Have scientists discovered infrared radiation, evidence of waste heat generated by the energy-harvesting star-surrounding spheres first proposed by British American physicist Freeman Dyson? CNN reports: [A] new study that looked at 5 million stars in the Milky Way galaxy suggests that seven candidates could potentially be hosting Dyson spheres — a finding that's attracting scrutiny and alternate theories... Using historical data from telescopes that pick up infrared signatures, the research team looked at stars located within less than 1,000 light-years from Earth: "We started with a sample of 5 million stars, and we applied filters to try to get rid of as much data contamination as possible," said lead study author Matías Suazo, a doctoral student in the department of physics and astronomy of Uppsala University in Sweden. "So far, we have seven sources that we know are glowing in the infrared but we don't know why, so they stand out...."

Among the natural causes that could explain the infrared glow are an unlucky alignment in the observation, with a galaxy in the background overlapping with the star, planetary collisions creating debris, or the fact that the stars may be young and therefore still surrounded by disks of hot debris from which planets would later form...

An earlier study, published in March and using data from the same sources as the new report, had also found infrared anomalies among a sample dataset of 5 million stars in our galaxy. "We got 53 candidates for anomalies that cannot be well explained, but can't say that all of them are Dyson sphere candidates, because that's not what we are specifically looking for," said Gabriella Contardo, a postdoctoral research fellow at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, who led the earlier study. She added that she plans to check the candidates against Suazo's model to see how many tie into it. "You need to eliminate all other hypotheses and explanations before saying that they could be a Dyson sphere," she added. "To do so you need to also rule out that it's not some kind of debris disk, or some kind of planetary collision, and that also pushes the science forward in other fields of astronomy — so it's a win-win."

Both Contardo and Suazo agree that more research is needed on the data, and that ultimately they could turn to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope for more information, as it is powerful enough to observe the candidate stars directly. However, because of the lengthy, competitive procedures that regulate use of the telescope, securing access might take some time.

CNN adds that "A May 23 paper published in response to the one by Suazo and his colleagues suggests that at least three of the seven stars have been 'misidentified' as Dyson spheres and could instead be 'hot DOGs' — hot dust-obscured galaxies — and that the remaining four could probably be explained this way as well."

But "As for Dyson himself, if he were still alive, he also would be highly skeptical that these observations represent a technological signature, his son George argued: 'But the discovery of new, non-technological astronomical phenomena is exactly why he thought we should go out and look.' "

wgoodman shares a report from The Register: NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is back in action and conducting normal science operations for the first time since the veteran probe began spouting gibberish at the end of 2023. All four of the spacecraft's remaining operational instruments are now returning usable data to Earth, according to NASA. Some additional work is needed to tidy up the effects of the issue. Engineers need to resynchronize the timekeeping software of Voyager 1's three onboard computers to ensure that commands are executed at the correct times. Maintenance will also be performed on the digital tape recorder, which records some data from the plasma instrument for a six-monthly downlink to Earth.

Voyager 1's woes began in November 2023, when the spacecraft stopped transmitting usable data back to Earth. Rather than engineering and science data, NASA found itself faced with a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes, as though the spacecraft was somehow stalled. Engineers reckoned the issue lay with the Flight Data System (FDS) and in March sent a command -- dubbed a "poke" -- to get the FDS to try some other software sequences and thus circumvent whatever was causing the problem. The result was a complete memory dump from the computer, which allowed engineers to pinpoint where the corruption had occurred. It appeared that a single chip was malfunctioning, and engineers were faced with the challenge of devising a software update that would work around the defective hardware.

Usable engineering data began to be returned later in April, and in May the mission team sent commands to instruct the probe to keep science data flowing. The result was that the plasma wave subsystem and magnetometer instrument began sending data immediately. According to NASA, the cosmic ray subsystem and low energy charged particle instrument required a little more tweaking but are now operational. The rescue was made all the more impressive by the fact that it takes 22.5 hours for a command to reach Voyager 1 and another 22.5 hours for a response to be received on Earth.

Paul M. Nakasone, a retired U.S. Army general and former NSA director, is now OpenAI's newest board member. Nakasone will join the Safety and Security Committee and contribute to OpenAI's cybersecurity efforts. CNBC reports: The committee is spending 90 days evaluating the company's processes and safeguards before making recommendations to the board and, eventually, updating the public, OpenAI said. Nakasone joins current board members Adam D'Angelo, Larry Summers, Bret Taylor and Sam Altman, as well as some new board members the company announced in March: Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, former executive vice president and global general counsel of Sony; and Fidji Simo, CEO and chair of Instacart.

