This ancient predator had two spiny appendages sticking out of its face. This creature Anomalocaris canadensis may have been the freakiest thing to ever haunt the sea. For decades, scientists thought it used those strange limbs to snatch trilobites off the seafloor. The beast could then crush and eat these crunchy snacks. But a new study hints that A. canadensis instead used its spiny limbs to swiftly hunt soft prey. 



Researchers shared their new findings on July 12. The work appeared in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.





A. canadensis means the abnormal shrimp from Canada. It prowled the seas roughly 500 million years ago. Only about as long as a housecat, it still was one of the biggest animals of the Cambrian Period. (The Cambrian ran from about 540 million to 485 million years ago.) That makes A. canadensis one of the earliest top predators.





These sea monsters were like the orcas or great white sharks of their time, says Jakob Vinther. He did not take part in the new study. But he is a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England. 



Some researchers thought A. canadensis hunted another iconic Cambrian critter the trilobite. Thats because people have unearthed lots of fossils of injured trilobites. This hinted that something had attacked them. A. canadensis became a prime suspect.



But Russell Bicknell wasnt so sure. After all, trilobites have hard, thick exoskeletons. And no one had shown that A. canadensis could crack that armor.



Bicknell is a paleobiologist. He works at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He was part of a team that set out to learn if A. canadensis really could have crushed and chowed down on trilobites.



This is a closeup of an A. canadensis fossil. It was found in the Burgess Shale of Canada. The fossil shows the creatures head and curled front appendages.Allison Daley


Pinning softies with its spikes



The researchers compared the ancient creatures bendy appendages to those of modern arthropods. These animals include todays insects, spiders and crustaceans. Bicknells team also built computer models of the limbs on A. canadensis. Using those models, the team tested the limbs toughness, range of motion and best swimming position.



The ancient spiky limbs would have been good at grabbing prey. In that way, A. canadensis may have hunted much like todays whip spiders. But the limbs of A. canadensis probably were too fragile to attack armored prey. Those would have included trilobites.





Plus, A. canadensis would have moved most efficiently when its appendages were stretched out front. (Think of how Superman holds his arms while in flight.)



Together, these results suggest that A. canadensis was best suited for chasing soft creatures swimming through the water. It would have snagged prey in its spiky clutches, Bicknell says. It was going to absolutely pincushion something soft and squishy.

The SouthernTropical Andes, which comprisesareasof Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, is one of the world's most biodiverse regions especially when it comes to amphibians. The areais home to about980amphibianspecies, including over half of the 150-knownglass frog species. Now, two new membersof the tiny frogs have joined thisever-growing list.

Thecountdown tothe 2020 Summer Gameshas begun. On July 23, 2021, about 11,000 athletes from 206 countries will gather at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Japan, for the opening ceremony of the Games of the XXXII Olympiad.Here are a few contestantsto keep an eye on at the world's mostprestigious sporting event.

A seriesof deadly tornadoesswept across a large swath of the Midwestern and SoutheasternUS overnight onDecember 10, 2021.TheNational Weather Service (NSW)estimates that the severe storms spawned about50 twisters across eight states Arkansas, Indiana,Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Ohio, and Illinois.

Hello! This is the holiday contest. I know that the following options may not be your favorites. Don’t worry! Feel free to comment on your favorite, but please vote on the holidays listed below. The winners will have the chance to share their ideas, and I will even give a shout-out! Pick one and good […]

All known stars are made of ordinary matter. But astronomers havent completely ruled out that some could be made of antimatter.



Antimatter is the oppositely charged alter-ego of normal matter. For instance, electrons have antimatter twins called positrons. Where electrons have negative electric charge, positrons have positive charge. Physicists think the universe was born with equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Now the cosmos appears to have almost no antimatter.



Space-station data have recently cast doubt on this idea of a practically antimatter-free universe. One instrument might have seen bits of antihelium atoms in space. Those observations have to be confirmed. But if they are, that antimatter could have been shed by antimatter stars. That is, antistars.



Explainer: What are black holes?





Intrigued by this idea, some researchers went hunting for potential antistars. The team knew that matter and antimatter annihilate each other when they meet. That could happen when normal matter from interstellar space falls onto an antistar. This type of particle annihilation gives off gamma rays with certain wavelengths. So the team looked for those wavelengths in data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.



And they found them.



Fourteen spots in the sky gave off the gamma rays expected from matter-antimatter annihilation events. Those spots did not look like other known gamma-ray sources such as spinning neutron stars or black holes. That was further evidence that the sources could be antistars. Researchers reported their find online April 20 in Physical Review D.



Rare or possibly hiding?



The team then estimated how many antistars could exist near our solar system. Those estimates depended on where antistars would most likely be found, if they truly existed.



Any in the disk of our galaxy would be surrounded by lots of normal matter. That could cause them to emit lots of gamma rays. So they should be easy to spot. But the researchers only found 14 candidates.



That implies that antistars are rare. How rare? Perhaps only one antistar would exist for every 400,000 normal stars.



Understanding light and other forms of energy on the move



Antistars could exist, however, outside the Milky Ways disk. There, they would have less chance to interact with normal matter. They also should emit fewer gamma rays in this more isolated environment. And that would make them harder to find. But in that scenario, one antistar could lurk among every 10 normal stars.



Antistars are still only hypothetical. In fact, proving any object is an antistar could be nearly impossible. Why? Because antistars are expected to look almost identical to normal stars, explains Simon Dupourqu. Hes an astrophysicist in Toulouse, France. He works at the Institute of Research in Astrophysics and Planetology.





It would be much easier to prove the candidates found so far are not antistars, he says. Astronomers could watch how gamma rays from the candidates change over time. Those changes might hint at whether these objects are really spinning neutron stars. Other types of radiation from the objects might point to their actually being black holes.



If antistars exist, that would be a major blow for our understanding of the universe. So concludes Pierre Salati, who wasnt involved in the work. This astrophysicist works at the Annecy-le-Vieux Laboratory of Theoretical Physics in France. Seeing antistars would mean that not all of the universes antimatter was lost. Instead, some would have survived in isolated pockets of space.



But antistars probably could not make up for all the universes missing antimatter. At least, thats what Julian Heeck thinks. A physicist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he too did not take part in the study. And, he adds, you would still need an explanation for why matter overall dominates over antimatter.

Hey guys! Welcome to this group. I am AthenaDaBest, and I am creating this for all people who LUVVV mythology and Percy Jackson fans and other Rick Riordan books, but other mythology series are allowed. Have fun!!

Bacteria can have superpowers. Some flourish in almost any environment. Others can transform toxic materials into harmless sludge. A bacterium called Shewanella oneidensis can do both. But this microbe also has a much rarer superpower: It absorbs and produces electricity. In fact, new research suggests, these bacteria may be able to use energy collected from wind or solar sources to make fuels to run vehicles and more.



I think of these organisms as eating electricity, says Annette Rowe. Shes a microbiologist at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. Her team has just identified which genes the microbe uses to gobble electricity.



Explainer: Understanding electricity



Electrons are negatively charged particles. A moving stream of them creates an electric current. Scientists already knew that Shewanella can move electrons back and forth across its cell wall. But they didnt know exactly how the microbes controlled their current, Rowe says.





The pathway for getting the electrons in and out of the cell is like a wire, says Rowe. It allows current to flow from the inside to the outside. Reverse the flow, she says, and you can drive electrons into the cell. The cell could then use those electrons to do some other job, such as generate current. Or it could store the energy to use later. Those electrons could later be used to make fuel, for example.



Rowe knew that Shewanellas cellular wire had to be controlled by genes. But which ones?



Buz Barstow was able to help. He is a biological engineer at Cornell University. Its in Ithaca, N.Y. Earlier, he had made a list of nearly 4,000 of this bacteriums genes. That list also included mutations, or changes, in those genes. Rowe tested these mutants to find the genes that made up Shewanella’s cellular “wire.”



Explainer: What are genes?



Within a cell, a gene can deleted. For the new study, Rowe and her colleagues tested groups of bacteria with groups of deleted genes. Their goal: to see which deleted genes allowed the bacteria to pull in electrons. These were likely genes involved in making the cell’s “wire.”



That was no easy task. It was really tricky to look for electron flow and track the electrons, she says. But in time they devised a clever test. They grew the different mutated bacteria on glass covered by a thin metal film. Then they attached a wire to the bacteria. When they sent an electric current through the wire, they could measure how much the bacteria absorbed or added. If electrons didnt flow, the scientists knew the deleted genes must have been the ones needed for electron flow. 



In time, they narrowed in on five such genes that Shewanella apparently uses to absorb electrons. Each gene tells the cell how to make a protein. Some of those proteins likely grab electrons and bring them into the cell. Others may send signals within the cell that guide the process. Still others can likely expel electrons from the cell.





Bacterial biofuels



Scientists see many ways to use electric microbes. One would be to make biofuels. These differ from fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas. (Fossil fuels are rich in carbon from decayed remains of ancient living things.) Ethanol, which can be made from corn or sugarcane, is a biofuel that can be added to standard gasoline. Cars that run on diesel can be adapted to run on another biofuel. Called biodiesel, it is fuel made from vegetable oil or animal fats.



Biofuels get their carbon from sources like plants or animal wastes. One day, they may even get their carbon with the help of bacteria, says Rowe.



This technician holds a biofuel sample, an alternative to fossil fuels. One day bacteria may be able to supply the power or the carbon needed to unleash a new wave of such renewable fuels.Sue Barrt/Image Source/Getty Images Plus



Shewanella is among bacteria thatcan pluck carbon atoms out of carbon dioxide. They can use it to create other, larger molecules that could be burned as a biofuel. And powered by the electrons it gobbles, Shewanella could keep making these molecules, Rowe says.



Knowing which genes drive the electron-eating could help scientists develop new biofuels, says Rowe. Even better would be if the electrons that feed the bacteria come from wind or solar power. Such sources could power the biofuel-making process without adding warming carbon dioxide to the air.



