Spiral, elliptical or neither? 🍩

Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy NGC 2775.

NGC 2775 sports a smooth, featureless centre that is devoid of gas, resembling an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring with patchy star clusters, like a spiral galaxy.

Because we can only view NGC 2775 from one angle, it’s difficult to say for sure.

Which do you think it is? ➡️ esahubble.org/images/potw253…

Human activity has added an average of 40 days to the global wildfire season, fundamentally changing when fires occur around the world. New research from the University of Tasmania, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, shows that more than half of all burned area now happens outside the natural fire season, the period when lightning and dry conditions naturally coincide.

The study analyzed fuel moisture and lightning data across more than 700 ecological regions worldwide, finding that humans have altered wildfire timing in nearly every environment on Earth, from tropical savannas to boreal forests to Mediterranean landscapes.

"Before people began influencing fire, wildfires mostly happened when lightning struck during dry conditions," said lead author Dr. Todd Ellis, Research Associate in Physical Pyrogeography at the University of Tasmania.

"Our study separates natural fire seasons from those driven by people, showing just how much human influence has reshaped when wildfires occur across the globe."

The transformation is most dramatic in tropical grasslands, where people have effectively extended the wildfire season by around three months, with most fires now occurring in this human-driven window.
Importantly, even remote boreal forests and tundra are beginning to experience longer fire seasons, stretching beyond what natural lightning ignitions would allow.

This global shift in wildfire seasonality poses significant ecological risks. Species have evolved over millennia to cope with wildfires occurring during specific seasonal windows. When wildfires happen outside these natural periods, ecosystems face unprecedented stress.

"We're not just seeing more wildfires, and fires of a greater intensity, we're seeing them at times of the year when ecosystems haven't evolved to cope with them," co-author Dr. Grant Williamson explained.

"This temporal mismatch can hamper species recovery and disrupt reproductive processes which are often closely tied to specific seasons, thereby threatening biodiversity in ways we're only beginning to understand."

NASA introduced its newest astronauts Monday, 10 scientists, engineers and test pilots chosen from more than 8,000 applicants to help explore the moon and possibly Mars.

For the first time, there were more women than men in an incoming astronaut class. They included a geologist who worked on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and a SpaceX engineer who's already rocketed into orbit, flying on a billionaire-sponsored mission that featured the world's first private spacewalk last year.

The six women and four men will undergo two years of training before becoming eligible for spaceflight.

Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said one of them could become one of the first to step on Mars. He also stressed that the U.S. will win this second race to land astronauts on the moon.

Research on rare post-mortem brain tissue shows changes in gene activity, offering new insight into the biological basis of depression.

Researchers from McGill University and the Douglas Institute have discovered two distinct types of brain cells that show alterations in individuals with depression.

Their study, published in Nature Genetics, paves the way for potential treatments that directly target these cells while also advancing scientific understanding of depression, a major global health challenge affecting over 264 million people.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to identify what specific brain cell types are affected in depression by mapping gene activity together with mechanisms that regulate the DNA code,” said senior author Dr. Gustavo Turecki, a professor at McGill, clinician-scientist at the Douglas Institute and Canada Research Chair in Major Depressive Disorder and Suicide. “It gives us a much clearer picture of where disruptions are happening, and which cells are involved.”

Rare brain bank enables breakthrough
The team examined post-mortem brain tissue from the Douglas-Bell Canada Brain Bank, one of the rare global resources containing donated samples from individuals with psychiatric conditions.

Using single-cell genomic methods, they analyzed RNA and DNA from thousands of brain cells to determine which cell types functioned differently in depression and which DNA sequences might account for those changes. Their analysis included samples from 59 individuals with depression and 41 without the condition.

Tardigrades — also known as water bears or moss piglets — are pretty adorable. Under a microscope, each one looks a bit like a plump caterpillar, wriggling around on eight legs tipped with dainty clawed feet. But don’t let their cuteness fool you. These salt grain–sized animals are some of the toughest beasts on Earth.

Water bears can brave days in space without air. They can cope with temperatures colder than any ever measured on Earth. They have been known to survive hundreds of times the X-ray radiation that would kill a human. And they’ve even withstood getting blasted out of a gun at more than 1,800 miles per hour. Basically, tardigrades are the ultimate extremophiles.

Why did these wee creatures evolve to be so durable? Some 1,300 species of tardigrades have been found. They thrive in ponds, streams and damp soil and clumps of moss. Many of those places can dry out in the summer. So tardigrades need ways to survive being parched. Adaptations they evolved to survive dehydration may have bestowed tardigrades with the power to survive other harsh conditions.

Alarge asteroid strike on the Moon could have negative consequences for the artificial satellites we now depend on. That being the case, a NASA-led team has looked into the options for preventing Asteroid 2024 YR4 from making such an impact in 2032. Contrary to the usual conclusions that asteroids should be diverted, not destroyed, they think this is a time for a Hollywood-approved demolition event.

