Research by the Neuhauser and Caram groups introduces a fast and efficient method, TDHF@vW, for accurately predicting how molecules absorb light—dramatically reducing computational costs and enabling faster discovery of advanced materials for energy, healthcare, and electronics.
A paper detailing the research was recently featured in the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Publishing Showcase.
Titled “Parameterized Attenuated Exchange for Generalized TDHF@vW Applications,” the paper was published in The Journal of Chemical Physics on July 15, 2025.
The first author is Caram group graduate student Barry Y. Li. Co-authors include graduate student Tim Duong (Neuhauser/Caram groups) and Tucker Allen (Neuhauser group), as well as Neuhauser group alumna Dr. Nadine Bradbury, now a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton. Professors Justin Caram and Daniel Neuhauser are the senior authors.
From The American Institute of Physics (AIP) Publishing Showcase:
This research introduces a computational method that simplifies the prediction of how molecules absorb light, a key factor in designing better dyes and materials for applications like solar cells and medical imaging. Traditional high-level quantum calculations, such as those based on many-body perturbation theory, are highly accurate but computationally expensive, requiring significant time and resources. Our approach, called TDHF@vW, uses a parameterized exchange kernel to mimic complex quantum interactions, making the process faster while maintaining accuracy. By leveraging similarities in how different molecules respond to light, we reduce the need for individual calculations, achieving results comparable to advanced methods but at a fraction of the cost. This breakthrough is particularly useful for studying large or complex molecules, such as those used in organic electronics or biomedical imaging.
Photo by Pramod Tiwari on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Accurately predicting light absorption in molecules is critical for advancing technologies like organic solar cells, fluorescent dyes, and light-emitting devices. Current methods either sacrifice accuracy for speed or are too resource-intensive for practical use. Our work bridges this gap by combining the precision of advanced quantum theories with the efficiency of simpler models. The parameterized approach cuts computational costs dramatically, enabling researchers to study larger systems or screen multiple molecules quickly. This innovation opens doors to faster discovery of new materials for energy, medicine, and nanotechnology, making high-quality simulations accessible to more scientists.
“We are excited about the potential of this method to democratize access to high-accuracy quantum chemistry calculations for molecular excited states. By reducing the computational burden, we hope to accelerate research in photophysics and materials science, empowering more groups to explore complex molecular systems without needing supercomputers. This work also highlights how clever parameterization can unlock the power of quantum mechanics for real-world applications, a direction we’re eager to expand in future studies.”
Barry Li University of California, Los Angeles
This page is a summary of “Parameterized attenuated exchange for generalized TDHF@vW applications”, The Journal of Chemical Physics, July 2025, American Institute of Physics. You can read the full text here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0273771.
The image to the left, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows a possible planet being born around the young star HD 135344B. This star, located around 440 light-years away, is surrounded by a disc of dust and gas with prominent spiral arms. Theory predicts that planets can sculpt spiral arms like these, and the new planet candidate is located at the base of one of the arms, just as expected.
The image was captured with a new VLT instrument: the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS). The central black circle corresponds to a coronagraph –– a device that blocks the light of the star to reveal faint details around it. The white circle indicates the location of the planet.
The image to the right is a combination of previous observations taken with the SPHERE instrument also at the VLT (red) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA, orange and blue). These and other previous studies of HD 135344B did not find signatures of a companion, but ERIS may have finally unveiled the culprit responsible for the star’s spiral disc.
view more
Credit: ESO/F. Maio et al./T. Stolker et al./ ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/N. van der Marel et al.
Astronomers may have caught a still-forming planet in action, carving out an intricate pattern in the gas and dust that surrounds its young host star. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), they observed a planetary disc with prominent spiral arms, finding clear signs of a planet nestled in its inner regions. This is the first time astronomers have detected a planet candidate embedded inside a disc spiral.
