EverythingScience

SpaceX's next-generation Starship V3 rocket got off to a glorious start for its first test flight, and although not all of its engines fired fully according to plan, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the mission "scored a goal for humanity."

This was the 12th Starship launch, but the first one since SpaceX completed a thorough redesign of the rocket's Super Heavy first-stage booster, the second stage (known as Ship), the Raptor rocket engines and the launch facilities at SpaceX's Starbase in south Texas.

Super Heavy lit all 33 of its Raptor V3 engines at liftoff, and successfully sent Ship on its way over the Gulf of Mexico. But after stage separation, Super Heavy shut down its engines prematurely. As a result, the booster tumbled through the atmosphere to an uncontrolled but safe splashdown in the gulf. SpaceX had planned for a controlled splashdown but hadn't planned to recover the booster, so it was no great loss.

About an hour after launch, Ship made a fiery atmospheric re-entry over the Indian Ocean. Onboard cameras showed the glow of superheated plasma surrounding the rocket stage, followed by occasional flashes of flame. In the moments just before splashdown, Ship fired up two of its Raptor engines — as opposed to the three that would typically be used for a landing — and flipped itself upright just in time for the end.

SpaceX's team members emphasized that they didn't expect everything to go right the first time. "This is a flight test," Huot said. "We're trying to intentionally find where our limits are."

As an Ebola outbreak rages in central and East Africa, public health workers say that the response has been stymied by the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid and global health organizations.

“We are no longer able to get some supplies,” Amadou Bocoum, Democratic Republic of Congo country director for the anti-poverty nonprofit CARE, tells WIRED. “Because of that, we are not able to react immediately.”

Bocoum says that basic medical equipment like masks and hand sanitizers, as well as components necessary for testing, are in short supply due to funding cuts.

WIRED spoke to more than half a dozen global health experts who described how the Trump administration’s move to shutter the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), amid other funding cuts, has created a strained, increasingly fragmented disease prevention and response system in the lead up to this Ebola outbreak, one in which a severely reduced workforce already struggles with burnout.

“We are so far behind in this outbreak,” says a current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employee with outbreak experience. “This is a perfect storm.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak an emergency “of international concern” on May 16. There is no vaccine or treatment for this strain of Ebola, known as Bundibugyo. There were over 530 confirmed cases and 134 deaths as of May 19, and both numbers are rising quickly. According to the CDC, 25 to 50 percent of people who contract the strain will die from it.

“People really need to understand that if this is not handled carefully, it will get wild very easily,” says Bocoum. “It’s really key that we need to react fast to contain it.”

Chinese engineers have built a mecha-style robot that can quickly transition from two legs to four while carrying people, resembling the power-loader exoskeletons from Aliens or the utility-style mobile suits from Japanese anime series Gundam SEED.

The robot's developer, Unitree, says the large, humanoid robot is intended for civilian transport. In a promotional video, the robot — called GD01 — walks upright, smashes down a high wall of cinder blocks, and reconfigures itself to stand on four limbs to traverse more difficult terrain.

Unitree representatives say the machine weighs around 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) with an operator on board and stands nearly 10 feet (3 meters) tall. People can even buy the robot, with prices starting at 3.9 million yuan ($572,000).

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Researchers have found that obesity may leave a lasting biological “memory” in the immune system, potentially increasing the risk of obesity-related diseases years after a person loses weight. The findings come from a decade-long study published in EMBO Reports.

The European study was led by Professor Claudio Mauro from the University of Birmingham and supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre: Birmingham. The team discovered that helper T cells, also known as CD4+ lymphocytes, can retain long-term changes linked to obesity.

Scientists found that a process called DNA methylation adds molecular markers to the DNA of these immune cells. These changes may remain for 5 to 10 years after successful weight loss. Researchers say this lingering “memory” could disrupt important immune system functions, including waste removal and regulation of immune aging.

The research team believes this may help explain why some people remain vulnerable to obesity-related conditions even after reaching a healthy weight.

Imagine slicing an apple into smaller and smaller pieces. First you would reach molecules, then atoms, and eventually the subatomic particles inside them, including protons, quarks, and gluons. According to string theory, however, nature may continue even deeper. At scales far smaller than a proton, the universe could be built from tiny vibrating strings.

