Category: 7. Science

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journal Reference

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

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

Oldest rocks found in Northern Quebec

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

How scientists accurately dated 4.16 billion-year-old rocks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Chris McGrew

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

duplication: The process of copying something.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Clays are ideal for preserving traces of ancient life on Earth. Could the same be true on Mars?
• Layers of clay, up to hundreds of feet thick, are common on Mars. A new study from a team of researchers in the U.S. shows they formed alongside standing bodies of liquid water on ancient Mars.
• This environment was likely stable enough for microbes to live in, if they ever existed.

Clays on Mars

Clays are some of the best kinds of terrain to preserve traces of ancient life, at least on Earth. They are rich in minerals and require water to form. So what about on Mars? A team of researchers, led by the University of Texas at Austin, conducted a new study of thick clay layers on Mars. The researchers said on June 16, 2025, that most of the clay layers formed alongside standing bodies of surface liquid water, such as lakes. This environment could have been calm and stable enough to provide an ideal habitat for microbes.

These clay layers can be up to hundreds of feet deep. And they can be found in many locations on Mars. So, how did they form?

The researchers published their peer-reviewed findings in Nature Astronomy on June 16, 2025.

Thick clay layers on Mars

Clays are common on Mars. In fact, there are widespread layers of clay all over the planet. These layers are also thick, up to hundreds of feet deep. They are similar to thick layers of clay in tropical regions on Earth. The Martian clays formed billions of years ago, when the planet was much wetter than it is today.

And on Earth, clays can preserve traces of ancient life. Is that also the case for Mars?

They Might Be ClaysThis observation targets a region of layered materials exposed along the northern edge of the Hellas Basin. These layers have a light tone, suggesting the presence of clays.uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_08…NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona#Mars #science #NASA

— HiRISE BeautifulMars (NASA) (@uahirise.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T18:00:18.394Z

A stable, habitable environment

The thick clay deposits are rich in minerals. Combined with the adjacent bodies of water, they could have been well-suited not only for preserving traces of past life, but also sustaining stable, habitable conditions for microbial life billions of years ago. Lead author Rhianna Moore at the University of Texas’ Jackson School of Geosciences said:

These areas have a lot of water but not a lot of topographic uplift, so they’re very stable. If you have stable terrain, you’re not messing up your potentially habitable environments. Favorable conditions might be able to be sustained for longer periods of time.

With this in mind, the researchers examined images and other data from 150 known clay deposits on Mars. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) had previously mapped out the locations of these clay layers. Most of the clays are near former lakes and are similar to clay deposits on Earth. Co-author Tim Goudge is an assistant professor at the Jackson School’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He explained:

On Earth, the places where we tend to see the thickest clay mineral sequences are in humid environments, and those with minimal physical erosion that can strip away newly created weathering products. These results suggest that the latter element is true also on Mars, while there are hints at the former as well.

Formation of clays on Mars similar to Earth, yet different

Indeed, the clays are further evidence that Mars was once much more Earthlike. But, in addition, they also reveal distinct differences. The reason has to do with plate tectonics. Earth’s crust is divided into plates that can move on top of the mantle below. They expose fresh rock that interacts with water and carbon dioxide. Mars, however, never had plate tectonics.

Also, when Mars’ volcanoes released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere eons ago, there was no source of fresh rock for the gas to interact with. So consequently, it just lingered in the atmosphere. As a result, the planet became warmer and wetter. The researchers said that is how these Martian clays likely formed. The end product was similar to clays on Earth, but the formation process was a bit different.

Puzzle of the missing carbonates

The lack of fresh rock could also help explain another Martian mystery: the seeming lack of extensive carbonates. Carbonates are chemical compounds derived from carbonic acid or carbon dioxide. The lack of newly created fresh rock could have impeded the chemical reactions needed to form carbonate rock. Then, the ongoing formation of clays might have also contributed to the lack of carbonates. It would have sucked up water and sequestered chemical byproducts in the clay. As a result, this would have prevented them from leaching out into the wider environment, where they could react with the surrounding geology. As Moore noted:

It’s probably one of many factors that’s contributing to this weird lack of predicted carbonates on Mars.

However, on that note, another international team of researchers said last April that NASA’s Curiosity rover found rich deposits of carbonates in rocks in Gale crater. The evidence suggests there might indeed be a lot of carbonates on Mars after all, which just haven’t been identified yet.

Bottom line: A new study shows that thick layers of clays on Mars formed close to bodies of water like lakes. This might have provided a stable environment for life.

Source: Deep chemical weathering on ancient Mars landscapes driven by erosional and climatic patterns

Via Texas Geosciences/ The University of Texas at Austin

Read more: New discovery of carbonates on Mars could solve big mystery

Read more: Ancient ‘honeycomb’ mud on Mars boosts chances for life

Astronomers have found a distant galaxy referred to as a “cosmic fossil” that has stayed virtually unchanged, or “frozen in time,” for billions of years.

Just as dinosaur fossils on Earth help us understand the history of life, this cosmic fossil, called KiDS J0842+0059, provides important insights into the universe’s evolution, reported Space.com.

A cosmic fossil is a galaxy that has avoided significant collisions or interactions with other galaxies, allowing it to serve as a pristine time capsule for studying the characteristics of early galaxies.

Recent studies using data from the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) have shown that this galaxy has remained largely unaltered for approximately 7 billion years.

“We have discovered a galaxy that has been ‘perfectly preserved’ for billions of years, a true archaeological find that tells us how the first galaxies were born and helps us understand how the universe has evolved to this day,” team co-leader and National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) researcher Crescenzo Dove said in a statement.

