Researchers at Stanford University found that among the pollutants emitted from gas stoves is benzene, which is linked to cancer. "Levels of benzene can reach higher than those found in secondhand tobacco smoke and the benzene pollution can spread throughout a home," reports NPR. From the report: Stanford scientists measured benzene from gas stoves in 87 California and Colorado homes in 2022 for the paper published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. They found both natural gas and propane stoves "emitted detectable and repeatable levels of benzene that in some homes raised indoor benzene concentrations above well-established health benchmarks." The risks of benzene have long been known. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the chemical is linked to leukemia and other blood cell cancers.

"Benzene forms in flames and other high-temperature environments, such as the flares found in oil fields and refineries. We now know that benzene also forms in the flames of gas stoves in our homes," said Rob Jackson in a statement. He's the study's senior author and a Stanford professor of earth sciences. With one burner on high or the oven at 350 degrees, the researchers found benzene levels in a house can be worse than average levels for second-hand tobacco smoke. And they found the toxin doesn't just stay in the kitchen, it can migrate to other places, such as bedrooms. "Good ventilation helps reduce pollutant concentrations, but we found that exhaust fans were often ineffective at eliminating benzene exposure," Jackson said. He says this is the first paper to analyze benzene emissions when a stove or oven is in use.

Researchers also tested whether cooking food - pan-frying salmon or bacon - emits benzene but found all the pollution came from the gas and not the food. That's important because the gas industry often deflects concern about pollution from its fuel, to breathing problems that can be triggered by cooking fumes. There are no studies out there that say cooking with gas will make someone sick. This is all about increasing risks for certain illnesses.

Researchers have discovered high concentrations of phosphorus in ice crystals emitted from Saturn's moon Enceladus, enhancing its potential to support life. The findings, based on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, suggest that Enceladus may possess the necessary elements for life. Reuters reports: The discovery was based on data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, the first to orbit Saturn, during its 13-year landmark exploration of the gaseous giant planet, its rings and its moons from 2004 to 2017. The same team previously confirmed that Enceladus' ice grains contain a rich assortment of minerals and complex organic compounds, including the ingredients for amino acids, associated with life as scientists know it. But phosphorus, the least abundant of six chemical elements considered necessary to all living things -- the others are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur -- was still missing from the equation until now.

"It's the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth," the study's lead author, Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the Free University in Berlin, said in a JPL press release. [...] One notable aspect of the latest Enceladus discovery was geochemical modeling by the study's co-authors in Europe and Japan showing that phosphorus exists in concentrations at least 100 times that of Earth's oceans, bound water-soluble forms of phosphate compounds. "This key ingredient could be abundant enough to potentially support life in Enceladus' ocean," said co-investigator Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is a stunning discovery for astrobiology." "Whether life could have originated in Enceladus' ocean remains an open question," Glein said.

According to global consulting leader McKinsey and Company, Generative AI could add "2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually" to the global economy. That's almost the "economic equivalent of adding an entire new country the size and productivity of the United Kingdom to the Earth ($3.1 trillion GDP in 2021)," notes VentureBeat. From the report: The $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion economic impact figure marks a huge increase over McKinsey's previous estimates of the AI field's impact on the economy from 2017, up 15 to 40% from before. This upward revision is due to the incredibly fast embrace and potential use cases of GenAI tools by large and small enterprises. Furthermore, McKinsey finds "current generative AI and other technologies have the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70% of employees' time today." Does this mean massive job loss is inevitable? No, according to Alex Sukharevsky, senior partner and global leader of QuantumBlack, McKinsey's in-house AI division and report co-author. "You basically could make it significantly faster to perform these jobs and do so much more precisely than they are performed today," Sukharevsky told VentureBeat. What that translates to is an addition of "0.2 to 3.3 percentage points annually to productivity growth" to the entire global economy, he said.

However, as the report notes, "workers will need support in learning new skills, and some will change occupations. If worker transitions and other risks can be managed, generative AI could contribute substantively to economic growth and support a more sustainable, inclusive world." Also, the advent of accessible GenAI has pushed up McKinsey's previous estimates for workplace automation: "Half of today's work activities could be automated between 2030 and 2060, with a midpoint in 2045, or roughly a decade earlier than in our previous estimates."