“We will never witness the formation of Earth, but here, around a young star 440 light-years away, we may be watching a planet come into existence in real time,” says Francesco Maio, a doctoral researcher at the University of Florence, Italy, and lead author of this study, published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The potential planet-in-the-making was detected around the star HD 135344B, within a disc of gas and dust around it called a protoplanetary disc. The budding planet is estimated to be twice the size of Jupiter and as far from its host star as Neptune is from the Sun. It has been observed shaping its surroundings within the protoplanetary disc as it grows into a fully formed planet.
Protoplanetary discs have been observed around other young stars, and they often display intricate patterns, such as rings, gaps or spirals. Astronomers have long predicted that these structures are caused by baby planets, which sweep up material as they orbit around their parent star. But, until now, they had not caught one of these planetary sculptors in the act.
In the case of HD 135344B’s disc, swirling spiral arms had previously been detected by another team of astronomers using SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch), an instrument on ESO’s VLT. However, none of the previous observations of this system found proof of a planet forming within the disc.
Now, with observations from the new VLT’s Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) instrument, the researchers say they may have found their prime suspect. The team spotted the planet candidate right at the base of one of the disc’s spiral arms, exactly where theory had predicted they might find the planet responsible for carving such a pattern.
“What makes this detection potentially a turning point is that, unlike many previous observations, we are able to directly detect the signal of the protoplanet, which is still highly embedded in the disc,” says Maio, who is based at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, a centre of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). “This gives us a much higher level of confidence in the planet’s existence, as we’re observing the planet’s own light.”
A star’s companion is born
A different team of astronomers have also recently used the ERIS instrument to observe another star, V960 Mon, one that is still in the very early stages of its life. In a study published on 18 July in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team report that they have found a companion object to this young star. The exact nature of this object remains a mystery.
The new study, led by Anuroop Dasgupta, a doctoral researcher at ESO and at the Diego Portales University in Chile, follows up observations of V960 Mon made a couple of years ago. Those observations, made with both SPHERE and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), revealed that the material orbiting V960 Mon is shaped into a series of intricate spiral arms. They also showed that the material is fragmenting, in a process known as ‘gravitational instability’, when large clumps of the material around a star contract and collapse, each with the potential to form a planet or a larger object.
“That work revealed unstable material but left open the question of what happens next. With ERIS, we set out to find any compact, luminous fragments signalling the presence of a companion in the disc — and we did,” says Dasgupta. The team found a potential companion object very near to one of the spiral arms observed with SPHERE and ALMA. The team say that this object could either be a planet in formation, or a ‘brown dwarf’ — an object bigger than a planet that didn’t gain enough mass to shine as a star.
If confirmed, this companion object may be the first clear detection of a planet or brown dwarf forming by gravitational instability.
More information
This research highlighted in the first part of this release was presented in the paper “Unveiling a protoplanet candidate embedded in the HD 135344B disk with VLT/ERIS” to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics (doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202554472). The second part of the release highlights the study “VLT/ERIS observations of the V960 Mon system: a dust-embedded substellar object formed by gravitational instability?” published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ade996).
The team who conducted the first study (on HD 135344B) is composed of F. Maio (University of Firenze, Italy, and INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico Arcetri, Firenze, Italy [OAA]), D. Fedele (OAA), V. Roccatagliata (University of Bologna, Italy [UBologna] and OAA), S. Facchini (University of Milan, Italy [UNIMI]), G. Lodato (UNIMI), S. Desidera (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Italy [OAP]), A. Garufi (INAF – Istituto di Radioastronomia, Bologna, Italy [INAP-Bologna], and Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany [MPA]), D. Mesa (OAP), A. Ruzza (UNIMI), C. Toci (European Southern Observatory [ESO], Garching bei Munchen, Germany, and OAA), L. Testi (OAA, and UBologna), A. Zurlo (Diego Portales University [UDP], Santiago, Chile, and Millennium Nucleus on Young Exoplanets and their Moons [YEMS], Santiago, Chile), and G. Rosotti (UNIMI).
