Category: 7. Science

by Prof Heidi Newberg

The Earth supports the only known life in the universe, all of it depending heavily on the presence of liquid water to facilitate chemical reactions. While single-celled life has existed almost as long as the Earth itself, it took roughly three billion years for multicellular life to form. Human life has existed for less than one 10 thousandth of the age of the Earth.

All of this suggests that life might be common on planets that support liquid water, but it might be uncommon to find life that studies the universe and seeks to travel through space, like we do. To find extraterrestrial life, it might be necessary for us to travel to it.

However, the vastness of space, coupled with the impossibility of traveling or communicating faster than the speed of light, places practical limits on how far we can roam. Only the closest stars to the sun could possibly be visited in a human lifetime, even by a space probe. In addition, only stars similar in size and temperature to the sun are long-lived enough, and have stable enough atmospheres, for multicellular life to have time to form. For this reason, the most valuable stars to study are the 60 or so sun-like stars that are closer to us than approximately 30 light-years. The most promising planets orbiting these stars would have sizes and temperatures similar to the Earth, so solid ground and liquid water can exist.

A needle in the haystack

Observing an Earth-like exoplanet separately from the star it is orbiting around is a major challenge. Even in the best possible scenario, the star is a million times brighter than the planet; if the two objects are blurred together, there is no hope of detecting the planet. Optics theory says that the best resolution one can get in telescope images depends on the size of the telescope and the wavelength of the observed light. Planets with liquid water give off the most light at wavelengths around 10 microns (the width of a thin human hair and 20 times the typical wavelength of visible light). At this wavelength, a telescope needs to collect light over a distance of at least 20 meters to have enough resolution to separate the Earth from the sun at a distance of 30 light-years. Additionally, the telescope must be in space, because looking through the Earth’s atmosphere would blur the image too much. However, our largest space telescope – the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) – is only 6.5 meters in diameter, and that telescope was extremely difficult to launch.

Because deploying a 20-meter space telescope seems out-of-reach with current technology, scientists have explored several alternative approaches. One involves launching multiple, smaller telescopes that maintain extremely accurate distances between them, so that the whole set acts as one telescope with a large diameter. But, maintaining the required spacecraft position accuracy (which must be precisely calibrated to the size of a typical molecule) is also currently infeasible.

Other proposals use shorter wavelength light, so that a smaller telescope can be used. However, in visible light a sun-like star is more than 10 billion times brighter than the Earth. It is beyond our current capability to block out enough starlight to be able to see the planet in this case, even if in principle the image has high enough resolution.

One idea for blocking the starlight involves flying a spacecraft called a ‘starshade’ that is tens of meters across, at a distance of tens of thousands of miles in front of the space telescope, so that it exactly blocks the light from the star while the light from a companion planet is not blocked. However, this plan requires that two spacecraft be launched (a telescope and a starshade). Furthermore, pointing the telescope at different stars would entail moving the starshade thousands of miles, using up prohibitively large quantities of fuel.

A rectangular perspective

In our paper , we propose a more feasible alternative. We show that it is possible to find nearby, Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars with a telescope that is about the same size as JWST, operating at roughly the same infrared (10 micron) wavelength as JWST, with a mirror that is a one by 20 meter rectangle instead of a circle 6.5 meters in diameter.

With a mirror of this shape and size, we can separate a star from an exoplanet in the direction that the telescope mirror is 20 meters long. To find exoplanets at any position around a star, the mirror can be rotated so its long axis will sometimes align with the star and planet. We show that this design can in principle find half of all existing Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars within 30 light-years in less than three years. While our design will need further engineering and optimization before its capabilities are assured, there are no obvious requirements that need intense technological development, as is the case for other leading ideas.

If there is about one Earth-like planet orbiting the average sun-like star, then we would find around 30 promising planets. Follow-up study of these planets could identify those with atmospheres that suggest the presence of life, for example oxygen that was formed through photosynthesis. For the most promising candidate, we could dispatch a probe that would eventually beam back images of the planet’s surface. The rectangular telescope could provide a straightforward path towards identifying our sister planet: Earth 2.0.

Scientists identified a new plant genus, Franscinella, from a 296-million-year-old fossil in Brazil. The find sheds light on ancient plant evolution.