Elad Noor is an environmental scientist. He works at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Its in Rehovot, Israel. There, hes helping to develop new ways to fix carbon that is, to pull carbon from carbon dioxide to build other chemical compounds. Using bacteria to create biofuels is attractive because the bacteria can regenerate and should be able to repurpose the carbon. Soring energy in bacteria also would be green, he adds. After all, the microbes dont need dangerous metals, as a normal battery would.



However, working with living organisms is complicated, he warns. Biological systems are hard to predict, he says. There are ways to store energy that are much more efficient.



The genes that Rowes team found in Shewanella show up in other bacteria. The group plans to search for others that can store or release electrons. Rowe also wants to try to improve Shewanellas abilities, because these are the organisms we know the most about.

Dont watch TV close to bedtime. Put away your phone, too, or you may have trouble falling asleep. You may not realize it, but the blue light from device screens and even common lamps will confuse your brains internal 24-hour clock. Even white light contains these blue wavelengths. And when blue light enters the eyes, your brain gets the message that it needs to stay awake. But a new type of lighting appears to get around these sleep-challenging effects so you can nod off easily at bedtime.



This new light-emitting diode, or LED, might someday deliver the glow in lamps and other types of home lighting, its developers say. It might even find use in TV, laptop and smartphone screens, says Jakoah Brgoch. Hes a chemist at the University of Houston, Texas. He also helped design the new lighting technology.



He and fellow University of Houston chemist Shruti Hariyani have been studying the properties of phosphors. These substances glow when hit with light.



Explainer: Our bodies internal clocks





Light shines through the lens of an LED, usually a plastic bulb. Behind the scenes is an LED chip, which has small light-emitting diodes attached to a printed circuit board. When the chip is coated with powdered phosphors, the color of the light shining through the lens changes. The Houston team created a new phosphor to make their LED shine with a warm white light. Here, warm means the light contains less of the short, blue wavelengths that can mess with sleep.



Those same blue wavelengths are found in sunlight. And they tell your internal body clock that its time to be awake. Normally that body clock winds down as daylight fades. Melatonin is a hormone produced at night. It helps bring on sleep unless blue light tells your body otherwise. Blue light suppresses the melatonin hormone.



Explainer: What is a hormone?



And our bodies may well get confused if its late and our eyes remain bathed in blue light from devices or indoor lighting. Even though your body craves sleep, its still getting that signal for wakefulness.



Most modern screens and lighting systems use blue LEDs. They are energy efficient, long-lasting and cost little. But, Hariyani says, you have to be okay with the negative side effects [of their light] or fix it.



Shes part of a team thats choosing to fix it.





How to lose the blues



A new violet LED, shown here in a drawing, uses red, green and blue-emitting phosphors to combine the colors of the visible spectrum and create white light.S. Hariyani/University of Houston



Software helps some devices emit less blue light. For example, the iPhones night mode shifts its color palette. But this makes images look more red than normal, so users give up color quality. Plus, the LEDs in this and other smartphones still emit enough blue light to affect the bodys internal clock and melatonin production. People can block out some blue light by wearing yellow glasses near bedtime. However, this too will distort the hues in whatever youre viewing.



Says Brgoch, We wanted to know: Can we get to a high-quality light bulb with warmer and better quality light?



LEDs create white light by mixing red, green and blue hues. While these same primary colors of pigment in paint or crayons mix to make black, light works the opposite way. The white light shining out of an LED comes from the bulb color plus the colors of the phosphors used to coat the LED. Common house lighting uses blue LEDs coated with phosphors whose colors add to the LEDs colors to make white light.



A rarer type of LED has a violet bulb. Places such as museums and clothing stores install white lighting made using violet LEDs. Thats because these are designed to show an object’s true color better than the more common bluer LEDs used in most home lights. One drawback is that violet LEDs cost more. Still, Brgoch and Hariyani chose them for their prototype to get the best color.



Used in the new light, this phosphor glows blue when lit with a violet LED.S. Hariyani and J. Brgoch/University of Houston



To reduce their LEDs blue emissions, the chemists first altered a white powdered crystal that didnt glow on its own. They added a bright silver-colored element to the powders structure. This europium turns the crystal into a phosphor. Europium often is added to lighting phosphors because it helps boost the blue part of an LEDs glow. In this case, it made a true, high-quality blue good for use in an LED. That blue can combine with other colors to make white light.



The Houston team tested the new phosphor to make sure it wouldnt break down easily. They exposed it to heat and water. Not only did the phosphor continue to glow at the same intensity, but its color remained steady. Having all of these properties at once makes it superior to many other phosphors, Hariyani says.



Then they mixed the blue phosphor with red and green ones to create white light. The chemists added this combination to a modified violet LED. Compared to standard violet LEDs, this new one emits far less intense blue light.



Good white and good night?



A mixture of the new blue phosphor, together with red- and green-emitting ones, produces this warm white light when lit by a violet LED.S. Hariyani and J. Brgoch/University of Houston



Theres maybe a dozen phosphors used around the world in lightbulbs, notes Brgoch. To find something new thats on par with what you can buy is fantastic. And, he adds, its lower production of short, blue wavelengths should reduce its effect on someones nighttime secretion of melatonin.



But other aspects of light also influence the body, warns Mariana Figueiro. Her work at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City focuses on how light affects the body clock and melatonin.



Brightness and colors of light other than blue such as green and yellow also affect the bodys natural readiness for sleep, Figueiro notes. To leave nighttime melatonin alone, she explains, A light source needs to have both low light levels and less blue light. She wonders if everyday lamps and screens could be dim enough not to interfere with the body’s internal clock and still be bright enough for practical use. Still, she says, its certainly worth studying.



To know if the new LED could help people who want to sleep better, scientists will have to measure its effect on melatonin.



This is science that is still relatively new to us, Brgoch says. As such, he says it will take some time for scientists to fully understand how to use the new LEDs in household items.



He and Hariyani shared their findings April 14 in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

Did you know that arid deserts in several countries have turned into lush, fertile land? In countries such as the United Arab Emirates and China, fruits and vegetables now flourish, providing fresh produce for their inhabitants. But what caused this miraculous transformation? Lets find out! What is Nanoclay? In the 1980s, the Nile Delta in Egypt, known for its reliable farming, suddenly became barren. For decades, the Nile floodwaters had spread minerals, nutrients, and clay particles over the soil. However, the newly built Aswan Dam prevented clay particles from flowing, reducing the soils...

Memorial Day, whichwill be celebrated onMay 31, 2021,is one of the most important American holidays.Observed annually on the last Monday ofMay, it honors the brave men and women of theUS Army, Navy, Marine Corps, National Guard, Air Force, and the Coast Guard whosacrificed their lives to defend America's freedom. Meanwhile,Veterans Day, which takes place each yearon November 11, honorsall veterans living or deadbut mainly givesthanks to livingveteranswho served their country honorably during war or peacetime.

Donut lovers,rejoice!Friday,June 4, 2021, is National Donut Day. That means it is your civic duty to consume at least one oreven a dozen of the delicious confections. The fun US holiday, observed annually on the first Friday of June,was startedin 1938 by theSalvation Army to help raisefunds forthose in need.

Mythical mermaids are often known for their fishy tails and alluring songs. But if you were underwater with one, her tunes wouldnt sound quite like they do in the movies. And you might struggle to understand the words as Ariel or her other mermaid friends burst out singing.



Even next to a mermaid, the song would sound muffled and would seem to come from all around, says Jasleen Singh. You could still make out what she is saying, but it would sound fuller with less clarity, Singh says. She studies human hearing at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.





If mermaids existed, and if they sang and talked to one another, their hearing and sound-making setups might resemble marine creatures features instead of humans. To understand why, you have to start with the basics of sound and hearing.



Explainer: How the ears work



Sound is produced when an object vibrates. Touch your throat while you talk, and you can feel your vocal cords vibrating inside your neck. These vibrations can travel through gases, liquids and solids. In each medium, atoms and molecules get pushed around by a sound sources back-and-forth motion. These particles bump into each other in a rippling pattern of waves. Like a line of falling dominoes, the colliding particles spread sound.



Human hearing starts with sound waves entering the air-filled space in each earhole. The waves vibrate the eardrum, which wiggles three little ear bones. One of the bones taps on a snail-shaped structure in the inner ear called the cochlea. This fluid-filled structure converts the vibrations into electrical signals that the brain understands as sound.



Underwater, its a different story. Since water plugs your ears, you rely on sound waves directly vibrating the skull. This happens on land too, but it works better below the waters surface. Thats because water and bone have similar densities. When sound waves gently rattle the skull, that is directly stimulating the inner ear the cochlea itself, Singh says. This is called bone conduction. We humans, however, are much more attuned to the sound waves striking our eardrums. As a result, the sound quality of bone conduction is not as good as regular air conduction.



Plus, its difficult to figure out where a sound is coming from underwater. On land, if someone starts talking on your right side, sound waves hit your right ear before your left. This slight variation in timing helps your brain find the source of a sound. But sound travels much faster in water than in air. Thats because the particles that make up liquids are closer together. In water, there is virtually no time difference between sound hitting each ear. That makes underwater noise sound very full, like its coming from everywhere.









Our sea-dwelling relatives



To hear their friends talk and sing properly, mermaids might have evolved hearing structures more like aquatic animals.



Marine mammals, such as whales, dolphins and seals, hear in a way very similar to humans, notes Colleen Reichmuth. A biologist, she studies marine mammals at the University of California, Santa Cruz. These creatures have cochleae. They also have ear bones and eardrums, though not always functional. And they have evolved some adaptations to help them hear under the sea.





The lower jaw of dolphins and some whales contains fat that directs sound to the bony middle ear. This fat has a special chemical composition that makes it really suitable for transmitting acoustic waves, says Laela Sayigh. Shes a marine biologist at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.



Some marine mammals, such as seals, have convertible ears. On land, the animals can open ear holes to pick up sound waves traveling through air. But when diving, their ear tissue swells with fluid, plugging the holes. The fluid-filled ears help transfer sound from the water to the cochleae.





Those features could help a mermaid hear her friends songs more clearly. But if mermaid voices were more like those of marine mammals, their vocal systems could get a major upgrade, too.



