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In the early 20th century, after years of effort, Albert Einstein developed his general theory of relativity. This was a massive improvement in our understanding of gravity, giving us a sophisticated view into the inner workings of that fundamental force.

Tracking down resources on the Moon is a critical process if humanity decides to settle there permanently. However, some of our best resources to do that currently are orbiting satellites who use various wavelengths to scan the Moon and determine what the local environment is made out of. One potential confounding factor in those scans is “space weathering” - i.e. how the lunar surface might change based on bombardment from both the solar wind and micrometeroid impacts. A new paper from a researchers at the Southwest Research Institute adds further context to how to interpret ultra-violet data from one of the most prolific of the resource assessment satellites - the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) - and unfortunately, the conclusion they draw is that, for some resources such as titanium, their presence might be entirely obscured by the presence of “old” regolith.

Radio astronomers hunting for the faint whispers of the early universe face an unexpected threat from above: satellites designed to be silent are leaking radio noise into space. New research using the Murchison Widefield Array has set the first limits on unintended radio emissions from distant geostationary satellites, revealing that most remain mercifully quiet in the frequency range crucial for next-generation telescopes. The findings offer cautious hope that the Square Kilometre Array, set to become the world's most sensitive radio telescope, might avoid the radio pollution crisis now plaguing observations of low Earth orbit satellites.

Astronomers have been observing the Cosmic Owl for years, wondering if what they were seeing was a long-predicted runaway black hole. Now, 50 years after scientists first predicted the phenomenon, the JWST has provided the clinching evidence.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reobserved interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on 30 November with its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. At the time, the comet was about 286 million km from Earth. Hubble tracked the comet as it moved across the sky.

Efforts to lower the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere may come too late to prevent long-term changes to the Arctic

A new report identifies searching for life as the top science priority for humanity's first landing on Mars, ranking it above understanding water cycles, mapping geology, or even studying how the Martian environment affects astronaut health. The report outlines four possible exploration campaigns, with the highest ranked approach calling for missions totalling 330 sols at a single scientifically rich site where crews could investigate everything from ancient lava flows to active dust storms. By placing the search for extraterrestrial life at the centre of human Mars exploration, the report reimagines the first crewed mission not just as a milestone for spaceflight but as humanity's best chance to answer whether we're alone in the universe.

Yes, it’s that time of year again: time to send in photos of your Christmas cats (or, if you have a Jewish cat, a Hanukkah-themed photo). If I get twenty pictures, I’ll put them together for a Christmas Day/beginning of Koynezaa post.

The rules are simple:

a. Email me a photo of your moggy/moggies with a Christmas theme. If you don’t know where to send them, go here

b. One picture per customer, even if you have multiple cats.

c.  Give the name or names of the cats, and say a few words about them.

Have them to me by Dec. 23 or so.  Now’s the time to make your cat famous and show it off.

Thanks!

There are two small moons in orbit around Mars today, but both may be remnants of a much larger moon that had enough of a gravitational pull to drive tides in the Red Planet's lost lakes and seas

Let’s say you are transported back in time to some ancient culture. And along the way you somehow forget everything you knew about modern cosmology (don’t worry about the details, it’s just to get us going here, pretend if you have to that it’s a very strange and selective sort of amnesia introduced by the time traveling device).

The Hubble Tension is one of the great mysteries of cosmology. Solving it might require a fundamental change in how we understand the universe - but scientists have to prove it actually exists first. A new paper from a collective of cosmologist researchers known as the TDCOSMO Collaboration adds further fuel to that first with updated measurements of the “Late Universe” measurement of the Hubble Constant using gravitational lenses of quasars, which shows that the Tension might exist after all.

Scientists have managed to observe solar neutrinos carrying out a rare atomic transformation deep underground, converting carbon-13 into nitrogen-13 inside the SNO+ detector. By tracking two faint flashes of light separated by several minutes, researchers confirmed one of the lowest-energy neutrino interactions ever detected.

Scientists have managed to observe solar neutrinos carrying out a rare atomic transformation deep underground, converting carbon-13 into nitrogen-13 inside the SNO+ detector. By tracking two faint flashes of light separated by several minutes, researchers confirmed one of the lowest-energy neutrino interactions ever detected.

TRAPPIST-1e, an Earth-sized world in the system’s habitable zone, is drawing scientific attention as researchers hunt for signs of an atmosphere—and potentially life-supporting conditions. Early James Webb observations hint at methane, but the signals may instead come from the star itself, a small ultracool M dwarf whose atmospheric behavior complicates interpretation.

Via podcasts, Fox News interviews, and "leaked" memos, our FDA leaders are teasing "profound revelations" about dead children and hidden data, complete with dastardly villains and brave heroes, namely themselves. Stay tuned for more!

The post Dr. Marty Makary: Using Dead Children to Create a Spectacle of Accusations first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Controlling qubits with quantum superpositions allows them to dramatically violate a fundamental limit and encode information for about five times longer during quantum computations

What geological features on Earth can be used to better understand unique geological features on Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated potential Earth analogs for studying a unique geological feature on Europa scientists identified almost 30 years ago. This study has the potential help scientists gain insights into Europa’s unique geological features, some of which scientists hypothesize are caused by the moon’s internal liquid water ocean.

Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the microbe responsible for gonorrhoea, is developing resistance to most antibiotics, which means we need new drugs to treat the condition. An antibiotic called zoliflodacin might be part of a solution

Surface-bound gels may have provided the structure and chemistry necessary for life to take root on Earth. These findings could also have implications in the search for life beyond Earth.

The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is forming a new research group that will focus solely on the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The pair of irregular dwarf galaxies are satellites of the Milky Way, and are natural, nearby laboratories for studying how galaxies form and evolve. The research group will make heavy use of the spectroscopic 4MOST survey from the VISTA telescope.