Specifically, McKinsey's report found that four types of tasks -- customer operations, marketing and sales, software engineering and R&D -- were likely to account for 75% of the value add of GenAI in particular. "Examples include generative AI's ability to support interactions with customers, generate creative content for marketing and sales and draft computer code based on natural-language prompts, among many other tasks." [...] Overall, McKinsey views GenAI as a "technology catalyst," pushing industries further along toward automation journeys, but also freeing up the creative potential of employees. "I do believe that if anything, we are getting into the age of creativity and the age of creator," Sukharevsky said.

Researchers have proposed a new explanation for the origin of biological handedness or "homochirality," reports Science Magazine. "In three new papers, researchers suggest magnetic minerals common on early Earth could have caused key biomolecules to accumulate on their surface in just one mirror image form, setting off a positive feedback that continued to favor the same form." From the report: Chemical reactions are typically unbiased, yielding equal amounts of right- and left-handed molecules. But life requires selectivity: Only right-handed DNA, for example, has the correct twist to interact properly with other chiral molecules. To get life, "you've got to break the mirror, or you can't pull it off," says Gerald Joyce, an origin of life chemist and president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Over the past century, researchers have proposed various mechanisms for skewing the first biomolecules, including cosmic rays and polarized light. Both can cause an initial bias favoring either right- or left-handed molecules, but they don't directly explain how this initial bias was amplified to create the large reservoirs of chiral molecules likely needed to make the first cells. An explanation that creates an initial bias is a good start, but "not sufficient," says Dimitar Sasselov, a physicist at Harvard University and a leader of the new work.

[...] Now, Sasselov and his colleagues have put these two pieces together. They wondered whether magnetic surfaces might favor a single RAO chiral form. To find out, they turned to magnetite, a magnetic mineral that is common in Earth's crust. They applied a strong external magnetic field, aligning electron spins in the magnetite and strengthening its magnetism. When they exposed the magnetite surface to a solution containing an equal mix of right- and left-handed RAO molecules, 60% of those that settled on top were of a single handedness. This created a crystalline seed that caused additional like-handed RAOs to bind, eventually forming pure single-handed RAO crystals, the researchers reported last week in Science Advances. When they flipped the field's orientation and repeated the experiment, crystals with the opposite handedness took shape. [...]

In a report accepted last week in The Journal of Chemical Physics they show that once an excess of chiral RNA is formed, known chemical reactions could pass on this chiral bias, templating amino acids and proteins with the opposite handedness and ultimately fostering other chiral molecules essential to cell metabolism. The quest that began with Pasteur isn't quite over, though. One loose end, Sasselov acknowledges, is that RAO has only been shown to lead to the synthesis of two of RNA's four nucleotides, cytosine and uracil. It isn't known to produce the other two, adenine and guanine, although Sasselov says there's a "big push" to search for RAO reactions that could do it. If they can, the mystery of biological handedness might be another step closer to being solved.

Owen Gingerich, a renowned astronomer and historian of science, has passed away at the age of 93. Gingerich dedicated years to tracking down 600 copies of Nicolaus Copernicus's influential book "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium Libri Sex" and was known for his passion for astronomy, often dressing up as a 16th-century scholar for lectures. He believed in the compatibility of religion and science and explored this theme in his books "God's Universe" and "God's Planet." The New York Times reports: Professor Gingerich, who lived in Cambridge, Mass., and taught at Harvard for many years, was a lively lecturer and writer. During his decades of teaching astronomy and the history of science, he would sometimes dress as a 16th-century Latin-speaking scholar for his classroom presentations, or convey a point of physics with a memorable demonstration; for instance, The Boston Globe related in 2004, he "routinely shot himself out of the room on the power of a fire extinguisher to prove one of Newton's laws." He was nothing if not enthusiastic about the sciences, especially astronomy. One year at Harvard, when his signature course, "The Astronomical Perspective," wasn't filling up as fast as he would have liked, he hired a plane to fly a banner over the campus that read: "Sci A-17. M, W, F. Try it!"

Professor Gingerich's doggedness was on full display in his long pursuit of copies of Copernicus's "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium Libri Sex" ("Six Books on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres"), first published in 1543, the year Copernicus died. That book laid out the thesis that Earth revolved around the sun, rather than the other way around, a profound challenge to scientific knowledge and religious belief in that era. The writer Arthur Koestler had contended in 1959 that the Copernicus book was not read in its time, and Professor Gingerich set out to determine whether that was true. In 1970 he happened on a copy of "De Revolutionibus" that was heavily annotated in the library of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, suggesting that at least one person had read it closely. A quest was born. Thirty years and hundreds of thousands of miles later, Professor Gingerich had examined some 600 Renaissance-era copies of "De Revolutionibus" all over the world and had developed a detailed picture not only of how thoroughly the work was read in its time, but also of how word of its theories spread and evolved. He documented all this in "The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus" (2004). John Noble Wilford, reviewing it in The New York Times, called "The Book Nobody Read" "a fascinating story of a scholar as sleuth."

