Category: 7. Science

One of the best meteor showers of the year is almost here! The Perseids peak in mid-August, and should put on a decent show.

The Perseids meteor shower arrives every year between July and September, as Earth swings into the debris trail of the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. It’s one of the most popular events on the skywatching calendar, thanks to the frequency of meteors visible and their tendency to burn brighter and longer than those in many other showers.

The fact that it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, where they’re most visible, probably helps draw crowds beneath the cool night sky.

In dark conditions, Perseids can appear to be particularly prolific, with 50 to 75 visible meteors per hour at their peak. And they’re quick, zipping by at up to 59 kilometers (37 miles) per second.

Related: Three Epic Meteor Showers Are About to Light Up July – Here’s Your Guide

This year, the shower will be visible from July 17 to August 23, peaking in the early hours of August 13.

Sadly, the Moon is being a bit of a glory hog this time around, being 84 percent full on the peak night. That extra light will wash out the fainter meteors, leaving only the brightest to shine through and reducing the visible activity to about 25 meteors per hour.

Even so, it’s well worth the effort. Not only is that still more meteors than some other showers, but they’ll be only the best and brightest the Perseids have to offer.

For best results, get yourself out to a nice, dark spot away from city lights in the hours before dawn. Look to the northeast, towards the constellation of Perseus – the shower’s namesake – which is where the meteors will appear to be radiating from. Avoid using your phone, to give your eyes time to adjust to the dark. Then, bust out the popcorn.

If you miss the Perseids, don’t worry. There are still plenty of other meteor showers to see out the year.

Today, the asteroid’ ‘2022 YS5’ is going to come very close to Earth. Scientists have warned that this asteroid, which is about 120 feet in diameter, will pass Earth at a speed of 22,500 km/h, and if its path changes, it will pose a threat to the Earth. This asteroid will pass Earth at a distance of about 4.15 million kilometers. This may seem like a huge distance to us on Earth. But in terms of space, it is considered close. Its speed and distance have created a crisis that requires this asteroid to be monitored. According to NASA’s CNEOS Center, the ‘2022 YS5’ asteroid is about the size of a 10-story building. However, it is not large enough to be classified as a “potentially hazardous” asteroid. This means that if it hits Earth, it will not cause a catastrophe. The effects will be minimal.
Although ‘2022 YS5’ is not directly harmful, experts warn that its direction may change over time due to factors such as gravity or solar radiation. This makes it important to continue monitoring near-Earth objects.NASA will only classify an asteroid as “potentially hazardous” if it is more than 85 meters in diameter and passes within 7.4 million kilometers of Earth. Since 2022, YS5 has not met these criteria, and it is not considered hazardous.

Often, meteorites of this size break up and explode in the atmosphere before hitting the ground. This is called an “airburst.” Meteorites that break up in this way can cause damage in many places. Not only that, the atmospheric explosion creates a powerful shock wave. This shock wave can spread over thousands of square kilometers and break windows. If this stone hits the head, it will create a crater with a diameter of 1,200 feet to 2,400 feet. Studies have shown that this can cause earthquakes and tsunamis if it falls into the ocean.

A recent study from the University of Lincoln has revealed that tortoises may possess emotional depth previously thought to be unique to mammals and birds. Specifically, red-footed tortoises (Chelonoidis carbonaria) were found to experience long-term mood states—suggesting they are capable of optimism, anxiety, and even emotional resilience. This discovery challenges long-held assumptions that reptiles are driven purely by instinct, devoid of subjective feelings. By using cognitive bias tests originally designed for humans, researchers observed that tortoises living in enriched environments demonstrated more optimistic behaviors. These findings not only shed new light on reptile cognition but could also revolutionize the way reptiles are treated in homes, zoos, and wildlife reserves.

Testing tortoise feelings through cognitive bias

To assess emotional states in tortoises, researchers used cognitive bias tests—a method widely applied to study moods in mammals and birds. The idea is simple: animals in positive emotional states are more likely to interpret ambiguous cues optimistically, while those in negative moods lean toward pessimism. Fifteen red-footed tortoises were trained to associate certain locations with rewards and then tested with neutral or ambiguous cues. Those in enriched enclosures (with natural elements, stimulation, and space) showed more optimistic responses, suggesting a positive underlying mood.In a second phase of the study, researchers exposed the tortoises to mildly stressful situations, such as unfamiliar environments or objects. Tortoises that had responded optimistically in the earlier tests were also less anxious in these settings. This behavioral consistency provides strong evidence that tortoises experience internal emotional states that influence their actions—a key marker of sentience.

