Category: 7. Science

The two phone calls from Washington DC arrived at the same split of a second but I declined both on my Apple Watch as I was answering questions on a live TV interview about the new interstellar object 3I/ATLAS discovered on July 1, 2025. As soon as the interview ended, I listened to the two recorded messages and found that one was from the office of Representative Anna Paulina Luna and the second from Reuters. Both wanted to know more about 3I/ATLAS. I informed Representative Luna about the opportunity to get a closer look of 3I/ATLAS with the Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter, based on a paper that I submitted for publication a few hours earlier (accessible here) with Adam Hibberd and Adam Crowl from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies.

If I had only a few months left to live with a choice of where to spend them, I would have loved to board Juno on a collision course with 3I/ATLAS. The pre-collision view of a large interstellar object that travelled through interstellar space for billions of years must be magnificent.

A few hours later, I was informed that Joe Rogan posted a YouTube segment in which he discusses my recent papers on 3I/ATLAS. This segment received more than a million views within 12 hours. It was followed by interview requests that I received from CBS, CNN, NewsNation and international TV channels.

Communicating my research to the public is an important responsibility. However, I find less value in talking about scientific work than doing it. This is why I wrote a total of nine new scientific papers over the past month alone (accessible here). Before the internet was invented and when written news was printed on paper, it was often said that “Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper.” People forget the news of yesterday, but the physical reality maintains its nature. Therefore, any new scientific knowledge about that physical reality is far more precious than the chitchat in social media or news outlets about it. The nature of 3I/ATLAS will not be revealed by listening to opinions of commentators but rather by analyzing data collected by state-of-the-art telescopes. We can learn more by observing the interstellar show of 3I/ATLAS on the sky during the coming months with our best telescopes from the radio band to X-rays.

As a scientist, I respond to evidence collected by instruments. As of now, we have anomalies but we need more data on 3I/ATLAS or other interstellar objects in order to ascertain whether any one of them is technological in origin. Once we find an interstellar artifact beyond a reasonable doubt, the next step will be to figure out its technological capabilities and intent. The analysis of the available data could benefit from artificial intelligence (AI), especially if the object shows complex patterns. The reverse engineering of the alien technologies could spark new growth frontiers in human-made products. Those would represent a quantum leap in our abilities if the aliens benefitted from thousands or millions of years of advanced scientific research compared to the one century we had so far after quantum mechanics was discovered.

But there is also a security aspect to technological interstellar objects. For objects inside the Earth’s atmosphere, it is necessary to employ state-of-the-art cameras to monitor the sky around the globe at infrared, optical and radio wavebands and then analyze the data with the best AI software available. This is the approach taken by the Galileo Project, under my leadership. For interstellar objects far away from Earth, one would like to analyze data coming from the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in the southern hemisphere and build a similar observatory in the northern hemisphere. Again, the data should be analyzed by AI algorithms. Over the coming decade, the Rubin Observatory is expected to discover a new interstellar object every few months.

To do a good job on both types of objects, it is imperative to allocate major funds and attract the best minds in the world, as I noted in a congressional briefing, attended by Representative Luna, on May 1, 2025 (accessible here).

When approaching a `blind date,’ it is prudent to listen to the other side before speaking. This is a particularly good practice for a blind date with a visitor from another star, since all bets are off. We must first learn what the alien visitor is about and then design optimal communication and mitigation strategies. A friendly appearance might be misleading as it may potentially reflect a `Trojan Horse’. A neighbor with superior intelligence could manipulate us. This is a concern for the artificial intelligence we are currently creating, but even more so for alien intelligence. It is unclear which type of AI poses a bigger existential threat to the future of humanity. The answer will depend on the nature of any interstellar artifacts uncovered by the Rubin Observatory and other survey telescopes over the next decade.

As I suggested in my CBS interview (accessible here), it is important to establish a risk scale for interstellar encounters, with 0 marking a natural comet or asteroid and 10 marking an alien spaceship of unknown intent.

