Category: 7. Science

For astrobiologists, the search for life beyond our Solar System could be likened to where one would look in a vast desert where there’s water. The most intriguing targets are planets called sub-Neptunes, which get their name because they’re larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. What makes them fascinating is that their size and mass suggest they’re packed with water but not the kind of water we know.

These steam worlds orbit much closer to their host stars than Earth does to our Sun, making them far too hot for liquid oceans on their surfaces. Instead, they’re shrouded in thick steam atmospheres that hover over layers of water in an exotic “supercritical” state. This strange phase of water, which scientists have recreated in Earth laboratories, behaves in ways far more complex than simple liquid or ice.

Test unit of the sunshield stacked and expanded at the Northrop Grumman facility in California (Credit : Chris Gunn)

The James Webb Space Telescope has already detected steam on several sub-Neptunes, confirming what astronomers had theorised for decades. Now, with dozens more observations expected, researchers need better tools to interpret what they’re seeing.

The challenge lies in the extreme nature of these worlds. Previous models were designed for studying icy moons like Europa and Enceladus in our Solar System; small, cold bodies with icy crusts over liquid oceans. Sub-Neptunes are entirely different beasts, being 10 to 100 times more massive and subjected to crushing pressures and scorching temperatures that create water phases impossible to find on icy moons.

This is Europa in true colour, cropped from Juno’s flyby of Europa (Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill)

Under the most extreme conditions deep within these planets, water might even transform into “superionic ice,” a bizarre state where water molecules reorganise so that hydrogen ions move freely through an oxygen lattice. This phase has been produced in the lab and is thought to exist in the deep interiors of Uranus, Neptune, and potentially sub-Neptunes as well.

Led by postdoctoral researcher Artem Aguichine, the UC Santa Cruz team has created models that account for these exotic water phases and how they evolve over millions and billions of years.

“When we understand how the most commonly observed planets in the universe form, we can shift our focus to less common exoplanets that could actually be habitable,” – Artem Aguichine from UC Santa Cruz.

The research also serves as preparation for future missions. The European Space Agency’s upcoming PLATO telescope will search for Earth like planets in habitable zones, and these new models will help scientists interpret what they find. As Aguichine put it, the models are making predictions for telescopes while helping shape humanity’s next steps in searching for life beyond Earth.

Understanding these steam worlds matters because they’re everywhere, among the most common planets we’ve discovered. By deciphering how water behaves under such extreme conditions, we’re not just learning about distant worlds, but gaining insights into the fundamental processes that shape planetary systems throughout the universe.

Source : New model aims to demystify ‘steam worlds’ beyond our solar system

A breakthrough in stem cell biology has been 3D-printed in Minnesota—and the lab results show promise for spinal cord injury recovery, and even reversal.

A research team at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities demonstrated a groundbreaking process that combines 3D printing, stem cell biology, and lab-grown tissues to provide spinal cord injury recovery.

Currently there is no way to completely reverse the damage and paralysis. A major challenge is the death of nerve cells and the inability for nerve fibers to regrow across the injury site. This new research tackles this problem by building a bridge.

The team created a unique 3D-printed framework for lab-grown organs, called an organoid scaffold, with microscopic channels. These channels are then populated with ‘spinal neural progenitor cells’ derived from adult stem cells in humans, which have the capacity to divide and differentiate into specific types of mature cells.

“We use the 3D printed channels of the scaffold to direct the growth of the stem cells, which ensures the new nerve fibers grow in the desired way,” said Guebum Han PhD, a former University of Minnesota mechanical engineering researcher and first author of the paper published in Advanced Healthcare Materials, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

“This method creates a relay system that when placed in the spinal cord bypasses the damaged area.”

In the study—funded by the NIH, the State of Minnesota Spinal Cord Injury and Traumatic Brain Injury Research Grant Program, and the Spinal Cord Society—the researchers transplanted these scaffolds into rats with spinal cords that were completely severed.

The cells successfully differentiated into neurons and extended their nerve fibers in both directions—rostral (toward the head) and caudal (toward the tail)—to form new connections with the host’s existing nerve circuits.

The new nerve cells integrated seamlessly into the host spinal cord tissue over time, leading to significant functional recovery in the rats.

