Tech News
Starting July 1, Academic Publishers Can't Paywall NIH-Funded Research
science - Posted On:2025-05-01 08:15:01 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader writes: NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has announced that the NIH Public Access Policy, originally slated to go into effect on December 31, 2025, will now be effective as of July 1. From Bhattacharya's announcement: NIH is the crown jewel of the American biomedical research system. However, a recent Pew Research Center study shows that only about 25% of Americans have a "great deal of confidence" that scientists are working for the public good. Earlier implementation of the Public Access Policy will help increase public confidence in the research we fund while also ensuring that the investments made by taxpayers produce replicable, reproducible, and generalizable results that benefit all Americans. Providing speedy public access to NIH-funded results is just one of the ways we are working to earn back the trust of the American people. Trust in science is an essential element in Making America Healthy Again. As such, NIH and its research partners will continue to promote maximum transparency in all that we do. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft hits a speed bump on the way to a metal asteroid
Science - Posted On:2025-05-01 00:00:01 Source: arstechnica
NASA's Psyche spacecraft, located nearly 150 million miles from Earth on the way to an unexplored metal asteroid, has stopped firing its engines after detecting a problem in its propulsion system.
NASA published an update Tuesday revealing that the robotic spacecraft shut off its plasma thrusters earlier this month. The news wasn't widely shared until Wednesday, when NASA science chief Nicky Fox posted it on X.
"Engineers with NASA’s Psyche mission are working to determine what caused a recent decrease in fuel pressure in the spacecraft’s propulsion system," the agency said. The spacecraft detected the drop in pressure April 1 inside the line that feeds xenon fuel to the spacecraft's four plasma thrusters.
DNA links modern pueblo dwellers to Chaco Canyon people
Science - Posted On:2025-04-30 19:00:01 Source: arstechnica
A thousand years ago, the people living in Chaco Canyon were building massive structures of intricate masonry and locations as far away as Mexico. Within a century, however, the area would be largely abandoned, with little indication that the same culture was re-established elsewhere. If the people of Chaco Canyon migrated elsewhere, it's unclear where they ended up.
Around the same time that construction expanded in Chaco Canyon, far smaller pueblos began appearing in the northern Rio Grande Valley hundreds of kilometers away. These have remained occupied to the present day in New Mexico; although their populations shrank dramatically after European contact, their relationship to the Chaco culture has remained ambiguous. Until now, that is. People from one of these communities, Picuris Pueblo, worked with ancient DNA specialists to show that they are the closest relatives of the Chaco people yet discovered, confirming aspects of the pueblo's oral traditions.
The list of authors of the new paper describing this genetic connection includes members of the Pueblo government, including its present governor. That's because the study was initiated by the members of the Pueblo, who worked with archeologists to get in contact with DNA specialists at the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen. In a press conference, members of the Pueblo said they'd been aware of the power of DNA studies via their use in criminal cases and ancestry services. The leaders of Picuris Pueblo felt that it could help them understand their origin and the nature of some of their oral history, which linked them to the wider Pueblo-building peoples.
New Atomic Fountain Clock Joins Elite Group That Keeps the World on Time
science - Posted On:2025-04-30 16:15:00 Source: slashdot
NIST: Clocks on Earth are ticking a bit more regularly thanks to NIST-F4, a new atomic clock at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) campus in Boulder, Colorado. This month, NIST researchers published a journal article establishing NIST-F4 as one of the world's most accurate timekeepers. NIST has also submitted the clock for acceptance as a primary frequency standard by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), the body that oversees the world's time. NIST-F4 measures an unchanging frequency in the heart of cesium atoms, the internationally agreed-upon basis for defining the second since 1967. The clock is based on a "fountain" design that represents the gold standard of accuracy in timekeeping. NIST-F4 ticks at such a steady rate that if it had started running 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed, it would be off by less than a second today. By joining a small group of similarly elite time pieces run by just 10 countries around the world, NIST-F4 makes the foundation of global time more stable and secure. At the same time, it is helping to steer the clocks NIST uses to keep official U.S. time. Distributed via radio and the internet, official U.S. time is critical for telecommunications and transportation systems, financial trading platforms, data center operations and more. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Research roundup: Tattooed tardigrades and splash-free urinals
Science - Posted On:2025-04-30 15:30:00 Source: arstechnica
It's a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. April's list includes new research on tattooed tardigrades, the first live image of a colossal baby squid, the digital unfolding of a recently discovered Merlin manuscript, and an ancient Roman gladiator whose skeleton shows signs of being gnawed by a lion.
