Category: 7. Science

Sharks can be formidable predators, but when they’re flipped upside down, many species enter a trance-like state, known as tonic immobility, and are as helpless as a beetle on its back.

Tonic immobility is “as close to hypnotising a shark as you can get!” Joel Gayford, a doctoral candidate of marine ecology at James Cook University in Australia, told Live Science in an email. “The animal completely stops swimming, and the only movement it’s making is slow rhythmic breathing.”

Astronomers have taken a close look at one of the youngest known exoplanets and found it’s on the receiving end of relentless brutality. 

This giant baby world, TOI 1227b, is about the size of Jupiter but much lighter — more like a puffed-up version of Neptune, about 330 light-years from Earth. But the distant planet likely won’t stay that size for long, because the star that birthed it is blasting it with X-rays, causing it to puff up and blow away. 

The punishing radiation appears to be causing the planet to shed its atmosphere at a rate of at least 1 trillion grams per second, according to a new study involving NASA‘s Chandra X-ray Observatory. That’s like a full Earth disappearing into space every two centuries. 

The findings, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, offer a rare window into what planets look like in their infancy — and how they evolve amid the violence perpetrated by their stars. This planet’s atmosphere simply can’t withstand that kind of beating, said Attila Varga, a doctoral student at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.  

“It’s almost unfathomable to imagine what is happening to this planet,” said Varga, who led the research, in a statement. 

The number of confirmed exoplanets — planets that don’t orbit the sun — has tipped 5,900, according to NASA, with thousands of additional candidates under review. 

Red dwarf stars, sometimes referred to as M-type stars, are the most common stars within the Milky Way, yet nobody knows whether planets orbiting them can hold onto atmospheres. TOI 1227b, just 8 million years old, is one such world orbiting this kind of star. 

Most astronomers agree that detecting atmospheres is crucial in the search for habitable worlds. NASA has playfully called Earth’s own atmosphere its “security blanket”: Without it, the type of life flourishing here wouldn’t exist. This cocoon holds oxygen in the air and filters out harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun, all while keeping our world warm. Furthermore, it creates pressure that allows liquid water to pool on the surface.

The James Webb Space Telescope, a collaboration of NASA and its European and Canadian counterparts, is embarking on a massive study of rocky worlds outside the solar system, specifically to learn whether worlds orbiting near cool red dwarf stars could have air. The campaign, first reported by Mashable, will zero in on a dozen nearby-ish exoplanets. 

The new observations of TOI 1227b have revealed that its star is essentially boiling off the baby planet’s atmosphere. It’s so close to its star — closer than Mercury is to the sun — that it’s exposed to nonstop radiation. Based on simulations, the researchers estimate the planet could lose more than 10 percent of its total mass over the next billion years. 

That’s equivalent to two Earths’ worth of material, gone with the stellar wind, whittling it down to perhaps a super-Earth. This process might help explain why astronomers have noticed a noticeable lack of midsize planets, between 1.5 and two times Earth’s size. It’s possible that some planets in this range lost their atmospheres due to radiation.

“A crucial part of understanding planets outside our solar system is to account for high-energy radiation like X-rays that they’re receiving,” said co-author Joel Kastner in a statement. “We think this planet is puffed up, or inflated, in large part as a result of the ongoing assault of X-rays from the star.”

For TOI 1227 b, the future looks bleak. The planet is likely too hot and battered to ever host life. And as the abuse from its star continues, this world is ever more likely to shrivel into a barren rock. Future Webb telescope studies may shed light on what exactly TOI 1227b’s air is made of before it’s decimated.

This week, scientists have, for the first time, observed matter-antimatter asymmetry in special particle decay, the first known trilobite fossil collected by Romans may have been used as a “magical” pendant or as a board game piece, and the “earliest moment” of planet formation has been spotted for the first time around a star 1,300 light-years away. Finally, we investigate whether we all need to be taking vitamin B12 supplements, or is it just a quick trip to expensive pee?

