Science

Using a computer model of the retina, researchers have been able to trace the cause of the expanding hole illusion

Kepler was one of the most successful exoplanet-hunting missions so far. It discovered 2,600 confirmed exoplanets – almost half of the total – in its almost ten years of operation. However, most data analysis focused only on one of the 150,000 targets it “intended” to look at. While it was making those observations, there were a myriad of background stars that also had their light captured incidentally. John Bienias and Robert Szabó of Hungary’s Konkoly Observatory have spent a lot of time looking at those background stars and recently published a paper suggesting there might be seven more exoplanet candidates hiding in the data.

As with many space telescope missions, Kepler’s dataset is open to the public. NASA maintains a database with the raw data collected during the space telescope’s observations, and researchers are free to download it and analyze it as they see fit.

Plenty of interesting things are hiding in that data that were overlooked by the more than 3136 peer-reviewed scientific papers that have utilized Kepler’s data. In the past, the authors have published other documents using the same datasets that described eclipsing binary stars and RR Lyrae stars, a type of pulsating variable star already existing in the data.

Fraser discusses the end of Kepler’s mission.

But while looking for more data on another paper about longer-period versions of those phenomena, they came across several stars whose light curve variability indicated something different – a planet passing in front of them. These “transits”, as they are called, are one of the most common ways to identify exoplanet candidates, and have been used for decades, but this might be the first time they’ve been used on some of the 500,000 background stars in Kepler’s data.

That might be because the data is patchier, as the telescope was not focused on the stars in the background, making this resolution more difficult. However, difficult does not mean impossible, and plenty of software solutions have been developed in the six years since the end of Kepler’s primary mission to help facilitate crunching large sets of data to look for planets around other stars.

One such system that has been around for a while is the Lomb-Scargle algorithm, developed in the 1970s and 80s and designed to detect periodic signals within time-series data. This algorithm is a valuable step in finding both the eclipsing binaries the authors were initially looking for and the exoplanet candidates they recently described.

Fraser discusses Kepler’s newest successor – MAUVE.

Other, more modern tools, proved more finicky, such as PSFmachine. This software package is designed to “deblend” light curves in Kepler’s data. Light curves are critical to exoplanet hunting as they show how the brightness of an object changes over time. However, in Kepler’s background, multiple stars might be overlapping, causing a blending of their light curves. PSFmachine is designed to deal with that problem. However, the authors described several issues in using the software, including its inability to create any stand-alone curves in one case. This seemed to be due to the placement of the stars compared to Kepler’s aperture (i.e., they were in the background) and the relatively small variations seen in the data.

Another tool developed near the end of Kepler’s mission was Pytransit, a Python-based software package that estimates the transmit models of light curves, including period, sizes, and orbital eccentricity. Candidate stars were also cross-referenced with the dataset from Gaia, which is designed to capture data about stars. 

Utilizing all the tools, the authors identified seven exoplanet candidates. All were hot Jupiters, with sizes between .89 and 1.52 Jupiter’s radius and orbits between .04 and .07 AU. They also checked to see if any of those dips in light curves might have been caused by second planets orbiting the same star but came up empty-handed.

While seven additional candidate exoplanets might not seem like a lot compared to the 2,600 confirmed ones Kepler already found, combing over already released data shows how much more helpful context is sometimes publicly available if a researcher knows where and how to look. As more powerful software packages and analytical tools are developed, there will undoubtedly be more discoveries coming out of older data sets like Kepler’s for some time to come.

Learn More:
J Bienias & R Szabó – Background exoplanet candidates in the original Kepler field
UT – Old Data from Kepler Turns Up A System with Seven Planets
UT – This is Kepler’s Final Image
UT – It’s Over For Kepler. The Most Successful Planet Hunter Ever Built is Finally out of Fuel and Has Just Been Shut Down.