The team behind the second study (on V960 Mon) is primarily composed of members of the Millennium Nucleus on Young Exoplanets and their Moons (YEMS), a collaborative research initiative based in Chile. Core YEMS contributors include A. Dasgupta (ESO, Santiago, Chile, UDP, and YEMS), A. Zurlo (UDP and YEMS), P. Weber (University of Santiago [Usach], Chile, and YEMS, and Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Astrophysics and Space Exploration [CIRAS], Santiago, Chile), F. Maio (OAA, and University of Firenze, Italy), Lucas A. Cieza (UDP and YEMS), D. Fedele (OAA), A. Garufi (INAF Bologna and MPA), J. Miley (Usach, YEMS, and CIRAS), P. Pathak (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India), S. Pérez (Usach and YEMS, and CIRAS), and V. Roccatagliata (UBologna and OAA).
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of ESO, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.
Links
Contacts
Francesco Maio (for questions on the HD 135344B study) INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri Florence, Italy Email: francesco.maio@inaf.it
Davide Fedele (for questions on the HD 135344B study) INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri Florence, Italy Tel: (+39) 055-2752-242 Email: davide.fedele@inaf.it
Anuroop Dasgupta (for questions on the V960 Mon study) European Southern Observatory Santiago, Chile Email: Anuroop.Dasgupta@eso.org
A new commentary published in Nature Communications by Dr James Bradley, Reader in Environmental Science at Queen Mary University of London, and his team reveals a dramatic and concerning shift in the Arctic winter. During a fieldwork campaign in Svalbard in February 2025, researchers encountered exceptionally high temperatures, widespread snowmelt, and blooming vegetation.
Svalbard, warming at six to seven times the global average rate, is at the forefront of the climate crisis, with winter temperatures rising at nearly double the annual average. The commentary highlights that winter warming in the Arctic is no longer an exception but a recurring feature of a profoundly altered climate system, challenging the long-held assumption of a reliably frozen Arctic winter.
“Standing in pools of water at the snout of the glacier, or on bare, green tundra, was shocking and surreal,” Dr Bradley describes his experience. “The thick snowpack covering the landscape vanished within days. The gear I packed felt like a relic from another climate.”
The team, accustomed to preparing for extreme cold with thermal layers, thick gloves, and insulated down, found themselves working bare-handed in the rain on the glacier.
Laura Molares Moncayo, a PhD student at Queen Mary and the Natural History Museum and a co-author on the study, added: “The goal of our fieldwork campaign was to study freshly fallen snow. But over a two-week period, we were only able to collect fresh snow once, as most of the precipitation fell as rain. This lack of snowfall in the middle of winter undermines our ability to establish a representative baseline for frozen-season processes. The unexpected melt not only disrupted our sampling plan, but also made us question how safe or feasible winter fieldwork really is under such rapidly changing conditions.”
This firsthand experience corroborates long-standing projections about Arctic amplification, but it also underscores the alarming speed at which these changes are taking hold. The crossing of the 0°C melting threshold has a transformative impact on the physical environment, the dynamics of local ecosystems, and the very methodology of conducting scientific research in the Arctic during winter.
The implications of these rapid winter changes for the Arctic ecosystem are far-reaching. Winter warming events can disrupt everything from microbial carbon cycling to the survival of Arctic wildlife. These events may also create a feedback loop, accelerating permafrost thaw, microbial carbon degradation, and the release of greenhouse gases across the Arctic. The observed meltwater pooling above frozen ground, forming vast temporary lakes and reducing snow cover to zero in large areas, further exposes the bare ground surface and leads to widespread blooms of biological activity.
The commentary calls for urgent action and highlights critical policy implications. “Climate policy must catch up to the reality that the Arctic is changing much faster than expected, and winter is at the heart of that shift,” states Dr Bradley.
The commentary urgently calls for increased investment in wintertime Arctic monitoring, highlighting a significant lack of data and understanding regarding Arctic systems during this fastest-changing season. More observations and experimentation are crucial, not only to establish baselines but also to project future impacts. Furthermore, the authors stress that policymaking must shift from reactive to anticipatory strategies, recognising winter as a critical season of risk. The challenges already faced by well-equipped scientific bases due to mid-winter warming underscore the immense pressure this might place on remote Indigenous Arctic communities, their infrastructure, transport, and emergency responses.
