Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Giant space 'boulders' unleashed by NASA's DART mission aren't behaving as expected, revealing hidden risks of deflecting asteroids

Harry Baker
LiveScience
Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00 UTC
debris field
© NASA DART team and LICIACubeESA's LICIACube spacecraft captured images of the debris field shortly after the DART-Dimorphos collision. Analysis of these images has now revealed some surprising results.
Debris released from the asteroid Dimorphos during NASA's DART mission has a higher momentum and less random distribution than expected, which "changes the physics we need to consider when planning these types of missions," researchers say.

Three years ago, NASA made history by deliberately smashing a spacecraft into a large asteroid, altering its course and demonstrating humankind's ability to protect our planet from "potentially hazardous" space rocks in the future.

But a new analysis hints that the debris from this monumental collision is not behaving as expected, raising doubts about the success of future asteroid-deflecting missions.

On Sept. 26, 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft purposefully collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, crashing directly into the middle of the space rock at around 15,000 mph (24,000 km/h). The mission was a smashing success: Not only did DART alter Dimorphos' trajectory — shortening its trip around its partner asteroid Didymos by around 30 minutes — it also completely changed the shape of the asteroid.
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Info

Ötzi the Iceman and his neighbors had totally different ancestries, ancient DNA study finds

Kristina Killgrove
Live Science
Sun, 20 Jul 2025 14:38 UTC
A study of prehistoric skeletons from the Italian Alps shows that society may have been organized around fathers and that Ötzi the Iceman had a unique family lineage.
Ötzi the Iceman
© Getty ImagesÖtzi the Iceman, shown here in a reconstruction, had a unique family lineage, ancient DNA of him and his Copper Age neighbors reveals.
A new analysis of ancient DNA from 15 people who lived in the Italian Alps around the same time as Ötzi the Iceman shows that Ötzi's ancestry was decidedly different from his neighbors'.

"We analysed an additional 15 Copper Age individuals and they have the same genetic structure as the Iceman," Valentina Coia, a researcher at the Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzano, Italy, told Live Science in an email. But when looking more closely at the DNA to understand lineages, "we were able to compare the results with those of the Iceman and found that it differs from the other Alpine samples in the area."

In a study published July 11 in the journal Nature Communications, Coia and colleagues analyzed the genomes of 47 people who lived in the Tyrolean Alps between the Mesolithic and the Middle Bronze Age, around 6400 to 1300 B.C., to learn more about their ancestry.

The most famous individual they examined was Ötzi, who lived 5,300 years ago in the Alps before he was murdered in mysterious circumstances. His mummified and frozen corpse was discovered by tourists in 1991. Because a previous study found that Ötzi had "unusually high Anatolian farmer ancestry," the researchers wanted to investigate whether the Iceman's neighbors — who lived in the Alps in the Copper Age, between 3368 and 3108 B.C. — had a similar ancestry or whether they were more closely related to hunter-gatherer groups from the Eurasian Steppe.
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Info

Orion Nebula, Pleiades and Hyades share a common origin says new study


University of Bonn
Fri, 18 Jul 2025 15:56 UTC
The trio of star clusters Orion Nebula, Pleiades and Hyades do not just randomly lie in the same region of space.
constellation Orion with the Orion Nebula Cluster
© Aladin sky atlas/CDS Strasbourg Observatory (France)The image shows - the constellation Orion with the Orion Nebula Cluster as the central “star” in the sword of Orion, the Pleiades and the Hyades. All three open clusters are highlighted by large yellow circles.
Orion Nebula, Pleiades and Hyades: The latest research results indicate that these famous star clusters represent the different phases of life of one and the same star system. A team of astrophysicists at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences in Zanjan, Iran, and the University of Bonn have found evidence that these three star systems are not just located in roughly the same region of space but also developed in the same way. These results were recently published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

When the stars twinkle in the night sky, you can see the Seven Sisters (Pleiades) and Hyades right next to one another with the naked eye, not far from the central "star" in Orion's Sword. It isn't really one star but rather the Orion Nebula Cluster - and thus the third of a group of star clusters.

However, the clusters in this trio are of different ages and at varying distances away from Earth. The Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) is one of the youngest and most active star-forming regions in the Milky Way - at just 2.5 million years old and around 1,350 light years away. It contains thousands of young stars surrounded by the residual cloud of gas from which they were formed. In contrast, Pleiades, which is also known as the Seven Sisters, is about 100 million years old and its stars are much more widely scattered, while Hyades is around 700 million years old and contains fewer stars that are even more widely dispersed.
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Info

For the first time, astronomers witness the dawn of a new solar system


European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Wed, 16 Jul 2025 18:18 UTC
HOPS-315
© ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. McClure et al.This is HOPS-315, a baby star where astronomers have observed evidence for the earliest stages of planet formation. The image was taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. Together with data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), these observations show that hot minerals are beginning to solidify.

