Category: 7. Science

Antarctic sea ice is more than just a platform for penguins. The sea ice’s high reflectivity influences the whole Earth’s climate, and the ice is a key habitat for underwater as well as above-water ecosystems. Antarctic sea ice cover is becoming much more variable as the climate changes; there has been a string of record high years followed by years with record low areas of ice. Edward Doddridge and colleagues studied these record-low years, which they expect will become more common as the climate warms. Using observations and modeling, the authors find a host of effects of ultra-low ice years, including warming of the Southern Ocean, increased ice-shelf calving, and stronger phytoplankton blooms. Low sea-ice area negatively affects krill, small crustaceans that feed and find refuge beneath the sea ice, as well as fatty silverfish. Reductions in krill and fish populations affect their predators, including whales. Penguins and seals that use ice floes to moult, nest, or grow new fur will struggle if low sea ice continues for many years. Finally, a reduction in the area of firm ice affixed to the land makes it more difficult for humans to operate on the continent, affecting Antarctic science. According to the authors, additional research is needed to fully understand the impacts of low Antarctic sea ice on the physical, ecological, and societal systems within and around Antarctica, and they call, in particular, for reliable, year-round, long-term measurements of sea-ice thickness.

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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has captured the first close-up images of Martian “spiderwebs” or zig-zagging ridges left behind by ancient groundwater. Studying these structures could provide more insights into Mars’ watery past and whether the planet once held extraterrestrial life.

Curiosity Rover Captures ‘Spiderwebs’

The web-like structures consist of criss-crossing ridges of mineral-rich rocks, spanning up to 12 miles across. Until now, these features have never been studied up close.

Smaller boxwork structures can also be found on the walls of caves on Earth, which were formed from a similar process to stalagmites and stalactites. Researchers suggest the same process created the structures on Mars.

“The bedrock below these ridges likely formed when groundwater trickling through the rock left behind minerals that accumulated in those cracks and fissures, hardening and becoming cementlike,” NASA representatives wrote in a statement. “Eons of sandblasting by Martian wind wore away the rock but not the minerals, revealing networks of resistant ridges within.”

According to Live Science, Curiosity is currently exploring a series of boxwork on the slopes of the 3.4-mile-tall Mount Sharp at the heart of the Gale Crater. The rover set its sights on this area in November 2024 and arrived there in early June 2025.

The area was sought out for study because the unique ridges only appear in this area and not anywhere else on the mountain, which has puzzled researchers. After drilling some sample rocks around the web-like ridges, the rover found they contained calcium sulfate, a salty mineral left behind by groundwater.

“These ridges will include minerals that crystallized underground, where it would have been warmer, with salty liquid water flowing through,” Kirsten Siebach, a Curiosity mission scientist at Rice University in Houston who has been studying the area, previously stated. “Early Earth microbes could have survived in a similar environment. That makes this an exciting place to explore.”

In addition to releasing the first close-up images of the site, NASA also released an interactive video that enables 3D exploration of the area.

“You operate as an autonomous agent controlling a pursuit spacecraft.”

This is the first prompt researchers used to see how well ChatGPT could pilot a spacecraft. To their amazement, the large language model (LLM) performed admirably, coming in second place in an autonomous spacecraft simulation competition.

Imagine a giant planet drifting far beyond the known edges of a solar system, hundreds of times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun.

Astronomers have spotted such distant giants around other stars, and some believe our own Sun might be hiding one too. The elusive Planet Nine, a mysterious world that could be tugging on the orbits of icy objects way out past Neptune.

But how do these far-flung giants end up in such lonely orbits?

Scientists at Rice University and the Planetary Science Institute ran thousands of simulations and discovered something wild. These wide-orbit planets might be cosmic leftovers from the chaotic early days of star systems.

Back then, stars were born in crowded clusters, and planets were like pinballs are bumping, bouncing, and sometimes getting flung to the outer edges. If the timing was just right, some of these planets didn’t escape entirely; instead, they got trapped in distant orbits.

Solar system’s hidden Planet X may finally be spotted soon

Even cooler? Systems like ours are especially good at catching these planetary wanderers. So the idea of a hidden ninth planet in our backyard isn’t just sci-fi, it’s becoming more scientifically plausible.

To understand how giant planets end up on super-distant orbits, scientists ran thousands of simulations of different planetary systems: some like ours, others with wild setups like twin suns. They placed these systems inside realistic star clusters, where stars are born close together.

