Category: 7. Science

NASA is exploring the properties of a metal alloy that shrinks as it is heated, as boffins in its Astrophysics Division think it may be needed if the planned Habitable Worlds Observatory (HBO) is to succeed.

Readers doubtless know that metals expand when heated. As explained in a NASA blog post that’s a problem for space telescopes because if their components warm and expand it can mean that the shape of their mirrors change in ways that make it harder to conduct observations.

NASA has already developed materials that compensate for those effects and used them in the James Webb Space Telescope and in the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope that the aerospace agency intends to launch in 2027.

The HBO, NASA’s next space ‘scope project after the Nancy Grace Roman, will need even more resilient materials.

To understand why, the post explains how to observe exoplanets.

“As light passes through a planet’s atmosphere or is reflected or emitted from a planet’s surface, telescopes can measure the intensity and spectra (i.e., ‘color’) of the light, and can detect various shifts in the light caused by gases in the planetary atmosphere. By analyzing these patterns, scientists can determine the types of gases in the exoplanet’s atmosphere.”

Observing those shifts is no easy matter, “because the exoplanets appear very near their host stars when we observe them, and the starlight is one billion times brighter than the light from an Earth-size exoplanet.”

That means the Habitable Worlds Observatory “will need a contrast ratio of one to one billion (1:1,000,000,000).”

To achieve that contrast ratio, the HBO will need to be 1,000 times more stable than the James Webb telescope.

Which is why NASA scientists and a company called ALLVAR are investigating a “negative thermal expansion” (NTE) alloy that shrinks when heated.

According to NASA’s post, “A 1-meter-long piece of this NTE alloy will shrink 0.003 mm for every 1° C increase in temperature.”

“Because it shrinks when other materials expand, ALLVAR Alloy 30 can be used to strategically compensate for the expansion and contraction of other materials,” NASA’s post states.

Tests have delivered promising results: ALLVAR apparently built a test mirror mounted on struts of a titanium alloy that expands when heated and struts made with Alloy 30. Both alloys performed as expected, with Alloy 30 offsetting the expansion in the titanium alloy to produce a stable mirror.

NASA thinks the tests also showed Alloy 30 “enabled enhanced passive thermal switch performance and has been used to remove the detrimental effects of temperature changes on bolted joints and infrared optics.”

Space boffins are therefore considering how to use Alloy 30 in many other space scenarios.

You might want to consider using it, too, as NASA wrote “ALLVAR developed washers and spacers are now commercially available to maintain consistent preloads across extreme temperature ranges in both space and terrestrial environments.” ®

Little luck or skill is needed to find them: scientists believe that there are more dinosaur eggs here than at any other place on Earth. 

The area, closed to the public, is nicknamed “Eggs en Provence”, due to its proximity to the southeastern city of Aix en Provence. 

“There’s no other place like it,” explained Thierry Tortosa, a palaeontologist and conservationist at the Sainte Victoire Nature Reserve. 

“You only need to look down to find fragments. We’re literally walking on eggshells here.” 

Around 1,000 eggs, some of them as big as 30 centimetres (12 inches) in diameter, have been found here in recent years in an area measuring less than a hectare -– a mere dot on a reserve that will span 280 hectares once it is doubled in size by 2026 to prevent pillaging. 

“We reckon we’ve got about one egg per square metre (11 square feet). So there are thousands, possibly millions, here,” Tortosa told AFP. 

“Eggs” is not in the business of competing with other archaeological sites -– even though Tortosa finds the “world record” of 17,000 dinosaur eggs discovered in Heyuan, China, in 1996 vaguely amusing. 

“We’re not looking to dig them up because we’re in a nature reserve and we can’t just alter the landscape. We wait until they’re uncovered by erosion,” he said. 

“Besides, we don’t have enough space to store them all. We just take those that are of interest from a palaeontology point of view.” 

– Holy Grail –

Despite the plethora of eggs on site, the scientists still have mysteries to solve. 

Those fossils found so far have all been empty, either because they were not fertilised or because the chick hatched and waddled off. 

“Until we find embryos inside -– that’s the Holy Grail — we won’t know what kind of dinosaur laid them. All we know is that they were herbivores because they’re round,” said Tortosa. 