The unexpected conditions during fieldwork, including the thin and slushy snow that hindered snowmobile access to field sites, forced researchers to reconsider how and even whether they can continue winter science as usual. This also presents new safety concerns, including rescue efforts and the ability for the researchers to retreat quickly to the safety of the research station if they encounter polar bears while working in the field.
The commentary, “Svalbard winter warming is reaching melting point,” serves as a stark reminder of the accelerating pace of climate change in the Arctic, emphasising that these anomalies are, in fact, the new Arctic reality.
The article involves authors from Queen Mary University of London, the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography in Marseille, France, The Natural History Museum in London, University of Naples Federico II in Italy, the CNR Institute of Polar Science in Italy.
“We are still unaware of the consequences that these recurring events are bringing to Arctic ecosystems, especially during the winter period, where conditions are more complex and data is scarce”, said Donato Giovannelli, an geomicrobiologist at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy and one of the senior authors on the paper. “We might have been too cautious with our messages. Irreversible changes to the Arctic climate are happening in front of our own eyes”.
ENDS
Journal
Nature Communications
Method of Research
Commentary/editorial
Article Title
Svalbard winter warming is reaching melting point
Article Publication Date
21-Jul-2025
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
HAMPTON, Virginia. NASA is testing a modular small satellite platform designed to accelerate deployment of spaceborne sensors and reduce mission costs, the agency announced in a statement.
The Athena Economical Payload Integration Cost (EPIC) satellite, built in partnership with NovaWurks, is part of a demonstration program that uses a Hyper-Integrated Satlet (HISat) architecture to consolidate spacecraft functions and streamline payload integration, the statement reads.
The HISat system, assembled into larger structures known as SensorCraft, allows multiple payloads to share onboard resources such as processors and power systems. This architecture eliminates the need for redundant subsystems on individual instruments and reduces spacecraft size, cost, and complexity, NASA says.
The Athena sensor payload—developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center—was built using spare components from previous Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) missions. It includes an optical module and calibration system designed for Earth observation, the agency says.
Athena EPIC is the first HISat-based mission led by NASA and includes contributions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Space Force.
For centuries, people thought Uranus was just a faraway star. It wasn’t until the 1700s that we realized it was a planet, one unlike any other in the solar system.
Even today, this icy, ringed oddball continues to keep scientists guessing. Uranus spins sideways, so each pole gets blasted with sunshine for 42 years straight. And its rotation is backward compared to most of its planetary siblings, except for Venus.
But the real puzzle? Uranus appears to be significantly colder inside than expected.
Back in 1986, NASA’s Voyager 2 flew by and took a single direct measurement of its internal heat. Since then, researchers have believed Uranus lacks the heat that other giant planets have. And that’s a head-scratcher.
Foremost X-rays from Uranus Discovered
“We’re still trying to figure out why,” says NASA scientist Amy Simon. “And it’s tricky, because all our theories are based on just one piece of data.”
Using advanced computer modeling and revisiting years of data, NASA’s Amy Simon and her team discovered that Uranus does generate some of its heat. It’s subtle, but it’s there.
Scientists figured this out by comparing the energy Uranus absorbs from the Sun to what it emits back into space. The imbalance usually reveals a planet’s internal heat source. And it turns out that Uranus isn’t just a chilly mirror; it’s quietly radiating warmth, just a little less than its planetary cousins.
This tweak reshapes theories about the planet’s age, formation, and evolution. And perhaps most importantly, it proves that even the coldest mysteries can thaw with a fresh look.
Astronomers have detected X-rays from Uranus for the first time
“We thought, ‘Could it be that there is no internal heat at Uranus?’” said Patrick Irwin, the paper’s lead author and professor of planetary physics at the University of Oxford in England. “We did many calculations to see how much sunshine is reflected by Uranus, and we realized that it is more reflective than people had estimated.”
To understand how much heat Uranus truly generates, scientists needed to examine the planet’s full energy budget: how much sunlight it absorbs, how much it reflects, and how much it emits as heat.
