The planet Mercury could have "a layer of diamonds," reports CNN, citing new research suggesting that about 310 miles (500 kilometers) below the surface...could be a layer of diamonds 11 miles (18 kilometers) thick.

And the study's co-author believes lava might carry some of those diamonds up to the surface: The diamonds might have formed soon after Mercury itself coalesced into a planet about 4.5 billion years ago from a swirling cloud of dust and gas, in the crucible of a high-pressure, high-temperature environment. At this time, the fledgling planet is believed to have had a crust of graphite, floating over a deep magma ocean.

A team of researchers recreated that searing environment in an experiment, with a machine called an anvil press that's normally used to study how materials behave under extreme pressure but also for the production of synthetic diamonds. "It's a huge press, which enables us to subject tiny samples at the same high pressure and high temperature that we would expect deep inside the mantle of Mercury, at the boundary between the mantle and the core," said Bernard Charlier, head of the department of geology at the University of Liège in Belgium and a coauthor of a study reporting the findings.

The team inserted a synthetic mixture of elements — including silicon, titanium, magnesium and aluminum — inside a graphite capsule, mimicking the theorized composition of Mercury's interior in its early days. The researchers then subjected the capsule to pressures almost 70,000 times greater than those found on Earth's surface and temperatures up to 2,000 degrees Celsius (3,630 degrees Fahrenheit), replicating the conditions likely found near Mercury's core billions of years ago.

After the sample melted, the scientists looked at changes in the chemistry and minerals under an electron microscope and noted that the graphite had turned into diamond crystals.
The researchers believe this mechanism "can not only give us more insight into the secrets hidden below Mercury's surface, but on planetary evolution and the internal structure of exoplanets with similar characteristics."

New preliminary evidence for phosphine and ammonia in Venus's atmosphere deepens the mystery of their origins, suggesting the possibility of a biological source. The detections, made using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Green Bank Telescope, point to potential microbial life in Venus's clouds despite the planet's extreme surface conditions. Space.com reports: The new detections of phosphine and ammonia were obtained by a team led by Jane Greaves of the University of Cardiff using submillimeter radio wavelength data collected by the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. "We don't know how you make phosphine or ammonia in an oxygenating atmosphere like that of Venus," said team member and astrophysicist Dave Clements of Imperial College, London, in an interview with Space.com. Then again, it's not clear why biology on Earth produces phosphine, either." Whether it's in penguin poop or badger guts, we don't know why bacteria make phosphine, but they do."

The JCMT's initial detection of phosphine on Venus in 2020 by Greaves and her team was met by fierce disagreement from some quarters. This disagreement focused on how the data was processed and whether that was creating spurious signals since observations by other telescopes struggled to detect the phosphine. Clements said those technical disagreements have now been resolved and that the latest measurements, using a new detector on the JCMT called Namakanui (meaning 'Big Eyes' in Hawaiian), have come from three observing campaigns, each providing 140 times as much data as the initial detection. [...]

Clements is open to the possibility that both phosphine and ammonia are being produced by some rare photochemistry in Venus' upper atmosphere involving solar ultraviolet breaking up molecules and allowing phosphine and ammonia to form from the molecular debris. If that is the case, nobody has observed this process yet, not even in the laboratory. Another possibility that has been mooted is that the phosphine could be produced by Venusian volcanoes. Clements also pointed out that the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is making a fly-by of Venus in August 2025 to help slingshot it towards the Jovian system. JUICE carries instruments capable of detecting phosphine and ammonia, but there's no guarantee that its instruments will be switched on and deployed at Venus.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: With thousands of species at risk of extinction, scientists have devised a radical plan: a vault filled with preserved samples of our planet's most important and at-risk creatures located on the moon. An international team of experts says threats from climate change and habitat loss have outpaced our ability to protect species in their natural habitats, necessitating urgent action. A biorepository of preserved cells, and the crucial DNA within them, could be used to enhance genetic diversity in small populations of critically endangered species, or to clone and create new individuals in the worst-case scenario of extinction.