Popular depictions of Roman gladiators in combat invariably include battling not just human adversaries but wild animals. We know from surviving texts, imagery, and artifacts that such battles likely took place. But hard physical evidence is much more limited. Archaeologists have now found the first direct osteological evidence: the skeleton of a Roman gladiator who encountered a wild animal in the arena, most likely a lion, based on bite marks evident on the pelvic bone, according to a paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.
The skeleton in question was that of a young man, age 26 to 35, buried between 200–300 CE near what is now York, England, formerly the Roman city of Eboracum. It's one of several such skeletons, mostly young men whose remains showed signs of trauma—hence the suggestion that it could be a gladiator burial site. "We used a method called structured light scanning [to study the skeleton]," co-author Tim Thompson of Maynooth University told Ars. "It's a method of creating a 3D model using grids of light. It's not like X-ray or CT, in that it only records the surface (not internal) features, but since it uses light and not X-rays etc, it is much safer, cheaper, and more portable. We have published a fair bit on this and shown its use in both archaeological and forensic contexts."
Firefly Aerospace's Alpha Rocket Fails, Sends Satellite Falling Into Ocean
science - Posted On:2025-04-30 06:15:00 Source: slashdot
Firefly Aerospace's sixth Alpha rocket launch failed on April 29, 2025, after an upper-stage anomaly prevented a Lockheed Martin satellite demo from reaching orbit. Both the stage and payload fell into the Pacific Ocean near Antarctica. Space.com reports: The two-stage, 96.7-foot-tall (29.6 meters) Alpha lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base this morning (April 29), carrying a technology demonstration for aerospace giant Lockheed Martin toward low Earth orbit (LEO). But the payload never got there. Alpha suffered an anomaly shortly after its two stages separated, which led to the loss of the nozzle extension for the upper stage's single Lightning engine. This significantly reduced the engine's thrust, dooming the mission, Firefly said in an update several hours after launch. Today's mission, which Firefly called "Message in a Booster," was the first of up to 25 that the company will conduct for Lockheed Martin over the next five years. The flight aimed to send a satellite technology demonstrator to LEO. This demo payload "was specifically built to showcase the company's pathfinding efforts for its LM 400 mid-sized, multi-mission satellite bus, and to demonstrate the space vehicle's operational capabilities on orbit for potential customers," Firefly wrote in a prelaunch mission description. "Initial indications showed Alpha's upper stage reached 320 km [199 miles] in altitude. However, upon further assessment, the team learned the upper stage did not reach orbital velocity, and the stage and payload have now safely impacted the Pacific Ocean in a cleared zone north of Antarctica," an update reads. "Firefly recognizes the hard work that went into payload development and would like to thank our mission partners at Lockheed Martin for their continued support," it continues. "The team is working closely with our customers and the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] to conduct an investigation and determine root cause of the anomaly. We will provide more information on our mission page after the investigation is completed." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After 53 Years, a Failed Soviet Venus Spacecraft Is Crashing Back to Earth
science - Posted On:2025-04-30 03:15:01 Source: slashdot
Kosmos 482, a failed Soviet Venus probe, is expected to make an uncontrolled reentry in mid-May after orbiting Earth for 53 years. Gizmodo reports: The lander module from an old Soviet spacecraft is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere during the second week of May, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker based in Leiden, the Netherlands. "As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact," Langbroek wrote in a blog update. "The risks involved are not particularly high, but not zero." Kosmos 482 launched on March 31, 1972 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport in Kazakhstan. The mission was an attempt by the Soviet space program to reach Venus, but it failed to gain enough velocity to enter a transfer trajectory toward the scorching-hot planet. A malfunction resulted in an engine burn that wasn't sufficient