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“Regenerative medicine has brought about a new era in spinal cord injury research,” said Ann Parr, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota. “Our laboratory is excited to explore the future potential of our ‘mini spinal cords’ for clinical translation.”

While the research is in its beginning stages, it offers a new avenue of hope for those with spinal cord injuries—and the team hopes to scale up production and continue developing this combination of technologies.

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What processes are responsible for our Sun’s solar wind, heat, and energy? This is what a recent study published in Physical Review X hopes to address as a team of researchers presented evidence for a newly discovered type of barrier that the Sun exhibits that could help explain the transfer of energy to heat within the Sun’s outer atmosphere. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the underlying mechanisms for what drives our Sun and what this could mean for learning about other suns throughout the cosmos.

For the study, the researchers analyzed data obtained from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which has been studying the Sun for several years and is also the closest spacecraft to orbit the Sun in history. The goal of the study was to gain insight into how the Sun converts energy into heat, also called turbulent dissipation. The team conducted this by obtaining measurements and data about the Sun’s magnetic field, solar wind, plasma behavior, and the corona, the last of which exists in the Sun’s outer atmosphere.

In the end, the researchers presented evidence for the existence of what they refer to as the “helicity barrier”, which is a long-hypothesized boundary where small-scale energies influence the heating of plasma, which alters the solar wind.

“This paper is important as it provides clear evidence for the presence of the helicity barrier, which answers some long-standing questions about coronal heating and solar wind acceleration, such as the temperature signatures seen in the solar atmosphere, and the variability of different solar wind streams,” said Dr. Christopher Chen, who is a Reader in the Astronomy Unit of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London and a co-author on the study. “This allows us to better understand the fundamental physics of turbulent dissipation, the connection between small-scale physics and the global properties of the heliosphere and make better predictions for space weather.”

Going forward, these findings could help scientists better understand stars in other solar systems, specifically how they convert energy to heat and what this could mean for the formation and evolution of exoplanets, including whether they could host life as we know it. The solar wind influences the Earth’s magnetic field, resulting in the auroras at the north and south polar regions, but if the solar wind is strong enough it could damage satellites and ground stations, which occurred on September 1-2, 1859, in an incident known as the Carrington Event. While the Earth’s magnetic field shields use from the Sun’s harmful radiation and solar wind, exoplanets orbiting other stars with stronger helicity barriers might be influenced differently.

Launched in August 2018, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has been instrumental in teaching astronomers, specifically solar physics, more about our Sun than ever before. This has been accomplished due to Parker’s ability to travel dangerously close to the Sun using its white reflective shield to protect the scientific instruments designed to gather data about our Sun.

This incredible journey includes setting and breaking several of its records regarding its distance to Sun, with the closest being 6.1 million kilometers (3.8 million miles) from the Sun’s surface, which was accomplished on December 24, 2024. This passage marked the final gravity assist of the spacecraft with mission planners choosing to end the mission as the spacecraft will eventually burn all its fuel. Once this happens, it is slated to orbit the Sun for the next several million years.

What new discoveries about the Sun’s helicity barrier will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Scientists from the University of Minnesota have discovered something extraordinary in Jupiter’s polar regions that has never been seen before, a completely new type of plasma wave that creates aurora unlike anything we observe on Earth.

While Earth’s northern and southern lights (also known as the aurora borealis and aurora australis) create familiar green and blue curtains dancing across our sky, Jupiter’s aurora is an entirely different beast. In comparison, Jupiter is vastly more magnetic, due to its large size, fast rotation, and complex interactions with its moons, make it a natural laboratory for extreme physics.

The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, shines above Bear Lake (Credit : United States Air Force)

The discovery came from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which made history as the first probe to orbit Jovian poles. What the team found challenges everything we thought we knew about aurora, which have primarily been understood through Earth based observations.

The key to this breakthrough is the nature of plasma. Plasma is a state of gas where matter is so hot that atoms break apart into electrons and ions. This then flows like an invisible ocean around Jupiter. These particles are accelerated down toward the planet, where they ignite gases in the upper atmosphere, creating the aurora phenomenon.