Professor Gingerich was raised a Mennonite and was a student at Goshen College, a Mennonite institution in Indiana, studying chemistry but thinking of astronomy, when, he later recalled, a professor there gave him pivotal advice: "If you feel a calling to pursue astronomy, you should go for it. We can't let the atheists take over any field." He took the counsel, and throughout his career he often wrote or spoke about his belief that religion and science need not be at odds. He explored that theme in the books "God's Universe" (2006) and "God's Planet" (2014). He was not a biblical literalist; he had no use for those who ignored science and proclaimed the Bible's creation story historical fact. Yet, as he put it in "God's Universe," he was "personally persuaded that a superintelligent Creator exists beyond and within the cosmos." [...] Professor Gingerich, who was senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, wrote countless articles over his career in addition to his books. In one for Science and Technology News in 2005, he talked about the divide between theories of atheistic evolution and theistic evolution. "Frankly it lies beyond science to prove the matter one way or the other," he wrote. "Science will not collapse if some practitioners are convinced that occasionally there has been creative input in the long chain of being." In 2006, Gingerich was mentioned in a Slashdot story about geologists' reacting to the new definition of "Pluton." He was quoted as saying that he was only peripherally aware of the definition, and because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important."

"Gingerich lead a committee of the International Astronomical Union charged with recommending whether Pluto should remain a planet," notes the New York Times. "His panel recommended that it should, but the full membership rejected that idea and instead made Pluto a 'dwarf planet.' That decision left Professor Gingerich somehwat dismayed."

In less than two years, NASA plans to have astronauts walking on the moon again — the first time in over half a century. "And one potential surprise could be detecting life on the moon," reports Space.com: New research suggests that future visitors to the lunar south pole region should be on the lookout for evidence of life in super-cold permanently shadowed craters — organisms that could have made the trek from Earth. Microbial life could potentially survive in the harsh conditions near the lunar south pole, suggested Prabal Saxena, a planetary researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "One of the most striking things our team has found is that, given recent research on the ranges in which certain microbial life can survive, there may be potentially habitable niches for such life in relatively protected areas on some airless bodies," Saxena told Space.com.

Indeed, the lunar south pole may possess the properties that can enable survival and potentially even episodic growth of certain microbial life, Saxena said. "We're currently working on understanding which specific organisms may be most suited for surviving in such regions and what areas of the lunar polar regions, including places of interest relevant to exploration, may be most amenable to supporting life," he said. In work presented at a recent science workshop on the potential Artemis 3 landing sites, Saxena and study members reported that the lunar south pole may contain substantial surface niches that could be potentially habitable for a number of microorganisms.
While it's possible organic molecules from earth might have been hurled to the moon after a meteor impact, there's a much more likely possibility. A NASA organic geochemist on the study views humans as "the most likely vector, given the extensive data that we have about our history of exploration..." Especially if humans start visiting these temperate radiation-protected sites...

China is planning to deploy a constellation of satellites in orbit around the moon to create a radio telescope that would enable the study of radio waves longer than 33 feet, providing insights into the "Dark Ages" of the universe. Space.com reports: The array would consist of one "mother" satellite and eight mini "daughter" craft. The mother would process data and communicate with Earth, and the daughters would detect radio signals from the farthest reaches of the cosmos, Xuelei Chen, an astronomer at the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said at the Astronomy From the Moon conference held earlier this year in London. Putting such an array in orbit around the moon would be technically more feasible than building a telescope directly on the lunar surface, a venture that NASA and other space agencies are currently considering as one of the next big steps in astronomy.

"There are a number of advantages in doing this in orbit instead of on the surface because it's engineeringly much simpler," Chen said during the conference. "There is no need for landing and a deployment, and also because the lunar orbital period is two hours, we can use solar power, which is much simpler than doing it on the lunar surface, which, if you want to observe during the lunar night, then you have to provide the energy for almost 14 days." He added that this proposed "Discovering Sky at the Longest Wavelength," or Hongmeng Project, could orbit the moon as early as 2026.

