Europe's 'dark universe' Euclid spacecraft ready for July 1 SpaceX launch - Space.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — Europe's dark universe hunter is ready to leave its home planet.

Euclid, a dark matter and dark energy mission, is set to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station here tomorrow (July 1) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Launch is scheduled for July 1 at 11:11 a.m. EDT (1511 GMT).  A live webcast from NASA Television will be carried here at Space.com for free starting at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT).

After liftoff, Euclid will spend about a month journeying to the distant Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, on the opposite side of the sun to us and about 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. After another seven months of commissioning, the probe will spend six years studying the dark universe, gathering data that will shed light on the evolution of galaxies, the expansion of the universe and other physical phenomena.

"This is 15 years of people's lives," Carole Mundell, the European Space Agency's (ESA) director of science, said during a prelaunch briefing on June 23. "There were two teams that originally proposed missions, one to study dark energy and one to study dark matter. Both were incredibly challenging, but we thought, 'Well, that's not hard enough. Let's put them both together on a single spacecraft and do the impossible.' "

Related: James Webb Space Telescope will help Euclid spacecraft investigate dark energy and dark matter

Dark matter is believed to make up most of the material universe, but we can only see it through its gravitational effects. Dark energy is the force believed to be pushing along the accelerating expansion of the universe. Euclid aims to bring sharper eyes to the sky than ever before to try to demystify dark matter and dark energy.

As Mundell noted, the 1.4 billion-euro ($1.5 billion USD) Euclid was originally split among two mission concepts proposed to ESA in 2007: Dune (Dark Universe Explorer) and Space (Spectroscopic All Sky Cosmic Explorer). Euclid, selected in 2011, forges the complementary studies of these proposals to examine dark matter and dark energy across time and space.

Euclid will include two complementary experiments. The first examines lensing — the "precise detail, the shapes of galaxies ... that goes back to 10 billion light-years," said Gaitee Hussain, head of ESA's science division, during the same briefing. The second study will scrutinize the redshifting of galaxies, or the light of receding galaxies being stretched into the red parts of the wavelength spectrum.

The images by Euclid will be four times sharper than equivalent ground surveys looking at large swaths of the sky, Hussain added. "That also requires really working hard on the technology to get the most out of the instrumentation we possibly can," Hussain said.

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Euclid will carry out this work using two instruments. One will focus on visible light, whereas the other is optimized for infrared (heat) wavelengths.

Euclid is also complementary to other missions with ESA involvement that look at cosmic time, such as Europe's Gaia, which tracks the location of more than a billion objects in space, and the NASA-led James Webb Space Telescope, which is peering at some of the universe's first-ever stars and galaxies, among other tasks.

The forecast for launch on Saturday appears excellent. For the early morning before 8 a.m. local (the longest-range data available in the 24-hour forecast), Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will have clear skies and no chance of rain or lightning, with light winds of just five knots, according to the forecast from the U.S. Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45.

Elizabeth Howell is in Florida to cover Euclid's launch under co-sponsorship by Canadian Geographic magazine and Canada's University of Waterloo. Space.com has independent control of its news coverage. 

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Saturns rings steal the show in new image from Webb telescope - Ars Technica

Enlarge / Saturn stars in this near-infrared image taken June 25 by the James Webb Space Telescope.

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The James Webb Space Telescope has observed Saturn for the first time, completing a family portrait of the Solar System’s ringed planets nearly a year after the mission’s first jaw-dropping image release.

Webb’s near-infrared camera took the picture of Saturn on June 25. Scientists added orange color to the monochrome picture to produce the image released Friday.

The picture shows Saturn’s iconic icy rings shining around the disk of the gas giant, which appears much darker in near-infrared due to the absorption of sunlight by methane particles suspended high in the planet’s atmosphere.

Webb pointed its 21.3-foot (6.5-meter) gold-coated mirror toward Saturn as part of an observing program to test the telescope’s ability to detect faint moons. The observations included several deep exposures of Saturn that astronomers are still analyzing to probe the planet’s fainter rings and search for undiscovered moons.

There are 146 known moons in orbit around Saturn, ranging in size from larger than the planet Mercury to the size of a sports arena, more than any other planet in the solar system, according to NASA.

“Any newly discovered moons could help scientists put together a more complete picture of the current system of Saturn, as well as its past,” NASA said in a blog post released with the new Saturn image.

Three of Saturn’s moons appear to the left of the planet in Webb’s view: Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys are visible as points of light. Each is about the size of a large US state.

Recent observations of Enceladus using Webb’s near-infrared spectrograph instrument revealed a jet of water vapor extending more than 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers) into space, 20 times the diameter of the moon. Scientists say Enceladus is one of the most promising locations in the solar system to search for signs of life because it harbors a water ocean underneath a global ice shell.

Enlarge / The James Webb Space Telescope's first views (clockwise) of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

NASA’s Cassini orbiter flew by Enceladus numerous times before its mission ended in 2017. Cassini spotted similar water plumes erupting through fissures in Enceladus’s ice sheet and flew through the jets to sample the particles coming from the moon’s deep ocean.

The Cassini spacecraft captured views of Saturn with higher resolution than Webb, but with Cassini’s mission over, Webb is the primary tool scientists will use to continue studying Enceladus and Saturn for at least the next decade. 