The U.S. government has little to offer other than alert citizens to major natural disasters, such as the new Tsunami Warning to Hawaiian residents — triggered by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off Russia’s eastern Kamchatka Peninsula. An encounter with an artifact on the interstellar risk scale of 10 would be a tsunami of astronomical proportions. Trading options on the stock market volatility would not make much sense because money will lose its value in the aftermath of the encounter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.

In July 1925—exactly a century ago—famed physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to his equally famous colleague, Wolfgang Pauli. In it, Heisenberg confesses that his “views on mechanics have become more radical with each passing day,” requesting Pauli’s prompt feedback on an attached manuscript he’s considering whether to “complete…or to burn.”

That was the Umdeutung (reinterpretation) paper, which set the foundation for a more empirically verifiable version of quantum mechanics. For that reason, scientists consider Umdeutung’s publication date as quantum mechanics’s official birthday. To commemorate this 100th anniversary, Nature asked 1,101 physicists for their take on the field’s most fiercely debated questions, revealing that, as in the past, the field of quantum physics remains a hot mess.

Published today, the survey shows that physicists rarely converge on their interpretations of quantum mechanics and are often unsure about their answers. They tend to see eye-to-eye on two points: that a more intuitive, physical interpretation of math in quantum mechanics is valuable (86%), and that, perhaps ironically, quantum theory itself will eventually be replaced by a more complete theory (75%). A total of 15,582 physicists were contacted, of which 1,101 responded, giving the survey a 7% response rate. Of the 1,101, more than 100 respondents sent additional written answers with their takes on the survey’s questions. 

‘Textbook’ approach still tops, with a caveat

Participants were asked to name their favored interpretation of the measurement problem, a long-standing conundrum in quantum theory regarding the uncertainty of quantum states in superposition. No clear majority emerged from the options given. The frontrunner, with 36%, was the Copenhagen interpretation, in which (very simply) quantum worlds are distinct from classical ones, and particles in quantum states only gain properties when they’re measured by an observer in the classical realm.

It’s worth noting that detractors of the Copenhagen interpretation scathingly refer to it as the “shut up and calculate” approach. That’s because it often glosses over weedy details for more practical pursuits, which, to be fair, is really powerful for things like quantum computing. However, more than half of physicists who chose the Copenhagen interpretation admitted they weren’t too confident in their answers, evading follow-up questions asking them to elaborate. 

Still, more than half of the respondents, 64%, demonstrated a “healthy following” of several other, more radical viewpoints. These included information-based approaches (17%), many worlds (15%), and the Bohm-de Broglie pilot wave theory (7%). Meanwhile, 16% of respondents submitted written answers that either rejected all options, claimed we don’t need any interpretations, or offered their personal takes on the best interpretation of quantum mechanics. 

So, much like many other endeavors in quantum mechanics, we’ll just have to see what sticks (or more likely, what doesn’t).

Divided results, equivocal reviews

Physicists who discussed the results with Nature had mixed feelings about whether the lack of consensus is concerning. Elise Crull at the City University of New York, for instance, told Nature that the ambiguity suggests “people are taking the question of interpretations seriously.”

Experts at the cross-section of philosophy and physics were more critical. Tim Maudlin, a philosopher of physics at New York University, told Gizmodo that the survey’s categorization of certain concepts is misleading and conducive to contradictory answers—a discrepancy that the respondents don’t seem to have realized, he said. “I think the main takeaway from this is that physicists do not think clearly—and have not formed strongly held views—about foundational issues in quantum theory,” commented Maudlin, my professor in graduate school.

In an email to Gizmodo, Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins who responded to the survey, expressed similar concerns. Several factors may be behind this lack of consensus, he said, but there’s a prevalent view that it “doesn’t matter as long as we can calculate experimental predictions,” which he said is “obviously wrong.”

“It would be reasonable if we thought we otherwise knew the final theory of physics and had no outstanding puzzles,” added Carroll, who was part of an expert group consulted for the survey. “But nobody thinks that.”