A telescope on the moon, astronomers say, would allow them to finally see cosmic radiation in a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is impossible to study from Earth's surface: radio waves longer than 33 feet (10 meters), or, in other words, those with frequencies below 30 megahertz (MHz). "If you are looking into the low-frequency part of the electromagnetic spectrum, you'll find that, due to strong absorption [by Earth's atmosphere], we know very little about [the region] below 30 megahertz," Chen said. "It's almost a blank part of the electromagnetic spectrum. So we want to open this last electromagnetic window of the universe."

Greenhouse gas emissions have reached an all-time high, threatening to push the world into "unprecedented" levels of global heating, scientists have warned. From a report: The world is rapidly running out of "carbon budget," the amount of carbon dioxide that can be poured into the atmosphere if we are to stay within the vital threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures, according to a study published in the journal Earth System Science Data on Thursday.

Only about 250bn tonnes of carbon dioxide can now be emitted, to avoid the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere that would raise temperatures by 1.5C. That is down from 500bn tonnes just a few years ago, and at current annual rates of greenhouse gas emissions, of about 54bn tonnes a year over the past decade, it would run out well before the end of this decade. Prof Piers Forster, the director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds, and lead author of the paper, said: "This is the critical decade for climate change. Decisions made now will have an impact on how much temperatures will rise and the degree and severity of impacts we will see as a result."

Artificial photosynthesis, inspired by the natural process that enables plants to convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into oxygen and energy, could be crucial for space exploration and colonization. By using semiconductor materials and metallic catalysts, these devices could efficiently produce oxygen and recycle carbon dioxide, reducing reliance on heavy and unreliable systems currently used on the International Space Station. ScienceAlert reports: As my colleagues and I have investigated in a new paper, published in Nature Communications, recent advances in making artificial photosynthesis may well be key to surviving and thriving away from Earth. [...] We produced a theoretical framework to analyze and predict the performance of such integrated "artificial photosynthesis" devices for applications on Moon and Mars. Instead of chlorophyll, which is responsible for light absorption in plants and algae, these devices use semiconductor materials which can be coated directly with simple metallic catalysts supporting the desired chemical reaction. Our analysis shows that these devices would indeed be viable to complement existing life support technologies, such as the oxygen generator assembly employed on the ISS. This is particularly the case when combined with devices which concentrate solar energy in order to power the reactions (essentially large mirrors which focus the incoming sunlight).

There are other approaches too. For example, we can produce oxygen directly from lunar soil (regolith). But this requires high temperatures to work. Artificial photosynthesis devices, on the other hand, could operate at room temperature at pressures found on Mars and the Moon. That means they could be used directly in habitats and using water as the main resource. This is particularly interesting given the stipulated presence of ice water in the lunar Shackleton crater, which is an anticipated landing site in future lunar missions.

On Mars, the atmosphere composes of nearly 96% carbon dioxide - seemingly ideal for an artificial photosynthesis device. But the light intensity on the red planet is weaker than on Earth due to the larger distance from the Sun. So would this pose a problem? We actually calculated the sunlight intensity available on Mars. We showed that we can indeed use these devices there, although solar mirrors become even more important. [...] The returns would be huge. For example, we could actually create artificial atmospheres in space and produce chemicals we require on long-term missions, such as fertilizers, polymers, or pharmaceuticals. Additionally, the insights we gain from designing and fabricating these devices could help us meet the green energy challenge on Earth.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have successfully demonstrated the capability of steering power in a microwave beam from a satellite to targets in space, as well as transmitting some of that power to a detector on Earth. Science Magazine reports: The Caltech mission, funded by the Donald Bren Foundation and Northrop Grumman Corporation, aimed to go a step further with lightweight, inexpensive, and flexible components. The microwave transmitter was an array of 32 flat antennas packed onto a surface slightly larger than a dinner plate. By varying the timing of signals sent to the different antennas, the researchers could steer the array's beam. They pointed it at a pair of microwave receivers about a forearm's distance away and switched the beam from one receiver to the other at will, lighting up an LED on each.

The transmitted power was small, just 200 milliwatts, less than that of a cellphone camera light. But the team was still able to steer the beam toward Earth and detect it with a receiver at Caltech. "It was a proof of concept," says Caltech electrical engineer Ali Hajimiri. "It indicates what an overall system can do."

