The Dragonfly mission is flying through milestones! Recent thermal and environmental testing shows how the rotorcraft will survive and navigate Titan’s skies. This bold mission will explore one of our solar system’s most intriguing worlds. https://t.co/ctPlSEzMyS

The greatest challenge facing astrobiologists is that there is only one planet known to us that has life. Of all the bodies of the Solar System, only Earth has a dense atmosphere, liquid water on its surface, and the organic chemistry that supports life.

However, these conditions did not exist billions of years ago when Earth was still young. While the nebula from which the planets formed was rich in volatile elements, the high temperatures in the inner Solar System largely prevented them from condensing, leaving them mostly in a gaseous state.

As a result, these elements were not incorporated into the solid rocky materials from which the inner planets formed. Only celestial bodies that formed farther from the Sun retained the substances essential to life, which raises questions about how and when they were introduced to Earth.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Bern showed for the first time how the chemical composition of primordial Earth was complete three million years after it formed (ca. 4.5 billion years ago).

Their results imply that the ingredients for life (water, carbon compounds, sulfur, etc.) were introduced later, likely by an impact.

Starting next month, four volunteers will spend a year inside a 3D-printed habitat at NASA Johnson to help us prepare for future missions to Mars.

Meet the members of our new CHAPEA crew: https://t.co/BMnXQaWq1O

The ocean is filled with life, yet much of it remains hidden unless observed at very close range. Water acts like a natural veil, bending and scattering light while also dimming it as it moves through the dense medium and reflects off countless suspended particles. Because of this, accurately capturing the true colors of underwater objects is extremely difficult without close-up imaging.

Researchers at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have created an image-analysis system that removes many of the ocean’s optical distortions. The tool produces visuals of underwater scenes that appear as though the water has been removed, restoring their natural colors. To achieve this, the team combined the color-correction tool with a computational model that transforms images into a three-dimensional underwater “world” that can be explored virtually.

The team named the tool “SeaSplat,” drawing inspiration from both its underwater focus and the technique of 3D Gaussian splatting (3DGS). This method stitches multiple images together to form a complete 3D representation of a scene, which can then be examined in detail from any viewpoint.

“With SeaSplat, it can model explicitly what the water is doing, and as a result, it can in some ways remove the water, and produces better 3D models of an underwater scene,” says MIT graduate student Daniel Yang.

On Wednesday, Sept. 10 at 11am EDT, NASA will host a media teleconference with Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy and experts from the Mars Perseverance mission to discuss the analysis of a rock sampled by the rover.

Set a reminder:
https://www.youtube.com/live/-StZggK4hhA

🌙 A blood moon from the edge of the world 🇦🇶
🌒 A few nights ago, around 85% of Earth could see a total lunar eclipse - including the crew of Concordia station in Antarctica, a place more remote than the Space Station.
📸: esa /IPEV/PNRA/DC21-J. Lacrampe, sivrupanin

A landmark federally funded clinical trial has provided the first real evidence that doctors can pinpoint breast cancer survivors at higher risk of relapse by detecting dormant cancer cells, and that these hidden cells can be successfully treated using already available drugs. The work, led by researchers at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, appears in the journal Nature Medicine.

Although survival rates for breast cancer continue to improve thanks to better screening and therapies, the disease remains incurable once it comes back after initial treatment. About 30 percent of women and men experience a relapse, leaving them dependent on ongoing treatment that cannot completely remove the cancer. Some forms, such as triple negative and HER2+, often reappear within a few years, while ER+ cases can resurface even decades later. Until now, doctors had no way to identify which survivors carried dormant cells that fuel recurrence or to step in with a therapy that could prevent it.

One of the first parts of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease is the entorhinal cortex — a region that plays a big role in memory, spatial navigation, and the brain’s internal mapping system.

With support from the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases Research Award Fund (ARDRAF), Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC scientists Sharon Swanger and Shannon Farris are working to understand why this area is especially vulnerable.

A large study of more than 5 million women over 30 years has suggested that CT scans before conception could increase the risk of pregnancy loss and congenital anomalies.

As concerning as the results seem, there are a lot of caveats to consider.

This observational study was conducted in Ontario, Canada, between 1992 and 2023, involving 5,142,339 pregnancies that resulted in 3,451,968 live births. Generally, rates of spontaneous pregnancy loss and congenital anomalies were found to increase in patients who had more CT scans prior to conception.

Compared to patients who had no CT scans, the risk of pregnancy loss increased by 8 percent for those who had 1 scan, 14 percent for 2 scans, and 19 percent for 3 or more scans. The risk of congenital anomalies increased by 6 percent for 1 scan, 11 percent for 2 scans, and 15 percent for 3 or more scans.

That sounds alarming, but extra context is important.

First, the increase itself is rather small: If, for example, your baseline risk is 10 percent, and it increases by 19 percent after 3 scans, the new risk is 11.9 percent.

Secondly, the study shows a correlation but not necessarily causation, and other factors are almost certainly at play. For instance, people don't tend to require CT scans for trivial reasons – the reason they're getting checked out could be a bigger driver of problems than the scan itself.