There’s currently no mission on the books to visit Enceladus. NASA’s robotic Dragonfly mission is scheduled for launch toward Saturn in 2027, but it will focus on exploring Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

The first scientific images from Webb were released nearly one year ago, showing the promise of the $10 billion mission to see deeper into the Universe than ever before. Observations within the Solar System are just part of Webb’s scientific portfolio, alongside scientific topics such as studying the formation of the first galaxies after the Big Bang and the search for planets around other stars that might contain the ingredients for life.

Webb science teams previously released spectacular views of the Solar System’s other ringed planets—Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus—along with its first observations of Mars.

Stationed about a million miles from Earth, Webb is unable to observe the Moon, Mercury, or Venus because they are too bright or too close to the Sun.

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Giant gravitational waves: why scientists are so excited - Nature.com

On 29 June, four separate teams of scientists made an announcement^1–4 that promises to shake up astrophysics: they had seen strong hints of very long gravitational waves warping the Galaxy.

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time that are generated when large masses accelerate. They were first detected in 2015, but the latest evidence hints at ‘monster’ ripples with wavelengths of 0.3 parsecs (1 light year) or more; the waves detected until now have wavelengths of tens to hundreds of kilometres.

Here Nature reports what these monster gravitational waves could mean for our understanding of the cosmos, and how the field could evolve.

How do the newly announced gravitational waves differ from those astronomers had already found?

Gravitational waves were first spotted by the twin detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Louisiana and Washington State. They sensed the ripples produced by two black holes spiralling into each other and merging. LIGO and its counterpart Virgo in Europe have since reported dozens of similar events.

For the latest results, the authors relied on special beacon stars called millisecond pulsars. The teams tracked changes over more than a decade in the distances between Earth and millisecond pulsars in the Milky Way, comparing the signals from arrays of dozens of the beacon stars. These pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are sensitive to waves that are 0.3 parsecs long or more.

And whereas LIGO and Virgo spot evidence of the last stages of individual merger events — regularly spaced waves coming from one definite direction in the sky — the four PTA collaborations have so far found only a ‘stochastic background’, a constant jostling in random directions. This is comparable to the random sloshing of water on the surface of a pond caused by the rain.

What is the origin of the waves?

The most likely explanation for the stochastic background seen by PTAs is that it is produced by many pairs of supermassive black holes orbiting each other in the hearts of distant galaxies, says Sarah Burke-Spolaor, an astrophysicist at West Virginia University in Morgantown.

Most galaxies are thought to harbour one such monster black hole, with a mass millions or billions of times that of the Sun. And astronomers know that throughout the Universe’s history, many galaxies have merged. So, some galaxies must have ended up with two supermassive black holes, known as a black-hole binary.

Monster gravitational waves spotted for first time

Researchers also have calculated that in the crowded centre of such a galactic merger, each black hole would transfer some of its momentum to surrounding stars, slinging them out at high speed or simply dragging them around. As a result, the two black holes would eventually slow down and end up orbiting each other at distances of around 1 parsec, explains Chiara Mingarelli, a gravitational-wave astrophysicist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Only paired black holes that got much closer to each other than 1 parsec would contribute to the PTA signal, however. “They need to be separated by a milliparsec to emit detectable gravitational waves,” says Mingarelli. Theories that explain how this would happen are speculative, however, and whether the binaries can do this has been an open question, known as the final-parsec problem. “If you don’t overcome the final-parsec problem, then you don’t get any gravitational waves,” says Mingarelli.

Scientists will now seek to verify that the PTA signal does indeed come from binary supermassive black holes. If that could be confirmed, it would be evidence that supermassive black holes can come very close to each other in nature.

That result would be of fundamental importance, says Monica Colpi, an astrophysicist at the University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy — showing that thousands of black-hole binaries across the Universe have somehow ‘solved’ the final-parsec problem. “It would be the discovery that such a population exists.”

What would such binary black holes mean for LISA, Europe’s planned space-based detector?

Supermassive-black-hole pairs that got close enough to emit gravitational waves would eventually collide and merge. That’s because the gravitational waves themselves would carry energy and momentum away from the black holes, turning their orbits into spirals. In hundreds to tens of thousands of years, each of the pairs would end up colliding.

How gravitational waves could solve some of the Universe’s deepest mysteries

Colpi says this could be good news for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a trio of probes the European Space Agency plans to launch in the mid-2030s.

As the black holes spiral inwards, the frequencies of their gravitational waves will increase and, in some cases, enter LISA’s spectrum of sensitivity. LISA will be sensitive to wavelengths of between 3 million km and 3 billion km — shorter than the wavelengths that can be detected by the PTAs, although still much longer than those seen by ground-based detectors. So LISA could see several of these mergers during its mission.

Black-hole mergers could also help to explain how some of the black holes have grown so large: they are themselves the result of earlier mergers.

Could something other than binary black holes be producing the stochastic background?

There is a plethora of exotic-physics theories that predict a similar omnidirectional background of waves coming from all directions in space. These sources could constitute part or even most of the signal. The possibilities include certain types of dark matter and even cosmic strings, hypothetical infinitesimally thin defects in the curvature of space-time. Cosmic strings could develop kinks, which could eventually snap, producing gravitational waves.

One of the most exciting alternative explanations is a cosmic gravitational-wave background originating from the early Universe, says Burke-Spolaor. Telescopes that see across the electromagnetic spectrum — from radio waves to γ-rays — are limited in how far away they can peek, and thus in how far into the past they can see. This is because, long before galaxies and stars existed, an opaque ionized gas filled the cosmos. This blocks astronomers’ view of what happened in the Universe during its first 400,000 years or so.