“It’s just embarrassing that we don’t have a story to tell people about what reality is,” admitted Carlton Caves, a theoretical physicist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque who participated in the survey, in Nature’s report. 

However, the survey’s results do seem to hint at a general belief in the importance of a solid theoretical groundwork, with almost half of the participants agreeing that physics departments don’t give sufficient attention to quantum foundations. On the other hand, 58% of participants answered that experimental results will help inform which theory ends up being “the one.”

Schrödinger’s consensus, kind of

For better or worse, the survey represents the lively, fast-developing field of quantum science—which, if you’ve been following our coverage, can get really, really weird. A lack of explanation or consensus isn’t necessarily bad science—it’s just future science. After all, quantum mechanics, for all its complexity, remains one of the most experimentally verified theories in the history of science.

It’s fascinating to see how these experts can disagree so wildly about quantum mechanics, yet still offer solid evidence to support their views. Sometimes, there’s no right or bad answer—just different ones.

For you fellow quantum enthusiasts, I highly recommend that you check out the full report for the entire account of how and where physicists were split. You can also find the original survey, the methodology, and an anonymized version of all the answers at the end of the report. 

And if you do take the survey, or at least part of it, feel free to share your answers. Oh, and let me know whether you believe Heisenberg should have burned Umdeutung after all.

Astronomers discovered a new rogue planet lurking in archival data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope, and the find is thanks to a little serendipity — and a little help from the genius himself, Albert Einstein.

Rogue, or “free-floating,” planets are worlds that don’t orbit a star. They earn their rogue status when they are ejected from their home systems due to interactions with their sibling planets or via gravitational upheaval caused by passing stars.

In the dense forests of Central and South America, a strange thing happens. Hundreds of butterfly species – most of them nearly identical in appearance – flutter through the trees, each warning predators that they’re toxic through shared colors and patterns.

But if the butterflies all look the same, how do they find the right partner to mate with? New research reveals that these butterflies can smell each other.

Even among species that look nearly identical, each one produces a unique scent. This tiny chemical difference is how they tell each other apart.

Genetics of glasswing butterflies

The research was conducted by an international team of scientists led by the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

The team sequenced the genomes of dozens of glasswing butterfly species – specifically focusing on two groups known for rapidly forming new species.

Glasswing butterflies are not rare. There are more than 400 species across Central and South America, and many live in the same areas.

These butterflies are often used in conservation as “indicator species” because their presence reflects the health of the broader insect ecosystem.

Lookalike butterflies have a strategy

What makes things tricky is that all glasswing butterflies look strikingly alike – and this similarity is no accident. It’s a defense strategy that warns predators they’re poisonous.

But while this mimicry helps protect them, it poses a serious challenge for scientists trying to identify or monitor them in the wild.

To solve this, the research team mapped the genetics of the butterflies. In doing so, they discovered six subspecies were actually distinct enough to count as separate species.

The experts also produced ten high-quality reference genomes now freely available to the research community.

Scent matters for glasswing butterflies

One major discovery: even butterflies that look the same can still recognize their own species through pheromones – chemicals they release to communicate through smell.

This matters a lot for mating. Because many of these butterflies have gone through a process called rapid radiation – where lots of new species evolve in a short period – they’re often closely related.

Visually, the butterflies are often indistinguishable. But smelling different? That’s a game-changer.

“Having the reference genomes for the two groups of glasswing butterflies, Mechanitis and Melinaea, allowed us to take a closer look at how they have adapted to life in such close proximity to their relatives,” said study senior author Dr. Caroline Bacquet.

“These butterflies share the responsibility of warding off predators by displaying similar color patterns, and by producing different pheromones they can successfully find mates and reproduce.”

“Now that we have clarity on glasswing butterfly species, we can look for specific markings or differences between them, giving new ways to track them during fieldwork.”

Butterflies that evolve quickly

The team also uncovered something surprising in the butterflies’ DNA. Most butterflies have 31 chromosomes, but in glasswing species, that number varied from 13 to 28.