Originally developed in the 1960s, string theory attempts to solve one of the biggest unsolved problems in physics: combining quantum mechanics with general relativity. Quantum mechanics explains the behavior of matter and energy at extremely small scales, while general relativity describes gravity and the structure of the cosmos on the largest scales. Physicists have struggled for decades to merge the two frameworks because the mathematics tends to break down when gravity is treated quantum mechanically.

String theory offers a possible solution by replacing pointlike particles with microscopic strings. Different vibrations of these strings would produce all known particles, including the graviton, a hypothetical particle believed to carry gravity. The theory also predicts the existence of at least 10 dimensions, rather than the four dimensions humans experience in everyday life.

One of the biggest challenges is testing the theory directly. The energies needed to probe strings experimentally are so enormous that researchers would need a particle accelerator roughly the size of a galaxy.

A New Bootstrap Approach to String Theory
Unable to test string theory directly, physicists are turning to alternative methods. One increasingly popular strategy is known as the “bootstrap” approach. Instead of beginning with a complete theory, scientists start with a few broad assumptions about how nature should behave and see what mathematical structures emerge.

In a new paper called “Strings from Almost Nothing,” accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters, researchers from Caltech, New York University, and Institut de Fisica d’Altes Energies in Barcelona used this method to explore particle interactions at extremely high energies. Starting from only a small number of assumptions about scattering behavior, they unexpectedly recovered the defining features of string theory.

“The strings just fell out,” says Clifford Cheung, professor of theoretical physics and director of the Leinweber Forum for Theoretical Physics at Caltech. “We didn’t start with any assumptions about strings at all, but then the solution contained the cornerstone signatures of strings.”

Cheung explains that the work does not count as experimental proof of string theory, but the result is still significant because the assumptions could have produced many possible mathematical outcomes. Instead, the equations led to a unique structure matching string theory.

“Once dismissed as too small-brained or simple to support experience, insects are now known as capable of remarkably complex tasks, including associative learning, context-sensitive decision-making and cross-modal sensory integration,” said Dr. Thomas White, an evolutionary ecologist and entomologist at the University of Sydney, and his colleagues.

“Recent studies have also identified brain regions such as the mushroom bodies and central complex that appear to support evaluative processing functionally analogous to that seen in vertebrates.”

“Yet the question of pain in insects cannot be settled by neural architecture alone.”

“Given the diversity of nervous systems across phyla, and the sheer creative power of adaptive evolution showcased via multiple realizability, behavior remains our most direct and inclusive route to inferring experience.”

“That is, rather than asking whether an animal has the same hardware, the more relevant question is whether it shows a comparable behavioral profile under similar conditions.”

In their research, the authors tested 80 adult house crickets in a carefully controlled experiment designed to rule out simple reflexes.

A planet that is about the size of Saturn, but with a temperature more like Earth's, has an atmosphere rich in methane, according to a new study using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Unlike the gas giant planets—Jupiter and Saturn—in Earth's solar system, which are distant from the sun and therefore extremely cold, and so-called "hot Jupiters"—giant planets beyond the solar system that are scorching hot due to their proximity to the stars they orbit—the planet is one of only a handful of known temperate, giant planets and the first to have its atmosphere analyzed.

The new details about the composition of the planet's atmosphere will inform models of planetary formation and evolution and could improve astronomers' understanding of how Earth's atmosphere works, according to the research team.

Exoplanet background and discovery context
"One of the main advantages of studies of planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets, is the ability to study many different types of planets—especially ones that we don't see in the solar system—to learn about how planetary systems form and evolve," said Renyu Hu, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and leader of the research team.

"Since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1992 by a team that included Aleksander Wolszczan at Penn State, astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets. But only a few giant, temperate exoplanets are known and this is the first time that we have been able to study the atmosphere of one of them in detail."

A temperate giant with Saturn-like size
The planet, called TOI-199b, orbits a star that is more than 330 light-years from Earth about every hundred days. Its temperature is about 175 degrees Fahrenheit [79°C], which is still hot from a human perspective, but not too much hotter than the highest record temperatures on Earth at around 134 degrees [57°C]. It is easily reached, for example, on the dashboards of cars parked in direct sunlight. It's significantly more temperate than the hot Jupiters that can reach thousands of degrees and the cold solar-system gas giants that are hundreds of degrees below zero.