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First-Ever Giant Ichthyosaur Soft Tissues Preserved In “Extraordinary Fossil” Dating Back 183 Million Years

An extraordinary fossil has blown the socks off palaeontologists as it was found to contain the soft tissues of a Temnodontosaurus ichthyosaur, marking the first time we’ve ever found soft tissue remains of a giant ichthyosaur and introducing new-to-science features that reveal how they hunted. The discovery is going to revolutionize the way we look at ichthyosaurs, so said study co-author and palaeontologist Dr Dean Lomax, who knows a thing or two about these extinct marine reptiles. Read the full story here

8 Children Have Been Born With 3 Biological Parents Each After Mitochondrial Transfer

A technique to allow women who carry diseases in their mitochondrial DNA to have healthy children has been performed successfully eight times since being legalized, two papers have announced. With one pregnancy having led to identical twins, the work has led to eight healthy babies, as well as one pregnancy underway. Read the full story here

First Known Observations Of Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry In Special Particle Decay

Particles and antiparticles have opposite charges, and they annihilate if they interact, turning into pure energy. In the Big Bang, an equal amount of matter and antimatter formed, but some process must have given matter a boost, leaving just a tiny fraction of antimatter in the cosmos today. The reason for this is not clear, and several experiments are looking for an answer. The LHCb at CERN has just announced some incredible observations, taking us a step closer to it. Read the full story here

First Known Trilobite Fossil Collected By Romans Was Used As “Magical” Pendant

Excavations at a 2,000-year-old settlement in Spain have yielded the first ever trilobite fossil from Roman times. Found in a trash heap associated with a high-status household, the specimen appears to have been intentionally modified to form part of a necklace or bracelet, and was probably used as a magical pendant designed to protect its wearer. Read the full story here

“Earliest Moment” Of Planet Formation Spotted For First Time Around Star 1,300 Light-Years Away

The formation of planetary systems is not fully understood. There are many steps that require further observations, modeling, and theories. Stars form from clouds of gas and dust, and following star formation, that dust will crystallize into minerals, which will become pebbles, which might end up growing into planets. For the first time, researchers have observed the crystallization process. Read the full story here

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Feature of the week: 

Vitamin B12: Do We All Need To Be Supplementing It?

Have you been feeling a little low in energy lately? Are you looking for a quick (ish) fix? Attempt to find a solution on the internet, and you may well be told to try a vitamin B12 supplement – but is that actually going to work? Or will it end up being a waste of your hard-earned cash? Read the full story here 

More content:

Have you seen our e-magazine, CURIOUS? Issue 36 (July 2025) is available now. This month we asked, “How To Fake A Fossil” – check it out for exclusive interviews, book excerpts, long reads, and more.

PLUS, the We Have Questions podcast – an audio version of our coveted CURIOUS e-magazine column – continues. In episode 8, we ask, “Why Does Snow Sometimes Look Blue?”

The Big Questions podcast has returned, and we’re continuing season 5 with episode 3’s big question: How Do Black Holes Shape The Universe?

NASA has shared a stunning new image of the Aurora Australis, offering a perspective on the Southern Lights that few will ever see in person. The photograph, taken by astronaut Nichole Ayers on June 12, 2025, shows the vibrant green arcs of the aurora glowing above the Indian Ocean as the International Space Station orbited 269 miles (432.91 km) above the planet.

While its northern counterpart, the Aurora Borealis, is a famous tourist attraction, the Aurora Australis remains one of the world’s most elusive light show. This is due to geography — the southern aurora is centered over the vast, uninhabited continent of Antarctica and the surrounding oceans. Unlike the Northern Hemisphere, there are very few accessible landmasses within the prime viewing zone, making it difficult to see from the ground.

For those determined enough to try, the hunt for the Southern Lights is a significant challenge. The most reliable viewing spots are on the extreme southern edges of the globe. These include Stewart Island in New Zealand, Tasmania in Australia, and the southern tip of South America. However, even from these prime locations, the aurora often appears as a faint glow on the horizon, and unpredictable weather can often spoil the view.