The genes were mostly the same, but they were rearranged in different ways – a phenomenon called chromosomal rearrangement. These rearrangements aren’t just quirky genetic facts. They affect reproduction.

When butterflies with mismatched chromosome arrangements try to reproduce, their offspring are sterile. That means mating with the wrong species is a dead end. So, the butterflies have evolved to rely on pheromones as a way to ensure they choose the right partner.

Scientists think this high level of chromosomal rearrangement might be a key reason why these butterflies evolve into new species so quickly.

Protecting lookalike butterflies

Once a population’s chromosome count shifts, it effectively becomes its own species, better able to adapt to local environments or food sources.

“Glasswing butterflies are an incredibly adaptive group of insects that have been valuable in ecology research for around 150 years,” said Dr. Eva van der Heijden, first author of the study.

“However, until now, there was no genetic resource that allowed us to robustly identify different species, and it is difficult to monitor and track something that you can’t identify easily.”

“With this new genetically informed evolutionary tree, and multiple new reference genomes, we hope that it will be possible to advance biodiversity and conservation research around the world, and help protect the butterflies and other insects that are crucial to many of Earth’s ecosystems.”

Understanding how new species evolve

Understanding how these lookalike butterflies evolved – and continue to evolve – could help scientists tackle broader questions.

Why do some insects branch into many species while others don’t? How do environmental pressures drive rapid adaptation? And can this knowledge help us in agriculture or pest control?

Dr. Joana Meier, senior author at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, warned that we are in the middle of an extinction crisis and understanding how new species evolve, and evolve quickly in some cases, is important for preserving species.

“Comparing butterflies that rapidly form new species to others that do not could benchmark how common this is in insects and highlight the factors involved,” said Dr. Meier.

“This, in turn, could identify any species that require closer conservation and possibly identify genes that are important in the adaptation process and might have uses in agriculture, medicine, or bioengineering.

“This research would not have been possible without global collaboration. We have one planet, and we must work together to understand and protect it.”

The full study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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A planetary scientist whose research revealed the possibility of extraterrestrial life on one of Saturn’s moons has been made the first female astronomer royal.

Prof Michele Dougherty, a leading space physicist who was a researcher for the Nasa Cassini mission, has been awarded the 350-year-old honorary title.

As an investigator on two major space missions, Dougherty has played a role in major discoveries in the solar system, including the revelation that jets of water vapour shoot out of one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, meaning it may be able to support life.

Dougherty said she was “absolutely delighted” with her appointment. She added: “As a young child I never thought I’d end up working on planetary spacecraft missions and science, so I can’t quite believe I’m actually taking on this position. In this role I look forward to engaging the general public in how exciting astronomy is, and how important it and its outcomes are to our everyday life.”

The role of astronomer royal was created in 1675, with the aim of discovering how to determine longitude at sea when out of sight of land. The outgoing astronomer royal, Martin Rees, is retiring from the role.

Dougherty told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday: “I’ve always wanted to make sure that if I’m ever selected for a role, it’s because of what I do, and not because I’m female. Particularly for young girls, seeing someone who looks like them in a role like this will potentially allow them to dream that they might be able to do something like this in the future. So if it makes just a few people think: ‘Oh maybe I can do something that looks a bit scary,’ then I would have achieved one of the things I’d like to achieve.”

She will hold the role alongside her current positions as executive chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, president-elect of the Institute of Physics and as a professor of space physics at Imperial College London.

She said she feared for the future of science funding. “Things are unsettled right now across the world on a range of fronts. That’s why it’s so important that in the UK we are very open about why we do the research we do and why it is so important to the health and wellbeing of the UK economy.”

Her main role will be to “talk to people about the science we do and how it can impact people” She said she wanted to “enthuse and excite people”.

Dougherty, 62, was born in South Africa and has English and Irish grandparents. When she was about 10 years old, her father built a telescope, and Dougherty and her sister helped mix the concrete for its base. “My first view of Jupiter and its four large moons and Saturn and its rings was through my dad’s telescope,” she told Today.

