Mike M. – Page 6

China rules that Nvidia violated its antitrust laws

antitrust, china, NVIDIA, Policy, syndication, tarrifs, trade wars / Mike M. / September 15, 2025

A Chinese regulator has found Nvidia violated the country’s antitrust law, in a preliminary finding against the world’s most valuable chipmaker.

Nvidia had failed to fully comply with provisions outlined when it acquired Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli-US supplier of networking products, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said on Monday. Beijing conditionally approved the US chipmaker’s acquisition of Mellanox in 2020.

Monday’s statement came as US and Chinese officials prepared for more talks in Madrid over trade, with a tariff truce between the world’s two largest economies set to expire in November.

SAMR reached its conclusion weeks before Monday’s announcement, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, adding that the regulator had released the statement now to give China greater leverage in the trade talks.

The regulator started the anti-monopoly investigation in December, a week after the US unveiled tougher export controls on advanced high-bandwidth memory chips and chipmaking equipment to the country.

SAMR then spent months interviewing relevant parties and gathering legal opinions to build the case, the people said.

Nvidia bought Mellanox for $6.9 billion in 2020, and the acquisition helped the chipmaker to step up into the data center and high-performance computing market where it is now a dominant player.

The preliminary findings against the chipmaker could result in fines of between 1 percent and 10 percent of the company’s previous year’s sales. Regulators can also force the company to change business practices that are considered in violation of antitrust laws.

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The US is trying to kick-start a “nuclear energy renaissance”

climate change, Energy, nuclear energy, reactors, Science, syndication / Mike M. / September 13, 2025

Push to revive nuclear energy relies on deregulation; experts say strategy is misplaced.

In May, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders to facilitate the construction of nuclear reactors and the development of nuclear energy technology; the orders aim to cut red tape, ease approval processes, and reshape the role of the main regulatory agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC. These moves, the administration said, were part of an effort to achieve American independence from foreign power providers by way of a “nuclear energy renaissance.”

Self-reliance isn’t the only factor motivating nuclear power proponents outside of the administration: Following a decades-long trend away from nuclear energy, in part due to safety concerns and high costs, the technology has emerged as a potential option to try to mitigate climate change. Through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split to release energy, reactors don’t emit any greenhouse gases.

The Trump administration wants to quadruple the nuclear sector’s domestic energy production, with the goal of producing 400 gigawatts by 2050. To help achieve that goal, scientific institutions like the Idaho National Laboratory, a leading research institute in nuclear energy, are pushing forward innovations such as more efficient types of fuel. Companies are also investing millions of dollars to develop their own nuclear reactor designs, a move from industry that was previously unheard of in the nuclear sector. For example, Westinghouse, a Pennsylvania-based nuclear power company, plans to build 10 new large reactors to help achieve the 2050 goal.

However, the road to renaissance is filled with familiar obstacles. Nuclear energy infrastructure is “too expensive to build, and it takes too long to build,” said Allison Macfarlane, a science and technology policy expert at the University of British Columbia who used to chair the NRC from 2012 to 2014.

And experts are divided on whether new nuclear technologies, such as small versions of reactors, are ready for primetime. The nuclear energy field is now “in a hype bubble that is driving unrealistic expectations,” said Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization that has long acted as a nuclear safety watchdog.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying to advance nuclear energy by weakening the NRC, Lyman said. “The message is that it’s regulation that has been the obstacle to deploying nuclear power, and if we just get rid of all this red tape, then the industry is going to thrive,” he added. “I think that’s really misplaced.”

Although streamlining the approval process might accelerate development, the true problem lies in the high costs of nuclear, which would need to be significantly cheaper to compete with other sources of energy such as natural gas, said Koroush Shirvan, a nuclear science researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Even the license-ready reactors are still not economical,” he said. If the newer reactor technologies do pan out, without government support and subsidies, Shirvan said, it is difficult to imagine them “coming online before 2035.”

