Category: 7. Science

The James Webb Space Telescope‘s (JWST) latest extragalactic survey has revealed fainter and more distant objects than ever before, some dating back to the earliest periods of the universe. But it stands on the shoulders of a giant: When NASA published the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image in 2004, it stunned the world of astronomy. A composite of 800 images from exposures totaling 11 days, the deep image of an otherwise unremarkable part of the night sky revealed nearly 10,000 galaxies, many among the most distant known.

Now, JWST has observed that same patch of sky with different eyes — and found 2,500 more objects. Crucially, they’re even more distant.

Monday evening (Aug. 11) offers a perfect chance to identify what many consider the most beautiful object in the night sky: the ringed planet Saturn. Helping guide the way, will be another familiar celestial companion, the moon, shining in its waning gibbous phase.

As I’ve pointed out over the years here at Space.com, to the naked eye, Saturn does not exactly scream for attention. It lacks the dazzling, eye-popping brilliance of Venus or Jupiter and it does not have the fiery orange-yellow color of Mars.

Hydrogen-rich white dwarfs can appear deceptively ordinary in optical light, making their true origin difficult to determine. Ultraviolet data is crucial because it can detect the faint carbon signatures that betray a merger history. Without Hubble’s ultraviolet capability, WD 0525+526 would likely have been classified as a typical white dwarf, masking the fact that it is the product of a violent stellar collision.
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Topline

Early risers this month can see a “planet parade” building in the eastern sky before sunrise featuring Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Mercury. Best seen about an hour before sunrise, on Monday, Aug. 11, Saturn will be visible in the south, with bright planets Jupiter and Venus in the east. Mercury may also be glimpsed below Venus and Jupiter as sunrise nears, but the “Swift Planet” will be easier to see later this week. Uranus and Neptune will also be in the sky — making a six-planet parade — but neither is visible to the naked eye.

Key Facts

Watch For Early ‘shooting Stars’

If you’re outside while it’s dark — or you return after dark later in the day — keep your eyes peeled for “shooting stars” from the Perseid meteor shower. It peaks overnight on Tuesday, Aug. 12 through Wednesday, Aug. 13, when 50-75 “shooting stars” are typically visible each hour, with activity high on the nights either side. Bright moonlight will restrict visibility this year, but the Perseids are known for their occasional very bright fireballs.

What’s Next In The ‘planet Parade’

This “planet parade” will become more visible and easier to see as the days pass during August. After this week’s Venus-Jupiter conjunction, Mercury will become easier to see as it rises higher. Next week, as Mercury reaches its highest point in the morning sky, a waning crescent moon will move through the planets, creating a beautiful scene. Here are the key dates:

• Monday, Aug. 18: A 26% crescent moon will glow near Venus and Jupiter.
• Tuesday, Aug. 19: Mercury will be at its highest in the morning sky as the moon wanes to 16%-lit and forms a curve with Venus and Jupiter.
• Wednesday, Aug. 20: A 9%-lit crescent moon will appear very close to Venus, with Mercury below and Jupiter above:
• Thursday, Aug. 21: a slender 4%-lit waning crescent moon will be beneath Jupiter and Venus, close to Mercury.

What’s Next In The Night Sky

The “planet parade” will draw to a close around Aug. 26 as Mercury disappears from view, leaving Saturn and Jupiter to gradually brighten as Venus begins to fade. However, Venus has one last act — before sunrise on Aug. 31, it will pass across the Beehive Cluster, one of the closest open clusters of stars to the solar system, which should be a fabulous sight through binoculars.

Further Reading

ForbesA Six-Planet Parade Is Coming — When To See ItBy Jamie CarterForbesPerseid Meteor Shower Begins Next Week — When To Get The Best ViewBy Jamie CarterForbesDon’t Miss This Week’s Dazzling Venus-Jupiter EncounterBy Jamie Carter

In a time when space missions often involve the latest technology and huge budgets, NASA’s Voyager 1 stands out as a true classic. Launched way back in 1977– when cassette tapes were still popular– this old spacecraft is still making news. Recently, Voyager 1 discovered a very hot and energetic area just beyond the edge of our solar system that scientists didn’t expect.This new zone, which researchers are calling a “firewall,” could change what we thought about the border between our solar system and the vast space beyond. A hot zone without fire: What Voyager detectedVoyager 1 has entered a region where particles are so energetic that their temperatures measure between 30,000 and 50,000 degrees Celsius, as per an Economic Times report. But don’t worry– this doesn’t mean there are flames or fire. The particles are spread out so thinly that they don’t act like heat does on Earth.

