
Illustration of what Mollisonia would have looked like some 500 million years ago. It likely fed on early insects and millipedes. Image via Nick Strausfeld/ University of Arizona.
Bottom line: We think of spiders, scorpions and other arachnids as land creatures. But according to a new study, they might have originated in the sea.
Source: Cambrian origin of the arachnid brain
Via The University of Arizona
Read more: Spiders can smell using their legs! The secret revealed
Read more: Lifeform of the week: Scorpions
Cristina Ortiz
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About the Author:
Cristina Ortiz – based in Granada, Spain – is EarthSky’s defender of animals with her “lifeform” videos at EarthSky YouTube. Discover the most fascinating facts about all the beings with whom we share Earth. Are you ready for the adventure? Cristina has been an EarthSky.org editor since 2021. She has a master’s degree in translation and interpreting, specializing in science and technology. “Since I was a kid,” she says, “I could feel that passion for science and communication.”
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.
Related: Scientists make ‘magic state’ breakthrough after 20 years — without it, quantum computers can never be truly useful
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“By drastically reducing the chance of error, this work significantly reduces the infrastructure required for error correction, opening the way for future quantum computers to be smaller, faster, and more efficient,” Molly Smith, a graduate student in physics at the University of Oxford and co-lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Precise control of qubits will also be useful for other quantum technologies such as clocks and quantum sensors.”
Record-low quantum computing error rates
The quantum computer used in the team’s experiment relied on a bespoke platform that eschews the more common architecture that uses photons as qubits — the quantum equivalent of computer bits — for qubits made of “trapped ions.”
The study was also conducted at room temperature, which the researchers said simplifies the setup required to integrate this technology into a working quantum computer.
Whereas most quantum systems either deploy superconducting circuits that rely on “quantum dots” or employ the use of lasers — often called “optical tweezers” — to hold a single photon in place for operation as a qubit, the team used microwaves to trap a series of calcium-43 ions in place.
With this approach, the ions are placed into a hyperfine “atomic clock” state. According to the study, this technique allowed the researchers to create more “quantum gates,” which are analogous to the number of “quantum operations” a computer can perform, with greater precision than the photon-based methods allowed.
Once the ions were placed into a hyperfine atomic clock state, the researchers calibrated the ions via an automated control procedure that regularly corrected them for amplitude and frequency drift caused by the microwave control method.
In other words, the researchers developed an algorithm to detect and correct the noise produced by the microwaves used to trap the ions. By removing this noise, the team could then conduct quantum operations with their system at or near the lowest error rate physically possible.
Using this method, it is now possible to develop quantum computers that are capable of conducting single-gate operations (those conducted with a single qubit gate as opposed to a gate requiring multiple qubits) with nearly zero errors at large scales.
This could lead to more efficient quantum computers in general and, per the study, achieves a new state-of-the-art single-qubit gate error and the breakdown of all known sources of error, thus accounting for most errors produced in single-gate operations.
This means engineers who build quantum computers with the trapped-ion architecture and developers who create the algorithms that run on them won’t have to dedicate as many qubits to the sole purpose of error correction.
By reducing the error, the new method reduces the number of qubits required and the cost and size of the quantum computer itself, the researchers said in the statement.
This isn’t a panacea for the industry, however, as many quantum algorithms require multigate qubits functioning alongside or formed from single-gate qubits to perform computations beyond rudimentary functions. The error rate in two-qubit gate functions is still roughly 1 in 2,000.
While this study represents an important step toward practical, utility-scale quantum computing, it doesn’t address all of the “noise” problems inherent in complex multigate qubit systems.