Lead Image:
Artist’s impression of Kepler
Credit – NASA Amex / JPL-Caltech/T Pyle

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As the finale of the UK series approaches this evening, these are the best tactics to win the game of backstabbing and treachery, according to forensic psychology, game theory and evolutionary biology

Rovers on alien worlds need to be built of strong stuff. The dry rugged terrain can be punishing on the wheels as they explore the surface. In order to prevent the damage to the wheels, NASA is testing a shape memory alloy material that can return to its original shape after being bent, stretched, heated or cooled.  NASA has already used this material for years but never in tires, in what may be its perfect application.

Rovers are a common sight now as they explore the surface of other planets. Their versatility and ability to respond to the environment and commands from mission controllers make them a valuable exploration tool. Cameras, sensors, collection instruments and analysis tools are common onboard systems that provide information about the local environment. There have been a number of well known examples such as the Mars rovers; Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance. They have helped us to learn about the geology, atmosphere, presence of water and habitability of the planet. Taken Mars as a case in point, we have only explored 1% so there is most certainly still a need for robotic rover exploration. 

Mars Perseverence rover sent back this image of its parking spot during Mars Solar Conjunction. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Perhaps the most robust aspect of a rover is its wheels and tires. They must be capable of coping with rugged, uneven and rocky surfaces yet light enough not to cost a fortune to launch to the alien worlds. NASA has recently undertaken and completed a rigorous round of testing of a new tire using revolutionary shape memory alloys material. The tire technology was developed at the Glenn Research Center in partnership with Goodyear Tire and Rubber. 

The shape memory alloys have been used for numerous applications due to their unique feature of being able to return to their original shape after being deformed. They are typically made from combinations of metals like nickel and titanium which exhibit the property known as super-elasticity. The fascinating property allows the material to ‘remember’ its original shape and have been used in medical devices like stents, wires and various aerospace components. This is the first time NASA have explore their use in tyres. 

Image of the Opportunity rover’s front wheel, taken on June 9th, 2004. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

The idea about their use in rover wheels came about rather by chance. Dr. Santo Padula II, materials research engineer at NASA Glenn Research Center came across Colin Creager a NASA mechanical engineer while leaving a meeting. Creager explained about the work he was doing in the Glenn Simulated Lunar Operations Laboratory (a simulated lunar surface) to improve rover performance. Having enjoyed a tour of the facilities, Padula noticed the rover tyres were made of steel. Padula immediately realised that the steel wheels would get irreversibly damaged through use ultimately leading to their failure to provide traction. On discussing the matter, Creager explained it was the only problem they couldn’t solve. 

As a materials researcher Padula told him about his  work on a new alloy that would solve the problems with wheel irreversible deformations. The SMA tires concept was born. The two joined forces to develop the first nickel-titanium tires that would deform but return to their original shape and, after rigorous testing, the SMA tires became the solution to Creager’s problem. 

The team is now looking for other ways that SMAs can be used in other space exploration such as habitat protection. The extreme environment of space with meteoroid impacts being a regular occurrence make memory alloys the ideal solution. As robotic exploration continues apace and human exploration of our Solar System moves forward, SMAs look set to be a real game changer in ensuring safety and continued operation of a multitude of space hardware. 

Source : NASA Sets Sights on Mars Terrain with Revolutionary Tire Tech

Link : https://www.nasa.gov/technology/nasa-sets-sights-on-mars-terrain-with-revolutionary-tire-tech/

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Records from UK vehicle safety tests show that the average lifespan of an electric vehicle is 18 years, and the reliability is still improving considerably from year to year

The study of exoplanets is challenging enough with the immense distances and glare from the host start but astronomers have taken planetary system explorations to the next level. A team of astronomers have recently announced that they have observed belts of icy pebbles in systems with exoplanets. Using a radio telescope they have been able to detect wavelengths of radiation emitted by millimeter-sized pebbles created by exocomet collisions! Based upon this survey, they have found that about 20% of planetary systems contain these exocometary belts.

