Ever since the first protoplanetary disk was discovered in 1984 around the star Beta Pictoris, these objects have presented astronomers with laboratories to study the births and evolution of worlds around distant stars. A team at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Bordeaux, made a recent breakthrough in understanding these planetary birthplaces when they directly observed the rotation of a protoplanetary disk around the young star AB Aurigae.

The disk appears to rotate as you might expect based on based on the laws of physics. However, there are several regions there that don't quite move as predicted by theory. Such a rotational anomaly likely is caused by the presence of giant planets in the process of formation in the disk.

The team used an instrument called SPHERE (for Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch), installed on European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. This highly sensitive infrared tool allowed the team to track the disk's rotation by focusing on emissions from dust grains embedded in the disk.

Astronauts working on the International Space Station briefly sheltered in a docked capsule Friday as Russian colleagues assessed leak repairs, NASA said.

Five astronauts had briefly entered the docked Dragon spacecraft as a precautionary measure—the capsule functions as a lifeboat of sorts in the case an evacuation is needed.

NASA gave the all clear and the astronauts were able to return to their stations.

A NASA spokesperson told AFP that Roscosmos cosmonauts took measurements of the leaks and were now assessing data.

"With today's operations, they wanted to be extra safe, extra precautionary, and have the crew move into the safe haven posture," the spokesperson said.

NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens then said on social media that "NASA has instructed the crew members inside the Dragon spacecraft to end the safe haven procedures and return to planned operations aboard the International Space Station."

In a statement cited by Russian state media, Russia's Roscosmos space agency said that while pressurizing the transfer chamber, known as PrK, a leak was recorded.

"During an inspection of the PrK, the cosmonauts discovered two potential air leak sites. The first was promptly sealed by applying the first layer of the two-component sealant 'Germetall‑1.' The second site is located on the conical part of the PrK. Work is underway to prepare for its sealing," read the statement.

NASA's Stevens had previously said the transfer tunnel had suffered cracks and leaks for some time.

A fly that deposits its parasitic, flesh-eating offspring inside cows has been detected in Texas for the first time in decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported Wednesday (June 3).

Here's what to know about the New World screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax), a pest that was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1960s.

What is the New World screwworm?
New World screwworms are parasites that feed exclusively on the living flesh of warm-blooded animals, according to the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). The screwworms are the larvae, or maggots, of adult C. hominivorax flies...

Humans are the only species known to use fully symbolic language: a system capable of expressing abstract ideas, imaginary worlds and endless combinations of meaning. But how did we get there?

The origins of language have fascinated philosophers, scientists and storytellers for thousands of years. Despite all our advances in linguistics, archaeology and cognitive science, we still don't know exactly how language began.

That uncertainty hasn't stopped people from trying to solve the mystery. In fact, some of the earliest theories of language's origins are among the strangest and most entertaining ideas in the history of science.

The natural climate cycle, which supercharges temperatures and shifts weather patterns across the planet, officially took hold over the past month, according to a June 11 update by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center.

What's more, an accompanying average of various forecasting models gives a "63% chance of a very strong El Niño during November-January that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950," NOAA officials wrote in the update.

This is no longer much of a surprise. Last week, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, considered the "gold standard" of global weather models, suggested that this year's brewing El Niño would likely become the strongest ever recorded.

What is El Niño?
El Niño events occur every two to seven years as part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) natural climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean. The ENSO cycle flips between the warmer El Niño phase and the cooler La Niña phase, with neutral periods in between. El Niño periods bring elevated sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific, thereby weakening or reversing trade winds and strongly disrupting global temperatures and rainfall patterns.

Go far and wide with NASARoman! NASA’s next space telescope will be joining Webb in L2, a million miles away to join us and your name can come too!

Get your boarding pass to send your name with Roman as we work to create the most complete picture of the universe yet: go.nasa.gov/RomanNames

Submitted names will be uploaded to an SD card attached to the observatory.

China has become the first country in the world to operate an underwater data center, or UDC, powered by wind. Located off the coast of Shanghai, the complex represents a significant advance in the country's strategy to secure energy supplies in the face of the accelerated growth of artificial intelligence, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and reduce the environmental impact of its technology infrastructure.

The initiative is the result of a collaboration between private company HiCloud Technology and state-owned China Communications Construction, which involved an investment of 1.6 billion yuan, equivalent to about $236 million.