Why it matters for animal welfare

These findings could have serious implications for how reptiles are housed and cared for. In the UK, the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 recognizes the capacity of animals to feel—but reptiles are often excluded from conversations around emotional wellbeing. Professor Anna Wilkinson, a leading expert in animal cognition, emphasized the importance of studying reptiles’ affective states as their popularity as pets increases. The research supports a more compassionate approach to reptile care, urging policy-makers and pet owners alike to consider the mental wellbeing of these animals.

Rewriting the narrative on reptile intelligence

Reptiles have long been perceived as emotionless creatures acting purely on instinct. However, recent studies—including this one—are rapidly shifting that narrative. The presence of enduring mood states in tortoises not only expands our understanding of reptile behavior but also raises questions about the emotional lives of other “cold-blooded” species. If tortoises can feel and process emotions, it suggests that affective states may have evolved much earlier in the animal kingdom than previously assumed.

PARIS: Astronomers said on Wednesday they had observed the moment when planets start forming around a distant star for the first time, revealing a process that sheds light on the birth of our own solar system.

The new planetary system is forming around the baby star HOPS-315 — which resembles our own Sun in its youth — 1,300 light years from Earth in the Orion Nebula.

Young stars are surrounded by massive rings of gas and dust called protoplanetary discs, which is where planets form. Inside these swirling discs, crystalline minerals that contain the chemical silicon monoxide can clump together.

This process can snowball into kilometre-sized “planetesimals”, which then grow into full planets.

Hot minerals starting to solidify in the disc surrounding HOPS-315, study says

In our home Solar System, the crystalline minerals that were the starter dough for Earth and Jupiter’s core are believed to have been trapped in ancient meteorites.

Now astronomers have spotted signs that suggest these hot minerals are starting to solidify in the disc surrounding HOPS-315, according to a new study in the journal Nature.

“For the first time, we have identified the earliest moment when planet formation is initiated around a star other than our Sun,” lead study author Melissa McClure of Leiden University in the Netherlands said in a statement.

The minerals around the star were first spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Then the astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s ALMA telescope in Chile to find out exactly where the chemical signals were coming from. They discovered that these minerals are in a small portion of the disc which is similar to the asteroid belt that surrounds our Sun.

This will allow scientists to watch the process that may have birthed our home planet.

Co-author of the study, Merel van’t Hoff said, “We’re seeing a system that looks like what our Solar System looked like when it was just beginning to form.”

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2025

A remarkable 2.35 billion year old meteorite found in Africa in 2023 has opened a new window into the Moon’s volcanic history, filling a gap in our understanding of how Earth’s closest neighbour evolved over billions of years.

The meteorite, officially named Northwest Africa 16286 (gets award for catchiest meteorite name!) represents the youngest basaltic lunar meteorite ever discovered on Earth.

Its rare geochemical composition sets it apart from those returned by previous Moon missions, with chemical evidence indicating it likely formed from a lava flow that solidified after emerging from deep within the Moon.

What makes this discovery particularly exciting is its timing. The meteorite’s age is especially significant because it fills an almost billion year gap in lunar volcanic history. The rock bridges the age gap between older samples collected by Apollo, Luna, and Chang’e 6 missions and the much younger materials brought back by China’s Chang’e 5 mission.

Related: Mysteriously Magnetic Moon Rocks Might Have an Explosive Origin Story

This age is crucial because it proves that volcanic activity continued on the Moon for much longer than previously documented in lunar samples. The rock provides evidence for the first time that the Moon retained internal heat generating processes that powered volcanic activity across multiple distinct phases throughout its history.

The 311 gram meteorite is a type of lunar volcanic basalt called olivine phyric basalt, containing relatively large crystals of the mineral olivine. Its chemical composition tells a fascinating story, it has moderate levels of titanium, high levels of potassium, and an unusually high uranium to lead ratio that serves as a unique geochemical fingerprint.

These chemical clues suggest the rock originated from deep within the Moon’s interior, where ongoing heat generation processes, possibly from radioactive elements decaying over long periods, continued to drive volcanic activity billions of years after the Moon’s formation. Unlike samples collected during expensive space missions, which are limited to specific landing sites, meteorites offer a different advantage.

