EverythingScience

A rock on Mars spilled a surprising yellow treasure after Curiosity accidentally cracked through its unremarkable exterior.

When the rover rolled its 899-kilogram (1,982-pound) body over the fragile lump of mineral in May of last year, the deposit broke open, revealing yellow crystals of elemental sulfur, known as brimstone.

Although sulfates are fairly common on Mars, this represented the first sulfur in its pure elemental form found on the red planet.

What's even more exciting is that the Gediz Vallis Channel, where Curiosity found the rock, is littered with objects that look suspiciously similar to the sulfur rock before it got fortuitously crushed – suggesting that, somehow, elemental sulfur may be abundant there in some places.

New balloon-mounted space radiation probes developed by the Surrey Space Center at the University of Surrey have captured their first measurements of a major solar storm, confirming the research team's model, which indicates the flare caused the highest levels of radiation at aviation altitude in almost two decades.

The solar flare—classified as an X5 event—triggered a rare Ground Level Enhancement (GLE) on 11 November 2025, in which solar energetic particles penetrated deep into Earth's atmosphere and caused a radiation surge that was detectable even at ground level. Within an hour, the UK Met Office and their counterparts at KNMI in the Netherlands began launching a sequence of weather observation balloons equipped with Surrey's sensors to measure the storm in real time—right up to commercial aircraft altitudes and into regions used by business jets and supersonic transport.

Radiation levels and aviation impact
Early analysis shows that radiation levels at 40,000 feet rose to their highest since 2006, reaching almost ten times normal background levels for a short period. Although this event did not pose any immediate health concern, larger storms in future could be more worrying, not least because they have the potential to disturb on-board aircraft electronic systems. During the storm's peak, the team estimate that single-event upsets—bit-flips in onboard computer memory caused by energetic particles—could have reached around 60 errors per hour per gigabyte.

Professor Clive Dyer, an expert in space weather at Surrey Space Center, University of Surrey, said, "This was the strongest Ground Level Event we've seen since December 2006. Neutron monitors around the world measured significant increases and, in conjunction with newly installed UK monitors at Lerwick, Guildford and Camborne, these will enable us to map the footprint of the event across the globe.

"Our sensors have given the clearest picture yet of how rapidly conditions can change at aviation altitudes. We know from historical observations that significantly bigger events are possible, and we need to be ready."

Researchers have found that early Earth’s atmosphere could naturally produce sulfur-based biomolecules, including amino acids like cysteine. Using light and simple gases, they recreated conditions that created complex molecules long thought to require living organisms.

These findings suggest that life’s raw ingredients may have been widespread, not limited to rare environments like volcanic vents.

Early Atmosphere as a Source of Life’s Raw Materials
Earth’s ancient air may have played a far larger role in the rise of life than scientists once believed.

A study published today (December 1) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, led by researchers from CU Boulder and several collaborators, reports that the early atmosphere may have been actively generating sulfur-based molecules billions of years ago. These compounds are known to be important for life.

The discovery challenges the long-standing assumption that such sulfur molecules appeared only after living organisms had already evolved.

“Our study could help us understand the evolution of life at its earliest stages,” said first author Nate Reed, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA who completed the research while working in the Department of Chemistry and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at CU Boulder.

What are these green swirls in the water?

This timelapse of Landsat images shows the explosive growth of toxic algae in Nevada’s Pyramid Lake in 2024. Satellite data can warn us about poor water quality and help track harmful algae blooms.

Funding organizations can fix the science publishing system—which currently puts profit first and science second—according to research published on the arXiv preprint server.

The new paper says the current relationship between researchers, funders and commercial publishers has created a "drain"—depriving the research system of money, time, trust and control.

The research team used public revenue and income statements to assess the money being spent on publishing articles with the biggest commercial publishers, and placed this in the broader historical context, including recent trends.

Published on arXiv, the paper examines the scale of publisher profits—with the four leading publishers (Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis) generating over $7.1 billion in revenue in 2024 alone, with profit margins exceeding 30%.

Much of this money comes from public funds intended for research—and the new paper says bold action by funders is now essential.

"The real solution is not for scientists to band together. We've tried that for 30 years and it hasn't worked—publisher profit margins have remained steady despite every attempted reimagining of science publishing," said Dr. Mark Hanson, from the Center for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter.

"The funding agencies hold all the cards. They're the ones paying authors to do research, and journals to publish that research. They can mandate change.

"Some already are. For example, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has proposed limits on how much it will reimburse researchers for payments to publishers to make their articles open access (free to read).

"We researchers can support the battle, but we cannot lead the charge."

Research funding often includes money to pay journal fees to make articles open access. With these fees rising, increasing amounts of research funding—which often comes from taxpayers—becomes publisher profits.

What’s the longest mountain range on Earth? 🤔

👉Explore more hidden wonders of our ocean planet: hubs.li/Q03Wt8bN0

As we travel from Mars’s equator toward the planet’s northern regions, we arrive at Coloe Fossae. This landscape is characterized by long, shallow grooves that cut across an area filled with steep valleys, scattered impact craters, and surface clues left behind by an ancient ice age.

Ice Ages on Earth and Across the Solar System
Earth has gone through several ice ages over the past 2.5 billion years. The most recent one, which reached its peak roughly 20,000 years ago, lowered Earth’s global average temperature to around 7–10 °C (up to 8 °C cooler than today).

These long-term freezes differ completely from today’s human-driven warming trend. Ice ages arise from slow, natural cycles tied to shifts in a planet’s orbit around the Sun and changes in the tilt of its rotational axis. When an ice age begins, glaciers and ice sheets expand, and as temperatures fluctuate, these ice masses repeatedly advance and retreat.