The best time to attempt a viewing is during the long, dark nights of the Southern Hemisphere’s autumn and winter, from March through September. The lack of daylight during this season provides the dark canvas needed for the aurora’s faint light to shine.

Because of these challenges, images like this one from the Crew Earth Observations team aboard the space station are invaluable. For most of the world, photos captured by astronauts with handheld cameras offer the only way to witness the full glory of this beautiful and remote celestial phenomenon.

I have always been fascinated by technology and digital devices my entire life and even got addicted to it. I have always marveled at the intricacy of even the simplest digital devices and systems around us. I have been writing and publishing articles online for about 6 years now, just about a year ago, I found myself lost in the marvel of smartphones and laptops we have in our hands every day. I developed a passion for learning about new devices and technologies that come with them and at some point, I asked myself, “Why not get into writing tech articles?” It is useless to say I followed up the idea — it is evident. I am an open-minded individual who derives an infinite amount of joy from researching and discovering new information, I believe there is so much to learn and such a short life to live, so I put my time to good use — learning new things. I am a ‘bookworm’ of the internet and digital devices. When I am not writing, you will find me on my devices still, I do explore and admire the beauty of nature and creatures. I am a fast learner and quickly adapt to changes, always looking forward to new adventures.

What’s the story

A massive asteroid, dubbed 2018 BY6, is set to make a close approach to Earth today.
The space rock, which is about the size of an airplane at some 210 feet (nearly 64 meters) across, will come within 3.27 million kilometers of our planet.
While that may seem like a long way off, it’s actually considered quite close in astronomical terms.
The asteroid is traveling at a speed of around 26,700km/h.

Imagine you could go back and see the formation of our Solar System, the moment when the planets began to form around our young Sun.

Astronomers using the ALMA telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope have, for the first time, pinpointed the exact moment planets have begun to form around a star beyond our Sun.

These are observations of the first crumbs of planet-forming material; hot minerals beginning to solidify in orbit around a distant star.

It’s the first time a distant planetary system has been identified so early in its formation and, what’s more, gives us a glimpse into the history of our own Solar System.

Exploring the system

This record-breaking newborn planetary system is beginning to form around HOPS-315, a baby star – known as a ‘proto star’ – 1,300 lightyears from Earth.

Stars come in all different shapes and sizes, but this one happens to be very similar to what our young Sun must have been like.

Astronomers have seen protoplanetary discs around stars before, discs of dust and gas out of which planets may eventually form.

They’ve even been able to see young discs around stars containing massive Jupiter-like planets.

But, says Melissa McClure, professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the new study published in Nature, “For the first time, we have identified the earliest moment when planet formation is initiated around a star other than our Sun.

“We’ve always known that the first solid parts of planets, or ‘planetesimals’, must form further back in time, at earlier stages.”

Co-author Merel van ‘t Hoff, a professor at Purdue University, USA, compares their findings to “a picture of the baby Solar System”, saying “we’re seeing a system that looks like what our Solar System looked like when it was just beginning to form.”

A glimpse into our Solar System’s birth

Astronomers can learn a lot about the formation of our Solar System by studying space rocks like asteroids and meteorites.

These were the very first solid materials to condense near Earth’s present location around the Sun.

Therefore, age-dating these primordial rocks enables scientists to confirm when our Solar System began forming.

Meteorites are full of crystalline minerals containing silicon monoxide (SiO) and can condense at the extremely high temperatures present in young planetary discs.

Eventually, these condensed solids join together, growing in size and mass and potentially becoming full-blown planets in orbit around a star.

This discovery is evidence of these hot minerals beginning to condense in the disc around HOPS-315.

Results show SiO is present around the baby star in its gaseous state, but also within crystalline minerals.

That suggests it’s only just beginning to solidify. We’re seeing the very first stages of a brand new planetary system forming around a distant star.