Fossilised dinosaur embryos are rarer than hen’s teeth.  

Palaeontologists discovered a tiny fossilised Oviraptorosaur that was at least 66 million years old in Ganzhou, China, around the year 2000. 

But Tortosa remains optimistic that “Eggs” holds its own Baby Yingliang.

“Never say never. In the nine years that I’ve been here, we’ve discovered a load of stuff we never thought we’d find.” 

Which is why experts come once a year to search a new part of the reserve. The location is always kept secret to deter pillagers.

When AFP visited, six scientists were crouched under camouflage netting in a valley lost in the Provencal scrub, scraping over a few square metres of clay-limestone earth, first with chisels, then with pointy-tipped scribers.  

“There’s always something magical — like being a child again — when you find an egg or a fossilised bone,” specialist Severine Berton told AFP. 

– Unique –

Their “best” finds -– among the thousands they have dug up — include a small femur and a 30-centimetre-long tibia-fibula. They are thought to come from a Rhabdodon or a Titanosaur — huge herbivores who roamed the region.

In the Cretaceous period (89-66 million years BCE), the Provencal countryside’s then-flooded plains and silty-clayey soils offered ideal conditions for dinosaurs to graze and nest, and perfect conditions to conserve the eggs for millennia. 

The region, which stretched from what is now Spain to the Massif Central mountains of central France formed an island that was home to several dinosaur species found nowhere else in the world.

Alongside the endemic herbivores were carnivores such as the Arcovenator and the Variraptor, a relative of the Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame. 

In 1846, French palaeontologist Philippe Matheron found the world’s first fossilised dinosaur egg in Rognac, around 30 kilometres from Eggs.

Since then, museums from across the world have dispatched people to Provence on egg hunts. Everyone, it seems, wants a bit of the omelette. 

Despite efforts to stop pillaging, problems persist, such as when a wildfire uncovered a lot of fossils in 1989 and “everyone came egg collecting”, Tortosa said. 

Five years later the site was designated a national geological nature reserve, closed to the public — the highest level of protection available. 

The regional authorities are now mulling over ways to develop “palaeontology tourism”, a move Tortosa applauds. 

“France is the only country in the world that doesn’t know how to promote its dinosaurs,” Tortosa said.

“Any other place would set up an entire museum just to show off a single tooth.”

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Led by Zhi-Pei Liang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I., the team reported its findings in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

“Understanding the brain, how it works and what goes wrong when it is injured or diseased is considered one of the most exciting and challenging scientific endeavors of our time,” Liang said. “MRI has played major roles in unlocking the mysteries of the brain over the past four decades. Our new technology adds another dimension to MRI’s capability for brain imaging: visualization of brain metabolism and detection of metabolic alterations associated with brain diseases.”

Conventional MRI provides high-resolution, detailed imaging of brain structures. Functional MRI maps brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow and blood oxygenation level, which are closely linked to neural activity. However, they cannot provide information on the metabolic activity in the brain, which is important for understanding function and disease, said postdoctoral researcher Yibo Zhao, the first author of the paper.

“Metabolic and physiological changes often occur before structural and functional abnormalities are visible on conventional MRI and fMRI images,” Zhao said. “Metabolic imaging, therefore, can lead to early diagnosis and intervention of brain diseases.”

Both MRI and fMRI techniques are based on magnetic resonance signals from water molecules. The new technology measures signals from brain metabolites and neurotransmitters as well as water molecules, a technique known as magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging. These MRSI images can provide significant new insights into brain function and disease processes, and could improve sensitivity and specificity for the detection and diagnosis of brain diseases, Zhao said.

Other attempts at MRSI have been bogged down by the lengthy times required to capture the images and high levels of noise obscuring the signals from neurotransmitters. The new technique addresses both challenges.

“Our technology overcomes several long-standing technical barriers to fast high-resolution metabolic imaging by synergistically integrating ultrafast data acquisition with physics-based machine learning methods for data processing,” Liang said. With the new MRSI technology, the Illinois team cut the time required for a whole brain scan to 12 and a half minutes.