to reach Venus' orbit and left the spacecraft in an elliptical Earth orbit, according to NASA. The spacecraft broke apart into four different pieces, with two of the smaller fragments reentering over Ashburton, New Zealand, two days after launch. Meanwhile, two remaining pieces, believed to be the payload and the detached upper-stage engine unit, entered a higher orbit measuring 130 by 6,089 miles (210 by 9,800 kilometers). The failed mission consisted of a carrier bus and a lander probe, which together form a spherical pressure vessel weighing more than 1,000 pounds (495 kilograms). Considering its mass, "risks are similar to that of a meteorite impact," Langbroek wrote. As of now, it's hard to determine exactly when the spacecraft will reenter. Langbroek estimates that the reentry will take place on May 10, but a more precise date will get clearer as the reentry date nears. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Chemical In Plastics Linked To 350,000 Heart Disease Deaths
science - Posted On:2025-04-29 23:45:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Daily exposure to certain chemicals used to manufacture household plastics may be connected to more than 356,000 cardiovascular-related deaths in 2018 alone, a new analysis has found. These chemicals, called phthalates, are present in products around the world but have particular popularity in the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific -- regions that collectively bore about 75 percent of the global death total, according to the research, published on Tuesday in the Lancet eBioMedicine. Phthalates, often used in personal care products, children's toys and food packaging and processing materials, are known to disrupt hormone function and have been linked to birth defects, infertility, learning disabilities and neurological disorders. The NYU Langone Health team focused in the analysis on a kind of phthalate called di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), which is used to make items like food containers and medical equipment softer and more flexible. Scientists have already shown that exposure to DEHP can trigger an overactive immune response in the heart's arteries, which over time can be linked to increased risk of heart attack or stroke. In the new analysis, the researchers estimated that DEHP exposure played a role in 356,238 global deaths in 2018, or nearly 13.5 percent of heart disease mortality among men and women ages 55 through 64. [...] These findings are in line with the team's previous research, which in 2021 determined that phthalates were connected to more than 50,000 premature deaths each year among older Americans -- most of whom succumbed to heart conditions. But this latest analysis is likely the first global estimate of cardiovascular mortality resulting from exposure to these environmental contaminants [...]. In a separate report from the New York Times, author Nina Agrawal highlights some of the caveats with the data. First of all, the study relies heavily on statistical modeling and assumptions, drawing from prior research that may include biases and confounding factors like diet or socioeconomic status. It also uses U.S.-based risk estimates that may not generalize globally and focuses only on one type of phthalate (DEHP). Additionally, as Agrawal points out, this is an observational study, showing correlation rather than causation. As such, more direct, long-term research is needed to clarify the true health impact of phthalate exposure. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Firefly’s rocket suffers one of the strangest launch failures we’ve ever seen
Science - Posted On:2025-04-29 16:15:00 Source: arstechnica
Firefly Aerospace launched its two-stage Alpha rocket from California early Tuesday, but something went wrong about two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, rendering the rocket unable to deploy an experimental satellite into orbit for Lockheed Martin.
The Alpha rocket took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base about 140 miles northwest of Los Angeles at 6:37 am PDT (9:37 am EDT; 13:37 UTC), one day after Firefly called off a launch attempt due to a technical problem with ground support equipment.
Everything appeared to go well with the rocket's first-stage booster, powered by four kerosene-fueled Reaver engines, as the launcher ascended through fog and arced on a southerly trajectory over the Pacific Ocean. The booster stage jettisoned from Alpha's upper stage two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, and that's when things went awry.