Whales, dolphins, seals and other marine mammals can sing underwater, creating complex noises with musical notes or rhythms. They produce sound by passing air along tissues to vibrate them, similar to a humans voice box. But unlike people, who must breathe out to make noise, many of these sea creatures dont need to expel air from their mouths or blowholes to produce sound.



Underwater, air is a precious commodity, says Joy Reidenberg. If whales exhaled when using their voices, they would have to keep resurfacing for more air. That would interrupt their lengthy songs, Reidenberg says. She studies animal anatomy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.



Instead, whales and dolphins can move air around in their bodies and even reuse it. This air recycling system would certainly help a mermaid sustain conversation or song below the surface, Reichmuth says.



For a voice that really carries, mermaids might be built like baleen whales. These whales, which include humpbacks, have huge vibrating structures in their throats that toss out sound. Some can make noises so loud and low-pitched too low for humans to hear that the songs could potentially travel more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) in the ocean. (Lower-pitched sound waves lose less energy when traveling through water than higher-pitched ones.)



Humpback whales sing beautiful, lengthy songs. But they dont need to breathe out of their mouths or blowholes to do it. These whales recycle the air supply in their bodies and can stay submerged for nearly an hour. Craig Lambert/iStock/Getty Images Plus



Something sounds fishy



A mermaids mammal upper half may not be the only part that could make or hear sounds. Crustaceans and fish are known to make quite a ruckus, too. In fact, snapping shrimps, typically around four centimeters (1.5 inches) long, are some of the loudest creatures on Earth. As the name implies, these shrimp snap one of their claws to produce a colossal sound.



Many fish use a similar method to make noise. They click or rub their bodys bony structures together. Sea horses, for example, produce clicks by knocking the tops of their skulls into the horns on their heads. They do this when wooing a mate.



You can think of it like clicking your teeth together, says Audrey Looby. A marine ecologist, she studies fish at the University of Floridas Nature Coast Biological Station in Cedar Key.



Other species can use their muscles to vibrate an internal organ, like playing a drum. Some fish can even communicate by expelling air out their backside, Looby says. Essentially, fish communicating through farting. And they have special cells lining the sides of their bodies that can sense vibrations in the water, helping them to hear.



If you met a mermaid, she might have both fish-like and mammalian structures to communicate with her underwater friends. Motion-detecting cells may line her tail, and her ears may work like a seals to hear both in and out of water. She would probably recycle her bodys air supply to talk and sing without having to keep resurfacing. But her conversations may also be sprinkled with teeth chattering, clapping and even farting.

A dose of antibiotics seems to help some corals recover from a mysterious tissue-eating disease. And yes, theyre the same antibiotics used in people.



Divers discovered the coral disease in 2014. It was afflicting reefs near Miami, Fla. Nicknamed skittle-D, it appears as white lesions that rapidly eat away at coral tissue. The disease has no cure. It currently plagues nearly all of the Great Florida Reef, which spans some 580 kilometers (360 miles). In recent years, skittle-D has spread to reefs in the Caribbean.



Now, a type of coral with skittle-D just off the Florida coast has improved several months after being treated with amoxicillin. Researchers reported the findings April 21 in Scientific Reports. The deadly disease came back on some treated coral over time. But the results provide a spot of good news.



Antibiotic treatments give the corals a break, says Erin Shilling. She works as a coral researcher at Florida Atlantic University in Fort Pierce. Its very good at halting the lesions its applied to.



Treatment with an antibiotic paste (white bands, left) stopped a tissue-eating lesion from spreading over a great star coral colony up to 11 months later (right).E.N. Shilling, I.R. Combs and J.D. Voss/Scientific Reports 2021



Testing treatments



What causes skittle-D remains unknown. So scientists are left to treat the lesions it causes through trial and error. Two treatments show promise. In one, divers apply a material known as a chlorinated epoxy. In another, divers use an amoxicillin paste. 





Lets learn about coral reefs




Shilling and her colleagues wanted to see if either worked as well as some people have been saying. In April 2019, her team found 95 lesions on 32 colonies of great star corals. The scientists dug trenches to surround the lesions. Trenches separate diseased coral tissue from healthy tissue. The team then filled the moats and covered the lesions with the paste or epoxy. Scientists monitored the corals for 11 months.



Within about three months, some 95 percent of lesions treated with amoxicillin had healed. Meanwhile, only about 20 percent of the epoxy-treated lesions had healed in that time. That rate was no better than in untreated lesions. 



But a one-and-done treatment doesnt stop new lesions from popping up, the team found. Some key questions also still need answers, the scientists note. For instance, how long does the treatment work and in which coral species. Scientists are also trying to figure out what side effects antibiotics might pose to the corals.






Cause for hope



Erins work is fabulous, says Karen Neely. She is a marine biologist at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Neely and her team see similar results in their two-year experiment at the Florida National Marine Sanctuary. Her group used the same paste and epoxy treatments on more than 2,300 lesions. Those lesions affected some 1,600 coral colonies.The antibiotic was more than 95 percent effective across all eight species tested, Neely says. New lesions popped up after the initial treatment. But covering those new patches with paste appeared to stop skittle-D from coming back over time. Her teams findings are undergoing peer-review in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.Overall, putting these corals in this treatment program saves them, Neely says. We dont get happy endings very often, so thats a nice one.

Winter, theprosthetic-taileddolphin whose storyinspired a book and two heartwarming movies, died onNovember 12, 2021.The 16-year-oldhad been suffering froman intestinal blockage sinceNovember 1, 2021.The doctorsatFlorida'sClearwater Marine Aquarium tried severallife-saving efforts but were unable to helpthe beloved mammal.

Explorers from Europe made their home in North America longer ago than we had realized. Vikings settled in Canada exactly 1,000 years ago, a new study finds. Details preserved in wood were key to the discovery.



Researchers had evidence that Norse Vikings built the structures and lived there roughly 1,000 years ago. But until now, they hadnt been able to find an exact date for the settlement.



Newfoundland is part of Canadas easternmost province. A team of scientists examined wooden objects at a site on site on its northern coast. By counting tree rings preserved in the wood, they discovered that the objects were made from trees cut down in the year 1021. That gives the oldest precise date for Europeans in the Americas.



Indeed, its the only one from before Christopher Columbus and his ships came to North America in 1492. Margot Kuitems and Michael Dee are geological scientists who led the study. They work at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Their team shared its findings October 20 in Nature.





The site where archeologists found the wooden objects is known as LAnse aux Meadows. Thats French for meadow cove. Discovered in1960, it is now a historic site protected as part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The Newfoundland site hosts the remains of three houses and other structures. All were made from local trees.





Signature spike



The new study focused on four wooden objects found at LAnse aux Meadows. Its not clear how the objects were used, but each had been cut with metal tools. On three of the finds, Kuitems, Dee and their team identified an annual growth rings in the wood that showed a signature spike in radiocarbon levels. Other researchers have dated that spike to the year 993. Thats when a surge of cosmic rays from solar activity bombarded Earth and increased the planets atmospheric levels of radioactive carbon.



The scientists used the signature spike to help them count the growth rings in each of the wooden objects. Each year that a tree lives, it adds a ring of woody tissue around the outer layer of its trunk. Counting those rings would tell the researchers when the tree was cut down and used to make the object. They started at the year 993 ring and worked their way out to the edge. All the objects yielded the same year 1021.



Despite its precision, that date doesnt answer the question of when Vikings first set foot in the Americas. Some scientists believe LAnse aux Meadows might have been part of a larger area in eastern Canada called Vinland. That region is described in 13th century Icelandic texts as having been settled by Vikings.

Hello and Merry Christmas! Christmas might not be a time of video games, but it’s a thing to entertain you during the wintertime! Here are some games recommended by me that you should play during Christmas time. 1. Santa Tracker Why not add this to the list? Not only does it include games, but it […]

On February 17, 2026, more than 1.5 billion people worldwide will welcome the start of the Chinese New Year. Also called Lunar or Spring New Year, it is one of the most important holidays in China. The date of the two-week celebration is determined by the lunar calendar. It usually falls between late January and mid-February. For many families, it is a time to reflect on the past year and prepare for a fresh start.

Acollection of 1,000 prehistoricstructures dubbed mustatils the plural form of the Arabic term for rectangles scattered across 124,274 miles(200,000 kilometers) innorthwest Saudi Arabiamay be theworld's oldest monuments. A team of archeologistsfromthe University of Western Australia (UWA)reached this conclusion afterradiocarbon dating of charcoalfound inside the courtyardsindicatedtheywere constructed in 5,000 BC or about 2,000 years before theEgyptian pyramids or monuments likeStonehenge in southern England.

Have you ever heard of goldenseal? Its a perennial plant found exclusively in the hardwood forests of eastern North America and is part of the buttercup family. It has a long and varied history of medicinal use. Unfortunately, the future of this wonder plant is in trouble. What happened to goldenseal? Lets find out! Goldenseal: A Miracle Plant Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) has many uses and is prepared in many forms. Treatment methods include capsules, teas, and herbal extracts. The roots and leaves are used to treat viruses and swelling. Goldenseal is also used in ear drops, allergy...

Tectonic plate (noun, Tek-TAHN-ick PLAYT)



Earths outermost layer, or lithosphere, is broken up into a giant jigsaw puzzle of tectonic plates. These huge slabs of rock hold both Earths continents and its seafloor. Theyre around 100 kilometers (miles) thick on average and include both Earths crust and upper mantle. Earth is covered in about a dozen main tectonic plates. And its the only planet known to have tectonic plates.



Explainer: Understanding plate tectonics



Earths tectonic plates continually slide around atop the hot, swirling rock beneath them. They move only a few centimeters per year. But over millions of years, those tiny movements add up. When tectonic plates bump into each other, they push up mountains. When plates slide beneath each other, they can form volcanoes. Plates can also slide past each other. Each of these movements can trigger earthquakes.



Even more dramatically, the shuffling of tectonic plates can give Earths surface a complete makeover. More than 200 million years ago, Earth had only one huge landmass: Pangaea. Over time, the shifting of tectonic plates broke that landmass apart and gave rise to the continents we see today.