“Lunar meteorites can potentially be ejected by impact cratering occurring anywhere on the Moon’s surface. There’s some serendipity surrounding this sample; it just happened to fall to Earth and reveals secrets about lunar geology without the massive expense of a space mission” – Dr. Joshua Snape, Research Fellow at the University of Manchester.

Like most meteorites with a lunar origin, the journey to Earth wasn’t a gentle one. Its melted glassy pockets and veins suggest it was shocked by an asteroid or meteorite impact on the Moon’s surface before being ejected into space and eventually falling to Earth. This impact event makes dating the rock more challenging, but researchers estimate its age with a margin of plus or minus 80 million years.

As researchers continue analysing this remarkable meteorite, it serves as a reminder that sometimes the most significant scientific discoveries come not from expensive space missions, but from rocks that simply fall from the sky, carrying with them the secrets of worlds beyond our own.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

BYLINE: Amber Rose

With a novel approach to X-ray spectroscopy, researchers are now able to capture detailed, ultrafast snapshots of electron interactions.

Newswise — In a leap forward for atomic-scale imaging, researchers have introduced a novel X-ray technique that could transform our understanding of electron motion at the microscopic level. This cutting-edge method, developed by an international team of scientists, uses the unique properties of X-ray lasers to capture detailed snapshots of atomic interactions.

The technique, called stochastic Stimulated X-ray Raman Scattering (s-SXRS), turns noise into valuable data, offering snapshots of the electronic structures near specific atoms. This advancement sets the stage for breakthroughs in chemical analysis and materials science.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, along with the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics and the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (European XFEL), both in Germany, developed this innovative approach to X-ray spectroscopy, achieving unprecedented detail and resolution.

“For a long time, chemists have dreamed of seeing how electrons move when they’re in excited states, as these movements are what drive chemical reactions,” said Linda Young, an Argonne Distinguished Fellow and professor at the University of Chicago. ​“Our technique brings us closer to realizing that dream.”

The key innovation is a super-resolution technique that greatly improves the detail in X-ray spectroscopy, a method for studying electron placement around atomic centers. This advancement helps scientists identify closely spaced energy levels in atoms, offering a clearer view of their electronic structures, which determine chemical properties.

“For a long time, chemists have dreamed of seeing how electrons move when they’re in excited states, as these movements are what drive chemical reactions. Our technique brings us closer to realizing that dream.” — Linda Young, Argonne Distinguished Fellow and professor at the University of Chicago

“Think of it like upgrading from a standard-definition television to an ultra-high-definition screen,” Young explained. ​“We’re now able to see the fine details of electronic motion that were previously blurred or invisible.”

The practical applications of s-SXRS are wide-ranging. For example, it can provide insights into how chemical bonds form and break, offering a deeper understanding of fundamental processes relevant to chemical analysis. This knowledge is essential for developing new materials with specific electronic properties, impacting industries like electronics and nanotechnology.

s-SXRS uses intense X-ray pulses to excite electrons within atoms. As the X-rays pass through a gas, they amplify the Raman signals — a type of X-ray fingerprint that provides information about the excited electronic states of molecules — by nearly a billion-fold.

This amplified signal provides detailed information about the electronic structure of the gas on a femtosecond timescale, or one quadrillionth of a second. By analyzing the relationship between the incoming pulses and the resulting Raman signals, scientists can create a detailed energy spectrum from many individual snapshots, rather than scanning slowly across different energy levels.

“The large number of pulses in each X-ray flash not only boosts the measurement signal but also holds the key to the highest spectral resolution by averaging over many photon impacts on the detector at once,” said Thomas Pfeifer from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics.

This approach, pinpointing the center position of broad but distinct spectral spikes much more precisely than the width of the spikes, is similar to the super-resolution microscopy technique that won the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry, Pfeifer added.

s-SXRS also uses a statistical method, called covariance analysis, to link the incoming X-ray pulses with the emitted Raman signals. This transforms what was once considered ​“noise” into a valuable resource, allowing extraction of detailed information from complex data. This approach not only enhances the resolution, but also speeds up data collection, providing rapid and detailed snapshots of atomic interactions.

Researchers conducted a straightforward experiment to implement this technique. They directed an X-ray beam through a gas and used a spectrometer to collect the resulting radiation. At the European XFEL, a small, 5-millimeter gas cell designed by the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, was positioned in the path of the X-ray beam.

