Mars is about to join a currently exclusive planetary club. Until today, the only worlds known to have lightning were Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn. It has long been suspected that the Red Planet, with its whirlwinds and global dust storms, could have some lightning phenomena, just like in the deserts of Earth. Now, researchers have finally found evidence supporting that notion.

The evidence is not visual, as we might expect when we picture lightning. Instead, it is audio recordings from the SuperCam microphone aboard the Perseverance rover. And it didn't record thunder either – the recordings are of the electric discharge that happens in the air.

Trying to avoid getting drawn into holiday shopping? Get pulled into #BlackHoleFriday instead!

Get up to speed on some black hole basics here: go.nasa.gov/4iucoVS

Long-term memory emerges from a sequence of molecular programs that sort, stabilize, and reinforce important experiences.

Understanding these timers may allow researchers to bypass damaged brain regions and preserve memories in degenerative conditions.

How the Brain Chooses What to Remember
Every day, the brain takes fleeting experiences, moments of creativity, and emotionally charged events and turns them into lasting memories that help shape who we are and how we make decisions. A major question has been how the brain chooses which pieces of information to preserve and how long each one should remain.

Recent research shows that long-term memories form through a series of molecular timing processes that unfold across different parts of the brain. Using a virtual reality-based behavioral system in mice, scientists found that specific molecular regulators guide memories along distinct paths, either strengthening them into more stable forms or allowing them to fade.

Multiple Brain Regions Orchestrate Long-Term Storage
The study, published today (November 16) in Nature, reveals that several brain regions work together to gradually transform new experiences into more permanent memories. Along the way, various checkpoints help determine which memories are important enough to be reinforced and preserved.

“This is a key revelation because it explains how we adjust the durability of memories,” says Priya Rajasethupathy, head of the Skoler Horbach Family Laboratory of Neural Dynamics and Cognition. “What we choose to remember is a continuously evolving process rather than a one-time flipping of a switch.”

NASA has confirmed that it will contribute to Europe's Martian rover Rosalind Franklin, which is scheduled to launch in 2028 after repeated delays, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday.

The rover aims to be the first on the red planet capable of drilling up to two meters (6.5 feet) below the surface to search for extraterrestrial life.

However, the mission relies on several elements from NASA, which US President Donald Trump has targeted with steep budget cuts since returning to the White House in January.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said he had received "a letter from the NASA administration to confirm the contributions" of the US space agency to the mission.

"That is good news," Aschbacher said on the sidelines of the ESA's ministerial council meeting being held this week in the German city of Bremen.

The mission was originally intended to launch in 2020, but suffered several setbacks.

In 2022, it was suspended after the ESA ended cooperation with Russia—the agency's main partner for the mission—following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

New research warns that Africa's forests, once vital allies in the fight against climate change, have turned from a carbon sink into a carbon source.

A new international study published in Scientific Reports and led by researchers at the National Center for Earth Observation at the Universities of Leicester, Sheffield and Edinburgh reveals that Africa's forests, which have long absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, are now releasing more carbon than they remove.

This alarming shift, which happened after 2010, underscores the urgent need for stronger global action to protect forests, a major focus of the COP30 Climate Summit that concluded last week in Brazil.

How researchers measured forest changes
Using advanced satellite data and machine learning, the researchers tracked more than a decade of changes in aboveground forest biomass, the amount of carbon stored in trees and woody vegetation. They found that while Africa gained carbon between 2007 and 2010, widespread forest loss in tropical rainforests has since tipped the balance.

Between 2010 and 2017, the continent lost approximately 106 billion kilograms of forest biomass per year. That is equivalent to the weight of about 106 million cars. The losses are concentrated in tropical moist broadleaf forests in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and parts of West Africa, driven by deforestation and forest degradation. Gains in savanna regions due to shrub growth have not been enough to offset the losses.

An investigation into why blood doesn't always behave as doctors expect has revealed a super-rare mutation in an extremely uncommon variation of blood.

Testing more than 544,000 blood samples in a hospital in Thailand revealed three people carrying a never-before-seen version of the B(A) phenotype – a genetic quirk estimated to occur in about 0.00055 percent of people, or roughly one in 180,000.

This discovery, says a team led by hematologist Janejira Kittivorapart of Mahidol University in Thailand, suggests that there may be more rare blood variants out there, too subtle for standard testing to detect.

Human blood is categorized into eight main groups based on the sugars and proteins – or lack thereof – stuck all over your red blood cells.

A, B, and AB types are based on the shape of antigens, sugar molecules that can trigger an immune response. O-type blood has no A or B antigens. Meanwhile, rhesus factors are proteins that determine blood compatibility, and are what give your blood its + or - designation.

Climate change conditions turn plastics into more mobile, persistent, and hazardous pollutants. This is done by speeding up plastic breakdown into microplastics—microscopic fragments of plastic—spreading them considerable distances, and increasing exposure and impact within the environment.

This is set to worsen as both plastic manufacturing and climate effects increase. Global annual plastic production rose 200-fold between 1950 and 2023.