In a sentence



A single catastrophic collision may have given Earth both its moon and its tectonic plates.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

Hiya everyone, this is going to be a blast because I’m going to show you the wonders of our animal kingdom!!!! Basically, I’m going to be posting some animal facts. If you’re interested in another animal and want me to share the facts about it, comment on whatever animal you’d like me to share. If […]

Bond (noun, BOND)



In chemistry, a bond is an attachment between atoms. Bonds form because atoms are made of particles with electrical charges. The center of an atom contains particles with a positive charge, and particles with no charge. The particles around the outside of an atom each have a negative charge. Have you heard the saying opposites attract? It applies in chemistry, too. The attraction between negative charges in one atom and positive charges in another is the basis for a chemical bond



Chemical bonds between individual atoms form molecules. Bonds can also form between the atoms in molecules and other atoms or molecules nearby. Chemical bonds form every solid thing on Earth from huge boulders to the cells in your body.



There are many kinds of chemical bonds. All of them require energy to form, and energy to break. Every chemical reaction involves a change in chemical bonds as atoms get added or removed from molecules. Thats why all chemical reactions involve energy.



In a sentence



Bonds between hydrogen atoms might help explain why hot water freezes faster than cold water.



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After months of negotiations, US lawmakers finally reached an agreementtoallocate$1.2 trillion to much-neededpublic works projects. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,signed into law by President Joe Biden onNovember 15, 2021,includes$550 billion in new spending.The restwill be reallocated from already existing projects and funds. Here are some of the manyinfrastructure improvements that can be expected across the country over the next five years.

Experiment (noun, Ex-PAIR-uh-ment)



The word experiment might make you think of scientists wearing white coats in a lab. But anyone, anywhere can do an experiment. An experiment is a procedure used to test an idea about the world.



In an experiment, a person manipulates one thing and observes how that may affect another thing. The thing that the person manipulates is the independent variable. The thing that may change in response is the dependent variable.





For example, Science News for Students did an experiment to test the five-second rule. The rule states that food dropped on the floor will collect fewer germs if its picked up quickly. To test this rule, you need to compare two things: how long food lays on the floor, and how germy the food gets. In this case, the person doing the experiment manipulates the amount of time the food spends on the floor. How long the food lays on the floor is the independent variable. The dependent variable the thing that may change in response is how dirty the food gets.



Measurements of the number of germs on different pieces of food are experimental data. Analyzing data can lead to a conclusion about the idea being tested. In this experiment, the data suggest that time spent on the floor does not affect how many germs get on food. Conclusion: the five-second rule is a myth.



But don’t take our word for it. A crucial part of science is replication. Thats when many scientists do the same experiment to confirm or deny the results. Join the scientific process by doing the five-second rule experiment for yourself. Or try another experiment from our collection.



In a sentence



If you have a question, like which parts of the body are most sensitive to touch, an experiment can help you find out the answer.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

In March, the film Dune: Part Two returned sci-fi fans to the desert planet Arrakis. On this harsh, sandy world, human settlers seek the spice a substance that enables interstellar travel. But spice miners must evade giant, man-eating sandworms.  



This fantastical setting has captured Dune fans imaginations for decades. Frank Herbert first introduced Arrakis in the novel Dune in 1965. The new movies, based on the book and directed by Denis Villeneuve,have brought Herberts rich worldbuilding to new life. And now, scientists have weighed in on how realistic the world of Arrakis really is. 



People probably could live on a planet like Arrakis, researchers say. But monstrous sandworms (thankfully) could not.  



Habitable? Yes. Pleasant? Eh 



A few years ago, a team of climate modelers madea computer simulation of Arrakis. (You canexplore the virtual planet at Climate Archive). To create their model, the researchers started with the physics known to drive weather and climate on Earth. Then, they added details about the planet from the Dune novel and its sequels. The modelers also drew information from theDune Encyclopedia. 



Explainer: What is a computer model?



According to that intel, Arrakis atmosphere is similar to Earths with a couple of key differences. Arrakis has less carbon dioxide, or CO2, in its atmosphere. But the fictional world also has far more ozone in its lower atmosphere. Ozone makes up some 0.5 percent of the gases in Arrakis lower atmosphere. But its only about 0.000001 percent of Earths lower atmosphere. 



All that extra ozone is crucial for understanding Arrakis. Ozone is a powerful greenhouse gas. Its about 65 times as potent at warming the atmosphere as CO2 is over a 20-year period.  



Arrakis would certainly have a much warmer atmosphere, even though it has less CO2than Earth today, says Alexander Farnsworth. Hes part of the team that built the model Arrakis. He works at the University of Bristol in England. 



A climate model of Arrakis predicts that cloud cover and other factors would make regions near the poles unbearably hot in summer and well below freezing in the winter. Areas closer to the equator would be slightly more comfortable. But they would have strong winds (white arrows) that whip up massive sand dunes. A. Farnsworth, M. Farnsworth, S. Steinig/The Conversation (CC BY-ND 4.0 DEED)



So much ozone in the lower atmosphere could be bad news for humans. That would be incredibly toxic, I think, Farnsworth says. Almost fatal, if you were to live under such conditions. People on Arrakis would likely have to use some technology to remove ozone from the air. 



People would also need to be careful about where they established settlements on Arrakis. In the Dune universe, people live near the poles. But in reality, these areas would have extreme summer heat and bone-chilling winter cold. For instance, winter could bring temperatures as low as 40 C to 75 C (40 F to 103 F). This would make polar regions nearly unlivable without technology, Farnsworth says. 



Temperatures near Arrakis equator would be milder. Say, around 45 C (113 F) in the warmest months and about 15 C (59 F) in colder ones.  



On Earth, high humidity causes tropical areas near the equator to be far warmer than at the poles. But this was not the case in the computer model of Arrakis. Most of the atmospheric moisture was essentially removed from the tropics, Farnsworth says. This made even the scorching summers more bearable. The clouds and tiny amount of moisture gathered near the poles to heat the atmosphere.



But the tropics on Arrakis would pose their own challenges. Hurricane-force winds would regularly sandblast settlers and builddunes up to 250 meters (820 feet) tall. 



That doesnt mean people couldnt live on Arrakis, Farnsworth says. Theyd just need technology and lots of off-world support to bring in food and water. Its a very livable world, he says. Just a very inhospitable world. 



The fictional planet Arrakis is said to orbit the real star Canopus (pictured). The real Canopus is the second brightest star in the Southern Hemisphere sky but is not known to host any planets. In Dune, Arrakis is about as far from Canopus as Pluto is from the sun. The planet would still get blasted with a fair amount of radiation from its star which is a large white star much hotter than the sun. But ozone in Arrakiss upper atmosphere could help shield life on the surface from this harmful radiation. NASA



Its hard to be a giant sandworm 



Humans might be able to get by on Arrakis with some help from their tech. But the planet would likely not be livable for its most famous residents: the giant sandworms.  



The sandworms on Arrakis are said to be up to 400 meters (1,300 feet) long. Thats nearly 10 times the length of the biggest dinosaurs that ever lived. That would be unusual for an animal with a long body, like a worm.  



The worm body plan is really common. It has evolved many times over the last 600 million years, says Patrick Lewis. But none of them have ever been very big. Lewis is a vertebrate paleontologist. He works at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. 



For invertebrate worms those without spines the problem is oxygen. Worms often absorb oxygen through their skin to spread through their bodies. The larger the animal, the harder it would be to get oxygen to their internal organs. 



Lewis figures that Arrakis giant sandworms must be vertebrates, though. We have vertebrate worm-like creatures on Earth,likeZygaspisworm lizards from sub-Saharan Africa. Those are the species that Lewis studies. They are much smaller than Arrakis worms. Theyre only about 20 to 30 centimeters (8 to 12 inches) long. But that didnt stop Lewis from imagining what aDune-sized vertebrate worm might be like. 



Arrakis, the fictional planet in Dune, would be livable for humans, researchers say. But not the giant sandworms depicted in the movies (as in this scene from Dune: Part Two).Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures



Worms with bones and muscles could be bigger and stronger than invertebrates, Lewis says. But they would be limited by gravity. Whales can be big because they live in water. There, buoyancy can do a lot of the heavy lifting on their bodies.  



But if youre going to be on the surface, then you have to be able to fight gravity, Lewis says. To reach more than 150 meters long, you would basically have to be a big ball of bone to keep from crushing under your own weight. 



Perhaps Arrakis worms would have bones made of a superlight material not known on Earth. Then, they could grow to such a huge size. But that poses a problem for moving around. The bigger you get, the relatively weaker the muscles are, Lewis says. So youd need monstrously strong muscles and unbelievably thick bones to attach them to. And muscles create a lot of heat. 





Zygaspisworm lizards can tolerate 45 C (113 F) temperatures in Africas Kalahari Desert. Thats because they are small. This means their bodies have lots of surface area compared to their volume. The more surface area relative to volume an animal has, the more easily it can shed heat.  



A giant sandworm wouldnt be able to shed heat nearly as easily. The bigger an animal is, the more volume it has which generates and stores heat compared to the surface area it uses to cool itself. Combine that with the hot weather of Arrakis, and that spells trouble for huge worms.  



If youre a giant worm, a hot climate is not your friend, Lewis says. 



So if youre aDunefan wondering what life would truly be like on Arrakis, youre in luck. The planet would be a realistic, if harsh, place for humans to live. As a bonus, you probably wouldnt have to worry about getting eaten by a giant sandworm. 

We have all heard that reducing meat and dairy consumption is an important behavioral change that can help with our planet's climate. However, what is a successful strategy to get people to consume more plant-based food? Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital has an answer. They pioneered a vegetarian/vegan option to reduce climate change. Faulkner is one of 60 hospitals, universities, major corporations, and cities that have signed an international pledge to reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030. One of the main strategies they are using: not mentioning the word vegan...

It looks like a steak. It cooks like a steak. And according to the scientists who made and ate it, the thick and juicy slab smells and tastes like a steak. A ribeye, specifically. But appearances can be deceiving. Unlike any steak found on a menu or store shelf today, this one didnt come from a slaughtered animal.