The researchers tested their MRSI technique on several populations. In healthy subjects, the researchers found and mapped varying metabolic and neurotransmitter activity across different brain regions, indicating that such activity is not universal. In patients with brain tumors, the researchers found metabolic alterations, such as elevated choline and lactate, in tumors of different grades — even when the tumors appeared identical on clinical MRI images. In subjects with multiple sclerosis, the technique detected molecular changes associated with neuroinflammatory response and reduced neuronal activity up to 70 days before changes become visible on clinical MRI images, the researchers report.

The researchers foresee potential for broad clinical use of their technique: By tracking metabolic changes over time, clinicians can assess the effectiveness of treatments for neurological conditions, Liang said. Metabolic information also can be used to tailor treatments to individual patients based on their unique metabolic profiles.

“High-resolution whole-brain metabolic imaging has significant clinical potential,” said Liang, who began his career in the lab of the late Illinois professor Paul Lauterbur, recipient of the Nobel Prize for developing MRI technology. “Paul envisioned this exciting possibility and the general approach, but it has been very difficult to achieve his dream of fast high-resolution metabolic imaging in the clinical setting.

“As healthcare is moving towards personalized, predictive and precision medicine, this high-speed, high-resolution technology can provide a timely and effective tool to address an urgent unmet need for noninvasive metabolic imaging in clinical applications.”

This work was supported by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.

The moon is in another phase of the lunar cycle, and we have all the information you need about tonight’s visibility and what to look out for.

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. 

See what’s happening with the moon tonight, July 2.

What is today’s moon phase?

As of Wednesday, July 2, the moon phase is First Quarter. According to NASA’s Daily Moon Observation, 48% of the moon will be lit up and visible to us on Earth.

First Quarter is the stage of the lunar cycle where the moon appears to be a half moon. This is day seven of the lunar cycle, and with significantly more of the moon on display, there’s plenty to see when you look up.

Unaided, you’ll be able to see the Mare Serenitatis, Mare Tranquillitatis, and the Mare Fecunditatis on the moon’s surface. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, these will be positioned in the top right of the moon. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, direct your gaze to the bottom left.

If you have binoculars, you’ll also spot the Endymion Crater and the Posidonius Crater are visible, as well as the Mare Nectaris. And with a telescope, like last night, you’ll be able to see the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 spot and the Rupes Altai. You’ll also get a sneak peek at the Descartes Highlands. NASA tells us this is a crater just south of the Apollo 16 landing spot.

When is the next full moon?

This month’s full moon will take place on July 10. The last full moon was on June 11.

What are moon phases?

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.

New interstellar object visiting our solar system

There’s a new object in the solar system headed toward the sun, and it may have come from interstellar space. We only know of two other objects that have entered into our solar system before, ‘Oumuamua and Comet 2I/Borisov. The nature of ‘Oumuamua is still a matter of debate, and the second was a comet from another solar system. And now we may have a third interstellar visitor. Currently named A11pl3Z, this object has a trajectory that suggests it didn’t originate inside our own solar system.

The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center added the object to their Near-Earth Object confirmation list on July 1, 2025. The object is also on NASA and the JPL website for Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page under A11pl3Z. Despite being listed as a near-Earth object, there is no fear of it hitting Earth or even coming particularly close.

Observations of the visitor

Astrafoxen, an astrophysics undergrad student in California on Bluesky, has shared an image of A11pl3Z from the Deep Random Survey in Chile. Additionally, Sam Deen, a prolific amateur astronomer, found earlier images of the object in ATLAS data from June 25 to 29. These data points help show the track of the object, indicating that it is almost certainly interstellar.

The dim space rock is currently at about magnitude 18.8. Our new visitor, A11pl3Z, will get its closest to the sun – at about 2 astronomical units (AU), or twice as far as Earth is to the sun – in October.

Chatter on Bluesky

Interstellar object candidate #A11pl3Z from Deep Random Survey, Chile (obs code X09). No obvious tail, will have to do a stack to see if there’s anything…

Date is 2025 Jul 2 00:52:39 UTC.

[image or embed]

— astrafoxen (@astrafoxen.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 8:30 PM

In the image above, the dot at center is the new candidate for an interstellar object visiting our solar system, currently named A11pl3Z.

