Example exoatlas visualization placing the first discovered transiting exoplanet HD209458b in context with other transiting exoplanets and the eight major Solar System planets. Errorbars use a color intensity that scales inversely with quantity uncertainties, to avoid giving undue visual weight to the least precise data. — astro-ph.IM
Planets are complicated. Understanding how they work requires connecting individual objects to the context of broader populations.
Exoplanets are easier to picture next to their closest Solar System archetypes, and planets in the Solar System are richer when seen alongside a growing community of known exoplanets in the Milky Way.
The exoatlas toolkit provides a friendly Python interface for retrieving and working with populations of planets, aiming to simplify the process of placing worlds in context.
Zach K. Berta-Thompson, Patcharapol Wachiraphan, Autumn Stephens, Mirielle Caradonna, Catriona Murray, Valerie Arriero, Jackson Avery, Girish M. Duvvuri, Sebastian Pineda
Comments: Submitted to the Journal of Open Source Software. Please try it at this link https://zkbt.github.io/exoatlas/ and submit GitHub Issues with bugs or suggestions for improvement! Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) Cite as: arXiv:2507.02210 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2507.02210v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.02210 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Zach K. Berta-Thompson [v1] Thu, 3 Jul 2025 00:14:38 UTC (250 KB) https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02210 Astrobiology
Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻
Atmospheric speciation of TRAPPIST-1e at 280 K above a planetary surface with stable condensates for atmospheres originally in equilibrium with a fully molten mantle. In all panels, the curve colours correspond to the gas species listed in the legend and condensate masses are relative to Earth oceans (EO). Upper panels show the percentage of models by dominant species (VMR > 50%) that satisfy the requirement of a minimum mass of (a) Water, (b) Graphite, (c) α-sulfur, and (d) Ammonium chloride. Lower panels illustrate the composition and total pressure of the atmosphere for (e) CO2-rich above a water ocean, (f) CH4-rich above graphite, (g) CO2-rich above α-sulfur, and (h) CH4-rich above ammonium chloride. Median values are indicated by lines and shaded regions bracket the first and third quartiles. Compare to the atmospheric speciation derived from a partially molten mantle in Figure A5. — astro-ph.EP
A quantitative understanding of the nature and composition of low-mass rocky exo(planet) atmospheres during their evolution is needed to interpret observations.
The magma ocean stage of terrestrial- and sub-Neptune planets permits mass exchange between their interiors and atmospheres, during which the mass and speciation of the atmosphere is dictated by the planet’s volatile budget, chemical equilibria, and gas/fluid solubility in molten rock.
As the atmosphere cools, it is modified by gas-phase reactions and condensation. We combine these processes into an open-source Python package built using JAX called Atmodeller, and perform calculations for planet sizes and conditions analogous to TRAPPIST-1e and K2-18b.
For TRAPPIST-1e-like planets, our simulations indicate that CO-dominated atmospheres are prevalent during the magma ocean stage, which, upon isochemical cooling, predominantly evolve into CO2-rich atmospheres of a few hundred bar at 280 K. Around 40% of our simulations predict the coexistence of liquid water, graphite, sulfur, and ammonium chloride-key ingredients for surface habitability.
For sub-Neptune gas dwarfs, pressures are sufficiently high (few GPa) to deviate the fugacities of gases from ideality, thereby drastically enhancing their solubilities. This buffers the total atmospheric pressure to lower values than for the ideal case. These effects conspire to produce CH4-rich sub-Neptune atmospheres for total pressures exceeding around 3.5 GPa, provided H/C is approximately 100x solar and fO2 moderately reducing (3 log10 units below the iron-wüstite buffer).
Otherwise, molecular hydrogen remains the predominant species at lower total pressures and/or higher H/C. For all planets at high temperature, solubility enriches C/H in the atmosphere relative to the initial composition.