An illustration shows NASA’s Juno spacecraft near Io with its parent planet Jupiter in the background (Credit : NASA)

Professor Robert Lysak, a world expert on plasma waves, worked with observational astronomers Ali Sulaiman and Sadie Elliott to decode what Juno was seeing. They discovered that Jupiter’s unique conditions, an incredibly strong magnetic field combined with extremely low plasma density in its polar regions, created the never seen before phenomenon.

Alfvén waves, named after physicist Hannes Alfvén who first theorised in 1942 that plasma could behave like both a fluid and respond to magnetic fields are central to the phenomenon. The data showed that, due to the extremely low density of the plasma in Jupiter’s polar region, the frequency of the plasma waves was very low especially compared to the frequency of similar waves on Earth.

The differences between Earth and Jupiter’s auroral systems are striking. On Earth, the aurora forms a typical donut pattern of auroral activity around the polar cap, while the polar cap itself remains dark. Jupiter operates differently, thanks to its complex magnetic field system which allows charged particles to flood directly into the polar cap regions, creating aurora where Earth would have darkness.

Auroras shine bright blue over Jupiter (Credit : NASA/ESA)

Unlike Earth’s visible green and blue auroras created by oxygen and nitrogen, Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is very different from Earth’s and its aurora tends to be invisible to the naked eye and can only be observed with UV and Infrared instruments.

This discovery reveals an entirely new regime of plasma physics that couldn’t be observed from Earth based studies alone. The research expands our understanding of how plasma behaves under extreme conditions, knowledge that could have applications in fusion energy research and space weather prediction.

While Juno continues to orbit Jupiter, the team hopes future missions like JUICE and Europa Clipper, arriving at Jupiter in the late 2020s, will provide additional opportunities to study this phenomenon. Each new observation helps scientists piece together the complex puzzle of planetary magnetospheres and their role in shaping the space environment around giant planets.

Source : Alien Aurora: Lysak, Sulaiman and Elliott find new plasma regime in Jupiter’s aurora

Ancient droplets found in meteorites reveal the history of planet formation.

About 4.5 billion years ago, Jupiter expanded quickly into the giant planet we see today. Its immense gravity disturbed the paths of countless rocky and icy objects, known as planetesimals, which resembled present-day asteroids and comets.

These disturbances led to violent collisions so energetic that the rock and dust inside the planetesimals melted, producing droplets of molten rock called chondrules. Many of these ancient droplets are still preserved within meteorites that fall to Earth.

In a new breakthrough, scientists from Nagoya University in Japan and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) have uncovered how these chondrules were created and used them to precisely date Jupiter’s formation.

Their research, published in Scientific Reports, reveals that the traits of chondrules, including their size and cooling rates in space, were shaped by the amount of water present in the colliding planetesimals. This discovery not only matches what scientists observe in meteorite samples but also confirms that the birth of planets directly drove the creation of chondrules.

Time capsules from 4.6 billion years ago

Chondrules, small spheres approximately 0.1-2 millimeters wide, were incorporated into asteroids as the solar system formed. Billions of years later, pieces of these asteroids would break off and fall to Earth as meteorites. How chondrules came to have their round shape has puzzled scientists for decades.

“When planetesimals collided with each other, water instantly vaporized into expanding steam. This acted like tiny explosions and broke apart the molten silicate rock into the tiny droplets we see in meteorites today,” co-lead author Professor Sin-iti Sirono from Nagoya University’s Graduate School of Earth and Environmental Sciences explained.

“Previous formation theories couldn’t explain chondrule characteristics without requiring very specific conditions, while this model requires conditions that naturally occurred in the early solar system when Jupiter was born.”

The researchers developed computer simulations of Jupiter’s growth and tracked how its gravity caused high-speed collisions between rocky and water-rich planetesimals in the early solar system.

“We compared the characteristics and abundance of simulated chondrules to meteorite data and found that the model spontaneously generated realistic chondrules. The model also shows that chondrule production coincides with Jupiter’s intense accumulation of nebular gas to reach its massive size. As meteorite data tell us that peak chondrule formation took place 1.8 million years after the solar system began, this is also the time at which Jupiter was born,” Dr. Diego Turrini, co-lead author and senior researcher at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), said.

A new way to date when planets form

This study provides a clearer picture of how our solar system formed. However, the production of chondrules started by Jupiter’s formation is too brief to explain why we find chondrules of many different ages in meteorites. The most likely explanation is that other giant planets like Saturn also triggered chondrule formation when they were born.

