Astronomy

Only in the fleeting darkness of a total solar eclipse is the

On 8 April, a total solar eclipse passed over Mexico, the US and Canada – here are some of the most stunning images

On 8 April, a total solar eclipse passed over Mexico, the US and Canada – here are some of the most stunning images

Life on Earth depends on six critical elements: Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorous, and Sulfur. These elements are referred to as CHNOPS, and along with several trace micronutrients and liquid water, they’re what life needs.

Scientists are getting a handle on detecting exoplanets that might be warm enough to have liquid water on their surfaces, habitability’s most basic signal. But now, they’re looking to up their game by finding CHNOPS in exoplanet atmospheres.

We’re only at the beginning of understanding how exoplanets could support life. To grow our understanding, we need to understand the availability of CHNOPS in planetary atmospheres.

A new paper examines the issue. It’s titled “Habitability constraints by nutrient availability in atmospheres of rocky exoplanets.” The lead author is Oliver Herbort from the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Vienna and an ARIEL post-doctoral fellow. The paper has been accepted by the International Journal of Astrobiology.

At our current technological level, we’re just beginning to examine exoplanet atmospheres. The JWST is our main tool for the task, and it’s good at it. But the JWST is busy with other tasks. In 2029, the ESA will launch ARIEL, the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large survey. ARIEL will be solely focused on exoplanet atmospheres.

An artist’s impression of the ESA’s Ariel space telescope. During its four-year mission, it’ll examine 1,000 exoplanet atmospheres with the transit method. It’ll study and characterize both the compositions and thermal structures. Image Credit: ESA

In anticipation of that telescope’s mission, Herbort and his co-researchers are preparing for the results and what they mean for habitability. “The detailed understanding of the planets itself becomes important for interpreting observations, especially for the detection of biosignatures,” they write. In particular, they’re scrutinizing the idea of aerial biospheres. “We aim to understand the presence of these nutrients within atmospheres that show the presence of water cloud condensates, potentially allowing the existence of aerial biospheres.”

Our sister planet Venus has an unsurvivable surface. The extreme heat and pressure make the planet’s surface uninhabitable by any measure we can determine. But some scientists have proposed that life could exist in Venus’ atmosphere, based largely on the detection of phosphine, a possible indicator of life. This is an example of what an aerial biosphere might look like.

This artistic impression depicts Venus. Astronomers at MIT, Cardiff University, and elsewhere may have observed signs of life in the atmosphere of Venus by detecting phosphine. Subsequent research disagreed with this finding, but the issue is ongoing. Image Credits: ESO (European Space Organization)/M. Kornmesser & NASA/JPL/Caltech

“This concept of aerial biospheres enlarges the possibilities of potential habitability from the presence of liquid water on the surface to all planets with liquid water clouds,” the authors explain.

The authors examined the idea of aerial biospheres and how the detection of CHNOPS plays into them. They introduced the concept of nutrient availability levels in exoplanet atmospheres. In their framework, the presence of water is required regardless of other nutrient availability. “We considered any atmosphere without water condensates as uninhabitable,” they write, a nod to water’s primacy. The researchers assigned different levels of habitability based on the presence and amounts of the CHNOPS nutrients.

This table from the research illustrates the authors’ concept of atmospheric nutrient availability. As the top row shows, without water, no atmosphere is habitable. Different combinations of nutrients have different habitability potential. ‘red’ stands for redox, and ‘ox’ stands for the presence of the oxidized state of CO2, NOx, and SO2. Image Credit: Herbort et al. 2024.

To explore their framework of nutrient availability, the researchers turned to simulations. The simulated atmospheres held different levels of nutrients, and the researchers applied their concept of nutrient availability. Their results aim to understand not habitability but the chemical potential for habitability. A planet’s atmosphere can be altered drastically by life, and this research aims to understand the atmospheric potential for life.

“Our approach does not directly aim for the understanding of biosignatures and atmospheres of planets, which are inhabited, but for the conditions in which pre-biotic chemistry can occur,” they write. In their work, the minimum atmospheric concentration for a nutrient to be available is 10?9, or one ppb (part per billion.)

“We find that for most atmospheres at ( p gas, T gas) points, where liquid water is stable, CNS-bearing molecules are present at concentrations above 10?9,” they write. They also found that carbon is generally present in every simulated atmosphere and that sulphur availability increases with surface temperature. With lower surface temperatures, nitrogen (N2, NH3) is present in increasing amounts. But with higher surface temperatures, nitrogen can become depleted.