But gravitational waves can travel across any medium. As a result, any such waves created since the first instant after the Big Bang could still be around and be detectable as part of a stochastic background, providing a window into the extreme physics of the Big Bang. “That is just amazing to me,” says Burke-Spolaor. “Who knows what’s back there.”

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Saturn's rings look gorgeous in 1st James Webb Space Telescope photo of the gas giant - Space.com

Image of Saturn and several of its moons, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument on June 25, 2023.  (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. Tiscareno (SETI Institute), M. Hedman (University of Idaho), M. El Moutamid (Cornell University), M. Showalter (SETI Institute), L. Fletcher (University of Leicester), H. Hammel (AURA); image processing by J. DePasquale (STScI))

The first official photo of Saturn from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) does not disappoint.

On Friday (June 30), NASA released a stunning JWST image that shows the ringed planet in a whole new light. The photo, captured on June 25 by the observatory's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument, "is already fascinating researchers," NASA officials said in an image description.

"Saturn itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength observed by the telescope, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere," they added. "However, the icy rings stay relatively bright, leading to the unusual appearance of Saturn in the Webb image."

The newly released image was captured during a 20-hour-long JWST Saturn-observing campaign. We got a sneak peak at the results of this campaign a few days ago, via raw JWST photos posted to the unofficial website JWST feed. As the new photo shows, processing makes a world of difference. 

Related: Saturn: Everything you need to know about the sixth planet from the sun

Annotated version of the photo of Saturn and several of its moons that JWST captured on June 25, 2025. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. Tiscareno (SETI Institute), M. Hedman (University of Idaho), M. El Moutamid (Cornell University), M. Showalter (SETI Institute), L. Fletcher (University of Leicester), H. Hammel (AURA); image processing by J. DePasquale (STScI))

While Saturn's rings are the clear star of the new photo, it also highlights Enceladus, Dione and Tethys, three of Saturn's 145 known moons.

Enceladus is of particular interest to astrobiologists, because the satellite is thought to possess an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell. The moon blasts some of its subsurface water out into space via geysers near its south pole, dramatic features discovered by NASA's Cassini probe back in 2005 and observed recently by JWST.

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JWST was designed to peer into deep time, giving astronomers looks at some of the universe's first stars and galaxies. But, as the new Saturn shot shows, the observatory can eye objects much closer to home as well. 

Indeed, the $10 billion telescope has also snapped amazing photos of Uranus and given us great views of Jupiter and its polar auroras. And JWST is just getting started: The observatory launched on Dec. 25, 2021 and began science operations last summer.

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Scientists find 'ghost particles' spewing from our Milky Way galaxy in landmark discovery (video) - Space.com

Astronomers have detected high-energy neutrinos coming from within our Milky Way galaxy, potentially opening up an exciting new window of research, a new study reports.

Neutrinos are extraordinarily difficult to spot, as they rarely collide with atoms. A light-year's worth of lead would stop only about half of the neutrinos flying through it (which explains why neutrinos have been dubbed "ghost particles"). 

Neutrinos are created from radioactive decay, such as in nuclear reactors, or when extraordinarily high-energy particles strike atoms. The friskiest types feature energies millions to billions of times higher than those produced by the fusion reactions that power stars.

Related: 'Neutrino factories' could hold the solution to the cosmic ray mystery

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is seen under a starry night sky, with the Milky Way appearing over low auroras in the background. (Image credit: Yuya Makino, IceCube/NSF)

High-energy neutrinos are known to originate from galaxies beyond the Milky Way. But researchers have long suspected that our own galaxy is a source as well. For example, when cosmic rays — atomic nuclei moving at nearly the speed of light — strike dust and gas, they generate both gamma rays and high-energy neutrinos. Previous research has detected gamma rays from the Milky Way's plane, so scientists have expected high-energy neutrinos from there as well.

There have been hints of such emission, but confirmation has proven elusive to date. The new study took another look, using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. IceCube is embedded within a gigaton (1 billion tons) of ice, making it the first gigaton neutrino detector ever built.

IceCube encompasses 0.24 cubic miles (1 cubic kilometer) of Antarctic ice holding more than 5,000 light sensors. These devices watch for the unique flashes of light that result from the rare instances in which neutrinos do smash into atoms.

The research team focused on the plane of the Milky Way, the dense region of the galaxy that lies along the Milky Way's equator. They studied 10 years of IceCube data, analyzing 60,000 neutrinos — 30 times more than prior neutrino scans of the galactic plane had looked at.

This was even more difficult than it sounds, because the background of neutrinos produced by cosmic ray collisions with molecules in Earth's atmosphere clouds efforts to single out neutrinos from farther away.

To overcome this challenge, the researchers used artificial intelligence technology to analyze the IceCube data. This helped weed out atmospheric neutrinos, whose production tends to generate other particles that the observatory can detect as well.

This work identified high-energy neutrinos that likely came from the Milky Way's galactic plane.

"This observation of high-energy neutrinos opens up an entirely new window to study the properties of our host galaxy," study co-author Mirco Hüennefeld, an astroparticle physicist at TU Dortmund University in Germany, told Space.com.

"I think it's exciting to see the young field of neutrino astronomy develop with such an increasing pace," Hüennefeld added. "It took decades to envision a neutrino telescope such as IceCube, and just in the last few years, we saw an accumulation of exciting observations, including the first evidence of extragalactic sources. Now, with these results, we have achieved a new milestone in neutrino astronomy."

