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Where on Earth did life originate, and where else could it occur? A comprehensive answer is most likely a long way off. But it might depend on how many suitable sites for abiogenesis there are on different worlds.

We only have one data point for life: dear old Earth. Examining abiogenesis, the natural process where life originates from non-living matter, can’t be done by observing other places where it occurred. Instead, scientists use models to dig into the big question.

Manasvi Lingam is an astrobiologist at Florida Tech University. In new research, Lingam and his co-researchers examine the probability of life originating in different sites on Earth. The research is titled “A Bayesian Analysis of the Probability of the Origin of Life Per Site Conducive to Abiogenesis.” It’s published in the journal Astrobiology, and the other authors are Ruth Nichols and Amedeo Balbi.

“We can’t peer back in time. Sometimes you can arrive at answers just through very clever use of limited data… but there is a part that you’ll never know.”

Manasvi Lingam, Astrobiologist, Florida Tech University

A Bayesian Analysis uses existing knowledge—in this case, the appearance of life on Earth—to estimate how probable it is that the same thing will occur elsewhere. Disregarding panspermia, we know that life originated on Earth at least once. Scientists can use it to try to determine how probable it is that life arose elsewhere.

There are many roadblocks on our path to understanding the spontaneous appearance of life. “One of the foremost among these current limitations is our lack of conclusive knowledge regarding the minimal set of conditions necessary for engendering abiogenesis, as well as the absence of definitive data pinpointing the likely location(s) where this process took place,” the authors write.

But the fact that it did arise on Earth, at least once but possibly in multiple locations, is an information-rich fact. But the information doesn’t announce its presence. Scientists have to tease it out. “Nevertheless, the occurrence of abiogenesis on Earth still holds significant informative value,” the authors explain.

An image of Earth taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1990. Even though we don’t know how life started, scientists can use the fact that life exists to examine the probability. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

In new research, Lingam and his co-researchers developed a model based on urable sites. Urable sites are those that are viable places where life could start. The results were surprising and counter-intuitive.

Urable sites are environments where we think life can arise. They include hydrothermal vents, impact sites, lakes and ponds, and natural atomic reactors like the one that existed in Gabon two billion years ago.

In this work, the researchers compiled a list of urable sites, and each type has a corresponding level of conduciveness for life to get going. They shaped their models according to two questions: on how many sites could life have originated on Earth, and what is the probability of life emerging for each one.

It’s critical to understand that this work can’t tell us how and where life originated. Instead, the goal was to understand how to interpret the models’ results.

In their simulations, the researchers considered three different scenarios, each with a different number of urable sites. One had only 10 urable sites, one had 1016 urable sites, and one had 1031 urable sites. They also worked with optimistic, pessimistic, and uninformative scenarios. The optimistic had a higher probability of life appearing per urable sites, the pessimistic had a lower probability, and uninformative means the results were just that.

Warm little ponds are one type of urable site. This artist’s impression shows the early Earth, where the continental crust was below sea level, and the only exposed land was volcanic islands. On these islands, bombarded by lightning, gas from volcanoes could’ve formed increasingly complex molecules in little ponds. Eventually, a molecule capable of storing information, replicating it, and mutating randomly may have formed. As these islands were eroded away, these molecules could’ve been spread into the ocean. Image Credit: NASA

The researchers anticipated that a larger number of urable sites would mean a higher probability of life emerging. But to their surprise, the opposite was true. More sites meant a lower probability of life emerging, and fewer sites meant a higher probability.

“That’s the two situations that are here. One where there are lots of sites, but there’s very low probability [of life] per site. And the second where there are very few sites, but there’s a very high probability per site,” Lingam said in a press release.

“Normally ‘the more, the better’ is the attitude for many things in life,” Lingam says. “But more is not always better. If it’s fewer, but it’s the right kind of fewer, then that can actually be better.”

This means that in their model, where Earth had the fewest urable sites, the probability of life emerging on any single site is higher. When there are plentiful sites, the probability of life emerging on any one of them is lower.

This black smoker hydrothermal vent was discovered in the Atlantic Ocean in 1979. It’s fueled from deep beneath the surface by magma that superheats the water. The plume carries minerals and other materials out to the sea. Vents like these are one type of urable site. Image Credit: USGS.