Phosphorus is a different matter. “The limiting element of the CHNOPS elements is phosphorus, which is mostly bound in the planetary crust,” they write. The authors point out that, at past times in Earth’s atmosphere, phosphorus scarcity limited the biosphere.

An aerial biosphere is an interesting idea. But it’s not the main thrust of scientists’ efforts to detect exoplanet atmospheres. Surface life is their holy grail. It should be no surprise that it still comes down to liquid water, all things considered. “Similar to previous work, our models suggest that the limiting factor for habitability at the surface of a planet is the presence of liquid water,” the authors write. In their work, when surface water was available, CNS was available in the lower atmosphere near the surface.

But surface water plays several roles in atmospheric chemistry. It can bond with some nutrients in some circumstances, making them unavailable, and in other circumstances, it can make them available.

“If water is available at the surface, the elements not present in the gas phase are stored in the crust condensates,” the authors write. Chemical weathering can then make them available as nutrients. “This provides a pathway to overcome the lack of atmospheric phosphorus and metals, which are used in enzymes that drive many biological processes.”

Artist’s impression of the surface of a hycean world. Hycean worlds are still hypothetical, with large oceans and thick hydrogen-rich atmospheres that trap heat. It’s unclear if a world with no surface can support life. Image Credit: University of Cambridge

This complicates matters on worlds covered by oceans. Pre-biotic molecules might not be available if there’s no opportunity for water and rock to interact with the atmosphere. “If indeed it can be shown that life can form in a water ocean without any exposed land, this constraint becomes weaker, and the potential for the surface habitability becomes mainly a question of water stability,” the authors write.

Some of the models are surprising because of atmospheric liquid water. “Many of the models show the presence of a liquid water zone in the atmospheres, which is detached from the surface. These regions could be of interest for the formation of life in forms of aerial biospheres,” Herbort and his colleagues write.

If there’s one thing that research like this shows, planetary atmospheres are extraordinarily complex and can change dramatically over time, sometimes because of life itself. This research makes some sense in trying to understand it all. Emphasizing the complexity is the fact that the researchers didn’t include stellar radiation in their work. Including that would’ve made the effort unwieldy.

The habitability issue is complicated, confounded by our lack of answers to foundational questions. Does a planet’s crust have to be in contact with water and the atmosphere for the CHNOPS nutrients to be available? Earth has a temporary aerial biosphere. Can aerial biospheres be an important part of exoplanet habitability?

But beyond all the simulations and models, as powerful as they are, what scientists need most is more data. When ARIEL launches, scientists will have much more data to work with. Research like this will help scientists understand what ARIEL finds.

The post Measuring the Atmospheres of Other Worlds to See if There are Enough Nutrients for Life appeared first on Universe Today.

During the total solar eclipse, skywatchers saw ruby-colored prominences sticking out of the moon's shadow. Here's the science of those red dots

The total solar eclipse of 2024 thrilled millions of people who turned up to watch the celestial event unfold across North America.

The next great eclipse is upon us, with viewers across North America witnessing the moon passing in front of the Sun. It’s an amazing experience, but also an opportunity to do science. Let’s talk about what we can learn from this momentous event.

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Scientific American staffers headed to locations ranging from Texas to Vermont to try to catch a glimpse of the total solar eclipse

Artificial Intelligence is making its presence felt in thousands of different ways. It helps scientists make sense of vast troves of data; it helps detect financial fraud; it drives our cars; it feeds us music suggestions; its chatbots drive us crazy. And it’s only getting started.

Are we capable of understanding how quickly AI will continue to develop? And if the answer is no, does that constitute the Great Filter?

The Fermi Paradox is the discrepancy between the apparent high likelihood of advanced civilizations existing and the total lack of evidence that they do exist. Many solutions have been proposed for why the discrepancy exists. One of the ideas is the “Great Filter.”

The Great Filter is a hypothesized event or situation that prevents intelligent life from becoming interplanetary and interstellar and even leads to its demise. Think climate change, nuclear war, asteroid strikes, supernova explosions, plagues, or any number of other things from the rogue’s gallery of cataclysmic events.

Or how about the rapid development of AI?