The proposed lunar biorepository, as described in the journal BioScience, would be beyond the reach of climate breakdown, geopolitical events or other Earth-based disasters. The moon's naturally frigid environment means samples would remain frozen year-round without the need for human involvement or an energy source. By taking advantage of deep craters near the polar regions that are never exposed to sunlight, the moon is one of few places that can provide the ultra-low temperature of -196C necessary to preserve the samples in a way suitable for future cloning. [...] Besides those facing the imminent risk of extinction, the proposed repository would prioritize species with important functions in their environment and food webs. Through careful selection, those housed could be used to re-establish an extinct population on Earth or even to terraform another planet. Dr Mary Hagedorn of the Smithsonian's national zoo and conservation biology institute and the proposal's lead author believes the biorepository proposal will come to fruition, although perhaps not in our lifetime: "We know how to do this and can do this and will do this, but it may take decades to finally achieve," she said.

The report says the next steps "will be to develop packaging for the cryopreserved samples that can withstand the conditions of space, and to work out the logistics of transporting samples to the moon."

Scientists say the drying Great Salt Lake in Utah is now becoming a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the climate to warm, according to a new study. From a report: Due largely to water diversions by farmers and Utah's booming population growth, the Great Salt Lake has shrunk by almost half in recent years. Scientists spent seven months in 2020 sampling emissions coming off the dried saline lake bed. Canada's Royal Ontario Museum published the study on Thursday in the journal One Earth. [...]

The researchers found that the drying lake bed emitted 4.1 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which would translate to a 7% increase in Utah's human-caused emissions. According to scientists, 4 million tons of CO2 is roughly equivalent to the total annual emissions of 140 commercial planes. The Great Salt Lake is the largest saline lake left in the Western Hemisphere. The study occurred during one of the most notorious dry stretches of the West's mega drought, which had lasted two decades at the time of the study.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Earth's land lost much of their ability to absorb the carbon dioxide humans pumped into the air last year, according to a new study that is causing concern among climate scientists that a crucial damper on climate change underwent an unprecedented deterioration. Temperatures in 2023 were so high — and the droughts and wildfires that came with them were so severe — that forests in various parts of the world wilted and burned enough to have degraded the ability of the land to lock away carbon dioxide and act as a check on global warming, the study said.

The scientists behind the research, which focuses on 2023, caution that their findings are preliminary. But the work represents a disturbing data point — one that, if it turns into a trend, spells trouble for the planet and the people on it...

Philippe Ciais [a scientist at France's Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences who co-authored the new research] and his colleagues saw that the concentration of CO2 measured at an observatory on Mauna Loa in Hawaii and elsewhere spiked in 2023, even though global fossil fuel emissions increased only modestly last year in comparison. That mismatch suggests that there was an "unprecedented weakening" in the Earth's ability to absorb carbon, the researchers wrote. The scientists then used satellite data and models for vegetative growth to try to pinpoint where the carbon sink was weakening. The team spotted abnormal losses of carbon in the drought-stricken Amazon and Southeast Asia as well as in the boreal forests of Canada, where record-breaking wildfires burned through tens of millions of acres.

Speaking at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a number of cryptocurrency-related pledges:

• Trump promised that if elected, he'd commute the sentence of Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht to a sentence of time served. "It's enough."

• Trump promised to change the top personnel at America's Securities and Exchange Commission. "On Day One, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chairman," Trump told the crowd, drawing a long round of applause. ("I didn't know he was that unpopular," Trump joked — then repeated his promise to appoint "a new SEC chairman who believes America should build the future, not block the future, which is what they're doing.")

• Trump also promised that "As president, I will immediately shut down Operation Chokepoint 2.0." (For context, Operation Chokepoint was an Obama-era program — ended during Trump's presidency — to scrutinize bank lending to "high-risk" merchants, mostly predatory "payday" lenders. Concerns were raised that bank regulators were pressuring banks to cut off certain businesses, and while there is no official "Choke Point 2.0," the phrase has been used colloquially to describe the possibility of bank regulators pressuring specific industries like cryptocurrency.)