Brazilian paleobotanists have resolved a long-standing mystery through the redefinition of a fossil plant first described decades ago in southern Brazil. Their work has led to the establishment of a new genus, Franscinella, to classify the species now named Franscinella riograndensis (Salvi et al.) Carniere, Pozzebon-Silva, Guerra-Sommer, Uhl, Jasper et Spiekermann comb. nov.

This research forms part of the master’s thesis of Júlia Siqueira Carniere, now a doctoral student in the Graduate Program in Environment and Development at Univates (PPGAD). The study, published in the Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, reexamines material once identified as Lycopodites riograndensis and provides the first confirmed record of lycopodites with in situ spores from the Permian strata of the Paraná Basin.

The finding not only updates the plant’s taxonomy but also addresses a scientific challenge that had remained unsolved for over 50 years: the documentation of in situ plant spores preserved in Upper Paleozoic clastic rocks (dating from 298.9 million to 252.17 million years ago) in Brazil. This breakthrough was made possible by the fossil’s exceptional preservation and the use of advanced microscopic techniques, combined with interdisciplinary collaboration across leading Brazilian research institutions.

A new look at a classic fossil

The species Lycopodites riograndensis was originally identified based only on broad external features seen in the fossil, such as the overall shape and arrangement of its stems. These early descriptions, made decades ago, lacked more detailed anatomical and spore-level information, which limited the accuracy of its classification.

With modern advances in microscopic sample preparation and imaging, a team from the University of Vale do Taquari – Univates, working within the Graduate Program in Environment and Development (PPGAD), revisited the original fossil material preserved in the Univates Paleontological Collection. Their goal was to determine whether newer, more refined techniques could reveal anatomical and palynological details that had not been previously observed.

The researchers applied a combination of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), vinyl polysiloxane silicone molding (VPS), and transmitted light microscopy. These tools made it possible to view both surface features and internal structures at high magnification and resolution. This analysis uncovered several characteristics that supported a taxonomic reclassification: isotomic branching of stems, a hallmark of certain fossil lycopsids; preserved tracheids in the vascular cylinder, crucial for identifying extinct plant groups; and trilete spores with verrucate ornamentation, found preserved in situ within the reproductive organs of the plant.

Securing spores in their original position (in situ) proved to be one of the most challenging yet decisive aspects of the study. Success came through the facilities of the itt Oceaneon Technological Institute at the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), which specializes in recovering microfossils such as spores, pollen, and marine microorganisms like ostracodes and radiolarians. The itt Oceaneon team applied a specialized recovery protocol, which turned out to be highly effective for this type of fossil material.

From micro to macro: connecting fossil records

The spores found in Franscinella riograndensis show morphology compatible with the palynological genus Converrucosisporites, common in Permian deposits in the Paraná Basin. This correspondence is relevant because it directly links the macrofossil record (visible parts of the plant) to the microfossil record (spores and pollen grains), broadening our understanding of past vegetation and ecosystems.

In practice, this means that researchers can now make more complete interpretations of Permian plant communities, integrating information from different lines of evidence. In addition, this correlation contributes to biostratigraphy studies, which use fossils to date and correlate rock layers.

Why is this discovery important?

The redefinition of Franscinella riograndensis shows how revisiting known fossils with new tools can generate groundbreaking discoveries. Many fossil groups, such as lycopodids, have historically been classified under broad, generic genera, in this case Lycopodites. This type of umbrella classification was a practical solution in the absence of more detailed information, but tends to be revised when new data becomes available.

From a paleobotanical point of view, the recording of lycopsids with spores in situ in the Paraná Basin opens up new perspectives for reconstructing the flora of the Permian and for understanding the evolution of vascular plants. From a global scientific perspective, this study contributes to the understanding of the diversity and distribution of herbaceous lycopsids during the Permian in Gondwana, being only the fifth known record, which makes this type of occurrence rare. In addition, it allows comparisons with similar records in other regions of the world, offering new data on the evolution and ecology of these plant groups in the Paleozoic.

