Construction on MARS

  Material which could be used to build first colony on MARS 

During crewed Mars missions in the coming years, finding ways to reduce supply loads and utilize local materials will be a crucial element to ensuring the success of our explorations of the Red Planet. To address this, researchers are working to achieve this goal, allowing Mars explorers to grow their own building materials directly on the Red Planet. Scientists are finding ways to turn Martian dirt into usable metals. This breakthrough could make it possible to build settlements on Mars without bringing everything from Earth. Swinburne and CSIRO researchers have successfully produced iron in Mars-like conditions, opening the door to metal production beyond Earth. The vision of establishing settlements on Mars has captured the imagination of billionaires, government space programs and space exploration advocates. However, building such colonies requires vast amounts of material, and transporting it all from Earth is not practical. To put it in perspective, sending NASA’s one-ton Perseverance Rover to Mars cost around US$243 million.

For CSIRO Postdoctoral Fellow and Swinburne graduate Dr Deddy Nababan, the solution may lie in Mars’s own soil, known as regolith. This new project, with support from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts, the US space agency’s funding arm for radical, long-term concepts related to aerospace. The team spent years developing living substances which can form construction materials on their own, and they have now applied their work to autonomous construction on Mars, utilizing the local regolith. Swinburne and CSIRO researchers have successfully made iron under Mars-like conditions, opening to door to off-world metal production. “Sending metals to Mars from Earth might be feasible, but it’s not economical. Can you imagine bringing tonnes of metals to Mars? It’s just not practical,” Dr Nababan says. “Instead, we can use what’s available on Mars. It’s called in-situ resource utilization, or ISRU.” More specifically, Dr Nababan is looking at astrometallurgy, making metals in space.

This work may be the answer to bringing construction materials across vast distances and into challenging environments which are normally lacking in resources. Other attempts to forge construction materials from the Martian regolith have focused on addressing the material shortage, but remain impractical as they have overlooked the likely labour shortage which any early Mars missions will encounter. Creating solutions for these conditions called for bonding regolith particles with various compounds composed of magnesium or sulphur, as well as a geopolymer concept. Still, all of these required more intensive hands-on work than those early explorers would be able to dedicate to the project. There have been approaches attempting to minimize the required labour by relying on microbes to help power a self-growing technology. While bacteria and fungi can bind particles into more useful construction materials, such as bricks, the microbes involved often suffer from survivability issues. Previous attempts relied on a single species, requiring a great deal of care and nutrient feeding to remain viable, replacing the regolith bonding focus with an all new task: caring for the microbes.

As it turns out, Mars has all the ingredients needed to make native metals. This includes iron-rich oxides in regolith and carbon from its thin atmosphere, which acts as a reducing agent. Swinburne University of Technology astrometallurgist, Professor Akbar Rhamdhani, is working with Dr Nababan to test this process with regolith simulant, an artificial recreation of the stuff found of Mars. The researchers used a regolith simulant which mimics the materials found at Gale Crater on Mars. “We picked a simulant with very similar properties to that found at Gale Crater on Mars and processed them on Earth with simulated Mars conditions. This gives us a good idea of how the process would perform off-world,” he says. The simulant is placed inside a chamber at Mars surface pressure and heated at increasing temperatures. The experiments showed pure iron metal formation around 1000°C, with liquid silicon-iron alloys produced around 1400°C. “At high enough temperatures, all of the metals coalesced into one large droplet. This could then be separated from liquid slag the same way it is on Earth,” Professor Rhamdhani says. Along with Dr Nababan, Prof Rhamdhani is collaborating with CSIRO’s Dr Mark Pownceby to further advance the process. They’re particularly focused on making metals with zero waste, where the byproducts of the process are used to make useful items.

Minimizing astronauts’ commitments to construction-related labour was a major focus for the team. To that end, they produced a resilient multi-species synthetic community, resulting in a fully autonomous self-growing process which requires no external nutrients. The heterotrophic filamentous fungi that the team utilized have significantly greater survivability than heterotrophic bacteria, while promoting the formation of biominerals to serve as a bonding agent for regolith particles. Photoautotrophic diazotrophic cyanobacteria complete the synthetic lichen by converting atmospheric carbon dioxide and dinitrogen into oxygen and organic nutrients to feed the fungi and increase the carbonate ion concentration, which the fungi bind to their cell walls. The filamentous fungi complete the cycle by providing water, minerals and CO2 to the cyanobacteria. Both the fungi and cyanobacteria release biopolymers which adhere the regolith particles together.

In space exploration, in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) is becoming increasingly important because every kilogram launched aboard a rocket adds to the cost and complexity of a mission. Although launch costs are gradually decreasing, the scale of resources needed to support human exploration remains enormous. Significant progress is already being made, including the first off-world demonstration of ISRU. NASA’s MOXIE experiment, carried by the Mars Perseverance rover, successfully generated breathable oxygen from nothing more than the carbon dioxide in Mars’s atmosphere. Metal production is the next giant leap. Prof Rhamdhani hopes Mars-made alloys could be used as shells for housing or research facilities and in machinery for excavation. “There are certainly challenges. We need to better understand how these alloys would perform over time, and of course, whether this process can be recreated on the real Martian surface,” Prof Rhamdhani says. But in the meantime, Swinburne and its partners are doubling down. Prof Rhamdhani, together with Dr Nababan and Dr Matt Shaw, another CSIRO researcher and Swinburne alum, recently delivered a 4-day bespoke workshop on astrometallurgy in South Korea. The feedback was promising. “We’re starting to see increased interest in this field globally as the world gets serious about Mars exploration,” he says. “To make it happen, we’re going to need experts from many fields, mining, engineering, geology and much more.” For Dr Nababan, the benefits go beyond exploration. He hopes their research will also drive more efficient metallurgy here on Earth. “By doing this, I wish that I can help the development of space exploration, and at the end it will bring good to human life here on Earth.” In testing, the process was successful and fully autonomous, growing in a mixture of simulated regolith, inorganic liquid, light and air. With the material creation process demonstrated, the team is moving on to testing their regolith material.  

