Category: 7. Science

  • NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Just Solved a 70-Year Solar Mystery

    NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Just Solved a 70-Year Solar Mystery

    Scientists have at last seen how the Sun snaps and explodes, thanks to NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. The mission confirmed a 70-year-old theory about the magnetic forces behind solar storms. Credit: Shutterstock

    For the first time in history, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has flown through a region of the Sun where explosive magnetic forces snap and reconnect, directly confirming a theory that scientists have debated for 70 years.

    This breakthrough explains how the Sun unleashes immense bursts of energy that drive solar flares and storms powerful enough to disrupt satellites, power grids, and communications here on Earth.

    Confirming Decades-Old Solar Theories

    A team led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has provided the first direct confirmation of long-standing theories about magnetic reconnection, a powerful process that unleashes stored magnetic energy and fuels solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other space weather events. The breakthrough was made possible by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP), the only spacecraft to travel through the Sun’s upper atmosphere.

    Magnetic reconnection takes place when magnetic field lines inside superheated plasma break apart and then link up again in a different arrangement. This sudden shift releases tremendous energy. On the Sun, the process drives eruptions that can ripple across the solar system and interfere with technology on Earth, including satellites, communications, and power grids. Developing accurate models of how reconnection works on the Sun is key to predicting these disruptive solar storms before they reach our planet.

    Parker Solar Probe Coronal Mass Ejection Source
    An SwRI-led study of the Sun confirms decades-old theoretical models about solar magnetic reconnection. Measurements from NASA’s Solar Parker Probe helped fill crucial gaps in the data about processes that drive solar flares, coronal mass ejections and other space weather phenomena. The measurements were taken from the region pictured in the white box, which was identified as the source of a coronal mass ejection. The figures shown here are taken from images captured by the ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission. Credit: ESA/NASA/Solar Orbiter

    From Earth’s Magnetosphere to the Sun

    “Reconnection operates at different spatial and temporal scales, in space plasmas ranging from the Sun to Earth’s magnetosphere to laboratory settings to cosmic scales,” said Dr. Ritesh Patel, a research scientist in SwRI’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado, and lead author of a new paper published in Nature Astronomy. “Since the late 1990s, we have been able to identify reconnection in the solar corona through imaging and spectroscopy. In-situ detection was possible in Earth’s magnetosphere with the launch of missions like NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. Similar studies in the solar corona, however, only became possible when NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018.”

    PSP’s unprecedented closeness to the Sun has opened the door to discoveries once thought impossible. During a close pass on September 6, 2022, the spacecraft encountered a massive eruption and gathered the first detailed images and measurements of plasma and magnetic field activity in such an event. By combining these observations with data from the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, the SwRI-led team confirmed that PSP had indeed flown through a magnetic reconnection zone in the Sun’s atmosphere for the first time.

    Parker Solar Probe Touches Sun
    NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is the first spacecraft to fly directly through the Sun’s outer atmosphere, gathering unprecedented data on solar activity and its effects on Earth. Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Brian Monroe

    Long-Standing Models Finally Validated

    “We’ve been developing the theory of magnetic reconnection for almost 70 years, so we had a basic idea of how different parameters would behave,” Patel said. “The measurements and observations received from the encounter have validated numerical simulation models that have existed for decades within some degree of uncertainty. The data will serve as strong constraints for future models and provide a path to understand PSP’s solar measurements from other timeframes and events.”

    NASA’s MMS mission, led by SwRI, provided researchers with an idea of how reconnection occurs in the near-Earth environment on a smaller scale. The 2022 PSP observations now provide researchers with the missing piece connecting Earth scale to solar scale reconnection. SwRI will next work to identify whether reconnection mechanisms accompanied by turbulence or fluctuations and waves of the magnetic fields are present in the solar regions PSP identified as having active reconnection.

    Unlocking Energy Transfer Secrets

    “Ongoing work provides discoveries at different scales, which allows us to see how energy is transferred and how particles are accelerated,” Patel said. “Understanding these processes at the Sun can help better predict solar activity and improve our understanding of the near-Earth environment.”