With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the facility is submerged at a depth of 10 meters in the Lin-gang Special Zone, within the China Pilot Free Trade Zone in Shanghai. This location allows seawater to be used as a natural cooling system, reducing the proportion of energy used to cool the infrastructure to less than 10 percent.

This feature solves one of the main energy consumption challenges of conventional data centers, where air conditioning systems typically account for 40 to 50 percent of the total electricity required to operate.
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A report recently published by the UN points out that only 32 countries host data centers specialized in artificial intelligence. Of that global infrastructure, about 90 percent is concentrated in two nations: China and the United States.

Both powers have taken steps to secure the energy demanded by AI development, albeit through different approaches. While the United States has reduced investments and proposals related to the energy transition, China seeks to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels both to meet its climate goals and to reduce its vulnerability to external suppliers.

Shocks are disturbances created by a perturber/object/fluid moving through a fluid faster than the local speed of sound, causing an abrupt change in pressure at the boundary between the two.

Typical examples are bow shocks where planetary atmospheres and solar winds meet, named after the analogous shocks produced on water by the bow of a ship.

Most shocks in space plasma are collisionless, because particle densities are too low for direct collisions between particles to convert the shock’s energy into heat. Instead, this is done by electromagnetic forces.

Collisionless shocks are thought to be a site in which cosmic rays can accelerate to relativistic speeds (near the speed of light), a process known as relativistic electron acceleration.

However, a lack of direct observational evidence has limited scientists’ understanding of how these structures work.

“Astronomers have sought the origins of cosmic rays since their discovery more than 100 years ago,” Dr. Savvas Raptis from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and colleagues said in a statement.

“These energetic particles can come from many sources, including supernovas and eruptions from the Sun.”

“When solar cosmic rays reach Earth, they can trigger space weather effects that disrupt satellites, communications, and power systems.”

“NASA missions showed how some electrons become highly energized in a region near Earth called the foreshock, where solar particles first encounter Earth’s magnetic field.”

“Scientists suspected the same process was responsible for accelerating high-energy particles in foreshocks at other planets and astrophysical systems, but they could not confirm it until now.”

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have created miniature brain and spinal cord circuits in the lab that mimic the neural pathways responsible for movement. Using this advanced model, they discovered that damage to these connections, long considered permanent, may actually be reversible.

As the human body develops from embryo to fetus and eventually into infancy, nerve cells called neurons form networks that allow signals to travel between the brain and spinal cord. A crucial part of these cells is the axon, a long nerve fiber that carries information to other neurons and helps trigger muscle movement.

However, at some point during development, neurons in the central nervous system lose much of their ability to grow new axons. As a result, damage to the brain or spinal cord often becomes permanent, leading to severe disabilities such as paralysis or loss of hand function. This limited regenerative capacity is a major challenge in traumatic spinal cord injuries and neurological disorders including motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis.

Earth's underground fungal network is so vast that, if it were in outer space, it would span roughly 10% of the Milky Way if placed in a straight line, a new study finds.

These subterranean structures, called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks, work in partnership with most of the world's land plants, feeding plants nitrogen and phosphorus in return for their carbon. Now, the first global map of this fungal network has revealed where their intricate branching structures are most densely packed.

In grasslands that are high-altitude or flooded grasslands, such as the Everglades in Florida, the top 6 inches (15 centimeters) of soil are especially dense, containing around 40% of the global fungal biomass. This highlights that undisturbed grasslands are an essential, reliable carbon sink, according to the research, which was published Thursday (June 11) in the journal Science.

Deep in Book VII of Plato's Republic, Socrates describes prisoners chained inside a cave, mistaking shadows cast on a wall by firelight for reality itself. They name the shadows, debate them and develop expertise about them. The prisoners are completely, sincerely wrong, and they have no idea. The cave isn't a place of stupidity; it's a place of convincing, well-organized illusion.

But Plato's real interest wasn't the cave; it was in the periagoge—a Greek word meaning the turning of the soul away from shadows and toward the light. For Plato, this was education itself: not the filling of an empty vessel with facts, but a fundamental reorientation of how a person relates to truth and how they come to know that truth.

The shadows persist, but today they aren't cast by firelight; they are generated by machines. Large language models (LLMs), image-making and AI-powered search produce outputs that are fluent, confident and immediate.