The intense beam created tiny holes in the cell’s entrance and exit windows, allowing the X-rays to pass through to a grating spectrometer — a device that separates light into its different wavelengths — provided by collaborators from Uppsala University in Sweden. The European XFEL staff played a vital role in coordinating the installation and performing thorough pre-experimental testing. This ensured optimal focusing conditions, which were crucial for efficiently acquiring a large amount of data during the experiment.

“It’s remarkable how a simple X-ray experiment, combined with innovative data analysis, can reveal electronic dynamics and structure details with unprecedented clarity,” said Kai Li, a graduate student at Argonne and the University of Chicago.

Michael Meyer, group head of the Small Quantum Systems instrument at European XFEL, added, ​“This study is an excellent example of the capability of the European XFEL, especially of its high intensities and the recently demonstrated generation of extremely short X-ray pulses with durations of less than one femtosecond. These advancements will certainly trigger further investigations to unravel the dynamics of complex chemical reactions.”

Another crucial part of this research involved the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a DOE Office of Science user facility, which provided the necessary computational power to simulate the complex interactions between X-ray pulses and matter. The team worked closely with ALCF staff to optimize their code for the Theta supercomputer and implement a software tool to help run large ensembles of calculations more efficiently. These simulations were vital for interpreting the experimental results and refining the technique.

The ALCF’s supercomputing capabilities enabled the team to conduct detailed simulations that closely matched the experimental data, providing valuable insights into how X-ray pulses behave as they travel through gases. The computations were instrumental in confirming the researchers’ understanding of how the X-ray pulses move and interact, paving the way for future investigations.

With continued advancements, s-SXRS could become a standard tool in laboratories worldwide, driving innovation across many fields.

“We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what we can achieve with this level of detail,” Young said. ​“It’s an exciting time for science and technology.”

Other contributors to this work include Christian Ott, Alexander Magunia and Marc Rebholz from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics; Marcus Agåker from Uppsala University and Lund University; Phay Ho and Gilles Doumy from Argonne National Laboratory; Marc Simon from Sorbonne University; Tommaso Mazza, Alberto De Fanis, Thomas M. Baumann, Jacobo Montano, Nils Rennhack, Sergey Usenko, and Yevheniy Ovcharenko from European XFEL; Kalyani Chordiya from the University of Hamburg and Louisiana State University; Lan Cheng from Johns Hopkins University; Jan-Erik Rubensson from Uppsala University; and Mette B. Gaarde from Louisiana State University.

The results of this research were published in Nature. This study was funded by the DOE Office of Science, Basic Energy Science, Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences Division, the Hamburg Cluster of Excellence ​‘CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter’, the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence STRUCTURES of the German Research Foundation (DFG), the European Research Council (ERC) and the Max Planck Society.

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility provides supercomputing capabilities to the scientific and engineering community to advance fundamental discovery and understanding in a broad range of disciplines. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, the ALCF is one of two DOE Leadership Computing Facilities in the nation dedicated to open science.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

Stars and planets are naturally associated with one another. While some planets have gone rogue and are drifting through space, the vast majority are in solar systems, where they’re gravitationally bound and orbit their stars in predictable ways. But some planets stray too close to their stars, with dire consequences. These exoplanets have something to teach us about the exoplanet population.

Our exoplanet discoveries (~6,000 and counting) have shown us that our Solar System is not representative. Other solar systems contain planets nothing like ours, in orbits not seen in our Solar System. TOI-1227b is one of them.

TOI-1227b is a roughly Jupiter-size planet with about 20% of Jupiter’s mass. It orbits an M-dwarf, or red dwarf star, about 330 light-years away. It was discovered in 2022 in data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

TOI-1227b is suffering an existential crisis. It orbits extremely close to its star, only about 1/5th as far away as Mercury is from the Sun. New research shows that this planet is young, only about eight million years old. It’s a diaper-wearing infant when compared to Earth. Sadly for this young planet, instead of putting on weight, it’s losing its mass.

The research is titled “The Age and High Energy Environment of the Very Young Transiting Exoplanet TOI 1227b,” and will be published in The Astrophysical Journal but is available at arxiv.org. The lead author is Attila Varga, a Ph.D. student at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York. At only eight million years old, the exoplanet is the second youngest planet astronomers have ever found transiting in front of its star.