Nuclear Battery which might last for 433 Years

 NASA’s most ambitious Power source, a Nuclear Battery which could last 433 Years  

What if a space probe could run for over 400 years? NASA’s new nuclear battery might make that possible. Spacecraft have used a plutonium isotope to stay afloat for decades, but another isotope could last even longer. Radioisotope power systems (RPS) keep spacecraft going with nuclear batteries. Until now, RPS operated using a plutonium isotope, but researchers have found that an isotope of americium could keep spacecraft engines going even longer. A collaborative effort between NASA and the University of Leicester is now developing batteries with this isotope for future missions. Space, at least as far as we can fathom, is infinite. Rocket fuel is finite. While we haven’t yet found a way of keeping spacecraft from sputtering to a halt light-years away from Earth, NASA has the next best thing, and it’s radioactive.

The goal of NASA and the University of Leicester are to develop a new nuclear battery powered by americium-241, a radioactive isotope capable of fuelling space probes for 433 years. The research was recently featured and it could mark a major turning point in how we think about long-duration space missions. NASA has been using radioisotope power systems (RPS) which involve nuclear batteries since the early 1960s to power missions including both Voyagers, New Horizons, Curiosity, and, most recently, Perseverance. (The Dragonfly quadcopter meant to explore the methane lakes and seas of Saturn’s moon Titan will also rely on RPS.) Radioisotopes are unstable forms of elements which can only regain stability by degrading, and it is the breakdown of radioisotopes which generates heat and keeps the battery going. While that might sound futuristic enough, NASA is intending to level it up. The space agency has used plutonium-238, or plutonium oxide, as fuel for decades. The half-life of this isotope, how long it takes for an isotope’s radioactivity to drop to half its original level, is nearly 88 years. Now, however, the isotope americium-241 is being eyed for upcoming missions. With a half-life of almost 433 years, it lasts centuries longer than plutonium-238, and could keep spacecraft venturing far further into the unknown.

Radioisotopes need to meet NASA’s strict criteria to qualify for missions. For one, whatever form they take needs to be nontoxic (or minimally toxic) to the body, and they need to be insoluble so they are not easily absorbed by the body. As such, the fuel is usually in ceramic form, so instead of vaporizing and potentially being breathed in, they break into large fragments which cannot be absorbed even if ingested. For another, spacecraft instruments also need to be kept safe, so any radioisotopes used in a battery must have a sufficiently long half-life, remain stable at high temperatures, and only need a small amount to generate a blast of heat. This allows them to keep obiters, rovers and space telescopes going for decades. Radioisotope power systems (RPS) generate electricity from the heat released by radioactive decay, and they’re a big reason missions like Voyager, New Horizons, Curiosity, and Perseverance have lasted so long. Until now, these batteries relied on plutonium-238, which breaks down steadily over time but can only power missions for a few decades at best. Americium-241 changes that. With a half-life of 433 years, it keeps producing heat for centuries. This opens the door to truly long-term missions, ones that could outlast not just the spacecraft’s designers but entire generations of scientists. And yes, NASA has strict safety standards for anything radioactive. Americium-241 passes the test. It’s “minimally toxic,” and when used in ceramic form, it won’t vaporize. If something goes wrong, it breaks into large, chunky pieces, meaning it’s a lot less likely to be inhaled or absorbed into the body. 

Until now, only plutonium-238 has been able to pass. But this past January, NASA’s Glenn Research Centre (Glenn) and the University of Leicester in the UK joined forces and agreed to test-drive americium-241. They are also looking into using an optimal method of generating electricity from this radioactive fuel, instead of a system that can only power up a spacecraft using a crankshaft, a free-piston Stirling convertor allows pistons to float within the engine in microgravity (NASA has been using them for years). In 2020, a convertor at NASA’s Glenn Research Centre which was running on RPS reached 14 years of maintenance-free operation, which just so happens to be the minimum life needed for many deep space missions. Wayne Wong, head of Glenn’s Thermal Energy Conversion Branch, described the progress as “particularly significant” for missions which have long cruise times and can’t afford any downtime. “Previous flight projects determined that the mission duration requirement for RPS is 14 years, particularly for outer planetary missions with long cruise times.” Plutonium-238 had been on a 30-year production hiatus before 2011, when NASA received government funding to support the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy to restart production for space missions. The isotope is currently produced at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and several other facilities. The production process for americium-241 is currently undergoing improvements for efficiency and safety at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

One of the challenges with plutonium-238 is that it’s expensive and slow to make. In contrast, americium-241 is much easier to get. It’s a common by-product of nuclear reactors, so there’s already a decent supply. Right now, Los Alamos National Laboratory is working on improving the production process, making it safer and more efficient for long-term use in space. There are some challenges. Americium-241 emits more gamma radiation than plutonium, which means better shielding will be needed. But engineers seem confident that’s a solvable problem, especially considering how much longer this fuel can last. This tech isn’t just about extending mission timelines. It’s about changing how we think about space travel entirely. A probe launched in 2050 could, in theory, still be functioning in the year 2480. That’s not science fiction anymore, it’s a real possibility. Missions like Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered drone heading to Saturn’s moon Titan, are already banking on long-lasting battery tech. If americium-241 proves viable, it could fuel the next generation of deep space explorers, ones designed to operate for hundreds of years without stopping. Meanwhile, the Voyagers keep heading further and further from the Solar System, still powered by RPS, leading the way for missions to come. And as the Voyager spacecraft powered by the fading warmth of old-school RPS, NASA’s new battery tech is getting ready to take over, lighting the path for everything that comes next in world around us. 