These side-by-side images of Uranus, taken eight years apart by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, show seasonal changes in the planet’s reflectivity. The left image shows the planet seven years after its northern spring equinox when the Sun was shining just above its equator. The second photo, taken six years before the planet’s summer solstice, portrays a bright and large northern polar cap.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI)
But here’s the twist: measuring this isn’t as simple as looking straight at the planet. “You need to catch the light bouncing off at all angles,” said NASA’s Amy Simon, like tracking glitter in a disco ball, not just the flash in your face.
Oxford researchers built a highly detailed computer model, stitching together decades of sky-gazing data from Earth and space, including data from NASA’s Hubble and its infrared telescope in Hawaii.
NASA’s Hubble and New Horizons set their sights on Uranus
Their model captured everything: hazy skies, shifting clouds, and seasonal shifts, all the quirks that affect how Uranus handles sunlight and heat. The result? The sharpest look yet at the energy game this sideways-spinning, icy giant is playing.
New findings show that Uranus quietly radiates about 15% more energy than it gets from the Sun. It’s not as toasty as Neptune, which gives off more than twice what it absorbs, but it’s enough to prove Uranus has its internal heat source.
So what does that warmth mean?
Scientists like Amy Simon want to delve deeper into why Uranus still retains some of its ancient heat and what that reveals about its tumultuous past. From its sideways spin to mysterious cooling, Uranus has always been the oddball in the solar family.
However, studying it isn’t just about decoding one planet’s story; it also helps researchers understand how and when planets formed, shifted orbits, and even how distant exoplanets (many of which are Uranus-sized) might behave today.
Journal Reference:
Patrick Irwin, Daniel Wenkert, Amy Simon, Emma Dahl, Heidi Hammel. The bolometric Bond albedo and energy balance of Uranus. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf800
A new study from the University of Florida analyzing moon rock samples from a Chinese lunar exploration mission is rewriting our understanding of how the moon is cooled.
Stephen Elardo Ph.D., an assistant professor of geology at the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has found that lava on the far side of the moon likely cooled much later than previously thought, contradicting previous theories on how and when the moon’s layers formed.
The samples of basalt — an igneous rock formed from rapidly cooled lava — were gathered by China’s Chang’e 5 mission and are the first samples collected from the far side of the moon, as well as the youngest obtained on any lunar mission, making them an invaluable resource for those studying the moon’s geological history.
“Using radioactive dating, we put together a simple model showing that an enrichment in radioactive elements would have kept the Moon’s upper mantle hundreds of degrees hotter than it would have been otherwise, even at 2 billion years ago,” explained Elardo.
The submarine canyons that form valleys carved into the seafloor play a decisive role in ocean dynamics.
view more
Credit: MARC CERDÀ – UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA
Submarine canyons are among the most spectacular and fascinating geological formations to be found on our ocean floors, but at an international level scientists have yet to uncover many of their secrets, especially of those located in remote regions of the Earth like the North and South Poles. Now, an article published in the journal Marine Geology has brought together the most detailed catalogue to date of Antarctic submarine canyons, identifying a total of 332 canyon networks that in some cases reach depths of over 4,000 metres.
The catalogue, which identifies five times as many canyons as previous studies had, was produced by the researchers David Amblàs, of the Consolidated Research Group on Marine Geosciences at the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the University of Barcelona, and Riccardo Arosio, of the Marine Geosciences Research Group at University College Cork. Their article shows that Antarctic submarine canyons may have a more significant impact than previously thought on ocean circulation, ice-shelf thinning and global climate change, especially in vulnerable areas such as the Amundsen Sea and parts of East Antarctica.
Submarine canyons: the differences between East and West Antarctica
The submarine canyons that form valleys carved into the seafloor play a decisive role in ocean dynamics: they transport sediments and nutrients from the coast to deeper areas, they connect shallow and deep waters and they create habitats rich in biodiversity. Scientists have identified some 10,000 submarine canyons worldwide, but because only 27% of the Earth’s seafloor has been mapped in high resolution the real total is likely to be higher. And despite their ecological, oceanographic, and geological value, submarine canyons remain underexplored, especially in polar regions.