“We have conducted new X-ray imaging and optical spectroscopic observations of TOI 1227 aimed at ascertaining its age and the influence of its high-energy radiation on the exoplanet, TOI 1227b,” the researchers write.

The star it orbits, TOI-1227, is much smaller and dimmer than the Sun. As an M-dwarf, it’s far less massive than the Sun, and much dimmer in visible light. However, that dimness doesn’t describe the entire spectrum of the star’s output.

M-dwarfs are notorious for their extreme flaring, which produces powerful X-rays. Unlike the Sun, M-dwarfs are fully convective. Convection takes place throughout the interior of the star, which creates the powerful magnetic fields responsible for the flaring. In TOI-1227 b’s case, the unfortunate young gas giant is right in the crosshairs of this destructive flaring.

This illustration shows how low-mass, M-dwarf stars are fully convective. This convection creates the stars’ powerful, destructive flaring. Image Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

“It’s almost unfathomable to imagine what is happening to this planet,” said lead author Varga in a press release. “The planet’s atmosphere simply cannot withstand the high X-ray dose it’s receiving from its star.”

“Our modeling suggests that TOI 1227b is currently undergoing rapid atmospheric mass loss at rates on the order of ∼ 10^12 g s^−1,” the authors write. That equates to losing about 1 million metric tons of its atmosphere every single second. Varga and his co-authors calculated that in only one billion years, the planet will lose its entire atmosphere.

Powerful X-rays from stars like TOI 1227 strip away exoplanet atmospheres with several different, yet connected, mechanisms.

This figure shows TOI-1227’s spectral energy distribution. The red points are from archival photometry from GAIA, 2MASS, and WISE, and blue points are synthetic photometry points from an atmospheric model. The black line represents the best fit. Since X-rays span from about 0.01 to 10 nanometers, the figure shows that X-rays are blasting away at the exoplanet TOI-1227b. Image Credit: Varga et al. 2025. The Astrophysical Journal.

When X-rays strike molecules in the atmosphere, they ionize them and heat them up. This can heat the atmosphere to thousands of degrees Kelvin, which makes the atmosphere puff up. As the atmosphere extends further into space, the planet’s gravity has a weaker hold on it. The heating can be even more extreme in some cases, and this can essentially boil away some lighter molecules like molecular hydrogen.

Photodissociation plays a role, too. X-rays have enough energy to break water molecules apart into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Since hydrogen is so light, it can easily escape to space. On top of that, the X-rays can raise the temperature of the star’s stellar wind, giving it more energy and making it more efficient at stripping away the atmosphere.

“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, also of RIT. “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.”

The researchers think that the planet is losing the mass equivalent to two Earth atmospheres every two centuries. While many things astronomers discover take a long time to play out, this is happening much more quickly. Most things in astronomy are measured in millions or billions of years, not centuries.

“The future for this baby planet doesn’t look great,” said co-author Alexander Binks of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany. “From here, TOI 1227 b may shrink to about a tenth of its current size and will lose more than 10 percent of its weight.”

A hypothetical visualization of TOI-1227b. The planet is rapidly losing its atmosphere as intense X-ray radiation from its star strips it away. Image Credit: NASA Eyes on Exoplanets

Some of these numbers are not exact, because a lot depends on understanding the mass of the planet. In this case, that mass is proving elusive to determine exactly. To come up with these numbers, the team performed multiple simulations and settled on the most likely outcomes.

There’s a small planet radius gap in the exoplanet population, where planets with radii between 1.5 and 2 times Earth’s radius are very scarce. Photo-evaporation driven mass loss is the suspected cause of this gap, and astronomers want to observe planets like TOI 1227b to learn more about the process.

“The nearby, young transiting exoplanet system TOI 1227 represents a vital benchmark for understanding very early stages of exoplanet evolution around low-mass stars,” the researchers conclude, noting that “Follow-up photometric and spectroscopic observations aimed at further establishing the nature of the TOI 1227 system and providing tighter constraints on the mass and atmospheric mass loss,” are needed.

The hunt for potentially habitable rocky planets in our galaxy has been the holy grail of exoplanet studies for decades. While the discovery of over 5,900 exoplanets in over 4.400 planetary systems has been a remarkable achievement, only a small fraction (217) have been confirmed as terrestrial – aka. rocky or “Earth-like.” Furthermore, obtaining accurate information on a rocky exoplanet’s atmosphere is very difficult, since potentially habitable rocky planets are much smaller and tend to orbit closer to their stars.