A new paper in Acta Astronautica explores the idea that Artificial Intelligence becomes Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) and that ASI is the Great Filter. The paper’s title is “Is Artificial Intelligence the Great Filter that makes advanced technical civilizations rare in the universe?” The author is Michael Garrett from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester.

“Without practical regulation, there is every reason to believe that AI could represent a major threat to the future course of not only our technical civilization but all technical civilizations.”

Michael Garrett, University of Manchester

Some think the Great Filter prevents technological species like ours from becoming multi-planetary. That’s bad because a species is at greater risk of extinction or stagnation with only one home. According to Garrett, a species is in a race against time without a backup planet. “It is proposed that such a filter emerges before these civilizations can develop a stable, multi-planetary existence, suggesting the typical longevity (L) of a technical civilization is less than 200 years,” Garrett writes.

If true, that can explain why we detect no technosignatures or other evidence of ETIs (Extraterrestrial Intelligences.) What does that tell us about our own technological trajectory? If we face a 200-year constraint, and if it’s because of ASI, where does that leave us? Garrett underscores the “…critical need to quickly establish regulatory frameworks for AI development on Earth and the advancement of a multi-planetary society to mitigate against such existential threats.”

An image of our beautiful Earth taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1990. Do we need a backup home? Credit: NASA/JPL

Many scientists and other thinkers say we’re on the cusp of enormous transformation. AI is just beginning to transform how we do things; much of the transformation is behind the scenes. AI seems poised to eliminate jobs for millions, and when paired with robotics, the transformation seems almost unlimited. That’s a fairly obvious concern.

But there are deeper, more systematic concerns. Who writes the algorithms? Will AI discriminate somehow? Almost certainly. Will competing algorithms undermine powerful democratic societies? Will open societies remain open? Will ASI start making decisions for us, and who will be accountable if it does?

This is an expanding tree of branching questions with no clear terminus.

Stephen Hawking (RIP) famously warned that AI could end humanity if it begins to evolve independently. “I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans,” he told Wired magazine in 2017. Once AI can outperform humans, it becomes ASI.

Stephen Hawking was a major proponent for colonizing other worlds, mainly to ensure humanity does not go extinct. In later years, Hawking recognized that AI could be an extinction-level threat. Credit: educatinghumanity.com

Hawking may be one of the most recognizable voices to issue warnings about AI, but he’s far from the only one. The media is full of discussions and warnings, alongside articles about the work AI does for us. The most alarming warnings say that ASI could go rogue. Some people dismiss that as science fiction, but not Garrett.

“Concerns about Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) eventually going rogue is considered a major issue – combatting this possibility over the next few years is a growing research pursuit for leaders in the field,” Garrett writes.

If AI provided no benefits, the issue would be much easier. But it provides all kinds of benefits, from improved medical imaging and diagnosis to safer transportation systems. The trick for governments is to allow benefits to flourish while limiting damage. “This is especially the case in areas such as national security and defence, where responsible and ethical development should be paramount,” writes Garrett.

News reports like this might seem impossibly naive in a few years or decades.

The problem is that we and our governments are unprepared. There’s never been anything like AI, and no matter how we try to conceptualize it and understand its trajectory, we’re left wanting. And if we’re in this position, so would any other biological species that develops AI. The advent of AI and then ASI could be universal, making it a candidate for the Great Filter.

This is the risk ASI poses in concrete terms: It could no longer need the biological life that created it. “Upon reaching a technological singularity, ASI systems will quickly surpass biological intelligence and evolve at a pace that completely outstrips traditional oversight mechanisms, leading to unforeseen and unintended consequences that are unlikely to be aligned with biological interests or ethics,” Garrett explains.

How could ASI relieve itself of the pesky biological life that corrals it? It could engineer a deadly virus, it could inhibit agricultural food production and distribution, it could force a nuclear power plant to melt down, and it could start wars. We don’t really know because it’s all uncharted territory. Hundreds of years ago, cartographers would draw monsters on the unexplored regions of the world, and that’s kind of what we’re doing now.

This is a portion of the Carta Marina map from the year 1539. It shows monsters lurking in the unknown waters off of Scandinavia. Are the fears of ASI kind of like this? Or could ASI be the Great Filter? Image Credit: By Olaus Magnus – http://www.npm.ac.uk/rsdas/projects/carta_marina/carta_marina_small.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=558827

If this all sounds forlorn and unavoidable, Garrett says it’s not.