By studying chondrules of different ages, scientists can trace the birth order of the planets and understand how our solar system developed over time. The research also suggests that these violent planet formation processes may occur around other stars and offers insights into how other planetary systems developed.

Reference: “Chondrule formation by collisions of planetesimals containing volatiles triggered by Jupiter’s formation” by Sin-iti Sirono, and Diego Turrini, 25 August 2025, Scientific Reports.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-12643-x

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25K07383, by the Italian Space Agency through ASI-INAF contract 2016-23-H.0 and 2021-5-HH.0 and by the European Research Council via the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme ERC Synergy “ECOGAL” Project GA-855130.

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What can binary star systems teach astronomers about the formation and evolution of planets orbiting them? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated past studies that claimed a specific binary star system could host a planet demonstrating a retrograde orbit, meaning it orbits in the opposite direction of the star’s rotation. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand binary and multiple star systems, specifically the formation and evolution of their planets and what this could mean for finding life beyond Earth.

For the study, the researchers examined a planet in the binary star system, nu Octantis (nu Oct), which is located approximately 22.54 parsecs (73.5 light-years) from Earth, and is comprised of a K-type star (nu Oct A) that is approximately 1.5 times as massive as our Sun and a smaller star (nu Oct B) that is half as massive as our Sun. The planet—designated as nu Oct A b as it orbits nu Oct A—is estimated to be approximately 2.19 Jupiter masses while orbiting at approximately 1.24 astronomical units (AU) from its host star with an orbital period of approximately 402 days.

The researchers obtained radial velocity measurements from the European Southern Observatory (ESO)’s HARPS spectrograph to ascertain why nu Oct A b orbits at the distance it does, with past studies hypothesizing that it has a retrograde orbit due to its large orbital distance. In the end, not only did the researchers confirm that nu Oct A b has a retrograde orbit, but they also discovered that the smaller star in the system is a white dwarf, which are incredibly dense stars approximately the size of Earth that were once larger stars. For context, our Sun will eventually become a white dwarf star billions of years from now. Both the retrograde orbit of nu Oct A b and the white dwarf conformation of nu Oct B enabled the researchers to learn more about the system’s history.

“We found that the system is about 2.9 billion years old and that nu Oct B was initially about 2.4 times the mass of the Sun and evolved to a white dwarf about 2 billion years ago,” said Ho Wan Cheng, who is from The University of Hong Kong and lead author of the study. “Our analysis showed that the planet could not have formed around nu Oct A at the same time as the stars.”

In addition to the system’s age and stellar history, the researchers suggest two scenarios for the formation of nu Oct A b: a) It formed in a debris disk that was created from nu Oct B becoming a white dwarf, and b) It was initially in a normal orbit around the binary system (also called prograde) and was captured by nu Oct A’s gravity.

As noted, what makes this planet unique is its retrograde orbit. While Venus and Uranus in our solar system have retrograde rotations, they still exhibit prograde orbits. Therefore, the retrograde orbit of nu Oct A b could help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of exoplanets, and specifically within binary or multiple star systems. The closest multiple star system to Earth is the triple-star system, Alpha Centauri, which is located approximately 4.37 light-years from Earth and is also the closest star system, as well. While that system contains one (unconfirmed) rocky exoplanet, it exhibits a prograde orbit. There are currently only two other exoplanets that have retrograde orbits, HAT-P-7b and WASP-17b, which are part of a triple-star system and single star system, respectively.

What new discoveries about binary star systems and planetary formation and evolution will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

GW190814’s gravitational waves suggest a hidden supermassive black hole nearby. The finding reshapes how binary black holes may form.

Binary black holes are already among the universe’s most extraordinary phenomena, but scientists at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have uncovered evidence suggesting they might not exist in isolation. Instead, some of these systems could be influenced by an even more enigmatic presence—a massive companion hidden nearby.

A research group led by Dr. Wenbiao Han at SHAO recently reported strong indications that the binary black hole merger event GW190814 likely unfolded within the gravitational influence of a third compact object, which may have been a supermassive black hole.

This finding, recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, provides new clues to unraveling the mystery of binary black hole formation.