It’s déjá vu all over again

Rumblings of a nuclear renaissance give experts a sense of déjà vu. The first resurgence in interest was around 2005, when many thought that nuclear energy could mitigate climate change and be an energy alternative to dwindling supply and rising prices of fossil fuels. But that enthusiasm slowed mainly after the Fukushima accident in 2011, in which a tsunami-triggered power outage—along with multiple safety failures—led to a nuclear meltdown at a facility in Japan. “So, the first nuclear renaissance fizzled out,” said Lyman.

Globally, the proportion of electricity provided by nuclear energy has been dwindling. Although there has been an increase in generation, nuclear energy has contributed less to the share of global electricity demand, dropping to 9 percent in 2024 from a peak of about 17 percent in 2001. In the US, 94 reactors generate about a fifth of the nation’s electricity, a proportion that has held steady since 1990s. But only two of those reactors have come online in the last nearly 30 years.

This renewed push is “a second bite at the apple, and we’ll have to see but it does seem to have a lot more of a headwind now,” said Lyman.

Much of that movement comes from the private sector, said Todd Allen, a nuclear engineer at the University of Michigan. In the last couple of decades, dozens of nuclear energy companies have emerged, including TerraPower, co-founded by Bill Gates. “It feels more like normal capitalism than we ever had in nuclear,” Allen said. Those companies are working on developing the large reactors that have been the backbone of nuclear energy for decades, as well as newer technologies that can bolster the field.

Proponents say small modular reactors, or SMRs, and microreactors, which generate less than 300 megawatts and 20 megawatts, respectively, could offer safer, cheaper, and more flexible energy compared to their more traditional counterparts. (Large reactors have, on average, 900 megawatts of capacity.) One 2022 study found that modularization can reduce construction time by up to 60 percent.

These designs have taken the spotlight: In 2024, a report estimated that the SMR market would reach $295 billion by 2043. In June, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Congress that DOE will have at least three SMRs running by July of next year. And in July of this year, the Nuclear Energy Agency launched a dashboard to track SMR technologies around the world, which identified 74 SMR designs at different stages around the world. The first commercial SMR in North America is currently being constructed in Canada, with plans to be operational by 2030.

But whether SMRs and microreactors are actually safer and more cost-effective remains to be determined. A 2022 study found that SMRs would likely produce more leakage and nuclear waste than conventional reactors. Studying them, though, is difficult since so few are currently operational.

In part, that may be because of cost. Multiple analyses have concluded that, because of rising construction and operating costs, SMRs might not be financially viable enough to compete for the world’s energy markets, including in developing countries that lack affordable access to electricity.

And recent ventures have hit road bumps: For example, NuScale, the only SMR developer with a design approved by the NRC, had to shut down its operations in November 2023 due to increasingly high costs (though another uprated SMR design was approved earlier this year).

“Nothing is really commercialized yet,” said Macfarlane. Most of the tech companies haven’t figured out expenses, supply chains, the kind of waste they are going to produce or security at their reactors, she added.

Fuel supply is also a barrier since most plants use uranium enriched at low rates, but SMRs and microreactors use uranium enriched at higher levels, which is typically sourced from Russia and not commercially available in the US. So scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory are working to recover enriched uranium from existing reactors and developed new, more cost-effective fuels, said Jess Gehin, the associate laboratory director for the Nuclear Science & Technology Directorate at the INL. They are also using artificial intelligence and modeling simulation tools and capabilities to optimize nuclear energy systems, he added: “We got to reach 400 gigawatts, we need to accelerate all of this.”

Companies are determined to face and surpass these barriers. Some have begun pouring concrete, such as one nuclear company called Kairos Power that began building a demo of their SMR design in Tennessee; the plant is projected to be fully operational by 2027. “I would make the case that we’re moving faster than many in the field, if not the fastest,” Mike Laufer, the company’s CEO and co-founder, told Reuters last year.