Dan J. Bower, Maggie A. Thompson, Kaustubh Hakim, Meng Tian, Paolo A. Sossi
Comments: 41 pages, 10 figures in main text, 8 figures in appendices, submitted to ApJ Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) Cite as: arXiv:2507.00499 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2507.00499v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.00499 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Dan Bower [v1] Tue, 1 Jul 2025 07:14:10 UTC (12,751 KB) https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00499 Astrobiology
Reef scene off the coast of St. Croix, USVI [Photo credit: NOAA CCMA Biogeography Branch]
In a first-of-its-kind study, Stanford researchers have measured how the abundance of ocean life has changed over the past half-billion years of Earth’s history.
Overall, the total mass of marine organisms has generally increased over the past 500 million years, the study showed, albeit with setbacks after major extinction events. The findings align with evidence for a similar rise in marine biodiversity – the total variety of organisms – over the past half-eon from studies dating as far back as the 19th century, suggesting an evolutionary connection between biomass and biodiversity. The research appears in Current Biology June 25.
“Understanding the amount of biomass is important because it represents key traits about an ecosystem that are not captured by the number of species or even the number of niches that they fill,” said study lead author Pulkit Singh, a postdoctoral scholar in Earth and Planetary Sciences in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “But as we move into the past, our measurements of biomass are very limited, so that was the big gap in biological history we wanted to fill with our study.”
The results come from an in-depth compilation and review of data from thousands of rock samples containing skeletal remains, which in the oceanic environment primarily comprise shells of animals, certain kinds of algae, and single-celled organisms called protists. Fossils with skeletal remains recorded the amount of biomass – the material comprising and produced by living things – that was preserved across different geological intervals. Biomass reveals the productivity of an ecosystem, indicating the amount of energy (food) present and the quantity of organisms that a system can support. Productivity, in turn, speaks to ecosystem health, and in the broad aggregate, to planetary health.
Researchers have long shied away from attempting to measure biomass, given the immense effort required to gather relevant data and the possibility that data wouldn’t be sufficient for revealing meaningful patterns. Singh undertook the challenge, devoting several years to compiling data published over decades, as well as adding new data from his own samples.
“The first quantitative effort to document and graph biodiversity across geological time was made in 1860, but until Pulkit’s paper, there’s never been a corresponding biomass-across-time paper,” said senior study author Jonathan Payne, the Dorrell William Kirby Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Stanford. “I’m impressed by his intellectual courage to go and take a chance on a project like this.”
Picking through the past
For the study, Singh and colleagues considered more than 7,700 marine limestone samples from all over the world spanning the past 540 million years that have been documented across more than 100 scientific studies. The research team relied on data gathered via a standard method known as petrographic point-counting to assess the percentage of each sample that contained skeletal remains. The time-consuming technique involves cutting and polishing rocks very thinly so light can shine through them, then examining the thin sections of rock samples under a microscope to quantify their composition.
During the Cambrian, the earliest period sampled that started about 540 million years ago, researchers found fewer than 10 percent of the rocks, on average, were composed of shell material. As the Cambrian gave way to the Ordovician Period about 485 million years ago, that percentage climbed, partly reflecting the “Cambrian Explosion,” when life on Earth dramatically expanded in diversity and complexity. Calcifying sponges were initially notable contributors to biomass but were later leapfrogged by newly evolved echinoderms – including ancestors of modern-day starfish – and marine arthropods, including extinct trilobites and ancestors of crabs.
Throughout much of the next 230 million years, shell content soared well above 20 percent, with a significant decrease during one of the “Big Five” mass extinction events in the Late Devonian, about 375 to 360 million years ago. The biggest drop in living history then struck about 250 million years ago during the “Great Dying,” the Permian-Triassic extinction, when shell percentage plummeted to about 3 percent.
Life recovered, and except for subsequent significant mass extinctions – the end-Triassic extinction about 200 million years ago and the Cretaceous-Paleogene about 66 million years ago, which infamously killed off the non-avian dinosaurs – biomass has boomed in our current geological era, the Cenozoic, with shells exceeding 40 percent of rock volume, thanks in part to substantial contributions from mollusks and corals. “The overall pattern that we were able to capture is that it’s a gradual increase,” Singh said.