Scientists printed it earlier this year with a bioprinter. The machine is much like a standard 3-D printer. The difference: This type uses cells as a form of living ink.



Fashioning inks to print tissues



The technology involves the printing of actual living cells, explains biologist Neta Lavon. She helped develop the steak. Those cells are incubated, she says, to grow in a lab. By that she means theyre given nutrients and kept at a temperature that lets them keep growing. Using real cells this way, she says, is a real innovation over previous new meat products. This allows the printed product to acquire the texture and qualities of a real steak.





Lavon works at Aleph Farms, a company in Haifa, Israel. Her teams steak project grew out of a partnership between the company and scientists at TechnionIsrael Institute of Technology, which is in Rehovot. The ribeye is the latest addition to a growing list of meats grown in a lab instead of as part of some animal.



Researchers call these new meats cultivated or cultured. Interest in them has grown in recent years, partly because the technology shows they are possible. Advocates say that if meat can be printed, then no animal would need to lose its life to become human food.





But dont look for these products on the store shelves just yet. Making meat this way is much harder and therefore costs more than raising and killing an animal. The technology will require drastic reductions in cost before cultured meat will be widely available, says Kate Krueger. Shes a cell biologist in Cambridge, Mass., who started Helikon Consulting. Her business works with companies who want to grow animal-based foods from cells. 



One of the most expensive components, says Krueger, is the cell-growth medium. This mix of nutrients keeps the cells alive and dividing. The medium contains expensive ingredients called growth factors. Unless the cost of growth factors drops, says Krueger, cultured meat cant be produced at comparable prices to animal meat.



The road to slaughter-free meats



The ribeye joins a growing list of cultured meat products. It started in 2013. Back then, a physician and scientist named Mark Post debuted the worlds first burger made with lab-grown meat. Three years later, Memphis Meats, based in California, unveiled a cultured-meat meatball. In 2017, it debuted cultured duck and chicken meat. Aleph Farms entered the picture the next year with a thin-cut steak. Unlike its new ribeye, it was not 3-D-printed.



To date, none of these cultured-meat products is yet on sale in stores.



Explainer: What is 3-D printing?



The companies working on them use technology borrowed from tissue engineering. Scientists in this field study how to use real cells to build living tissues or organs that might help people.



At Aleph Farms, the process of building a ribeye begins with collecting pluripotent stem cells from a cow. Scientists then place these in a growth medium. This type of cell can produce more cells by dividing again and again. They are special because they can develop into almost any type of animal cell. For instance, Lavon notes, They can mature into the cell types that comprise meat, such as muscle.



The incubated cells will grow and reproduce. When there are enough, a bioprinter will use them as a living ink to build a printed steak. It lays the cells down one layer at a time. This printer also creates a network of tiny channels that mimic blood vessels, Lavon says. These channels let nutrients reach the living cells.



After printing, the product goes in what the company calls a tissue bioreactor. Here, the printed cells and channels grow to form a single system. The company hasnt yet shared how long it takes to print a ribeye from start to finish.



Lavon says the technology works, but cant yet print lots of ribeye steaks. She predicts that within two or three years, though, cultured ribeye steaks could reach supermarkets. The company plans to start selling its first product, that thin-cut steak, next year.



Like Krueger, Lavon says costs remain a challenge. In 2018, Aleph Farms reported that producing one serving of cultured steak cost $50. At that price, Lavon says, it cant compete with the real thing. But if scientists can find lower-cost methods, she says, then tissue engineering may stand a chance of giving beef without the moo.



This is one in a series presenting news on technology and innovation, made possible with generous support from the Lemelson Foundation.

Generally, when one pictures a battery, one imagines the lithium-ion battery in various high-tech forms. Yet in 2022, Polar Night Energy launched the world's first commercial sand battery, capable of storing 500-600C in heat energy for months. Compare this to a standard lithium battery that can only hold energy for a few hours! Now, Polar Night Energy, in collaboration with the heating company Lovisan Lmp, will launch a sand battery 10 times the size and capable of storing up to 100 megawatts hour of heat. This battery will eliminate the need for oil-based energy for the entire town of...

Earths geographic poles arent fixed. Instead, they wander in seasonal and near-annual cycles. The weather and ocean currents drive most of this slow drift. But a sudden zag in the direction of that drift started in the 1990s. That sharp change in direction appears due in large part to the melting of glaciers, a new study finds. And that melt? Climate change triggered it.



The geographic poles are where the planets axis pierces Earths surface. Those poles move in relatively tight swirls just a few meters across. They also drift over time as the distribution of the planets weight shifts. That shift in mass alters the rotation of Earth about its axis.



Explainer: Ice sheets and glaciers



Before the mid-1990s, the North Pole had been drifting toward the western edge of Canadas Ellesmere Island. Its part of Canadas Nunavut territory, just off Greenlands northwest shoulder. But then the pole veered eastward by about 71 degrees. That sent it toward the northeastern tip of Greenland. It has continued to head that way, moving about 10 centimeters (4 inches) per year. Scientists arent quite sure why this shift occurred, says Suxia Liu. Shes a hydrologist at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research. Its in Beijing, China.





Lius team checked how well the trends in the changing polar drift match data from studies on melting across the globe. In particular, glacial melt sped up during the 1990s in Alaska, Greenland and the southern Andes. The timing of that accelerated melting helped link it to Earths changing climate. This, as well as the effects that the melt would have had on altering the distribution of Earths mass, suggests glacial melting helped trigger the change in polar drift. Liu and her colleagues described their findings April 16 in Geophysical Research Letters.



While melting glaciers can account for much of the change in polar drift, it doesnt explain all of it. This means other factors must also be at work. Farmers, for instance, have been pumping lots of groundwater from aquifers for irrigation. Once brought to the surface, that water can drain to rivers. Eventually, it can flow to an ocean far away. Like glacial melt, how water is managed cannot alone explain the North Poles drift, the team reports. It can, however, give Earths axis a substantial nudge.



The findings reveal how much human activity can have an impact on changes to the mass of water stored on land, says Vincent Humphrey. Hes a climate scientist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The new data also show how large these shifts in our planets mass can be, he adds. Theyre so big that they can change the axis of the Earth.

Did you know that concrete is the second most-consumed resource after water? Think of your home, parking lots, bridges, or any other public utility building and you will find concrete. Unfortunately, this has also resulted in the concrete industry becoming one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. In fact, if the concrete industry were a nation, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, after China and the United States. Lets cement our knowledge of concrete, why it generates greenhouse gases, and a new alternative called green cement which cuts emissions. A Brief...

Savanna (noun, Suh-van-uh)



If you’ve ever seen The Lion King, you’ve seen a savanna. A savanna is a rolling grassland scattered with trees and shrubs. This type of ecosystem covers about 20 percent of the world’s land. That includes nearly half of Africa. The African savanna is home to lions, hyenas, zebras and other Lion King creatures. The Australian savanna hosts animals like kangaroos and wallabies. Savannas are also found in South America and Asia. And in North America, the oak savanna is one of the worlds most endangered ecosystems.



Most people may be familiar with the African savanna. But did you know North America has savannas, too? These grasslands are scattered with oak trees.Steepcone/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)



Most savannas don’t have the four seasons you might be familiar with. These areas alternate between dry winters and wet summers. During the winter, a savanna may not get rain for months at a time. That prevents many trees from growing there. Dry conditions also allow savannas to catch fire easily. Those fires prevent young trees from growing up and turning these habitats into forests. But heavy summer rains help thick grasses grow. That prevents the savanna from being a desert.



In a sentence



African savanna elephants are the largest land mammals in the world.



Check out the full list of Scientists Say.

Ria Kalluri and her colleagues had a simple request for Dall-E. This bot uses artificial intelligence, or AI, to generate images. We asked for an image of a disabled person leading a meeting, says Kalluri. I identify as disabled. Lots of folks do. So it shouldnt be hard for Dall-E to show someone with this description simply leading a meeting. 



But the bot couldnt do it.



At least, not when Kalluri and her team asked it to, last year. Dall-E produced a person who is visibly disabled watching a meeting while someone else leads, Kalluri recalls. Shes a PhD student at Stanford University in California. There, she studies the ethics of making and using AI. She was part of a team that reported its findings on problems with bias in AI-generated images in June 2023. Team members described the work at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency in Chicago, Ill.



Assuming that someone with a disability wouldnt lead a meeting is an example of ableism. Kalluris group also found examples of racism, sexism and many other types of bias in images made by bots.



Sadly, all of these biases are assumptions that many people also make. But AI often amplifies them, says Kalluri. It paints a world that is more biased than reality. Other researchers have shared similar concerns.



Dall-E produced this image in response to the prompt a disabled woman leading a meeting. The bot failed to depict the person in a wheelchair as a leader.F. Bianchi et al/Dall-E





In addition Dall-E, Kalluris group also tested Stable Diffusion, another image-making bot. When asked for photos of an attractive person, its results were all light-skinned, says Kalluri. And many had eyes that were bright blue bluer than real peoples.



When asked to depict the face of a poor person, though, Stable Diffusion usually represented that person as dark-skinned. The researchers even tried asking for a poor white person. That didnt seem to matter. The results at the time of testing were almost all dark-skinned. In the real world, of course, beautiful people and impoverished people come in all eye colors and skin tones.



The researchers also used Stable Diffusion to create images of people having a range of different jobs. The results were both racist and sexist.



For example, the AI model represented all software developers as male. And 99 percent of them had light-colored skin. In the United States, though, one in five software developers identify as female. Only about half identify as white.



Even images of everyday objects such as doors and kitchens showed bias. Stable Diffusion tended to depict a stereotypical suburban U.S. home. It was as if North America was the bots default setting for how the world looks. In reality, more than 90 percent of people live outside of North America.



Kalluris team used math to check the map an AI model makes of images on which it trained. In one test, doors with no location provided were mapped closer to doors from North America than to doors in Asia or Africa. That closeness indicates a bias: that “these models create a version of the world that further entrenches the view of American as default,” says Kalluri. F. Bianchi et al/Stable Diffusion



This is a big deal, Kalluri says. Biased images can cause real harm. Seeing them tends to strengthen peoples stereotypes. For example, a February study in Nature had participants view images of men and women in stereotypical roles. Even three days later, people who saw these images had stronger biases about men and women than theyd held before. This didnt happen to a group that read biased text or to a group that saw no biased content.