OpenAI on Monday announced the hiring of two top executives as well as a partnership with Apple that includes a ChatGPT-Siri integration. The company said Sarah Friar, previously CEO of Nextdoor and finance chief at Square, is joining as chief financial officer. Friar will "lead a finance team that supports our mission by providing continued investment in our core research capabilities, and ensuring that we can scale to meet the needs of our growing customer base and the complex and global environment in which we are operating," OpenAI wrote in a blog post. OpenAI also hired Kevin Weil, an ex-president at Planet Labs, as its new chief product officer. Weil was previously a senior vice president at Twitter and a vice president at Facebook and Instagram. Weil's product team will focus on "applying our research to products and services that benefit consumers, developers, and businesses," the company wrote. Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor who leaked classified documents in 2013 that exposed the massive scope of government surveillance programs, is wary of the appointment. In a post on X, Snowden wrote: "They've gone full mask-off: Do not ever trust OpenAI or its products (ChatGPT etc). There is only one reason for appointing an NSA director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth. You have been warned."

The iconic recycling symbol, invented 20 years before Earth Day 1990, has become omnipresent on products, often misleading consumers about what can be recycled, according to experts cited in a story explored by Grist. The chasing arrows logo, which promises rebirth for discarded materials, is frequently plastered on items that are not recyclable, particularly plastic products. Confusion over recycling rules has led to contamination at recycling facilities, driving up costs for cities. Only around 5 percent of plastic waste in the United States gets recycled, with much of the rest ending up in landfills or incinerators.

Environmental groups have called plastic recycling a "false solution." The trouble began in the 1970s when corporations, facing pressure to address litter, embraced recycling as a way to shift responsibility for waste onto individuals and local governments. The plastics industry introduced a resin code system in 1988, surrounding numbers with the chasing arrows logo, giving the impression that all plastics could be recycled. Despite industry efforts to promote recycling, experts say fulfilling the "urgent need to recycle" has proven difficult and unprofitable. The result is a lack of markets for most recycled plastics, with only 9 percent of all plastics ever produced having been recycled.

The sun fired off a volley of radiation-riddled outbursts in May. When they slammed into Earth's magnetic bubble, the world was treated to iridescent displays of the northern and southern lights. But our planet wasn't the only one in the solar firing line. From a report: A few days after Earth's light show, another series of eruptions screamed out of the sun. This time, on May 20, Mars was blitzed by a beast of a storm. Observed from Mars, "this was the strongest solar energetic particle event we've seen to date," said Shannon Curry, the principal investigator of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter, or MAVEN, at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

When the barrage arrived, it set off an aurora that enveloped Mars from pole to pole in a shimmering glow. If they were standing on the Martian surface, "astronauts could see these auroras," Dr. Curry said. Based on scientific knowledge of atmospheric chemistry, she and other scientists say, observers on Mars would have seen a jade-green light show, although no color cameras picked it up on the surface. But it's very fortunate that no astronauts were there. Mars's thin atmosphere and the absence of a global magnetic shield meant that its surface, as registered by NASA's Curiosity rover, was showered by a radiation dose equivalent to 30 chest X-rays -- not a lethal dose, but certainly not pleasant to the human constitution.

Rare Earths Norway has discovered Europe's largest proven deposit of rare earth elements in the Fen Carbonatite Complex, positioning Norway as a key player in Europe's effort to reduce reliance on China's rare earths supply. CNBC reports: Rare Earths Norway said in a June 6 statement that its Fen Carbonatite Complex in the southeast of the country boasts 8.8 million metric tons of total rare earth oxides (TREOs) with a reasonable prospect for economic extraction. Within the TREOs, which are considered vital to the global shift away from fossil fuels, the company says there is an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of magnet-related rare earths which can be used in electric vehicles and wind turbines. The discovery eclipses a massive rare earths deposit found last year in neighboring Sweden.