“Like those in the Arctic, Antarctic submarine canyons resemble canyons in other parts of the world,” explains David Amblàs. “But they tend to be larger and deeper because of the prolonged action of polar ice and the immense volumes of sediment transported by glaciers to the continental shelf.” Moreover, the Antarctic canyons are mainly formed by turbidity currents, which carry suspended sediments downslope at high speed, eroding the valleys they flow through. In Antarctica, the steep slopes of the submarine terrain combined with the abundance of glacial sediments amplifies the effects of these currents and contributes to the formation of large canyons.
The new study by Amblàs and Arosio is based on Version 2 of the International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean (IBCSO v2), the most complete and detailed map of the seafloor in this region. It uses new high-resolution bathymetric data and a semi-automated method for identifying and analysing canyons that was developed by the authors. In total, it describes 15 morphometric parameters that reveal striking differences between canyons in East and West Antarctica.
“Some of the submarine canyons we analysed reach depths of over 4,000 metres,” explained David Amblàs. “The most spectacular of these are in East Antarctica, which is characterized by complex, branching canyon systems. The systems often begin with multiple canyon heads near the edge of the continental shelf and converge into a single main channel that descends into the deep ocean, crossing the sharp, steep gradients of the continental slope.”
Riccardo Arosio noted that “It was particularly interesting to see the differences between canyons in the two major Antarctic regions, as this hadn’t been described before. East Antarctic canyons are more complex and branched, often forming extensive canyon–channel systems with typical U-shaped cross sections. This suggests prolonged development under sustained glacial activity and a greater influence of both erosional and depositional sedimentary processes. In contrast, West Antarctic canyons are shorter and steeper, characterized by V-shaped cross sections.”
According to David Amblàs, this morphological difference supports the idea that the East Antarctica Ice Sheet originated earlier and has experienced a more prolonged development. “This had been suggested by sedimentary record studies,” Amblàs said, “but it hadn’t yet been described in large-scale seafloor geomorphology.”
About the research, Riccardo Arosio also explained that “Thanks to the high resolution of the new bathymetric database — 500 metres per pixel compared to the 1–2 kilometres per pixel of previous maps — we could apply semi-automated techniques more reliably to identify, profile and analyse submarine canyons. The strength of the study lies in its combination of various techniques that were already used in previous work but that are now integrated into a robust and systematic protocol. We also developed a GIS software script that allows us to calculate a wide range of canyon-specific morphometric parameters in just a few clicks”.
Submarine canyons and climate change
As well as being spectacular geographic accidents, the Antarctic canyons also facilitate water exchange between the deep ocean and the continental shelf, allowing cold, dense water formed near ice shelves to flow into the deep ocean and form what is known as Antarctic Bottom Water, which plays a fundamental role in ocean circulation and global climate.
Additionally, these canyons channel warmer waters such as Circumpolar Deep Water from the open sea toward the coastline. This process is one of the main mechanisms that drives the basal melting and thinning of floating ice shelves, which are themselves critical for maintaining the stability of Antarctica’s interior glaciers. And as Amblàs and Arosio have explained, when the shelves weaken or collapse, continental ice flows more rapidly into the sea and directly contributes to the rise in global sea level.
Amblàs and Arosio’s study also highlights the fact that current ocean circulation models like those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change do not accurately reproduce the physical processes that occur at local scales between water masses and complex topographies like canyons. These processes, which include current channelling, vertical mixing and deep-water ventilation, are essential for the formation and transformation of cold, dense water masses like Antarctic Bottom Water. Omitting these local mechanisms limits the ability that models have to predict changes in ocean and climate dynamics.
As the two researchers conclude, “That’s why we must continue to gather high-resolution bathymetric data in unmapped areas that will surely reveal new canyons, collect observational data both in situ and via remote sensors and keep improving our climate models to better represent these processes and increase the reliability of projections on climate change impacts.”
