Category: 7. Science

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.

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.

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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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:

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.

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.

I have always been fascinated by technology and digital devices my entire life and even got addicted to it. I have always marveled at the intricacy of even the simplest digital devices and systems around us. I have been writing and publishing articles online for about 6 years now, just about a year ago, I found myself lost in the marvel of smartphones and laptops we have in our hands every day. I developed a passion for learning about new devices and technologies that come with them and at some point, I asked myself, “Why not get into writing tech articles?” It is useless to say I followed up the idea — it is evident. I am an open-minded individual who derives an infinite amount of joy from researching and discovering new information, I believe there is so much to learn and such a short life to live, so I put my time to good use — learning new things. I am a ‘bookworm’ of the internet and digital devices. When I am not writing, you will find me on my devices still, I do explore and admire the beauty of nature and creatures. I am a fast learner and quickly adapt to changes, always looking forward to new adventures.

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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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.

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.”

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.

“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.”

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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!