The spacecraft is safe and working just fine. What’s really interesting is that scientists didn’t expect to find this kind of hot zone. It’s making them rethink what they know about how space behaves just beyond the edge of our solar system.Redefining where the solar system endsFor many years, scientists have debated where the solar system really ends. As per a report by Economic Times, some say it’s the faraway Oort Cloud, but NASA defines the edge as the heliopause– the spot where the Sun’s solar wind slows down and can no longer push back against particles coming from outside our solar system.Voyager 1 crossed this boundary back in 2012. But now, finding this unexpected hot zone just beyond it shows that the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space isn’t as clear or simple as we thought. This new discovery suggests that the outer edge of the Sun’s influence is more complex than we once believed.

Magnetic fields defy previous assumptionsAlong with the heat surprise, Voyager 1 has been sending back unexpected information about magnetic fields. Scientists thought the magnetic conditions outside the heliopause would be very different from those inside. But Voyager’s data shows there’s some magnetic connection between the two areas, as per the ET report.This finding has sparked new questions about whether the Sun’s magnetic influence reaches farther than we thought, or if interstellar space is more linked to our solar system than we previously believed.Images: Canva (for representative purposes only)

As a child, I remember gazing up at the stars and dreaming of spacecraft journeying to distant worlds, those classic images of rockets blasting off toward unknown frontiers filled my imagination. But a mission to a black hole? That seemed beyond even the wildest science fiction. These stellar corpses were the stuff of theoretical physics books back then, mysterious objects so extreme that they devoured light itself. The idea that we might actually send something there, even a device smaller than a paperclip, makes you realise we’re living in an era where the impossible is slowly becoming possible.

Images of the Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket launch with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin inspired me and many other children to dream of travelling among the stars (Credit : NASA)

Here’s the idea; astrophysicist Cosimo Bambi from Fudan University has outlined an ambitious plan to send microscopic spacecraft to the nearest black hole. These “nanocrafts” would weigh just grams and consist of a microchip and light sail, propelled by powerful Earth based lasers to reach one third the speed of light. The mission would be a marathon, not a sprint. It would take about 70 years for the craft to reach a black hole 20 to 25 light years away, with another 20 years for the data to travel back to Earth, making the total mission duration around 80 to 100 years.

Black holes represent the universe’s most extreme conditions, where our understanding of physics is pushed to its limits. This mission could answer fundamental questions: Does a black hole truly have an event horizon beyond which nothing can escape? Do the rules of physics change near black holes? Does Einstein’s theory of general relativity hold under these extreme conditions? These aren’t just academic questions. Understanding how physics works in the most extreme environments could revolutionize our knowledge of space, time, and the universe itself.

Image of the black hole at the centre of the galaxy M87 (Credit : Event Horizon Telescope)

Sounds simple right but there are two major hurdles that stand in the way. First, scientists need to find a nearby black hole. Because black holes don’t emit or reflect light, they’re virtually invisible to telescopes. They can only detect by observing how they influence nearby stars or distort light. However, Bambi believes that new detection techniques could help locate a black hole within the next decade, possibly (and hopefully) just 20 to 25 light years from Earth.
The second challenge is building the technology. Traditional spacecraft are far too heavy and slow for this journey. The proposed nanocrafts would need to survive decades in space while maintaining their ability to collect and transmit data.

“We don’t have the technology now, but in 20 or 30 years, we might. The lasers alone would cost around one trillion euros today, and nanocraft technology doesn’t yet exist.” – Cosimo Bambi from Fudan University.

But he remains optimistic, pointing to past “impossible” achievements. People said we’d never detect gravitational waves because they’re too weak. We did 100 years later. People thought we’d never observe the shadows of black holes. Now, 50 years later, we have images of two.

While this mission may sound like the stuff of science fiction, it represents how scientific ambition pushes boundaries. Even if the full mission proves impossible, the technologies developed along the way could revolutionize space exploration and our understanding of the universe. The idea that we might one day touch the edge of a black hole, even if it is with a device smaller than a paperclip, captures the incredible potential of human curiosity and ingenuity reaching into the universe’s deepest mysteries.

Source : An interstellar mission to a black hole? Astrophysicist thinks it’s possible.

Now, a team led by Gao Caixia – a principal investigator at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing – has solved the riddle by making the decade-old gene editing tool much easier to use and more efficient. The study was published by the peer-reviewed journal Cell on Monday.