Thanks to next-generation instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), exoplanet studies are transitioning from discovery to characterization. However, no atmospheres have been clearly identified around rocky planets yet, and the atmospheric data Webb has collected so far is subject to some uncertainty. A summary of Webb’s findings was featured in a recent study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL). Based on their summary, they recommend a “five-scale height challenge” to assist astronomers in atmospheric characterization.

The study was led by Laura Kreidberg, a Professor at the MPIA and the Director of its Atmospheric Physics of Exoplanets (APEx) Department. She was joined by Kevin B. Stevenson, a research astronomer at the JHUAPL, and the Consortium on Habitability and Atmospheres of M-dwarf Planets (CHAMPs). The preprint of the paper that details their findings, “A first look at rocky exoplanets with JWST,” recently appeared online and is being reviewed for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Artist’s impression of the surface of Barnard’s Star b. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

As they outline in their paper, Webb has achieved some impressive milestones thanks to its advanced suite of sensitive and high-resolution infrared optics, combined with coronagraphs and spectrometers. “[T]he most precise transmission spectra for rocky planets yet, and detection of heat emanating from about half a dozen rocky planets,” Kreidberg told Universe Today via email. “JWST has also allowed us to push these measurements of thermal emission (heat) to cooler rocky planets than ever before – now as low as 100 degrees C (compared to 800 degrees C previously).”

Thanks to its observations, Webb has also enabled extensive theoretical work to predict the atmospheric properties of rocky planets. This is particularly true of those orbiting M-type red dwarf stars, which account for 80% of stars in the Milky Way. This has demonstrated that atmospheres can be shaped by many physical processes, including volatile elements delivered by comets and asteroids, atmospheric loss, interior-atmosphere interaction, and biological processes. Of these, atmospheric loss is especially important since it is unknown which rocky planets observed by Webb have retained their atmospheres.

Based on Webb’s observations to date, the concept of the “cosmic shoreline” has emerged as a popular framework to determine which planets are more likely to have atmospheres. According to this framework, planets with a higher escape velocity (more massive planets) and lower irradiation are more likely to retain atmospheres. However, it is still unknown how this “shoreline” is affected based on stellar type and irradiation history. Meanwhile, late-stage stars are known for exposing their planets to greater levels of high-level radiation, especially late M-type stars that are known to have extended UV-bright phases that can last up to 6 billion years.

Greater exposure to high-energy irradiation leads to greater atmospheric loss, and M-type stars are known for their intense flare activity. To address these unknowns, the team recommends a new framework to achieve greater precision in identifying rocky planet atmospheres. Said Kreidberger:

The five-scale height challenge is a goal to reach the measurement precision needed to detect Earth-like atmospheric features. The largest spectral feature in Earth’s atmosphere is carbon dioxide, and it spans about five scale heights (a unit astronomers use to refer to the typical vertical extent of an atmosphere). So far, the data is not precise enough to see a feature this small, so more observations are needed!

Artist’s impression of the surface of Proxima Centauri b. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Thanks to JWST’s large aperture, stability, and near-to-mid-infrared wavelength coverage, astronomers are now at a point where the characterization of atmospheres around rocky planets is finally possible. In particular, it is now possible to detect the tiny signals expected from volatile elements like water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), carbon monoxide (CO), and others. Looking ahead, astronomers will be able to obtain transmission and emission spectra from rocky exoplanets around M-type stars during planetary transits and eclipses. Said Kreidberger:

The five-scale height challenge sets a benchmark for how precise the data needs to be to detect an Earth-like atmosphere. This is going to require both more data and better modelling to remove noise from the star and JWST’s detectors. There was already a JWST observing program (GO 7073, Charting the Cosmic Shoreline) approved to attempt this for a small sample of rocky planets most likely to have atmospheres.

While the JWST is incapable of studying the atmospheres of Earth analogs around Sun-like stars, future next-generation missions like the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be able to do so via direct imaging. In the meantime, the framework proposed by Kreidberger’s team could help astronomers pave the way by constraining rocky exoplanet atmospheres further. “[W]e have made great progress with JWST already in our understanding of which rocky planets could have atmospheres,” added Kreidberger. “This is a critical first step, well before we get to biosignatures. We need to learn to walk before we can run!