“This process has never been seen before in a protoplanetary disc — or anywhere outside our Solar System,” says study co-author Edwin Bergin, a professor at the University of Michigan, USA.

Using our most powerful telescopes

The minerals were first identified by the James Webb Space Telescope, and the team then used ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, to find out where the chemical signals were coming from.

They determined the signals are from a small region of the disc around the star that’s about the same distance as between our asteroid belt and our Sun.

“We’re really seeing these minerals at the same location in this extrasolar system as where we see them in asteroids in the Solar System,” says co-author Logan Francis, a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University.

HOPS-315 is a view into the past; a chance to see the what the very beginnings of our Solar System must have been like.

“This system is one of the best that we know to actually probe some of the processes that happened in our Solar System,” says van ‘t Hoff.

SpaceX added 24 new Starlink satellites to its orbital network on a Friday night (July 18) launch from California.

The company’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 8:52 p.m. local (11:52 p.m. EDT or 0352 GMT on July 19) from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base. At about nine minutes into the flight, the booster’s upper stage delivered the two dozen satellites to space.

The flight was on track to deploy the Starlink spacecraft into low Earth orbit an hour later.

At Marambio Base, in the heart of the Antarctic Peninsula and under Argentine Air Force control, the cold and icy breeze shape the landscape of a polar desert. The island is rife with permafrost, rocks, and silent storms, which carry neither thunder nor lightning in their wake. It is also home to Adélie penguins, who typically gather in colonies of 60,000 members, eight kilometers (five miles) from the main scientific station in the trans-Andean country, which has been operating for a decade.

While they gather in that wasteland of ice and rock to live together, find mates, and start families, the penguins may also be unwittingly helping to mitigate the effects of climate change, a previously unknown impact on the environment. The fecal waste these animals scatter (known as guano) releases ammonia into the area, an essential compound that influences the increased formation of certain types of clouds that act as insulating layers in the atmosphere, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

Matthew Boyer, a researcher at the University of Helsinki in Finland, and his colleagues explored Antarctica to understand how this colorless but foul-smelling gas, produced naturally by the slow decomposition of organic matter, has the potential to contribute to reducing surface temperatures. “Our work involves studying the gases that influence the formation of particles in the atmosphere,” Boyer tells EL PAÍS.

The analysis is based on the concentration of ammonia in the air between January and March 2023. Levels of this gas are extremely low, meaning that any source of this element — whether emitted by the ocean or by local animals — can have a significant impact. One of the study’s conclusions is that the waste of this seabird, which feeds on krill and small fish, releases large volumes of ammonia into the atmosphere, which promotes the creation of small particles called aerosols.

Ammonia can increase the formation of these suspended particles in the air, which provide water vapor with a surface on which to condense, leading to cloud formation. But clouds, depending on their type, impact the climate in different ways. In some cases, they reflect sunlight back into space, cooling the surface. In others, they trap radiation, which contributes to warming. “This interaction is complex and depends on many factors,” the scientist emphasizes.

The researchers also noticed that when the wind blew from the direction of a colony, the ammonia concentration increased to 13.5 parts per billion. This effect persisted even after the penguins migrated from the area in late February. At that time, the amount of ammonia remained more than 100 times higher than the baseline. The remaining guano continued to emit the gas.

The seeds of the air

Ocean gases undergo chemical transformations in the atmosphere, producing compounds such as sulfuric acid, which, when interacting with ammonia, can initiate the formation of new particles. The key finding was that while sulfuric acid alone could form them, the presence of ammonia accelerates this process “up to a thousandfold.”

This is important because the rate of particle formation determines how many reach the atmosphere. These particles act as seeds, around which cloud droplets called condensation nuclei form. “So, the greater the number of particles, the greater the likelihood of clouds forming,” Boyer explains.

University of Cádiz doctor Erica Sparaventi points out that the study highlights that each organism and component of the ecosystem “offers a different service.” “The power of guano planting was already known, but on land, on terrestrial plant communities such as moss and lichens,” she explains.