The new genome editing technologies, collectively known as programmable chromosome engineering (PCE) systems, can edit large DNA fragments with precision by “handling bases ranging from the thousands to the millions in higher organisms, especially plants”, according to the institute.

According to a CAS branch institute in Beijing, by manipulating genomic structural variation, the technology will “open up new avenues for crop trait improvement and genetic disease treatment”.

The advance could also accelerate the development of artificial chromosomes, which have promising applications in emerging fields such as synthetic biology.

In a new image sent from Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover has captured something that immediately caught scientists’ attention– a small, oddly shaped rock that closely resembles coral. According to a report by NASA, the image was taken on July 24, 2025, during the rover’s 4,609th day on the Martian surface.At first glance, it may seem like a curious shape. But behind this formation lies a much older and more detailed story– one that stretches back billions of years to a time when Mars was a very different place.Ancient water and wind: The forces that shaped itAccording to the NASA report, this type of structure is the result of a common geological process. In the distant past, when liquid water still existed on Mars, it seeped into cracks in rocks. That water carried dissolved minerals, which settled into the cracks and stayed behind once the water dried up.Over time, the surrounding rock, which was less resistant, was worn away by continuous wind erosion– leaving the mineral deposits exposed in unusual shapes. These formations, while shaped by natural forces, are often visually complex and have been compared to floral or marine structures found on Earth, as per the NASA report.Close-up Captured by ChemCamAccording to the report, the image of the coral-like rock was taken using the Remote Micro Imager (RMI), a component of the ChemCam instrument aboard Curiosity. ChemCam plays a key role in helping scientists study the composition and texture of rocks from a distance.Around the same period, another rock with a similar form was observed using Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager, adding more detail to this ongoing study of Martian geology.According to the NASA report, the ChemCam itself is the result of an international partnership– developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, in collaboration with the French space agency CNES, the University of Toulouse, and CNRS.A mission that keeps deliveringCuriosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, continues to operate from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The rover is part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory project and operates under the broader Mars Exploration Program, led by the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.Not just an odd shapeWhile the rock’s shape has drawn interest due to its resemblance to coral, the real significance lies in what it tells us about Mars. Formations like these offer evidence that water once played an active role in shaping the Martian surface.Wind, minerals, and erosion have combined over billions of years to create the landscapes that Curiosity continues to explore today. This latest find is another reminder of how much Mars has changed– and how much there is still to understand.Thumb image: X/@astrobiobuzz

For over two decades, scientists have been puzzled by this genetic anomaly. Three major populations of white sharks show striking variation in mitochondrial DNA, despite nearly identical nuclear DNA. Early on, migration patterns seemed to explain the mismatch. But new research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has upended that theory.

Origins After the Ice Age
The mystery traces back to the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. Back then, lower sea levels confined white sharks to a single Indo-Pacific population. As the climate warmed, sharks dispersed to new regions, and by roughly 7,000 years ago, they had split into three genetically distinct groups.

Today, those populations live in the southern hemisphere near Australia and South Africa, the northern Atlantic, and the northern Pacific. But their total global population is tiny—around 20,000 individuals, according to study co-author Gavin Naylor of the Florida Museum of Natural History. “There are more fruit flies in any given city than there are great white sharks in the entire world,” he noted.

An Unexpected Discovery
In 2001, researchers studying sharks from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa found something odd: nuclear DNA was almost identical across all samples, but mitochondrial DNA in South African sharks differed significantly from that in Australian and New Zealand sharks.

The prevailing explanation was female philopatry—the tendency of females to return to the same place to breed—paired with wide-ranging male migrations. This could keep nuclear DNA uniform (thanks to roaming males) while allowing mitochondrial DNA to diverge (since it’s passed down from females).

Theory Overturned
The new study revisited the question with updated DNA analyses, directly testing the philopatry theory. The results were clear: migration patterns could not account for the mitochondrial differences.

That leaves only one possible explanation—natural selection. But here’s the twist: for natural selection to be responsible, given the sharks’ small population sizes, it would need to be “brutally lethal,” Naylor said. In other words, any deviation from the dominant mitochondrial DNA sequence would have to be fatal, preventing it from being passed on.

Case Still Open
The researchers stress that natural selection is not yet a confirmed answer. Genetic drift is ruled out, migration is off the table, and the selection hypothesis still needs strong evidence. For now, the genetic divide in white sharks remains an open case—one of the ocean’s most enduring scientific mysteries.

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