Though counterintuitive, Lingam says these results are valuable. There’s no consensus on what urable site life arose on, so different researchers can use them in their experiments to understand their own preferred environments in experiments. “Then they can do laboratory experiments, try to get a feel for how many trials might be needed to actually move to something like life,” Lingam says.

Even with all we don’t know about the origin of life, and even though these models can’t tell us how life arose, Lingam’s work can still help other researchers make progress.

“We can’t peer back in time,” Lingam says. “Sometimes you can arrive at answers just through very clever use of limited data… but there is a part that you’ll never know.”

The post Asking the Big Question: Where Did Life Originate? appeared first on Universe Today.

An intricate atlas of the inner lining of the uterus could help researchers better understand conditions like endometriosis, infertility and abnormal menstruation

A faint glow from all of the galaxies that have ever existed fills the cosmos, and NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has made the best measurement ever of just how faint it is

As part of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), NASA contracted with commercial space partners to develop crew-capable spacecraft to restore domestic launch capability to U.S. soil. In addition to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle, which was validated in 2020 and has been transporting crews to the International Space Station (ISS) ever since. Concurrently, Boeing developed the CT-100 Starliner, which has suffered a seemingly endless string of technical issues and delays. After undergoing a long checklist of fixes, the Starliner completed its first orbital flight test (OFT-1) in May 2022.

The Starliner then made its first crewed flight to the ISS on June 5th, 2024, carrying two astronauts – Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams. Unfortunately, malfunctions with the spacecraft’s RCS thrusters have forced it to remain in orbit until the necessary fixes were made. In addition to its thrusters, astronaut Butch Wilmore identified a strange pulsing sound coming from the Starliner crew capsule. That sound has since been identified as feedback from one of the capsule’s speakers, apparently due to an audio configuration between the ISS and Starliner.

Radio noise and feedback are common aboard the ISS and are the result of the station’s complex audio system, which allows multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected. Per standard practice, crews are asked to contact mission control whenever they hear sounds coming from the comm system to determine if there is a larger technical issue at work. According to NASA, the feedback Wilmore reported has no technical impact on the crew, the Starliner, or station operations and will not prevent the ship from returning.

Still, due to ongoing safety concerns, NASA has decided that the Starliner will return to Earth uncrewed no earlier than Friday, Sept. 6th. After undocking from the station and reentry, it will land at NASA’s White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 12:03 AM local time (02:03 PM EDT; 11:03 AM PDT) on Sept. 7th. In the meantime, Wilmore and Williams will become part of the Expedition 71/72 crew on the station alongside cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, and NASA astronaut Donald Pettit.

Further Reading: NASA

The post There Was a Strange Sound Coming From Starliner. It Was Caused by a Speaker in the Capsule appeared first on Universe Today.

Black holes are famous for sucking in everything that crosses their event horizons, including light. So, why do astronomers see energetic radiation coming from the environment of a black hole in an X-ray binary system? It’s a good question that finally has an answer.

As a black hole and its companion star in the system orbit in a mutual gravitational dance, material from the star spirals toward the black hole. It forms an accretion disk which glows bright in X-rays. The disk is threaded through by strong magnetic fields that get twisted as the black hole and disk spins. But, where do the X-rays originate? It turns out they stream from turbulent regions in the disk. They don’t come from the black hole itself.

X-ray Binary Systems

To understand these binary systems better, it helps to take a general look at their origins. These odd couples generally contain a regular star (usually a main-sequence one) coupled gravitationally to a neutron star or a black hole. There are several types of systems. One is the low-mass type with a star that has a lower mass than the neutron star or black hole companion. There are intermediate-mass ones, which contain an intermediate-mass star, and the high-mass x-ray binary that has a very high-mass star in the system.

Artist’s impression of an X-ray binary system. This one is called MAXI J1820+070, with a black hole (small black dot at the center of the gaseous accretion disk) and a companion star. Image produced with Binsim (credit: R. Hynes).