Biases can affect the opportunities people have, notes Kalluri. And, she notes, AI can produce text and images at a pace like never before. A flood of AI-generated biased imagery could be extremely difficult to overcome.



Researchers found that Stable Diffusion represented flight attendants only as female and software developers only as male. In the real world, around three out of five flight attendants and one out of five software developers in the United States identify as female.F. Bianchi et al.;adapted by L. Steenblik Hwang



Stuck in the past



Developers train bots such as Dall-E or Stable Diffusion to create images. They do this by showing them many, many example images. Theyve done mass scans of internet data, explains Kalluri. But a lot of these images are outdated. They represented people in biased ways.



Lets learn about bias



A further problem: Many images belong to artists and companies that never gave permission for AI to use their work.



AI image generators average their training data together to create a vast map. In this map, similar words and images are grouped closer together. Bots cant know anything about the world beyond their training data, notes Kalluri. They cannot create or imagine new things. That means AI-made images can only reflect how people and things appeared in the images on which they trained.



Does AI steal art or help create it? It depends on who you ask



In other words, Kalluri says: Theyre built on the past.



OpenAI has updated its bot Dall-E to try to produce more inclusive images. The company hasnt shared exactly how this works. But experts believe that behind the scenes, Dall-E edits peoples prompts.



Roland Meyer is a media scholar at Ruhr University Bochum. Thats in Germany. He was not involved in Kalluris research. But he has done his own tests of image-generating bots. In his experience, When I say give me a family, it translates the prompt into something else. It may add words such as Black father or Asian mother to make the result reflect diversity, he says.




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A game of whack-a-mole



Kalluri doesnt think this type of approach will work in the long term. Its like the game whack-a-mole, she says. Every time you say something and [AI companies] fix something, there are other problems to find.



For example, no AI-generated pictures of families in her research seemed to represent two moms or two dads. Plus, attempts to add diversity to AI-made images can backfire.



In February 2024, Google added image generation as a feature for its bot Gemini. People quickly discovered that the bot always included diversity, no matter what. On social media, one person shared their request for an image of the crew of Apollo 11. This group flew to the moon in 1969. Gemini showed the crew as a white man, a Black man and a woman. But three white men had made up the real crew. Gemini had messed up basic history. 





Google apologized and temporarily stopped the bot from generating pictures of people. As of May 2024, this feature had not yet been restored.



Kalluri suggests that the real problem here is the idea that the whole world should be using one bot to get images or text. One bot simply cant represent the values and identities of all cultures. The idea that there is one technology to rule them all is nonsense, she says.



In her ideal world, local communities would gather data for AI and train it for their own purposes. She wishes for technologies that support our communities. This, she says, is how to avoid bias and harm.

Ivory is so popular that poachers regularly kill elephants for their tusks. To stop the slaughter of these animals, most nations banned the international sale of elephant ivory in 1989. Those laws have not totally stopped poachers. But lasers might, scientists now report.



Ivory is the hard material that makes up the tusks of several mammal species (both living and extinct). Selling ancient ivory, such as from a mastodon, is legal. So is the sale of elephant ivory thats at least a century old (if you have the right documents to prove its that ancient). Whats illegal is newer elephant ivory.



Yet ivory from all of these animals looks about the same at least to the eye.



And thats proven a big problem. Poachers and other criminals can make lots of money from ivory. So many will lie about its source. The challenge for wildlife and customs officials is to know which ivory is which.



Since a ban on the ivory trade, poachers have posed less of a deadly threat to African elephants, like this one in Kenya. But some sales of illegal ivory continue, often by claiming it comes from other animals. A new technique could help close that loophole. Manoj Shah/Stone/Getty Images Plus



At the University of Bristol in England, scientists have just reported a new way to flag the illegal type. They use Raman spectroscopy (Spek-TRAAS-koh-pee). This chemical analysis, which involves lasers, is good for studying stuff thats dense. And its been used for decades just not to find poachers.



Raman spectroscopy is well suited to identifying differences in materials that look similar but have different chemical compositions, explains Eve Donnelly. This materials scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., knows that well. She uses the tool on human bones. She wants to see how they change with aging, disease or the use of certain medicines.



You just fire a laser at the material. That laser interacts with bonds that hold together the samples atoms. The reflected light reveals a molecular fingerprint of the material, Donnelly says. And that molecular signal reveals the identity of the sample.



Lets learn about elephants



Ivory and bone are similar, note the new studys authors. So they decided to see if Raman spectroscopy could identify an ivorys source.



And it does, reports Rebecca Shepherd. We can use it to tell the difference between different elephant species [and their relatives]. That includes woolly mammoths. Shepherd, an anatomist, led the new study.



There are other, faster ways to analyze ivory for its source, Shepherd admits. However, Raman spectroscopy has an advantage. It can be done without destroying the sample.



Her team shared its findings April 24 in PLoS ONE.





The threat to elephants



At the beginning of the 1800s, tens of millions of elephants roamed Africa. By the time the ivory ban went into effect, elephants were endangered with extinction. Today, their populations have grown to a little more than 400,000, according to the World Wildlife Fund. So theyre no longer considered endangered. But ivory poachers still kill up to 15,000 elephants each year. These majestic animals therefore continue to face a threat of going extinct.



Explainer: What is an endangered species?



Mammoths did go extinct almost 4,000 years ago.



Remains from some of them of have been found in Siberia, preserved in permafrost. But global warming has been melting that permafrost. Today, people search the world for mammoth carcasses and their ivory.



Mammoth ivory and elephant ivory look the same. And thats where the new technique can help. For the source of ivory, whether living or extinct, we can tell the difference, says Shepherd.



She says she plans to extend her research. She wants to adapt it to identify bone or teeth from other animals. Those include narwhals and sperm whales.



Shes also working with the World Wildlife Fund to explore how to stop poachers. She hopes the laser method will be integrated into portable devices that border guards already use to test ivory.



Id also like to create a large database of ivory samples and have this freely available, says Shepherd. Then, a piece of software could compare a new sample to known ones. This should indicate how likely the ivory is to have come from an illegal source. Itd be a really good first test, she says.




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Excavations in an Israeli sinkhole have turned up a previously unknown Stone Age group of hominids. Its members contributed to the evolution of our genus, Homo. Remains at the new site, known as Nesher Ramla, come from 140,000 to 120,000 years ago. This hominid joins Neandertals and Denisovans as a third Euro-Asian population that belong to our genus. Over time, researchers say, they culturally mingled with and possibly interbred with our species, Homo sapiens.



Hominid fossils also have been found in three Israeli caves. Some date to as early as 420,000 years ago. They likely come from an ancient population of the hominid group whose remains have just turned up at Nesher Ramla. Thats the conclusion of a new study. Paleoanthropologist Israel Hershkovitz led that study. He works at Tel Aviv University in Israel.



Scientists Say: Hominid



His team hasnt assigned a species name to the newfound hominids. The researchers simply refer to them as Nesher Ramla Homo. These folk lived in the Middle Pleistocene. It ran from about 789,000 to 130,000 years ago. Back then, interbreeding and cultural mixing took place among Homo groups. This happened so much, the team notes, that it prevented the evolution of a distinct Nesher Ramla species.





Two studies in the June 25 Science describe the new fossils. Hershkovitz led one team that described the hominid remains. Archaeologist Yossi Zaidner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem led a second team. It dated rock tools found at the site.



The new fossils further complicate the human family tree. That tree has grown more complex in the past six years or so. Its branches hold several newly identified hominids. They include H. naledi from South Africa and the proposed H. luzonensis from the Philippines.



Nesher Ramla Homo was one of the last survivors of an ancient group of [hominids] that contributed to the evolution of European Neandertals and East Asian Homo populations, Hershkovitz says.





Lots of cultural mixing



Work at Nesher Ramla uncovered five pieces of a skull. They come from the braincase. (As the term implies, this bone encased the brain.) A nearly complete lower jaw also turned up. It still held a lone, molar tooth. These fossils in some ways look like Neandertals. In other ways, they better resemble remains of a pre-Neandertal species. It was called Homo heidelbergensis. Scientists think those individuals occupied parts of Africa, Europe and possibly East Asia as early as 700,000 years ago.



Some Homo fossils from sites in China also show a mix of traits that resemble features of the Nesher Ramla fossils, Hershkovitz says. It may be, he says, that ancient Homo groups with roots at this site may have reached East Asia and mated with hominids there.



But Nesher Ramla folk didnt have to go that far to interact with other hominids. Stone tools at the Nesher Ramla site match those of about the same age made by nearby H. sapiens. Nesher Ramla Homo and early members of our species must have exchanged skills on how to make stone tools, Hershkovitz concludes. These folk also may have interbred. DNA from the new fossils might have confirmed that. For now, however, efforts to get DNA from the Nesher Ramla fossils have failed.



Along with the new fossils, Hershkovitzs team dug up some 6,000 stone artifacts. They also found several thousand bones. Those came from gazelles, horses, tortoises and more. Some of those bones showed stone-tool marks. That would suggest the animals had been butchered for meat.



These stone tools were made by an ancient population in the Middle East. Those individuals belonged to our genus, Homo. The tools resemble those made around the same time by nearby H. sapiens. This suggests the two groups had close contacts.Tal Rogovski



John Hawks at the University of WisconsinMadison did not take part in the new research. But as a paleoanthropologist, hes familiar with ancient hominids and artifacts from their time. Hawks is intrigued that stone tools usually linked with our species turned up among such distinctive-looking non-human fossils. Thats not a smoking gun proving there were close interactions between Nesher Ramla Homo and [our species], he says. But, he adds, it does suggest that.



The Nesher Ramla fossils fit a scenario in which the Homo genus evolved as part of a community of closely related Middle Pleistocene folk. These would have included Neandertals, Denisovans and H. sapiens. Groups at southern sites moved into much of Europe and Asia during relatively warm, wet times, writes Marta Mirazn Lahr. Shes a paleoanthropologist at the University of Cambridge in England. She wrote a commentary that accompanied the two new studies.