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Although the findings suggest that the newfound neutrinos come from our galaxy, IceCube currently is not sensitive enough to pinpoint their sources. They may emerge in a diffuse manner, or a significant number of them might come from specific points in the sky, Hüennefeld said.

"What's intriguing about these findings is that, contrary to photons, the galactic neutrino emission is outshined by the extragalactic neutrino flux," Hüennefeld said.

In the coming years, IceCube will get detector upgrades "that will further enhance its sensitivity, allowing us to obtain a clearer picture of the Milky Way in neutrinos in the near future," Hüennefeld said. "Answering these questions will have implications on our understanding of cosmic rays and their origin, and also in general on the inferred properties of our host galaxy."

The scientists detailed their findings online Thursday (June 29) in the journal Science.

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What's Really Happening When a Cuttlefish Seems to Vanish - The New York Times

Their camouflage seems almost magical, but scientists have observed some tricks the cephalopods use to blend in with their surroundings.

Put a cuttlefish on the spot — or, to be more exact, a series of spots — and it will disappear. These relatives of the squid and the octopus mimic the color and texture of their surroundings, camouflaging themselves to blend in with seaweed, sand or stone, which helps them escape predators.

But no one is quite sure how a cuttlefish brain takes what the eyes see and gets the muscles of the skin to copy it. Are they watching their own skin as it changes and tweaking it to fit the sand? Or what if getting the match doesn’t rely solely on eyesight — does a certain kind of speckling feel different to the animal than, say, stripes?

In an effort to answer this question, scientists have turned to high-resolution videos that can show what individual skin cells are up to as a cuttlefish changes color.

In a paper published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, researchers found that cuttlefish sampled a wide variety of different options while they worked to make a match between their skin and their surroundings. As they got closer and closer to a match, they repeatedly paused in their morphing, as if they were checking to see if this time, they’d gotten it right. The findings are a glimpse at what’s going on in a fundamentally different form of life as it does something that, to our eyes, seems almost magical.

To match their backgrounds, cuttlefish use an array of pigment-filled skin cells called chromatophores and raised structures called papillae. Cuttlefish contract myriad tiny muscles that open and close the chromatophores, like pixels on a screen, to get the right pattern of any surface they swim over.

As a mechanical fabric roller changed the background pattern from large pebbles to limestone, a cuttlefish, bottom right, reacted.Theodosia Woo, Xitong Liang, Sam Reiter, Gilles Laurent/Max Planck Institute for Brain Research

An extensive body of research has established that cuttlefish can reach their final pattern in less than a second. It was possible, thought Gilles Laurent, a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany and an author of the new paper, that the cuttlefish sees an image, decides how it’s going to mimic it and then goes straight to a matching skin pattern. Dr. Laurent and his colleagues broke that fraction of a second down to observe which chromatophores were open and closed on the way to the final product.

For the study, the team presented 30 backgrounds printed on fabric to cuttlefish, unrolling the backgrounds on the floor of their tank. As the animals changed their color and pattern, the cameras were watching, and when the researchers analyzed the data, they saw that each cuttlefish was working through different patterns.

“What we observe is the animals move in an intermittent fashion slowly toward that end pattern, in segments of motion, interrupted by times when they stop and seem to be comparing themselves to the end goal they want to achieve,” Dr. Laurent said. “Eventually, when they reach something that satisfies them, they stop.”

The little pauses get longer as the cuttlefish gets closer to the end goal, he continued. Perhaps it gets harder for the cuttlefish to tell if its skin pattern requires additional changes.

“We believe they have some knowledge of the pattern they express at a given time,” he said. “How that is acquired, we don’t know.” It might be that they are using their eyes to check their coloration. But it could also be that the cuttlefish is aiming for a certain feeling in its skin. No one is sure of the answer.

The colored dots on the arms of a cuttlefish each correspond to a specialized pigment cell called chromatophore, which can open and close to achieve the correct pattern.Stephan Junek/Max Planck Institute for Brain Research

What’s more, Dr. Laurent’s team noticed that when a cuttlefish encountered a background it had seen before, it did not go about matching it in exactly the same way. The cuttlefish took a different route to its final pattern each time.

That suggests that the animals are not learning a strategy for achieving a goal the way humans do when they learn to walk, or pick up objects, Dr. Laurent said. Instead, they are somehow born with the ability to paint what they see onto their skin using thousands of tiny muscle contractions.

“It’s so foreign to us, as a motor system, as a behavior, as an animal,” he said. “These are just amazing creatures.”

This system, honed through eons of evolution, may turn out to be quite complicated, or deceptively simple. Only more research will get scientists closer to understanding the experience of a cuttlefish as it flits over dappled sand, flexes its skin and disappears.

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ESA - Last glimpse of Euclid on Earth - European Space Agency

On 27 June, this last glimpse of ESA’s Euclid space telescope was caught right before it was encapsulated by a SpaceX Falcon 9 fairing, meaning that the nose of the rocket was installed over the spacecraft.

Euclid is 4.7-m tall and 3.7-m in diameter, fitting nicely in the Falcon 9 fairing with height of 13.1-m and width of 5.2-m. 

The Euclid satellite is getting ready for the target launch date of 1 July 2023 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA.  The Falcon 9 fairing will keep Euclid safe and clean during the last days before lift-off and it will protect the spacecraft against Earth’s atmosphere during launch. Euclid’s telescope and instruments are extremely sensitive and must be kept very clean. To protect them from degradation during launch a special request was made for a brand-new fairing.