Oort clouds and Voyager-1

NASA spacecraft will soon reach a full light-day from Earth and now heading towards Oort clouds       

NASA’s Voyager spacecraft is on the verge of making history by becoming the first human-made object to travel a full light-day away from Earth—a distance so vast that light itself takes 24 hours to cover it. This awe-inspiring milestone, set for Nov 2026, reminds us just how colossal the universe truly is and how tiny our fastest spacecraft seem in comparison. Voyager-1 is currently over 162 AU from Earth, already in interstellar space. But it’s still nowhere near the Oort Cloud, at its speed, it will take about 300 years just to reach the inner edge. Launched back in 1977, Voyager 1 has journeyed nearly 16 billion miles from Earth and is still sending signals home as it ventures further into the vastness of space. Crossing the light-day mark is not just about numbers, it’s a tribute to human curiosity, endurance and our desire to reach beyond what was once thought possible.

On 15 Nov, 2026, Voyager will be 16 billion miles from Earth, matching the distance light travels in a day. By 28 Jan, 2027, it will also reach that same light-day mark from the Sun. This isn’t just a cold statistic but a testament to how far human ingenuity and ambition can stretch. It’s inspiring to think that a tiny probe launched before the personal computer era has kept moving forward into the unknown, carrying priceless data and digital greetings into deep space. Voyager 1 is much more than an old spacecraft; it is a trailblazer which first crossed the heliopause, marking the boundary where the solar wind from our Sun gives way to the mysterious realm of interstellar space. Moving at roughly 38,000 miles per hour, it has steadily travelled outward for decades. Yet, despite its incredible speed, radio signals from Voyager take nearly 24 hours to make the trip back to Earth. This journey serves as a vivid reminder of just how enormous space is and how each step beyond our solar system opens new windows into the universe’s vast mysteries. The Oort Cloud is a giant spherical shell of icy objects that surrounds our solar system, believed to be the birthplace of long-period comets. It stretches from about 2,000 AU (astronomical units) to possibly 100,000 AU from the Sun.

These numbers highlight the staggering challenge of space travel beyond our own backyard. While light can cross these distances in just minutes, our best technology takes years or even decades. The fact that Voyager 1 has spent nearly 50 years journeying the equivalent of one light-day inspires a deep respect for the patience and persistence required to explore space. Scientists think the Oort Cloud contains billions of frozen remnants from the early solar system. Studying it could reveal how planets and comets formed, making it a cosmic time capsule. Since ancient times, humans have dreamed of reaching the stars faster than ever before. The fastest spacecraft built by humans, Apollo 10, reached almost 25,000 miles per hour in 1969, a speed still unmatched. But even a spacecraft traveling at that pace would take more than five months just to cover the 93 million miles from Earth to the Sun.  Voyager 1 long mission is amazing, a small robotic explorer could keep sending faint signals from such a mind-boggling distance. It’s a powerful symbol of endurance and human curiosity that still resonates today, reminding us to keep reaching higher.

Voyager-1, launched in 1977, is currently over 162 AU from Earth, already in interstellar space. But it’s still nowhere near the Oort Cloud, at its speed, it will take about 300 years just to reach the inner edge. As Voyager 1 continues its never-ending voyage, it brings up one of the biggest questions in astronomy: where does our solar system actually end? Scientists have debated this for years. Is it where the planets stop? Perhaps it’s the distant, cloud-like region called the Oort cloud, filled with icy bodies tugged by the Sun’s gravity. Or maybe it’s even farther, where the Sun’s gravitational pull fades away, halfway to Proxima Centauri, our nearest star neighbour. Will Voyager-1 actually reach the Oort Cloud? Technically, yes. Its trajectory is pointed outward. But by the time it gets there, its instruments and power will be long dead (expected to shut down by 2030). It will silently drift through.

NASA explains that this boundary isn’t a crisp line but an enormous, fuzzy region. Even at its blistering pace, Voyager would need nearly 40,000 years to reach this outer gravitational edge, which lies about two light-years away. Crossing the full Oort Cloud would take Voyager-1 tens of thousands of years. To reach the far edge could wander through the cloud long after humanity has changed beyond recognition. Contemplating this scale made us realize the universe’s true vastness in a whole new way. Every discovery, every spacecraft like Voyager which pushes beyond known frontiers, gradually unveils more of the cosmos’ secrets. Although it will take many lifetimes before humans get close to these far-flung edges, missions like Voyager blaze a trail for tomorrow’s explorers. Voyager-1 could one day pass close to icy objects in the Oort Cloud, but it won’t be able to send back data. To us, it’ll simply become a silent relic of Earth drifting among ancient cosmic icebergs. So, if you could send a message to Voyager 1 today, what would it be? Do you believe humans will ever travel faster than light? Or will the giant gulf between stars always keep us grounded? Even though Voyager-1 won’t be alive to study the Oort Cloud, its journey reminds us how vast our solar system is. It’s a symbol of human curiosity, a message in a bottle traveling toward one of the most mysterious regions of space.