Gravitational wave events and open questions

Since gravitational waves were first detected in 2015, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration has recorded more than 100 such events, the majority arising from binary black hole mergers. These discoveries have greatly advanced knowledge of the physics governing black hole mergers, though the processes driving their origin and development are still not fully understood.

Dr. Han’s group had earlier introduced the “b-EMRI” model, which describes a scenario where a supermassive black hole captures a binary black hole, forming a hierarchical triple system. In this configuration, the binary pair orbits the supermassive black hole, producing gravitational waves across several frequency ranges. The model was later featured in LISA’s white paper and identified as a unique target for China’s upcoming space-based gravitational wave observatories. Since then, the researchers have been searching LIGO-Virgo data for signs of mergers taking place near supermassive black holes.

Investigating GW190814’s unusual pairing

When analyzing the event GW190814, the team noted that its two merging black holes had a strikingly uneven mass ratio, close to 10:1. According to co-author Dr. Shucheng Yang, such an imbalance points to the likelihood that the pair once belonged to a triple system with a supermassive black hole, which slowly drew them together through gravitational interactions. Another possibility is that they developed within the accretion disk of an active galactic nucleus, brought together by the gravitational pull of nearby compact objects until they eventually merged.

The researchers observed that if a binary black hole merges near a third compact object, the orbital motion around the third object would produce a line-of-sight acceleration—an acceleration along the observer’s line of sight. This acceleration would alter the gravitational wave frequency through the Doppler effect, leaving a distinct “fingerprint” in the signal.

Detecting line-of-sight acceleration

To detect this signature, they developed a gravitational waveform template incorporating line-of-sight acceleration and applied Bayesian inference to analyze several high signal-to-noise binary black hole events. The results showed that for GW190814, the model with line-of-sight acceleration significantly outperformed the traditional “isolated binary black hole” model. The line-of-sight acceleration was estimated at approximately 0.002 c s-1 (90% confidence level, where *c* is the speed of light), with a Bayesian factor (a measure of model credibility) of 58:1, strongly supporting the conclusion that line-of-sight acceleration was present.

“This is the first international discovery of clear evidence for a third compact object in a binary black hole merger event,” said Dr. HAN. “It reveals that the binary black holes in GW190814 may not have formed in isolation but were part of a more complex gravitational system, offering significant insights into the formation pathways of binary black holes.”

With the next generation of ground-based gravitational wave detectors (e.g., Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer) and space-based detectors (e.g., LISA, Taiji, TianQin) coming online, scientists will be able to capture subtle variations in gravitational wave signals with even greater precision. Future observations may reveal more events like GW190814, helping humanity better understand the formation and evolution of binary black holes.

Reference: “Indication for a Compact Object Next to a LIGO–Virgo Binary Black Hole Merger” by Shu-Cheng Yang, Wen-Biao Han, Hiromichi Tagawa, Song Li and Chen Zhang, 21 July 2025, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/adeaad

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In Cities of the Absurd: Strange Tales from the Dark Metropolis (En Route 2025), Ken Francis tries to capture the spirit of our age — one in which nearly half (49 percent) of generative AI users with self-reported mental health conditions were using AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Woebot, or Wysa for emotional support. In many cases, this was without any prompting from healthcare providers. In other words, they were seeking emotional support from a source that is actually just a computer program. No wonder a book that attempts to capture the culture is called Cities of the Absurd.

One story, “The Ghosts of Hologram House” addresses the problem in a surreal way: It offers a type of premise similar to that of the 1952 short story “A Sound of Thunder” and the resulting 2005 movie: For a wad of cash back then, the client could travel back in time and shoot a dinosaur.

In “Hologram House,” the reality-altering premise is updated to reflect our age of artificial intelligence. For a wad of cash, we can see our dearly departed again in this life via holograms and LLMs. Our lonely story character wants to see his dearly missed parents again…

The deal is straightforward: For $6,000, a person requests a meeting to interact with a dead person for a short period of time, in my case an afternoon, with such a deceased person(s) recreated into a hologram. I had to supply the company with old film footage, complete with sound, of my parents at family events. The company also required two written anecdotes at such family events, which they inputted into the narrative of the algorithms AI for my parents’ hologram to respond to. The script was recorded by a male and a female actor, then the voiceover was digitally converted to that of my mother and father’s voices.