“Fossil galaxies are like the dinosaurs of the universe: studying them allows us to understand in which environmental conditions they formed and how the most massive galaxies we see today evolved.”

KiDS J0842+0059, situated about 3 billion light-years from Earth, was discovered in 2018 through the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS).

Astronomers used images from the Very Large Telescope Survey Telescope (VST) to determine the galaxy’s size and mass, with these measurements further refined using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its X-Shooter instrument.

Scientists at the University of Southampton have developed a new way of analysing fossils allowing them to see how creatures from millions of years ago were shaped by their environment on a day-to-day basis for the first time.

The research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences could revolutionise our understanding of how character traits driven by environmental changes shaped evolutionary history and life on earth.

It could help scientists to understand how much of a species’ evolutionary journey is down to ‘nature vs nurture’.

Researchers from the University of Southampton studied the fossilised remains of prehistoric plankton using high-resolution 3D scanning, like a medical CT scan, to examine tiny fossil shells about the size of a grain of sand.

These plankton, called foraminifera or ‘forams’ for short, are tiny floating seashells that still live in the ocean today. Their shells are made of calcium carbonate and grow every few days by adding a new chamber to their shell in a spiralling pattern.

These chambers act a little like the rings of a tree trunk, providing a permanent record of the growth and lived environment of forams over time.

The shells’ chemical composition also tells us about the conditions the organism lived in, including the chemistry, depth and temperature of the water.

“The fossil record provides the most powerful evidence of biodiversity change on Earth, but it traditionally does so at a scale of thousands and millions of years,” says Dr Anieke Brombacher , lead author of the paper how carried out the research at the University of Southampton and now works at the National Oceanography Centre.

“These fossils however act a bit like chapter summaries of a species’ evolutionary story. This new way of analysing them lets us read the pages within each chapter – allowing us to see how individual organisms adapted to their changing environment, not over the course of generations but within an individual life span at day-to-day resolution.”

The key advance the researchers developed was to combine highly advanced CT scanning with chemical analysis by laser ablation techniques. This combination of methods meant the team was able to ‘zoom in’ and ‘read’ the individual pages of those chapters to reveal how the forams grew and estimate the environment they experienced while growing.

The growth rates of all three species were similar at low temperatures, but one species grew much faster in higher temperatures despite reaching the same average size.

“If you’re a foram, temperature appears to be a bigger determinant of your growth rate than even how old you are,” says Dr Brombacher.

“Temperatures change throughout the depth of the ocean water column so being able to optimise growth at different temperatures would have allowed each foram to live in a greater variety of habitats.”

James Mulqueeney a PhD researcher from the University of Southampton and co-author of the study said: “We also found that of the two species with similar environmental sensitivities, one was able to reach the same size but with a thinner shell, indicating a lower energetic cost and potential evolutionary advantage.”

Researchers say the same analysis techniques could be applied to other creatures which preserve their environmental and lifespan information including ammonoids, corals and bivalves like clams, oysters and mussels.

“This sort of data is routine in how we study adaptation in modern populations but has only now been gathered for fossils. By bringing together experts and facilities across the University of Southampton, we’ve been able to make progress on a foundational question in biology that wouldn’t have been possible within a single discipline,” says Prof Thomas Ezard , supervising author on the paper from the University of Southampton.

The research is part of a wider project which aims to scale up the analysis across a wider sample of two thousand plankton specimens to determine if a species’ adaptive flexibility is likely to lead it to diverge into separate, distinct species over time.

Detecting environmentally dependent developmental plasticity in fossilised individuals is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is available online.

The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

As summer deepens in the Northern Hemisphere, a familiar constellation rises with the galactic core of the Milky Way each evening: Scorpius the Scorpion. One of the twelve zodiacal constellations, Scorpius contains many notable objects, making it an observer’s delight during the warmer months. Here are some items to spy in July:

• Antares: referred to as “the heart of the scorpion,” this supergiant has a distinct reddish hue and is visible to the naked eye. If you have good skies, try to split this binary star with a medium-sized telescope. Antares is a double star with a white main-sequence companion that comes in at a 5.4 magnitude.
• Messier 4: one of the easiest globular clusters to find, M4 is the closest of these star clusters to Earth at 5,500 light years. With a magnitude of about 5.6, you can spot this with a small or medium-sized telescope in average skies. Darker skies will reveal the bright core. Use Antares as a guide star for this short trip across the sky.
• Caldwell 76: If you prefer open star clusters, locate C76, also known as the Baby Scorpion Cluster, right where the ‘stinger’ of Scorpius starts to curve. At a magnitude of 2.6, it is slightly brighter than M4, albeit smaller, and can be spotted with binoculars and the naked eye under good sky conditions.

Lastly, if you have an astrophotography set up, capture the Cat’s Paw Nebula near the stinger of Scorpius. You can also capture the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex in the nearby constellation Ophiuchus. Brilliant Antares can be found at the center of this wondrous structure.

While many cultures tell tales of a ‘scorpion’ in the sky, several Polynesian cultures see the same stars as the demigod Māui’s fishhook, Manaiakalani. It is said that Māui didn’t just use his hook for giant fish in the sea, but to pull new islands from the bottom of the ocean. There are many references to the Milky Way representing a fish. As Manaiakalani rises from the southeast, it appears to pull the great celestial fish across a glittering sea of stars.

While you can use smartphone apps or dedicated devices like a Sky Quality Meter, Scorpius is a great constellation to measure your sky darkness with! On a clear night, can you trail the curve of the tail? Can you see the scorpion’s heart? Use our free printable Dark Sky Wheel, featuring the stars of Scorpius on one side and Orion on the other for measurements during cooler months. You can find this resource and more in the Big Astronomy Toolkit.