Earth's seasons observed from space

 Earth's seasons aren't the same everywhere, Scientists discover from space

The annual clock of the seasons, winter, spring, summer, autumn, is often taken as a given. But our new study in Nature, using a new approach for observing seasonal growth cycles from satellites, shows that this notion is far too simple. A new study about Nature reveals that Earth's seasons don't actually line up the same everywhere. By looking at 20 years of satellite data, researchers found big differences in when plants grow, even between places which are pretty close together. So, the idea of what everyone shares the same spring or fall? Not really true. We present an unprecedented and intimate portrait of the seasonal cycles of Earth's land-based ecosystems. This reveals "hotspots" of seasonal asynchrony around the world, regions where the timing of seasonal cycles can be out of sync between nearby locations. We then show these differences in timing can have surprising ecological, evolutionary, and even economic consequences.

By applying a new analysis to 20 years of satellite imagery, we made a better map of the timing of plant growth cycles around the globe. Alongside expected patterns, such as delayed spring at higher latitudes and altitudes, we saw more surprising ones too. Average seasonal cycles of plant growth around the world. Each pattern varies from its minimum (tan) to its maximum (dark green) throughout the year. One surprising pattern happens across Earth's five Mediterranean climate regions, where winters are mild and wet and summers are hot and dry. These include California, Chile, South Africa, southern Australia and the Mediterranean itself. These regions all share a "double peak" seasonal pattern, previously documented in California, because forest growth cycles tend to peak roughly two months later than other ecosystems. They also show stark differences in the timing of plant growth from their neighbouring dry lands, where summer precipitation is more common.

The seasons set the rhythm of life. Living things, including humans, adjust the timing of their annual activities to exploit resources and conditions which fluctuate through the year. The study of this timing, known as "phenology", is an age-old form of human observation of nature. But today, we can also watch phenology from space. The average seasonal growth cycles of Earth's land-based ecosystems, estimated from 20 years of satellite imagery gives a different results. With decades-long archives of satellite imagery, we can use computing to better understand seasonal cycles of plant growth. However, methods for doing this are often based on the assumption of simple seasonal cycles and distinct growing seasons. This works well in much of Europe, North America and other high-latitude places with strong winters. However, this method can struggle in the tropics and in arid regions. Satellite-based estimates of plant growth can vary subtly throughout the year here, without clear-cut growing seasons.

The biggest "out-of-sync" hotspots showed up in Mediterranean climates and tropical mountains, think California, Chile, South Africa or the Mediterranean itself. These timing gaps can shape which species thrive by changing how plants reproduce and spread genes. This even matches up with the complex geography of Colombia's coffee harvests, where nearby farms can have out-of-sync cycles. This complex mix of seasonal activity patterns explains one major finding of this work: the Mediterranean climates and their neighbouring dry lands are hotspots of out-of-sync seasonal activity. In other words, they are regions where the seasonal cycles of nearby places can have dramatically different timing. Consider, for example, the marked difference between Phoenix, Arizona (which has similar amounts of winter and summer rainfall) and Tucson only 160 km away (where most rainfall comes from the summer monsoon). Other global hotspots occur mostly in tropical mountains. The intricate patterns of out-of-sync seasons we observe there may relate to the complex ways in which mountains can influence airflow, dictating local patterns of seasonal rainfall and cloud. These phenomena are still poorly understood, but may be fundamental to the distribution of species in these regions of exceptional biodiversity.

Scientists tracked "phenology" basically, when plants and animals do their seasonal things, using global satellite imagery. Older methods mostly worked for places with clear-cut winters and summers but missed all the weird timing in tropical and dry regions. This study created the most detailed map yet of how seasonal events play out around the world. Identifying global regions where seasonal patterns are out of sync was the original motivation of the work. And final finding overlap with many of Earth's biodiversity hotspots, places with large numbers of plant and animal species, may not be a coincidence. In these regions, because seasonal cycles of plant growth can be out of sync between nearby places, the seasonal availability of resources may be out of sync, too. This would affect the seasonal reproductive cycles of many species, and the ecological and evolutionary consequences could be profound. One such consequence is that populations with out-of-sync reproductive cycles would be less likely to interbreed. As a result, these populations would be expected to diverge genetically, and perhaps eventually even split into different species. If this happened to even a small percentage of species at any given time, then over the long haul these regions would produce large amounts of biodiversity.

For a wide range of plant and animal species, satellite-based map predicts stark on-ground differences in the timing of plant flowering and in genetic relatedness between nearby populations. Understanding seasonal patterns in space and time isn't just important for evolutionary biology. It is also fundamental to understanding the ecology of animal movement, the consequences of climate change for species and ecosystems, and even the geography of agriculture and other forms of human activity around the world.

Giant planet discovered

  124 light-years away from Earth, giant planet discovered 

Astronomers report the detection of a new Jupiter-like exoplanet using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS). The newfound alien world orbits a nearby M-dwarf star designated GJ 2126. A nearby star has a new heavyweight companion, and it swings around on a path which is anything but neat. The world, labelled GJ 2126 b, traces a stretched orbit which pushes close to its star, then races far away again. Researchers identified a giant world 124 light years away that circles its star every 272.7 days on a highly stretched path, eccentricity equals 0.85. In addition, it has a minimum mass of about 1.3 Jupiter masses at roughly 0.71 astronomical units, about 66 million miles, from its star. These values come from 112 radial velocity measurements with the HARPS spectrograph. “This planet orbits a low-mass star and ranks among the most eccentric exoplanets discovered,” wrote Arbel Schorr from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University (TAU) who led the study. 

The radial velocity (RV) method of detecting an exoplanet is based on the detection of variations in the velocity of the central star, due to the changing direction of the gravitational pull from an unseen exoplanet as it orbits the star. Thanks to this technique, more than 600 exoplanets have been detected so far. HARPS is a high-resolution visible-light echelle spectrograph installed at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) 3.6-m telescope in Chile. Thanks to its radial-velocity accuracy of about 1 m/s, it is one of the most successful planet finders in history. Most planets in our own neighbourhood move on nearly round routes, so an orbit this stretched stands out. High eccentricity often points to a chaotic past shaped by strong gravitational run-ins. A path like this can reshape a planet’s temperature and atmospheric behaviour across a single year. The extremes also make modeller's revisit how giant planets form and later get knocked around.