• Trump also announced he'd oppose a central bank digital currency — although his wording was a little idiosyncratic. "Next I will immediately order the Treasury Department and other federal agencies to cease and desist all steps necessary — because, you know, there's a thing going on in your industry. They want to move the creation of a central bank digital currency. It's over, forget it." [Audience boos CBDC's ] "CBDC — there will never be a CBDC while I'm president of the United States." (In fact a 2023 statement from America's Federal Reserve about CBDC's stresses that "no decisions have been made at this time" and that the Federal Reserve would only proceed with a CBDC after passage of an authorizing law.)

• Trump also told the audience that "We will create a framework to enable the safe and responsible expansion of staple — stablecoins," then teased the crypto-friendly audience by asking playfully "Do you know what a stablecoin is? Does anybody know — please raise your hand." Trump promised the move would "allow us to extend the dominance of the U.S. dollar to new frontiers all around the world," and that "there will be billions and billions of people brought into the crypto economy and storing their savings in bitcoin."

• Toward the end Trump said that if elected, he would direct the government not to sell any of its currently-held bitcoin, keeping it instead as the core of a "strategic national bitcoin stockpile."
  
  "As you know, most of the bitcoin currently held by the U.S. government was obtained through law enforcement action — you know that, they took it from you. 'Let's take that guy's life, let's take his family, his house, his bitcoin — we'll turn it into bitcoin.' It's been taken away from you because that's where we're going now. That's where this country is going. It's a facist regime."

In a speech which lasted for over an hour, the 78-year-old former president also criticized his political opponents, touching on topics like inflation, immigration, and his promise to "drill, baby, drill."

But Trump closed by thanking the 3,000 attendees, telling them to "have a good time with your bitcoin, and your crypto and everything else that you're playing with. And we're going to make that one of the greatest industries on earth."

"Scientists working with NASA's Perseverance rover state emphatically that they are not claiming to have discovered life on Mars," writes the New York Times.

"But many would regard a rock that the rover just finished studying as 'Most Likely to Contain Fossilized Microbial Martians'..." The rover has drilled and stashed a piece of the rock, which scientists hope can be brought back to Earth in the coming years for closer analysis and more definitive answers. "What we are saying is that we have a potential biosignature on Mars," said Kathryn Stack Morgan, the mission's deputy project scientist. She describes a biosignature as a structure, composition or texture in a rock that could have a biological origin.

The rock, which scientists named Cheyava Falls, possesses features that are reminiscent of what microbes might have left behind when this area was warm and wet several billion years ago, part of an ancient river delta. The scientists clarified that they did not spot anything that they thought might be actual fossilized organisms... Within the rock, Perseverance's instruments detected organic compounds, which would provide the building blocks for life as we know it. The rover also found veins of calcium sulfate — mineral deposits that appear to have been deposited by flowing water. Liquid water is another key ingredient for life. Perseverance also spotted small off-white splotches, about 1 millimeter in size, that have black rings around them, like miniature leopard spots. The black rings contain iron phosphate.

The chemical reactions that created the leopard spots could also have provided energy for microbes to live on.
"One of the key parts of Perseverance's mission is to drill samples of interesting rocks for a future mission to bring samples back to Earth for scientists to study with state-of-the-art instruments in their laboratories," the article points out. And while exactly how those rocks would be return has yet to be determined, deputy project scientist Morgan tells the Times, "I think this sample comes to the top of the list."

As part of a team exploring Utah's Great Salt Lake, climate researcher Melissa Cobo "discovered more disturbing evidence that dried-out lakes are a significant source of carbon dioxide emissions," reports the Washington Post.

But more disturbingly, they write that this source of emissions "has not been included in the official accounting of how much carbon the world is releasing into the warming atmosphere." In a new study in the journal One Earth, the researchers calculated that 4.1 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were released from the drying bed of the Great Salt Lake in 2020, the year Cobo and others collected the samples. This would amount to about a 7 percent increase in Utah's human-caused emissions, the authors found.

While other researchers have documented carbon emissions from dried-out lakes — including the Aral Sea in Central Asia — [climate change museum curator Soren] Brothers said that his study tried to calculate what part of the emissions from this major saline lake could be attributed to humans, as the Great Salt Lake has been drawn down for human use, a decline worsened by climate change and the West's megadrought of the past two decades.