They found that in the early chaos of a young system, planets often get shoved outward by gravitational tugs from their neighbors. If a nearby star gives the planet a gentle nudge at just the right time, it can lock the planet into a distant orbit, far from the inner planets.

These planets end up “frozen” in place once the star cluster breaks apart. These wide-orbit planets sit between 100 and 10,000 AU from their star, way beyond where most planets form.

Collective gravity, not Planet Nine, may explain the orbits of ‘detached objects’

Scientists may be closer to solving the mystery of Planet Nine, a hidden world thought to orbit far beyond Neptune, between 250 and 1,000 times farther from the Sun than Earth. Though we haven’t seen it directly, the strange paths of distant icy objects suggest something massive is tugging on them.

New simulations show there’s up to a 40% chance that a Planet Nine-like object could have been captured during the early chaos of our solar system’s formation.

The study also connects these distant giants to rogue planets, lonely worlds that got kicked out of their home systems and now drift through space.

As researcher Nathan Kaib put it, “Not every scattered planet is lucky enough to get trapped. Most are flung into the galaxy, but some stick around in wide, frozen orbits, giving us a link between the planets we see on the edge and the ones we find wandering in the dark.”

Scientists are exploring how some planets get flung far from their stars, but don’t escape entirely. This idea, called “trapping efficiency,” measures how likely a scattered planet is to stay in a wide orbit instead of drifting off into space.

They found that solar systems like ours are pretty good at trapping these distant planets, with a 5–10% success rate. Other systems, like those with only ice giants or two suns, aren’t as efficient.

On average, there may be one wide-orbit planet for every thousand stars. That might sound rare, but across billions of stars, it adds up fast.

The study also gives exoplanet hunters a new roadmap: Wide-orbit planets are most likely to be found around metal-rich stars that already have gas giants. These systems are perfect targets for future deep-space imaging. And there’s more if Planet Nine exists, the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory might be the one to spot it.

Journal Reference

1. Izidoro, A., Raymond, S.N., Kaib, N.A., et al. Very-wide-orbit planets from dynamical instabilities during the stellar birth cluster phase. Nat Astron (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-025-02556-0

The story of Earth’s origins lies hidden in ancient stones, forged in a time of intense formation and volcanic activity. Recently, a groundbreaking discovery in northern Quebec has shed new light on the planet’s earliest days. Scientists have confirmed the presence of the oldest known rocks on Earth in a region near the village of Inukjuak, Nunavik. This remarkable find provides a rare glimpse into the Hadean eon, a mysterious and largely unknown chapter in Earth‘s history. The discovery has sparked intense scientific interest, offering new insights into the planet’s formation and evolution. It brings us closer to understanding the Earth’s unstable beginnings.

Oldest rocks found in Northern Quebec

According to earth.com, a groundbreaking study published in the journal Science has revealed the discovery of the oldest known rocks on Earth in northern Quebec, offering a rare glimpse into the planet’s earliest history. Collected in 2017 near the village of Inukjuak, Nunavik, these ancient rocks have sparked intense scientific interest due to their unusual properties and old composition. The research team employed advanced methods to determine the rocks’ age, settling a long-standing debate that had dated the rocks to anywhere between 3.75 and 4.3 billion years old. The team’s breakthrough came when they confirmed that intrusive rocks cutting through the volcanic layers were 4.16 billion years old, implying that the volcanic rocks themselves are even older.This remarkable find offers a rare glimpse into the Hadean eon, a period of Earth’s history marked by intense volcanic activity and a hostile environment.

How scientists accurately dated 4.16 billion-year-old rocks

To determine the age of the rocks, scientists employed radiometric dating, a precise technique that measures time based on the natural decay of elements within the rocks. They focused on samarium and neodymium, elements that undergo a slow and predictable transformation, with samarium decaying into neodymium at a known rate. By analysing the current ratio of these elements, scientists can calculate when the rock originally formed. The team used two independent isotope systems, both of which yielded the same result: the rocks solidified approximately 4.16 billion years ago. This method provides an accurate and reliable way to date ancient rocks, allowing scientists to reconstruct the Earth’s history.