UPDATE on our new interstellar friend #A11pl3Z:
Citizen scientist Sam Deen has found earlier observations of from June 25-28, from the ATLAS telescope!

Now with 6 days’ worth of data, the eccentricity of A11pl3Z’s trajectory is narrowed down to e=10.4 ± 1.1!
… that’s undoubtedly interstellar.
???

[image or embed]

— astrafoxen (@astrafoxen.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 9:37 PM

Our friend at Atlas seem to have discovered the 3rd interstellar object deep in the milky way. Precovery data going back to June 25th is leaving little doubt. With an eccentricity near 10, this is like nothing seen before. Comet is screaming by us. ??

[image or embed]

— David Rankin (@asteroiddave.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 9:25 PM

Bottom line: We have a new candidate for an interstellar object visiting our solar system. It’s speeding toward the sun and should make its closest approach in October 2025.

Via NASA/JPL

Via MPC

As if sequencing a full human genome wasn’t tricky enough, scientists are now attempting to reconstruct our species’ genetic material from the ground up.

It’s an ambitious and controversial project called the Synthetic Human Genome (SynHG) project, and work has already begun on a proof-of-concept.

The goal of this crucial first step is to use the human genome blueprint to write the genetic code for a single, enormously long strand of DNA in just one of our chromosomes – making up approximately 2 percent of our total genome.

The entire DNA content will be digitally designed before it is then built in the lab.

According to proponents, this project could kickstart a genetic revolution, profoundly changing our understanding of human DNA and possibly enabling designer cell-based therapies and virus-resistant tissue transplantation.

Related: Scientists Just Achieved a Major Milestone in Creating Synthetic Life

Emboldened by these futuristic possibilities, the Wellcome Trust – one of the world’s largest scientific research charities – announced this week that it was funding the SynHG initiative with £10 million (approximately US$13.7 million).

Researchers behind the project, who hail from the Universities of Oxford, Kent, Manchester, Cambridge, and Imperial College London, told the BBC that “the sky is the limit”. They aim to build a fully synthetic human chromosome in the next five to 10 years.

“The ability to synthesize large genomes, including genomes for human cells, may transform our understanding of genome biology and profoundly alter the horizons of biotechnology and medicine,” says project leader and molecular biologist Jason Chin from the Ellison Institute of Technology and Oxford.

“With SynHG we are building the tools to make large genome synthesis a reality.”

Some independent scientists, however, are dubious that the SynHG project can get that far, even with cutting-edge generative AI and advanced robotic assembly technologies.

Award-winning geneticist Robin Lovell-Badge from the Francis Crick Institute, who is not involved in the SynHG project, says that he is “very enthusiastic” about the initiative, as “you can only truly understand something if you can build it from scratch.”

But despite all the knowledge we have gained since fully sequencing and reading the human genome in 2003, he says there is still a lot of work to be done before we can actually build a complete one.

Today, the only human-made genomes fully written from scratch are for single-celled organisms that have, at most, 16 chromosomes made from roughly 12 million base pairs. That accomplishment took roughly a decade of hard work.

Humans, by comparison, typically possess more than 30 trillion cells with 46 chromosomes and 3 billion base pairs. Who knows how long it will take scientists to untangle that level of complexity?

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“As for synthetic human chromosomes, although the current project is very unlikely to get that far, it may eventually be possible to make synthetic cells that can be grown in the lab with high efficiency,” says Lovell-Badge.

“However, there is no suggestion to make synthetic humans. We have no idea how to do this, and it is likely to be very unsafe.”

While the details are hazy, the SynHG team claims to be working with academic, civil society, industry, and policy experts to examine the ethical, legal, and social implications of their research.

Projects like these are bound to inspire social and ethical debates on the possibilities and consequences of complex health and reproductive issues, from the right to make ‘designer’ babies to the definition of eugenics.

“We must recognize that this sort of work is not without controversy, and that is vital for researchers and the public to be in communication with one another,” says Sarah Norcross, director of the Progress Educational Trust (PET), which is a charity for people affected by genetic conditions.

“The public must have a clear understanding of what this research entails, while researchers and funders must have a thoroughgoing understanding of where the public wants to go with this science.”

As if sequencing a full human genome wasn’t tricky enough, scientists are now attempting to reconstruct our species’ genetic material from the ground up.

