Rice researchers found thin ice may have protected lake water on frozen Mars

Chinese researchers have successfully developed and mass-produced a next-generation superconducting magnet jacket, designated CHSN01, marking a significant stride in China's pursuit of clean fusion energy. This homegrown advanced material far surpasses current international standards in key performance metrics, positioning China at the forefront of cryogenic structural material technology for future fusion reactors.

Researchers able to track for the first time how a particularly active region of the sun develops over three solar rotations using two space probes.

Such observations help to better predict space weather.

The super -active region triggered the strongest solar storm observed in the last twenty years in May 2024.

Solar storms have the potential to cause significant disruption to modern technologies, including navigation, communication, and power systems. 

New experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) have pinpointed specific RNA alterations in cells that correspond with known space travel-related health issues. The findings lay the foundation to understand how spaceflight can accelerate disease development at the molecular level. Ionizing radiation and microgravity make space travel hard on an astronaut’s body – and lengthier trips can cause cellular changes that accelerate the development of various diseases. Wijdan Al-Ahmadi and colleagues have characterized those changes at a genetic level, by sending cell lines to the ISS for culturing. Onboard the station, technicians cultured 16 samples of myeloid cells belonging to the THP-1 lineage (a cell line known for plasticity and immune adaptability) and monitored them for RNA mutations. Al-Ahmadi et al. compared the sequencing data with controls on Earth and used machine learning to identify changes that might be related to known health issues. They observed enriched expression of genes tied to renal, muscular, sensory, neurological, and cardiac disorders. On a mechanistic level, they saw signaling and metabolic changes linked to vision, movement, and sleep. “These are associated, at least computationally, with diseases and conditions that exhibit symptoms similar to those experienced by astronauts, depending on duration of the mission,” the authors write, having also corroborated the findings with existing multi-omic spaceflight datasets.

Simultaneous ground- and space-based observations of a newly discovered free-floating planet have enabled direct measurement of its mass and distance from Earth, according to a new study. The findings offer insights into the diverse and dynamic pathways by which planets can be cast adrift into interstellar space. Although studies to date have only revealed a handful of such free-floating planets, detections are expected to increase in the coming years, particularly with the NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope campaign that is scheduled for launch in 2027, notes Gavin Coleman in a related Perspective. “Simultaneous space- and ground-based observations of microlensing events could be applied in the planning of future exploratory missions and could lead to a better understanding of how planets form across the Galaxy.”

 

Planets are most often found bound to one or more stars, yet a growing body of evidence shows that some wander the galaxy alone. These objects, called free-floating or rogue planets, lack any known stellar companion. And, since they don’t emit very much light, they reveal themselves only through their subtle gravitational effects – a phenomenon called microlensing. One of the main limitations of this discovery method is that it cannot determine the distance to these planets, making independent measurement of their mass difficult. As a result, much about this elusive population of solitary worlds remains speculative.

 

Here, Subo Dong and colleagues report the discovery of a new free-floating planet detected via a fleeting microlensing event. However, unlike previous detections, Dong et al. uniquely observed this microlensing event simultaneously from both Earth and space, using several ground-based surveys alongside the Gaia space telescope. Tiny differences in the timing of the light reaching these distantly separated vantage points enabled measurement of the microlensing parallax, which, when combined with finite-source point-lens modeling, allowed the authors to determine the planet’s mass and location. It is ~22% the mass of Jupiter and roughly 3,000 parsecs from the center of the Milky Way. Because this planet’s mass is comparable to that of Saturn, Dong et al. argue that it likely formed within a planetary system, rather than in isolation like a small star or brown dwarf. Such low-mass rogue planets are thought to be born around stars and later expelled from their orbital confines through gravitational upheavals, such as interactions with neighboring planets or unstable stellar companions.