Reference: “Franscinella riograndensis (Salvi et al.) gen. nov. et comb. nov.: The first record of a lycopsid with in situ spores for the Permian strata of the Paraná Basin, Brazil” by Júlia Siqueira Carniere, Ândrea Pozzebon-Silva, Rafael Spiekermann, Lilian Maia Leandro, Margot Guerra-Sommer, Dieter Uhl and André Jasper, 27 June 2025, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology.
DOI: 10.1016/j.revpalbo.2025.105401

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“When looking for black holes, this is about as far back as you can practically go. We’re really pushing the boundaries of what current technology can detect,” said Anthony Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cosmic Frontier Center and lead on the team that made the discovery. Their research was published Aug. 6 in the Astrophysical Journal.

“While astronomers have found a few, more distant candidates,” added Steven Finkelstein, a co-author on the paper and director of the Cosmic Frontier Center, “they have yet to find the distinct spectroscopic signature associated with a black hole.”

With spectroscopy, astronomers split light into its many wavelengths to study an object’s characteristics. To identify black holes, they search for evidence of fast-moving gas. As it circles and falls into a black hole, the light from gas moving away from us is stretched into much redder wavelengths, and light from gas moving toward us is compressed into much bluer wavelengths. “There aren’t many other things that create this signature,” explained Taylor. “And this galaxy has it!”

The team used data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s CAPERS (CANDELS-Area Prism Epoch of Reionization Survey) program for its search. Launched in 2021, JWST provides the most far-reaching views into space available, and CAPERS provides observations of the outermost edge.

“The first goal of CAPERS is to confirm and study the most distant galaxies,” said Mark Dickinson, a co-author on the paper and the CAPERS team lead. “JWST spectroscopy is the key to confirming their distances and understanding their physical properties.”

Initially seen as an interesting speck in the program’s imagery, CAPERS-LRD-z9 turned out to be part of a new class of galaxies known as “Little Red Dots.” Present only in the first 1.5 billion years of the universe, these galaxies are very compact, red, and unexpectedly bright.

“The discovery of Little Red Dots was a major surprise from early JWST data, as they looked nothing like galaxies seen with the Hubble Space Telescope,” explained Finkelstein. “Now, we’re in the process of figuring out what they’re like and how they came to be.”

CAPERS-LRD-z9 may help astronomers do just that.

For one, this galaxy adds to mounting evidence that supermassive black holes are the source of the unexpected brightness in Little Red Dots. Usually, that brightness would indicate an abundance of stars in a galaxy. However, Little Red Dots exist at a time when such a large mass of stars is unlikely.

On the other hand, black holes also shine brightly. That’s because they compress and heat the materials they’re consuming, creating tremendous light and energy. By confirming the existence of one in CAPERS-LRD-z9, astronomers have found a striking example of this connection in Little Red Dots.

The newfound galaxy may also help answer what causes the distinct red color in Little Red Dots. That may be thanks to a thick cloud of gas surrounding the black hole, skewing its light into redder wavelengths as it passes through. “We’ve seen these clouds in other galaxies,” explained Taylor. “When we compared this object to those other sources, it was a dead ringer.”

This galaxy is also notable for how colossal its black hole is. Estimated as up to 300 million times that of our sun, its mass measures up to half that of all the stars in its galaxy. Even among supermassive black holes, this is particularly big.

Finding such a massive black hole so early on provides astronomers a valuable opportunity to study how these objects developed. A black hole present in the later universe will have had diverse opportunities to bulk up during its lifetime. But one present in the first few hundred million years wouldn’t. “This adds to growing evidence that early black holes grew much faster than we thought possible,” said Finkelstein. “Or they started out far more massive than our models predict.”

To continue their research on CAPERS-LRD-z9, the team hopes to gather more, higher-resolution observations using JWST. This could provide greater insight into it and the role black holes played in the development of Little Red Dots. “This is a good test object for us,” said Taylor. “We haven’t been able to study early black hole evolution until recently, and we are excited to see what we can learn from this unique object.”

Additional data for research came from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a program of NSF NOIRLab.

Rockefeller researchers have discovered that the antioxidant glutathione, acting within mitochondria, plays a crucial role in allowing breast tumors to spread to the lung.

Mitochondria are best known as the cell’s powerhouse, but growing evidence indicates they also play a central role in driving cancer. New research has identified the mitochondrial metabolite glutathione as a key factor that enables breast cancer cells to detach from the primary tumor, spread through the body, and establish themselves in new tissues.