Her expertise lies in designing and operating instruments to measure the magnetic field in space on Nasa and European Space Agency (Esa) probes.

She noticed a “tiny anomaly” in the Cassini spacecraft’s measurement of the magnetic field as the probe flew by Enceladus in 2005, suggesting the moon might have an unexpected atmosphere. She convinced Nasa chiefs to send Cassini back for a closer look.

She told the Times: “I didn’t sleep for the first couple of nights beforehand. Imagine if we hadn’t seen anything. No one would have believed anything I said ever again. But we saw that, instead of an atmosphere, it was a water vapour plume coming out of the south pole.”

Enceladus is now considered one of the most promising places to look for alien life. Dougherty has designed instruments to find out more, including a magnetometer that is two years into an eight-year journey onboard Esa’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission. It will scan Ganymede, the solar system’s largest moon, which is bigger than Mercury and the only one with a spinning core, looking for a “global ocean” under the surface.

Dougherty began work on Cassini in 1992 and the probe operated until 2017. She started on Juice in 2008; it will reach Jupiter in 2031 and operate until 2035.

Prof Dame Angela McLean, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said: “Warm congratulations to Professor Michele Dougherty on her appointment to the distinguished position of astronomer royal. This is a fitting recognition of her outstanding work and enduring commitment to the field of astronomy.”

The Moon has a diameter of around a quarter that of Earth and travels around our planet in a circular orbit roughly every 27 days.

These companions fall into several categories:

But Earth also possesses a number of tiny co-orbital bodies – objects orbiting the Sun and so not true satellites of Earth, but which are influenced by our planet’s gravity and shadow our planet closely.

Objects on a ‘horseshoe’ or ‘tadpole’ orbit are repeatedly accelerated and decelerated by Earth’s gravity

‘Quasi-satellites’ follow a one-year elliptical orbit around the Sun, such that they appear to be on a wide, retrograde orbit around Earth.

There are four known bodies on horseshoe orbits of Earth, two in tadpole motion, five quasi-satellites, and four objects flip-flopping between quasi-satellite and horseshoe.

The orbital dynamics involved are a little complicated, but the important point is that such co-orbital objects are on very similar orbits around the Sun as Earth’s.

So, the question is: how did those objects get there? What’s the source of these bodies that become captured – at least temporarily – as companions of Earth?

Most of them are probably near-Earth asteroids.

One of the closest, most stable quasi-satellites, however, the 40-metre-wide (131ft) Kamo‘oalewa,
is spectrally very similar to the lunar surface.

Could this companion be a fragment of the Moon that was blasted off by a large asteroid impact and then caught as a quasi-satellite?

Simulating lunar ejecta 

Rafael Sfair, at the Sao Paulo State University, Brazil, and his colleagues, explored the conditions required for lunar ejecta to develop into co-orbital bodies of Earth.

This is what’s known as a four-body problem, with the gravitational effects of the Sun, Earth and Moon all being important for the object’s motion, and it requires precisely tracking trajectories using step-by-step computer simulations. 

Sfair’s team ran comprehensive simulations of 54,000 particles being ejected from across the entire globe of the Moon, with a range of ejection velocities, and tracked which became co-orbital with Earth. 

They found that 3.5% of their modelled ejecta particles ended up colliding with Earth, and indeed, over a tonne of lunar meteorites have been found.

But 6.7% of ejecta came to share a similar orbit to Earth, with over a quarter of those becoming quasi-satellites (rather than following horseshoe or tadpole orbits).

Material is most likely to become captured as a co-orbital object if it is ejected from the trailing (western) side of the Moon and near the equator.

Explaining Kamo‘oalewa

A previous study had suggested that Kamo‘oalewa was flung off the Moon by the impact that created the Giordano Bruno crater.

This is a 22km (14-mile) crater just on the far side of the Moon, believed to have been created relatively recently: around 4 million years ago.