ESA's Euclid mission is designed to explore the dark Universe and uncover the great cosmic mystery of dark matter and dark energy. The space telescope will create the largest, most accurate 3D map of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. This wealth of new data will chart how matter is distributed across immense distances and how the Universe has expanded, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.  

Find out more about Euclid in ESA’s launch kit 

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8 Ursae Minoris b: Scientists unlock mystery of planet that escaped death - BBC

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By Georgina Rannard

Climate and science reporter

Scientists baffled by a mysterious planet that should have been destroyed believe they have discovered why it survived.

The planet - 8 Ursae Minoris b - was identified in 2015 in the Milky Way.

But we should never have been able to see it because it should have been engulfed by a nearby dying star.

Researchers now believe 8 Ursae Minoris b escaped that fate because the dying star once had a companion that stopped its growth.

"No planetary system like this has been discovered before. This is the first, which is pretty special," explains astrophysicist Dimitri Veras at the University of Warwick who assisted lead researcher Marc Hon from the University of Hawaii.

The scientists explain their theories by talking about the fate of our own solar system.

Earth and the other planets in our solar system orbit the sun, a star filled with burning gases.

The sun is currently what is called a yellow dwarf and is burning hydrogen but one day it will start to die. When that happens, it will become a red giant and will expand significantly, consuming Mercury, Venus and possibly Earth.

That destruction by an expanding star is exactly what should have happened to 8 Ursae Minoris b.

But a companion star appears to have saved the planet, explains Marc Hon, who made the observations using the TESS space telescope.

The scientists believe that the planet once orbited two stars that were at different stages of life.

One was a red giant, which burns hydrogen until it heats up so much that its helium core ignites and it starts to shrink. The other was an older star, a white dwarf burning helium.

The researchers believe that the helium core in the red giant was ignited when it swallowed its companion star, putting a premature stop to its vigorous expansion.

8 Ursae Minoris b was then free to continue orbiting the merged star.

"The idea of a binary star merger came from effectively piecing together a puzzle," Dr Hon explains.

After he made the observations, he worked with theorist Dimitri Veras and a group of around 40 scientists, to work out the possible explanations for the planet's survival.

Another theory put forward by the scientists is that the planet was formed by material violently ejected by the merging of the two stars.

But they say this is a much more speculative idea.

"Most stars are in binary systems, but we don't yet fully grasp how planets may form around them. It is plausible that many more peculiar planetary systems may exist due to the influence of binary companions," explains Dr Hon.

The findings are published in the scientific journal Nature.

Related Topics

• Astronomy
• Planets

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Novel Quantum Theory of Light-Induced Matter Opens Door to Cutting-Edge Optical Technologies - SciTechDaily

Schematic illustration of time-resolved spectroscopy for the light-induced phase of molecules proposed based on the new quantum theory. Emission signal is collected in the detector after the laser pulses that excite molecules, yielding multi-dimensional imaging of exciton dynamics in real-time domain. Credit: Dr. Zhedong Zhang/City University of Hong Kong

A new quantum theory developed by scientists at the City University of Hong Kong provides unprecedented insights into the ‘light-induced phase’ of matter, offering potential to revolutionize quantum photonics and control at room temperature. The theory significantly advances our understanding of the excited state dynamics and optical properties of molecules, improving light-harvesting technologies and paving the way for breakthroughs in optical communications, biological imaging, and quantum metrology.

A team led by a physicist from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) recently developed a new quantum theory that explains the “light-induced phase” of matter and predicts its novel functionalities. The new theory has the potential to revolutionize the field of quantum photonics and quantum control at room temperature. It also opens the door to a variety of next-generation light-based applications, such as optical communications, quantum computing and light-harvesting technologies.

Scientists have found exotic phases in matter, in addition to the usual ones, known as the solid, liquid, and gas phases. And in different phases in which the atoms undergo certain arrangements in space, the matter may have different properties. As one category of the newly discovered phases, light-induced phases have drawn a lot of attention from scientists in the past decade, as they have been regarded as a promising platform for new photovoltaic panels and new chemical platforms, as well as a new avenue for modern quantum technology.

Dr. Zhang Zhedong (2nd from right) and his research group at City University of Hong Kong. Credit: Dr. Zhang Zhedong / City University of Hong Kong

“The ultrafast processes of photoactive molecules, such as electron transfer and energy redistribution, which are typically at the femtosecond scale (10^-15s), are of extensive importance for light-harvesting devices, energy conversion, and quantum computing,” explained Dr. Zhang Zhedong, Assistant Professor of Physics at CityU, who led the study. “However, the research on these processes is full of obscurities. Most of the existing theories related to light-induced phases are bottlenecked by time and energy scales and therefore cannot explain the transient properties and ultrafast processes of molecules when short laser pulses come into play. These impose a fundamental limit for exploring the light-induced phases of matter.”

To tackle these difficulties, Dr. Zhang and his collaborators developed a novel quantum theory for the optical signals of the light-induced phases of molecules, which is the first in the world. The new theory, through mathematical analysis in conjunction with numerical simulations, explains the excited state dynamics and optical properties of molecules in real time, overcoming the bottlenecks resulting from existing theories and techniques.

The new theory integrates advanced quantum electrodynamics into ultrafast spectroscopy. It uses modern algebra to explain the nonlinear dynamics of molecules, which lays the foundation for developing state-of-the-art technological applications for lasers and material characterization. It thus offers new principles for optical detection and quantum metrology.