But here's the crucial difference from Plato's original problem: His shadows were at least connected to something real. What AI produces is different in that a language model has no built-in commitment to truth, only a statistical relationship to an enormous quantity of text. When it tells you something, it isn't reporting; it's composing.

The outputs can be correct. But they can also be wrong in ways that are structurally indistinguishable from being right. The shadow no longer flutters on a cave wall. It speaks now, and sometimes it speaks beautifully.

This is why periagoge—turning toward the light—matters more now than ever and why AI threatens it so quietly. Knowledge isn't merely true belief; it's true belief held for the right reasons, connected to the world through justification, evidence and process.

AI disrupts this at the root. It is useful precisely because it decouples output quality from the slow, demanding work of verification. You don't need to consult a primary source, triangulate between perspectives or sit with the discomfort of not yet knowing.

Bypassing learning
GenAI poses many problems for learning. When an AI hands us an answer, we risk bypassing the process through which learning happens. We've received a product that looks like knowledge from the outside but is hollow at its core; it's a shadow that convinces us of something we haven't actually understood.

GenAI doesn't just help us think. It thinks instead of us. And there's growing evidence it's making us measurably worse at doing it ourselves.

NASA on Tuesday revealed the crew for its Artemis III mission, the next step in the space agency's plan to eventually land astronauts on the moon.

The announcement came two months after Artemis II's record-breaking trip around the moon that surpassed the distance record of Apollo 13.

NASA's Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, Andre Douglas and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano won't fly to the moon or land on the surface. Instead, they'll orbit Earth while practicing docking their Orion capsule with two lunar landers.

"To the Artemis III crew, we wish you Godspeed on the journey ahead," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are racing to deliver the lunar landers. The two-week demo is targeted for 2027. Blue Origin suffered a recent setback when its massive rocket exploded during an engine-firing test on the launch pad in Florida, shaking nearby homes and illuminating the sky with an orange fireball.

Think about a train sitting at a station. Passengers have boarded, conductors are checking tickets, and everything is ready to go. But if the engineer’s watch never signals departure, the doors stay open, the whistle never blows, and the train never leaves the platform.

A similar problem can occur inside living organisms when developmental timing goes wrong. Instead of delaying a trip, a breakdown in the body’s internal schedule can prevent normal growth and maturation.

Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have now identified what appears to be a master developmental clock in the tiny worm C. elegans. The discovery helps explain how cells know exactly when to activate key genetic programs during growth and development.

A Master Clock for Development
Previous work by CSHL Professor Christopher Hammell and his colleagues showed that development in C. elegans is driven by bursts, or pulses, of gene activity. What remained unclear was how those pulses were timed with such precision.

The new study reveals that two proteins already known to scientists, MYRF-1 and LIN-42, form a feedback circuit that acts as a central developmental clock. Together, they determine when each pulse of gene expression begins and how long it lasts.

According to the researchers, this is the first example of a biological clock designed to run through a finite sequence of events rather than repeating continuously.

“This is the central clock for all cells in the worm,” Hammell explains. “It’s responsible for coordinating a finite series of sequential pulses of gene expression that must occur only once, and in order, for proper developmental progression. It’s like a ratchet. It turns genes on and off multiple times during development, but ultimately, it’s only going in one direction.”

Researchers from Brown University and the University of Michigan College of Engineering have succeeded in stabilizing a previously elusive state of matter that had existed only in theoretical models.

Using carefully engineered nanoparticles as building blocks, the team created a new material structure that locks in a fleeting intermediate state between two of the most common crystal arrangements found in metals. The achievement not only provides new insight into how materials change their internal structure, but also reveals unusual optical properties that could one day prove useful for quantum computing and other quantum information technologies.

More broadly, the work demonstrates a powerful new strategy for designing materials from custom-made nanoparticles, opening possibilities for creating entirely new materials with tailored characteristics.

“Our work is a little bit like kids playing with LEGO blocks,” said Ou Chen, an associate professor of chemistry at Brown and a corresponding author of the research. “We synthesize unique nanoscale building blocks and stack them into interesting structures. In this case, we were able to stabilize these theorized transitional structures and demonstrate important quantum optical properties.”

In the next few decades, many physicists are hopeful that nuclear fusion could become a realistic source of practically limitless energy. But before this can happen, it will be critical to ensure that reactors cannot be covertly misused to produce materials for nuclear weapons.

Through new analysis published in Physical Review Applied, a team led by Patrick Huber at Virginia Tech has shown that an existing type of particle detector could be used to flag any such misuse.