The black hole/neutron star components form when a supermassive companion star explodes as a supernova. After that, the donor star starts losing mass to the dead star companion. The infalling material generally creates the accretion disk where high-energy activity takes place. Generally, the action in the accretion disk generates the emissions astronomers detect in these systems. The low-mass binaries emit more X-rays as part of their radiation “budget”, while the high-mass ones emit a lot of optical light in addition to the X-rays.

For a long time, scientists tried to understand the sources of the high-energy radiation by watching as the material was swept into the accretion disks. X-rays generally occur in extremely energetic environments. So, everyone assumed that these disks had localized energetic regions. One idea was that magnetic fields and local gas clouds interacted and that generated the x-rays. The activity looks similar to heating in the Sun’s environment created by magnetic activity related to solar flares. Flares do occur in the accretion disks around black holes, and they’re much more extreme than our Sun’s outbursts.

Making X-rays at Black Holes

Supercomputer simulations done at the University of Helsinki helped pinpoint the cause of the X-rays. They modeled interactions between radiation, superheated plasma, and magnetic fields in black hole accretion disks in binary pairs. The simulations showed that the turbulence around the black hole is incredibly strong. The plasma actually does produce X-rays emanating from accretion disks. Joonas Nättilä of the Computational Plasma Astrophysics group at the university led a team that investigated this kind of extreme plasma. He pointed out that to understand what’s happening we have to look at the effects of quantum electrodynamics on the system.

The team modeled a mix of electron-positron plasma and photons. Electron-positron plasma is a state where electrons and positrons interact in the confines of a strong magnetic field. In such conditions, the local X-ray radiation turns into electrons and positrons. Then, they annihilate back into radiation as they re-establish contact. Electrons and positrons are antiparticles of each other. That means they don’t usually occur in the same place. In addition, plasma and radiation don’t usually interact with each other. But, that can all change when you get into the environment around a black hole. There, electrons and positrons exist in close quarters and photons become so energetic that they become part of the activity.

“In everyday life, such quantum phenomena where matter suddenly appears in place of extremely bright light are, of course, not seen, but near black holes, they become crucial,” Nättilä said. “It took us years to investigate and add to the simulations all quantum phenomena occurring in nature, but ultimately, it was worth it,” he added.

For More Information

Explanation Found for X-ray radiation from Black Holes
Radiative Plasma Simulations of Black Hole Accretion Flow Coronae in the Hard and Soft states

Arxiv preprint

The post The Surprising Source of Radiation Coming From Black Holes appeared first on Universe Today.

A team has created a machine-learning algorithm that can detect up to 94% of bogus academic papers -- nearly twice as successfully as more common data-mining techniques.

In the contemporary Universe, massive galaxies are plentiful. But the Universe wasn’t always like this. Astronomers think that galaxies grew large through mergers, so what we see in space is the result of billions of years of galaxies merging. When galaxies merge, the merger can feed large quantities of gas into their centers, sometimes creating a quasar.

Much of this is theoretical and shrouded in mystery, but astronomers might have found evidence of a galaxy merger creating a quasar.

All galaxies contain interstellar gas, but some—typically younger ones—have a much higher concentration. When gas-rich galaxies merge, they trigger rapid star formation and feed large quantities of gas into the central black hole, which then flares brightly and appears as a luminous quasar.

A quasar is basically an extremely active black hole. It appears that all large galaxies host a supermassive black hole in their centers, and when these black holes are actively feeding, they’re called active galactic nuclei (AGN.) Quasars are the most luminous of all AGN and can outshine entire galaxies.

But quasars are mostly a thing of the past. Quasar activity seems to have peaked about 10 billion years ago, which is one reason there are still so many questions about how they form.

Astronomers have spotted two ancient, distant galaxies merging. Both have dim quasars at their centers. Could they be the progenitors of bright, massive quasars in the early Universe? One international team of researchers thinks so.

Their results are in new research published in The Astrophysical Journal titled “Merging Gas-rich Galaxies That Harbor Low-luminosity Twin Quasars at z = 6.05: A Promising Progenitor of the Most Luminous Quasars.” Takuma Izumi from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan is the lead author.

The pair of distant, dim quasars detected with the Subaru Telescope. Image Credit: NAOJ/Izumi et al. 2024.