His analysis so far is based on ASI and humans occupying the same space. But if we can attain multi-planetary status, the outlook changes. “For example, a multi-planetary biological species could take advantage of independent experiences on different planets, diversifying their survival strategies and possibly avoiding the single-point failure that a planetary-bound civilization faces,” Garrett writes.

If we can distribute the risk across multiple planets around multiple stars, we can buffer ourselves against the worst possible outcomes of ASI. “This distributed model of existence increases the resilience of a biological civilization to AI-induced catastrophes by creating redundancy,” he writes.

If one of the planets or outposts that future humans occupy fails to survive the ASI technological singularity, others may survive. And they would learn from it.

Artist’s illustration of a SpaceX Starship landing on Mars. If we can become a multi-planetary species, the threat of ASI is diminished. Credit: SpaceX

Multi-planetary status might even do more than just survive ASI. It could help us master it. Garrett imagines situations where we can experiment more thoroughly with AI while keeping it contained. Imagine AI on an isolated asteroid or dwarf planet, doing our bidding without access to the resources required to escape its prison. “It allows for isolated environments where the effects of advanced AI can be studied without the immediate risk of global annihilation,” Garrett writes.

But here’s the conundrum. AI development is proceeding at an accelerating pace, while our attempts to become multi-planetary aren’t. “The disparity between the rapid advancement of AI and the slower progress in space technology is stark,” Garrett writes.

The difference is that AI is computational and informational, but space travel contains multiple physical obstacles that we don’t yet know how to overcome. Our own biological nature restrains space travel, but no such obstacle restrains AI. “While AI can theoretically improve its own capabilities almost without physical constraints,” Garrett writes, “space travel must contend with energy limitations, material science boundaries, and the harsh realities of the space environment.”

For now, AI operates within the constraints we set. But that may not always be the case. We don’t know when AI might become ASI or even if it can. But we can’t ignore the possibility. That leads to two intertwined conclusions.

If Garrett is correct, humanity must work more diligently on space travel. It can seem far-fetched, but knowledgeable people know it’s true: Earth will not be inhabitable forever. Humanity will perish here by our own hand or nature’s hand if we don’t expand into space. Garrett’s 200-year estimate just puts an exclamation point on it. A renewed emphasis on reaching the Moon and Mars offers some hope.

The Artemis program is a renewed effort to establish a presence on the Moon. After that, we could visit Mars. Are these our first steps to becoming a multi-planetary civilization? Image Credit: NASA

The second conclusion concerns legislating and governing AI, a difficult task in a world where psychopaths can gain control of entire nations and are bent on waging war. “While industry stakeholders, policymakers, individual experts, and their governments already warn that regulation is necessary, establishing a regulatory framework that can be globally acceptable is going to be challenging,” Garrett writes. Challenging barely describes it. Humanity’s internecine squabbling makes it all even more unmanageable. Also, no matter how quickly we develop guidelines, ASI might change even more quickly.

“Without practical regulation, there is every reason to believe that AI could represent a major threat to the future course of not only our technical civilization but all technical civilizations,” Garrett writes.

This is the United Nations General Assembly. Are we united enough to constrain AI? Image Credit: By Patrick Gruban, cropped and downsampled by Pine – originally posted to Flickr as UN General Assembly, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4806869

Many of humanity’s hopes and dreams crystallize around the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter. Are there other civilizations? Are we in the same situation as other ETIs? Will our species leave Earth? Will we navigate the many difficulties that face us? Will we survive?

If we do, it might come down to what can seem boring and workaday: wrangling over legislation.

“The persistence of intelligent and conscious life in the universe could hinge on the timely and effective implementation of such international regulatory measures and technological endeavours,” Garrett writes.

The post Does the Rise of AI Explain the Great Silence in the Universe? appeared first on Universe Today.

This year's first solar eclipse, the total solar eclipse 2024 has officially begun!

An AI program can learn from smartphone users' behaviours in order to send timely pop-up reminders about when to close attention-grabbing apps. The system effectively reduced how often people opened apps such as TikTok

An AI program can learn from smartphone users' behaviours in order to send timely pop-up reminders about when to close attention-grabbing apps. The system effectively reduced how often people opened apps such as TikTok

It's total solar eclipse day, April 8, and we're rounding up the best images of the phenomenon on social media.