Some experts think achieving nuclear expansion can be done—and revel in the progress so far: “I would have never thought we’d be in this position where we’re working so hard to expand nuclear, because for most of my career, it wasn’t that way,” said Gehin. “And I would say each month that goes by exceeds my expectations on the next bigger things that are coming.”

Doing more with less?

Although the Trump administration aims to accelerate nuclear energy through executive orders, in practice, it has not allocated new funding yet, said Matt Bowen, an expert on nuclear energy, waste, and nonproliferation at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. In fact, the initial White House budget proposed cutting $4.7 billion from the Department of Energy, including $408 million from the Office of Nuclear Energy allocated for nuclear research in the 2026 fiscal year.

“The administration was proposing cuts to Office of Nuclear Energy and DOE more broadly, and DOGE is pushing staff out,” said Bowen. “How do you do more with less? Less staff, less money.”

The Trump administration places the blame for the nuclear sector’s stagnation on the NRC, which oversees licensing and recertification processes that cost the industry millions of dollars each year in compliance. In his executive orders, Trump called for a major reorganization of the NRC. Some of the proposed changes, like streamlining the approval process (which can take years for new plants), may be welcomed because “for a long time, they were very, very, very slow,” said Charles Forsberg, a nuclear chemical engineer at MIT. But there are worries that the executive orders could do more than cut red tape.

“Every word in those orders is of concern, because the thrust of those orders is to essentially strip the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its independence from the executive branch, essentially nullifying the original purpose,” said Lyman.

Some experts fear that with these new constraints, NRC staff will have less time and fewer resources to do their jobs, which could impact power plant safety in the future. Bowen said: “This notion that the problem for nuclear energy is regulation, and so all we need to do is deregulate, is both wrong and also really problematic.”

The next few decades will tell whether nuclear, especially SMRs, can overcome economic and technical challenges to safely contribute to decarbonization efforts. Some, like Gehin, are optimistic. “I think we’re going to accelerate,” he said. “We certainly can achieve a dramatic deployment if we put our mindset to it.”

But making nuclear financially competitive will take serious commitment from the government and the dozens of companies, with many still skeptical, Shirvan said. “I am quite, I would say, on the pessimistic scale when it comes to the future of nuclear energy in the US.”

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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60 years after Gemini, newly processed images reveal incredible details

andy saunders, apollo, Gemini, Images, Mercury, Space / Mike M. / September 13, 2025

“It’s that level of risk that they were taking. I think that’s what really hit home.”

Before / after showing the image transformation. Buzz Aldrin is revealed as he takes the first selfie in space on Gemini 12, November 12, 1966. Credit: NASA / ASU / Andy Saunders

Six decades have now passed since some of the most iconic Project Gemini spaceflights. The 60th anniversary of Gemini 4, when Ed White conducted the first US spacewalk, came in June. The next mission, Gemini 5, ended just two weeks ago, in 1965. These missions are now forgotten by most Americans, as most of the people alive during that time are now deceased.

However, during these early years of spaceflight, NASA engineers and astronauts cut their teeth on a variety of spaceflight firsts, flying a series of harrowing missions during which it seems a miracle that no one died.

Because the Gemini missions, as well as NASA’s first human spaceflight program Mercury, yielded such amazing stories, I was thrilled to realize that a new book has recently been published—Gemini & Mercury Remastered—that brings them back to life in vivid color.

The book is a collection of 300 photographs from NASA’s Mercury and Gemini programs during the 1960s, in which Andy Saunders has meticulously restored the images and then deeply researched their background to more fully tell the stories behind them. The end result is a beautiful and powerful reminder of just how brave America’s first pioneers in space were. What follows is a lightly edited conversation with Saunders about how he developed the book and some of his favorite stories from it.

Ars: Why put out a book on Mercury and Gemini now?

