For decades, scientists thought unbreakable quantum encryption required flawless light sources, a nearly impossible feat. But a team has flipped the noscript using tiny engineered “quantum dots” and clever new protocols.

By making imperfect light behave more securely, they proved that encrypted messages can travel farther and more safely than ever before. Real-world tests have shown that their method outperforms even the best current systems, bringing practical, affordable quantum-safe communication a significant step closer.

POV: You’re looking at the Moon outside of your window on the Orion spacecraft.

This visualization simulates what the crew of Artemis II might see out the Orion windows on the day of their closest approach to the Moon. Learn more: https://t.co/aNSPEPP6Bv

On the evening of September 7, the second (and final) total lunar eclipse of the year will take place—serving up the striking sight of a red “blood moon” in the sky across much of the world.

The totality phase of this September’s eclipse—when the moon is within Earth’s shadow and will appear a deep red—will be visible across Asia, central and eastern Africa, and Australia. These maps from Timeanddate.com show where on the planet the total eclipse can be seen.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), better known as forever chemicals, are gaining notoriety for their ability to linger in the environment and for possible links to health problems. Now, scientists are finding these chemicals in surprising places, including beer. A study published in ACS Environmental Science & Technology analyzed beers brewed across different regions of the United States. The results showed that the highest PFAS levels appeared in beers made in areas where local water supplies are already known to be contaminated.

Morphine and other opioids are commonly used in medicine because of their strong ability to relieve pain. Yet, they also pose significant risks, including respiratory depression and drug dependence. To limit these dangers, Japan enforces strict rules that allow only specially authorized physicians to prescribe such medications.

In contrast, the United States saw widespread prescribing of the opioid OxyContin, which fueled a rise in the misuse of synthetic opioids like fentanyl. By 2023, deaths from opioid overdoses had exceeded 80,000, marking the escalation of a nationwide public health emergency now known as the “opioid crisis.”

Opioids may soon face competition. Researchers at Kyoto University have identified a new analgesic, named ADRIANA, that provides pain relief through a completely different biological pathway. The drug is now moving through clinical development as part of an international research collaboration.

“If successfully commercialized, ADRIANA would offer a new pain management option that does not rely on opioids, contributing significantly to the reduction of opioid use in clinical settings,” says corresponding author Masatoshi Hagiwara, a specially-appointed professor at Kyoto University.

Without the Sun, life as we know it on our planet wouldn’t exist!

Our exhibition, Space: Could Life Exist Beyond Earth?, explores how our solar system formed and what could lie beyond it! Snap a selfie with a piece of Mars, touch a fragment of the Moon and lay your hands on a meteorite older than our planet. Find out more and book your tickets: https://t.co/TVtRzQsc5T

Earth's ocean contrast: the shallow, turquoise waters surrounding the Grand Bahama Island vs the deep blue of the open ocean🌊

📸 CopernicusEU Sentinel-2

Perseids Over Durdle Door 💫

The annual Perseid meteor shower can be a magical display of falling "stars." This year's show, unfortunately, was hampered by a waning gibbous moon, making it difficult to track the meteors even under dark skies. However, astrophotographer Josh Dury accepted the challenge with this gorgeous time-lapse over Durdle Door, a natural limestone arch on the coast in Dorset, England. There are fourteen meteors captured over a seven-hour integration. The galactic core glows above the horizon as the Milky Way stretches up over the night sky.

Note the glow worm near the bottom of the picture!

Credit: Josh Dury

Next spring, four astronauts will venture around the Moon on Artemis II, paving the way for future missions to the lunar surface & Mars. 🚀🌕🔴

Launch into learning about NASAArtemis with resources & activities in this week's NASA EXPRESS! 📬

https://t.co/nH2ZmXUoOp

What if alien life has been signaling us for centuries, and we’ve missed it? 👽

Astrophysicist Simon Steel and the SETIInstitute are leading the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, scanning space for radio signals from intelligent alien civilizations. But space is noisy, black holes and lightning and cosmic static fill the universe. What if the signals have always been there, and we’re only now learning how to listen?

Tonight, our ESA JUICE
mission will flyby Venus on it's way to Jupiter, following the successful resolution of a spacecraft anomaly that temporarily disrupted communication with Earth.

🔗 https://t.co/NA5ZbVAwMw

Giant worlds beyond the Solar System could be the probe we need to figure out how dark matter manifests in the Universe.

According to a new study, one particular dark matter model could see the mysterious mass accumulating in the cores of giant planets, collapsing into tiny black holes destined to consume the surrounding material over time.

If we can find evidence of the resulting planet-mass object, it might validate the existence of a hefty form of dark matter that doesn't destroy itself.

Ancient droplets found in meteorites reveal the history of planet formation.

About 4.5 billion years ago, Jupiter expanded quickly into the giant planet we see today. Its immense gravity disturbed the paths of countless rocky and icy objects, known as planetesimals, which resembled present-day asteroids and comets.

These disturbances led to violent collisions so energetic that the rock and dust inside the planetesimals melted, producing droplets of molten rock called chondrules. Many of these ancient droplets are still preserved within meteorites that fall to Earth.

In a new breakthrough, scientists from Nagoya University in Japan and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) have uncovered how these chondrules were created and used them to precisely date Jupiter’s formation.

Their research, published in Scientific Reports, reveals that the traits of chondrules, including their size and cooling rates in space, were shaped by the amount of water present in the colliding planetesimals. This discovery not only matches what scientists observe in meteorite samples but also confirms that the birth of planets directly drove the creation of chondrules.

The recent discovery of the third known interstellar object (ISO), 3I/ATLAS, has brought about another round of debate on whether these objects could potentially be technological in origin. Everything from random YouTube channels to tenured Harvard professors have thoughts about whether ISOs might actually be spaceships, but the general consensus of the scientific community is that they aren’t. Overturning that consensus would require a lot of “extraordinary evidence”, and a new paper led by James Davenport at the DiRAC Institute at the University of Washington lays out some of the ways that astronomers could collect that evidence for either the current ISO or any new ones we might find.

That evidence, known in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) circles as “technosignatures”, implies that a technological civilization crafted the objects making their way through our solar system. Technosignature searches don’t just happen for ISOs though - there are branches of SETI that look at everything from Dyson swarms around other stars to trying to find a hidden Monolith like that from 2001: A Space Odyssey somewhere on a moon in our solar system.

Since ISOs are still a relatively new discovery, despite their theorized existence for years, they are at the forefront of technosignature research. And the paper posits four different types of technosignatures astronomers might be able to find on one of them.

In a bold, strategic move for the U.S., acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy announced plans on Aug. 5, 2025, to build a nuclear fission reactor for deployment on the lunar surface in 2030. Doing so would allow the United States to gain a foothold on the moon by the time China plans to land the first taikonaut, what China calls its astronauts, there by 2030.

Apart from the geopolitical importance, there are other reasons why this move is critically important. A source of nuclear energy will be necessary for visiting Mars, because solar energy is weaker there. It could also help establish a lunar base and potentially even a permanent human presence on the moon, as it delivers consistent power through the cold lunar night.

Frozen water is one of the most abundant substances on Earth. It is found in glaciers, on mountain peaks and in polar ice caps. Although it is a well-known material, studying its properties continues to yield fascinating results.

An international study involving ICN2, at the UAB campus, Xi'an Jiaotong University (Xi'an) and Stony Brook University (New York), has shown for the first time that ordinary ice is a flexoelectric material.

In other words, it can generate electricity when subjected to mechanical deformation. This discovery could have significant implications for the development of future technological devices and help to explain natural phenomena such as the formation of lightning in thunderstorms.