The animals that call the Arctic home are fighting to survive as the ice disappears.

Scientists are constantly searching for new clues about the hidden forces that may exist beyond the known laws of physics. One promising area of research focuses on exotic boson interactions, hypothetical effects that could reveal previously unknown particles or forces.

These interactions are predicted to take 16 possible forms, most of which depend on the spins of particles, with some also linked to their velocity. When they occur, they may cause extremely small changes in atomic energy levels, producing faint pseudomagnetic fields.

Detecting these subtle signals requires incredibly sensitive instruments. The SQUIRE project aims to take this challenge into space by placing quantum spin sensors aboard the China Space Station. These sensors are designed to detect pseudomagnetic fields that might arise from interactions between their own spins and Earth’s geoelectrons.

By combining the precision of quantum measurement with the unique conditions of space, SQUIRE can overcome a major limitation of ground-based experiments: increasing both relative motion and the number of polarized spins at the same time.

Researchers from Stockholm University have—for the first time ever—managed to successfully isolate and sequence RNA molecules from Ice Age woolly mammoths. These RNA sequences are the oldest ever recovered and come from mammoth tissue preserved in the Siberian permafrost for nearly 40,000 years.

The study, published in the journal Cell, shows that not only DNA and proteins, but also RNA, can be preserved for very long periods of time, and provide new insights into the biology of species that have long since become extinct.

"With RNA, we can obtain direct evidence of which genes are 'turned on," offering a glimpse into the final moments of life of a mammoth that walked the Earth during the last Ice Age. This is information that cannot be obtained from DNA alone," says Emilio Mármol, lead author of the study and formerly a postdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University.

Most poverty-fighting efforts focus on meeting basic material needs, such as food and shelter. But this overlooks the psychological and cultural factors that shape how people take action in their lives.

University of Michigan researchers found that psychosocial programs designed to support women's agency in Niger, West Africa, were effective in promoting women's economic empowerment when grounded in local values—such as social harmony, respectfulness and collective progress—but not a Western-style program grounded in individual ambition.

The new study highlights how culturally attuned approaches to empowerment can offer a powerful pathway for reducing global poverty. The research, published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, introduces a "culturally wise" approach: psychosocial programs that honor diverse worldviews and community values.

"Fighting poverty may require cultural wisdom, not just cash," said study lead author Catherine Thomas, U-M assistant professor of psychology and organizational studies.

Nestled on a hillside in Guangdong Province near Zhaoqing City, the Jinlin crater managed to hide in plain sight until researchers identified it as an impact structure. Only about 200 confirmed impact craters exist worldwide, making each discovery scientifically valuable. But this one stands out for its exceptional size and youth.

The crater formed during the Holocene epoch when the last ice age ended roughly 11,700 years ago. Based on measurements of nearby soil erosion, researchers estimate it was carved sometime during the early to mid Holocene. With a diameter between 820 and 900 metres and a depth of 90 metres, it dwarfs Russia's 300 metre Macha crater, previously the largest known Holocene impact structure.

Finding such a massive, well preserved crater is surprising given the region's climate. Guangdong Province experiences regular monsoons, heavy rainfall, and high humidity precisely the conditions that accelerate erosion and should have long ago obliterated any visible crater. Yet the Jinlin crater remains remarkably intact, preserved within thick layers of weathered granite that protected its structure from the elements.

A large new review finds that adults with lower vitamin D levels are more likely to have depression, especially when 25-hydroxy-vitamin D [25(OH)D] falls at or below 30 nmol/L. The work, published in Biomolecules and Biomedicine, also makes clear that this pattern does not yet prove that low vitamin D causes depression.

Depression affects about 5% of adults worldwide and is expected to become the leading cause of disease burden by 2030. Standard antidepressants help many people but, on average, provide only “small to moderate” effects, which has kept interest high in safe, modifiable factors like vitamin D.

From a biological perspective, the connection makes sense. Vitamin D receptors are abundant in mood-relevant brain regions, including the hypothalamus and pons. Its active form, 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D, supports healthy brain signaling, calms neuro-inflammation, limits oxidative stress, and helps keep intracellular calcium in balance, all pathways that have long been tied to depression.

What's so special about comet 3I/ATLAS? It's only the third object we’ve ever found passing through our solar system from elsewhere in the galaxy. NASA's fleet of spacecraft is making coordinated observations of the comet. Some of what they've seen so far: go.nasa.gov/3IATLAS

🌌 All images, old and new, are in the comments

You can track the comet yourself anytime using our "Eyes on the Solar System" online experience, which simulates the current, past, and future positions of planetary objects and spacecraft using real NASA data: eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-sys…

The kind of view that makes you stop scrolling for a moment. ✨

Captured in a timelapse from the International Space Station, this sequence follows Earth as auroras ripple beneath the station and sunrise slowly edges over the planet’s curve. What begins as a quiet glow on the horizon becomes a full sweep of daylight in seconds, a transition you can only witness from orbit 250 miles above our world.

For decades, scientists have targeted the sticky protein clumps that amass in Alzheimer's brains as a potential way of treating the disease, but they may have been off the mark.

A new study shows that clearing away the amyloid-beta clumps doesn't appear to repair key brain functions.

In particular, it doesn't restore the brain's mechanisms for clearing out waste, known as the glymphatic system. This system is known to be impaired in people with Alzheimer's, and would usually help with getting rid of excess amyloid-beta plaques, via waves of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

The study comes from researchers at the Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan, who tested the new Alzheimer's drug lecanemab on 13 people with the disease. Magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI) scans were used to look at the effects on the brain.