A new review published in Frontiers in Science is calling for urgent action to avoid irreversible ecological damage by stemming the tide of microplastics entering the environment. The authors, from Imperial College London, urge eliminating non-essential single-use plastics (which account for 35% of production), limiting virgin plastic production, and creating international standards for making plastics reusable and recyclable.

"Plastic pollution and the climate are co-crises that intensify each other. They also have origins—and solutions—in common," said lead author Prof Frank Kelly, from Imperial's School of Public Health. "We urgently need a coordinated international approach to stop end-of-life plastics from building up in the environment."

A new study in Nature Communications from researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in the Republic of Korea finds that global warming is speeding up the likelihood of multi-year droughts. These prolonged dry periods can push regions toward severe water shortages, putting pressure on drinking water supplies, agriculture, and communities around the world within the next few decades.

To investigate this risk, the team used state-of-the-art climate model simulations to estimate when local water demand will surpass the available supply from rainfall, rivers, and reservoirs. This tipping point is known as the Day Zero Drought (DZD). Recent close calls in Cape Town (South Africa) in 2018 and Chennai (India) in 2019 have already demonstrated how vulnerable cities are to running out of water.

Identifying when and where these thresholds will occur is essential for planning effective water management for both urban and rural regions. According to the study, DZD events are projected to rise rapidly in the coming years, happening far earlier than once expected.

Climate model projections reveal accelerating Day Zero Drought events
The team relied on climate simulations based on the SSP3-7.0 and SSP2-4.5 greenhouse gas scenarios. By examining prolonged rainfall shortages, declines in river flow, and growing water use, the researchers identified clear DZD hotspots across the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and sections of North America. The analysis shows that cities in these regions are especially at risk.

Some creatures, like the hornbill and the mongoose, form unexpectedly close bonds.

Find out why this happens and see the peculiar pair in action in this week’s Surprising Science 🐾🪽

A planet’s habitability is determined by a confluence of many factors. So far, our explorations of potentially habitable worlds beyond our solar system have focused exclusively on their position in the “Goldilocks Zone” of their solar system, where their temperature determines whether or not liquid water can exist on their surface, and, more recently, what their atmospheres are composed of. That’s in part due to the technical limitations of the instruments available to us - even the powerful James Webb Space Telescope is capable only of seeing atmospheres of very large planets nearby. But in the coming decades, we’ll get new tools, like the Habitable Worlds Observatory, that are more specifically tailored to search for those potentially habitable worlds. So what should we use them to look for? A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv by Benjamin Farcy of the University of Maryland and his colleagues, argues that we should look to how a planet formed to understand its chances of harboring life.

To be clear, HWO won’t be able to see into the past - at least not anymore than would be allowed by how far the light from these worlds has to travel to get to us. However, it can glean insights into how the planet was formed based on current measurable values. Dr. Farcy and his co-authors describe four different aspects of a planet that are determined early in its formation that have a major impact on its ability to harbor complex life down the road.

The first major theme is the bulk composition - mainly of the four major elements that make up 93% of terrestrial planets. These are magnesium, iron, silicon, and oxygen. Ultimately, the ratio of these elements determine whether or not the planet has plate tectonics, which are necessary to maintain a relatively stable environment over millions of years. Conveniently, it’s also possible to determine the ratios of these elements in a planet by looking at the ratios in the planet’s host star - they should be equivalent since they were both formed out of the same available matter.

The colors of our atmosphere seen from space! Multiple vibrant layers of green atomic oxygen, orange hydroxyl radicals, and red airglow excited from solar activity.

Over on Reddit, people are once again asking some interesting physics questions with equally intriguing answers. Today is the turn of Redditor gothreepwood101, who asks "if I had a metal pole long enough to reach from the English coast to the French coast. And a person holding it at each end. If one person pulls it would the other end move instantly?"

That's a fun question, and it might seem pretty simple. It's made of metal, right, so if you push or pull on one end the other end must move instantaneously? An instant yank for the French person on the other end? But it's not as simple as you might imagine. If you answered "yes", then congratulations; you have broken a fundamental rule of the universe, affecting another part of the universe (in this case, the French) faster than the speed of light. 

The speed of light, 299,792,458 meters (983,571,056 feet) per second, is the speed limit of the universe. No matter, electromagnetic wave, or "guy with a theory" can travel faster than it.

Imagine designing robots that can maintain themselves on the Moon or Mars. At GITAI, we're making it a reality. This video showcases our rover autonomously changing a tire.

Current open positions 🌙  ➡️ grnh.se/g9o3tnbr8us

As Donald Trump's White House places huge pressure on Ukraine to sign a peace deal, a team of experts has published a new study examining what they describe as a worldwide shift toward "authoritarian peacemaking"—a model of conflict resolution shaped not by international institutions or liberal democracies, but by authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states whose interests lie in control, influence and geopolitical advantage rather than long-term solutions.