Lahr says it appears that ancient groups interbred, became fragmented, died out or recombined with other Homo groups along the way. All of this social mixing, she says, may help explain the wide variety of skeletal looks seen in European and East Asian fossils from our genus Homo.

A duck-billed hadrosaur quietly munches on ferns. Pterosaurs fly overhead. Suddenly, a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex bursts from the underbrush. With a slash of its sharp teeth, T. rex makes a quick meal of the hadrosaur.



Thats the movie version. But what really happened during the Age of Dinosaurs?



This Mesozoic Era began 252 million years ago. It would continue for 186 million more. It all started just after the largest mass extinction in history. Called the Great Dying, that event marked the sudden disappearance of at least 95 percent of species in the sea. Some 70 percent of those on land also died off. Such extensive losses cleared the way for an explosion of new species.



A lot of planet-altering events marked this era, notes Steve Brusatte. Continents moved. Vast volcanic eruptions triggered changes in climate. Evolution also brought us dinosaurs, notes this paleontologist at the University of Scotland in Edinburgh. And, he adds, they thrived for over 150 million years. But to do so, they had to adapt to many different types of climate and environments. So did plenty of other fascinating creatures that walked, swam, flew and crawled among them.





Here we meet the Mesozoic Eras three defining time periods.





This video runs through 186 million years in 10 minutes to show how reptiles emerged to become some of the largest animals to fly, stomp or swim across our planet. This prehistoric epic takes place in one single era: the Mesozoic.



The Triassic: 252 to 201 million years ago



At the Triassics dawn, all of Earths continents were lumped together in one big super-continent known as Pangaea (Pan-JEE-uh). At its center, far from coastlines, the climate was hot and dry maybe too extreme for most life.



Over the next tens of millions of years, the motion of tectonic plates began to stretch Pangea apart. Lava poured from growing gaps, or fissures, in Earths crust. These eruptions spewed carbon dioxide (CO2), a climate-warming greenhouse gas. That CO2 also triggered some wild climate ups and downs.



Jessica Whiteside studies Triassic history. Shes a geochemist at the University of Southampton in England. This periods first 20 million years were violently variable, she says. Temperatures ranged from really hot to ridiculously hot, she notes between 50 and 60 Celsius (122 and 140 Fahrenheit).





Along with extreme temps were some especially soggy periods. Together, they influenced evolution. For example, one brief but extra rainy stretch from 234 to 232 million years ago gave a leg up to some animals in certain regions.



Among plants that flourished throughout the Triassic were ferns and conifers, trees that produce cones and have needle-like leaves. Reptiles began to dominate the animal world. They included lizards, tortoises, countless crocodiles and, of course, dinosaurs. Their rise seems to be linked to fissure eruptions of unimaginable scale, Whiteside says.



Early dinos didnt just appear during this time of high volcanic activity, she notes. They also diversified into three main types: plant-eating sauropods, meat-eating theropods and beaked, plant-eating ornithischians. But none were giants. These first dinosaurs were small and humble, Brusatte explains, just about the size of small dogs.



With all the continents connected, you might think dinosaurs and other animals might easily spread from one region to another. But that didnt happen, Whiteside says. The equatorial areas were alternately horribly hot and dry and torrentially rainy with deadly floods, she explains. Raging wildfires left landscapes barren of trees. Only meat-eating dinos that didnt depend on plants could survive at tropical sites during the Triassic, notes Whiteside.  



This Period ended as the one before it had with a significant mass extinction. Half of all species may have gone extinct at this time. The cause and length of this extinction event is poorly understood. But once more, important ecological holes were left to fill.



During the last period of the Paleozoic Era called the Permian period Earths continents were lumped together into a supercontinent called Pangea. The great size of this continent had a powerful influence on climate. For example, drought conditions were widespread since so much of Earths land was far from oceans. Its inland areas also experienced extreme swings in temperature, similar to the American Midwest today. During the Jurassic period, Earths continents continued to separate. Vast outpourings of lava issued from the growing rifts. That volcanism likely added the carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere. This would have caused warm temperatures. In many areas, shallow oceans developed along the edges of the continents.As the Mesozoic Era began, during its Triassic period, Pangea began to very slowly break apart. It broke into smaller, but still vast, northern and southern supercontinents. These were separated by a warm, east-west sea called the Tethys Ocean. During the Cretaceous period, a gap between North and South America and Africa widened to become the Atlantic Ocean. As the continents further separated, plants and animals that lived on each also evolved separately. In addition, a shallow sea called the Western Interior Seaway flooded much of North America.When the Mesozoic Era ended 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period Earths continents were now separated by huge oceans, similar to their configuration today.All map illustrations: Tinkivinki/iStock/Getty Images Plus



The Jurassic Period: 201 to 145 million years ago



Dinosaurs had several key adaptations that helped them to thrive in the wake of the end-Triassic extinction, Whiteside says. One of the most obvious: the ability to stand upright. Less obvious, she notes, were their highly efficient lungs that essentially ran through their entire bodies. In the end, these traits helped many dinos evolve to gigantic beasts during the Jurassic Period.



The modern day sago palm is an example of a cycad, which was a dominant plant type in the Mesozoic, especially its Jurassic Period.Javier Fernndez Snchez/Moment/Getty Images Plus



Meanwhile, Pangaea really began to split apart. One fissure grew to become the young Atlantic Ocean. South America, Africa, North America and India spread apart and became separate continents.



In the Jurassic, pliosaurs patrolled the seas. These carnivores spanned some 15 meters (about 50 feet) long. On land, the world buzzed with insects, especially beetles, flies and dragonflies. Mammals, most the size of squirrels, took a backseat to the growing community of huge reptiles.



Abundant now, as throughout the Mesozoic, were cycads palm-like plants with seed-producing cones. And conifers really went wild. In fact, the long necks of plant-eating dinosaurs probably evolved to reach the top leaves of tall conifers. Changes in bone structure gave reptiles the larger digestive system they needed to eat these tough plants.



The plant-eating sauropod dinos reached their greatest diversity, abundance and size in the Late Jurassic. By the end of this period, conifers had begun to decline in relative abundance. With that decline came a drop in the share of long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs.



The Cretaceous Period 145 to 66 million years ago



By the emergence of the Cretaceous Period, Pangaea had completely splintered into separate continents and islands. The Atlantic had become a full-size ocean. Another shallow ocean, called the Western Interior Seaway, flooded what is now much of the midwestern United States and Canada.



With enormous seas now separating land masses, ocean currents began circulating between continents and toward the poles. That, plus periods of high CO2, gave the whole planet a relatively mild climate. Even the poles were warm, with forests growing near both the North and South Poles.



The Cretaceous also marked the emergence of flowering plants. Their blooms gave rise to many new species of insects, such as ants, grasshoppers and butterflies.



Still, life wasnt all roses. Some 120 million years ago, for example, the Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a marked the first of several times during the Cretaceous that oceans became anoxic, meaning greatly reduced in oxygen. Such conditions were likely triggered by massive volcanic eruptions, and would have triggered big shifts in ocean ecosystems.



Three Dorygnathus, a type of flying reptile, watch on as two Allosaurus predators observe a herd of Omeisaurus dinos in this artists rendering of some denizens of the Jurassic world.CoreyFord/iStock/Getty Images Plus



As the Cretaceous began to wrap up, the worlds land masses were sitting in places similar to today’s map, with many separate continents and different dinosaurs living on each, notes Brusatte. For instance, paleontologists in Germany discovered a downsized version of a larger dinosaur in 2005. They now suspect this mini-dino evolved on an island. Its pint-sized range might not have offered enough food and room to support a mega-animal. And in some particularly cool regions, dinosaurs developed feathers to insulate against chilly temperatures.



Finally, 66 million years ago, the Mesozoic ended in a cataclysmic bang. As a giant meteorite crashed into Earth, the global climate changed overnight. This wiped out the dinosaurs, along with half of all plant and animal species! Like the Great Dying 186 million years earlier, this mass extinction set the stage for the next act. And that act featured the rise of mammals, like us.

When the first astronauts land on Mars, maybe in a couple of decades, theyll need some way to communicate. Theyll need to talk with each other and mission control back on Earth using equipment on and around Mars.



Plus, theyll no doubt want to email loved ones, keep their playlists up-to-date or stream new episodes of their favorite shows. And setting up a Wi-Fi connection to Earths internet wont be an option. Earth is simply too far from Mars.





The distance between the two planets depends on where they are in their orbits around the sun. In fact, it can range from around 55 million to 400 million kilometers (34 million to 250 million miles). So even data traveling at the speed of light would take four to 24 minutes to make a one-way trip.



That means a quick ping from Mars to mission control on Earth is out of the question. And a WhatsApp call home? Forget about it.



Theres also the problem of solar conjunction. This is when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun, which happens every two years or so. During solar conjunction, the sun blocks all signals between the two planets.





This video describes a solar conjunction and how it risks disrupting communications between Earth and Mars.



No known strategy can overcome the time lag in signals traveling between Earth and Mars. Or make it possible to send messages through the sun.



But researchers are working on ways to make communication on the Red Planet more like it is on Earth. And at least one team has wondered: What if Mars had its own internet?



A good communications setup is crucial for human missions to Mars, says Claire Parfitt. Shes a systems engineer with the European Space Agency, or ESA, in Noordwijk, Netherlands. Basically, people on Mars will need some way to get online, she says.



At the moment, she adds, were in the early stages of working out what that means.



If future Mars astronauts tried to stream TV shows directly from Earth, theyd suffer a lot of long buffering. But if they tried to stream the data from spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet, they might have an experience more like viewers back home. Glenn Harvey



How Mars chats work today



Several space agencies have spacecraft on or near Mars. There are landers and rovers on the planets surface. (Landers sit still, rovers move around.) Satellites also orbit the Red Planet. All of these machines have to communicate with Earth.