The Caltech spacecraft still has two more planned experiments. One is now testing 32 different varieties of solar cell to see which best survives the rigors of space. The second is a folded piece of ultralight composite material that will unfurl into a sail-like structure 2 meters across. Although the sail will not hold any solar cells, it is meant to test the kind of thin, flexible, and large deployments required for a future power station.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Mycorrhizal fungi have been supporting life on land for at least 450 million years by helping to supply plants with soil nutrients essential for growth. In recent years, scientists have found that in addition to forming symbiotic relationships with nearly all land plants, these fungi are important conduits to transport carbon into soil ecosystems. In a meta-analysis published June 5 in the journal Current Biology, scientists estimate that as much as 13.12 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) fixed by terrestrial plants is allocated to mycorrhizal fungi annually -- roughly equivalent to 36% of yearly global fossil fuel emissions. Because 70% to 90% of land plants form symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi, researchers have long surmised that there must be a large amount of carbon moving into the soil through their networks.

Mycorrhizal fungi transfer mineral nutrients to and obtain carbon from their plant partners. These bi-directional exchanges are made possible by associations between fungal mycelium, the thread-like filamentous networks that make up the bulk of fungal biomass, and plant roots. Once transported underground, carbon is used by mycorrhizal fungi to grow a more extensive mycelium, helping them to explore the soil. It is also bound up in soil by the sticky compounds exuded by the fungi and can remain underground in the form of fungal necromass, which functions as a structural scaffold for soils. The scientists know that carbon is flowing through fungi, but how long it stays there remains unclear.

The paper is part of a global push to understand the role that fungi play in Earth's ecosystems. "We know that mycorrhizal fungi are vitally important ecosystem engineers, but they are invisible," says senior author Toby Kiers, a professor of evolutionary biology at Vrije University Amsterdam and co-founder of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN). "Mycorrhizal fungi lie at the base of the food webs that support much of life on Earth, but we are just starting to understand how they actually work. There's still so much to learn." But there's a race against time to understand and protect these fungi. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization warns that 90% of soils could be degraded by 2050, and fungi are left out of most conservation and environmental policy. Without the fertility and structure that soil provides, the productivity of both natural and crop plants will rapidly decline.

At WWDC today, Apple announced macOS Sonoma, the latest version of its Mac operating system that includes new features like desktop widgets, aerial screensavers, a new Game mode, and enhancements to apps like Messages and Safari. MacRumors reports: The first feature that Apple detailed was new interactive widgets, which can now be placed right on your desktop. Widgets blend into your desktop wallpaper to not be obtrusive when you're working, and with Continuity you can use the same widgets from your iPhone on your Mac. macOS Sonoma also introduces enhanced video conferencing features, including Presenter Overlay to allow a user to display themselves in front of the content they are sharing. Reactions let users share how they feel within a video session, and Screen Sharing has been improved with a simplified process.

As is usual with macOS updates, Safari is getting numerous new features within Sonoma. There's an update to Private Browsing that provides greater protection from trackers and from people who might have access to the user's device. Profiles within Safari offer a way to separate browsing between topics, like having one for work and one for personal browsing. There's also a new way to create web apps that work like normal apps and let you get to your favorite website faster.

When you're not actively using macOS Sonoma, the new screen savers feature slow-motion videos of various locations worldwide. They shuffle between landscape, Earth, underwater, or cityscape themes, similar to what you'll see on tvOS. For gamers, there's a new Game Mode in macOS Sonoma that delivers an optimized gaming experience with smoother and more consistent frame rates. It dramatically lowers audio latency with AirPods and reduces input latency with game controllers, and it works with any game on Mac. A beta version of macOS Sonoma is now available via the Apple Developer Program, with a public beta launching next month.

As Ars Technica notes, the macOS Sonoma update will only run on a couple generations of Intel Macs. "[I]f you're using anything made before 2018 or anything without an Apple T2 chip in it, you won't be able to run the new OS."

"Amazon employees staged a walkout Wednesday," reports CNBC, "in protest of the company's recent return-to-office mandate, layoffs and its environmental record." Approximately 2,000 employees worldwide walked off the job shortly after 3 p.m. EST, with about 1,000 of those workers gathering outside the Spheres, the massive glass domes that anchor Amazon's Seattle headquarters, according to employee groups behind the effort. Amazon disputed the figure and said about 300 employees participated.