"This is the first time we're saying, 'This is something that's on us,'" said Brothers, now a climate change curator with the Royal Ontario Museum. Lakes around the world normally store carbon. Plant and animal remains settle on the bottom over thousands of years as sediment, much of it in low-oxygen layers that degrade slowly. "When lakes are inundated with water, let's say their useful state, they are kind of allies in our struggle for removing CO2 from the atmosphere," said Rafael Marcé, a research scientist at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Blanes, Spain, who has collaborated with Brothers on prior work but wasn't involved in this study. When lakes dry out, oxygen can penetrate deep into the sediment, waking up microorganisms that start to feast on the organic matter, releasing carbon dioxide, Marcé said.

UN: The UN Secretary-General's Call to Action on Extreme Heat brings together the diverse expertise and perspectives of ten specialized UN entities (FAO, ILO, OCHA, UNDRR, UNEP, UNESCO, UN-Habitat, UNICEF, WHO, WMO) in a first-of-its-kind joint product, underscoring the multi-sectoral impacts of extreme heat.

Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere. Billions of people around the world are wilting under increasingly severe heatwaves driven largely by a fossil-fuel charged, human-induced climate crisis. Extreme heat is tearing through economies, widening inequalities, undermining the Sustainable Development Goals, and killing people.

The Call for Action calls for an urgent and concerted effort to enhance international cooperation to address extreme heat in four critical areas: Caring for the vulnerable - Protecting workers - Boosting resilience of economies and societies using data and science - Limiting temperature rise to 1.5C by phasing out fossil fuels and scaling up investment in renewable energy. From earlier today: Monday Was Hottest Recorded Day on Earth: 'Uncharted Territory'.

World temperature reached the hottest levels ever measured on Monday, beating the record that was set just one day before, data suggests. From a report: Provisional data published on Wednesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which holds data that stretches back to 1940, shows that the global surface air temperature reached 62.87F (17.15C), compared with 62.76F (17.09C) on Sunday.

Earlier this month, Copernicus found that global temperatures between July 2023 and July 2024 were the highest on record. The previous record before this week was set a year ago on 6 July. Before that, the previous recorded hottest day was in 2016, according to the Associated Press.

On Sunday, global temperatures reached their highest levels in recorded history (source may be paywalled; alternative source), with a daily average of 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit). "The historic day comes on the heels of 13 straight months of unprecedented temperatures and the hottest year scientists have ever seen," adds the Washington Post, citing preliminary data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service. From the report: Though Sunday was only slightly warmer than the world's previous hottest day, Copernicus researchers noted, it was extraordinarily hotter than anything that came before. Before July 2023, Earth's daily average temperature record -- set in August 2016 -- was 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit). But in the past year, the global has exceeded that old record on 57 days.

Scientists have been tracking global temperatures only for the past few centuries. Yet there is good reason to believe that Sunday was the hottest day on Earth since the start of the last Ice Age more than 100,000 years ago. Research from paleoclimate scientists -- who use tree rings, ice cores, lake sediments and other ancient material to understand past environments -- suggests that recent heat would have been all but impossible over the last stretch of geologic time. "We are in truly uncharted territory," Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. "And as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see records being broken in future months and years. What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records."

Parts of the Persian Gulf "have seen the heat index, or how it feels when factoring in the humidity, reach 140 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit (60 to 65 Celsius)," reports the Washington Post, "fueled by an intense heat dome, the warmest water temperatures in the world and the influence of human-caused climate change." Temperatures at the Persian Gulf International Airport in Asaluyeh, Iran, climbed to 108 (42 C) on Wednesday and 106 (41 C) on Thursday, with both days recording a peak heat index of 149 (65 C). In Dubai, the temperature topped out at 113 (45 C) on Tuesday and the heat index soared to 144 (62 C). Other extreme heat indexes in recent days include 141 (61 C) in Abu Dhabi and 136 (58 C) at Khasab Air Base in Oman.

Last August, this same region experienced even more extreme heat indexes, climbing as high as 158 degrees (70 C).