Physics of the perfect cacio e pepe sauce
Science - Posted On:2025-04-29 12:15:00 Source: arstechnica
Nobody does pasta quite like the Italians, as anyone who has tasted an authentic "pasta alla cacio e pepe" can attest. It's a simple dish: just tonnarelli pasta, pecorino cheese, and pepper. But its simplicity is deceptive. Cacio e pepe ("cheese and pepper") is notoriously challenging to make because it's so easy for the sauce to form unappetizing clumps with a texture more akin to stringy mozzarella rather than being smooth and creamy.
A team of Italian physicists has come to the rescue with a foolproof recipe based on their many scientific experiments, according to a new paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids. The trick: using corn starch for the cheese and pepper sauce instead of relying on however much starch leaches into the boiling water as the pasta is cooked.
A rocket launch Monday night may finally jump-start Amazon’s answer to Starlink
Science - Posted On:2025-04-29 11:00:00 Source: arstechnica
The first 27 operational satellites for Amazon's Kuiper broadband network lifted off from Florida's Space Coast on Monday evening, the opening salvo in a challenge to SpaceX's dominant Starlink global Internet service.
Amazon's Project Kuiper, costing up to $20 billion, will beam high-speed, low-latency broadband signals to consumers around the world. Monday's milestone launch kicks off a test campaign in low-Earth orbit to verify the functionality and performance of Amazon's satellites. In a statement earlier this month, Amazon said it planned to begin providing service to customers later this year.
These initial services are likely to have limited reach. Amazon needs more than 80 launches to complete the first-generation Kuiper network, and this will probably take several years.
Spain is about to face the challenge of a “black start”
Science - Posted On:2025-04-28 19:45:00 Source: arstechnica
Since the Iberian Peninsula lost power in a massive blackout, grid operators are in the process of trying to restore power to millions of customers and businesses. As you might imagine, the process—termed a "black start"—is quite a bit more challenging than flicking on a switch. However, the challenge is made considerably more difficult because nearly everything about the system—from the management hardware that remotely controls the performance of the grid to the power plants themselves—needs power to operate.
You might think that a power plant could easily start generating power, but in reality, only a limited number of facilities have everything they need to handle a black start. That's because it takes power to make power. Facilities that boil water have lots of powered pumps and valves, coal plants need to pulverize the fuel and move it to where it's burned, etc. In most cases, black-start-rated plants have a diesel generator present to supply enough power to get the plant operating. These tend to be smaller plants, since they require proportionally smaller diesel generators.
The initial output of these black start facilities is then used to provide power to all the plants that need an external power source to operate. This has to be managed in a way that ensures that only other power plants get the first electrons to start moving on the grid, otherwise the normal demand would immediately overwhelm the limited number of small plants that are operating. Again, this has to be handled by facilities that need power in order to control the flow of energy across the grid. This is why managing the grid will never be as simple as "put the hardware on the Internet and control it remotely," given that the Internet also needs power to operate.
50 years later, Vietnam’s environment still bears the scars of war
Science - Posted On:2025-04-28 15:45:00 Source: arstechnica
When the Vietnam War finally ended on April 30, 1975, it left behind a landscape scarred with environmental damage. Vast stretches of coastal mangroves, once housing rich stocks of fish and birds, lay in ruins. Forests that had boasted hundreds of species were reduced to dried-out fragments, overgrown with invasive grasses.
The term “ecocide” had been coined in the late 1960s to describe the US military’s use of herbicides like Agent Orange and incendiary weapons like napalm to battle guerrilla forces that used jungles and marshes for cover.
Fifty years later, Vietnam’s degraded ecosystems and dioxin-contaminated soils and waters still reflect the long-term ecological consequences of the war. Efforts to restore these damaged landscapes and even to assess the long-term harm have been limited.