Missions to asteroids have been on a tear recently. Visits by Rosetta, Osirix-REX, and Hayabusa2 have all visited small bodies and, in some cases, successfully returned samples to the Earth. But as humanity starts reaching out to asteroids, it will run into a significant technical problem – bandwidth. There are tens of thousands of asteroids in our vicinity, some of which could potentially be dangerous. If we launched a mission to collect necessary data about each of them, our interplanetary communication and control infrastructure would be quickly overwhelmed. So why not let our robotic ambassadors do it for themselves – that’s the idea behind a new paper from researchers at the Federal University of São Paulo and Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.

The paper primarily focuses on the control problem of what to do when a spacecraft is approaching a new asteroid. Current missions take months to approach and require consistent feedback from ground teams to ensure the spacecraft understands the parameters of the asteroid it’s approaching – especially the gravitational constant.

Some missions have seen more success with that than others – for example, Philase, the lander that went along with Rosetta, had trouble when it bounced off the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. As the authors pointed out, part of that difference was a massive discrepancy between the actual shape of the comet and the observed shape that telescopes had seen before Rosetta arrived there. 

Fraser discusses the possibility of capturing an asteroid.

Even more successful missions, such as OSIRIS-Rex, take months of lead-up time to complete relatively trivial maneuvers in the context of millions of kilometers their overall journey takes them. For example, it took 20 days for OSIRIX-Rex to perform multiple flybys at 7 km above the asteroid’s surface before its mission control deemed it safe to enter a stable orbit.

One of the significant constraints the mission controllers were looking at was whether they could accurately calculate the gravitational constant of the asteroid they were visiting. Gravity is notoriously difficult to determine from far away, and its miscalculation led to the problems with Philae. So, can a control scheme do to solve all of these problems?

Simply put, it can allow the spacecraft to decide what to do when approaching their target. With a well-defined control scheme, the likelihood of a spacecraft failure due to some unforeseen consequence is relatively minimal. It could dramatically decrease the time missions spend on approach and limit the communication bandwidth back toward mission control on Earth. 

One use case for quick asteroid mission – mining them, as Fraser discusses here.

Such a scheme would also require only four relatively ubiquitous, inexpensive sensors to operate effectively – a LiDAR (similar to those found on autonomous cars), two optical cameras for depth perception, and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that measures parameters like orientation, acceleration, and magnetic field. 

The paper spends plenty of time detailing the complex math that would go into the control schema – some of which involve statistical calculations similar to basic learning models. The authors also run trials on two potential asteroid targets of interest to see how the system would perform.

One is already well understood. Bennu was the target of the OSIRIX-Rex mission and, therefore, is well-characterized as asteroids go. According to the paper, with the new control system, a spacecraft could enter a 2000 m orbit within a day of approaching from hundreds of kilometers away, then enter an 800 m orbit the next day. This is compared to the months of preparatory work the actual OSIRIS-Rex mission had to accomplish. And it can be completed with minimal thrust and, more importantly, fuel – a precious commodity on deep-space missions.

Asteroid defense is another important use case for quick asteroid missions – as Isaac Arthus discusses in this video.
Credit – Isaac Arthur

Another demonstration mission is one to Eros, the second-largest asteroid near Earth. It has a unique shape for an asteroid, as it is relatively elongated, which could pose an exciting challenge for automated systems like those described in the paper. Controlling a spacecraft with the new schema for a rendezvous with Eros doesn’t have all the same advantages of a more traditional asteroid like Bennu. For example, it has a much higher thrust requirement and fuel consumption. However, it still shortens the mission time and bandwidth required to operate it.

Autonomous systems are becoming increasingly popular on Earth and in space. Papers like this one push the thinking about what is possible forward. Suppose all that’s required to eliminate months of painstaking manual technical work is to slap a few sensors and implement a new control algorithm. In that case, it’s likely that one of the various agencies and companies planning to rendezvous with an asteroid shortly will adopt that plan.

Learn More:
Negri et al. – Autonomous Rapid Exploration in Close-Proximity of an Asteroid
UT – Miniaturized Jumping Robots Could Study An Asteroid’s Gravity
UT – How to Make Asteroid Landings Safer
UT – A Spacecraft Could use Gravity to Prevent a Dangerous Asteroid Impact

Lead Image:
Artist’s conception of the Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids.
Credit – NASA

The post If We Want to Visit More Asteroids, We Need to Let the Spacecraft Think for Themselves appeared first on Universe Today.