Further Reading: arXiv

Wild tomatoes rooted on the raw lava of Fernandina and Isabela Islands have done something biologists once filed under “nearly impossible,” reviving a molecular defense that disappeared from their relatives millions of years ago during species evolution.

The phenomenon has been traced to a tiny tweak in the plants’ chemistry, and it now stands as the clearest plant example of reverse evolution, the re‑emergence of an ancestral trait after a long dormancy.

Lead author Adam Jozwiak at the University of California, Riverside, working with colleagues from the Weizmann Institute, mapped the unexpected comeback.

Evolution of wild tomatoes

Wild tomatoes on the islands produce a mix of bitter chemicals that help protect them from insects and animals that might try to eat them.

On the youngest islands, the mix has shifted toward an older type of toxin usually found in eggplants, not modern tomatoes, showing that this ancient version can still work better under harsh conditions like lava soil and intense heat.

The change comes down to a single enzyme in the plant that decides how its natural defense chemicals are made.

By slightly altering this enzyme, the plant switches back to an older version of its toxin that had been lost for millions of years.

“Just four amino acids changed everything,” reported the study team, noting that the modified enzyme brought back the older, more aggressive version of the toxin. It wasn’t a random mutation, but a precise shift that reactivated a long-dormant chemical pathway.

Life on lava and sand

The western Galápagos islands are among the youngest in the chain, with rugged volcanic ground and almost no soil. Plants growing there face intense heat, limited nutrients, and constant threats from insects and animals.

In those conditions, bringing back a stronger chemical defense gives the tomatoes a better chance of surviving, and evolution seems to have reached into the plant’s genetic history instead of creating something entirely new.

When tomato evolution hits reverse

Although it was once assumed that lost traits almost never return, research shows that evolution can sometimes retrace its steps. 

In some cases, structures that disappeared for millions of years have reappeared, such as larval stages in salamanders or wings in certain insects.

These reversals challenge the old idea that evolution always moves in one direction and suggest that dormant genetic pathways can be reactivated when conditions shift. 

The tomato work tightens the evidence because stereochemistry can be measured atom by atom, making accidental convergence unlikely.

Lessons for crop science

Changing four amino acids in GAME8 inside greenhouse tobacco forced the host to synthesize the ancestral toxin, showing that minimal editing is enough to remodel an entire metabolic branch.

Researchers now wonder whether carefully steering stereochemistry could dial pest resistance up or down in other crops while avoiding off‑flavors that plague tomato breeders. 

Island survey data hint at an evolutionary gradient: tomatoes on older eastern islands keep the modern toxin, central islands sit in the middle, and the youngest lava fields host plants in nearly full chemical retreat.

That pattern suggests evolution’s arrow is flexible, and under shifting climates crops might again reach backward for solutions thought obsolete.

How four amino acids changed the story

Most enzymes are highly specific, and even minor alterations can break them. But in this case, the GAME8 enzyme was surprisingly flexible.

By replacing just four amino acids in its active site, scientists restored the enzyme’s older behavior, allowing the plant to make the ancient version of its chemical defense again. 

This kind of precise control over a plant’s internal chemistry is unusual and suggests that nature sometimes keeps old instructions ready to use when needed. 

The researchers used molecular docking and structural models to predict which amino acids made the difference.

Lab tests confirmed their predictions, highlighting how small tweaks in sequence can flip a tomato plant’s entire chemical output.

This work also demonstrates how directed enzyme evolution, a common tool in biotechnology, occurs naturally under harsh selection pressures like those on the Galápagos lava fields.

Impacts beyond tomatoes

Tomatoes belong to the Solanaceae family, which includes peppers, potatoes, and tobacco. All of them produce related alkaloids, and this study suggests they might also hold buried chemical routes.

Understanding how GAME8 evolved can help scientists modify alkaloid profiles in related plants, potentially unlocking medicinal or agricultural uses with more precision.

Some glycoalkaloids are mildly toxic to humans, and breeders often try to reduce them. But with the ability to dial in the stereochemistry, it might be possible to keep the benefits while avoiding the downsides.

This also raises fresh questions for evolutionary theory, particularly around how often so-called “lost” traits are truly gone, or just waiting for the right trigger to come back.

The study is published in Nature Communications.

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