Such stories are never meant to end well and this one is no exception. No spoilers here but if you have been following Gary Smith’s real-life reporting on AI hallucinations, you won’t be quite as surprised by the unsettling outcome.

And it’s not even science fiction

Perhaps we had better get used to the fallout. These “deadbots” are going live in our culture, as Chloe Veltman noted a few days ago at NPR, powred by dreams of immense profits:

The digital afterlife industry, which manages a person’s digital assets after their death, is expected to quadruple in size to nearly $80 billion over the next decade. That includes the creation of deadbots. The more immersive these bots become, the more technology companies are exploring their commercial potential, causing concern in the research community and elsewhere.

“There is powerful rhetoric with a deadbot because it is tapping into all of that emotional longing and vulnerability,” said New Yorker cartoonist Amy Kurzweil. Kurzweil’s work frequently explores technological topics, including her 2023 book Artificial: A Love Story. The graphic memoir recounts how she and her father, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, created a text-based chatbot of her dead grandfather in 2018 using written materials from his archives. “I could feel like I had some communion with his presence,” she said.

“AI ‘deadbots’ are persuasive — and researchers say they’re primed for monetization,” August 26, 2025

Not all of Francis’s stories end with disappointment (see “The Busybody” or “Kingdom of the Moon” for a pick-me-up). Just enough of them to make you wonder where all this modern urban life is heading.

Kenneth Francis is a freelance writer and part-time university professor of journalism. He also holds an MA in Theology. Over the past 20 years, he worked in editing roles in various publications and he is the author of The Little Book of God, Mind, Cosmos and Truth and co-author of The Terror of Existence with Theodore Dalrymple (2018) and Neither Trumpets nor Violins (with Theodorre Dalrymple and Samuel Hux (2022).. His New English Review articles are archived here.

In the heart of the Butterfly Nebula, the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed glittering crystals, fiery dust, and mysterious molecules that could explain how rocky planets like Earth first formed.

Scientists found both gemstone-like silicates and smoky grains, along with life-linked carbon structures appearing in unexpected places. These discoveries not only showcase the nebula’s dazzling beauty but also shed light on the hidden chemistry that seeds stars, planets, and possibly life itself.

Clues About How Worlds Form

Clues to how planets like Earth first emerged have been uncovered in the heart of a dazzling “cosmic butterfly.”

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists report a major step forward in understanding how the fundamental building blocks of rocky planets take shape.

At the center of the Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302), located around 3,400 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius, researchers studied cosmic dust, which consists of tiny mineral and organic particles that also contain elements tied to the origins of life.

From the thick ring of dust surrounding the nebula’s hidden star to the streams of material flowing outward, Webb’s observations revealed new details that provide the most detailed look yet at a highly structured and energetic planetary nebula.

The findings were published on August 27 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Gemstones vs. Grime: The Dual Nature of Dust

While most cosmic dust has an irregular, soot-like structure, some of it arranges into striking crystalline forms that resemble microscopic gemstones.

“For years, scientists have debated how cosmic dust forms in space. But now, with the help of the powerful James Webb Space Telescope, we may finally have a clearer picture,” said lead researcher Dr Mikako Matsuura, of Cardiff University.

“We were able to see both cool gemstones formed in calm, long-lasting zones and fiery grime created in violent, fast-moving parts of space, all within a single object.

“This discovery is a big step forward in understanding how the basic materials of planets, come together.”

One of the Hottest Stars in the Galaxy

The Butterfly Nebula’s central star is one of the hottest known central stars in a planetary nebula in our galaxy, with a temperature of 220,000 Kelvin.

This blazing stellar engine is responsible for the nebula’s gorgeous glow, but its full power may be channelled by the dense band of dusty gas that surrounds it: the torus.

The new Webb data show that the torus is composed of crystalline silicates like quartz as well as irregularly shaped dust grains. The dust grains have sizes on the order of a millionth of a metre — large, as far as cosmic dust is considered — indicating that they have been growing for a long time.

Jets of Iron and Nickel

Outside the torus, the emission from different atoms and molecules takes on a multilayered structure. The ions that require the largest amount of energy to form are concentrated close to the centre, while those that require less energy are found farther from the central star.

Iron and nickel are particularly interesting, tracing a pair of jets that blast outward from the star in opposite directions.