In orange we see the distribution of carbon monoxide, blowing away from the star in a butterfly-shaped wind. In blue we see a narrow jet of silicon monoxide, also beaming away from the star. These gaseous winds and jets are common around baby stars like HOPS-315.

Together the ALMA and JWST observations indicate that, in addition to these features, there is also a disc of gaseous silicon monoxide around the star that is condensing into solid silicates –– the first stages of planetary formation.
International researchers have, for the first time, pinpointed the moment when planets began to form around a star beyond the Sun. Using the ALMA telescope, in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, and the James Webb Space Telescope, they have observed the creation of the first specks of planet-forming material — hot minerals just beginning to solidify. This finding marks the first time a planetary system has been identified at such an early stage in its formation and opens a window to the past of our own Solar System.

"For the first time, we have identified the earliest moment when planet formation is initiated around a star other than our Sun," says Melissa McClure, a professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the new study, published today in Nature.

Co-author Merel van 't Hoff, a professor at Purdue University, USA, compares their findings to "a picture of the baby Solar System", saying that "we're seeing a system that looks like what our Solar System looked like when it was just beginning to form."

This newborn planetary system is emerging around HOPS-315, a 'proto' or baby star that sits some 1300 light-years away from us and is an analogue of the nascent Sun. Around such baby stars, astronomers often see discs of gas and dust known as 'protoplanetary discs', which are the birthplaces of new planets. While astronomers have previously seen young discs that contain newborn, massive, Jupiter-like planets, McClure says, "we've always known that the first solid parts of planets, or 'planetesimals', must form further back in time, at earlier stages."
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Fireball 2

Study finds link between Grand Canyon landslide and meteor crater impact


PhysOrg
Tue, 15 Jul 2025 20:43 UTC
paleo lake grand canyon meteor strike
© Karl KarlstromConceptualization of Nankoweap landslide that brought down large boulders of Kaibab Limestone from the cliffs at left and created a geologically short-lived paleolake in Grand Canyon.
Geology is full of detective stories about the Earth's history, and a new paper in Geology by University of New Mexico Distinguished Professors Emeritus Karl Karlstrom and Laurie Crossey, along with their co‐authors, links two iconic geologic landmarks of the American Southwest: the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater.

The article, titled "Grand Canyon landslide‐dam and paleolake triggered by the Meteor Crater impact at 56 ka," highlights the striking coincidence in the geologic ages of a meteor impact and a landslide dam that blocked the Colorado River, forming a paleolake in the Grand Canyon about 56,000 years ago.

The study also includes a compelling backstory involving multiple generations of scientists, advances in scientific methods, and an international team of collaborators
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Satellite

Satellite mega-swarms are blinding us to the cosmos — and a critical 'inflection point' is approaching

Harry Baker
Live Science
Fri, 30 May 2025 00:00 UTC
space things
© Tobias RoetschSpace Traffic
'No radio astronomy from the ground would be possible anymore': Satellite mega-swarms are blinding us to the cosmos — and a critical 'inflection point' is approaching

Invisible radiation leaking out of private satellites, like SpaceX's Starlink spacecraft, is disrupting radio astronomers' ability to detect important signals from across the universe. If left unchecked, we could reach an "inflection point" beyond which we can no longer properly study the cosmos, researchers warn.

If you look up at the sky on a clear night, shortly after one of SpaceX's many Falcon 9 rocket launches, you might see a bright string of lights zooming across the heavens.

This phenomenon, known as a Starlink train, occurs when light reflects off a newly deployed batch of SpaceX satellites before they eventually fan out and become part of the wider Starlink network. It is also a common reminder that giant groups of private satellites, known as "megaconstellations," are quickly becoming a reality.

But behind these lights lurks an invisible — and much more problematic — form of radiation: radio waves.
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Microscope 2

New structure discovered hiding inside human cells

Michelle Starr
ScienceAlert
Mon, 14 Jul 2025 21:21 UTC
hemifusomes cell structure
© Tavakoli et al., Nat. Commun., 2025Meet hemifusomes, seen here in yellow and green.
After centuries of mapping the human body in ever-finer detail, scientists are still making discoveries. Here we are, in 2025, and a previously unknown cellular structure that could be vital to our health has just been added to the anatomy books.