Sfair says that his simulations agree with this possibility.

Overall, this new research bolsters the hypothesis that some of Earth’s co-orbital bodies originally came from the Moon.

Confirmation could be provided by China’s Tianwen-2 mission, which launched in May 2025 to collect and return a sample of Kamo‘oalewa to Earth for analysis.

By 2028, we might know for sure whether this quasi-satellite is actually a chip off the Moon.

Lewis Dartnell was reading The Moon as a Possible Source for Earth’s Co-orbital Bodies by R Sfair, LC Gomes et al. Read it online at: arxiv.org/abs/2505.09066

This article appeared in the August 2025 issue of BBC Sky at Night Magazine

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Studying plant vegetative reproduction is key to increasing crop yield and for bioengineering. Kobe University research is making progress on studying the genetic regulation of the process in liverworts, which are ideal model plants and even a candidate for space crops.

Potatoes are tubers, ginger is a rhizome, and both are forms of vegetative plant reproduction, in which plants create structures from which genetically identical individuals can emerge. This mode of reproduction is very important for agriculture and horticulture, but there is very little research on the underlying genetic mechanism. Kobe University plant geneticist ISHIZAKI Kimitsune thinks that the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha is an ideal model organism to study this process and over the past 10 years has been involved in decoding its genome and establishing tools for its convenient genetic manipulation. He says, “Also, the liverwort is so proliferative that it is considered a nuisance to gardeners, growing back quickly no matter how often it is removed.”

The liverwort spreads through tiny, detachable buds, called “gemmae,” that form in small cups on the upper side of the liverwort’s “leaves” and are dispersed by rain, the wind or animals. Apart from this, the plant also engages in sexual production, switching from vegetative reproduction when the days become longer in summer. “In previous research, we found a gene that seemed to be involved in the formation of both gemma cups and the plant’s sexual reproductive organs. But it was completely unclear what it does, so we wanted to learn more,” says Ishizaki.

In the journal New Phytologist, the Kobe University team now reports that plants lacking the gene generally don’t form vegetative or sexual reproductive organs, and in rare cases form empty, shot-glass-shaped cups instead of the usually wide and shallow gemma cups, leading them to name the gene “SHOT GLASS.” This shows that the gene is necessary for the development of functioning reproductive structures. Studying the interactions with other genes known to be involved, they found that SHOT GLASS acts by suppressing the development of air chambers in the liverwort’s “leaves” to make space for gemma cup development, and by helping factors needed for the development of sexual reproductive organs to locate to the right place.

In addition, Ishizaki and his team found something astonishing. They knew that flowering plants, which are much more complex than the simple liverwort, have genes that are related to SHOT GLASS and likely derive from the same gene in the ancestor of all land plants. Interestingly, in flowering plants, those genes are also involved in regulating the development of the secondary meristem that, broadly speaking, makes a plant grow branches. And when they inserted the liverwort’s gene into a flowering plant that lacks one of its own versions, they found that it can even compensate for the gap its more evolved cousin left. Ishizaki explains, “This suggests that the mechanism by which plants create new buds away from the main shoot tip may be common to all land plants.”

This means that Ishizaki’s liverwort is indeed a convenient model organism to study this agriculturally important process. But the Kobe University researcher has bigger dreams. “Unlike crop plants, liverworts don’t require soil but can be grown with just fog cultivation. We are exploring the development of liverworts where the whole body is directly available as a food resource. This means it could even be used as a food source in space,” Ishizaki explains. He adds: “We are also exploring using the liverwort as an organism for the bioproduction of valuable chemical resources, which has so far practically been restricted to bacteria and yeasts. The engineering technology we are developing and the knowledge we are gathering on the plant’s biology are an important step into that direction.”

Reference: Sakai Y, Takami H, Yamaoka S, et al. SHOT GLASS, an R2R3-MYB transcription factor, promotes gemma cup and gametangiophore development in Marchantia polymorpha. New Phytol. 2025. doi: 10.1111/nph.70337