The findings are among the first to link a specific mitochondrial metabolite to metastasis, with strong implications for the study of cancer at the cellular level. “We hope that our work will bring more attention to how organelles and their metabolites are relevant to cancer biology,” says Kivanç Birsoy, head of the Laboratory of Metabolic Regulation and Genetics at Rockefeller.

A mysterious connection with metastasis

Most cancer deaths occur not because of the original tumor, but due to the disease’s spread. Because metastasis is the leading cause of cancer mortality, researchers have long sought to uncover the mechanisms that allow cancer cells to break free from their primary site and colonize distant organs.

Previous studies have shown that metabolites such as lactate, pyruvate, glutamine, and serine each contribute to different stages of metastasis. Since mitochondria not only produce cellular energy but also generate metabolites, it is not surprising that recent work has tied mitochondrial activity to the spread of breast, renal, and pancreatic cancers.

Yet the exact molecular players remained unclear. “Mitochondria have thousands of metabolites, and it’s been difficult to determine which are important to tumor formation and growth, and which initiate metastasis,” Birsoy explains.

Cells under stress

To address this question, Birsoy and his colleagues used a protein-tagging approach that allowed them to distinguish between cells that remained in the breast tumor and those that had spread to the lung. Led by graduate fellow Nicole DelGaudio and postdoctoral fellow Hsi-wen Yeh, the team then examined how the metabolite composition of mitochondria changed when cancer cells established themselves in new tissues.

“These techniques allowed us to, in an unbiased manner, see the difference between what’s essential in metastasis and what’s essential in the primary tumor,” DelGaudio says.

Out of thousands of mitochondrial metabolites, glutathione emerged as a striking candidate. This antioxidant, known for reducing oxidative stress, aiding detoxification, and supporting immune function, was found in sharply elevated levels within metastatic cancer cells that had reached the lung. To validate the observation, the researchers employed spatial metabolomics to directly visualize glutathione distribution in lung tissues.

The investigation then shifted toward mitochondrial membrane proteins. Screening revealed that one stood out as indispensable for metastatic cancer cells: SLC25A39, the transporter that imports glutathione into mitochondria. Together, the findings established a direct connection between glutathione and its transporter, showing that mitochondrial glutathione import through SLC25A39 is a critical driver of cancer metastasis.

Birsoy and colleagues also found how mitochondrial glutathione drives cancer spread: not by acting as an antioxidant—an effect ruled out through multiple experiments—but by signaling to activate ATF4, a transcription factor that helps cancer cells survive in low-oxygen conditions. This also pinpointed when glutathione is specifically required: during the early steps of metastatic colonization, when cancer cells adapt rapidly to the stressful environment of a new tissue.

A familiar culprit

This work builds on recent significant work from the Birsoy lab. In 2021, his team was the first to demonstrate that SLC25A39 is the transporter that brings glutathione into the mitochondria; in 2023, they showed that SLC25A39 is not only a transporter but a dynamic sensor that regulates the amount of glutathione in the mitochondria and adjusts those levels accordingly. So when this metabolite and its mitochondrial transporter showed up in cancer screenings, Birsoy knew where to take his experiments next.

“Because we found this transporter earlier and knew how to block the entry of glutathione, we already had the tools necessary to investigate its role in cancer metastasis,” he says.

The findings may have clinical implications—especially since the team also found that breast cancer samples from patients whose disease had spread to the lung showed elevated SLC25A39, and that higher SLC25A39 expression was strongly correlated with poorer overall survival in breast cancer patients. One day, a small molecule that targets this metabolite by blocking its transporter could potentially forestall breast cancer metastasis, with fewer side effects than sweeping therapies that target more general cellular processes.

In the short term, however, the paper emphasizes the importance of nailing down just how metabolites within different compartments operate within our cells.

“We’re trying to make our knowledge of metabolism more precise,” Birsoy says. “It’s not just about some metabolite levels going up and others going down. We need to look at the organelles, the precise compartments, to understand how metabolites influence human health.”