The membrane-bound organelle appears to play a huge role in helping cells sort, discard, and recycle their contents. It's called a hemifusome, and a team of scientists says it could shed new light on disease.

"This is like discovering a new recycling center inside the cell," said biophysicist Seham Ebrahim of the University of Virginia. "We think the hemifusome helps manage how cells package and process material, and when this goes wrong, it may contribute to diseases that affect many systems in the body."

Not only that, the discovery helps us better understand the turnover and trafficking of compounds vital to the continuing function of our cellular machinery.
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Ice Cube

The weirdness of space ice

Gayoung Lee
Gizmodo
Thu, 10 Jul 2025 20:01 UTC
low density amorphous ice i space
© Michael B Davies, UCL and University of CambridgeVisual representation of the structure of low-density amorphous ice. Many tiny crystallites (white) are concealed in the amorphous material (blue).
A new study on the structure of ice formed in space overturns a decades-long consensus in astronomy.

For astronomers, probing the mysteries of "space ice" — its molecular makeup and how it formed — could be the key to understanding not just extraterrestrial geology but also the potential for alien life.

In a study published Monday in Physical Review B, researchers in England report that "space ice" likely contains countless tiny crystals inside and is less liquid-like than astronomers previously believed. At least, that's according to computer simulations and experimental replications. The discovery resets our understanding of how ice behaves in the frigid vastness of deep space and could influence our theories about planet formation, comet chemistry — and even the origin of life.

"We now have a good idea of what the most common form of ice in the universe looks like at an atomic level," said Michael B. Davies, a physicist at University College London (UCL) in England and the study's lead author, in a statement. "This is important, as ice is involved in many cosmological processes, for instance, in how planets form, how galaxies evolve, and how matter moves around the universe."
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Telescope

How Trump's budget cuts could affect 2 iconic space telescopes: Hubble and James Webb

Monisha Ravisetti
SPACE.com
Wed, 09 Jul 2025 00:00 UTC
2 images Pillars of Creation
© NASA, ESA, CSA, STScl/Hubble Heritage Project (STSci,AURA)/Joseph DePasquale (StSci)/Anton M. Koekemoeer (STSci)/Alyssa Paga n (STSci)2 images of the Pillars of Creation - a star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth • Hubble Space Telescope (L) and James Webb Space Telescope (R)
The JWST could see a 25-35% reduction in operations, and some Hubble instruments may have to fend for themselves.

The Trump administration has been disrupting the infrastructure of U.S. science over the last few months, its latest blow being a 2026 budget proposal that would cut NASA's science funding in about half. If passed by Congress, this budget would be devastating, scientists say. It would cancel a number of in-development and currently operational missions, lead to significant layoffs and force the shutdown of some astronomy facilities.

"It basically slashes science just about everywhere," Neill Reid, the multi-mission project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, said during the 246th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) here last month. "NASA science is cut by a factor of two; astrophysics is cut by two-thirds."

This situation therefore begs the question: How might Trump's proposed reductions in U.S. science funding domino down to two of the most high-profile astronomy instruments we have, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)?
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Comet

Massive boulders ejected during DART mission may complicate future asteroid deflection efforts

Georgia Jiang
PhysOrg
Tue, 08 Jul 2025 21:42 UTC
dart nasa deflect asteroids boulders problems
© NASA DART team and LICIACube.These images, showing ejecta around the impacted near-Earth asteroids, were taken during the approach (with Didymos to the upper left) and departure (Didymos to the upper right) of DART's companion spacecraft, LICIACube, which flew past a few minutes after the impact and imaged the aftermath. The ejecta field consists of an asymmetric cone of dust that exhibits streamers and filaments, as well as over a hundred meter-sized boulders that were ejected in preferred directions.
When NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid moon Dimorphos in September 2022, it didn't just change the asteroid's orbit as intended — it unleashed a massive barrage of boulders that carried more than three times the momentum of the spacecraft itself.

A University of Maryland-led team of astronomers found that while the mission successfully proved that kinetic impactors like the DART spacecraft can alter an asteroid's path, the resulting ejected boulders created forces in unexpected directions that could complicate future deflection efforts. According to the team's new paper published in the Planetary Science Journal on July 4, 2025, using asteroid deflection for planetary defense is likely far more complex than researchers initially understood.

"We succeeded in deflecting an asteroid, moving it from its orbit," said Tony Farnham, lead author of the paper and a research scientist at UMD's Department of Astronomy. "Our research shows that while the direct impact of the DART spacecraft caused this change, the boulders ejected gave an additional kick that was almost as big. That additional factor changes the physics we need to consider when planning these types of missions."
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