Andy Saunders: Well, it’s the 60th anniversaries of the Gemini missions, but the book is really the prequel to my first book, Apollo Remastered. This is about the missions that came before. So it takes us right back to the very dawn of human space exploration, back to the very beginning, and this was always a project I was going to work on next. Because, as well as being obviously very important in spaceflight history, they’re very important in terms of human history, the human evolution, even, you know, the first time we were able to escape Earth.

For tens of thousands of years, civilizations have looked up and dreamt of leaving Earth and voyaging to the stars. And this golden era in the early 1960s is when that ancient dream finally became a reality. Also, of course, the first opportunity to look back at Earth and give us that unique perspective. But I think it’s really the photographs specifically that will just forever symbolize and document at the beginning of our expansion out into the cosmos. You know, of course, we went to the Moon with Apollo. We’ll go back with Artemis. We spent long periods on the International Space Station. We’ll walk on Mars. We’ll eventually become a multi-planetary species. But this is where it all began and how it all began.

Ars: They used modified Hasselblad cameras during Apollo to capture these amazing images. What types of cameras were used during Mercury and Gemini?

Saunders: Mercury was more basic cameras. So on the very first missions, NASA didn’t want the astronaut to take a camera on board. The capsules were tiny. They were very busy. They’re very short missions, obviously very groundbreaking missions. So, the first couple of missions, there was a camera out of the porthole window, just taking photographs automatically. But it was John Glenn on his mission (Mercury-Atlas 6) who said, “No, I want to take a camera. People want to know what it’s going to be like to be an astronaut. They’re going to want to look at Earth through the window. I’m seeing things no humans ever seen before.” So he literally saw a $40 camera in a drugstore on his way after a haircut at Cocoa Beach. He thought, “That’s perfect.” And he bought it himself, and then NASA adapted it. They put a pistol grip on to help him to use it. And with it, he took the first still photographs of Earth from space.

So it was the early astronauts that kind of drove the desire to take cameras themselves, but they were quite basic. Wally Schirra (Mercury-Atlas 8) then took the first Hasselblad. He wanted medium format, better quality, but really, the photographs from Mercury aren’t as stunning as Gemini. It’s partly the windows and the way they took the photos, and they’d had little experience. Also, preservation clearly wasn’t high up on the agenda in Mercury, because the original film is evidently in a pretty bad state. The first American in space is an incredibly important moment in history. But every single frame of the original film of Alan Shepard’s flight was scribbled over with felt pen, it’s torn, and it’s fixed with like a piece of sticky tape. But it’s a reminder that these weren’t taken for their aesthetic quality. They weren’t taken for posterity. You know, they were technical information. The US was trying to catch up with the Soviets. Preservation wasn’t high up on the agenda.

This is not some distant planet seen in a sci-fi movie, it’s our Earth, in real life, as we explored space in the 1960s. The Sahara desert, photographed from Gemini 11, September 14, 1966. As we stand at the threshold of a new space age, heading back to the Moon, onward to Mars and beyond, the photographs taken during Mercury and Gemini will forever symbolize and document the beginning of humankind’s expansion out into the cosmos. NASA / ASU / Andy Saunders

Ars: I want to understand your process. How many photos did you consider for this book?

Saunders: With Apollo, they took about 35,000 photographs. With Mercury and Gemini, there were about 5,000. Which I was quite relieved about. So yeah, I went through all 5,000 they took. I’m not sure how much 16 millimeter film in terms of time, because it was at various frame rates, but a lot of 16 millimeter film. So I went through every frame of film that was captured from launch to splashdown on every mission.

Ars: Out of that material, how much did you end up processing?

Saunders: What I would first do is have a quick look, particularly if there’s apparently nothing in them, because a lot of them are very underexposed. But with digital processing, like I did with the cover of the Apollo book, we can pull out stuff that you actually can’t see in the raw file. So it’s always worth taking a look. So do a very quick edit, and then if it’s not of interest, it’s discarded. Or it might be that clearly an important moment was happening, even if it’s not a particularly stunning photograph, I would save that one. So I was probably down from 5,000 to maybe 800, and then do a better edit on it.