Misleading information online is often treated as a technical glitch, something that better algorithms or stricter moderation can fix. But research points to a more complex reality. That is, the rise of "misfluencers," individuals who shape how information is interpreted, shared and trusted across digital platforms.

Whether acting deliberately or not, they tap into emotion, identity and community to amplify misleading claims in ways that feel credible and relatable. This human layer makes misinformation harder to detect and regulate. It's a danger when it comes to everyday decisions about important topics like health, finance and technology. Understanding how misfluencers operate is key to navigating an information environment where trust is increasingly contested.

Herkulaas MvE Combrink is a co-director at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Digital Futures, senior lecturer in Economics and Management Sciences at the UFS, and the head of the Knowledge Mapping Lab, a research group to manage infodemics and human language technology innovation.

Phelokazi Mkungeka is an interdisciplinary researcher with a background in sociology, specializing in artificial intelligence and health misinformation in digital environments.

They've explored the interplay between AI, misfluencers and health communication.

What exactly is a 'misfluencer,' and how do they differ from traditional influencers?
A misfluencer is an individual who shapes how information is interpreted, trusted, and acted upon within a network. Misfluencers fuel the spread of misinformation by being perceived as a trustworthy source of information that people within their social network latch onto.

Traditional influencers typically aim to promote products, lifestyles, or ideas with clear intent. Often, these are within commercial or branding frameworks marketing a specific product, for example.

Sources of misinformation, on the other hand, are usually defined by the content itself. They are people who share false or misleading information.

The evolution of tiny arms in several groups of meat-eating dinosaurs was likely driven by the development of strong, powerful heads, which were used to attack prey, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL (University College London) and Cambridge University.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, looked at data for 82 species of theropod (two-legged, mainly meat-eating dinosaurs), finding that shortening of forelimbs occurred across five groups, including tyrannosaurids, the family that included Tyrannosaurus rex.

The team, including Dr. Elizabeth Steell at Cambridge and Professor Paul Upchurch at UCL, found that smaller arms were closely linked to the development of large, powerful skulls and jaws, more so than to larger overall body size, indicating that tiny arms were not just a by-product of bodies getting bigger.

The researchers suggested that the increasing size of prey, in the form of gigantic sauropods (long-necked, long-tailed plant-eaters) and other large herbivores, may have resulted in a shift to hunting using jaws and head instead of claws.

How tiny arms and big heads evolved
Lead author Charlie Roger Scherer, a Ph.D. student at UCL Earth Sciences, said, "Everyone knows the T. rex had tiny arms but other giant theropod dinosaurs also evolved relatively small forelimbs. The Carnotaurus had ridiculously tiny arms, smaller than the T. rex.

"We sought to understand what was driving this change and found a strong relationship between short arms and large, powerfully built heads. The head took over from the arms as the method of attack. It's a case of "use it or lose it"—the arms are no longer useful and reduce in size over time.

"These adaptations often occurred in areas with gigantic prey. Trying to pull and grab at a 100ft-long sauropod with your claws is not ideal. Attacking and holding on with the jaws might have been more effective.

"While our study identifies correlations and so cannot establish cause and effect, it is highly likely that strongly built skulls came before shorter forelimbs. It would not make evolutionary sense for it to occur the other way round, and for these predators to give up their attack mechanism without having a back-up."

NASA says its Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could launch as early as September 2026, moving the mission ahead of the agency’s previous commitment to fly no later than May 2027.

“Roman’s accelerated development is a true success story of what we can achieve when public investment, institutional expertise, and private enterprise come together to take on the near-impossible missions that change the world,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during a news conference at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Roman Space Telescope Mission Goals
The Roman Space Telescope is built to capture enormous sections of the sky with high-resolution infrared imaging. Its combination of a wide field of view and sensitive instruments will allow astronomers to study the universe on a scale that was previously difficult to achieve.