The walkout was organized in part by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an influential worker organization that has repeatedly pressed the e-retailer on its climate stance... One employee spoke about how remote work had allowed her to spend more time with her family, while coworkers told her it enabled them to care for newborn children and relatives with special needs. "Today looks like it might be the start of a new chapter in Amazon's history, when tech workers coming out of the pandemic stood up and said we still want a say in this company and the direction of this company," said Eliza Pan, a cofounder of AECJ and a former program manager at Amazon. "We still want a say in the important decisions that affect all of our lives, and tech workers are going to stand up for ourselves, for each other, for our families, the communities where Amazon operates and for life on planet Earth...."

Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said in a statement that the company has so far been pleased with the results of its return-to-office push. "There's more energy, collaboration, and connections happening, and we've heard this from lots of employees and the businesses that surround our offices," Glasser added. "

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Japan has extended its natural disaster preparations to vending machines, which will offer free food and drink in the event of a major earthquake or typhoon. Two machines have been installed in the western coastal city of Ako, located in a region that seismologists say is vulnerable to a powerful earthquake that is expected to hit the country's central and south-west pacific coast in the next few decades. The machines, which contain about 300 bottles and cans of soft drinks and 150 emergency food items, including nutritional supplements, have been installed near buildings that have been designated as evacuation shelters.

They are designed to "unlock" and make their contents available free of charge in the event of a heavy rain warning, or an evacuation order after a quake of an upper five or higher on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of seven, according to the Mainichi Shimbun. Their contents must be paid for the rest of the time, the newspaper added. The manufacturer, Earth Corp, which has a factory in the city, says the machines are the first of their kind in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active countries, and where increasingly powerful typhoons have caused widespread flooding and landslides in recent years. "We would like to install [the machines] throughout the country," a company representative told the Mainichi. A city official said: "We expect that the stockpile will lead to the safety and security of our residents." Earlier this year, a vending machine with a radio that will automatically issue emergency broadcasts was set up in a park in Tokyo. "The radio will be activated by earthquakes registering 5 or higher on the Japanese intensity scale, and transmit evacuation and other vital information from a local community radio station," reports the Guardian.

The Japanese space agency (JAXA) and NASA plan to launch a satellite made of wood in 2024. The Independent reports: The high durability of wood in space was recently tested and confirmed at the International Space Station (ISS) by an international group of scientists led by those from Kyoto University. Their experiments showed wood samples tested at the ISS for durability underwent minimal deterioration and maintained good stability. Preliminary inspection, including strength tests and crystal structural analyses, of the wood samples was also done once they were brought back to Earth from the ISS by Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata.

Despite extreme conditions in space, including temperature changes and exposure to intense cosmic rays and dangerous solar particles for 10 months, tests found no changes in the samples, such as cracking, warping, peeling or surface damage, according to a recent Kyoto University statement. The retrieved wood specimens were tested and showed no deformation after space exposure and also did not undergo any mass change before and after space exposure, scientists said.

The international research group has determined that the satellite LignoSat, slated to be jointly launched in 2024 by Nasa and Japan's space agency Jaxa, will likely use Magnolia wood -- "Hoonoki" in Japanese. Magnolia, researchers said, has relatively high workability, dimensional stability and overall strength, making its properties ideal for the mission. Wood also has some benefits compared to complex alloys used in space vehicles, as it is environmentally friendly, easier to produce and can be disposed off better at the end of a satellite's life. Such wooden satellites may also be designed to completely burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere and even if small fragments did survive, they may decompose easily.

China has begun digging a 10-kilometer-deep hole in the Earth's crust in the Tarim Basin, Xinjiang province, as part of its exploration of the planet's interior. From a report: The team will dig deep into the Earth, penetrating more than 10 continental strata, which can be used to reconstruct the history of the Earth's continents, including the evolution of landscapes, climate change, and the distribution of life. Continental strata are layers of rock, which are an important resource for understanding the history of the Earth. They can be used to identify and date past events, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and climate change. They can also be used to identify and study ancient life forms.

"Drilling a borehole over 10,000 meters deep is a bold attempt to explore the unknown territory of the Earth and expand the boundaries of human understanding," Wang Chunsheng, a technical expert who joined the operation, told China's Xinhua news agency. The borehole will penetrate a depth of 11,100 meters and is located in the hinterland of the Taklimakan Desert, the largest desert in China, which in itself is a challenging environment to work in. While the digging has begun, China has not yet given a full explanation or the reason behind the dig.