"Even when amyloid-beta is reduced by lecanemab, impairment of the glymphatic system may not recover within the short-term," says medical researcher Tatsushi Oura, of Osaka Metropolitan University.

Mutations in a gene associated with Crohn's disease have been found to rob critical immune cells of their ability to switch modes, causing them to overreact and trigger inflammation.

Variations in the NOD2 gene have been linked to Crohn's in previous studies, yet their exact role in the disease's pathology has long been a mystery.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego used machine learning techniques to identify patterns in gene activity of immune cells in the gut.

Experiments on lab-grown cells and samples from both healthy guts and digestive tracts with a form of Crohn's called inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) revealed that the mutations interfere with typical protective mechanisms that allow NOD2 proteins to guard against IBD.

Tracking the behavior of immune cells called macrophages through the expression of their genes, the researchers discerned which cells helped the gut stay healthy and which became inflammatory and caused damage.

"The gut is a battlefield, and macrophages are the peacekeepers," says UC San Diego Gajanan Katkar. "For the first time, AI has allowed us to clearly define and track the players on two opposing teams."

The rapid rise of ChatGPT and other generative AI systems has disrupted education, transforming how students learn and study.

Students everywhere have turned to chatbots to help with their homework, but artificial intelligence's capabilities have blurred the lines about what it should—and shouldn't—be used for.

The technology's widespread adoption in many other parts of life also adds to the confusion about what constitutes academic dishonesty.

Here are some do's and don'ts on using AI for schoolwork...

☄️ 40 000 near-Earth asteroids discovered!

Thankfully, none of them are cause for concern for the foreseeable future, but ESA's planetary defence teams are keeping a watchful eye on the skies.

esa.int/Space_Safety/P…

Over the course of billions of years, the universe has steadily been evolving. Thanks to the expansion of the universe, we are able to "see" back in time to watch that evolution, almost from the beginning. But every once in a while we see something that doesn't fit into our current understanding of how the universe should operate.

That's the case for a galaxy described in a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by Ph.D. student Sijia Cai of Tsinghua University's Department of Astronomy and their colleagues. They found a galaxy formed around 11 billion years ago that appears to be "metal-free," indicating that it might contain a set of elusive first generation (Pop III) stars.

Before we get into the discovery itself, some context is necessary. Population III (Pop III) stars are considered to be the first generation of stars that formed early in the universe's history. Importantly, they have essentially no "metal," which in cosmological terms means any element other than helium and hydrogen. Since those heavier elements can only be formed in stars themselves (or in the supernovae they create), by definition the first generation of stars can't contain them.

Cosmologists have been searching for examples of these Pop III stars for decades, but so far have been unable to find them. Typically, they search a time of the universe's history known as the Epoch of Reionization, which took place up to 1 billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe was very young and we believe the first stars themselves were starting to form.

So imagine the author's surprise when they found a galaxy that appeared about 2 billion years later than the Epoch of Reionization. By that point, plenty of stars should have lived and died, with their remnants "infecting" any nearby gas and dust clouds, or other stars themselves, with the metal they created. That was the theory at least.

But, using data gathered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and the Subaru Telescope, the authors identified a galaxy they called MPG-CR3 (or CR3 for short). The spectral signature of this galaxy was unique among all other galaxies of that era. It had very clean hydrogen and helium lines, and, notably, almost a complete lack of "metals" like oxygen in its spectral signature. In fact, the upper limit of the metallicity of the stars in the galaxy puts them at .7% of the metallicity of our sun.

Even more interestingly, the galaxy itself only appears to be about 2 million years old—making it relatively young by galactic standards. We are able to see it at such a young age, despite it being formed billions of years ago, because of the expansion of space-time. CR3 also appears to be relatively "dust-free," and have relatively small stars, especially for such an ancient galaxy. Most galaxies during Cosmic Noon have supermassive stars compared to our own.

Despite intense UV radiation and temperature swings, most spores remained viable when returned to Earth. Their protective casing acts as a natural shield, enabling resilience even scientists didn’t expect. The results open doors to using hardy plants for future off-world agriculture.

Moss Resilience From Earth to Space
Mosses are known for their ability to flourish in some of the harshest locations on the planet, from high mountain ranges like the Himalayas to the scorching terrain of Death Valley, as well as the frozen Antarctic tundra and even the cooling surfaces of active volcanoes. Their remarkable toughness inspired researchers to send moss sporophytes, which are reproductive structures that contain spores, into what may be the most inhospitable environment of all: outer space. The study, published in iScience today (November 20), reported that more than 80% of the spores endured 9 months outside the International Space Station (ISS) and returned to Earth still able to reproduce. This marks the first documented instance of an early land plant surviving long-term direct exposure to space.

“Most living organisms, including humans, cannot survive even briefly in the vacuum of space,” says lead author Tomomichi Fujita of Hokkaido University. “However, the moss spores retained their vitality after nine months of direct exposure. This provides striking evidence that the life that has evolved on Earth possesses, at the cellular level, intrinsic mechanisms to endure the conditions of space.”

Fujita first began considering the idea of testing moss in space while examining plant evolution and development. Mosses seemed exceptionally capable of settling in places that challenge most forms of life. “I began to wonder: could this small yet remarkably robust plant also survive in space?”

🌙 Argonaut's lunar lander family grows.
🚀 Starting in 2030, esa's Argonaut will deliver vital cargo to the Moon's surface.
🤝 Meet the partners getting us there 🔗 esa.int/Science_Explor…
🇮🇹🇫🇷🇬🇧🇩🇪 Thales Alenia S, OHB SE, Nammo