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
The geomorphometry of Antarctic submarine canyons
Article Publication Date
24-Jun-2025
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
Following the Big Bang, our universe expanded at an exponential rate. According to this theory, known as cosmic inflation, the explosive growth produced tiny quantum fluctuations that later evolved into galaxies. Cosmic inflation neatly explains how our universe got so large and mostly homogenous, and that’s why it’s remained a strong theory in cosmology for decades.
But it’s far from perfect. Cosmic inflation depends on certain theoretical assumptions that can get rather arbitrary—not ideal for a theory that’s supposed to explain why our universe appears the way it does. It’s this shortcoming that motivated theoretical physicist Raúl Jiménez from the University of Barcelona in Spain to devise an alternative approach to decoding the dynamics of the very early universe. The resulting proposal, published earlier this month in Physical Review Research, seeks to eliminate the excessive, circumstantial parameters in traditional models that have made it difficult for physicists to agree on a single theory.
The proposal, developed by Jiménez and colleagues, is a relatively simple paradigm founded mostly on well-understood principles of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It starts with the assumption that the very early universe existed in what’s called a De Sitter space, which sees the universe as a flat-shaped vacuum governed by general relativity. According to quantum mechanics, applying some energy to this—namely the Big Bang—generates quantum fluctuations that give rise to tensor modes, or gravitational waves. These waves organically seeded small bits of density throughout the universe, and those little bits eventually evolved into galaxies, stars, and planets, according to the theory.
Critics of traditional inflationary theory argue that it has too many adjustable parameters. One such parameter is the inflaton—hypothetical scalar fields that physicists believe drove rapid expansion in the early universe. But the new theory removes the inflaton from the picture, substituting it with a de Sitter space rocked by gravitational waves.
A representation of the evolution of the universe over 13.77 billion years. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team
That the new theory removes many adjustable parameters is a big bonus. “There is no general principle that determines these things, so basically you need to put them in by hand,” explained Arthur Kosowsky, a cosmologist at the University of Pittsburgh not involved in the new work, in an email to Gizmodo. “Physicists always strive to make models and theories which are in some sense as simple as possible, meaning that the number of arbitrary things you need to put in by hand is as small as possible.”
In an ideal world, a solid theory or model shouldn’t require so many adjustable variables. A similar problem exists with the all-encompassing Standard Model, which features a whopping 18 free parameters that need to be sorted out every single time. Physicists “expend lots of blood, sweat, and tears (and money) because most people are convinced that there must be a better, more powerful model which has two or three parameters instead of 18,” Kosowsky said.
And indeed, finding a simple, compelling explanation for early cosmic inflation is what motivated the new work, Jiménez told Gizmodo during a video call. The strength of this theory is that it is “fully falsifiable” in the sense that it either can or cannot explain observational data, he said. However, this is also the theory’s weakness, which Jiménez acknowledged: “Maybe nature didn’t choose this theory as the way things work.”
Of course, the most valuable thing about falsifiable theories is that they tell us what doesn’t work, he added. (While this might seem sketchy, physicists often employ something akin to a process of elimination for unknown phenomena, such as dark matter.) As for Jiménez’s newly proposed theory, it’s fair to ask whether it will hold up to observational data and survive further mathematical scrutiny.
“I like the overall philosophy driving this paper, [which is] ‘let’s see if we can come up with a situation where inflation arises naturally out of some basic physics,’” Kosowsky said. “If we can, this is both more elegant than adding some speculative and, in some sense, arbitrary physical elements and also is likely to make more specific predictions, which can then hopefully be compared with observations.”
“I believe it’s an interesting and novel proposal—it’s something that’s well worth a closer look,” commented Andrew Liddle, a theoretical cosmologist at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) at the University of Lisbon in Portugal, during a video call with Gizmodo. At the same time, its simplicity could also be its biggest flaw, but only time will tell if more mathematically minded cosmologists take a liking to it, he said.
“There have always been cosmologists who are uncomfortable with inflation [theory]. I’m one of them—and I work on it,” said Marina Cortês, also with the IA, in the same call. “One of the most uncomfortable things about inflation is that physicists understand everything from the Big Bang onwards, but not the Big Bang and the earliest stages.”