One of the aims of the Critical Raw Materials Act is to extract at least 10% of the European Union's annual demand for rare earths by 2030 and Rare Earths Norway says it hopes to contribute to that goal. Rare Earths Norway said the rare earths deposit in Telemark, roughly 210 kilometers (130 miles) southwest of Oslo, is likely to underscore Norway's position as an integral part of Europe's rare earth and critical raw material value chain.

schwit1 shares a report: Bill Gates and his energy company are starting construction at their Wyoming site for a next-generation nuclear power plant he believes will "revolutionize" how power is generated. Gates was in the tiny community of Kemmerer Monday to break ground on the project. The co-founder of Microsoft is chairman of TerraPower. The company applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March for a construction permit for an advanced nuclear reactor that uses sodium, not water, for cooling. If approved, it would operate as a commercial nuclear power plant.

The site is adjacent to PacifiCorp's Naughton Power Plant, which will stop burning coal in 2026 and natural gas a decade later, the utility said. Nuclear reactors operate without emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases. PacifiCorp plans to get carbon-free power from the reactor and says it is weighing how much nuclear to include in its long-range planning. The work begun Monday is aimed at having the site ready so TerraPower can build the reactor as quickly as possible if its permit is approved. Russia is at the forefront for developing sodium-cooled reactors.

The dream of perpetual, emissionless flight is getting closer to reality. Aviation giants, telecoms, investors, and military agencies are pouring millions into developing these prototypes, which could revolutionize aerial surveillance, emergency communications, and more.

Solar planes absorb energy via panels covering their wings and bodies, allowing them to fly indefinitely as long as the sun shines. Advances in battery technology now enable longer flights and overnight operation, albeit with less power than jet fuel. These slow, lightweight aircraft can fly at altitudes and durations impossible for humans, making them ideal for monitoring, telecom, and disaster response. Companies like BAE Systems, Airbus, and Skydweller are racing to commercialize solar planes, with hopes of offering services by 2026-2027. The unregulated stratosphere is a key focus, with planes acting as "steerable satellites." WSJ adds: Most of the companies trying to commercialize solar planes are building aircraft that are lightweight, autonomous and can fly at altitudes and for lengths of time that humans can't tolerate. Unlike balloons, solar planes are steerable, a big advantage for monitoring a target on the ground or providing telecom coverage without being blown off course. They are also cheaper and closer to Earth than satellites, putting them in a sweet spot for services that can't currently be offered by either, executives in charge of solar-aircraft projects say. The planes can capture higher resolution photos or video than satellites, or deliver broadband internet from the air, another thing satellites can't do.

"Virgin Galactic launched six people to suborbital space on Saturday, launching a Turkish astronaut and three space tourists," reports Space.com, "on what was the final voyage of the VSS Unity space plane." Unity, attached to the belly of its carrier plane Eve, took off from runway at Spaceport America in New Mexico at 10:31 a.m. EDT (1431 GMT) and carried to an altitude of 44,562 feet (13,582 meters) over the next hour, where it was dropped and ignited its rocket engine to carry two pilots and four passengers to space and back. The mission, called Galactic 07, reached an altitude of 54.4 miles (87.5 km) and marked the seventh commercial spaceflight by Virgin Galactic on Unity, which is being retired to make way for the company's new "Delta" class of spacecraft rolling out in 2026.

"I will need much more time to try and process what just happened," Tuva Atasever, the Turkish Space Agency astronaut on the flight, said in a post-flight press conference, adding that the view of Earth was indescribable. "It's not something you can describe with adjectives. It's an experiential thing ... you just feel it in your gut."
One of the space tourists was a principal propulsion engineer at SpaceX, who wore the flags of the U.S. and India on his spacesuit to honor both his home country and that of his parents. The other two were a New York-based real estate developer and a London-based hotel and resort investment strategy advisor.

The flight landed 70 minutes later at 11:41 a.m. EDT (1541 GMT), according to the article, "marking only its seventh commercial spaceflight for Virgin Galactic and 12th crewed spaceflight overall." In all, Virgin Galactic flew the space plane just 32 times, including non-space test flights... "This vehicle was revolutionary," Virgin Galactic president Mike Moses said in the post-launch press conference. "We tested it, we flew it, we demonstrated and prove to the world that commercial human spaceflight is possible with private funding for private companies... Seven commercial space flights, a single vehicle flying six times in six months last year, that's groundbreaking," Moses said. "The fact that we can take this vehicle back to back to back on a monthly basis is is really revolutionary."