One of the biggest challenges in conducting the study involved telling whether the increasing shell content in rocks truly signaled a rise in bio-abundances over time or if other ecological factors, such as a decrease in shell-boring and -destroying predators, or methodological sample biases were behind the pattern.
To cross-check their results, the researchers performed a series of rigorous tests. They sorted samples by depositional environment of shallow or deep water, factoring in how shell remains accumulate more frequently in better-populated shallow waters. The researchers also sorted samples by different latitudes and locations and shapes of the predecessors of today’s continents. Through it all, the signal remained strongly consistent across water depths, latitudes, and geologic settings.
“The more tests we did and the more we divided our dataset, we realized that these big biological patterns we were seeing stayed over time,” Singh said.
Life-altering events
As to why marine life has generally increased, evidence points to the parallel trends in greater diversity. With marine organisms becoming more specialized and more variable in their specializations, more energy can be extracted from available nutrients and food resources. This enhanced nutrient recycling starts with the autotrophs, such as phytoplankton, that photosynthetically “feed” on sunlight and ends with decomposers returning nutrients to the environment that autotrophs take up.
“The overall idea is that there is more food available in ecosystems and because of that, the ecosystems can support more life, there’s more energy available, and that leads to greater abundance expressed in biomass,” Singh said.
Whether or not the plenitude seen over the last hundreds of millions of years will persist could be in question, considering impacts from human activities. Although people have caused fertilizer runoff, overfishing, ocean acidification, and more during a mere blip in geological time, scientists have widely documented an ongoing, human-driven sixth mass extinction. Accumulating losses in biodiversity could potentially reduce biomass, and vice versa – a signal that perhaps could be captured in the fossil record currently being laid down.
“From our study’s perspective, modern times are quite complicated given the extent of human activity that’s rapidly altering conditions planetwide, including in the oceans,” said Payne, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “But our findings show that overall biomass is linked to biodiversity and that losses in biodiversity may suppress productivity for geologically meaningful intervals, adding one more argument of why conserving biodiversity is essential for the health of humans and our planet.”
Additional Stanford co-authors include Jordan Ferré, Bridget Thrasher, and Pedro Monarrez. Other study co-authors are from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Cantrell GeoLogic LLC, Trinity University, and the University of Ferrara. The research was supported by a Frontier Research in Earth Sciences grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Macroevolutionary coupling of marine biomass and biodiversity across the Phanerozoic, Current Biology
The major COMs formation routes on grain surface. The COMs studied in our simulations have teal background. The species involved in the methanol formation chain are highlighted in bold. The chemical desorption in the COMs surface formation reactions is the main source of the gaseous COMs. The expressions +H and +H/−H2 together denote a pair of reactions, H-atom addition and H-atom abstraction. — astro-ph.GA
We present the results of astrochemical modeling of complex organic molecules (COMs) in the ice and gas of the prestellar core L1544 with the recently updated MONACO rate equations-based model.
The model includes, in particular, non-diffusive processes, new laboratory verified chemical routes for acetaldehyde and methane ice formation and variation of H and H2 desorption energies depending on the surface coverage by H2 molecules.
For the first time, we simultaneously reproduce the abundances of several oxygen-bearing COMs in the gas phase, the approximate location of the peak of methanol emission, as well as the abundance of methanol in the icy mantles of L1544.
Radical-radical reactions on grains surface between species such as CH3, CH3O and HCO efficiently proceed non-diffusively. COMs are delivered to the gas phase via chemical desorption amplified by the loops of H-addition/abstraction surface reactions.
However, gas-phase chemical reactions as well provide a noticeable input to the formation of COMs in the gas, but not to the COMs solid-state abundances. This particularly applies for CH3CHO and CH3OCH3. The simulated abundances of COMs in the ice are in the range 1%–2% (for methyl formate ice) or ∼~0.1% (for CH3CHO and CH3OCH3) with respect to the abundance of H2O ice.
We stress a similarity between the simulated abundances of icy COMs in L1544 and the abundances of COMs in the gas phase of hot cores/corinos. We compare our non-diffusive model with the diffusive model and provide constraints for the species’ diffusion-to-desorption energy ratios.