When 2024 YR4 was discovered last December, it sparked headlines around the world, given the small possibility it would strike the Earth less than eight years later. As we learned more about its orbit, that chance rose to 3 percent before being downgraded. At an estimated 60 meters (200 feet) wide, this is no dinosaur-killer in size, nor probably speed, but it is large enough to do serious local damage if it struck a populated area, or unleash tsunamis in the ocean.

We now know the chance of a direct hit to Earth is essentially zero, but the chance of 2024 YR4 striking the Moon in seven years is currently 4 percent. While most people have been looking forward to the history-making once-in-5,000-years show we might all get if such an event were to occur, some spoilsports are crying “won’t somebody think of the satellites” and considering options.

An impact this large would inevitably throw up a lot of material, and with no atmosphere to constrain it, vast quantities of tiny particles would escape the low lunar gravity and spread widely. Some of this material would impact Earth’s atmosphere, creating a marvelous meteor shower lasting several days. Most of the rest would expand around the general vicinity of the Earth-Moon system, sometimes colliding later to slightly increase our ongoing meteor count. 

This all sounds great until you consider all the satellites that are vulnerable to being hit by material this size, including the JWST and the International Space Station. In a pre-print paper still undergoing peer review, a team led by Brent Barbee of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has looked into what can be done to minimise the danger.

Stars close to the center of our galaxy dance around what appears to be nothing at all, but is actually a black hole with the mass of 4 million Suns.

Born to climb, these ibex kids, just days old, navigate dizzying cliffs as they follow the herd to the desert's most important resource—water.

A small group of leopard sharks has been seen – and caught on film – engaging in a three-way bout of reproductive hanky-panky in the wild.

It's the first time scientists have documented this mating behavior in the animals, as first one male and then a second mated with a female leopard shark (Stegostoma tigrinum) in quick succession. The stunning observation, recorded from beginning to end, could shed light on the reproductive strategies of this endangered species.

The Trump administration just announced a program of actions to tackle the so-called “autism epidemic”, a term that is disputed by many within the autistic community. As well as seeking Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for a new drug treatment, safety label changes are being pursued for acetaminophen (paracetamol) due to a “potential association” between its use in pregnancy and neurodevelopmental conditions.

They told us way back in April that they would “know” the causes of autism by September. As predicted, the new announcements from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cannot go as far as that, but they do bring forth a suite of “bold actions” that many scientific experts say are not supported by any quality data and that, in short, are going too far, too fast.
...

“Following the science”, however, is the last thing these policies are doing, according to some experts.

“The best available evidence is that paracetamol use in pregnancy is not linked to autism,” Dr Edward Mullins, Clinical Associate Professor at Imperial College London, told the Science Media Centre. “In the absence of any new evidence, the reported press release from the Trump administration claiming it is would appear to be an unsubstantiated theory which is likely to lead to an essential treatment for fever and pain being denied to women in pregnancy without good reason, contrary to US and European medical guidance.”

“The fear mongering will prevent women from accessing the appropriate care during pregnancy,” said Dr Monique Botha, Associate Professor at Durham University. “Further, it risks stigmatising families who have autistic children as having brought it on themselves and reinvigorates the long pattern of maternal shame and blame as we’ve seen re-emerge repeatedly over the last 70 years where we try to pay the fault of autism at the mother’s door one way or another.”

The makers of Tylenol, Kenvue, pushed back strongly as well, telling the BBC that they are “deeply concerned with the health risk this poses for expectant mothers.”

Is life possible—or has it ever been possible—on other planets? The (Origin of) Life Marker Chip (LMCOOL) seeks the answer. This innovative chip is being developed by a Dutch consortium led by TU Delft. UT researcher Jurriaan Huskens and his team are going to make the optical sensor selective for the required biomarkers.

A Dutch-built instrument capable of detecting traces of life on Saturn's moon Enceladus—that is the ultimate dream of TU Delft researcher Niels Ligterink. Over the coming years, he will work with around thirty colleagues from various Dutch companies and knowledge institutes on the (Origin of) Life Marker Chip (LMCOOL).
The invention is best described as a tiny yet complete laboratory in the form of a computer chip. It is "pre-programmed" to identify specific molecules in liquids; molecules that could point to life, such as amino acids.

"You can best compare our chip to a keyhole, with the molecule we are searching for as the key," explains Ligterink, "Because only one key fits in the keyhole, we can be almost 100% certain that we have captured the molecule we are looking for when we detect something with our chip. This makes our lab-on-a-chip revolutionary."

UT researcher Huskens adds, "An important step forward is that we are going to selectively recognize a mirror image of an amino acid. After all, living organisms make only one of the mirror images, and so this recognition is essential to determine whether the amino acid comes from a life process or not."