The new Delta class of spacecraft will be able to fly at least twice a week, about eight times the rate of SpaceShipTwo, with Virgin Galactic planning to build at least two to start its new fleet. "We're going to field in 2026 two spaceships, our mothership Eve, that's 750 astronauts a year going to space," Moses said of the new fleet's flight capacity. "That's more than have gotten to space in the 60 year history of spaceflight to date...."

Since 2018, Virgin Galactic has flown payloads as part of NASA's Flight Opportunities program and most recently was selected to be a contracted flight provider for NASA for the next five years.
Phys.org reports that with the Delta-class rockets, "The future of the company is at stake as it seeks at long last to get into the black. Virgin is burning through cash, losing more than $100 million in each of the past two quarters, with its reserves standing at $867 million at the end of March." It also laid off 185 people, or 18 percent of its workforce, late last year. Its shares are currently trading at 85 cents, down from $55 in 2021, the year Branson himself flew, garnering global headlines.
Saturday's flight also became "a suborbital science lab" for microgravity research, according to a statement from the company. Phys.org reports that during the flight, astronaut Atasever "wore custom headgear with brain activity monitoring sensors to collect physiological data, a dosimeter, and two commercially available insulin pens to examine the ability to administer accurate insulin doses in microgravity, Virgin said in a statement." And Virgin Galactic said their flight also carried "rack-mounted" autonomous payloads from both Purdue ("to study propellant slosh in fuel tanks of maneuvering spacecraf") and U.C. Berkeley ("testing a new type of 3D printing"), as well as "multiple human-tended experiments." "Discovery and innovation are central to our mission at Virgin Galactic," said Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic. "We're excited to build on our successful record of facilitating scientific experiments in suborbital space, and we look forward to continuing to expand our role in suborbital research going forward."

"The first European Space Agency instrument to land on the Moon has detected the presence of negative ions on the lunar surface produced through interactions with the solar wind," according to a statement from the agency, collecting over three hours of data, "three times more than what the science teams needed for mission success..." The solar wind is a constant flow of radiation and particles from the Sun. Earth's magnetic field acts as a shield. In contrast, the Moon has no magnetic field and a very tenuous atmosphere, called the exosphere. When the solar wind hits the Moon,âthe surface reacts, kicking up secondary particles... While the positively charged particles have been measured from orbit before, measuring negative particles was a challenge. Negative ions are short-lived and cannot make it to orbit.
The instrument was dropped off by China's Chang'e-6 lunar lander, and Europe's ground stations are also providing support for that mission. Futurism reports: Within just over 48 hours, China's Chang'e-6 lunar touched down on the far side of the Moon, successfully scooped up samples, and kicked off once again. It was an extraordinary feat, representing the first-ever samples ever collected from the side of the Moon that permanently faces away from us. During its brief visit, the lander also dropped off several scientific payloads on the lunar service, including the European Space Agency's Negative Ions at the Lunar Surface instrument.
The lander also unfurled China's red and gold flag for the first time on the far side of the moon, according to the Associated Press. And then... Its ascender lifted off Tuesday morning at 7:38 a.m. Beijing time, with its engine burning for about six minutes as it entered a preset orbit around the moon, the China National Space Administration said. The agency said the spacecraft withstood a high temperature test on the lunar surface, and acquired the samples using both drilling and surface collection before stowing them in a container inside the ascender of the probe as planned. The container will be transferred to a reentry capsule that is due to return to Earth in the deserts of China's Inner Mongolia region about June 25.
The samples "could help researchers figure out why the moon's two sides are so starkly different," writes Science News: Spacecraft observations of the farside show very little volcanic activity. Some scientists suspect that this is because the nearside crust is much thinner, which would have allowed more magma to come up from below the surface, says Kerri Donaldson Hanna, a planetary geologist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

There is evidence that some volcanism occurred in the South Pole-Aitken basin and in Apollo crater, though it appears this activity happened roughly 3.5 billion years ago. It's possible the impact that created both Aiken and Apollo weakened the lunar crust, forming fractures and allowing magma to flow. The samples onboard Chang'e-6 could contain clues as to whether or not this happened.

Both Chinese and international researchers will be able to study the material. Donaldson Hanna is looking forward to seeing what insights will be gleaned from Chang'e-6 as well as future landers, such as those in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
Thanks to Slashdot reader cusco for sharing the news.

Carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere are accumulating "faster than ever" and have reached unprecedented levels, with a peak of 426.9 ppm recorded at NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in May 2024, said scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego. CBS News reports: "Over the past year, we've experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms," NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. "Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever." The researchers measured carbon dioxide, or CO2, levels at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. They found that atmospheric levels of the gas hit a seasonal peak of just under 427 parts per million in May -- an increase of 2.9 ppm since May 2023 and the fifth-largest annual growth in 50 years of data recording.

It also made official that the past two years saw the largest jump in the May peak -- when CO2 levels are at their highest in the Northern Hemisphere. John Miller, a NOAA carbon cycle scientist, said that the jump likely stems from the continuous rampant burning of fossil fuels as well as El Nino conditions making the planet's ability to absorb CO2 more difficult. The surge of carbon dioxide levels at the measuring station surpassed even the global average set last year, which was a record high of 419.3 ppm -- 50% higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution. However, NOAA noted that their observations were taken at the observatory specifically, and do not "capture the changes of CO2 across the globe," although global measurements have proven consistent without those at Mauna Loa. "Not only is CO2 now at the highest level in millions of years, it is also rising faster than ever," Ralph Keeling, director of Scripps' CO2 program, said in the release. "Each year achieves a higher maximum due to fossil-fuel burning, which releases pollution in the form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Fossil fuel pollution just keeps building up, much like trash in a landfill."

"We are living in unprecedented times. ... This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold," Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus, added.

The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that the past year saw record-breaking heat, with global temperatures surpassing all historical measurements. According to Copernicus, May marked the 12th consecutive month of record-high global temperatures, and exceeded a key Paris Agreement temperature target. The Week reports: The stretch is a "stark warning." In a separate study published Wednesday, a group of 57 scientists found that human activity was responsible for 92% of 2023's warming, which increased at a rate "unprecedented in the instrumental record."

While averting catastrophe is "still just about possible," the decisions made by global leaders "especially in the next 18 months" will determine whether the planet can be saved, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a special address. "We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell."

Without serious efforts to reverse global warming, "this string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold," Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said. "The 11 months in a row that tied or broke the 1.5C barrier did not yet constitute a breaching of the Paris target, since the benchmark refers to a timescale of multiple decades," notes Axios. "Still, the fact that the climate is now exceeding the target with greater regularity, and is projected to continue doing so, is a sign of the matter's urgency."

New submitter OwnedByTwoCats writes: SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful launch vehicle ever built, launched Thursday and achieved key objectives laid out for its fourth test flight that demonstrated the vehicle's reusability. The highly anticipated event was the company's second uncrewed test of 2024. Launch occurred from the private Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at 7:50 a.m. CT (8:50 a.m. ET), and the company streamed live coverage on X, formerly known as Twitter, drawing millions of viewers.

The Starship launch system includes the upper Starship spacecraft and a rocket booster known as the Super Heavy. Of the rocket's 33 engines, 32 lit during launch, according to the SpaceX broadcast. The vehicle soared through multiple milestones during Thursday's test flight, including the survival of the Starship capsule upon reentry during peak heating in Earth's atmosphere and splashdown of both the capsule and booster. After separating from the spacecraft, the Super Heavy booster for the first time successfully executed a landing burn and had a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about eight minutes after launch.

Meanwhile, the Starship capsule successfully achieved orbital insertion. About 50 minutes after launch, the spacecraft began its controlled reentry journey, and an incredibly colorful buildup of plasma could be seen around the vehicle as its heat shield faced the extreme temperatures of Earth's atmosphere. The company's Starlink satellites helped facilitate a livestream that was continuously available during reentry. A flap near the camera view on Starship appeared to scorch during reentry and particulate matter blocked some of the view of the camera. But in the end, there was enough of a view to see Starship achieve its expected landing burn into the Indian Ocean.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called Wednesday for a "windfall" tax on profits of fossil fuel companies to help pay for the fight against global warming, decrying them as the "godfathers of climate chaos." From a report: Guterres spoke from the American Museum of Natural History in New York in a bid to revive focus on climate change at a time when many national elections, and conflict in places like Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan this year have seized much of the international spotlight.

