Science

The moons of Mars are garnering increased attention, not only because they could provide a view of the solar system’s past but also because they could provide invaluable staging areas for any future human settlement on Mars itself. However, missions specifically designed to visit Phobos, the bigger of the two moons, have met with varying stages of failure. So why not make an inexpensive mission to do so – one that could launch multiple copies of itself if necessary? That’s the idea behind a CubeSat-based mission to Phobos, known as Perseus, which was initially described back in 2020. Phobos is interesting for several reasons, but so far, we’ve only gotten relatively grainy pictures of this small moon, whose total diameter is the size of a medium-sized city. Most of those pictures have come from Mars orbiters, such as MRO, who occasionally turn their instruments on the other bodies in the system. Several planned missions to visit directly, such as Phobos 1 and 2 and, more recently, Ph...

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have created the largest astrophysical simulation of the Universe ever. They used what was until recently the world’s most powerful supercomputer to simulate the Universe at an unprecedented scale. The simulation’s size corresponds to the largest surveys conducted by powerful telescopes and observatories. The Frontier Supercomputer is located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It’s the second-fasted supercomputer in the world, behind only El Capitan , which pulled ahead in November , 2024. Frontier is the world’s first exascale supercomputer, though El Capitan has joined the ranks of exascale supercomputing. The new Frontier simulation is record-breaking and is now the largest simulation of the Universe ever conducted. Its exascale computing allows it to simulate a level of detail that was unreachable prior to its implementation. Exascale is so advanced that it’s difficult to fully exploit its capa...

Popular media love talking about asteroid mining using big numbers. Many articles talk about a mission to Psyche, the largest metallic asteroid in the asteroid belt, as visiting a body worth $10000000000000000000, assumedly because their authors like hitting the “0” key on their keyboards a lot. But how realistic is that valuation? And what does it actually mean? A paper funded by Astroforge, an asteroid mining start-up based in Huntington Beach, and written by a professor at the Colorado School of Mine’s Space Resources Program takes a good hard look at what metals are available on asteroids and whether they’d genuinely be worth as much as the simple calculations say that would be. The paper divides metals on asteroids into two distinct types—those that would be worth returning to Earth and those that wouldn’t. Really, the only metals judged to be worthy of returning to Earth are the platinum-group metals (PGMs), which are known for their extraordinarily high cost, relatively low su...

Breaking oxygen out of a water molecule is a relatively simple process, at least chemically. Even so, it does require components, one of the most important of which is a catalyst. Catalysts enable reactions and are linearly scalable, so if you want more reactions quickly, you need a bigger catalyst. In space exploration, bigger means heavier, which translates into more expensive. So, when humanity is looking for a catalyst to split water into oxygen and hydrogen on Mars, creating one from local Martian materials would be worthwhile. That is precisely what a team from Hefei, China, did by using what they called an “AI Chemist.” Unfortunately, the name “AIChemist” didn’t stick, though that joke might vary depending on the font you read it in. Whatever its name, the team’s work was some serious science. It specifically applied machine learning algorithms that have become all the rage lately to selecting an effective catalyst for an “oxygen evolution reaction” by utilizing materials nati...

DENVER — At Terrapin Care Station, a Denver dispensary on Broadway, area manager Adam Shepler stood behind a counter displaying an array of more than 20 low-dose cannabis products: gummies, patches, drinks, topical lotions, tinctures, a vape and a powder. Most of them were recently released. Though Shepler has fielded customer interest in low-dose products for years, he’s now interacting with more newcomers seeking holistic anxiety relief — and the industry is responding. Soon, the shop on Broadway will also carry flower that’s half CBD, half THC. “As more consumers have been demanding this, you’re seeing more companies cater to that market,” Shepler said. In Colorado, several cannabis companies — Dialed In Gummies, Wana Brands and Sun Theory Holding Co. among them — are part of a burgeoning trend of catering to clientele who don’t want their marijuana so strong. The move to provide more low-dose products allows them to access new market demographics, such as inexperienced cannabis ...