And then the final 300 that are in the book are those that are either aesthetically stunning, or they’re a big transformation, or they show something important that happened on the mission, or a historically significant moment. But also, what I want to do with the book, as well as showing the photographs, is tell the stories, these incredible human stories that, because of the risks they were taking. So to do that, I effectively reconstructed every mission from launch to splashdown by using lots of different pieces of information in order to effectively map the photography onto a timeline so that it can then tell the story through the captions. So a photograph might be in there simply to help tell part of the story.

Ars: What was your favorite story to tell?

Saunders: Well, perhaps in terms of a chapter and a mission, I’d say Gemini 4 is kind of the heart of the book. You know, first US space walk, quite a lot of drama occurred when they couldn’t close the hatch. There’s some quite poignant shots, particularly of Ed White, of course, who later lost his life in the Apollo 1 fire. But in terms of the story, I mean, Gemini 9A was just, there needs to be a movie about just Gemini 9A. Right from the start, from losing the prime crew, and then just what happened out on Gene Cernan’s EVA, how he got back into the capsule alive is quite incredible, and all this detail I’ve tried to cover because he took his camera. So he called it the spacewalk from hell. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. He was incredibly exhausted, overheated. His visor steamed over. He went effectively blind, and he was at the back of the adapter section. This is at a point when NASA just hadn’t mastered EVA. So, simply how you maneuver in space, they just haven’t mastered, so he was exhausted. He was almost blind. Then he lost communication with Tom Stafford, his command pilot. He tore his suit, because, of course, back then, there were all kinds of jagged parts on the spacecraft.

And then when he’s finally back in the hatch, he was quite a big chap, and they couldn’t close the hatch, so he was bent double trying to close the hatch. He started to see stars. He said, Tom, if we don’t close this hatch now and re-pressurize, I am going to die. They got it closed, got his helmet off, and Tom Stafford said he just looked like someone that had spent far too long in a sauna. Stafford sprayed him with a water hose to kind of cool him down. So what happened on that mission is just quite incredible. But there was something on every mission, you know, from Gus Grissom sinking of the Liberty Bell and him almost drowning, the heat shield coming loose, or an indicator that suggested the heat shield was loose on Glenn’s mission. There’s an image of that in the book. Like I said, I mapped everything to the timeline, and worked out the frame rates, and we’ve got the clock we can see over his shoulder. So I could work out exactly when he was at the point of maximum heating through reentry, when part of the strapping that kept the retro pack on, to try and hold a heat shield on that hit the window, and he’s talking, but no one was listening, because it was during radio blackout.

After being informed his heat shield may have come loose, John Glenn is holding steadfast in the face of real uncertainty, as he observes the retro pack burn up outside his window, illuminating the cabin in an orange glow, during re-entry on February 20, 1962. “This is Friendship Seven. I think the pack just let go … A real fireball outside! … Great chunks of that retro pack breaking off all the way through!” Credit: NASA / Andy Saunders

The process I used for this, on the low-quality 16 mm film, was to stack hundreds and hundreds of frames to bring out incredible detail. You can almost see the pores in his skin. To see this level of detail, to me, it’s just like a portrait of courage. There he is, holding steadfast, not knowing if he’s about to burn up in the atmosphere. So that was quite a haunting image, if you like, to be able to help you step on board, you know, these tiny Mercury spacecraft, to see them, to see what they saw, to look out the windows and see how they saw it.

Ars: What was new or surprising to you as you spent so much time with these photos and looking at the details?