"We report the discovery of GJ 2126 b, a highly eccentric (e = 0.85) Jupiter-like planet orbiting its host star every 272.7 days. The planet was detected and characterized using 112 RV measurements from HARPS, provided by HARPS-RVBank," the researchers wrote. The team used HARPS which maintains about 1 meter per second velocity stability. The level of steadiness lets astronomers watch a star’s tiny wobble over many years. They mined the publicly curated HARPS-RVBank, which compiles 252,615 velocities for 5,239 stars observed before January 2022. Public datasets like this let independent teams test ideas and spot signals which earlier searches may have missed. With a semi-major axis of 0.71 AU and eccentricity of 0.85, periastron, the closest approach, sits near 0.11 AU, about 9.9 million miles. The farthest point stretches to roughly 1.31 AU, about 122 million miles. Those swings mean large changes in stellar heating across a single 272.7 day year. Timing, chemistry, and cloud formation likely shift dramatically between close pass and far turn.

The inclination of GJ 2126 b is unknown, its mass could be much greater and the possibility that this object may be a brown dwarf cannot be completely excluded. The host star, often listed as an M-dwarf of type M0V, is a cool, low-mass object with about 0.65 times the Sun’s mass and 0.73 times its radius. Its temperature sits near 4,159 kelvin and its metal content is high for a dwarf star. GJ 2126 is a high proper-motion star about 124 light years from Earth. Its brightness and proximity make follow-up work practical with existing instruments. Because the orbital tilt is unknown, the mass estimate is a lower limit. The team considered whether the companion might cross into brown dwarf territory if the orbit is nearly face-on. They argue that Gaia astrometry and the absence of long-term trends disfavor a very massive companion around this star. The paper reports a renormalized astrometric error near unity, a value not expected for a heavy hidden object. The researchers compared different ways to search for periodicity in uneven time series. They leaned on the Phase Distance Correlation periodogram, designed to handle non-sinusoidal signals like those from eccentric orbits. They also considered a known trap in velocity work, where two planets in a 2:1 resonance can masquerade as one eccentric planet. Their modelling rejected such alternatives for this dataset.

Astronomers underline that GJ 2126 b is one of the most eccentric exoplanets discovered around an M-dwarf. They added that the unique properties of GJ 2126 b place it in a relatively sparse region of the detected exoplanet population. Therefore, its further observations could help better understand planetary formation and evolution scenarios. Cool stars frequently show magnetic activity that adds noise to velocity data. Teams monitor spectral activity indicators to avoid mistaking star spots for planets and to validate true orbits. In this case, the auxiliary indicators did not line up with the 272.7 day signal. That mismatch supports a planetary cause rather than rotating surface features. When it comes to the host GJ 2126, it is a high proper motion star of spectral type M0V, with a radius of about 0.73 solar radii and a mass of around 0.65 solar masses. The star, which is estimated to be at a distance of approximately 124 light years away, has a metallicity at a level of 0.6 dex and its effective temperature is 4,159 K.

Their dataset spans about fifteen years around the critical phases of the orbit. The coverage anchored the fit and strengthened the case for a single object on an extreme path. Giant planets can acquire extreme eccentricities through planet-planet scattering after their birth in a gas disk. Numerical experiments show this process can drive e above 0.9 without invoking a distant stellar companion. As per these details, the system once hosted additional massive bodies that jostled each other until only one remained on a wild orbit. That would line up with the lack of a long-term drift in the present data. The planet’s radius is unknown because no transit has been seen in the available survey photometry. Without the tilt, the true mass remains uncertain, so further work aims to refine those values. Future velocity campaigns could detect subtle variations tied to mutual interactions, if any undiscovered companions exist. Continued astrometric monitoring may also tighten the mass constraints. Thermal measurements and reflected-light studies would be challenging, yet not out of the question for future facilities. The close approach near periastron may offer the best shot at characterization time. Long-baseline velocities will also test for secular changes which hint at additional bodies or tidal effects. A refined inclination would settle the mass question and finally close the door on the brown-dwarf scenario. Further observations of GJ 2126 b are required in order to determine its radius and to constrain its mass, which would shed more light regarding the composition of this exoplanet.

Evidence of life on Mars

 Searching evidence for life which might have existed on Mars

For decades, the search for extraterrestrial life has relied on complex missions, new instruments and billion-dollar budgets. After spending so much time on the Martian surface, the Opportunity rover sent troves of data back to Earth for scientists around the world to analyse in hopes of learning more about the red planet’s geology and atmosphere, past and present. One of those scientists was John Grant, a planetary geologist at the National Air and Space Museum. His aim was to find evidence of conditions which could have supported life on Mars. “It seems that all the necessary pieces are there on Mars for life to have existed,” John said. “We’ve found that there are areas on Mars where water was flowing in the distant past as well as relatively more recently. That’s evolved my thinking from ‘okay, so there was some water long ago' to ‘there were some big lakes there’ to ‘there were habitable environments and maybe life'.” But now, a PhD student and his supervisor at Imperial College London have shown that a device already sitting on Mars could answer one of humanity’s biggest questions: Is anything alive out there, right now? The breakthrough comes from Solomon Hirsch and Professor Mark Sephton of Imperial’s Department of Earth Science & Engineering. The gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) is an instrument that is already installed on the Curiosity rover and planned for use on the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover. The team realized that this common piece of equipment can be used in an entirely new way.