“What is particularly fascinating about our new theory is that the cooperative motion of a cluster of molecules shows a wave-like behavior, which spreads over a distance. This was not achievable in conventional studies. And this collective motion can exist at room temperature, instead of only in an ultralow, cryogenic temperature previously. This means that precise control and sensing of particle motion may be feasible at room temperature. This may open new frontiers of research, such as collective-driven chemistry that could potentially revolutionize the study of photochemistry,” said Dr. Zhang.

The new quantum theory facilitates the design of next-generation light-harvesting and emitting devices, as well as laser operation and detection. The coherence emerging from the light-induced molecular cooperativity may lead to bright emission of light. The spectroscopic probes of the light-induced phase of matter in the research can help to exploit next-generation optical sensing techniques and quantum metrology.

At a larger scale, the light-induced phases may enable a variety of novel light-based interdisciplinary applications, such as optical communications, biological imaging, control of chemical catalysis, and designating light-harvesting devices in an energy-efficient manner.

In the near future, the researchers plan to explore the light-induced phases and their effect on quantum materials, and develop new spectroscopic techniques and detection in the context of quantum entanglement.

The findings were published in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters under the title “Multidimensional coherent spectroscopy for molecular polaritons: Langevin approach.”

Reference: “Multidimensional Coherent Spectroscopy of Molecular Polaritons: Langevin Approach” by Zhedong Zhang, Xiaoyu Nie, Dangyuan Lei and Shaul Mukamel, 10 March 2023, Physical Review Letters.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.103001

Dr. Zhang is the first author of the paper. He and Professor Shaul Mukamel, of the University of California Irvine, are the corresponding authors. Their collaborators include Dr. Lei Dangyuan, from the Department of Material Sciences and Engineering at CityU, and Mr. Nie Xiaoyu, currently studying in the Centre of Quantum Technologies in the National University of Singapore. Key funding sources for the research include the Research Grants Council in Hong Kong and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

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A crew of 4 NASA volunteers will be locked in a virtual 'Mars' for 378 days. Here's why. - USA TODAY

A group of four NASA volunteers have embarked on a 378-day mission in which they will be locked in a ground-based simulation of the planet Mars.

The mission, which began Sunday, is the first of three year-long Mars surface simulations, according to NASA. During the mission, crew members will live and work in a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot habitat.

NASA says researchers will simulate the challenges of a human mission to Mars, including resource limitations, equipment failure and communication delays.

The crew will also carry out different types of mission activities, including simulated spacewalks, robotic operations and habitat maintenance.

'THE CREW IS NOT DRINKING URINE': NASA system helps astronaut pee, sweat to be recycled

The four-person team consists of research scientist Kelly Haston, structural engineer Ross Brockwell, emergency medicine physician Nathan Jones and U.S. Navy microbiologist Anca Selariu. Haston will serve as the crew's commander.

The quartet were selected from a pool of applicants to be part of NASA's Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, or CHAPEA.

"Thank you all for your dedication to exploration," said Grace Douglas, the mission's principal investigator at NASA, during a briefing Sunday before the crew entered the habitat.

"The crew has worked so hard this month to get ready for this mission," Haston said. 

"It has been very special to be a part of such a tremendous group of scientists and specialists from a diverse set of backgrounds working together to bring CHAPEA 1, the first of three missions, to reality," she added.

MORE NASA NEWS: NASA's Juno mission spots eerie green light on Jupiter: Here's what scientists think it is

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Never-before-seen 'missing link' dinosaur walks drinks and socializes in stunning new animation - Livescience.com

A digital reconstruction of what the newly discovered species, Gonkoken nanoi, might have looked like. (Image credit: PaleoGDY/University of Chile)

Paleontologists have unearthed a never-before-seen species of primitive duck-billed dinosaur in Chile — the likes of which has never been found in the Southern Hemisphere. The discovery of the car-size herbivore, which has been brought to life in a stunning new video, changes what we know about the history of its flat-nosed family.  

The newfound species, named Gonkoken nanoi, belongs to the family Hadrosauridae — a group of plant-eating dinosaurs commonly referred to as duck-billed dinosaurs because of the flattened bones in their snout. The name Gonkoken means "similar to a wild duck or swan" in the Aónikenk (Southern Tehuelches) language used by the Indigenous people who inhabited the area where the fossils were found until the end of the 19th century.

G. nanoi likely measured between 11.5 and 13 feet (3.5 to 4 meters) long and weighed 1,300 to 2,200 pounds (600 and 1,000 kilograms), researchers wrote in a translated statement. G. nanoi had hundreds of teeth "with which they could grind, crush, and cut virtually any plant material, including wood," the scientists added. 

Related: Teenage duck-billed dinosaurs struck out on their own, forming cliques 

Image 1 of 2

Researchers remove bones from the dig site in Chilean Patagonia. (Image credit: University of Chile)

Researchers clean a large limb bone in the lab. (Image credit: University of Chile)

Researchers uncovered the remains of G. nanoi in a large "bone bed" in the Valle del Río de Las Chinas sector of Chilean Patagonia. The preserved pile of around 50 fossils included the bones of at least three individuals that were a mix of adults and juveniles. The bones, which include teeth, vertebrae, skull bones, jaw fragments, limb bones and ribs, date back to around 72 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). 

The discovery of so many adult and juvenile fossils in one place suggests that G. nanoi was highly social and likely lived in sizable groups, the researchers wrote in the statement. 