Katerina Borshcheva (1 and 2), Gleb Fedoseev (3, 4 and 1), Anna F. Punanova (5), Paola Caselli (6), Izaskun Jiménez-Serra (7), Anton I. Vasyunin (1) ((1) Research Laboratory for Astrochemistry, Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg, Russia (2) Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia (3) Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, China (4) Xinjiang Key Laboratory of Radio Astrophysics, Urumqi, China (5) Onsala Space Observatory, Råö, Onsala, Sweden (6) Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany (7) Centro de Astrobiologia (CSIC-INTA), Torrejon de Ardoz Madrid, Spain)
Comments: 34 pages, 13 figures, 10 tables, accepted to The Astrophysical Journal Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) Cite as: arXiv:2507.00338 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2507.00338v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.00338 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Anton Vasyunin [v1] Tue, 1 Jul 2025 00:35:09 UTC (629 KB) https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00338 Astrobiology
A team of researchers has managed to generate and detect spin currents in graphene without using any external magnetic fields for the very first time, successfully addressing a long-standing challenge in physics. The development could play an important role in the evolution of next-generation quantum devices.
Special spin currents are a key ingredient in spintronics, a new kind of technology that uses the spin of electrons, instead of electric charge, to carry information. Spintronics promises ultrafast, super energy-efficient devices than today’s electronics, but making it work in practical materials like graphene has been difficult.
“In particular, the detection of quantum spin currents in graphene has always required large magnetic fields that are practically impossible to integrate on-chip,” said Talieh Ghiasi, lead researcher and a postdoc fellow at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in Netherlands.
However, in their latest study, Ghiasi and his team have now shown that by placing graphene on a carefully chosen magnetic material, they can trigger and control quantum spin currents without magnets. This discovery could pave the way for ultrathin, spin-based circuits and help bridge the gap between electronics and future quantum technologies.
Achieving dual Hall effect in graphene
To understand what makes this research special, it’s pertinent to know that the team was trying to create the quantum spin Hall (QSH) effect. This is a special state where electrons move only along the edges of a material, and their spins point in the same direction.
The motion is smooth and doesn’t get scattered by tiny imperfections, a dream scenario for making efficient, low-power circuits. However, until now, making graphene show this effect required applying strong magnetic fields.
Instead of forcing graphene to behave differently with magnets, the researchers took a different approach. They placed a sheet of graphene on top of a layered magnetic material called chromium thiophosphate (CrPS₄). This material naturally influences nearby electrons through what scientists call magnetic proximity effects.
Unexpected anomalous Hall effect
When graphene is stacked on CrPS₄, its electrons start to feel two key forces; spin-orbit coupling (which ties an electron’s motion to its spin) and exchange interaction (which favors certain spin directions). These forces open up an energy gap in graphene’s structure and lead to the appearance of edge-conducting states, which is a sign of the QSH effect.
The researchers confirmed that spin currents were flowing along the graphene’s edges and stayed stable across distances of tens of micrometers, even in the presence of small defects.
They also noticed something unexpected, an anomalous Hall (AH) effect, where electrons are deflected to the side even without an external magnetic field. Unlike the QSH effect, which they observed at low (cryogenic) temperatures, this anomalous behavior persisted even at room temperature.
“The detection of the QSH states at zero external magnetic field, together with the AH signal that persists up to room temperature, opens the route for practical applications of magnetic graphene in quantum spintronic circuitries,” the study authors note.
The huge potential of spin currents
The stable, topologically protected spin currents could be used to transmit quantum information over longer distances, possibly connecting qubits in future quantum computers. They also open the door to ultrathin memory and logic circuits that run cooler and more efficiently than today’s silicon-based devices.
“These topologically-protected spin currents are robust against disorders and defects, making them reliable even in imperfect conditions,” Ghiasi said.
However, there are still some limitations to overcome. Unlike AH, the QSH effect, which is more suitable for developing quantum circuits, observed here only occurs at very low temperatures, which limits its immediate use in consumer electronics.