Intriguingly, the team also spotted light emitted by carbon-based molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. They form flat, ring-like structures, much like the honeycomb shapes found in beehives.

On Earth, we often find PAHs in smoke from campfires, car exhaust, or burnt toast.

First Evidence of PAHs in Oxygen-Rich Nebula

Given the location of the PAHs, the research team suspects that these molecules form when a ‘bubble’ of wind from the central star bursts into the gas that surrounds it.

This may be the first-ever evidence of PAHs forming in a oxygen-rich planetary nebula, providing an important glimpse into the details of how these molecules form.

NGC 6302 is one of the best-studied planetary nebulae in our galaxy and was previously imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Planetary nebulae are among the most beautiful and most elusive creatures in the cosmic zoo. These nebulae form when stars with masses between about 0.8 and 8 times the mass of the Sun shed most of their mass at the end of their lives. The planetary nebula phase is fleeting, lasting only about 20,000 years.

The Misnamed Planetary Nebulae

Contrary to the name, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets: the naming confusion began several hundred years ago, when astronomers reported that these nebulae appeared round, like planets.

The name stuck, even though many planetary nebulae aren’t round at all — and the Butterfly Nebula is a prime example of the fantastic shapes that these nebulae can take.

The Butterfly Nebula is a bipolar nebula, meaning that it has two lobes that spread in opposite directions, forming the ‘wings’ of the butterfly. A dark band of dusty gas poses as the butterfly’s ‘body’.

This band is actually a doughnut-shaped torus that’s being viewed from the side, hiding the nebula’s central star — the ancient core of a Sun-like star that energises the nebula and causes it to glow. The dusty doughnut may be responsible for the nebula’s insectoid shape by preventing gas from flowing outward from the star equally in all directions.

Webb Zooms In with Unprecedented Detail

The new Webb image zooms in on the centre of the Butterfly Nebula and its dusty torus, providing an unprecedented view of its complex structure. The image uses data from Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) working in integral field unit mode.

This mode combines a camera and a spectrograph to take images at many different wavelengths simultaneously, revealing how an object’s appearance changes with wavelength. The research team supplemented the Webb observations with data from the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array, a powerful network of radio dishes.

Researchers analysing these Webb data identified nearly 200 spectral lines, each of which holds information about the atoms and molecules in the nebula. These lines reveal nested and interconnected structures traced by different chemical species.

Finally Pinpointing the Hidden Star

The research team was able to pinpoint the location of the Butterfly Nebula’s central star, which heats a previously undetected dust cloud around it, making the latter shine brightly at the mid-infrared wavelengths that MIRI is sensitive to.

The location of the nebula’s central star has remained elusive until now, because this enshrouding dust renders it invisible at optical wavelengths. Previous searches for the star lacked the combination of infrared sensitivity and resolution necessary to spot its obscuring warm dust cloud.

Reference: “The JWST/MIRI view of the planetary nebula NGC 6302 – I. A UV-irradiated torus and a hot bubble triggering PAH formation” by Mikako Matsuura, Kevin Volk, Patrick Kavanagh, Bruce Balick, Roger Wesson, Albert A Zijlstra, Harriet L Dinerstein, Els Peeters, N C Sterling, Jan Cami, M J Barlow, Joel Kastner, Jeremy R Walsh, L B F M Waters, Naomi Hirano, Isabel Aleman, Jeronimo Bernard-Salas, Charmi Bhatt, Joris Blommaert, Nicholas Clark, Olivia Jones, Kay Justtanont, F Kemper, Kathleen E Kraemer, Eric Lagadec, J Martin Laming, F J Molster, Paula Moraga Baez, H Monteiro, Anita M S Richards, Raghvendra Sahai, G C Sloan, Maryam Torki, Peter A M van Hoof, Nicholas J Wright, Finnbar Wilson and Alexander Csukai, 27 August 2025, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf1194

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For years, one rule in chemistry class seemed simple: certain high-energy carbon species, like vitamin B1, fall apart in water. That’s why many reactions take place in specialized organic solvents instead of the most common solvent on Earth.

A new study puts a crack in that rule. It shows that a reactive carbon species can persist in water long enough to be directly observed and clearly described.