AI Helps Unravel a Cause of Alzheimer's Disease and Identify a Therapeutic Candidate
science - Posted On:2025-04-28 03:45:00 Source: slashdot
"A new study found that a gene recently recognized as a biomarker for Alzheimer's disease is actually a cause of it," announced the University of California, San Diego, "due to its previously unknown secondary function." "Researchers at the University of California San Diego used artificial intelligence to help both unravel this mystery of Alzheimer's disease and discover a potential treatment that obstructs the gene's moonlighting role." A team led by Sheng Zhong, a professor in the university's bioengineering department, had previously discovered a potential blood biomarker for early detection of Alzheimer's disease (called PHGDH). But now they've discovered a correlation: the more protein and RNA that it produces, the more advanced the disease. And after more research they ended up with "a therapeutic candidate with demonstrated efficacy that has the potential of being further developed into clinical tests..." That correlation has since been verified in multiple cohorts from different medical centers, according to Zhong... [T]he researchers established that PHGDH is indeed a causal gene to spontaneous Alzheimer's disease. In further support of that finding, the researchers determined — with the help of AI — that PHGDH plays a previously undiscovered role: it triggers a pathway that disrupts how cells in the brain turn genes on and off. And such a disturbance can cause issues, like the development of Alzheimer's disease.... With AI, they could visualize the three-dimensional structure of the PHGDH protein. Within that structure, they discovered that the protein has a substructure... Zhong said, "It really demanded modern AI to formulate the three-dimensional structure very precisely to make this discovery." After discovering the substructure, the team then demonstrated that with it, the protein can activate two critical target genes. That throws off the delicate balance, leading to several problems and eventually the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. In other words, PHGDH has a previously unknown role, independent of its enzymatic function, that through a novel pathway leads to spontaneous Alzheimer's disease... Now that the researchers uncovered the mechanism, they wanted to figure out how to intervene and thus possibly identify a therapeutic candidate, which could help target the disease.... Given that PHGDH is such an important enzyme, there are past studies on its possible inhibitors. One small molecule, known as NCT-503, stood out to the researchers because it is not quite effective at impeding PHGDH's enzymatic activity (the production of serine), which they did not want to change. NCT-503 is also able to penetrate the blood-brain-barrier, which is a desirable characteristic. They turned to AI again for three-dimensional visualization and modeling. They found that NCT-503 can access that DNA-binding substructure of PHGDH, thanks to a binding pocket. With more testing, they saw that NCT-503 does indeed inhibit PHGDH's regulatory role. When the researchers tested NCT-503 in two mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, they saw that it significantly alleviated Alzheimer's progression. The treated mice demonstrated substantial improvement in their memory and anxiety tests... The next steps will be to optimize the compound and subject it to FDA IND-enabling studies. The research team published their results on April 23 in the journal Cell. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Could a 'Math Genius' AI Co-author Proofs Within Three Years?