In a new study published June 16 in the journal Science Advances, researchers used the bones to recreate the species' skeleton. In a video press conference in Spanish, researchers shared a short clip created by animator PaleoGDY that shows what G. nanoi may have looked like. 

A 'primitive' species 

In the late Cretaceous, hadrosaurs were one of the most abundant dinosaur groups in what is now South America. As a result, the researchers initially believed the newly uncovered bones belonged to one of the species already known to live there. However, their analysis revealed some key differences in the shapes of certain bones, such as the jaw and teeth, suggesting the remains belonged to a more primitive species than any known hadrosaurs from the area. 

The team believes that G. nanoi represents an "evolutionary link" between older and younger hadrosaur species. But the researchers do not think that G. nanoi was an ancestor to the other hadrosaurs in the Southern Hemisphere. Instead, they believe the newfound species lived alongside its more advanced counterparts. 

The researchers propose that G. nanoi — or its ancestors — emerged in the Northern Hemisphere alongside other primitive hadrosaurs, then migrated south, possibly via a land bridge, before the more advanced forms emerged in the Northern Hemisphere. Later, the more advanced hadrosaur groups followed suit and moved south to join G. nanoi. 

Image 1 of 2

An alternative artist's interpretation of what G. nanoi may have looked like. (Image credit: Mauricio Alvarez/University of Chile)

Another alternative interpretation of what G. nanoi may have looked like. (Image credit: Luis Pérez López/University of Chile)

The conditions in their new home, which were warmer and supported a greater variety of plants to eat, likely suited G. nanoi more than their old habitats, so they thrived in the south while their primitive northern relatives died out.

The researchers believe G. nanoi may have migrated as far south as Antarctica where hadrosaur teeth from an unidentified species have previously been found, although more research is needed to confirm this. G. nanoi may even have survived up until the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs around 66 million years ago.

The newly discovered species is not the only "missing link" in the hadrosaur lineage that's been unearthed recently. On June 7, another research group announced the discovery of Iani smithi, an ornithopod dinosaur that lived around 99 million years ago during the mid-Cretaceous. This research team suggested that I. smithi may have been an ancestor of hadrosaurs that narrowly avoided extinction during a period of extreme climate change.

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Watch house-size asteroid 2023 MU2 fly by Earth at over 2000 mph (video) - Yahoo! Voices

a small white dot among a field of streaks of light

A house-size asteroid raced past Earth at a staggering 2,000 miles per hour on Sunday, June 25. But even at this incredible speed, the near-Earth object (NEO) 2023 MU2 couldn't outrace observation by astronomers.

Capturing particularly impressive footage of the speeding asteroid traveling at two and half times the speed of sound was the Virtual Telescope Project operated by astronomer Gianluca Masi, who caught an impressive look at 2023 MU2 from Italy at 8:47 p.m. EDT on June 25 (0047 GMT on June 26).

The moving time-lapse image of the asteroid, which NASA estimates is between 13.5 and 30.1 feet (4.1 and 9.2 meters) in diameter, was created by Masi using several different telescope images and shows background stars racing past 2023 MU2, demonstrating its impressive speed.

Related: What are asteroids?

a small white dot among a field of streaks of light

"The image above comes from a single 60-second exposure, remotely taken with the Celestron C14+Paramount ME+SBIG ST8-XME robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project. The telescope tracked the asteroid," Masi wrote on the Virtual Telescope Project website. "At the imaging time, asteroid 2023 MU2 was at about 217,000 kilometers [135,000 miles] soon after the flyby, with the object already leaving us."

"To achieve this, our robotic telescope tracked at the very specific rates of the asteroid, this is why it looks like a sharp dot of light, while stars leave trails," Masi said.

Fortunately, astronomers could watch the passage of this asteroid with little concern. Discovered on June 16 and then confirmed on June 22 by the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center, 2023 MU2 posed no risk of striking our planet.

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The asteroid still came pretty close, reaching a minimum distance from Earth, or perigee, of just 134,000 miles (215,000 kilometers) on June 25 at 7:19 p.m. EDT (2319 GMT). To put that in context, it is 60% less than the average distance between Earth and the moon.

The Virtual Telescope Project was able to stream the passage of 2023 MU2 on Sunday despite some issues with the weather in Italy. "We had to delay the start of our live imaging session because of the strong wind, then we succeeded," Masi said.

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Foundation of All Known Life: Webb Telescope Makes First Detection of Crucial Carbon Molecule - SciTechDaily

Scientists have detected a new carbon compound, methyl cation, in space for the first time using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. This compound, crucial in forming complex carbon-based molecules, was found in a young star system in the Orion Nebula. The discovery could enhance our understanding of life’s potential development beyond Earth.

This molecule, never before seen in space, is believed to be a cornerstone of interstellar organic chemistry.

Carbon compounds form the foundations of all known life, and as such are of particular interest to scientists working to understand both how life developed on Earth, and how it could potentially develop elsewhere in our universe. As such, the study of interstellar organic (carbon-containing) chemistry is an area of keen fascination to many astronomers.

An international team of astronomers has used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to detect a carbon compound known as methyl cation for the first time. This molecule is important because it aids the formation of more complex carbon-based molecules. It was found in a young star system with a protoplanetary disk, 1,350 light-years away in the Orion Nebula.