    Reference: “Direct in situ observations of eruption-associated magnetic reconnection in the solar corona” by Ritesh Patel, Tatiana Niembro, Xiaoyan Xie, Daniel B. Seaton, Samuel T. Badman, Soumya Roy, Yeimy J. Rivera, Katharine K. Reeves, Guillermo Stenborg, Phillip Hess, Matthew J. West, Alex Feller, Johann Hirzberger, David Orozco Suárez, Sami K. Solanki, Hanna Strecker and Gherardo Valori, 13 August 2025, Nature Astronomy.
    DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02623-6

    The Parker Solar Probe is a NASA mission designed to study the Sun up close and uncover how its activity shapes the environment around Earth. It is part of NASA’s Living with a Star program, which focuses on the Sun-Earth system and its impact on daily life and society. The program is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft itself was designed and built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which also operates and manages the mission.

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  • Cosmic origin: Did comets play a role in shaping Earth? Nasa discovers hydrogen on ‘Devil comet’ formed water

    Cosmic origin: Did comets play a role in shaping Earth? Nasa discovers hydrogen on ‘Devil comet’ formed water

    Scientists have uncovered groundbreaking evidence that Earth‘s water may have originated from comets, following a new study of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, nicknamed the “devil comet”. The research, published in August 2025 in Nature’s astronomy, revealed that the water vapor detected in this Halley-type comet has an almost identical chemical composition to Earth’s oceans, providing the strongest evidence yet for the theory that comets delivered water to our planet.Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, approximately the size of Mount Everest, made its first close approach to Earth since 1954 during the total solar eclipse in April 2025. The comet follows a 71-year orbit around the Sun and belongs to a group of ancient Halley-type comets that contain primordial material from the solar system’s formation.Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile and Nasa’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii, researchers measured the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio in the comet’s water vapor. This ratio serves as a chemical signature that distinguishes water found on different celestial bodies.Scientists employed a breakthrough method to map both regular water and heavy water within the comet’s coma, enabling them to confirm the water’s origin from deep within the comet’s nucleus.“By mapping both H₂O and HDO, we can tell if these gases are coming from the frozen ices within the solid body of the nucleus, rather than forming from chemistry or other processes in the gas coma,” said Nasa’s Stefanie Milam, who co-authored the study.“This is the strongest evidence to date supporting the idea that comets could have helped make our planet habitable,” stated Nasa astrophysicist Martin Cordiner, who led the study.The discovery addresses a long-standing mystery about Earth’s formation. Scientists believe Earth initially formed as a predominantly dry planet, with its high temperatures preventing water retention. The theory suggested that water arrived later through impacts from icy bodies like comets or asteroids during Earth’s early evolution.Previous data had not supported this theory, as no comet had shown a close enough match in water composition until the analysis of 12P/Pons-Brooks. The comet’s water signature presents one of the strongest matches ever recorded between cometary and terrestrial water.The findings suggest that Halley-type comets may have played a more significant role in creating Earth’s environment than previously understood. This discovery has implications for future space missions, including the European Space Agency’s Comet Interceptor and Nasa’s proposed CAESAR project, which aims to return comet samples to Earth.The research indicates that these ancient comets may have not only delivered water but also potentially brought organic compounds that created conditions suitable for life on early Earth. The study of specific comet classes with matching deuterium-to-hydrogen ratios could provide further answers about Earth’s origins and the formation of our solar system.


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  • NASA’s Webb Telescope Discovers 300 Mysterious Objects That Shouldn’t Exist

    NASA’s Webb Telescope Discovers 300 Mysterious Objects That Shouldn’t Exist

    Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have spotted 300 mysterious objects that may be some of the universe’s earliest galaxies. If confirmed, their existence could reshape our understanding of how galaxies first formed. (Artist’s concept). Credit: SciTechDaily.com

    Drawing on observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, researchers at the University of Missouri have identified 300 unusual candidates for early galaxies.

    In a recent study, researchers from the University of Missouri examined distant regions of the universe and made a surprising discovery. By analyzing infrared images captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), they detected 300 objects shining more brightly than expected.

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

    Identifying objects in the universe is not immediate. It requires a deliberate, multi-stage process that brings together sophisticated technology, thorough analysis, and a measure of astronomical detective work to determine what they truly are.