Space exploration is a hell of a show, there are surprises around every corner. If we were to find evidence of life on Mars, it would surely make some of us start to question our own existence. It would tell us more about how life evolves. We only have one data point so far, and that’s Earth. There’s been this question since humanity first started to ruminate on big ideas about whether we’re alone in the universe. If you only have to go one planet away to find life, it speak volumes about how life may be distributed throughout the universe. It also changes how and why we explore in and outside our solar system in the future. It also provides us, as humans, some perspective on our place in the universe. “Space agencies such as NASA and ESA don’t know their instruments can already do this,” Sephton said. “Here we have developed an elegant method that rapidly and reliably identifies a chemical bond that shows the presence of viable life.” 

The GC-MS has a long pedigree in planetary science, with earlier versions flying on the Viking missions of the 1970s. Traditionally, scientists have used it to analyse gases released from rocks and soils. But Hirsch and Sephton discovered it could also detect fragile molecular bonds inside the membranes of living cells, a marker of life that is present only while an organism is alive or has very recently died. The technique focuses on intact polar lipids (IPLs), the molecules which make up the external membranes of bacteria and more complex cells. These molecules degrade within hours of death, making them a reliable sign of living organisms. When fed into the GC-MS, IPLs leave behind a sharp, unmistakable spike on the instrument’s readout. “If we find signs of life beyond Earth, the first question will be: Is it living right now?” Hirsch said. “It’s thrilling to think that the technique we developed here could be used to help answer that question.” Researchers unexpectedly found a clear biosignature in polar lipids using GC-MS, with equipment already deployed on space missions. If scientists ever detect such a spike on Mars or another world, it will provide direct evidence of active life rather than long-extinct biology.

Mars is not a welcoming place for life. Its thin atmosphere, freezing surface temperatures and constant radiation from space make survival difficult. Visiting Mars can have implications in other fields. Medical doctors have a completely different set of rationales. How does the human body respond to radiation? If we're ever going to get off the Earth and be an exploring species, Mars is one of the places where we should start. But still, we haven’t gotten to the question of “why?” Why go through all this trouble to study space at all, when we’ve got so many problems to solve here on Earth? Hirsch admits that expectations of finding organisms on the planet’s surface are low. But he points out that life is resourceful. “Life finds amazing ways to survive in extreme circumstances,” he noted. Future missions will also dig deeper into Mars’ crust, where conditions may be more favourable. The Rosalind Franklin rover, part of the delayed ExoMars mission, will drill several feet beneath the surface, where microbes could remain shielded from radiation and potentially active. Beyond Mars, icy moons like Europa and Enceladus are even more promising. They are known to host subsurface oceans and erupt plumes of water vapour into space. Sephton envisions the method being applied there too. “Our active life detection method could be deployed on Mars and the plumes of icy moons in the outer solar system, or in samples returned to Earth from potential alien biospheres,” he said.

The method could also help right here at home. Sephton sees the technique as both cost-effective and versatile. Instead of designing entirely new instruments for each mission, scientists could repurpose existing ones to do more than originally intended. Teams preparing to analyse samples returned from Mars are planning multimillion-dollar facilities to screen for possible life. A quick and simple GC-MS test would make the task more efficient, flagging which samples deserve deeper analysis. It’s an approach that may accelerate discoveries without requiring decades of waiting for the next mission to launch. It shows that sometimes the tools for transformative science are already in our hands – it just takes a new perspective to see them differently.

Whether or not life is discovered, the technique itself represents a leap forward. The search for extraterrestrial life is often portrayed as a grand adventure, requiring futuristic technology and vast budgets. Hirsch and Sephton’s work offers a humbler but no less profound possibility: the answer to one of humanity’s oldest questions may already be riding around the Martian surface waiting to be asked the right question in the right way. As Hirsch put it, the possibility remains remote but real: “Our expectation of finding things alive on the Martian surface is low due to the hostile temperature and radiation conditions. Still, we aren’t ruling out the possibility.” And if life does exist, this new approach may be the simplest way to prove it. By exploring things beyond Earth, we inspire people to get interested in and involved in science. Reaching Mars will inspire a lot of people around the world and might bring some new era of thought process about the universe.

New findings on universe's first ever molecules

 Scientists findings on universe’s first molecule reveal bigger role in forming early stars and the results challenge our understanding      

In a first, scientists have recreated the formation of the first ever molecules in the universe to learn more about early star formation. HeH⁺, the universe’s first molecule, didn’t fade quietly. It may have helped trigger the very first stars we see today. New findings on universe’s first molecule reveal bigger role in forming early stars. The universe’s first molecule just surprised us again. In a discovery which could rewrite our understanding of how the first stars formed, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg have revealed unexpected behaviour in helium hydride (HeH⁺), the earliest known molecule in the cosmos.

For the first time, researchers have recreated the universe's first ever molecules by mimicking the conditions of the early universe. The findings shake up our understanding of the origin of stars in the early universe and "calls for a reassessment of the helium chemistry in the early universe," the researchers wrote in the new study. Contrary to long-standing predictions, HeH⁺ remained chemically reactive even at extremely low temperatures: conditions that mimic the early universe. To test how this ancient molecule behaved initially, researchers recreated early-universe conditions at the Cryogenic Storage Ring (CSR) in Heidelberg. The world’s only facility of its kind, CSR simulates space-like environments just a few degrees above absolute zero. Just after the start 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was subject to extremely high temperatures. A few seconds later, though, temperatures decreased enough for hydrogen and helium to form as the first ever elements. Hundreds of thousands of years after those elements formed, temperatures became cool enough for their atoms to combine with electrons in a variety of different configurations, forging molecules.