science - Posted On:2025-04-27 23:15:00 Source: slashdot
A new DARPA project called expMath "aims to jumpstart math innovation with the help of AI," writes The Register. America's "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency" believes mathematics isn't advancing fast enough, according to their article... So to accelerate — or "exponentiate" — the rate of mathematical research, DARPA this week held a Proposers Day event to engage with the technical community in the hope that attendees will prepare proposals to submit once the actual Broad Agency Announcement solicitation goes out... [T]he problem is that AI just isn't very smart. It can do high school-level math but not high-level math. [One slide from DARPA program manager Patrick Shafto noted that OpenAI o1 "continues to abjectly fail at basic math despite claims of reasoning capabilities."] Nonetheless, expMath's goal is to make AI models capable of: - auto decomposition — automatically decompose natural language statements into reusable natural language lemmas (a proven statement used to prove other statements); and auto(in)formalization — translate the natural language lemma into a formal proof and then translate the proof back to natural language. "How must faster with technology advance with AI agents solving new mathematical proofs?" asks former DARPA research scientist Robin Rowe (also long-time Slashdot reader robinsrowe): DARPA says that "The goal of Exponentiating Mathematics is to radically accelerate the rate of progress in pure mathematics by developing an AI co-author capable of proposing and proving useful abstractions." Rowe is cited in the article as the founder/CEO of an AI research institute named "Fountain Adobe". (He tells The Register that "It's an indication of DARPA's concern about how tough this may be that it's a three-year program. That's not normal for DARPA.") Rowe is optimistic. "I think we're going to kill it, honestly. I think it's not going to take three years. But I think it might take three years to do it with LLMs. So then the question becomes, how radical is everybody willing to be?" "We will robustly engage with the math and AI communities toward fundamentally reshaping the practice of mathematics by mathematicians," explains the project's home page. They've already uploaded an hour-long video of their Proposers Day event. "It's very unclear that current AI systems can succeed at this task..." program manager Shafto says in a short video introducing the project. But... "There's a lot of enthusiasm in the math community for the possibility of changes in the way mathematics is practiced. It opens up fundamentally new things for mathematicians. But of course, they're not AI researchers. One of the motivations for this program is to bring together two different communities — the people who are working on AI for mathematics, and the people who are doing mathematics — so that we're solving the same problem. At its core, it's a very hard and rather technical problem. And this is DARPA's bread-and-butter, is to sort of try to change the world. And I think this has the potential to do that. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Russian Satellite Linked to Its Nuclear Anti-Satellite Weapon Program Appears Out of Control, Analyst says
science - Posted On:2025-04-27 18:15:01 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters: The secretive Russian satellite in space that U.S. officials believe is connected to a nuclear anti-satellite weapon program has appeared to be spinning uncontrollably, suggesting it may no longer be functioning in what could be a setback for Moscow's space weapon efforts, according to U.S. analysts... [The Cosmos 2553 satellite launched in 2022] has had various bouts of what appears to be errant spinning over the past year, according to Doppler radar data from space-tracking firm LeoLabs and optical data from Slingshot Aerospace shared with Reuters. Believed to be a radar satellite for Russian intelligence as well as a radiation testing platform, the satellite last year became the center of U.S. allegations that Russia for years has been developing a nuclear weapon capable of destroying entire satellite networks, such as SpaceX's vast Starlink internet system that Ukrainian troops have been using. U.S. officials assess Cosmos 2553's purpose, though not itself a weapon, is to aid Russia's development of a nuclear anti-satellite weapon. Russia has denied it is developing such a weapon and says Cosmos 2553 is for research purposes.... "This observation strongly suggests the satellite is no longer operational," the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said of LeoLabs' analysis in its annual Space Threat Assessment published on Friday. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Can Solar Wind Make Water on the Moon? A NASA Experiment Shows Maybe
science - Posted On:2025-04-26 18:45:00 Source: slashdot