A lighter way to search for life
The idea for the Life Marker Chip (LMC) was first proposed more than twenty years ago for ESA's ExoMars mission. Although ESA eventually selected other instruments for that mission, the consortium partners remained enthusiastic about the concept. With financial support from the NSO Instruments Program, the instrument is now being further developed so that it can be used on a range of future planetary missions.

One of the greatest advantages of the new LMCOOL is its compact size and low weight. Current life-detection instruments on Mars are the size of a microwave oven and weigh between ten and twenty kilos. By contrast, LMCOOL will be about the size of a soft drink can and weighs only 700 grams. In space exploration, where every kilogram of launch mass matters, the Dutch chip offers a lightweight yet high-performance alternative.

The new find was possibly 23 feet (7 meters) long and hailed from a mysterious group of dinosaurs called megaraptorans. They prowled across what's now South America, Australia and parts of Asia, splitting off into different species over millions of years.

Megaraptorans were known for their stretched-out skulls and "huge and very powerful claws," said Lucio Ibiricu with the Patagonian Institute of Geology and Paleontology, who was part of the discovery team.

But it's not yet clear how these creatures hunted and where they fall on the evolutionary timeline—mainly because the fossils recovered so far were incomplete.

In a new study, researchers said they uncovered part of a skull as well as arm, leg and tail bones from the Lago Colhué Huapi rock formation in Patagonia. They noticed unique features in the bones that made them realize this could be a new species.

This latest member of the megaraptoran clan named Joaquinraptor casali "fills a major gap by providing one of the most complete skeletons yet," Federico Agnolin with the Argentine Museum of Natural Science Bernardino Rivadavia said in an email.

Our vision for the future of space transportation.
Transportation hubs in orbit around our planet will act as airports and train stations on Earth, offering refilling and maintenance services for spacecraft en route to other destinations and platforms.

The human brain is a hefty thing. Weighing well over a kilo, its an electrified lump that’s been compared by neuroscientists to the texture of silken tofu, and yet within its innumerous connections is coded everything that we are. 

That wasn’t always the case, however. In fact, among the earliest lifeforms, eyes actually evolved before the brain. It makes you wonder: How exactly did we get to the human brain? And why are we so much more cognitively advanced than other mammals?

I wanted to find out, and with his latest series Secrets of the Brain set to air on BBC Two on September 29, Professor Jim Al-Khalili was an obvious person to ask. His mission? To dive into the history of the brain, and the pivotal changes that led to humans and our close relatives becoming so advanced at things like problem-solving and socializing.

Survival of the brainiest
The search for those answers led to Prof Al-Khalili, highly respected science communicator that he is, hanging from a tree in a less-than-comfy harness for several hours. It might not have been the most relaxing way to demonstrate how hard the primate brain had to work to be able to forage in the treetops while keeping an eye out for predators, but it's a good reminder of what a lot of our intelligence is attributable to: struggle.

“Like a lot of people, I assumed the human brain evolved because we're smart and it’s doing all this data processing and analysing because we develop language, and because we have opposable thumbs,” Al-Khalili told IFLScience. “What I hadn't appreciated was that this evolution, it's a story that is continuous.”

Our ancestors had to cope with challenges, to survive, to find food, and that required more brain power.
- Professor Jim Al-Khalili

“It wasn’t that animals were stupid and then humans turned up and became very smart. There were all these steps along the way, and a lot of them are just completely fortuitous.”

“You have mass extinctions, and then the organisms, the creatures, the animals that are left behind, they have to cope. Our ancestors had to cope with challenges, to survive, to find food, and that required more brain power.”

“So, the brain is growing because these creatures need to be able to adapt to their environments, and because this is evolution, those that brains don't grow, don't survive. It's only the smart ones that survived, but they developed their smartness because they needed to, it wasn’t that they survived because they were already smart.”

#PPOD: Frosty Martian Dunes ❄️

These Martian dunes in Mars' northern hemisphere were captured from above by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Sept. 8, 2022. Scientists use such images to track the amount of frost that settles on the landforms and then disappears as the weather warms in spring.

Martian dunes migrate just like dunes on Earth, with wind blowing away sand on one side of the dune and building up on another. Recent research has shown that winter frost stops the movement of sand grains, locking the dunes in place until the spring thaw.

Credit: NASA NASAJPL Caltech UArizona

A bane of farmers' existence, it's estimated that plant-eating pests are responsible for the loss of up to 40% of pre-harvest yields globally. But a new generation of crop treatments that target only "bad" bugs could mean big gains for the Canadian agriculture sector, improving pest management tools in an industry that in 2024 generated over $142 billion.