The maximum air temperatures this week — generally between 105 and 115 (41 and 46 C) — have only been somewhat above normal. But the dew points — which are a measure of humidity — have been excessive, climbing well into the 80s (27 to 32 C). In the United States, any dew point over 70 degrees (21 C) is considered uncomfortably humid. It's the very high dew points that have propelled heat indexes up to 30 degrees (16 C) above actual air temperatures. The extreme humidity levels are tied to bathtub-like water temperatures in the Persian Gulf, the warmest in the world. According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, sea surface temperatures are as warm as 95 degrees (35 C).

Largely because of the high humidity, nighttime minimum temperatures have also remained exceptionally warm, in many cases staying above 85 (29 C). Temperatures in Iranshar, Iran, only dropped to 97 (36 C) on Wednesday night, its hottest July night on record.
"Researchers have identified the Persian Gulf among the regions most likely to regularly exceed life-threatening heat thresholds during the next 30 to 50 years," the article adds. And it also cites new heat records reported for the region by weather historian Maximiliano Herrera. "The United Arab Emirates saw a scorching high temperature of 123 while Adrar, Algeria, tied its record of 122 (50 C). Cities in both Kuwait and Iraq reached 126 (52 C), and Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia, notched a record of 124 (51 C)...

"The same heat dome that's in the Persian Gulf region has spread record heat northward into Eastern Europe, westward into northern Africa, and eastward into India, Pakistan and Indonesia. In Eastern Europe, high temperatures surpassed 104 (40 C), with some locations staying above 85 degrees (29 C) at night."

A solar superstorm in May caused thousands of satellites to simultaneously maneuver to maintain altitude due to the thickening of the upper atmosphere, creating potential collision hazards as existing prediction systems struggled to cope. Space.com reports: According to a pre-print paper published on the online repository arXiv on June 12, satellites and space debris objects in low Earth orbit -- the region of space up to an altitude of 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) -- were sinking toward the planet at the speed of 590 feet (180 meters) per day during the four-day storm. To make up for the loss of altitude, thousands of spacecraft began firing their thrusters at the same time to climb back up. That mass movement, the authors of the paper point out, could have led to dangerous situations because collision avoidance systems didn't have time to calculate the satellites' changing paths.

The solar storm that battered Earth from May 7 to 10 reached the intensity of G5, the highest level on the five-step scale used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to assess the strength of solar storms. It was the strongest solar storm to hit Earth since 2003. The authors of the paper, however, pointed out that the environment around the planet has changed profoundly since that time. While only a few hundred satellites were orbiting Earth twenty years ago, there are thousands today. The authors of the paper put the number of "active payloads at [low Earth orbit]" at 10,000. [...] The new paper points out that space weather forecasts ahead of the May storm failed to accurately predict the duration and intensity of the event, making satellite collision predictions nearly impossible.

On the upside, the storm helped to clear out some junk as defunct satellites and debris fragments spiraled deeper into the atmosphere. The authors of the report estimate that thousands of space debris objects lost several kilometers in altitude during the storm. More powerful solar storms can be expected in the coming months as the peak of the current solar cycle -- the 11-year ebb and flow in the number of sunspots, solar flares and eruptions -- is expected in late 2024 and early 2025. The paper can be found here.

Astronomers say they've detected two gases that could indicate the presence of life forms lurking in the clouds of Venus. The Guardian reports: Findings presented at the national astronomy meeting in Hull on Wednesday bolster evidence for a pungent gas, phosphine, whose presence on Venus has been fiercely disputed. A separate team revealed the tentative detection of ammonia, which on Earth is primarily produced by biological activity and industrial processes, and whose presence on Venus scientists said could not readily be explained by known atmospheric or geological phenomena. "It could be that if Venus went through a warm, wet phase in the past then as runaway global warming took effect [life] would have evolved to survive in the only niche left to it -- the clouds," said Dr Dave Clements, a reader in astrophysics at Imperial College London, told the meeting. "Our findings suggest that when the atmosphere is bathed in sunlight the phosphine is destroyed," Clements said. "All that we can say is that phosphine is there. We don't know what's producing it. It may be chemistry that we don't understand. Or possibly life."