Dangerous tampering
Fusion reactors generate energy by forcing two hydrogen nuclei to fuse together, releasing enormous amounts of energy along with a stream of neutrons. Alongside their energy-related advantages, these reactors are also particularly desirable because, unlike conventional nuclear fission reactors, they generally don't require any weapons-grade materials.

However, the neutron stream produced in the reaction presents the possibility of a dangerous scenario: If uranium-238 were secretly introduced into the reactor, those neutrons would convert it into plutonium-239—a key ingredient in certain nuclear weapons. To ensure this can never happen, future fusion reactors will need reliable monitoring.

Detecting covert plutonium
In their study, Huber's team focused on whether this purpose could realistically be served with an antineutrino detector. Antineutrinos are chargeless, extremely low-mass particles that are abundantly produced during nuclear reactions. Crucially, it is impossible either to block them with a shield or to produce them with any non-nuclear process—making them ideal for covert monitoring.

When uranium-238 absorbs neutrons created in the fusion process, it undergoes fission, splitting into smaller nuclei and releasing a distinctive pattern of antineutrinos. The team ran simulations to see whether this signal could be distinguished from the antineutrinos produced during normal reactor operation, as well as those arriving from space.

Reassuringly, the team's results confirmed that even a relatively compact detector would be capable of confirming the production of just a few kilograms of plutonium over a 30-day period, enough to raise the alarm about any weapons program in its early stages.

Crucially, the detector would not need to be housed inside the reactor itself—it could operate at a distance, making the monitoring process minimally intrusive and practical to deploy at real facilities.

Food labels make calorie counts look straightforward. The number listed per serving is calculated from the food’s fat, carbohydrate, and protein content.

In reality, the digestive process is much more complex. As food moves through the body, it interacts with trillions of microbes in the gut that can affect how many calories are ultimately absorbed.

Researchers at Arizona State University have developed a mathematical model called DAMM, short for digestion, absorption, and microbial metabolism, to better capture this process. The model tracks food as it moves through the digestive system, estimating what is absorbed by the body, what reaches the colon, and how gut microbes transform the remaining material into substances that are either absorbed or eliminated.

The researchers say the model could improve understanding of obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders by revealing how different diets influence both the body and the microbial communities living in the colon.

Gut Microbes Change the Calorie Equation
With further development, DAMM could help health care providers create more personalized nutrition plans.

“Digestion is not just a human process—it is a collaboration between our bodies and trillions of microbes living in the gut,” said Professor Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown. “DAMM gives us a powerful new way to quantify how those microbial partners contribute to human health and energy balance and also points at the importance of properly feeding our gut microbes.”

Unfortunately there’s more bad news to report on the clear skies front. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center, reports that 73.3% of images the agency’s new SPHEREx space telescope collected between May and September of last year were contaminated by at least one artificial satellite trail. And it’s only going to get worse from here.

Unfortunately this doesn’t come as a surprise. The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) was designed to map the entire sky in near-infrared light. Meaning it would have long exposure times and cover a very large chunk of the visible sky at any one time. Both of which are a recipe for interruption from orbiting satellites.

Typically this type of light pollution is primarily associated with ground telescopes. But, SPHEREx is an orbital satellite, traveling along an orbit that is 700km above the Earth’s surface. Apparently even that wasn’t enough to escape from the light trails. On average there were 2.18 trails per exposure, most of which are concentrated in an “X” pattern that mimics the orbital paths of the satellite megaconstellations.

There appears to be no easy way to handle this interruption, either. SPHEREx uses an automated “sample up-the-ramp” algorithm to protect itself from stray cosmic rays. When a sudden energy blast from one of those rays hits a pixel, the system halts data collection on that pixel to prevent saturation. But commercial satellites are now so bright that they are triggering this system without the help of any stray cosmic rays.

The resultant images have what the authors describe as “railroad” tracks, where the blinding center of the trail is scrubbed out but parallel lines running alongside it are permanently etched into the science imagery. As a result, the images lose the photometric data of anything hidden beneath the rails.

As if that news wasn’t bad enough, SPHEREx isn’t the only one suffering from this fate. A few years ago another team led by Sandor Kruk published a study that found the fraction of Hubble images crossed by satellites rose from 2.8% in the early 2000s to 5.9% in 2021. Admittedly Hubble doesn’t take as wide of shots as SPHEREx, but the fact that one of the most venerable space telescopes still operating is suffering from the same problem is not a good sign.