By colliding stored HeH⁺ ions with a beam of neutral deuterium atoms, the team was able to observe the molecule’s reaction rates at ultra-cold temperatures for the first time. Formed shortly after the Big Bang, HeH⁺ is a simple molecule made from a helium atom and a proton. It marked the beginning of chemical bonding in the universe and laid the foundation for molecular hydrogen (H₂), the fuel which powers stars. For decades, HeH⁺ has been assumed to play a passive role in the cooling processes which allowed protostars to condense and ignite. But new experimental results challenge this narrative. According to the researchers, a helium hydride ion, or HeH+, became the first ever molecule. The ion is needed to form molecular hydrogen, now the most abundant molecule in the universe. Both helium hydride ions and molecular hydrogen were critical to the development of the first stars hundreds of millions of years later, the researchers said. For a protostar to begin fusion, the process which enables stars to create their own energy, atoms and molecules within it must collide with each other and release heat. This process is largely ineffective at temperatures under 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit (10,000 degrees Celsius). However, helium hydride ions are particularly good at continuing the process, even under cool temperatures, and are considered to be a potentially integral factor of star formation in the early universe. The amount of helium hydride ions in the universe may therefore have had significant bearing on the speed and efficacy of early star formation, the researchers said.

The researchers found that instead of slowing down as the temperature dropped, the reaction between HeH⁺ and deuterium remained surprisingly constant. This contradicts earlier models, which predicted a steep decline in reactivity at low temperatures. “Previous theories predicted a significant decrease in the reaction probability at low temperatures, but we were unable to verify this in either the experiment or new theoretical calculations by our colleagues,” said Dr. Holger Kreckel of MPIK, who studies nuclear physics at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany. This matters because in the young universe, during the so-called “cosmic dark ages” before stars began to shine, molecules like HeH⁺ played a key role in cooling the primordial gas. The researchers recreated early helium hydride reactions by storing the ions at minus 449 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 267 degrees Celsius) for up to 60 seconds to cool them down before forcing them to collide with heavy hydrogen. Researchers studied how the collisions, similar to those that kickstart fusion in a star, changed depending on the temperature of the particles. Reaction rates between these particles do not slow down at lower temperatures, which contradicts older assumptions.        

Effective cooling is necessary for gas clouds to collapse under gravity and form stars. Since hydrogen atoms alone can’t release heat efficiently below 10,000°C, molecules with dipole moments like HeH⁺ were critical for shedding energy via radiation. HeH⁺ also degrades through collisions with hydrogen atoms, producing ions that eventually lead to molecular hydrogen formation. This chain of reactions was vital to star formation, and the new findings suggest HeH⁺ was far more active in that chemistry than previously thought. "This new finding of how helium hydride ions function challenges how physicists think stars formed in the early universe. Reactions between the ions and other atoms "appear to have been far more important for chemistry in the early universe than previously assumed," Kreckel said. The MPIK team’s results also exposed flaws in older theoretical models. Collaborating with theoretical physicist Yohann Scribano, researchers found a long-standing error in the potential energy surface used to predict HeH⁺ behaviour. Correcting this surface brought simulations in line with experimental data, sharpening our understanding of early-universe chemistry. These findings reframe HeH⁺ as a central player in star formation rather than a passive bystander. 

Largest Black Hole in the Universe

 Discovery of 'The biggest black hole' ever seen by Scientists

Astronomers have discovered what could be the largest black hole ever detected. With a mass of 36 billion times that of our Sun, its gravity is so powerful that it bends the light of an entire galaxy behind it into a near-perfect circle called an Einstein ring, effectively reducing a realm with trillions of stars of its own into an astrophysical fashion accessory. It's 10,000 times as heavy as our Milky Way's own central black hole, and is nigh unto breaking the universe's theoretical upper limit. If anything ever warranted being called a cosmic monster, it's this. This is amongst the top 10 most massive black holes ever discovered, and quite possibly the most massive. A bright yellow blob surrounded by a warped blueish line in the shape of a horseshoe. This blue horseshoe is a distant galaxy magnified and distorted by the strong gravitational pull of the massive foreground Luminous Red Galaxy. Together, these galaxies create the Cosmic Horseshoe system. About 5 billion light-years away from where you're sitting, in one of the most massive galaxies on record, there exists an astonishing black hole. It was only just measured by scientists who managed to peer through the fabric of warped space-time, and it appears to hold a mass equivalent to that of 36 billion suns.

"This is amongst the top ten most massive black holes ever discovered, and quite possibly the most massive," Thomas Collett, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Portsmouth and coauthor of a new study about the giant said about the work. Other detections of similar sized objects, Collett noted, have generally come with uncertainties too large to be definitive. This not-super but ultramassive black hole lurks in the centre of the famous Cosmic Horseshoe galaxy, which itself ranks among the most massive ever spotted. The galaxy is considered a fossil group, which formed from other large galaxies, and their constituent supermassive black holes, collapsing together. "So we're seeing the end state of galaxy formation and the end state of black hole formation," Collet said. It's no exaggeration to say, then, that we're literally witnessing a black hole's final form. More specifically, the black hole is found in one of two galaxies which make up the Cosmic Horseshoe system and is what's known as a "dormant" black hole. This means it's a relatively quiet black hole; it isn't actively chomping on matter in its surroundings, as opposed to an active black hole that is accreting matter from a disk which circles it, known as an accretion disk. The black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is also a dormant black hole, but, for context, it only holds the mass of about 4.15 million suns.