Saunders: The human side to them. Now that we can see them this clearly, they seem to have an emotional depth to them. And it’s that level of risk that they were taking. I think that’s what really hit home. The Earth shots are stunning. You know, you can almost feel the scale, particularly with a super wide lens, and the altitudes they flew to. And you can just imagine what it must have been like out on an EVA, for example. I think Gene Cernan said it was like sitting on God’s front porch, the view he had on his EVA. So those Earth shots are stunning, but it’s really those the human side that really hits home for me. I read every word of every transcript of every mission. All the conversations were recorded on tape between the air and the ground, and between the astronauts when they were out of ground contact, and reading those it really hits home what they were doing. I found myself holding my breath, and, you know, my shoulders were stiff.

Ars: So what’s next? I mean, there’s only about 100 million photos from the Space Shuttle era.

Saunders: Thankfully, they weren’t all taken on film. So if I wanted to complete space on film, then what I haven’t yet done is Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab, and the first, whatever it is, 20 percent of the shuttle. So maybe that’s next. But I would just like a rest, because I’ve been doing this now since the middle of 2019, literally nonstop. It’s all I’ve done with Apollo and now Mercury and Gemini. The books make a really nice set in that they’re exactly the same size. So it covers the first view of the curvature of Earth and space right through to our last steps on the Moon.

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

60 years after Gemini, newly processed images reveal incredible details Read More »

Modder injects AI dialogue into 2002’s Animal Crossing using memory hack

AI, AI integration, Animal Crossing, Biz & IT, chatgpt, Dolphin emulator, Emulation, game hacking, game modding, GameCube, gaming, generative ai, Google, large language models, machine learning, Nintendo, openai, retrogaming, retrotech, Tom Nook / Mike M. / September 13, 2025

But discovering the addresses was only half the problem. When you talk to a villager in Animal Crossing, the game normally displays dialogue instantly. Calling an AI model over the Internet takes several seconds. Willison examined the code and found Fonseca’s solution: a watch_dialogue() function that polls memory 10 times per second. When it detects a conversation starting, it immediately writes placeholder text: three dots with hidden pause commands between them, followed by a “Press A to continue” prompt.

“So the user gets a ‘press A to continue’ button and hopefully the LLM has finished by the time they press that button,” Willison noted in a Hacker News comment. While players watch dots appear and reach for the A button, the mod races to get a response from the AI model and translate it into the game’s dialog format.

Learning the game’s secret language

Simply writing text to memory froze the game. Animal Crossing uses an encoded format with control codes that manage everything from text color to character emotions. A special prefix byte (0x7F) signals commands rather than characters. Without the proper end-of-conversation control code, the game waits forever.

“Think of it like HTML,” Fonseca explains. “Your browser doesn’t just display words; it interprets tags … to make text bold.” The decompilation community had documented these codes, allowing Fonseca to build encoder and decoder tools that translate between a human-readable format and the GameCube’s expected byte sequences.

A screenshot of LLM-powered dialog injected into Animal Crossing for the GameCube. — A screenshot of LLM-powered dialog injected into *Animal Crossing* for the GameCube. Credit: Joshua Fonseca

Initially, he tried using a single AI model to handle both creative writing and technical formatting. “The results were a mess,” he notes. “The AI was trying to be a creative writer and a technical programmer simultaneously and was bad at both.”

The solution: split the work between two models. A Writer AI creates dialogue using character sheets scraped from the Animal Crossing fan wiki. A Director AI then adds technical elements, including pauses, color changes, character expressions, and sound effects.

The code is available on GitHub, though Fonseca warns it contains known bugs and has only been tested on macOS. The mod requires Python 3.8+, API keys for either Google Gemini or OpenAI, and Dolphin emulator. Have fun sticking it to the man—or the raccoon, as the case may be.

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Feds try to dodge lawsuit against their bogus climate report

climate change, doe, Energy, EPA, greenhouse gasses, lawsuit, Policy, Science / Mike M. / September 13, 2025

Meanwhile, Congress is trying to keep serious scientists from weighing in.