It’s an ambitious and controversial project called the Synthetic Human Genome (SynHG) project, and work has already begun on a proof-of-concept.

The goal of this crucial first step is to use the human genome blueprint to write the genetic code for a single, enormously long strand of DNA in just one of our chromosomes – making up approximately 2 percent of our total genome.

The entire DNA content will be digitally designed before it is then built in the lab.

According to proponents, this project could kickstart a genetic revolution, profoundly changing our understanding of human DNA and possibly enabling designer cell-based therapies and virus-resistant tissue transplantation.

Related: Scientists Just Achieved a Major Milestone in Creating Synthetic Life

Emboldened by these futuristic possibilities, the Wellcome Trust – one of the world’s largest scientific research charities – announced this week that it was funding the SynHG initiative with £10 million (approximately US$13.7 million).

Researchers behind the project, who hail from the Universities of Oxford, Kent, Manchester, Cambridge, and Imperial College London, told the BBC that “the sky is the limit”. They aim to build a fully synthetic human chromosome in the next five to 10 years.

“The ability to synthesize large genomes, including genomes for human cells, may transform our understanding of genome biology and profoundly alter the horizons of biotechnology and medicine,” says project leader and molecular biologist Jason Chin from the Ellison Institute of Technology and Oxford.

“With SynHG we are building the tools to make large genome synthesis a reality.”

Some independent scientists, however, are dubious that the SynHG project can get that far, even with cutting-edge generative AI and advanced robotic assembly technologies.

Award-winning geneticist Robin Lovell-Badge from the Francis Crick Institute, who is not involved in the SynHG project, says that he is “very enthusiastic” about the initiative, as “you can only truly understand something if you can build it from scratch.”

But despite all the knowledge we have gained since fully sequencing and reading the human genome in 2003, he says there is still a lot of work to be done before we can actually build a complete one.

Today, the only human-made genomes fully written from scratch are for single-celled organisms that have, at most, 16 chromosomes made from roughly 12 million base pairs. That accomplishment took roughly a decade of hard work.

Humans, by comparison, typically possess more than 30 trillion cells with 46 chromosomes and 3 billion base pairs. Who knows how long it will take scientists to untangle that level of complexity?

“As for synthetic human chromosomes, although the current project is very unlikely to get that far, it may eventually be possible to make synthetic cells that can be grown in the lab with high efficiency,” says Lovell-Badge.

“However, there is no suggestion to make synthetic humans. We have no idea how to do this, and it is likely to be very unsafe.”

While the details are hazy, the SynHG team claims to be working with academic, civil society, industry, and policy experts to examine the ethical, legal, and social implications of their research.

Projects like these are bound to inspire social and ethical debates on the possibilities and consequences of complex health and reproductive issues, from the right to make ‘designer’ babies to the definition of eugenics.

“We must recognize that this sort of work is not without controversy, and that is vital for researchers and the public to be in communication with one another,” says Sarah Norcross, director of the Progress Educational Trust (PET), which is a charity for people affected by genetic conditions.

“The public must have a clear understanding of what this research entails, while researchers and funders must have a thoroughgoing understanding of where the public wants to go with this science.”

Related News

Chile’s ALMA observatory, which houses some of the world’s most powerful telescopes, has captured its most detailed images to date of the building blocks of the early universe — primarily cold gases, dust and stellar light in 39 galaxies.

“We’ve never achieved so much detail and depth in galaxies from the early universe,” Sergio Martin, head of Scientific Operations at ALMA, told AFP during a presentation of the research at University of Concepcion in Santiago.

Due to its dark skies and clear air, Chile hosts the telescopes of more than 30 countries, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) that was used in the findings. 

The research was led by Rodrigo Herrera-Camus, director of the Millennium Nucleus of Galaxies (MINGAL) of Chile, who told AFP the new images provide “the opportunity to study how stars are born.”

The survey also found that stars emerged in “giant clumps,” Herrera-Camus said.

By combining ALMA’s findings with images from the James Webb and Hubble telescopes, researchers were able to learn more about how galaxies evolve, interact, and form stars.

The ALMA telescope was developed by the European Southern Observatory, the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

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