Located some five billion light years away, the Cosmic Horseshoe is so named due to its gravitational lensing effect, a phenomenon in which the light of a background galaxy is warped by the gravity of a foreground one. Lensing is common throughout the cosmos, and it can be a fortuitous tool for astronomers, acting like a magnifying glass which allows them to observe distant objects whose light would otherwise be too faint to examine. But in this case, the huge foreground galaxy and its companion in the background happen to be in almost perfect alignment with our Earthly perspective, bending the light into an incomplete ring. The fact that the Cosmic Horseshoe black hole is found in such a massive galaxy and that Sagittarius A* is found in our more modestly sized Milky Way is probably not a coincidence. In fact, the team behind the new measurement is hoping to learn more about the apparent size connection between supermassive black holes and their parent galaxies. "We think the size of both is intimately linked," Collett said, "because when galaxies grow they can funnel matter down onto the central black hole. Some of this matter grows the black hole, but lots of it shines away in an incredibly bright source called a quasar. These quasars dump huge amounts of energy into their host galaxies, which stops gas clouds condensing into new stars."

Astronomers have long suspected that there was a black hole at the heart of the Cosmic Horseshoe, but have never been able to spot it. One of the reasons why is its extreme distance, at billions of light years away. But the even more impressive hurdle that's been overcome is that it's a "dormant" black hole that's no longer accreting matter, according to Carlos Melo, lead author from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. "Typically, for such remote systems, black hole mass measurements are only possible when the black hole is active," Melo said. "But those accretion-based estimates often come with significant uncertainties." When a black hole devours significant amounts of matter, the infalling material gets heated up and radiates huge amounts of energy and light, forming what's known as an active galactic nucleus. (The brightest of these are called quasars.) But this detection "relied purely on [the black hole's] immense gravitational pull and the effect it has on its surroundings," Melo said. Their method involved a combination of lensing and what's known as stellar kinematics, which allows astronomers to infer a black hole's mass by studying the velocity of stars trapped in the surrounding galaxy. "What is particularly exciting is that this method allows us to detect and measure the mass of these hidden ultramassive black holes across the universe, even when they are completely silent," Melo said.

This brings us to another key aspect of the team's findings: the way this black hole was measured to begin with. The research team was able to utilize a unique approach that doesn't rely on the black hole being an actively accreting one. Without active feeding, black holes can kind of hide behind the veil of the cosmos. It is the accretion itself that usually gives these objects away. Such commotion produces lots of emissions, like X-rays, which scientists here on Earth can detect. Naturally, it's also far easier to measure the precise masses of black holes via such emissions. However, there is one characteristic of black holes which even dormant ones can't suppress: their immense gravitational pull. And the greater the gravitational pull, the greater the warp in space-time, as predicted by Albert Einstein's general relativity theory. And its size is no coincidence. There's a reason, the astronomers argue, that we're finding this ultra massive rarity in one of the heaviest galaxies on record, and not in one of relatively unremarkable size like our Milky Way, which hosts a comparatively puny black hole of 4.3 million solar masses. "We think the size of both is intimately linked," Collet said, "because when galaxies grow, they can funnel matter down onto the central black hole." In a nutshell, Albert Einstein's famous theory of general relativity explains the true nature of gravity. It suggests that gravity isn't quite an intrinsic, elusive property of an object which pulls things down. In other words, Earth itself isn't really pulling us down to the ground. Rather, general relativity states that objects with mass (all objects, including you and me) warp the four-dimensional fabric of space-time, and these warps influence the motion of other objects caught up in the folds.

It may seem like an obvious conclusion to draw, but how supermassive black holes attain their enormous sizes remains one of the great mysteries of cosmology. Some have been spotted so early on in the universe's history that they physically shouldn't exist, not having enough time to accrete the mass they possess. If it formed from galactic mergers, it provides a strong clue of at least one mechanism which can spawn these colossal objects. For instance, imagine a trampoline on which you place a ball. That ball would warp the trampoline inward. Now, imagine placing a smaller ball on the trampoline. That smaller ball would fall inward as well, along the warped trampoline's fabric and sit right next to the original ball. The trampoline in this case is space-time, the original ball is Earth and the smaller ball is you. The big caveat in this analogy, however, is that this trampoline exists in three dimensions. We'd need to scale this up to the four-dimensional universe for it to start representing reality more accurately, but our brains have a hard time comprehending that dimension visually. Importantly for the team's new measurements, something which arises from warped space-time (in the fourth dimension, remember) is that physical matter isn't the only thing affected by the warps. Light gets affected, too — and that includes light emanating from galaxies, such as the other galaxy in the Cosmic Horseshoe. This is the effect the study team managed to take advantage of when spotting the newly confirmed black hole. Light from the Cosmic Horseshoe system's background galaxy was warped as it travelled past the foreground galaxy that contains black hole. The Cosmic Horseshoe system is actually an iconic example of this effect, which is called gravitational lensing. Not only does this system have a strong version of this effect, but each galaxy involved happens to be perfectly aligned such that the light-warped background galaxy appears as almost a perfect ring around the foreground galaxy. When this happens, it's called an "Einstein Ring." So, we're seeing an "almost" Einstein ring in this case. 

There are quite a few ways to move forward on this work, one of which is to reveal the link between galaxy size and supermassive black hole size, but another could be to zero in on the Cosmic Horseshoe black hole alone and learn how it became so utterly gigantic. The Cosmic Horseshoe is what's known as a "fossil group," which refers to the end stage of the "most massive gravitationally bound structures in the universe, arising when they have collapsed down to a single extremely massive galaxy, with no bright companions," according to the statement. The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will likely become a fossil group someday, seeing as they're likely on a path to colliding somewhere in the far future. That crash has recently been brought into question, but it's still a possibility. Nonetheless, the Cosmic Horseshoe could very well be a peek into our realm's final era.