SAN ANTONIO — September. 24, 2025 — The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has selected Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Christopher Glein to present the Carl Sagan Lecture at its Fall meeting. He will present “Seafaring in Space: A Personal Voyage to Enceladus,” discussing the Saturn moon with a deep ocean beneath its frozen surface, offering some of the most compelling evidence of habitability in our solar system.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Compact Coronagraph-2 (CCOR-2) launched at 7:30 a.m. EDT on September 24 onboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) observatory from NASA – Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, Florida.

Researchers from The University of Western Australia node at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have uncovered a colossal bridge of neutral hydrogen gas linking two dwarf galaxies, which spans an astonishing 185,000 light-years between galaxies NGC 4532 and DDO 137, located 53 million light-years from Earth.

In a science lab on the fourth floor of UTSA’s Multidisciplinary Studies Building, UTSA students engage in meticulous choreography around a glowing furnace, melting rocks to produce lava.

The task helps them survey the vast landscapes of the universe — from the Earth to the moon — in a space known as the Heat and Mass Transfer & Experimental Rheology Lab , HAMsTER for short.

Led by Alan Whittington, professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the lab offers students interested in petrology and planetary sciences the opportunity to apply their interests in a range of research opportunities. While one group may be examining the lava flow of volcanoes on Earth, another is melting down and testing samples of meteorites to chart varying thermal properties.

Dr. Shiki Machida from the Chiba Institute of Technology revealed that the scale of material heterogeneity in the upper mantle caused by mantle plumes is less than 10 km—much smaller than previously thought. This suggests that materials inside the Earth mix and recycle faster than expected, offering new insights into the Earth’s internal structure.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024493725002348