Liddle and Cortês, both uninvolved in the new work, said that while cosmologists (including themselves) often disagree on how to best interpret cosmic inflation, the evidence seems to support the notion that inflation did in fact take place. Many physicists have devised alternative explanations, but practically everything has ended up in a “dustbin” of discarded ideas, Liddle explained.
“But there’s no limit to people’s imagination,” Liddle said. And the next few decades should see no shortage of new ideas and models—just like this one, according to the two cosmologists.
“Cosmology right now is mostly about these things called tensions, or hints that things are not quite well aligned with the standard cosmological model,” Liddle said. Several questions threatening to usurp what we know about the physical universe—dark energy, the Hubble tension—appear to be coming together in one paradoxical package for scientists, and inflation could be a part of that, Cortês added.
No matter what happens, it goes without saying that we’re witnessing a time of excitement, chaos, and discovery for cosmology—a sentiment that all the scientists agreed on.
“Not only is the data growing at exponential amounts, but the quality of the analysis is also growing at an exponential quality,” Jiménez said. “I think that we are living a golden age of cosmology.”
“When we are thinking about inflation, we are trying to take the next step and answer the question of why the universe looks the way it does, and not just describe how it looks,” Kosowsky said. “Is this due to some deep physics principle yet undiscovered? It could be, and this is what keeps us working hard to push back the boundaries of our understanding.”
What makes the human brain distinctive? A new study published July 21 in Cell identifies two genes linked to human brain features and provides a road map to discover many more. The research could lead to insights into the functioning and evolution of the human brain, as well as the roots of language disorders and autism.
The newly characterized genes are found among the “dark matter” of the human genome: regions of DNA that contain a lot of duplicated or repeat sequences, making them difficult to study until recently. If assembling a DNA sequence is like putting together a book from torn-up pages, reconstructing it from repeat sequences would be like trying to match pages using only words like “and” and “the.” There are many opportunities for mismatches and overlap.
Although difficult to study, DNA repeats are also thought to be important for evolution as they can generate new versions of existing genes for selection to act on.
“Historically, this has been a very challenging problem. People don’t know where to start,” said senior author Megan Dennis, associate director of genomics at the UC Davis Genome Center and associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine and MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis.
In 2022, Dennis was a co-author on a paper describing the first sequence of a complete human genome, known as the ‘telomere to telomere’ reference genome. This reference genome includes the difficult regions that had been left out of the first draft published in 2001 and is now being used to make new discoveries.
Identifying human brain genes
Dennis and colleagues used the telomere-to-telomere human genome to identify duplicated genes. Then, they sorted those for genes that are: expressed in the brain; found in all humans, based on sequences from the 1000 Genomes Project; and conserved, meaning that they did not show much variation among individuals.
They came out with about 250 candidate gene families. Of these, they picked some for further study in an animal model, the zebrafish. By both deleting genes and introducing human-duplicated genes into zebrafish, they showed that at least two of these genes might contribute to features of the human brain: one called GPR89B led to slightly bigger brain size, and another, FRMPD2B, led to altered synapse signaling.
“It’s pretty cool to think that you can use fish to test a human brain trait,” Dennis said.
The dataset in the Cell paper is intended to be a resource for the scientific community, Dennis said. It should make it easier to screen duplicated regions for mutations, for example related to language deficits or autism, that have been missed in previous genome-wide screening.
“It opens up new areas,” Dennis said.
Additional co-authors on the work are: Daniela Soto, José Uribe-Salazar, Gulhan Kaya, Ricardo Valdarrago, Aarthi Sekar, Nicholas Haghani, Keiko Hino, Gabriana La, Natasha Ann Mariano, Cole Ingamells, Aidan Baraban, Zoeb Jamal, Sergi Simó and Gerald Quon, all at UC Davis; Tychele Turner, Washington University St. Louis; Eric Green, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, Md.; and Aida Andrés, University College, London.
The work was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and The Wellcome Trust.