Reference: “Mitochondrial glutathione import enables breast cancer metastasis via integrated stress response signaling” by Hsi-wen Yeh, Nicole Lauren. DelGaudio, Beste Uygur, Alon Millet, Artem Khan, Gokhan Unlu, Michael Xiao, Rebecca C. Timson, Caifan Li, Kerem Ozcan, Karl W. Smith, Luiza Martins. Nascentes Melo, Gabriele Allies, Olca Basturk, Albert Sickmann, Erol C. Bayraktar, Richard Possemato, Alpaslan Tasdogan and Kivanc Birsoy, 31 July 2025, Cancer Discovery.
DOI: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-24-1556

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No one knows what happened to the MS München. Yet clues suggest the 850-foot vessel was struck by a titanic force that left it without power or propulsion in the North Atlantic. A faint distress call was received by on-shore radio stations, but that was it. The widely held theory is the München likely sank on or around Dec 12, 1978, after a 30-hour struggle to recover from a list, taking with it its entire crew of 28 sailors. She was never found.Two years later, the MV Derbyshire, a 964-foot cargo carrier with 44 crew, was ploughing through a storm in the South China Sea when it sank in less than two minutes, becoming the largest Britishflagged ship to be lost at sea during peacetime, and joining a list of tragic vessels that sank without a distress call. Her wreck was found 14 years later, four kilometres below off Okinawa, Japan.It’s long suspected both vessels were hit by rogue waves, which by definition are at least two times bigger than neighbouring waves. They emerge spontaneously, with a tall crest and a deep trough, and vanish in minutes. It’s still unclear when they form, but there are two theories: one says waves of different speeds, from different directions, pile up to form a wall of water; the second postulates smaller waves may transfer all their energy into a single, big one.These waves continue to be major threats. Ship design has improved vastly since the ’80s and ’90s, but modern-day tolerances can still be tested. In 2022, shards from a shattered window killed a passenger on a cruise ship bound for Antarctica after the liner was stuck by a 50-foot wave.

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A key trigger seems to be wind. Waves form when atmospheric energy is transferred to the surface as wind. So, stronger the wind, choppier the sea; choppier the sea, higher are the chances of extreme waves. Studies are still on to determine if a changing climate will trigger more rogue waves, but experts said a link is possible.“What we know for sure is global warming will boost wind speeds,” said Amin Chabchoub, head of the Marine Physics and Engineering Unit of Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, and visiting professor at University of Tokyo and The University of Melbourne.“Winds are wave generators, so there may be a natural link between climate change and rogue waves. We need more proof to be fully sure,” Chabchoub said. In 2019, a British study found heights of rogue waves, off US, increasing by 1% year on year.“Stronger winds will generate bigger waves. But it’s complicated because waves interact with currents, which are changing too with global warming. There’s no single factor,” the researchers said.Scientists also found rogue waves were more common than previously thought. Alessandro Toffoli, an ocean engineering professor with the University of Melbourne, found waves two times taller than their neighbours occurring every six hours during a 2017 expedition to the southern ocean, where powerful winds blast the sea surface.“It’s an undisturbed body of water with no continents nearby to block waves. There, waves grow till they’re fully developed,” he said.Toffoli too said wind likely has a key role in rogue wave formation. “We found ‘young waves’ (those beginning to crest) were most responsive to wind. It’s wind that causes ‘young waves’ to grow higher. At one point, they become strong enough to steal energy from other waves,” he said.In the Indian Ocean, Swarnali Majumder, formerly with Indian National Centre of Ocean Information Services, along with the institute’s director Balakrishnan Nair, logged 55 “freak wave events” between 2009 and 2017, all detected by buoys.“This was comprehensive proof that such waves happen in the Indian Ocean too,” Majumder said. Nair said a better understanding of rogue wave physics could lead to enhanced warning systems.“There have been accidents, because these waves appear suddenly,” he said.In Jan 2010, the 100-foot ship, Early Dawn, was hit off Alaska by a wave its captain said was at least 35 feet tall, first seen 100 metres from his vessel. A probe later showed the wave had likely moved towards the boat at 12 metres per second, giving crew just about 10 seconds to react.But that was in 2010. Scientists said advancements such as AI could make rogue waves predictable.At the University of Maryland, researchers Thomas Breunung and Balakumar Balachandran published a paper last year about an AI tool that could provide up to 5 minutes of advance warning time for a rogue wave, developed using billions of 30-minute-long recordings of sea surface elevations, collected from more than 170 buoys off the US coastline.“We used machine learning to develop a rogue waveclassification tool and trained a neural network to pick out waves that would be followed by a rogue wave,” Balachandran said.The tool was able to predict 70% of rogue waves five minutes before they occurred.“It could give ships and offshore rigs time to prepare for impact,” Balachandran said. “Rogue waves are extreme events. A warning would be invaluable,” he added.Francesco Fedele, professor of environmental engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, said AI can transform rogue wave forecasting.“Especially if we combine advanced models with realtime buoy or satellite data,” he said.“Predictability requires that AI learns how to quantify probability of rogue waves. Deep-learning models can capture hidden probability laws governing rogue waves and generate near-real examples of such waves. Large data from satellites and buoys highlight challenges as well: as with other AI systems, forecasts will only be as good as the data used to train them. So the data must be cleaned up to prevent AI from ‘hallucinating’ and producing misleading predictions,” Fedele said.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit has shared a striking video of an aurora that he captured from the International Space Station (ISS) during his most recent mission.