    Step 1: Spotting the first clues

    The research team at Mizzou began their work with two of JWST’s advanced infrared instruments: the Near-Infrared Camera and the Mid-Infrared Instrument. These tools are built to capture light from the most distant regions of space, making them essential for investigating the early universe.

    Early Galaxy Candidates Identified in UDS Field
    Graphic showing the mysterious objects in the universe that the University of Missouri researchers identified.in their study. Credit: Bangzheng “Tom” Sun/University of Missouri

    Why focus on infrared light? The reason is that the farther an object lies from Earth, the longer its light has traveled, stretching into the infrared part of the spectrum by the time it arrives.

    “As the light from these early galaxies travels through space, it stretches into longer wavelengths — shifting from visible light into infrared,” Yan said. “This stretching is called redshift, and it helps us figure out how far away these galaxies are. The higher the redshift, the farther away the galaxy is from us on Earth, and the closer it is to the beginning of the universe.”

    Step 2: The ‘dropout’

    To determine the identity of each of the 300 potential early galaxies, the researchers at Mizzou applied a well-established approach known as the dropout technique.

    “It detects high-redshift galaxies by looking for objects that appear in redder wavelengths but vanish in bluer ones — a sign that their light has traveled across vast distances and time,” said Bangzheng “Tom” Sun, a Ph.D. student working with Yan and the lead author of the study. “This phenomenon is indicative of the ‘Lyman Break,’ a spectral feature caused by the absorption of ultraviolet light by neutral hydrogen. As redshift increases, this signature shifts to redder wavelengths.”

    Step 3: Estimating the details

    While the dropout technique identifies each of the galaxy candidates, the next step is to check whether they could be at “very” high redshifts, Yan said.

    “Ideally, this would be done using spectroscopy, a technique that spreads light across different wavelengths to identify signatures that would allow an accurate redshift determination,” he said.

    But when full spectroscopic data is unavailable, researchers can use a technique called spectral energy distribution fitting. This method gave Sun and Yan a baseline to estimate the redshifts of their galaxy candidates — along with other properties such as age and mass.

    Haojing Yan
    Haojing Yan. Credit: University of Missouri

    In the past, scientists often thought these extremely bright objects weren’t early galaxies, but something else that mimicked them. However, based on their findings, Sun and Yan believe these objects deserve a closer look — and shouldn’t be so quickly ruled out.

    “Even if only a few of these objects are confirmed to be in the early universe, they will force us to modify the existing theories of galaxy formation,” Yan said.

    Step 4: The final answer

    The final test will use spectroscopy — the gold standard — to confirm the team’s findings.

    Spectroscopy breaks light into different wavelengths, like how a prism splits light into a rainbow of colors. Scientists use this technique to reveal a galaxy’s unique fingerprint, which can tell them how old the galaxy is, how it formed, and what it’s made of.

    “One of our objects is already confirmed by spectroscopy to be an early galaxy,” Sun said. “But this object alone is not enough. We will need to make additional confirmations to say for certain whether current theories are being challenged.”

    Reference: “On the Very Bright Dropouts Selected Using the James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam Instrument” by Bangzheng Sun and Haojing Yan, 27 June 2025, The Astrophysical Journal.
    DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/addbe0

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  • Moon phase today explained: What the moon will look like on August 24, 2025

    Moon phase today explained: What the moon will look like on August 24, 2025

    The moon is starting to make a reappearance as we enter a new phase of the lunar cycle.

    The lunar cycle is 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. 24.

    What is today’s moon phase?

    As of Sunday, Aug. 24, the moon phase is Waxing Crescent, and only 2% will be lit up to us on Earth, according to NASA’s Daily Moon Observation.

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

    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.

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  • 35.3 million lbs displaced: Data on spacecraft’s collision with asteriod is released

    35.3 million lbs displaced: Data on spacecraft’s collision with asteriod is released

    NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) was a mission designed to test how a spacecraft can redirect an asteroid. In 2022, DART reached its target, colliding successfully with the asteroid Dimorphos. DART, however, had a companion small satellite called LICIACube (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids). The Italian Space Agency (ASI) provided this small satellite to capture images of the asteroid after the collision.