In a second talk, Prof Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University, presented preliminary observations from the Green Bank telescope indicating ammonia, which on Earth is made through either industrial processes or by nitrogen-converting bacteria. Greaves said: "Even if we confirmed both of these [findings], it is not evidence that we have found these magic microbes and they're living there today," adding that there were not yet "any ground truths." Dr Robert Massey, the deputy executive director at the Royal Astronomical Society, said in a statement: "These are very exciting findings but it must be stressed that the results are only preliminary and more work is needed to learn more about the presence of these two potential biomarkers in Venus's clouds. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to think that these detections could point to either possible signs of life or some unknown chemical processes. It will be interesting to see what further investigations unearth over the coming months and years."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: CNBC spoke to three startups -- France-based Zephalto, Florida-based Space Perspective and Arizona-based World View -- that aim to hoist tourists to the stratosphere using pressurized capsules and massive gas-filled balloons. "The capsule itself is designed to to carry eight customers and two crew into the stratosphere," said Ryan Hartman, CEO of World View. "There will be a center bar where people can gather, and then, of course, there will be a bathroom aboard the capsule." The balloon rides will last around 6 hours, but will not take passengers all the way to space. Most will reach heights of 15 to 19 miles above the earth's surface, flying in an area known as the stratosphere. The start of space is generally accepted by the U.S. government to be around 80 kilometers, or about 50 miles, above the earth's surface.

Jane Poynter, founder and co-CEO of Space Perspective, has a differing view. "There is no universal definition of space," Poynter said. "We are regulated as a spaceship. If we go over 98,000 feet, we are a spaceship. Outside the capsule, it's essentially a vacuum. We're above 99% of Earth's atmosphere, which is why the sky is so deep black." Compared to rocket-powered space tourism, the physical sensation that passengers will experience on a stratospheric balloon ride is more comparable to being on an airplane. Passengers will not experience weightlessness. "We don't need any physical requirements to board the balloon," said Vincent Farret d'Asties, the founder and chief pilot at Zephalto. "If you can board a standard plane, you can board the balloon."

All three companies told CNBC that they were pleased with consumer interest. World Views says it sold 1,250 tickets so far while Space Perspective has sold 1,800. Zephalto did not tell CNBC how many tickets it sold, but said its initial flights were fully booked. Ticket prices range from $50,000 per seat with World View to around $184,000 with Zephalto. Space Perspective sells tickets to its experience for $125,000 per seat. That's all assuming commercial service gets off the ground. Only Zephalto has performed crewed tests so far, though not at the company's target altitude of about 15 miles above the earth's surface.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Puerto Rico filed suit against fossil fuel companies this week, alleging that the oil and gas giants have misled the public about climate change and delayed a transition to clean energy. The suit seeks $1 billion in damages to help Puerto Rico defend itself against climate disasters. In a complaint (PDF) filed in San Juan yesterday, Puerto Rico's Department of Justice says that the companies violated trade law by promoting fossil fuels without adequately warning about the dangers. The defendants include ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and other energy companies.

In the complaint, Puerto Rico says it expects to pay billions of dollars in the future to cope with catastrophes made worse by climate change -- including storms like Hurricane Maria, which killed thousands of people in 2017 and triggered monthslong power outages. The suit asks defendants to contribute to a fund that would be used to mitigate the consequences of climate change and pay for measures to strengthen Puerto Rico's infrastructure against future climate-related calamities. After Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, thirty-seven municipalities in Puerto Rico and the capital city of San Juan filed suit against fossil fuel companies, "seeking to hold them accountable for the devastation," notes The Verge.

Last week, Portland's Multnomah County filed a lawsuit against several fossil fuel companies, blaming their emissions for the 2021 heat dome that resulted in the deaths of 69 people.

NASA: The stars above and on Earth aligned as an inspirational message and lyrics from the song "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" by hip-hop artist Missy Elliott were beamed to Venus via NASA's DSN (Deep Space Network). The agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California sent the transmission at 10:05 a.m. PDT on Friday, July 12. As the largest and most sensitive telecommunication service of NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, the DSN has an array of giant radio antennas that allow missions to track, send commands, and receive scientific data from spacecraft venturing to the Moon and beyond. To date, the system has transmitted only one other song into space, making the transmission of Elliott's song a first for hip-hop and NASA.