Our own Solar System is peppered with them so it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to find them in planetary systems around other stars. The so called exocomets are generally only detected when they pass through or near to our own system. It would also be reasonable to assume they are made of the same icy and rocky material as our own comets but they can still provide valuable insights into the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems. The first such comet was discovered around the star Beta Pictoris in the 19080s.

Comet 12P Pons-Brooks. Credit: Michael Jaeger.

A team of astronomers that have been working upon the REASONS (REsolved ALMA and SMA Observations of Nearby Stars) study and have imaged exocomet belts around nearby stars! ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) and SMA (Submillimeter Array) are powerful radio observatories that explore the skies in millimetre and submillimeter wavelengths. ALMA is based in northern Chile and composed of an array of 66 dishes and SMA is in Hawaii consisting of 8 dishes. 

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Credit: C. Padilla, NRAO/AUI/NSF

The team led by astrophysicists from Trinity College Dublin have been revealed images that reveals pebbles and hence the locations of exocomets. In most cases, they are located tens to hundreds of astronomical units from their host star (one astronomical unit is the average distance from Earth to the Sun.) At theses immense distances from the star the temperatures will be in the between -250 and -150 degrees where any water will be frozen. The observations have detected the radiation emitted from the exocometary collisions. It’s the first time such an in depth analysis has been completed and to date, they have released images from belts in 74 exoplanetary systems. 

The rings are quite varied with some multiple disks and risks, others exhibiting high eccentricity. The eccentricity suggests that there are planets in these systems causing gravitational effects to modify the distribution of the pebbles in the belts.

Co-author of the study Dr Sebastian Marino,  Royal Society University Research Fellow from the University of Exeter explained “The images reveal a remarkable diversity in the structure of belts. Some are narrow rings, as in the canonical picture of a ‘belt’ like our Solar System’s Edgeworth-Kuiper belt. But a larger number of them are wide, and probably better described as ‘disks’ rather than rings.”

The study was able to develop a model showing that the number of pebbles seems to decrease for older planetary systems. This makes sense since an aged system will have run out of exocomets to generate the debris. They also found that the decrease in pebbles is faster when the belt is closer to the star.

Over the last few decades the focus seems to have been on exoplanets but this recent study has shown that the field of exocometary research is well and truly off the starting blocks and revealing fascinating insights into the exoplanetary systems. 

Source : Astrophysicists reveal structure of 74 exocomet belts orbiting nearby stars in landmark survey

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In 2017, Dr. Vinay Prasad said an anti-vaccine doctor was a "quack". What changed?

The post Dr. Vinay Prasad 2025 = Dr. Kelly Brogan 2015 first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Neuromorphic computing -- a field that applies principles of neuroscience to computing systems to mimic the brain's function and structure -- needs to scale up if it is to effectively compete with current computing methods. Researchers, now present a detailed roadmap of what needs to happen to reach that goal.

Researchers have demonstrated an ideal Weyl semimetal, marking a breakthrough in a decade-old problem of quantum materials.

Researchers have demonstrated an ideal Weyl semimetal, marking a breakthrough in a decade-old problem of quantum materials.

Red dwarfs always make me think of the classic British TV science comedy show in the 90’s that was named after them. The stars themselves better little resemblance to the show though. They are small, not surprisingly red stars that can generate flares and coronal mass ejections that rival many of the much larger stars. A team of astronomers have recently used the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to study Wolf 359 and found it unleashes brutal X-ray flares that would be extremely damaging to life on nearby planets. 

Red dwarf stars are small, cool, and very long-lived stars that shine with only a fraction of the brightness of our Sun. They have a mass less than half of the Sun’s and their surface temperatures range from 2,500 to 4,000 degrees Celsius. Because they burn their fuel so slowly, red dwarfs can last for trillions of years, far outliving more massive stars. They are common across the cosmos making up about 70-80% of all stars in the Galaxy but despite this they are hard to spot with the naked eye. 