These Webb images show a part of the Orion Nebula known as the Orion Bar. It is a region where energetic ultraviolet light from the Trapezium Cluster — located off the upper-left corner — interacts with dense molecular clouds. The energy of the stellar radiation is slowly eroding the Orion Bar, and this has a profound effect on the molecules and chemistry in the protoplanetary disks that have formed around newborn stars here.
The largest image, on the left, is from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument. At upper right, the telescope is focused on a smaller area using Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). At the very center of the MIRI area is a young star system with a protoplanetary disk named d203-506. The pullout at the bottom right displays a combined NIRCam and MIRI image of this young system.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), PDRs4ALL ERS Team

Webb Space Telescope Makes First Detection of Crucial Carbon Molecule

A team of international scientists has used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to detect a new carbon compound in space for the first time. Known as methyl cation (pronounced cat-eye-on) (CH₃⁺), the molecule is important because it aids the formation of more complex carbon-based molecules. Methyl cation was detected in a young star system, with a protoplanetary disk, known as d203-506, which is located about 1,350 light-years away in the Orion Nebula.

Carbon compounds form the foundations of all known life, and as such are particularly interesting to scientists working to understand both how life developed on Earth, and how it could potentially develop elsewhere in our universe. The study of interstellar organic (carbon-containing) chemistry, which Webb is opening in new ways, is an area of keen fascination to many astronomers.

This image taken by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows a part of the Orion Nebula known as the Orion Bar. It is a region where energetic ultraviolet light from the Trapezium Cluster — located off the upper-left corner — interacts with dense molecular clouds. The energy of the stellar radiation is slowly eroding the Orion Bar, and this has a profound effect on the molecules and chemistry in the protoplanetary disks that have formed around newborn stars here.
Within this image lies a young star system known as d203-506, which has a protoplanetary disk. Astronomers used Webb to detect a carbon molecule known as methyl cation in that disk for the first time. That molecule is important because it aids the formation of more complex carbon-based molecules.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), PDRs4ALL ERS Team

CH₃⁺ is theorized to be particularly important because it reacts readily with a wide range of other molecules. As a result, it acts like a “train station” where a molecule can remain for a time before going in one of many different directions to react with other molecules. Due to this property, scientists suspect that CH₃⁺ forms a cornerstone of interstellar organic chemistry.

The unique capabilities of Webb made it the ideal observatory to search for this crucial molecule. Webb’s exquisite spatial and spectral resolution, as well as its sensitivity, all contributed to the team’s success. In particular, Webb’s detection of a series of key emission lines from CH₃⁺ cemented the discovery.

“This detection not only validates the incredible sensitivity of Webb but also confirms the postulated central importance of CH₃⁺ in interstellar chemistry,” said Marie-Aline Martin-Drumel of the University of Paris-Saclay in France, a member of the science team.

This image from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) shows a small region of the Orion Nebula. At the center of this view is a young star system with a protoplanetary disk named d203-506. An international team of astronomers detected a new carbon molecule known as methyl cation for the first time in d203-506. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), PDRs4ALL ERS Team

While the star in d203-506 is a small red dwarf, the system is bombarded by strong ultraviolet (UV) light from nearby hot, young, massive stars. Scientists believe that most planet-forming disks go through a period of such intense UV radiation, since stars tend to form in groups that often include massive, UV-producing stars.

Typically, UV radiation is expected to destroy complex organic molecules, in which case the discovery of CH₃⁺ might seem to be a surprise. However, the team predicts that UV radiation might actually provide the necessary source of energy for CH₃⁺ to form in the first place. Once formed, it then promotes additional chemical reactions to build more complex carbon molecules.

Broadly, the team notes that the molecules they see in d203-506 are quite different from typical protoplanetary disks. In particular, they could not detect any signs of water.

“This clearly shows that ultraviolet radiation can completely change the chemistry of a protoplanetary disk. It might actually play a critical role in the early chemical stages of the origins of life,” elaborated Olivier Berné of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Toulouse, lead author of the study.

These findings, which are from the PDRs4ALL Early Release Science program, have been published in the journal Nature.

Reference: “Formation of the Methyl Cation by Photochemistry in a Protoplanetary Disk” by Olivier Berné, Marie-Aline Martin-Drumel, Ilane Schroetter, Javier R. Goicoechea, Ugo Jacovella, Brenger Gans, Emmanuel Dartois, Laurent Coudert, Edwin Bergin, Felipe Alarcon, Jan Cami, Evelyne Roueff, John H. Black, Oskar Asvany, Emilie Habart, Els Peeters, Amelie Canin, Boris Trahin, Christine Joblin, Stephan Schlemmer, Sven Thorwirth, Jose Cernicharo, Maryvonne Gerin, Alexander Tielens, Marion Zannese, Alain Abergel, Jeronimo Bernard-Salas, Christiaan Boersma, Emeric Bron, Ryan Chown, Sara Cuadrado, Daniel Dicken, Meriem Elyajouri, Asunción Fuente, Karl D. Gordon, Lina Issa, Olga Kannavou, Baria Khan, Ozan Lacinbala, David Languignon, Romane Le Gal, Alexandros Maragkoudakis, Raphael Meshaka, Yoko Okada, Takashi Onaka, Sofia Pasquini, Marc W. Pound, Massimo Robberto, Markus Röllig, Bethany Schefter, Thiébaut Schirmer, Ameek Sidhu, Benoit Tabone, Dries Van De Putte, Sílvia Vicente and Mark G. Wolfire, 26 June 2023, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06307-x

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

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