I remember reading about an audacious mission to endeavour to drill through the surface ice of Europa, drop in a submersible and explore the depths below. Now that concept may be taking a step closer to reality with researchers working on technology to do just that. Worlds like Europa are high on the list for exploration due to their potential to harbour life. If technology like the SLUSH probe (Search for Life Using Submersible Head) work then we are well on the way to realising that dream. 

The search for life has always been something to captivate the mind. Think about the diversity of life on Earth and it is easy to see why we typically envisage creatures that rely upon sunlight, food and drink. But on Earth, life has found a way in the most inhospitable of environments, even at the very bottom of the ocean. The Mariana’s Trench is deeper than Mount Everest is tall and anything that lives there has to cope with cold water, crushingly high pressure and no sunlight. Seems quite alien but even here, life thrives such as the deep-sea crustacean Hirondellea Gigas – catchy name. 

Location of the Mariana Trench. Credit: Wikipedia Commons/Kmusser

Europa, one of the moon’s of Jupiter has an ice crust but this covers over a global ocean of liquid water.  The conditions deep down in the ocean of Europa might not be so very different from those at the bottom of the Mariana’s Trench so it is here that a glimmer of hope exists to find other life in the Solar System. Should it exist, getting to it is the tricky bit. It’s not just on Europa but Enceladus and even Mars may have water underneath ice shelves. Layers of ice up to a kilometre thick might exist so technology like SLUSH has been developed to overcome. 

Natural color image of Europa obtained by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill)

The technology is not too new though since melt probes like SLUSH have been tested before. The idea is beautifully simple.  The thermo-mechanical probe uses a drilling mechanism to break through the ice and then the heat probe to partially melt the ice chips, forming slush to enable their transportation to behind the probe as it descends. 

The probe, which looks rather like a light sabre, is then able to transmit data from the subsurface water back to the lander. A tether system is used for the data transmission using conductive microfilaments and an optical fibre cable. Intriguingly and perhaps even cunningly, should the fibre cable break (which is a possibility due to tidal stresses from the ice) then the microfilaments will work as an antenna.  They can then be tuned into by the lander to resume data transmission. The tether is coiled up and housed inside spools which are left behind in the ice as the spool is emptied. I must confess my immediate thought here was ‘litter’! I accept we have to leave probes in order to explore but surely we can do it without leaving litter behind! However there is a reason for this too. As the spools are deployed, they act as receivers and transmitters to allow the radio frequencies to travel through the ice. 

The company working on the device is Honeybee Robotics have created prototypes. The first was stand alone, had no data transmission capability and demonstrated the drilling and slushing technology in an ice tower in Honeybee’s walk in freezer. While this was underway, the tether communication technology was being tested too with the first version called the Salmon Probe. This was taken to Devon Island in the Arctic where the unspooling method is being put through its paces. The first attempts back in 2022 saw the probe achieving depths of 1.8m! 

A further probe was developed called the Dolphin probe and this was capable of getting to depths of about 100m but sea ice limitations meant it could only get to a depth of 2m! Thus far, all probes have performed well. Honeybee are now working on the Narwhal Probe which will have more measuring equipment on board, a deployable tether and spool and will be far more like the finished product. If all goes to plan it will profile the ice on Devon Island to a depth of 100m.  This is still quite short of the kilometre thick ice expected but it is most definitely fantastic progress toward exploring the cold watery depths of alien worlds. 

Source : SLUSH: AN ICE DRILLING PROBE TO ACCESS OCEAN WORLDS

The post Testing a Probe that Could Drill into an Ice World appeared first on Universe Today.

People with long covid after a serious covid-19 infection have raised levels of many immune molecules in their blood. Better understanding how these molecules can vary could lead to more targeted treatments

People with long covid after a serious covid-19 infection have raised levels of many immune molecules in their blood. Better understanding how these molecules can vary could lead to more targeted treatments

One in three adults have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease – often without knowing. Now we understand what causes this stealthy condition and how to reverse it

One in three adults have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease – often without knowing. Now we understand what causes this stealthy condition and how to reverse it