In a bare-knuckled speech timed for World Environment Day, Guterres drew on new data and projections to trumpet his case against Big Oil: The European Union's climate watching agency reported that last month was the hottest May ever, marking the 12th straight monthly record high. The EU's Copernicus climate change service, a global reference for tracking world temperatures, cited an average surface air temperature of 15.9 C (60.6 F) last month -- or 1.52 C higher than the estimated May average before industrial times. The burning of fossil fuels -- oil, gas and coal -- is the main contributor to global warming caused by human activity. Meanwhile, the U.N. weather agency predicted an 80% chance that average global temperatures will surpass the 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) target set in the landmark Paris climate accord of 2015. Further reading: UN Chief Says World is On 'Highway To Climate Hell' as Planet Endures 12 Straight Months of Unprecedented Heat.

AmiMoJo shares a report: The world is off track to meet the goal of tripling renewable electricity generation by 2030, a target viewed as vital to enable a swift global transition away from fossil fuels, but there are promising signs that the pace of progress may be picking up.

Countries agreed last December on a tripling of renewable power by the end of this decade. But few have yet taken concrete steps to meet this requirement and on current policies and trends global renewable generation capacity would only roughly double in developed countries, and slightly more than double globally by 2030, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency.

Governments should include targets and policies on renewables in their national action plans for the climate (called nationally determined contributions, or NDCs), which are a requirement under the Paris agreement, the IEA found. Many currently fail to do so, even though vast increases in renewable power are essential to meeting the treaty's aspiration of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

The IEA, the gold standard for global energy research, analysed the domestic policies and targets of nearly 150 countries, and found they would result in about 8,000GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. That amount is about 70% of what is necessary to reach 11,000GW of capacity, the amount needed for the tripling goal agreed at the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai last year.

CarbonBrief: China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 3% in March 2024, ending a 14-month surge that began when the economy reopened after the nation's "zero-Covid" controls were lifted in December 2022. The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, reinforces the view that China's emissions could have peaked in 2023.

The drivers of the CO2 drop in March 2024 were expanding solar and wind generation, which covered 90% of the growth in electricity demand, as well as declining construction activity. Oil demand growth also ground to a halt, indicating that the post-Covid rebound may have run its course. A 2023 peak in China's CO2 emissions is possible if the buildout of clean energy sources is kept at the record levels seen last year.

China's Chang'e-6 probe successfully lands on far side of the moon China's moon probe has "successfully touched down on the far side of the moon," CNN reports, in "a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country's aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon" by 2030.

The mission's ultimate goal is to return to Earth the first samples from the moon's far side, CNN reports. And China's lunar lander "is now expected to use a drill and a mechanical arm to gather up to 2 kilograms of moon dust and rocks from the basin, a crater formed some 4 billion years ago." To complete its mission, the lander will need to robotically stow those samples in an ascent vehicle that made the landing with it. The ascent vehicle will then return to lunar orbit, where it will dock with and transfer the samples to a re-entry capsule, according to mission information provided by the China National Space Administration. The re-entry capsule and orbiter will then travel back to Earth's orbit and separate, allowing the re-entry capsule to make its expected return later this month to the Siziwang Banner Landing Site in China's rural Inner Mongolia region.
The mission began with its launch on May 3 — and is expected to last 53 days. The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully reached the far side of the moon. China first completed that historic feat in 2019 with its Chang'e-4 probe... The technically complex mission is made more challenging due to where it is being conducted. The far side of the moon is out of range of normal communications, which means Chang'e-6 must also rely on a satellite that was launched into lunar orbit in March, the Queqiao-2.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Last year, Jaume Pellicer led a team of fellow scientists into a forest on Grande Terre, an island east of Australia. They were in search of a fern called Tmesipteris oblanceolata. Standing just a few inches tall, it was not easy to find on the forest floor. "It doesn't catch the eye," said Dr. Pellicer, who works at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona in Spain. "You would probably step on it and not even realize it." The scientists eventually managed to spot the nondescript fern. When Dr. Pellicer and his colleagues studied it in the lab, they discovered it held an extraordinary secret. Tmesipteris oblanceolata has the largest known genome on Earth. As the researchers described in a study published on Friday, the fern's cells contain more than 50 times as much DNA as ours do. [The analysis revealed the species T. oblanceolata to have a record-breaking genome size of 160.45 Gbp, which is about 7% larger than that of P. japonica (148.89 Gbp). For comparison, the human genome contains about 3.1 Gbp distributed across 23 chromosomes and when stretched out like a ball of yarn, the length of DNA in each cell only measures about 2m.] "Surprisingly, having a larger genome is usually not an advantage," notes Phys.org in a report. "In the case of plants, species possessing large amounts of DNA are restricted to being slow growing perennials, are less efficient at photosynthesis (the process by which plants convert the sun's energy into sugars) and require more nutrients (especially nitrogen and phosphates) to grow and compete successfully with their smaller-genomed neighbors. In turn, such effects may influence the ability of a plant to adapt to climate change and their risk of extinction."