"Future moon astronauts may find water more accessible than previously thought," writes Space.com, citing a new NASA-led experiment: Because the moon lacks a magnetic field like Earth's, the barren lunar surface is constantly bombarded by energetic particles from the sun... Li Hsia Yeo, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, led a lab experiment observing the effects of simulated solar wind on two samples of loose regolith brought to Earth by the Apollo 17 mission... To mimic conditions on the moon, the researchers built a custom apparatus that included a vacuum chamber, where the samples were placed, and a tiny particle accelerator, which the scientists used to bombard the samples with hydrogen ions for several days. "The exciting thing here is that with only lunar soil and a basic ingredient from the sun — which is always spitting out hydrogen — there's a possibility of creating water," Yeo said in a statement. "That's incredible to think about." Supporting this idea, observations from previous moon missions have revealed an abundance of hydrogen gas in the moon's tenuous atmosphere. Scientists suspect that solar-wind-driven heating facilitates the combination of hydrogen atoms on the surface into hydrogen gas, which then escapes into space. This process also has a surprising upside, the new study suggests. Leftover oxygen atoms are free to bond with new hydrogen atoms formed by repeated bombardment of the solar wind, prepping the moon for more water formation on a renewable basis. The findings could help assess how sustainable water on the moon is, as the sought-after resource is crucial for both life support and as propellant for rockets. The team's study was published in March in the journal JGR Planets . NASA created a fascinating animation showing how water is released from the Moon during meteor showers. (In 2016 scientists discovered that when speck of comet debris vaporize on impact, they create shock waves in the lunar soil which can sometimes breach the dry upper layer, releasing water molecules from the hydrated layer below...) Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New Analysis Casts Doubt On 'Biosignatures' Found On Planet K2-18b
science - Posted On:2025-04-26 06:15:00 Source: slashdot
Initial claims that life-associated gases were detected on exoplanet K2-18b are being challenged, with independent reanalysis by Jake Taylor suggesting the data is too noisy to support such conclusions and that stronger, model-independent evidence is needed. NPR reports: Rather than seeing a bump or a wiggle that indicated a signal, "the data is consistent with a flat line," says Taylor, adding that more observations from the telescope are needed to know what can be reliably said about this planet's atmosphere. "If we want to claim biosignatures, we need to be extremely sure." What this new work shows is that "the strength of the evidence depends on the nitty gritty details of how we interpret the data, and that doesn't pass the bar for me for a convincing detection," says Laura Kreidberg, an expert on the atmospheres of distant planets at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany who didn't work on the original research team or this new analysis. She explains that astronomers can make a lot of different choices when analyzing data; for example, they can make different assumptions about the physics and chemistry at play. "Ideally, for a robust detection, we want it to be model-independent," she says -- that is, they want the signal to show up even if the underlying assumptions change from one analysis to another. But that wasn't the case here. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
China Shares Rare Moon Rocks With US
science - Posted On:2025-04-26 03:15:01 Source: slashdot
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: China will let scientists from six countries, including the U.S., examine the rocks it collected from the Moon -- a scientific collaboration that comes as the two countries remain locked in a bitter trade war. Two NASA-funded U.S. institutions have been granted access to the lunar samples collected by the Chang'e-5 mission in 2020, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said on Thursday. CNSA chief Shan Zhongde said that the samples were "a shared treasure for all humanity," local media reported. Chinese researchers have not been able to access NASA's Moon samples because of restrictions imposed by U.S. lawmakers on the space agency's collaboration with China. Under the 2011 law, Nasa is banned from collaboration with China or any Chinese-owned companies unless it is specifically authorized by Congress. But John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, told BBC Newshour that the latest exchange of Moon rocks have "very little to do with politics." While there are controls on space technology, the examination of lunar samples had "nothing of military significance," he said. "It's international cooperation in science which is the norm." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New study: There are lots of icy super-Earths
Science - Posted On:2025-04-25 18:30:01 Source: arstechnica
What does the "typical" exosolar system look like? We know it's not likely to look like our own Solar System, given that our familiar planets don't include entire classes of planets (Hot Jupiters! Mini-Neptunes!) that we've found elsewhere. And our discovery methods have been heavily biased toward planets that orbit close to their host star, so we don't really have a strong sense of what might be lurking in more distant orbits.
A new study released on Thursday describes a search for what are called "microlensing" events, where a planet acts as a gravitational lens that magnifies the star it's orbiting, causing it to brighten briefly. These events are difficult to capture, but can potentially indicate the presence of planets in more distant orbits. The researchers behind the new work find indications that there's a significant population of rocky super-Earths that are traveling in orbits similar to that of Jupiter and Saturn.
The two primary methods we've used to discover exoplanets are called transit and radial velocity. In the transit method, we simply watch the star for dips in the light it sends to Earth, which can be an indication of a planet orbiting in a way that it eclipses a small fraction of the star. For radial velocity, we look for red- or blue-shifts in the light received from the star, caused by a planet tugging the star in different directions as it orbits.