Dr. Justin Pahara and his team at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's (AAFC) Lethbridge Research and Development Center are designing new screening methods to learn whether current crop treatments are effective. Their end goal, however, is to develop a method for using nanotechnology to deliver specific chemicals into pests based on their unique DNA—without harming helpful insects.

For example, through methods developed and tested at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, the researchers found that lygus bugs contain regions of enriched minerals pointing to certain proteins that could one day be targeted with tailored agents to prevent them from eating crops. The lygus bug is a common agriculture pest that feeds on many crops, including canola. Pahara and his team's innovative methods are published in the Canadian Journal of Chemistry.

"We all need food, and if farmers cannot grow their products efficiently and make a living out of it, it's a problem," says Pahara. "We need new tools for pest management. Insects are becoming more tolerant to chemicals in the same way antibiotic resistance works in humans."
Developing targeted pest treatments would also make "carpet bombing" insects with harmful pesticides a thing of the past.

After multiple delays, the first crewed Artemis flight around the moon could be less than 20 weeks away, NASA officials said Tuesday, putting the space program one step closer to returning to the moon itself in its "second space race" with China.

The Artemis II mission, which would be the first crewed spaceflight to exit low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972, had already been pushed back several times after its original launch target of 2024, with the most recent delay aiming for "no later than" April 2026. But with pieces falling into place, it could launch as early as Feb. 5, NASA officials said during a mission update from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We want to emphasize that safety is our top priority, and so as we work through these operational preparations, as we finish stacking the rocket, we're continuing to assess to make sure that we do things in a safe way," said Lakiesha Hawkins, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

Monthly launch windows, which take into account the required proximity of the Earth and moon, would last four to eight days. Most of the February launch window attempts would be in the evening.

"As we get closer, we'll be able to more clearly communicate what those periods could be," Hawkins said.
Artemis II is planned to be a 10-day flight to take NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a trip out past the moon, but without landing.

"Let me emphasize that this is a test flight, and so the activities that we do together, we are going to learn from them," Hawkins said. "While Artemis I was a great success, there are new systems and new capabilities that we will be demonstrating on Artemis II, including the life support systems, the display capabilities, software, etc."

It's a test mission that would set up Artemis III, currently on NASA's schedule for summer 2027, to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program.

Artemis I flew in late 2022, sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft launching atop the first flight of the Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center.
But damage to Orion's heat shield was among the reasons mission managers pushed back the follow-up flight, resulting in no Artemis flights going on during the three years since the first launch.
NASA and Lockheed Martin worked to understand the damage, but decided to stick with the existing heat shield for Artemis II. They instead adjusted the planned reentry path to avoid what teams determined was the cause of the damage.

"I have the utmost in confidence in the engineering expertise that went into the testing and the flight rationale that we are going to be able to bring the Artemis II flight crew home safely at the end of the mission," said NASA's Rick Henfling, the lead Artemis II entry flight director.

The cultivation of rice—the staple grain for more than 3.5 billion people around the world—comes with extremely high environmental, climate and economic costs.

This may be about to change, thanks to new research led by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and China's Jiangnan University. They have shown that nanoscale applications of the element selenium can decrease the amount of fertilizer necessary for rice cultivation while sustaining yields, boosting nutrition, enhancing the soil's microbial diversity and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they demonstrate for the first time that such nanoscale applications work in real-world conditions.

"The Green Revolution massively boosted agriculture output during the middle of the last century," says Baoshan Xing, University Distinguished Professor of Environmental and Soil Chemistry, director of UMass's Stockbridge School of Agriculture, and co-senior author of the new research. "But that revolution is running out of steam. We need to figure out a way to fix it and make it work."

Part of what made the Green Revolution so revolutionary was the invention of synthetic, nitrogen-heavy fertilizers that could keep agricultural yields high. But they're expensive to make, they create an enormous amount of carbon dioxide, and much of the fertilizer washes away.

Most crops only use about 40–60% of the nitrogen applied to them, a measurement known as nitrogen use efficiency, or NUE, and the NUE of rice can be as low as 30%—which means that 70% of what a farmer puts on their fields washes away into streams, lakes and the oceans, causing eutrophication, dead zones and a host of other environmental problems. It also means that 70% of the cost of the fertilizer is likewise wasted.

Furthermore, when nitrogen is applied to soils, it interacts with the soil's incredibly complex chemistry and microbes, and ultimately leads to vastly increased amounts of methane, ammonia and nitrous oxide—all of which contribute to global warming. Furthermore, synthesizing fertilizer itself is a greenhouse-gas-heavy enterprise.

Nat Geo photographer Babak Tafreshi (BabakTafreshi) and NASA astronaut Don Pettit (astro Pettit) are photographing the same places from radically different POVs—the ground and the International Space Station—creating a new way of seeing the world: on.natgeo.com/4pFm8zQ