By Michelle Marchante, Miami Herald (TNS) MIAMI — As her students finished their online exam, Arlet Lara got up to make a cafe con leche . Her 16-year-old son found her on the kitchen floor. First, he called Dad in a panic. Then 911. “I had a stroke and my life made a 180-degree turn,” Lara told the Miami Herald, recalling the medical scare she experienced in May 2020 in the early months of the COVID pandemic. “The stroke affected my left side of the body,” the North Miami woman and former high school math teacher said. Lara, an avid runner and gym goer, couldn’t even walk. “It was hard,” the 50-year-old mom said. After years of rehabilitation therapy and a foot surgery, Lara can walk again. But she still struggles with moving. This summer, she became the first patient in South Florida to get an implant of a new and only FDA-approved nerve stimulation device designed to help ischemic stroke survivors regain movement in their arms and hands. This first procedure was at Jackson ...

In 1936 astronomers watched as FU Orionis, a dim star in the Orion constellation, brightened dramatically. The star’s brightness increased by a factor of 100 in a matter of months. When it peaked, it was 100 times more luminous than our Sun. Astronomers had never observed a young star brightening like this. Since then, we’ve learned that FU Orionis is a binary star. It’s surrounded by a circumstellar disk and the brightness episodes are triggered when the star accretes mass from the disk. There are other young stars similar to FU Orionis, and it’s now the namesake for an entire class of variable young stars that brighten in the same manner. FU Ori stars are a sub-class of T-Tauri stars , young, pre-main sequence stars that are still growing. Astronomers have modelled FU Ori’s accretion and brightness episodes with some success. But the nature of the disk-star interface has remained a mystery. Attempts to image the boundary between the two haven’t been successful. Until now. Astron...

Astronomers often use the Milky Way as a standard for studying how galaxies form and evolve. Since we’re inside it, astronomers can study it in detail with advanced telescopes. By examining it in different wavelengths, astronomers and astrophysicists can understand its stellar population, its gas dynamics, and its other characteristics in far more detail than distant galaxies. However, new research that examines 101 of the Milky Way’s kin shows how it differs from them. One powerful way to understand things is to compare and contrast them with others in their class, a technique we learn in school. Surveys are an effective tool to compare and contrast things, and astronomical surveys have contributed an enormous amount of foundational data towards the effort. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), and the ESA’s Gaia mission are all prominent examples. The Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) Survey is another, and its third data release ...

MONTEREY – International cooperation is reeling the world’s most valuable fish back from the shores of extinction. The population of Pacific bluefin tuna ascended 1,000% between 2014 and 2022, scientists learned at a conference in June. They did not expect to reach this milestone until 2034. “This is one of the biggest moments in sustainable seafood history,” says Matt Beaudin, executive chef at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In response, the aquarium’s Seafood Watch upgraded some bluefin caught off the coast of California and Mexico from red (avoid) to yellow (good alternative). A yellow rating means that catching the fish has some negative environmental impact, but is not entirely unsustainable. This is the first time Seafood Watch has updated the fish’s status in the program’s 25-year history. Such a development was unimaginable 10 years ago. RELATED: Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch: A fixture in the conversation about sustainable seafood In 2014, Pacific bluefin tuna were...

By Susanne Rust | Los Angeles Times State health officials confirmed Sunday that H5N1 bird flu virus was detected in a retail sample of raw milk from the Fresno-based Raw Farm dairy. The sample was collected by officials with the Santa Clara County public health office. Raw Farm has issued a voluntary recall for all quart and half-gallon-sized milk products produced on Nov. 9, with an expiration date of Nov. 27, with a lot ID of #20241109. So far, there have been no reports of illness associated with this recall. Last week, the CDC reported samples taken from a child in Alameda County who was showing mild respiratory symptoms were positive for H5N1. It is unclear how the child was exposed to the virus, although investigators ruled out exposure to infected dairy or poultry animals. They also ruled out raw milk. Throughout California, 29 people have tested positive for the virus, all but one — the child in Alameda County — are dairy workers. Nationwide, the number is 55, with ...