Hadean Eon made Earth a planet, but it wasn’t ready for life yet

The Hadean eon marked the violent and chaotic birth of Earth, around 4.6 billion years ago, with intense heat and volcanic activity. The planet was a molten rock, pummeled by space debris, and massive impacts likely shaped its formation, including the creation of the Moon. The surface was a scorching lava ocean with extreme volcanic activity, and the atmosphere consisted of toxic gases and steam. Despite these hostile conditions, Earth was setting the stage for life. As the Hadean eon came to a close around 4 billion years ago, the planet began to cool, forming a solid crust and oceans from volcanic steam and comet impacts. Ancient zircon crystals even suggest that water may have existed earlier than previously thought, slowly making the planet habitable, though devoid of life and fossils at this stage.Also read | Mice with two fathers? Scientists create fertile mice using DNA from two fathers

In the 1800s, astronomers were mystified by the discovery of stars that displayed highly unusual emission lines. It was only after 1868, when scientists discovered the element helium, that astronomers were able to explain the broad emission bands due to the presence of helium in these stars.

Over time, these stars became known as Wolf-Rayet stars (Charles Wolf was a French astronomer, and helium was first detected by the French scientist Georges Rayet and others), and astronomers came to understand that they were the central stars within planetary nebulae, and continually ejecting gas at high velocity.

This gives Wolf-Rayet stars a distinctive appearance in the night sky. And this week, Chris McGrew has shared a photo of WR 134—a variable Wolf-Rayet star about 6,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus—which he captured from a dark sky location in southwestern New Mexico.

“The stellar winds are blowing out the blue shell of ionized oxygen gas visible in the middle of the image,” McGrew said. “This is a deep sky object that has been imaged countless times, and I get why. Ever since I saw it for the first time, it’s been high on my list. For years I didn’t have the skies or the time, but I finally got the chance to go after it.”

Source: Chris McGrew

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amino acids: Simple molecules that occur naturally in plant and animal tissues and that are the basic building blocks of proteins.

bacteria: (singular: bacterium) Single-celled organisms. These dwell nearly everywhere on Earth, from the bottom of the sea to inside other living organisms (such as plants and animals). Bacteria are one of the three domains of life on Earth.

chemical: A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (bond) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a chemical made when two hydrogen atoms bond to one oxygen atom. Its chemical formula is H₂O. Chemical also can be an adjective to describe properties of materials that are the result of various reactions between different compounds.

corpse: The body of a dead human. Also sometimes used to describe the remains of some inanimate object (such as a star).

dimethyl disulfide: A pair of methanethiol molecules that have been linked together. The result is a very stinky chemical, which smells like rotting meat. It’s toxic to many organisms. That’s led to dimethyl disulfide being developed as a soil fumigant that farmers can use to kill weeds, parasitic nematodes (tiny roundworms) and plant pathogens that live in soil.

DNA: (short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. It is built on a backbone of phosphorus, oxygen, and carbon atoms. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.

dung: The feces of animals, also known as manure.

duplication: The process of copying something.

evolution: (v. to evolve) A process by which species undergo changes over time, usually through genetic variation and natural selection. These changes usually result in a new type of organism better suited for its environment than the earlier type. The newer type is not necessarily more “advanced,” just better adapted to the particular conditions in which it developed. Or the term can refer to changes that occur as some natural progression within the non-living world (such as computer chips evolving to smaller devices which operate at an ever-faster speed).

gene: (adj. genetic) A segment of DNA that codes, or holds instructions, for a cell’s production of a protein. Offspring inherit genes from their parents. Genes influence how an organism looks and behaves.

halitosis: This is the medical term for bad breath. It’s not a disease but a symptom of some stinky chemistry occurring in the mouth. It may trace to diet (such as smelly foods, such as garlic) or the stinky emissions of bacteria responsible for a range of conditions, but especially for diseased gums or teeth.

molecule: An electrically neutral group of atoms that represents the smallest possible amount of a chemical compound. Molecules can be made of single types of atoms or of different types. For example, the oxygen in the air is made of two oxygen atoms (O₂), but water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (H₂O).

oral: An adjective that refers to things in or affecting the mouth.

organism: Any living thing, from elephants and plants to bacteria and other types of single-celled life.

pollinate: To transport male reproductive cells — pollen — to female parts of a flower. This allows fertilization, the first step in plant reproduction.

shrub: A perennial plant that grows in a generally low, bushy form.

species: A group of similar organisms capable of producing offspring that can survive and reproduce.