Lets learn about space robots



Consider NASAs Perseverance rover Percy, for short. It sends and receives two types of data. One is called command and telemetry. Thats where operators on Earth tell a rover what to do, receive responses from it and then decide what to do next. Percy typically gets more than 1,000 commands from Earth every day.



Percy and Earth also share science data. Percy takes pictures of Martian rocks and collects other kinds of data about its surroundings. It then sends those findings back to Earth.



The helicopter Ingenuity, which ended its mission earlier this year, used to ping Percy too. Percy relayed data and commands between Ingenuity and Earth.



Orbiters circling Mars likewise send science data back home. These robotic scouts includeNASAs Mars OdysseyandMars Reconnaissance Orbiter or MRO. Theres alsoESAs Trace Gas Orbiter, or TGO.



Mars orbiters dont just send their own observations back to Earth. They also help send home data collected by other machines on the planets surface.



A lot of messages to and from Mars are routed through the Mars Relay Network. Its made up of five orbiters around Mars: the three mentioned above, plus NASAs MAVEN and ESAs Mars Express orbiters. All five have antennas pointed toward Earth to send data home. Its a tightly choreographed dance, NASA says.



A global array of radio telescopes, including this one in Madrid, make up the Deep Space Network. These radio receivers listen for signals from spacecraft across the solar system.NASA/JPL-Caltech



Say a rover needs to send its latest observations home. It first passes those data to one of the orbiters in the Mars Relay Network using radio waves. That orbiter may or may not have a clear view of Earth at the time. If it does, it can beam the data home straight away, also using radio waves. If not, the orbiter can hold on to the rovers data until Earth is in its line of sight.



Once an orbiter broadcasts its data, powerful radio antennas on Earth can pick those signals up. A global network of radio receivers, such as NASAs Deep Space Network, is always listening for pings from deep space.



This whole setup works pretty well for robots on Mars. But once a human crew lands there, this system will not be good enough.




Calling Earth



Perseverance and other Mars rovers get most commands directly from Earth via X band radio waves. Percy can send small amounts of data back to Earth directly. But it often uses ultrahigh-frequency, or UHF radio waves, to relay data to some orbiter in the Mars Relay Network. Those spacecraft have big antennas for sending data to Earth. When the helicopter Ingenuity was exploring Mars, Percy also communicated with it through UHF radio waves.


EARTH AND MRO: NASA; DSN ANTENNA: ANITA GOULD/FLICKR (CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED);
ROVER, INGENUITY AND MARS SURFACE: JPL-CALTECH/NASA; ADAPTED BY C. CHANGEARTH AND MRO: NASA; DSN ANTENNA: ANITA GOULD/FLICKR (CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED);
ROVER, INGENUITY AND MARS SURFACE: JPL-CALTECH/NASA; ADAPTED BY C. CHANG



Mars communication renovations



Vincent Chan studies fiber-optic and satellite communications at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. He doesnt foresee local, on-the-ground communication as a challenge for future Mars explorers.



Lets learn about surviving a trip to Mars



A crew could interact using existing wireless tech that sends messages through radio waves, Chan says. Two mini cell towers would be enough when the astronauts are close together. When theyre far apart, some device that picks up radio waves and passes them along could help bridge the gap between astronauts. People living in remote places on Earth already connect in a similar way.



Those services are already in play, Chan says. Whats more, he adds, theyre very economical.



A big antenna on the crews landing vehicle could point toward Earth. That antenna would probably be the very first thing Martian explorers would set up, Chan says. It would route all communications to and from Earth.



But what about when that antenna doesnt have a direct line of sight to Earth? Orbiters similar to the Mars Relay Network could step in. The crews ground-based antenna could send messages to an orbiter. That spacecraft would then relay the data between other orbiters to reach one with a clear view of Earth. But several orbiters would be needed for round-the-clock coverage. Theyd also need to be equipped to handle a lot of data.



Five satellites currently make up the Mars Relay Network. They are (clockwise from top left): NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Mars Atmospheric and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), Mars Odyssey, and ESAs Mars Express and Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).NASA/JPL-Caltech, ESA



ESA is looking for ways to make todays Mars Relay Network better. The agency is considering a concept called MARCONI. Thats short for the Mars Communication and Navigation Infrastructure. If this project moves forward, it will develop a set of communication and navigation spacecraft. Those devices could piggyback on any future mission to the Red Planet.



Once orbiting Mars, these spacecraft would handle radio communication on and with Mars, Parfitt explains. They could then stick around for use on future missions.



The more stuff you send to Mars, the more expensive it is, Parfitt says. So you wouldnt necessarily want to land massive communication systems on Mars every time [you go there].



So far, spacecraft on and around Mars have mostly communicated using radio waves. This has been fine for non-human explorers. They dont need to send or receive tons of data super fast. But if future astronauts do want to move lots of data, they will need far higher rates of data transfer. For this, they might turn to lasers.




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Laser communication in space



Laser light is made up of optical waves. These have much higher frequencies than radio waves. That is, the crests and troughs of optical waves are much closer together in space than those of radio waves. As a result, optical waves can densely pack in a lot more data than radio waves can. In fact, lasers could carry 10 to 100 times as much data in the same time as radio waves.



But laser-based messaging in deep space must be tested first.



NASAs Psyche mission is helping here. The spacecraft launched last October. Its main job is to explore an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. But the spacecraft also carries NASAs Deep Space Optical Communications tech. This is letting it test long-distance laser communications through space.



NASAs Deep Space Optical Communications technology is attached to the Psyche spacecraft. That system is currently testing laser communication from beyond the moon. In this pre-launch image of Psyche, the transmitter/receiver is located (though not visible) to the right of communication systems tubelike sunshade.JPL-CALTECH/NASA



Laser signaling had never been tested from distances farther than the moon. But last November, Psyche beamed data to Earth from a distance of 16 million kilometers (10 million miles). Thats 40 times farther from Earth than the moon is. A month later, it sent a video of a cat named Taters from 31 million kilometers (19 million miles) away.



ESA is also exploring long-distance laser communication. One of its programs is called ScyLight (pronounced skylight). Thats short for Secure and Laser Communication Technology. This program supports the development of optical and quantum tech for secure and fast messaging from space.



Despite its benefits, laser communication has its drawbacks. For one thing, it requires super-precise aim. Radio waves fan out as they travel through space. This allows radio receivers to net these signals easily from multiple locations. But laser signals travel in narrow beams. That means a laser has to point exactly at the receiver. Miss it and the message is gone.



Whats more, clouds and atmospheric effects also mess with laser signals. And using lasers would require upgrading existing radio antennas in the Deep Space Network. Or building new receivers to listen for laser signals from deep space.



An internet on Mars



Future Mars residents will likely want to do more than send messages back and forth. Theyll want to set up something like Earths internet. This might be something they could use to share photos or look things up.



In June 2023, two computing experts proposed how to achieve such a thing. A fleet of satellites orbiting Mars, they said, could provide the Red Planet with its own offshoot internet. Those researchers, Tobias Pfandzelter and David Bermbach, both work at Technische Universitt Berlin. Thats in Germany.





What color is the Red Planet? NASA explains how Mars got that nickname, and why from orbit the planets surface can take on a whole range of other hues.



Most of us here on Earth access the internet through our phones using radio waves. This happens on either 4G or 5G wireless networks. Or it happens through Wi-Fi routers. These connections are linked by fiber-optic cables. Such cables are buried underground, hang from poles and snake across seafloors around the world.



The proposed Mars internet would instead be similar to Starlink. Thats a fleet of satellites in low Earth orbit run by the company SpaceX. On Earth, connecting to the internet by satellite is expensive. But on Mars, such a system might be cheaper and easier to build than a fiber-optic cable network on the ground.



Pfandzelter and Bermbach calculate that a swarm of 81 satellites around Mars could provide planet-wide coverage. This local communications system would essentially be an extension of Earths internet.



Imagine that an astronaut on Mars is trying to catch up on a Netflix show. If you were to stream it from Earth, you would have to first wait 10, 15 or even 40 minutes, Pfandzelter says. Thats just to connect. It would be a frustrating stop-and-start affair to get through an episode. If another astronaut on Mars wanted to watch the same show, they would have to go through the same process all over.



A team of researchers suggests that a network of 81 satellites in orbit around Mars, depicted here in blue, could offer planetwide internet coverage. Green points show Mars landing sites as of 2018.T. PFANDZELTER AND D. BERMBACH/SATCOM 2023


The 81 satellites around Mars could instead offer local data storage. A movie could be slowly uploaded from Earth to the satellite system once, and then stored there. When astronauts on Mars want to stream that flick, they could then retrieve that data instantly from the Mars satellite fleet.



You could just have the same experience that you have on Earth, because all your data is locally copied, Pfandzelter says. Meanwhile, other uploads and downloads to and from Earth, such as science data, could continue in the background.



Putting internet satellites into orbit around Mars wouldnt require landing a lot of stuff on the surface. Thats a good thing. Landing things on another world can be very costly. It would be much cheaper to just send a bunch of networking satellites to Mars, says Pfandzelter. Those satellites could use radio waves or optical waves, if laser tech is ready.



Learning from the moon



Missions to the moon could offer lessons for setting up an internet on Mars. NASAs Artemis program, for instance, aims to return humans to the moon. As part of that effort, NASA has arranged for private companies to set up a 4G network for the moon one based on radio waves. It would include installing antennas and base stations that can withstand the harsh lunar landscape. Theyd relay transmissions on the moon.



ESA has a related program called Moonlight. It invites private space companies to set up satellites around the moon. These spacecraft would allow people on the far side of the moon, which never faces Earth, to reach people at home. The first phase of the program includes the launch of the Lunar Pathfinder orbiter in 2026.



Lets learn about Mars



Everything that is being done for the moon, its got the objective of taking humans and missions to Mars, explains Tomas Navarro. Hes a future projects engineer with ESA in London, England.



Even if human missions to Mars are decades away, Parfitt says, its not too soon to start planning. Live video-chats between planets not physically possible. But other challenges can be overcome. And tackling those may not only benefit future astronauts on Mars. They also may help convince space agencies that human crews are ready to take on the Red Planet.

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