While the mission’s primary objectives include investigating dark energy, dark matter, and planets orbiting distant stars, scientists expect Roman to support research across many areas of astronomy. Its advanced capabilities could help researchers uncover unusual objects and cosmic events that have never been observed before.

Massive Cosmic Survey and Data Archive
During its planned five-year primary mission, Roman is expected to gather roughly 20,000 terabytes of scientific data. Researchers will use that information to study approximately 100,000 exoplanets, hundreds of millions of galaxies, and billions of stars.

Scientists also hope the telescope’s sweeping surveys of deep space will reveal rare and unexpected phenomena that could reshape understanding of the cosmos.

Launch Plans With SpaceX
NASA plans to send Roman into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The agency and SpaceX will announce more details about the official launch date as preparations continue.

A protein tied to the brain’s immune system may be helping Parkinson’s disease spread from cell to cell, and scientists believe stopping it could open a new path toward slowing the disease itself.

In a new study published in Neuron, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania reported that monoclonal antibodies were able to block the activity of a protein called glycoprotein nonmetastatic melanoma B (GPNMB), preventing the spread of harmful Parkinson’s-related protein clumps in laboratory experiments.

“Many patients with Parkinson’s disease are diagnosed in the early stages, when symptoms are relatively mild, but there is currently no treatment that slows the progression,” said lead author, Alice Chen‑Plotkin, MD, Parker Family Professor of Neurology. “These early results are a promising step towards developing this type of treatment.”

Hello Mars, goodbye Mars 👋

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft was speeding by the Red Planet on May 15 when it snapped this rare, crescent view of Mars.

The successful flyby flung the Psyche spacecraft toward its final destination: the metal-rich asteroid Psyche.

Psyche's successful gravity assist also gave mission planners a chance to test the spacecraft’s science instruments, including its imagers, magnetometers, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer.

Get the details: go.nasa.gov/4dn30CI

What if the next generation of high-performance materials did not come from a factory filled with petroleum-based plastics, but from living bacteria?

Scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston have developed a new way to turn bacterial cellulose into an ultra-strong, multifunctional material that could eventually replace plastics in products ranging from packaging to electronics. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, describe a scalable manufacturing process that guides bacteria to build highly organized cellulose structures with remarkable strength and thermal performance.

Plastic waste remains a major environmental problem because synthetic plastics gradually break down into microplastics that can release harmful substances such as bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates, and carcinogens. To explore a more sustainable alternative, the team led by Muhammad Maksud Rahman, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Houston and adjunct assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University, focused on bacterial cellulose, one of the purest and most abundant natural biopolymers on Earth.

“Our approach involved developing a rotational bioreactor that directs the movement of cellulose-producing bacteria, aligning their motion during growth,” said M.A.S.R. Saadi, the study’s first author and a doctoral student in material science and nanoengineering at Rice. “This alignment significantly enhances the mechanical properties of microbial cellulose, creating a material as strong as some metals and glasses yet flexible, foldable, transparent, and environment friendly.”

Isotope analysis of gas from geothermal springs in Zambia could show that a new continental rift is forming, scientists say. Unexpectedly high helium isotope ratios indicate that a weakness in Earth's crust has broken through to reach the mantle beneath. This rift could eventually become a new tectonic plate boundary. In the meantime, opportunities for geothermal energy could boost local economies.

"The hot springs along the Kafue rift of Zambia have helium isotope signatures which indicate that the springs have a direct connection with Earth's mantle, which lies between 40 and 160km below Earth's surface," said Prof Mike Daly of the University of Oxford, an author of the article in Frontiers in Earth Science.

"This fluid connection is evidence that the fault boundary of the Kafue Rift is active and therefore the Southwest African Rift Zone is too—and may be an early indication of the break-up of sub-Saharan Africa."

Cast your mind back to 1969, if you’re old enough. Before Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface in July, NASA flew Apollo 9, a mission that never left Earth orbit. It docked the Command Module with the Lunar Module, tested the systems, proved the hardware worked together, and gave engineers the confidence to risk sending astronauts to the Moon. Without Apollo 9, Apollo 11 doesn't happen. NASA is about to do the same thing again.