    On September 11, 2022, fifteen days before DART’s collision with Dimorphos, LICIACube detached from DART. The small satellite was on hand to take pictures of the collision about two minutes and 40 seconds after impact. Moving at an incredible speed of 15,000 mph (24,000 km/h), LICIACube had only 60 seconds to snap pictures of the asteroid. While moving past, it took approximately one snapshot every three seconds.

    Scientists published their findings in the Planetary Science Journal on August 21 after analyzing the series of images. The results revealed that Dimorphos released an estimated 35.3 million pounds (16 million kilograms) of debris due to the impact. That is about 30,000 times the weight of the spacecraft itself.

    The debris formed a thick cloud with opaque innermost parts. This suggested that the cloud mostly contained large particles. Studies showed that the debris changed the asteroid’s trajectory much more than DART’s impact did.

    While previous ground and space-based observations of the post-collision effects on Dimorphos have been from millions of miles away, LICIACube has offered the closest yet. The closest image taken from the small satellite was only 53 miles (85.3 kilometers) away.

    Scientists expect that many of the asteroids close to Earth have a similar “rubble-pile” structure to Dimorphos. So, unraveling this mission further would be key to building spacecraft that will deflect asteroids from Earth. ESA’s Hera is set to arrive at the scene in late 2026 to carry out a further examination of the DART-Dimorphos impact.

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  • Astronomers Just Uncovered the Secret Fuel Behind Giant Stars

    Astronomers Just Uncovered the Secret Fuel Behind Giant Stars

    The dust emission of the high-mass star forming region G336.018-00.827 ALMA1 at radio wavelengths. The star symbol indicates the protostellar position. The gas is rotating and falling along the red and blue arrows. The gas flow (streamer) indicated by the blue arrow transports gas from the molecular cloud core to the high-density region in the vicinity of the protostar. Credit: KyotoU / Fernando Olguin

    How do the universe’s biggest stars get so massive, when their own powerful radiation should blast away incoming material?

    Astronomers using the ALMA telescope in Chile have uncovered a surprising answer: vast “cosmic streamers” of gas act like interstellar highways, funneling matter directly into young stars.

    Giants Among the Stars

    The universe is so vast that its scale is beyond human comprehension. Our sun alone is staggering in size, with a mass more than 330,000 times that of Earth. Yet even the sun is overshadowed by other stars that are many times larger.

    Stars that exceed eight times the mass of the sun are classified as high-mass stars. These giants form quickly, releasing powerful stellar winds and radiation. Under normal circumstances, such forces should strip material away, preventing the stars from reaching such enormous sizes. Clearly, something is supplying them with fuel, but the exact process behind their rapid growth has long puzzled scientists.

    The Mystery of High-Mass Formation

    For years, astronomers suspected that enormous accretion disks (vast, rotating structures of dust and gas around a star) provided the needed material for young stars to bulk up. But new research from an international team including scientists at Kyoto University and the University of Tokyo points to a different answer.

    “Our work seems to show that these structures are being fed by streamers, which are flows of gas that bring matter from scales larger than a thousand astronomical units, essentially acting as massive gas highways,” says corresponding author Fernando Olguin.

    Gas Highways Feeding Stars

    To test this idea, the researchers needed to see star-forming regions in much greater detail, since the birthplaces of high-mass stars are farther away than those of smaller stars. They turned to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a powerful observatory in Chile made up of dozens of antennae capable of detecting faint dust and molecular emissions at millimeter wavelengths.

    With ALMA’s precision, the team observed a young star being supplied by what appeared to be two distinct streamers. One of these streamers connected directly to the star’s central region and showed a velocity pattern consistent with rotation and possibly infall. This evidence indicates that the streamer is carrying enough material at a rapid pace to counter the feedback from the young star, building up the dense region found around its core.

    Streamers Delivering Stellar Fuel

    The research team expected to see a dust disk or torus of several hundred astronomical units in size, but they did not expect the spiral arms to reach as close to the central source.

    “We found streamers feeding what at that time was thought to be a disk, but to our surprise, there is either no disk or it is extremely small,” says Olguin.