“When we first observed the interaction between these two galaxies, it was like watching a dance, with the black holes at their centers having started their growth.”

Takuma Izumi, NAOJ

Quasars become extremely luminous and are more easily observed, but by that time, the merger that created them has played out. Astronomers need to see the dim ones in a pre-merger state to find answers to their questions. They want to know what processes govern merging gas-rich galaxies and how some of the gas is taken up in a burst of star formation while some of it is funnelled into the center, creating a quasar.

“While multiwavelength observations of quasars have progressed significantly in recent years, understanding of their progenitors lags behind,” the authors write in their paper.

At z = 6.05, these quasars are extraordinarily distant and ancient. The light reaching us now left these objects about 12.7 billion years ago in the Universe’s Cosmic Dawn. Due to the expansion of the Universe, the light has been travelling for about 23.5 billion light years. For many of these photons, their long journey ended when they reached the Subaru Telescope and the ALMA radio telescope.

The Subaru Telescope is an optical/infrared telescope on the summit of Maunakea, Hawaii, operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). It is equipped with the Hyper Suprime-Cam, a 900-megapixel digital camera with an extremely wide field of view. Together, the Subaru telescope and Hyper Suprime-Cam allow astronomers to detect very faint objects in surveys.

Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam discovered the pair of dim galaxies earlier this year with help from the Gemini North Telescope. Yoshiki Matsuoka, at Ehime University in Japan, was looking over images taken by the Subaru Telescope and noticed a faint patch of red. “While screening images of quasar candidates I noticed two similarly and extremely red sources next to each other,” says Matsuoka, “The discovery was purely serendipitous.”

The Subaru Telescope, with its Hyper Suprime-Cam, detected the pair of galaxies. Image Credit:

The pair of quasars the Subaru detected is so dim that astronomers assumed it was a pre-merger pair. But to determine the exact nature of the objects, lead author Izumi and his colleagues turned to another powerful observatory: ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array. To understand what they were seeing, the researchers needed to see how the gas in the galaxies was behaving. ALMA is one of astronomers’ most powerful tools for observing gas.

Most of the gas in galaxies is hydrogen, but it can be difficult to detect. ALMA observes what’s called the CII absorption line. Since both hydrogen and CII are commonly found in gas clouds, the CII line serves as a tracer for hydrogen.

By observing the distribution and motion of hydrogen in the galaxies, the astronomers concluded that the pair is in the process of merging. Two pieces of evidence support their conclusion: the bridge of matter connecting them and the motion of the gas.

This figure from the research shows the quasar locations C2 and C1. It also shows the ‘bridge’ and ‘tail’ features, both signs that the pair of galaxies is merging. “Both the Bridge and the Tail are most likely formed by interactions of the host galaxies of C1 and C2,” the authors write. Image Credit: Izumi et al. 2024.

However, establishing that the pair is merging was just the first step. The real question is if the pair of merging galaxies will produce a luminous quasar. To determine that, the researchers had to measure the amount of gas.

The panel on the left is a velocity map of the galaxies and their quasars, marked C2 and C1. The panel on the right shows the four stages of the merger, including stage IV, the observed stage. Image Credit: Izumi et al. 2024.

Using ALMA, the researchers determined that the galaxies hold 100 billion solar masses of gas. That’s more gas than some of the galaxies that host the brightest quasars. This extraordinarily large amount of gas won’t be depleted quickly. It’s enough to trigger and sustain both explosive post-merger star formation and fuelling of the supermassive black hole.

“According to models of merger-driven galaxy evolution, both star formation and AGN are activated by the interaction of gas-rich galaxies,” the authors write in their research. “Thus, we expect that this pair will evolve into a luminous quasar with a high SFR of greater than 1000 solar masses yr?1, comparable to the value for optically luminous quasars observed so far at high redshifts.”

Astronomers concluded that the pair of galaxies are interacting and in the process of merging. Image Credit: ALMA/Izumi et al. 2024.

“When we first observed the interaction between these two galaxies, it was like watching a dance, with the black holes at their centers having started their growth. It was truly beautiful,” said lead author Izumi.

These findings are significant because they provide astronomers with perspectives not only on quasar formation and explosive star formation but also on galaxy structure and motion.