Most people think they are open-minded and would like others to perceive them as such. But for the things that matter most—religious beliefs, for example, or the meaning of life—few of us are genuinely willing to consider that we might be wrong, let alone do the hard work of revising beliefs. At a fundamental level, we humans are somewhat closed-minded.

As a social psychologist, I research big questions, such as what makes life meaningful and the nature of humility. I've had a long-standing interest in why people are so resistant to changing their cherished core beliefs. After all, isn't it better to remain open-minded when you may be wrong or can't know for certain?

As decades of research have revealed, it turns out that our deepest convictions serve important psychological functions that make them hard to change. It's unsettling to admit that our core beliefs about how the world works may be wrong.

I call that openness "existential humility": a willingness to change our minds about our deepest convictions when presented with new evidence. And though holding beliefs in this way can be difficult, it can also be a bridge to creating stronger relationships and more inclusive communities.

Power of worldview
All of us hold myriad beliefs that range from the mundane to the magnificent. "Is pineapple a legitimate pizza topping?" is very different from "Is there life after death?" Yet these seemingly disparate beliefs are connected through an interlocking set of ideas and principles that help us make sense of ourselves and the world around us.

Psychologists call these sets of beliefs "worldviews," and they provide people with a sense of meaning in an otherwise confusing and chaotic world. They are a constellation of beliefs that shape what people value, view as important and perceive as morally right and wrong.

It's natural to take worldviews for granted, assuming that other intelligent people see the world the same way.

At the core of these worldviews are your most cherished beliefs: who you are, what the meaning of life is, what constitutes right and wrong. Ask yourself how willing you are to revise those beliefs. How sure are you that you are right? What would it take to alter those convictions?

Probably a lot.

Did you know that the New Mexico Whiptail Lizard is entirely female? 🦎

But how do they reproduce? Find out in this episode of Surprising Science!

Something doesn’t quite add up about the orbits of our solar system’s eight planets and their hundreds of moons, a new study hints.

According to the research — which compared more than 100 simulations of our cosmic neighborhood’s early history — there may have once been two extra giant planets careening around the outer solar system, helping to reshape the orbits of the other planets before ultimately being kicked out into interstellar space.

The infant solar system was constantly being reshuffled. One drastic rearrangement, called the giant planet instability, may have caused the giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — to migrate from their initial positions, ending up farther from the sun.

This migration, first proposed in 2005 by astronomers in Nice, France, as a part of the "Nice Model," likely started due to extra-close encounters between the planets and leftover planetary building blocks called planetesimals. Additionally, modifications proposed in 2011 suggested there may have been a fifth giant planet whose gravitational encounters with its neighbors ultimately tossed it out of our cosmic neighborhood.

However, astronomers don't know much about this missing planet. To find out more, the new study "systematically tested the effects of giant-planet close encounters on the orbital stability of their satellites," Matthew Clement, a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the study's first author, told Live Science in an email.

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed a soft, wearable ultrasound patch that can continuously monitor a fetus for hours at a time while maintaining reliable performance even as the fetus and umbilical cord move throughout pregnancy.

The device could help physicians identify complications earlier in high-risk pregnancies. During clinical testing, the patch detected prolonged abnormal fetal signals in one case, prompting an early Cesarean delivery. Researchers said the intervention may have helped save the baby’s life. The technology could also improve access to prenatal care in low-resource regions where trained ultrasound specialists and continuous monitoring are often unavailable.

“Wearable ultrasound technology has the potential to enable continuous prenatal monitoring and improve pregnancy outcomes in ways that were previously not possible,” said study co-first author Geonho (Tom) Park, a chemical and nanoengineering PhD student at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Park co-led the study with fellow UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering co-first authors Yizhou Bian, Hao Huang, and Sai Zhou.

Autonomous Tracking Overcomes Fetal Movement Challenges
Most prenatal ultrasounds provide only a brief look at fetal health and require trained sonographers to operate the equipment. In contrast, the new patch is designed to remain on the body and continuously monitor a baby’s anatomy and blood flow in real time without the need to manually position an ultrasound probe.

“To comprehensively monitor mothers and babies over the amount of time needed to catch complications like preeclampsia, you need a system that can work continuously and largely on its own,” Bian said. “That is why the sensing depth, functional capabilities, and autonomy of this ultrasound technology are critical.”