The Artemis programme was formally established in 2017 with a clear ambition to return humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, and this time stay. Artemis I, launched in November 2022 and sent an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon to test the rocket and capsule. Artemis II, just six weeks ago, did the same with a crew of four, the first humans to travel beyond low Earth orbit in over fifty years. The next step was expected to be the landing but it isn’t at least not yet.

Artemis III, now targeted for late 2027 has been redesigned as a crewed Earth orbit test flight, similar to Apollo 9. The Moon landing has moved to Artemis IV, scheduled for 2028. The reasons are practical though, delays in the development of both SpaceX's Starship lunar lander and Blue Origin's Blue Moon spacecraft made the original timeline untenable. So NASA has done what it does when the stakes are high enough, it’s added a rehearsal.

It’s more complex than usual though since, for the first time in history, NASA will coordinate a single launch campaign involving three separate spacecraft from multiple providers. The SLS rocket will carry a four person crew in Orion to low Earth orbit. Already waiting there will be SpaceX's Starship human landing system pathfinder and Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 2 pathfinder which will be launched separately by their commercial providers. Orion will then rendezvous and dock with them. For the first time, Orion's docking system will be demonstrated with crew aboard. The astronauts could even enter at least one of the landers once docked, rehearsing procedures that their successors will rely on for the actual lunar landing.

One technical detail worth noting, instead of the usual upper stage rocket to boost Orion after launch, Artemis III will use what NASA calls a “spacer", a non propulsive structure with the same mass and dimensions as the real upper stage. The Orion service module, built by the European Space Agency, will instead handle the propulsion to circularise the orbit. This approach is deliberate, low Earth orbit gives NASA more launch windows for each element of the mission, improving the chances of getting everything into place successfully.

New research led by the University of Oxford and University College London (UCL) has revealed that pollution from coal-fired power plants is significantly reducing the energy output of solar photovoltaic (solar PV) installations, particularly where these are expanding side by side. The findings have been published in Nature Sustainability.

Global scale of solar power losses
The new study mapped and assessed more than 140,000 solar PV installations worldwide using satellite data. By combining this with atmospheric data on air pollution, the researchers calculated how much sunlight is lost and how this reduces electricity generation.

They found that aerosols—tiny particles suspended in the air—reduced global solar electricity output by 5.8% in 2023. This is equivalent to 111 terawatt-hours (TWh) of lost energy—the amount generated by 18 medium-sized coal-fired power plants.

Crucially, these losses represent a significant and often overlooked constraint on the clean energy transition. Between 2017 and 2023, new PV installations added an average of 246.6 TWh of electricity each year, while aerosol-related losses from existing systems reached 74.0 TWh annually—equivalent to nearly one-third of the gains from new capacity.

This highlights a previously unrecognized interaction between fossil fuel use and renewable energy, where emissions from one system directly reduce the performance of the other.

A stem cell treatment helped mice recover from strokes by rebuilding damaged brain connections, restoring blood vessels, and improving movement, according to new research from the University of Zurich and the University of Southern California. The findings raise hopes that future therapies could one day repair stroke damage that is currently considered permanent.

Stroke remains one of the world’s leading causes of long-term disability. When blood flow to part of the brain is cut off, oxygen-starved cells die within minutes. Unlike skin or bone, the brain has only a limited ability to replace lost tissue, leaving many survivors with lifelong paralysis, speech problems, or memory loss.

Scientists have spent years searching for ways to help the brain rebuild itself. In the new study, researchers used neural progenitor cells, early-stage cells capable of developing into different types of brain tissue. The cells were created from induced pluripotent stem cells, which are adult human cells reprogrammed into a stem cell-like state.

The team transplanted these cells into the brains of mice one week after a stroke. That timing turned out to be critical. Earlier transplants survived poorly because the injured brain was still overwhelmed by inflammation and toxic chemical signals. Waiting several days allowed conditions to stabilize enough for the transplanted cells to take hold.

What happened next surprised the researchers.

New Neurons and Rebuilt Connections
Over five weeks, the transplanted cells survived, spread through nearby brain tissue, and matured mostly into functioning neurons. Many became GABAergic neurons, specialized inhibitory brain cells that help regulate neural activity and are heavily depleted after stroke. These cells are essential for balancing brain signaling, preventing excessive excitation, and coordinating movement.