The deepest man-made hole on Earth is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in the Kola Peninsula of Russia, which was drilled between 1970 and 1992. The hole touched a depth of 12,262 meters and was aimed at studying the Earth's crust and mantle. However, the team experience several challenges during the project including high temperatures of up to 180 degrees Celsius at the bottoms of the hole, the constant breaking and changing of the drill bit and the strength of the rocks at the depth.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Atomic-scale imaging emerged in the mid-1950s and has been advancing rapidly ever since -- so much so, that back in 2008, physicists successfully used an electron microscope to image a single hydrogen atom. Five years later, scientists were able to peer inside a hydrogen atom using a "quantum microscope," resulting in the first direct observation of electron orbitals. And now we have the first X-ray taken of a single atom, courtesy of scientists from Ohio University, Argonne National Laboratory, and the University of Illinois-Chicago, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature.

"Atoms can be routinely imaged with scanning probe microscopes, but without X-rays one cannot tell what they are made of," said co-author Saw-Wai Hla, a physicist at Ohio University and Argonne National Laboratory. "We can now detect exactly the type of a particular atom, one atom at a time, and can simultaneously measure its chemical state. Once we are able to do that, we can trace the materials down to [the] ultimate limit of just one atom. This will have a great impact on environmental and medical sciences." [...] Hla has been working for the last 12 years to develop an X-ray version of STM: synchrotron X-ray-scanning tunneling microscopy, or SX-STM, which would enable scientists to identify the type of atom and its chemical state. X-ray imaging methods like synchrotron radiation are widely used across myriad disciplines, including art and archaeology. But the smallest amount to date that can be X-rayed is an attogram, or roughly 10,000 atoms. That's because the X-ray emission of a single atom is just too weak to be detected -- until now.

SX-STM combines conventional synchrotron radiation with quantum tunneling. It replaces the conventional X-ray detector used in most synchrotron radiation experiments with a different kind of detector: a sharp metal tip placed extremely close to the sample, the better to collect electrons pushed into an excited state by the X-rays. With Hla et al.'s method, X-rays hit the sample and excite the core electrons, which then tunnel to the detector tip. The photoabsorption of the core electrons serves as a kind of elemental fingerprint for identifying the type of atoms in a material. The team tested their method at the XTIP beam line at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source, using an iron atom and a terbium atom (inserted into supramolecules, which served as hosts). And that's not all. "We have detected the chemical states of individual atoms as well," said Hla. "By comparing the chemical states of an iron atom and a terbium atom inside respective molecular hosts, we find that the terbium atom, a rare-earth metal, is rather isolated and does not change its chemical state, while the iron atom strongly interacts with its surrounding." Also, Hla's team has developed another technique called X-ray-excited resonance tunneling (X-ERT), which will allow them to detect the orientation of the orbital of a single molecule on a material surface.

A SpaceX capsule carrying a former NASA astronaut and three paying customers returned from the International Space Station, marking the conclusion of a historic weeklong mission for the crew. From a report: The Crew Dragon spacecraft departed the space station Tuesday morning and the crew spent nearly 12 hours in orbit as the capsule maneuvered back toward Earth. After a fiery reentry, the Crew Dragon and passengers made a safe splashdown off the coast of Panama City, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico at 11:04 p.m. ET. This mission, dubbed Axiom Mission 2, or AX-2, launched from Florida on May 21. AX-2 was put together by the Houston-based company Axiom Space and marked the second all-private mission to the orbiting outpost, meaning solely commercial companies, rather than a government agency, have been leading the mission.

This mission was also a milestone in the history of spaceflight as stem cell researcher Rayyanah Barnawi became the first woman from Saudi Arabia to travel to space. The AX-2 mission is one in a lineup of commercial missions designed to spur private sector participation in spaceflight -- particularly in low-Earth orbit, where the International Space Station orbits. Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, 63, led the AX-2 crew. Whitson, now an Axiom Space employee, also became the first woman to command a private spaceflight. One of the three paying customers joining Whitson was John Shoffner, an American who made his fortune in the international telecom business and founded the hardware company Dura-Line Corp. Saudi Arabia also paid to fly two of its citizens: Barnawi and Ali AlQarni, a fighter pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force.