Space changes you. It strengthens some muscles, weakens others, shifts fluids within your body, and realigns your sense of balance. NASA's Human Research Program works to understand—and sometimes even counter—those changes so astronauts can thrive on future deep space missions.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station work out roughly two hours a day to protect bone density, muscle strength and the cardiovascular system, but the longer they are in microgravity, the harder it can be for the brain and body to readapt to gravity's pull. After months in orbit, returning astronauts often describe Earth as heavy, loud, and strangely still. Some reacclimate within days, while other astronauts take longer to fully recover.

Strange nodules of unusual minerals found on speckled rocks on Mars have offered more tantalizing clues that ancient life may have once thrived on the now-dead planet, NASA says.

NASA's Perseverance rover found one such arrow-shaped rock, nicknamed Cheyava Falls, in 2024 along the northern bank of Neretva Vallis, the dried-up remnants of an ancient river that once rushed into Mars' Jezero crater.

An initial analysis of the rock, which appeared in a lake bed formation known as Bright Angel, revealed it was crammed with organic compounds, had evidence that water once flowed through it, and contained flecks of leopard-like spots from chemical reactions that ancient microbes could have used for energy.

These features may result from non-biological processes occurring over millions of years. But now, in a new study published Sept. 10 in the journal Nature, NASA scientists have announced intriguing details about additional rock samples found at two nearby sites — and they say these clues bolster the case for past life on Mars.

"After a year of review, they have come back and they said, listen, we can't find another explanation," Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy, said during a news briefing following the announcement. "So this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we've ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting."

How well do we understand the Universe if we struggle to understand its most energetic events? This question can trigger a wide-ranging philosophical or even epistemological discussion. It's the kind of question that can bring the Universe's most mysterious incidents into the foreground of busy lives.

While the Big Bang is, without a doubt, the most energy-dense event in the Universe's history, there are other energetic events that lack clear causes. Scientists have a pretty clear theoretical framework for the Big Bang, but when it comes to Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB), our understanding of them is lacking. Unlike the Big Bang, which happened more than 13 billion years ago, GRBs are happening right now, yet scientists don't have a clear understanding of their underlying physics.

Usually in science, discovering more examples of a class of objects leads to greater understanding. However, that may not be the case when it comes to the most recently detected GRB. It's unlike any previous GRB that scientists have encountered.

The new GRB is called GRB 250702B and it was discovered on July 2nd, when the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope detected it and sent out an alert. But this detection was different. Rather than a single burst, there were three separate bursts over a nearly day-long period.

GRBs are extremely energetic explosions, the most energetic in the Universe, and they usually last only milliseconds, or sometimes several minutes. They're likely caused by massive stellar explosions or by supermassive black holes tearing huge stars apart. But this GRB's multiple bursts, that span almost an entire day, set it apart from other GRBs. In a press release, Martin-Carrillo said that the GRB is "unlike any other seen in 50-years of GRB observations." Lead author Levan also pointed out how unusual this GRB is. "This is 100-1000 times longer than most GRBs,” he said.

Makemake, also known as 2005 FY9 and (136472), was discovered in 2005 by a team of astronomers from the California Institute of Technology led by Mike Brown.
This dwarf planet is located in a region beyond Neptune that is populated with small Solar System bodies.

It has a radius of approximately 715 km (444 miles) — just slightly smaller and dimmer than Pluto.

It takes about 305 Earth years for this dwarf planet to make one trip around the Sun.

Previously observed stellar occultations suggested that Makemake lacked a substantial global atmosphere, though a thin one could not be ruled out.

Meanwhile, infrared data of the dwarf planet hinted at puzzling thermal anomalies and unusual characteristics of its methane ice, which raised the possibility of localized hot spots across its surface and potential outgassing.

“Makemake is one of the largest and brightest icy worlds beyond Neptune, and its surface is dominated by frozen methane,” said Dr. Silvia Protopapa, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute.

“Webb revealed that methane is also present in the gas phase above the surface, a finding that makes Makemake even more fascinating.”
“It shows that Makemake is not an inactive remnant of the outer Solar System, but a dynamic body where methane ice is still evolving.”

The observed methane spectral emission is interpreted as solar-excited fluorescence, which is the re-emission of sunlight absorbed by methane molecules.
According to the team, this could indicate either a tenuous atmosphere in equilibrium with surface ices — similar to Pluto — or more transient activity, such as cometary-like sublimation or cryovolcanic plumes.

Repetition has a strange relationship with the mind. Take the experience of déjà vu, when we wrongly believe we have experienced a novel situation in the past – leaving us with an spooky sense of pastness.

But we have discovered that déjà vu is actually a window into the workings of our memory system.

Our research found that the phenomenon arises when the part of the brain which detects familiarity de-synchronises with reality. Déjà vu is the signal which alerts you to this weirdness: it is a type of "fact checking" for the memory system.

But repetition can do something even more uncanny and unusual.

The opposite of déjà vu is "jamais vu", when something you know to be familiar feels unreal or novel in some way. In our recent research, which has won an Ig Nobel award for literature, we investigated the mechanism behind the phenomenon.

Jamais vu may involve looking at a familiar face and finding it suddenly unusual or unknown. Musicians have it momentarily – losing their way in a very familiar passage of music. You may have had it going to a familiar place and becoming disorientated or seeing it with "new eyes".

It's an experience which is even rarer than déjà vu and perhaps even more unusual and unsettling. When you ask people to describe it in questionnaires about experiences in daily life they give accounts like: "While writing in my exams, I write a word correctly like 'appetite' but I keep looking at the word over and over again because I have second thoughts that it might be wrong."