    These results suggest that, independent of the presence of a disk around the central star, streamers can transport large amounts of gas to feed star-forming regions, even in the presence of feedback from the central star.

    A New Path to Stellar Growth

    Next, the team plans to expand their research by studying other regions to see if this is a common mode of accretion that results in the formation of massive stars. They also plan to explore the gas close to the star to determine whether they can confirm, or rule out, the presence of small disks.

    Reference: “Massive extended streamers feed high-mass young stars” by Fernando A. Olguin, Patricio Sanhueza, Adam Ginsburg, Huei-Ru Vivien Chen, Kei E. I. Tanaka, Xing Lu, Kaho Morii, Fumitaka Nakamura, Shanghuo Li, Yu Cheng, Qizhou Zhang, Qiuyi Luo, Yoko Oya, Takeshi Sakai, Masao Saito and Andrés E. Guzmán, 20 August 2025, Science Advances.
    DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adw4512

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  • How can origami design solve engineering challenges? – Deseret News

    How can origami design solve engineering challenges? – Deseret News

    • BYU student discovers previously unknown “blooming flower” origami folding pattern.
    • The new technique has an infinite number of variations that can expand into 3-D forms.
    • The designs have potential applications in space systems, medical devices and architecture.

    Brigham Young University student Kelvin (Zhongyuan) Wang’s love of paper folding just led to a discovery that added a new chapter to an art form that can trace its roots back hundreds of years.

    And it’s a revelation that Wang’s mentors say has the potential to solve design challenges across a wide array of applications including space systems, medical devices, bulletproof shields, architecture, furniture and aerodynamic components for transportation.

    Wang is the lead author of the discovery, which was recently published in Proceedings of the Royal Society. Co-authors include BYU professor Larry Howell, a global expert on compliant mechanisms (jointless structures such as origami), and Robert J. Lang, an origami artist and a leading theorist on origami mathematics.

    “What Kelvin has developed is an entirely new family of origami patterns that he’s called bloom patterns,” Lang said in a taped interview. “It’s a very apt name because many of them bloom like a flower.”

    Wang said he folded the first of his bloom patterns years ago. But when Lang saw the work, he remarked that he’d never seen the pattern before.

    “I was speechless,” Wang said.

    A new flower-bloom origami pattern that Brigham Young University student Kelvin (Zhongyuan) Wang discovered is displayed. | Aaron Cornia, BYU Photo

    Infinite possibilities

    Lang said the discovery has opened the door to an “uncountable infinity” of new types of patterns that share characteristics that make the technique extremely valuable in the world of engineering. The blooms all can be opened completely into a flat sheet; can open partially to create a spherical, three-dimensional shape and, no matter how large the starting material is, can be collapsed into stacked layers above a flat disk.

    BYU researchers said while one or two of those features are common in origami, it has been rare to find all three characteristics in a single design. The combination offers both technical and economic advantages:

    • Flat foldability is ideal for stowing large arrays in compact spaces.
    • Deployable systems require crease patterns that allow transformation without damaging the material.
    • Repeating panels and rotational symmetry offer stability and lower manufacturing cost, since it’s more efficient to replicate identical panels than to produce varied parts.

    “This new pattern has a lot of potential in space,” Howell said. “We can make it very compact in launch and deploy out in space.”

    A new flower-bloom origami pattern that Brigham Young University student Kelvin (Zhongyuan) Wang discovered is displayed. | Aaron Cornia, BYU Photo

    The design concept helps address the opposing realities of space-based devices in which limited cargo space and weight considerations favor compactness on the launch end, while instruments like antennas, space telescopes and solar arrays require large surface areas to perform their jobs after extraterrestrial deployment.

    The ancient informs the modern

    And that’s why concepts embodied in ancient paper folding techniques — Japanese origami can be traced back to the 16th century — have been studied and adapted in research happening around the world, including at BYU where researchers have been in the forefront of gathering insights from the craft for over a decade.

    Another unique aspect of the bloom pattern, according to the research team, is the intermediate shape that emerges between the flat and fully deployed forms.