Other planets show similar patterns. Mars carries its own evidence, and the newest views from the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express reveal how strongly these cold periods shaped the planet.

Like all living things, bacteria adapt in order to survive. Over time, many have become resistant to widely used antibiotics and disinfectants, creating growing challenges for healthcare and sanitation. At the same time, a large portion of bacteria are helpful and play essential roles in human health.

This raises an important question: could shifting the behavior of bacteria inside the body help prevent disease and improve health outcomes?

The hidden language of oral microbes
Bacteria communicate constantly. Hundreds of species in the human mouth send and receive chemical messages in a process called quorum sensing. Many rely on signaling molecules known as N-acyl homoserine lactones (AHLs) to exchange information.

Researchers in the College of Biological Sciences and the School of Dentistry at the University of Minnesota set out to explore how oral bacteria use these signals and whether this communication could be altered to stop plaque from forming and support a healthier oral microbiome. Their findings, published in the journal npj Biofilms and Microbiomes, point to possibilities that could reshape future medical treatments.

BREAKING: Sugars essential for life have been found in pristine asteroid Bennu samples collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.
Combined with previous detections of amino acids and nucleobases, we see that life’s ingredients were widespread throughout the solar system.
go.nasa.gov/48MTu9i

More on the study led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of TohokuUniPR
Scientists identified ribose (used in RNA) and – for the first time in any extraterrestrial sample – glucose, a major energy source for life. These sugars join nucleobases and phosphates previously found, demonstrating the full suite of RNA building blocks were present on the ancient asteroid.

While ribose was present, deoxyribose (the DNA sugar) was not. This suggests RNA may have been more prevalent than DNA in the early solar system – supporting the “RNA world” hypothesis that DNA was not necessary for the origin of life.

Because OSIRIS-REx samples were collected and analyzed free of earthly contamination, these findings give strong evidence that crucial ingredients for life’s chemistry were readily available on asteroids throughout the solar system.

This discovery of ribose and other chemical building blocks of life in Bennu wouldn’t have been possible without the strong international partnership between scientists at NASAGoddard, JAXA En, and multiple universities in Japan.

#PPOD: Deimos Before Sunrise 🌄

NASAPersevere captured this view of Deimos, the smaller of Mars' two moons, shining in the sky at 4:27 a.m. local time on March 1, 2025, the 1,433rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. In the dark before dawn, the rover's left navigation camera used its maximum long-exposure time of 3.28 seconds to capture 16 individual shots, which were combined into a single image that was later sent to Earth. In total, the image represents an exposure time of about 52 seconds.

The low light and long exposures add digital noise, making the image hazy. Many of the white specks seen in the sky are likely noise; some may be cosmic rays. Two of the brightest white specks are Regulus and Algieba, stars that are part of the constellation Leo.

"Woodstock Crater," at center right, is roughly a half-mile (750 meters) away from the rover. At the time, Perseverance was en route to "Witch Hazel Hill."

Credit: NASA NASAJPL Caltech

Researchers at NYU Langone Health have discovered that a specific form of cell death triggered by the buildup of highly reactive molecules can help slow the growth of lung tumors.

This form of cell death, called ferroptosis, originally developed as a natural way for the body to remove cells experiencing extreme stress. Cancer cells also undergo this stress, yet they have adapted over time by developing defenses that prevent ferroptosis, allowing them to continue multiplying even when they are damaged.

Blocking FSP1 Greatly Reduces Lung Tumor Growth
A study published online November 5 in Nature reported that an experimental approach capable of blocking a protein known as ferroptosis suppressor protein 1 (FSP1) significantly reduced tumor growth in mice with lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Preventing FSP1 from functioning in cancer cells reduced tumor size by up to 80%. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, and LUAD is the most common type among nonsmokers, accounting for about 40% of all cases.

“This first test of a drug that blocks ferroptosis suppression highlights the importance of the process to cancer cell survival and paves the way for a new treatment strategy,” said senior study author Thales Papagiannakopoulos, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

A research team at Nagoya University in Japan has identified a previously unknown plant tissue that plays a crucial role in forming seeds. This marks the first time in 160 years that scientists have documented a newly recognized plant tissue. The finding opens the door to an entirely new research area and has already shown real-world potential, as the group has used the discovery to boost yields in major crops such as rice. The study appears in the journal Current Biology.

Scientists have known since 2005 that fertilization must occur for the developing seed body, called the hypocotyl, to draw nutrients from the ‘mother’ tissues of the plant. Gaining insight into how plants recognize when fertilization has succeeded is considered important for improving crop productivity during breeding efforts.

A Chance Observation Leads to a Breakthrough
The team, directed by Ryushiro Kasahara and Michitaka Nodaguchi, encountered the new tissue unexpectedly. Kasahara had been staining seeds to observe the buildup of callose, a waxy substance often examined for its role in fertilization, as part of an effort to confirm earlier research.

During this work, he came across something surprising.

“Plants fertilize by the insertion of a pollen tube, so most scientists are only interested in the place where this occurs. However, we found signals on the opposite side too,” he said. “Nobody was looking where I was looking. I remember being surprised, especially when we realized that this signal was particularly strong when fertilization failed.”

Further analysis revealed a distinctive rabbit-shaped tissue structure that functions as a gateway. This structure, named the ‘Kasahara Gateway’ in honor of its discoverer, represents the first new plant tissue identified since the mid-19th century.