During the mission, Barnawi led stem cell research suited for the microgravity environment aboard the space station. The orbiting laboratory has long been a key venue for various scientific experiments, as the lack of gravity can give researchers a better fundamental understanding of the topic at hand. Barnawi and AlQarni also engaged in outreach projects, including testing out a kite in microgravity and capturing video for viewers back home. The AX-2 crew spent about eight days working alongside astronauts representing NASA, Russia's Roscomos space agency and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency aboard the space station, though they operated on different schedules. The AX-2 crew worked through a lineup of more than 20 investigations and science projects -- including stem cell and other biomedical research. "Late tonight, at 11:02 pm local time in California (06:02 UTC Wednesday), SpaceX has a chance to reach 200 successful launches [of the Falcon 9 rocket] with a Starlink mission lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base," reports Ars Technica. "Such a performance is in uncharted territory for any orbital rocket, ever. [...] SpaceX is setting itself up to double the record for the number of consecutive successes by an orbital rocket."

You can view a livestream of the launch here.

The Mars helicopter 'Ingenuity' recently completed its 47th, 48th, and 49th flight, NASA reports on the blog for its Mars rover 'Perseverance'. That rover is making a "long ascent" up the delta in Mars' Jezero crater, "an area where scientists surmise that, billions of years ago, a river once flowed into a lake.

On its 47th flight, Ingenuity attempted "tactical and scientific scouting" for the rover, but "just narrowly missing the main area of interest." But then... Ingenuity's 48th flight produced a treasure trove of aerial images showing the exact area of interest at a resolution several orders of magnitude better than anything prior. All of these images were downlinked to Earth and provided to rover planners and scientists a full two weeks before the rover would reach this area... [T]he team chose to send the helicopter farther up the delta rather than perform additional scouting flights in the region... The Guidance Navigation and Control team once again managed to push the flight envelope with a 16-meter vertical popup at the end of the flight. At the peak, Ingenuity snapped the highest suborbital picture taken of the Martian surface since landing...

That downlink was the last time the team would hear from the helicopter for an agonizingly long time. Eager to continue up the delta, the team tried and failed to uplink the instructions for Flight 50 several times. Sol after sol, the helicopter remained elusive. Each time, the downlinked telemetry from the Helicopter Base Station (HBS) on the rover would come back showing no radio sign of the helicopter... When the rover emerged from the communications shadow on its way to Foel Drygarn and the helicopter was still nowhere to be found, the situation began to generate some unease... In more than 700 sols operating the helicopter on Mars, not once had we ever experienced a total radio blackout. Even in the worst communications environments, we had always seen some indication of activity...

Finally, on Sol 761, nearly a week after our first missed check-in, our communications team observed a single, lonely radio ACK (radio acknowledgement) at 9:44 LMST (Local Mean Solar Time), exactly the time when we'd expect to see the helicopter wakeup. Another single ACK at the same time on Sol 762 confirmed that the helicopter was indeed alive, which came as a welcome relief for the team. Ultimately, this first-of-its-kind communications blackout was a result of two factors. First, the topology between the rover and the helicopter was very challenging for the radio used by Ingenuity. In addition to the aforementioned communications shadow, a moderate ridge located just to the southeast of the Flight 49 landing site separated the helicopter from the rover's operational area. The impact of this ridge would only abate once the rover had gotten uncomfortably close to the helicopter. Second, the HBS antenna is located on the right side of the rover, low enough to the deck to see significant occlusion effects from various part of the rover...

Relying on the helicopter's onboard preflight checks to ensure vehicle safety and banking on solid communications from the rover's imminent proximity, the team uplinked the flight plan. As commanded, Ingenuity woke up and executed its 50th flight on the red planet, covering over 300 meters and setting a new altitude record of 18 m.

The rover had closed to a mere 80 meters by the time the helicopter lifted off in the Martian afternoon Sun.
And Flight 51 happened 9 days later...

"Planetary scientists now know how thick the Martian crust is," reports ScienceNews, "thanks to the strongest Marsquake ever observed." On average, the crust is between 42 and 56 kilometers thick [26 to 34 miles], researchers report in a paper to appear in Geophysical Research Letters. That's roughly 70 percent thicker than the average continental crust on Earth.

The measurement was based on data from NASA's InSight lander, a stationary seismometer that recorded waves rippling through Mars' interior for four Earth years. Last May, the entire planet shook with a magnitude 4.7 quake that lasted more than six hours. "We were really fortunate that we got this quake," says seismologist Doyeon Kim of ETH Zurich.

InSight recorded seismic waves from the quake that circled Mars up to three times. That let Kim and colleagues infer the crust thickness over the whole planet. Not only is the crust thicker than that of the Earth and the moon, but it's also inconsistent across the Red Planet, the team found. And that might explain a known north-south elevation difference on Mars.