    Iterations on a new flower-bloom origami pattern that Brigham Young University student Kelvin (Zhongyuan) Wang discovered are displayed. | Aaron Cornia, BYU Photo

    “One can imagine using that intermediate state, that spherical shape, as the desired finished state,” Lang said. “If one wants, for example, a bowl or perhaps a dish antenna, the bloom pattern could provide that.”

    Wang said origami has been a satisfying outlet for personal creativity and one that he’s learning can also become a transformative force in the real world.

    “The process of discovery requires a lot of repetition,” he said. “I feel incredibly peaceful as I fold and get into that state of flow. I can fold sometimes for hours. It feels wonderful to do that even when it’s mostly repetitions. I’m creating something out of paper with my hands and ideas come to my mind — to reality — about how to make it into a physical model.”

    He added, “I love to do origami but if I can use origami to make practical applications that can benefit the world, that will be a dream come true.”

    A new flower-bloom origami pattern that Brigham Young University student Kelvin (Zhongyuan) Wang discovered is displayed. | Aaron Cornia, BYU Photo

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  • Early-Onset Chronic Drug-Induced Cardiomyopathy in a Pediatric Patient With Ewing Sarcoma

    Early-Onset Chronic Drug-Induced Cardiomyopathy in a Pediatric Patient With Ewing Sarcoma


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  • Advancing Lunar Habitats with Thermoelectric Power Generation

    Advancing Lunar Habitats with Thermoelectric Power Generation

    How can thermoelectric generators (TEGs) help advance future lunar surface habitats? This is what a recent study published in Acta Astronautica hopes to address as a team of researchers from the Republic of Korea investigated a novel technique for improving power efficiency and reliability under the Moon’s harsh conditions. This study has the potential to help mission planners, engineers, and future astronauts develop technologies necessary for deep space human exploration to the Moon and beyond.

    For the study, the researchers conducted a first-time analysis of how a novel TEG system could function under lunar surface conditions, specifically regarding the extreme temperature differences between the lunar day and lunar night, which ranges from 121°C (250°F) to -133°C (-208°F), respectively. Previous studies have hypothesized that drastic temperature ranges could enable greater efficiency for TEGs, also called a transient-state operation.

    The goal of this study was to discuss how switching heat storage (HS) systems, also called multiple-HS systems, under lunar conditions could produce the transient-state operation. In the end, the researchers found the multiple-HS system under lunar conditions resulted in a 48.9 percent power generation increase, indicating the temperature range could benefit TEGs and a potentially long-term lunar habitat.

    The study notes, “Deep space exploration, including missions such as the establishment of human bases, especially on the Moon and Mars, has garnered significant interest worldwide. As stated by scientists helming missions such as the Artemis project, a manned lunar base is an integral part of deep space exploration as it can serve as a base for future missions in the solar system. Consequently, production of sufficient power for maintaining such a base has become the focus of this research.”

    The study discusses other potential power sources like Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) but discourages their use for long-term missions due to the half-life decay of radioactive isotopes. Despite this, RTGs have successfully been used on instruments that were left on the lunar surface by the Apollo missions and are currently being used by NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars.

    Going forward, NASA plans to use RTGs on the agency’s upcoming Dragonfly mission, which is currently slated to launch in July 2028. The researchers briefly mention how solar and nuclear power could be used as viable power sources on the Moon, with nuclear fission reactors previously being suggested for use on the lunar surface.

    NASA’s Artemis program, specifically with the goal of establishing a long-term human presence on the lunar surface, enhances the relevance of this study. The continued development of new technologies on the lunar surface not only ensures a long-term human presence on the Moon but also establishes technologies that could be used on future crewed missions to Mars, as outlined in NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture. Additionally, the use of a reliable power source on the lunar surface mitigates the need for bringing power sources from Earth, enhancing a practice called in situ resource utilization (ISRU), which uses available resources to maintain a successful mission. In this case, TEGs use the wide temperature range on the lunar surface for their power generation needs.

    As humanity continues its journey towards developing long-term settlements beyond Earth, studies like this demonstrate a growing interest in using Earth-based technologies for improving life beyond Earth. Perhaps TEGs could serve as a starting point for powering long-term lunar habitats until a more advanced and reliable system is established.

    How will thermoelectric power generation help advance lunar habitats in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

    As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

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