The grafted neurons did not simply exist alongside the damaged brain tissue. Evidence suggested they actively communicated with surrounding cells through molecular signaling systems linked to neural growth, synapse formation, and tissue repair. The researchers identified several major pathways involved in this cross-talk, including neurexin, neuregulin, NCAM, and SLIT signaling, all of which are associated with rebuilding neural networks and guiding axons to reconnect.

The stem cell treatment also appeared to trigger a broader healing response across the injured brain.

Mice receiving the transplants developed significantly more blood vessels near the stroke site, improving circulation in damaged tissue. The treatment also reduced inflammatory activity and strengthened the blood-brain barrier, the protective lining that normally prevents harmful substances in the bloodstream from leaking into the brain. Damage to this barrier is a major contributor to swelling and further injury after stroke.

Researchers additionally observed increased growth of nerve fibers around the damaged region. Some transplanted neurons extended long projections into areas linked to movement and sensory control, suggesting the new cells may have started integrating into existing brain circuits.

A massive Atlantic Ocean circulation system that plays a central role in regulating Earth’s climate has been weakening for nearly 20 years, according to a new study. Scientists say the slowdown spans a large portion of the Atlantic and could eventually alter weather patterns in many parts of the world.

The research, led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science, provides some of the strongest direct observational evidence so far that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is losing strength. Researchers say the findings could improve climate forecasts and help scientists better understand how global warming may affect future weather and ocean conditions.

“A weaker AMOC can shift weather patterns, potentially leading to more extreme storms, changes in rainfall, or colder winters in some regions,” said Shane Elipot, a senior author of the study and physical oceanographer at the Rosenstiel School. “It can also influence sea-level rise along coastlines, affecting communities and infrastructure.”

Why the AMOC Matters for Global Climate
The AMOC is one of the most important systems controlling climate in the Atlantic region. It helps distribute heat through the ocean, influencing temperatures, weather patterns, and sea levels, especially around the North Atlantic.

Scientists say a slowdown in the circulation could affect European winters, hurricane activity, rainfall patterns, and other climate conditions around the globe.

Researchers also believe measurements taken along the western boundary of the Atlantic may act as an early warning signal for future climate changes. They compared the monitoring approach to a canary in a coal mine because it may provide an efficient way to track long-term changes in this crucial climate-regulating system.

“This research helps scientists better predict how the climate may change in the coming decades—information that governments, businesses, and communities use to prepare for future environmental conditions,” said Elipot.

Our solar system is currently passing through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a region of highly diluted gas and dust between the stars. On its path, Earth continuously accumulates iron-60, a rare radioactive isotope of iron produced in stellar explosions. This has now been confirmed by an international research team led by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) through the analysis of Antarctic ice tens of thousands of years old. From the steady but time-varying influx, the researchers conclude that the radioactive isotope has been stored within the cloud since a long-past stellar explosion. The results have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Iron-60 is formed in the interiors of massive stars and is ejected into space when they explode. Geological archives show that our solar system was hit twice by iron-60 from supernovae millions of years ago. In more recent times, however, there have been no nearby stellar explosions—and thus no direct supply of iron-60. When scientists discovered iron-60 in Antarctic surface snow less than twenty years old a few years ago, the question of its origin arose.

"Our idea was that the Local Interstellar Cloud contains iron-60 and can store it over long time periods. As the solar system moves through the cloud, Earth could collect this material. However, we couldn't prove this at the time," explains Dr. Dominik Koll from the Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research at HZDR.

In recent years, the team led by Koll and Prof. Anton Wallner analyzed additional samples, including deep-sea sediments up to 30,000 years old. Iron-60 was also found there, but competing theories remained. The new Antarctic ice samples date back 40,000 to 80,000 years. Their analysis now makes it clear: the Local Interstellar Cloud is the likely source.

"This means that the clouds surrounding the solar system are linked to a stellar explosion. And for the first time, this gives us the opportunity to investigate the origin of these clouds," says Koll.

Our solar system entered the Local Interstellar Cloud several tens of thousands of years ago and will leave it again in a few thousand years. At present, we are located near its edge.