Auroras are natural light displays in Earth’s sky, caused by charged particles from the solar wind colliding with atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere. While astronauts on the orbital facility are frequently treated to these amazing displays, most of them are green in color. But this one features a strong red element, too:

An international team of researchers has discovered a new configuration of nuclear particles that decays by kicking out individual protons.

With 85 protons and just 103 neutrons, the atomic nucleus is both the heaviest known to break down this way and the lightest known isotope of the element astatine (At).

Astatine itself only occurs on Earth as a decay product of heavier elements, and never for very long. All of its isotopes are radioactive and ephemeral, with half-lives ranging from hours to nanoseconds. That helps make astatine the rarest naturally occurring element in Earth’s crust. Less than 1 gram is believed to exist globally at any given time, and only in fleeting traces.

Related: Scientists Just Revealed Exactly What Happens When an Atom Splits in Two

In the new study, researchers unveil a novel astatine isotope that decays via proton emission, a route that isn’t typical. Nuclei typically decay by emitting neutrons and protons together as alpha particles or through the emission of electrons or positrons as beta decay.

“Proton emission is a rare form of radioactive decay, in which the nucleus emits a proton to take a step toward stability,” says first author Henna Kokkonen, a nuclear physicist from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.

It’s not easy to study this type of exotic nucleus – a term for atomic nuclei with unusual numbers of protons and neutrons that render them highly unstable and prone to speedy decay. That brief existence, among other factors, requires sophisticated methods to summon and examine them.

Kokkonen and her colleagues generated this novel nucleus in the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Jyväskylä, using a fusion-evaporation reaction in which two nuclei collide and fuse, forming an unstable compound nucleus that then sheds particles in pursuit of stability.

“The nucleus was produced in a fusion-evaporation reaction by irradiating a natural silver target with ⁸⁴Sr ion beam,” University of Jyväskylä nuclear physicist Kalle Auranen says in reference to a strontium beam emitted from the lab’s cyclotron particle accelerator.

Residues from this reaction were isolated using the lab’s gas-filled recoil separator unit and then analyzed via a spectrometer and a pair of detectors.

To help interpret this experimental data, the researchers also expanded upon a theoretical framework in nuclear physics known as the non-adiabatic quasiparticle model, which illuminates the structure and mechanics of deformed nuclei.

The model accurately reproduced the measured decay rate, suggesting the nucleus is probably a prolate spheroid – a rounded object with a distance between two of its poles exceeding its equatorial diameter.

In other words, the nucleus is watermelon-shaped.

The precise reasons for this shape remain unclear, but it hints at deeper mysteries that warrant further investigation, the researchers say.

“The properties of the nucleus suggest a trend change in the binding energy of the valence proton,” Kokkonen says. “This is possibly explained by an interaction unprecedented in heavy nuclei.”

Research like this can help shed new light on the building blocks of matter, yielding fundamental knowledge about the Universe that could prove useful in many different ways.

More observations of ¹⁸⁸At are needed, the researchers write, to clear up lingering uncertainties about how exotic nuclei like this develop and decay.

“Equally interesting would be to study the decay of presently unknown nucleus ¹⁸⁹At,” they write, another astatine isotope that might decay by proton emission.

The study was published in Nature Communications.