"Both space exploration and Missy Elliott's art have been about pushing boundaries," said Brittany Brown, director, Digital and Technology Division, Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington, who initially pitched ideas to Missy's team to collaborate with the agency. "Missy has a track record of infusing space-centric storytelling and futuristic visuals in her music videos, so the opportunity to collaborate on something out of this world is truly fitting." The song traveled about 158 million miles (254 million kilometers) from Earth to Venus -- the artist's favorite planet. Transmitted at the speed of light, the radio frequency signal took nearly 14 minutes to reach the planet. The transmission was made by the 34-meter (112-foot) wide Deep Space Station 13 (DSS-13) radio dish antenna, located at the DSN's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, near Barstow in California. Coincidentally, the DSS-13 also is nicknamed Venus.

AI companies are generally secretive about their sources of training data, but an investigation by Proof News found some of the wealthiest AI companies in the world have used material from thousands of YouTube videos to train AI. Companies did so despite YouTube's rules against harvesting materials from the platform without permission. From a report: Our investigation found that subtitles from 173,536 YouTube videos, siphoned from more than 48,000 channels, were used by Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Anthropic, Nvidia, Apple, and Salesforce. The dataset, called YouTube Subtitles, contains video transcripts from educational and online learning channels like Khan Academy, MIT, and Harvard. The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the BBC also had their videos used to train AI, as did The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Proof News also found material from YouTube megastars, including MrBeast (289 million subscribers, two videos taken for training), Marques Brownlee (19 million subscribers, seven videos taken), Jacksepticeye (nearly 31 million subscribers, 377 videos taken), and PewDiePie (111 million subscribers, 337 videos taken). Some of the material used to train AI also promoted conspiracies such as the "flat-earth theory." Further reading: YouTube Says OpenAI Training Sora With Its Videos Would Break Rules.

The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet. From a report: The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity's actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years. The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS navigation, all of which rely on precise timekeeping.

The length of the Earth's day has been steadily increasing over geological time due to the gravitational drag of the moon on the planet's oceans and land. However, the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets due to human-caused global heating has been redistributing water stored at high latitudes into the world's oceans, leading to more water in the seas nearer the equator. This makes the Earth more oblate -- or fatter -- slowing the rotation of the planet and lengthening the day still further.

The planetary impact of humanity was also demonstrated recently by research that showed the redistribution of water had caused the Earth's axis of rotation -- the north and south poles -- to move. Other work has revealed that humanity's carbon emissions are shrinking the stratosphere.

"In a significant advancement for space technology, a team of UC Berkeley researchers, led by doctoral student Taylor Waddell, successfully launched a 3D printer into space," reports the university's student newspaper: As part of the Virgin Galactic 07 mission, the team sent a 3D printer named SpaceCAL to space to explore the potential of Computed Axial Lithography, or CAL, and additive manufacturing in space... During its 140-second flight in suborbital space, the SpaceCAL printer autonomously detected microgravity and printed four test parts: two space shuttles and two Benchies, or 3D-printed boats created to check the printer's accuracy, according to Sean Chu, a member of the team who worked on designing structures and mechanisms. Within the 140 seconds, the process involved multiple steps such as printing, post-washing, flushing with water and post-curing with light to fully solidify the parts.
But that's just the beginning, says the university's engineering department: To date, CAL has shown that it can successfully print with more than 60 different materials on Earth, such as silicones, glass composites and biomaterials. According to Waddell, this versatility could come in handy for both the cabin and the crew... "CAL is also capable of repairing the crew. We can print dental replacements, skin grafts or lenses, or things personalized in emergency medicine for astronauts, which is very important in these missions, too."

Someday, CAL may be used to print even more sophisticated parts, such as human organs. Lawrence Livermore National Lab has received a grant from NASA to test this technology on the International Space Station. "They're going to basically do bioprinting on the Space Station," said Waddell. "And the long, long-term goal is to print organs up in space with CAL, then bring them back down to Earth." Next, Waddell and his colleagues hope to begin work with NASA on developing and validating a single object that could support crew health and wellness, like a dental crown for an astronaut or a surgical wound closure tool...

This project was made possible through a $1.4 million grant and engineering support provided by NASA. In addition, Virgin Galactic played a pivotal role in taking this project to the next level.