Category: 7. Science

The first step toward quantum gravity, the “holy grail of physics,” may be hiding in a quantum recipe to cook up black holes.

That’s the suggestion of new research that adds quantum corrections to Einstein’s 1916 theory of gravity, known as “general relativity.” Black holes are relevant to this because they first theoretically emerged from the solutions to the Einstein field equations that underpin general relativity.

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• Meteorites found in the Sahara Desert might be pieces of Mercury that broke off as the result of a collision when the Solar System was still forming.

• The meteorites had many parallels to the surface of Mercury, but also some noticeable differences, including a mineral not previously detected on Mercury’s surface.

• Whether or not these rocks are from Mercury remains a mystery, but if not, they could still be useful analogs for understanding more about the innermost planet.

Though human boots have never set foot on another planet, pieces of Mars have fallen to Earth as meteorites, giving us our only chance to study them up close until NASA’s Mars Sample Return Mission drops off the rock cores collected by Perseverance. Meteorites that emerged from the Sahara desert might be from another resident of our solar system, Mercury.

To say Mercury is extreme is an understatement— it’s hot enough to melt lead, after all. The innermost planet of the solar system is only about 58 million km. (36 million miles) from the Sun, with an average temperature of 167°C (333°F). Few spacecraft have been able to venture anywhere near this scorching clump of iron and silicates without overheating and breaking down. Mariner10 performed the first flyby of Mercury, MESSENGER orbited, and BepiColombo is on its way, but nothing has ever been able to crawl on its surface.

If fragments of Mars could have hurtled to Earth after some ancient collision, then why are there none from Mercury? This is the question planetary scientist Ben Rider-Stokes of The Open University in the UK wanted to answer. MESSENGER has been able to collect data about the surface composition of Mercury, but we have yet to figure out how to send something to pick up samples without being blasted by solar radiation. Stokes examined meteorites that had previously been suspected to have come from Mercury and found possible matches.

“The rise in the number of meteorites collected from hot and cold deserts has greatly expanded the range of meteorite compositions and potential parent objects,” Stokes said in a study recently published in Icarus.

Meteorites Ksar Ghilane 022, which landed in Tunisia, and Northwest Africa 15915, discovered in Morocco, show a surface composition and mineralogy similar to the Mercurian crust. Whether they are actually from Mercury remains unknown. However, both are achondrites, previously melted meteorites characterized by an absence of chondrules (mineral spheres embedded in the rock) and made mostly of silicates such as olivine and pyroxene, often found in igneous and metamorphic rocks. Plagioclase and oldhamite are also present. They also do not fit in with any other known achondrites. There’s just one issue.

What is problematic about both specimens is that the iron-free silicates and oxygen isotopes they contain mirror aubrites, made largely of the translucent silicate mineral enstatite (MgSiO₃). Aubrites have not been detected on the surface of Mercury.

“It is not believed that the aubrites originated from Mercury, as the planet has an extremely red spectrum which differs from aubrite spectra, but it has been suggested that aubrites represent a proto-Mercury,” said Stokes.

Billions of years ago, Mercury might have had a different surface composition before it was pummeled by asteroids, which pockmarked it with craters. Both meteorites are about 4.5 billion years old. This makes them younger than most primitive materials that were swirling around in the solar system, but older than the smooth plains of Mercury, which cover a third of its surface and are around 3.6 billion years old. Even 4-billion-year-old regions of the plains are still no match for the age of the meteorites.

It is possible that the meteorites are actually remnants of Mercury’s crust before there were enough collisions to obliterate that rock and expose the material beneath it. Remnants of this crust on Mercury might have gone undetected, but that knowledge eludes us. BepiColombo is expected to reach Mercury by the beginning of 2026. The spacecraft may be able to find a source of material that is a match for these mysterious rocks.

Even if they aren’t from Mercury, Ksar Ghilane 022 and Northwest Africa 15915 could be analogs for the surface of a planet on which we would’t be able to take the heat.

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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