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In a universe of a billion galaxies, Earth is the world known to have life. If we're a common example of what happens in the Universe, then our location can tell us something about habitability. A new study is about to flip everything we thought we knew about habitability on its head, examining the potential for life in exotic environments, such as rogue planets, water worlds, and tidally locked planets, and calculate how habitable they would be compared to Earth. As we learn more about these other worlds, if they are more habitable, it can give new predictions.

Just when astronomers think they're starting to understand stellar activity, something strange grabs their attention. That's the case with a newly discovered stellar object called ASKAP J1832-0911. It lies about 15,000 light-years from Earth and belongs to a class of stellar objects called "long-period radio transients." That means it emits radio waves that vary in their intensity on a schedule of only 44 minutes per cycle. It does the same thing in X-ray intensities, which is the first time anybody's seen such a thing coupled with long-period radio transits.

You'd think that icy worlds are frozen in time and space because they're - well - icy. However, planetary scientists know that all worlds can and do change, no matter how long it takes. That's true for Europa, one of Jupiter's four largest moons. Recent observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) zero in on the Europan surface ices and show they're constantly changing.

Could Satellites Endanger Radio Astronomy?

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is equipped with a powerful tool called SHARAD (Shallow Radar), designed to peer beneath the Martian surface and uncover hidden layers of ice, rock, and geological secrets. To accommodate it, engineers mounted SHARAD on the side of the spacecraft, requiring the orbiter to roll 28° during operation to boost signal quality. But computer models hinted at something else: if the orbiter rolled more than 120°, the radar performance could dramatically improve. Scientists put this daring idea to the test—and it paid off. The extreme roll manoeuvre worked, unlocking an even clearer view of Mars’s buried past.

Betelgeuse is dying—but not quietly. This colossal red supergiant, already famous for its brightness fluctuations, has now revealed a strange long-term rhythm: a secondary pulse every 2,100 days. One tantalising theory suggests a hidden companion—possibly a second star orbiting Betelgeuse at roughly the distance between Saturn and the Sun, circling every six years. Astronomers recently pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at the giant in search of this elusive “Betel-Buddy" but failed to find it constraining its size and orbit.

Frameworks are a critical, if underappreciated, component of any space exploration mission. They can range from the overall mission architecture, capturing scientific and technical goals, to the structure of messages sent between two internal components of the system. One of the most interesting frameworks that is getting much attention in the space exploration community is the interaction of multiple robots for a single purpose, known as a multiple-robot system, or MRS. On top of that, one of the most common frameworks for robots on Earth or in space is the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS), which is commonly used to run everything from vacuum cleaners to giant mining trucks. Its most recent iteration, ROS2, even uses yet another framework, known as a middleware, to handle aspects of robot communication such as networking and packetizing data. However, there are plenty of different middlewares to choose from for ROS2, so a team of researchers from the University of Luxembourg decided to try to pick one that would be best for planetary exploration applications.

Researchers present new experimental and theoretical results for the bound electron g-factor in lithium-like tin which has a much higher nuclear charge than any previous measurement. The experimental accuracy reached a level of 0.5 parts per billion. Using an enhanced interelectronic QED method, the theoretical prediction for the g-factor reached a precision of 6 parts per billion.

Scientists have developed a powerful new tool for finding the next generation of materials needed for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing. The significant breakthrough means that, for the first time, researchers have found a way to determine once and for all whether a material can effectively be used in certain quantum computing microchips.

Scientists have developed a powerful new tool for finding the next generation of materials needed for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing. The significant breakthrough means that, for the first time, researchers have found a way to determine once and for all whether a material can effectively be used in certain quantum computing microchips.

We've been gazing at the Moon for a long time, yet it's still mysterious. We've sent numerous orbiters and landers to our satellite, and even brought some of it back to our labs. Those rocks only presented more mysteries, in some ways. Lunar rocks are magnetic, yet the Moon doesn't have a magnetosphere. How did this happen?

In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) is commonly cited as being a critical step towards a sustainable human presence in space, especially on the Moon. Just how crucial it is, and how much its by-products will affect other uses of the Moon, is still up for debate. A new paper from Evangelia Gkaravela and Hao Chen of the Stevens Institute of Technology dives into those questions and comes up with a promising answer - ISRU is absolutely worth it, if we can control the waste products.

As the world shifts toward sustainable energy sources, 'green hydrogen' - hydrogen produced without emitting carbon - has emerged as a leading candidate for clean power. Scientists have now developed a new iron-based catalyst that more than doubles the conversion efficiency of thermochemical green hydrogen production.

Lightweight, powerful lithium-ion batteries are crucial for the transition to electric vehicles, and global demand for lithium is set to grow rapidly over the next 25 years. A new analysis looks at how new mining operations and battery recycling could meet that demand. Recycling could play a big role in easing supply constraints, the researchers found.

Researchers gave participants face tattoos that can track when their brain is working too hard. The study introduces a non-permanent wireless forehead e-tattoo that decodes brainwaves to measure mental strain without bulky headgear. This technology may help track the mental workload of workers like air traffic controllers and truck drivers, whose lapses in focus can have serious consequences.

Researchers gave participants face tattoos that can track when their brain is working too hard. The study introduces a non-permanent wireless forehead e-tattoo that decodes brainwaves to measure mental strain without bulky headgear. This technology may help track the mental workload of workers like air traffic controllers and truck drivers, whose lapses in focus can have serious consequences.

Reducing travel speeds and using an intelligent queuing system at busy ports can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from oceangoing container vessels by 16-24%, according to researchers. Not only would those relatively simple interventions reduce emissions from a major, direct source of greenhouse gases, the technology to implement these measures already exists.

Just because we can find ozone in the atmosphere of other planets doesn't mean there's life. Ozone is a sign of life on Earth, but its detection on Venus shows that it can also be produced abiotically. This indicates that there are different pathways for its creation, not only on Venus but also on other Venus-like exoplanets.

What happens when you see something that just doesn’t make sense? Perhaps you rub your eyes and consider it an anomaly. But what if you see it in an experiment? Say, travelling electrons that make different patterns depending upon whether they were detected? Then, you might want to change your sense of reality. Now, if you can develop a theory for the observations, then maybe you can start a new field of science. It has happened. Quantum mechanics is the name given to this relatively new field and it’s the topic that Sean Carroll writes in his book, “The Biggest Ideas in the Universe – Quanta and Fields”. In his book, there’s much ado about particles, fields, groups and diagrams; all with the aim of enabling any reader to make sense of it.

The failure of SpaceX’s ninth Starship launch has raised fresh concerns about the future of the rocket, but is there any alternative to Elon Musk’s approach to space?