An artistic impression of Trappist-1 B shortly before it passes behind the cool, red dwarf star, Trappist-1. Such stars are known for their activity with large starspots and eruptions. Trappist-1 B may experience intense volcanism. Credit Thomas Muller (HDA.MPIA)

Wolf 359 is a one such red dwarf star located about 7.8 light-years away from Earth, making it one of the closest stars to our solar system. It’s still too dim to be seen without a telescope though shining at just one-thousandth the brightness of the Sun. It’s part of the constellation Leo and has a mass only about 12% of our Sun’s, with a surface temperature around 4,000 degrees Celsius. Wolf 359 is a relatively young star, but due to its low mass, it will burn its hydrogen fuel slowly and could remain stable for tens of billions of years.

With the intense radiation emissions from Wolf 359 its very likely that any planets in orbit around it will be unable to maintain a stable life supporting atmosphere. A team of astronomers however have been studying it with NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM Newton. They have found that only a planet that has green house gasses, just like Earth, in its atmosphere could sustain life. Given that red dwarfs are the most prevalent stars in the Universe, astronomers have explored them to find evidence of exoplanets but to date, with little success. The team found evidence for two planets in orbit about Wolf 359 but not all scientists are convinced. 

Artist’s illustration of Chandra

Every star has a habitable zone and its location is determined by the temperature and energy output from the star itself. The outer limits for this zone around Wolf 359 is about 15% of the distance between Earth and Sun. The two yet to be confirmed exoplanets orbit the star outside the habitable zone; one is too close, the other to far. 

As they studied the system over 3.5 days, they observed 18 X-Ray flares from Wolf 359. That was just over 3.5 days though and the team propose that more powerful and more damaging flares will occur from time to time. These intense X-ray flares are the chief reason that any planets in orbit must be within the habitable zone and will need an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide to sustain habitable conditions. It’s unlikely however, that any planet within the habitable zone will be able to keep its atmosphere due to the strength of the wind blowing upon it. 

Source : Exoplanets Need to Be Prepared for Extreme Space Weather, Chandra Find

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While entangled photons hold incredible promise for quantum computing and communications, they have a major inherent disadvantage. After one use, they simply disappear. In a new study physicists propose a new strategy to maintain communications in a constantly changing, unpredictable quantum network. By rebuilding these disappearing connections, the researchers found the network eventually settles into a stable -- albeit different -- state.

While entangled photons hold incredible promise for quantum computing and communications, they have a major inherent disadvantage. After one use, they simply disappear. In a new study physicists propose a new strategy to maintain communications in a constantly changing, unpredictable quantum network. By rebuilding these disappearing connections, the researchers found the network eventually settles into a stable -- albeit different -- state.

Perovskite solar cells are a flexible and sustainable alternative to conventional silicon-based solar cells. Researchers were able to find -- within only a few weeks -- new organic molecules that increase the efficiency of perovskite solar cells. The team used a clever combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and automated high-throughput synthesis. Their strategy can also be applied to other areas of materials research, such as the search for new battery materials.

Researchers have measured the thinking time of London taxi drivers -- famous for their knowledge of more than 26,000 streets across the city -- as part of a study into the future of AI route-mapping.

Electrical engineers have developed a better way to perform the comparative analysis of entire genomes. This approach can be used to study relationships between different species across geological time scales. This new approach is poised to unlock discoveries regarding how evolution has shaped present-day genomes and also how the tree of life is organized.

A team has identified a strain of bacteria that can break down and transform at least three types of PFAS, and, perhaps even more crucially, some of the toxic byproducts of the bond-breaking process.

Chirality is a fundamental property of matter that determines many biological, chemical and physical phenomena. Chiral solids, for example, offer exciting opportunities for catalysis, sensing and optical devices by enabling unique interactions with chiral molecules and polarized light. These properties are however established when the material is grown, that is, the left- and right-handed enantiomers cannot be converted into one another without melting and recrystallization. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and the University of Oxford have shown that terahertz light can induce chirality in a non-chiral crystal, allowing either left- or right-handed enantiomers to emerge on demand. The finding, reported in Science, opens up exciting possibilities for exploring novel non-equilibrium phenomena in complex materials.