“With the combined power of the Subaru Telescope and ALMA, we have begun to unveil the nature of the central engines (supermassive black holes), as well as the gas in the host galaxies,” Izumi said.

Finding a pair of pre-merger quasars is a milestone achievement. Quasars have puzzled astronomers since they were first detected with radio astronomy in the 1950s. At first, they didn’t know what they were, and astronomers referred to them as quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) and quasi-stellar radio sources. The name was shortened to quasar, and it stuck.

By 1960, astronomers had detected hundreds of quasars. Now we know what they are, but we have questions about how these objects come to be. This study is answering some of them, but astronomers always crave a deeper understanding of nature, and according to Izumi, the pair is ripe for further observations which should uncover some answers.

Izumi points out that the properties of the stars in both host galaxies are unknown. “Using the James Webb Space Telescope, which is currently operational, we could learn about the stellar properties of these objects. As these are the long-sought ancestors of high-luminosity quasars, which should serve as a precious cosmic laboratory, I hope to deepen our understanding of their nature and evolution through various observations in the future,” Izumi said.

The post This Ancient Galaxy Merger Will Produce a very Luminous Quasar appeared first on Universe Today.

New research addresses the fundamental science necessary to increase the efficiency of nuclear energy. Researchers have now documented the unique chemistry dynamics and structure of high-temperature liquid uranium trichloride salt, a potential nuclear fuel source for next-generation reactors.

New research addresses the fundamental science necessary to increase the efficiency of nuclear energy. Researchers have now documented the unique chemistry dynamics and structure of high-temperature liquid uranium trichloride salt, a potential nuclear fuel source for next-generation reactors.

Bioengineers developed a road map for the protein-protein interactions that give rise to gas vesicles, naturally occurring nanobubbles with potential use in biomedical applications.

Chemists have found a novel glass-forming liquid electrolyte that exhibits specific lithium-ion conduction. They study the speciation and dipole reorientation dynamics in the glass-forming liquid electrolyte by means of Raman and dielectric relaxation spectroscopy to understand the specific lithium-ion conduction, contributing to advancements in battery electrolyte research.

A research group has developed a safe, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly method to synthesize sulfonyl fluorides. By reacting thiols and disulfides with SHC5 and potassium fluoride, they achieved a green synthesis process with non-toxic by-products. This method simplifies the production of sulfonyl fluorides, making it suitable for chemical and industrial applications, aligning with Sustainable Development Goals.

An electrooxidation process efficiently converts glycerol, a byproduct of biodiesel production, into high-value three-carbon compounds.

Around 4 billion years ago, an asteroid hit the Jupiter moon Ganymede. Now, a researcher realized that the Solar System's biggest moon's axis has shifted as a result of the impact, which confirmed that the asteroid was around 20 times larger than the one that ended the age of the dinosaurs on Earth, and caused one of the biggest impacts with clear traces in the Solar System.

A sweat-powered wearable has the potential to make continuous, personalized health monitoring as effortless as wearing a Band-Aid. Engineers have developed an electronic finger wrap that monitors vital chemical levels -- such as glucose, vitamins, and even drugs -- present in the same fingertip sweat from which it derives its energy.

A sweat-powered wearable has the potential to make continuous, personalized health monitoring as effortless as wearing a Band-Aid. Engineers have developed an electronic finger wrap that monitors vital chemical levels -- such as glucose, vitamins, and even drugs -- present in the same fingertip sweat from which it derives its energy.

An oil-free super-lubricant created from potato proteins could pave the way for sustainable engineering and biomedical applications, thanks to new research.

A model developed by evolutionary mathematicians shows that as conditions for cooperation improve between two species, mutually beneficial behavior can unexpectedly become unbalanced. Cooperative behavior pools in one species, the other consumes the spoils.

Over billions of years, the universe's stars and galaxies shined their light into space, leaving behind an imperceptibly faint night light known as the cosmic optical background. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has traveled to the edge of Earth's solar system and captured the most accurate measurement of this glow to date.

New research shows consumers use 'happier' words to search for products when they are in a good mood. Researchers have connected those positive search terms with an increased likelihood of clicking on search engine ads.