"In animals, some of the largest genomes include the marbled lungfish (Protopterus aethiopicus) at 129.90 Gbp and the Neuse River waterdog (Necturus lewisi) at 117.47 Gbp," reports Phys.org. "In stark contrast, six of the largest-known eukaryotic genomes are held by plants, including the European mistletoe (Viscum album) at 100.84 Gbp."

Vermont has become the first state to enact a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the damage caused by climate change after the state suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather. From a report: Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature late Thursday, saying he is very concerned about the costs and outcome of the small state taking on "Big Oil" alone in what will likely be a grueling legal fight. But he acknowledged that he understands something has to be done to address the toll of climate change. "I understand the desire to seek funding to mitigate the effects of climate change that has hurt our state in so many ways," Scott, a moderate Republican in the largely blue state of Vermont, wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

Scott, a popular governor who recently announced that he's running for reelection to a fifth two-year term, has been at odds with the Democrat-controlled Legislature, which he has called out of balance. He was expected by environmental advocates to veto the bill but then allowed it to be enacted. Scott wrote to lawmakers that he was comforted that the Agency of Natural Resources is required to report back to the Legislature on the feasibility of the effort. Last July's flooding from torrential rains inundated Vermont's capital city of Montpelier, the nearby city Barre, some southern Vermont communities and ripped through homes and washed away roads around the rural state. Some saw it as the state's worst natural disaster since a 1927 flood that killed dozens of people and caused widespread destruction. It took months for businesses -- from restaurants to shops -- to rebuild, losing out on their summer and even fall seasons. Several have just recently reopened while scores of homeowners were left with flood-ravaged homes heading into the cold season.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big "termination shock" that is estimated have pushed the rate of global heating to double the long-term average, according to research. Until 2020, global shipping used dirty, high-sulphur fuels that produced air pollution. The pollution particles blocked sunlight and helped form more clouds, thereby curbing global heating. But new regulations at the start of 2020 slashed the sulphur content of fuels by more than 80%. The new analysis calculates that the subsequent drop in pollution particles has significantly increased the amount of heat being trapped at the Earth's surface that drives the climate crisis. The researchers said the sharp ending of decades of shipping pollution was an inadvertent geoengineering experiment, revealing new information about its effectiveness and risks.

Dr Tianle Yuan, at the University of Maryland, US, who led the study, said the estimated 0.2 watts per sq meter of additional heat trapped over the oceans after the pollution cut was "a big number, and it happened in one year, so it's a big shock to the system." "We will experience about double the warming rate compared to the long-term average" since 1880 as a result, he said. The heating effect of the pollution cut is expected to last about seven years. The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, combined satellite observations of sulphur pollution and computer modeling to calculate the impact of the cut. It found the short-term shock was equivalent to 80% of the total extra heating the planet has seen since 2020 from longer-term factors such as rising fossil-fuel emissions.

The scientists used relatively simple climate models to estimate how much this would drive up average global temperatures at the surface of the Earth, finding a rise of about 0.16C over seven years. This is a large rise and the same margin by which 2023 beat the temperature record compared with the previous hottest year. However, other scientists think the temperature impact of the pollution cut will be significantly lower due to feedbacks in the climate system, which are included in the most sophisticated climate models. The results of this type of analysis are expected later in 2024. [...] The new analysis indicates that this type of geoengineering would reduce temperatures, but would also bring serious risks. These include the sharp temperature rise when the pumping of aerosols stopped -- the termination shock -- and also potential changes to global precipitation patterns, which could disrupt the monsoon rains that billions of people depend on. "We should definitely do research on this, because it's a tool for situations where we really want to cool down the Earth temporarily," like an emergency brake, said Dr Gavin Schmidt, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "But this is not going to be a long-term solution, because it doesn't address the root cause of global warming," which is emissions from fossil fuel burning.