The Stargate Project aims to build huge data centres for AI development – but the details remain murky, and it is still unclear exactly how this might impact the energy future of the US

If you want to know what the newly forming Solar System looked like, study planetary disks around other stars. Like them, our star was a single star forming its retinue of worlds and other stars did the same. This all happened 4.5 billion years ago, so we have to look at similar systems around nearby stars.

Recently astronomers used radio and optical telescopes to study a collection of so-called “double planetary disks”. These are collections of material around binary stars, sometimes also called “protoplanetary disks.” They zeroed in on a system called DF Tau because it showed some peculiar characteristics. You’d think the planetary disks in those pairs would be roughly the same since they formed from the same raw materials as their parent stars. However, they show some surprising differences from each other.

DF Tau and Its Double Planetary Disks

DF Tau lies just over 400 light-years away from us in the constellation Taurus. It’s in a giant molecular cloud that contains hundreds of newborn stars. DF Tau is two fairly young stars of equal mass. They’re in a 48-year-long orbital dance with each other, and very likely formed together in the same cloud of gas and dust. However, their disks show distinct differences. The brighter, primary star has an active inner disk. The secondary star’s inner region appears to have almost completely disappeared. What does this say about the formation and evolution of these regions and their planets (if they have any)?

According to Dr Taylor Kutra of Lowell Observatory and one of the researchers looking at this system, it’s complex. “The dispersal of circumstellar disks is a complicated process with many unknowns,” said Kutra. “By looking at systems that form together, we can control one major variable: time. DF Tau and other systems in our survey tell us that disk evolution isn’t strictly a function of time, other processes are at play.”

Disk Mechanics

Think of planetary disks like giant wheels spinning in the hearts of molecular clouds. As it moves, material from the disk clumps together. That forms planetesimals, and ultimately planets. The process of planet formation eventually uses up the material in the disk. It doesn’t take long for the material to dissipate like this. There’s nothing left of our own Solar System’s circumstellar birthplace, so we have to look for other examples to understand our own.

Artist’s depiction of a protoplanetary disk in which planets are forming. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Finding such disks around other stars is a snapshot of a planetary crèche early in the formation and evolution process. Finding a pair of them as a binary is an extraordinary chance to understand the complications of planetary formation in such a pair. The fact that one of them has experienced dissipation of its inner region raises a lot of questions. What’s happening to cause that dissipation? Could it be due to planetary formation taking place more rapidly in one disk? Is there formation taking place in the brighter one? What other processes could cause such an imbalance in the two structures?

Kutra and a team of astronomers used the NRAO’s Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile, as well as optical and infrared observations from other facilities such as the Keck Observatory to study the pair. Their data should help shed light on the process of planetary formation in the paired disks, and explain the differences. One possibility to explain the differences in dissipation is to look at the viscosities of the individual disks. Another is to look for the presence of a substellar companion carving out gaps in the one surrounding the secondary star. It’s also possible that the newborn stars could affect their disks in different ways. In some systems, those stars work to evaporate their disks quite quickly.

Future Work Needed

DF Tau wasn’t the only system they studied. There are many other sources in the ALMA survey. They allow astronomers to study how circumstellar disks evolve, particularly in binary systems. The DF Tau system merits more study since astronomers are just beginning to understand its characteristics.

Once astronomers get a handle on these processes, it should help us understand planet formation in circumstellar disks. That’s because their evolution directly affects the timing of planetary formation. Astronomers will continue to probe the density of the disks, and the timing of changes in the inner and outer regions—and if all goes well—search for newly forming worlds there and in other systems they find in the future. Since not all stars form as singletons (like the Sun did), checking out more binaries should give us a better understanding of binary star and planet evolution.

For More Information

Double the Disks, Double the Discovery: New Insights into Planet Formation in DF Tau
Sites of Planet Formation in Binary Systems. II. Double the Disks in DF Tau
Star Formation in the Taurus-Auriga Dark Clouds

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