Sparaventi has been able to verify this directly through her work on the PIMETAN project, which investigates the role of penguins in recycling metals and nutrients in the Southern Ocean. “We have seen that guano, when introduced into the waters near colonies, can introduce trace metals essential for phytoplankton development,” says the expert, who was not involved in the research.

The planktonic plant population — which includes microscopic algae — is found at the base of the Antarctic food chain and also plays a role in the biological carbon pump. “Phytoplankton absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, transforming it into organic carbon that will be absorbed,” says the scientist.

According to Boyer, in science, hypotheses are built based on data, but more evidence needs to be gathered to make inferences. Still, the results of the analysis open a fascinating door. “Penguins can influence particle formation,” concludes the lead author of the study, “which likely affects cloud formation.” The next step will be to directly measure the radiative properties of these clouds to understand their impact on climate.

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A new international study suggests that ancient viral DNA embedded in our genome, which were long dismissed as genetic “junk”, may actually play powerful roles in regulating gene expression. Focusing on a family of sequences called MER11, researchers from Japan, China, Canada, and the US have shown that these elements have evolved to influence how genes turn on and off, particularly in early human development.

Transposable elements (TEs) are repetitive DNA sequences in the genome that originated from ancient viruses. Over millions of years, they spread throughout the genome via copy-and-paste mechanisms. Today, TEs make up nearly half of the human genome. While they were once thought to serve no useful function, recent research has found that some of them act like “genetic switches”, controlling the activity of nearby genes in specific cell types.

However, because TEs are highly repetitive and often nearly identical in sequence, they can be difficult to study. In particular, younger TE families like MER11 have been poorly categorized in existing genomic databases, limiting our ability to understand their role.

To overcome this, the researchers developed a new method for classifying TEs. Instead of using standard annotation tools, they grouped MER11 sequences based on their evolutionary relationships and how well they were conserved in the primate genomes. This new approach allowed them to divide MER11A/B/C into four distinct subfamilies, namely, MER11_G1 through G4, ranging from oldest to youngest.

This new classification revealed previously hidden patterns of gene regulatory potential. The researchers compared the new MER11 subfamilies to various epigenetic markers, which are chemical tags on DNA and associated proteins that influence gene activity. This showed that this new classification aligned more closely with actual regulatory function compared with previous methods.

To directly test whether MER11 sequences can control gene expression, the team used a technique called lentiMPRA (lentiviral massively parallel reporter assay). This method allows thousands of DNA sequences to be tested at once by inserting them into cells and measuring how much each one boosts gene activity. The researchers applied this method to nearly 7000 MER11 sequences from humans and other primates, and measured their effects in human stem cells and early-stage neural cells.

The results showed that MER11_G4 (the youngest subfamily) exhibited a strong ability to activate gene expression. It also had a distinct set of regulatory “motifs,” which are short stretches of DNA that serve as docking sites for transcription factors, the proteins that control when genes are turned on. These motifs can dramatically influence how genes respond to developmental signals or environmental cues.

Further analysis revealed that the MER11_G4 sequences in humans, chimpanzees, and macaques had each accumulated slightly different changes over time. In humans and chimpanzees, some sequences gained mutations that could increase their regulatory potential during in human stem cells.Young MER11_G4 binds to a distinct set of transcription factors, indicating that this group gained different regulatory functions through sequence changes and contributes to speciation,leading researcher Dr. Xun Chen explains.

The study offers a model for understanding how “junk” DNA can evolve into regulatory elements with important biological roles. By tracing the evolution of these sequences and directly testing their function, the researchers have demonstrated how ancient viral DNA has been co-opted into shaping gene activity in primates.

“Our genome was sequenced long ago, but the function of many of its parts remain unknown“, co-responding auther Dr. Inoue notes. Transposable elements are thought to play important roles in genome evolution, and their significance is expected to become clearer as research continues to advance.