The study, set to be published in journal Washington Quarterly, traces how traditional peacemaking—rooted in international law, rights and negotiated compromise—has been eroded over the last two decades. According to the authors, the Iraq War, the post-9/11 security paradigm and growing global competition have weakened the norms that once governed international conflict resolution. This has opened space for powerful states to broker deals that prioritize strategic gain over accountability or the wishes of the affected population, as seen in the Ukraine peace plan drawn up by the U.S. and Russia.

The research draws on the concept of "Revisionist Conflict Management," a framework relying on transactional bargaining, economic incentives and top-down deals that freeze conflicts rather than resolving their causes. The authors argue that these patterns are increasingly visible in conflicts across the Middle East and Africa—and now in Europe too.

The findings have particular resonance for the current efforts to end the war in Ukraine. The proposals floated by the U.S. give greater weight to Russian territorial "realities on the ground," and involve conversations where Ukraine's role is more limited than expected for a state whose sovereignty is at stake. This reflects concerns highlighted in the research—that peace deals in the current climate risk being shaped by external actors, not those living with the consequences.

The study compares this dynamic to earlier conflicts where authoritarian or centralized governments acted as mediators while pursuing their own agendas. In the authors' view, this risks creating "victor's peace" arrangements that halt fighting but entrench dominant states' interests, leaving questions of justice, accountability and democratic legitimacy unresolved.

The researchers note that public opinion in Ukraine remains strongly opposed to ceding territory, and that Ukrainian society continues to insist on a settlement that restores borders and addresses wartime abuses. The tension between these expectations and geopolitical pressure, they argue, is emblematic of the broader global transition their study describes.

"By examining the Ukraine case through this lens, our research offers a wider warning about the international system—as global power becomes more fragmented and traditional norms weaken, the nature of mediation itself is changing. The Ukraine conflict could become a defining example of what peace looks like in a world where authoritarian logic increasingly shapes diplomatic outcomes," said Oliver Richmond, professor in international relations, Peace & Conflict Studies at The University of Manchester.

Domestic cats the world over can trace their ancestry back to North African wildcats that lived around 2,000 years ago. It was from these feral felines that the very first domestic cats were produced, yet their cuteness and companionship were so coveted by humans that within a few decades they had spread to all corners of the Roman Empire.

Previously, it was thought that cats had been domesticated during Neolithic times in the Levant. Support for this theory came from the discovery of a 7,500-year-old burial in Cyprus containing a human and a cat, while mitochondrial DNA from 6,000-year-old felines in Türkiye indicated that early domestic cats may have spread from Anatolia to Europe alongside early agriculturalists.

A research team at Nagoya University in Japan has identified a previously unknown plant tissue that plays a crucial role in forming seeds. This marks the first time in 160 years that scientists have documented a newly recognized plant tissue. The finding opens the door to an entirely new research area and has already shown real-world potential, as the group has used the discovery to boost yields in major crops such as rice. The study appears in the journal Current Biology.

Scientists have known since 2005 that fertilization must occur for the developing seed body, called the hypocotyl, to draw nutrients from the ‘mother’ tissues of the plant. Gaining insight into how plants recognize when fertilization has succeeded is considered important for improving crop productivity during breeding efforts.

A Chance Observation Leads to a Breakthrough
The team, directed by Ryushiro Kasahara and Michitaka Nodaguchi, encountered the new tissue unexpectedly. Kasahara had been staining seeds to observe the buildup of callose, a waxy substance often examined for its role in fertilization, as part of an effort to confirm earlier research.

During this work, he came across something surprising.

“Plants fertilize by the insertion of a pollen tube, so most scientists are only interested in the place where this occurs. However, we found signals on the opposite side too,” he said. “Nobody was looking where I was looking. I remember being surprised, especially when we realized that this signal was particularly strong when fertilization failed.”

Further analysis revealed a distinctive rabbit-shaped tissue structure that functions as a gateway. This structure, named the ‘Kasahara Gateway’ in honor of its discoverer, represents the first new plant tissue identified since the mid-19th century.

Researchers at NYU Langone Health have discovered that a specific form of cell death triggered by the buildup of highly reactive molecules can help slow the growth of lung tumors.

This form of cell death, called ferroptosis, originally developed as a natural way for the body to remove cells experiencing extreme stress. Cancer cells also undergo this stress, yet they have adapted over time by developing defenses that prevent ferroptosis, allowing them to continue multiplying even when they are damaged.

Blocking FSP1 Greatly Reduces Lung Tumor Growth
A study published online November 5 in Nature reported that an experimental approach capable of blocking a protein known as ferroptosis suppressor protein 1 (FSP1) significantly reduced tumor growth in mice with lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Preventing FSP1 from functioning in cancer cells reduced tumor size by up to 80%. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, and LUAD is the most common type among nonsmokers, accounting for about 40% of all cases.

“This first test of a drug that blocks ferroptosis suppression highlights the importance of the process to cancer cell survival and paves the way for a new treatment strategy,” said senior study author Thales Papagiannakopoulos, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.