Water is common, safe, cheap, and central to life. If reactive carbon chemistry can run in water, we get a clearer picture of how some enzymes might work inside cells and a cleaner path for industry to make useful molecules.

Vitamin B1 debate began in 1958

Back in 1958, a bold idea suggested that vitamin B1 could form a short-lived, carbene-like species inside cells.

The concept clashed with the old view that water destroys carbenes almost instantly. The debate simmered for decades as tools improved and chemists searched for direct proof.

That proof has now arrived with a made-to-measure molecule that shields the reactive center well enough to persist in liquid water.

The team didn’t just propose it. They produced it and documented it with measurements that settle the case.

“This is the first time anyone has been able to observe a stable carbene in water,” said Vincent Lavallo, a professor of chemistry at UC Riverside and corresponding author of the paper.

“People thought this was a crazy idea. But it turns out, Breslow was right.”

Water, carbenes, and complications

A carbene is a carbon atom with two open spots for bonding. Carbon usually prefers a full set of electrons.

With fewer electrons than usual, it becomes reactive quickly. That reactivity is useful in many lab and industrial reactions because it can rearrange bonds efficiently.

Water molecules are quick to react with electron-hungry species. For most carbenes, that means a fast end to the reaction you wanted to study.

That’s the core reason many chemists long believed carbenes couldn’t play a role in watery environments like cells.

How they proved it

The researchers protected the carbene by surrounding it with bulky groups that hinder attack by water.

By crowding the space near the reactive carbon, they reduced unwanted side reactions while keeping the carbon center active.

They generated the carbene in water and captured its signature using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. That experiment gave a clear, solution-phase fingerprint.

They then obtained a single-crystal X-ray structure that fixed the positions of the atoms in space. Together, those tools moved the result from “likely” to “certain.”

Vitamin B1 connection

Vitamin B1, also known as thiamine, becomes an active cofactor in the body. In that form, it helps enzymes break and form carbon-carbon bonds during metabolism.

The 1958 proposal suggested that, under the right conditions, a carbene-like state forms long enough to assist those bond changes.

Over the years, chemists gathered indirect support, such as the “Breslow intermediate,” but critics could still argue that real carbenes can’t exist in water.

This work removes that roadblock by showing that a true carbene can persist in water when designed correctly.

Cleaner chemistry impact

“Water is the ideal solvent – it’s abundant, non-toxic, and environmentally friendly,” said first author Varun Raviprolu, who completed the research as a graduate student at UCR and is now a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA.

“If we can get these powerful catalysts to work in water, that’s a big step toward greener chemistry.”

A large share of chemical manufacturing still depends on organic solvents that pose fire and health hazards.

If more carbene chemistry can run in water, production lines for some medicines and materials could become safer and easier to manage. Water won’t replace every solvent, but even a partial shift would help.

Vitamin B1 is just the first step

“There are other reactive intermediates we’ve never been able to isolate, just like this one,” Lavallo said. “Using protective strategies like ours, we may finally be able to see them, and learn from them.”

That outlook matters. Many useful reactions rely on short-lived species we seldom catch in the act. With smarter protection and sharper tools, more of those species can move from theory to clear evidence.

Vincent Lavallo put it this way: “Just 30 years ago, people thought these molecules couldn’t even be made,” he said. “Now we can bottle them in water. What Breslow said all those years ago – he was right.”

Science often works like this. An idea arrives before the tools exist to test it. Over time, methods improve, and designs get better. When the right experiment finally lands, the field shifts from debate to result.

Why does any of this matter?

This finding does not claim to show vitamin B1 forming a carbene inside a living cell directly on camera. It shows that water doesn’t automatically rule out carbene chemistry.

The result aligns with a classic proposal about vitamin B1, clears away a key objection, and points to cleaner ways to run powerful reactions in the safest solvent we have.

With good molecular design, a carbene can endure in water and still do its job. That makes the original idea from 1958 chemically realistic and strengthens modern views of how thiamine-dependent enzymes might carry out their work.

“We were making these reactive molecules to explore their chemistry, not chasing a historical theory. But it turns out our work ended up confirming exactly what Breslow proposed all those years ago,” Raviprolu concluded.

It’s a careful piece of chemistry with practical upside – and a reminder that good ideas can wait a long time before the right evidence arrives.

The full study was published in the journal Science Advances.

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