The researchers now aim to investigate ways to make the effect more robust at higher temperatures and explore other material combinations where this approach could work.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
An asteroid worth a whopping $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 that NASA is in the process of capturing could have shocking unintended consequences.
In 2023, the space agency announced that it was going to set off for the valuable asteroid, named 16 Psyche.
Thought to contain precious metals, including gold, iron and nickel, NASA is really keen to get its hands on the asteroid.
“Teams of engineers and technicians are working almost around the clock to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles to a metal-rich asteroid that may tell us more about planetary cores and how planets form,” the space agency said in a statement released in July 2023.
The mission officially began in October 2023 as the spacecraft was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Traveling at a speed of approximately 84,000mph through space, it’s expected to reach the valuable asteroid in August 2029.
While 16 Psyche may have been known about for a long time, experts are continuing to learn new things about the valuable asteroid all the time.
Newsweek reports that the projected value of the asteroid is 100,000 times the value of the world’s $100 trillion global domestic product due to the amount of gold, platinum and cobalt in it. That’s theoretically enough to make everyone on the planet a billionaire. Yikes.
Many have flocked to the comments section to express concerns that such an event could lead to gold becoming worthless, which in turn, would lead to a lot of people losing money.
One person said: “It wouldn’t make anyone billionaires but it will turn a lot billionaires to 0. Gold will lose its entire value.”
While a second added: “The price of gold would drop to a fraction of a penny an ounce, and nobody would become a billionaire from it. Simple supply and demand.”
A model of 16 Psyche at the Kennedy Space Center (CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
NASA estimates that this oddly shaped asteroid, which has a surface area of about 64,000 square miles (165,800 square kilometres), is made up of 30 to 60 percent metal.
It could also contain the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet which is one of the building blocks of our solar system.
And if the asteroid’s materials really are worth $10 quintillion dollars, and that wealth was divided between every single living person, everyone would become very rich indeed.
There are some 8.062 billion humans alive, so dividing $10 quintillion dollars by our population would give us each a total of around $1.2 billion each.
I mean, it really is life changing stuff – so let’s see what happens in the coming years, eh?
Astronomers have discovered the third interstellar comet to pass through our solar system. Named 3I/ATLAS (initially A11pl3Z), it was first spotted July 1 by the ATLAS telescope in Chile and confirmed the same day. Pre-discovery images show it in the sky as far back as mid-June. The object is racing toward the inner system at roughly 150,000 miles per hour on a near-straight trajectory, too fast for the Sun to capture. Estimates suggest its nucleus may be 10–20 km across. Now inside Jupiter’s orbit, 3I/ATLAS will swing closest to the Sun in October and should remain observable into late 2025.
Discovery and Classification
According to NASA, in early July the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile spotted a faint moving object first called A11pl3Z, and the IAU’s Minor Planet Center confirmed the next day that it was an interstellar visitor. The object was officially named 3I/ATLAS and noted as likely the largest interstellar body yet detected. At first it appeared to be an ordinary near-Earth asteroid, but precise orbit measurements showed it speeding at ~150,000 mph – far too fast for the Sun to capture. Astronomers estimate 3I/ATLAS spans roughly 10–20 km across. Signs of cometary activity – a faint coma and short tail – have emerged, earning it the additional comet designation C/2025 N1 (ATLAS).
Studying a Pristine Comet
3I/ATLAS was spotted well before its closest approach, giving astronomers time to prepare detailed observations. It will pass within about 1.4 AU of the Sun in late October. Importantly, researchers can study it while it is still a pristine frozen relic before solar heating alters it. As Pamela Gay notes, discovering the object on its inbound leg leaves “ample time” to analyze its trajectory. Astronomers are now racing to obtain spectra and images – as Chris Lintott warns, the comet will be “baked” by sunlight as it nears perihelion.
Determining its composition and activity is considered “a rare chance” to learn how planets form in other star systems. With new facilities like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory coming online, researchers expect more such visitors in the years ahead. 3I/ATLAS offers a rare chance to study material from another star system.
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