While the Trump administration has continued to refer to efforts to avoid the worst impacts of climate change as a scam, it has done almost nothing to counter the copious scientific evidence that demonstrates that climate change is real and doing real damage to the citizens of the US. The lone exception has been a draft Department of Energy report prepared by a handful of carefully chosen fringe figures that questioned the mainstream understanding of climate change. The shoddy work and questionable conclusions of that report were so extensive that an analysis of it required over 450 pages to detail all of its shortcomings.

But its shortcomings may not have been limited to the science, as a lawsuit alleges that its preparation violated a law that regulates the activities of federal advisory panels. Now, in an attempt to avoid dealing with that lawsuit, the Department of Energy is claiming that it dissolved the committee that prepared the report, making the lawsuit moot.

Meanwhile, Congress is also attempting to muddy the waters. In response to the DOE report, the National Academies of Science announced that it would prepare a report describing the current state of climate science. Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight have responded by announcing an investigation of the National Academies “for undermining the EPA.”

The vanishing committee

As we noted in our original coverage, the members of the advisory group that prepared the DOE report were carefully chosen for having views that are well outside the mainstream of climate science. Based on their past public statements, they could be counted on to produce a report that would question the severity of climate change and raise doubts about whether we had any evidence it was happening. The report they produced went beyond that by suggesting that the net effect of our carbon emissions was likely to be a positive for humanity.

Not only was that shoddy science, but a lawsuit filed by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists suggested that it was likely illegal. Groups like the one that wrote the report, the suit alleges, fall under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which (among other things) dictates that these groups must be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented,” rather than be selected in order to reinforce a single point of view.

The “among other things” that the law dictates is that the advisory groups have public meetings that are announced in advance, be chartered with a well-defined mission, and all of their records be made available to the public. In contrast, nobody within the Department of Energy, including the contrarians who wrote the report, acknowledged the work they were doing publicly until the day the draft report was released.

The suit alleges that the work of this group fell under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and the group violated the act in all of the above ways and more. The act asks the courts to force the DOE to disclose all the relevant records involved with the preparation of the report, and to cease relying on it for any regulatory actions. That’s significant because the Environmental Protection Agency cited it in its attempts to roll back its prior finding that greenhouse gases posed a danger to the US public.

This week, the DOE responded in court by claiming the panel that produced the report had been dissolved, making the suit moot. That does not address the fact that the EPA is continuing to rely on the report in its attempts to argue there’s no point in regulating greenhouse gases. It also leaves the report itself in a weird limbo. Its release marked the start of a period of public comment, and said comments were supposed to be considered during the revisions that would take place before the draft was finalized.

Failure to complete the revision process would leave the EPA vulnerable to claims that it’s relying on an incomplete draft report for its scientific justifications. So, while the DOE’s tactics may protect some of its internal documents, it may ultimately cause larger problems for the Trump administration’s agenda.

Attacking the academies

Earlier this year, we were critical of the US’s National Academies of Science for seemingly refusing to respond to the Trump administration’s attacks on science. That reticence appeared to end in August with the release of the DOE climate report and the announcement that the EPA was using that report as the latest word on climate science, which it argued had changed considerably since the initial EPA decisions on this issue in 2009.

In response, the National Academies announced that it would fast-track a new analysis of the risks posed by greenhouse gases, this one done by mainstream scientists instead of a handful of fringe figures. The goal was to get it done before the EPA closed its public comment period on its proposal to ignore greenhouse gases.

Obviously, this poses a threat to the EPA’s planned actions, which apparently prompted Republicans in Congress to step in. Earlier this month, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), announced he was investigating the National Academies for preparing this report, calling it “a blatant partisan act to undermine the Trump Administration.”

Comer has also sent a letter to the National Academies, outlining his concerns and demanding a variety of documents. Some of these are pretty convoluted: “The study is led by a National Academies member who serves as an external advisor to the Science Philanthropy Alliance, which has ties to the left-wing group Arabella Advisors through the New Venture Fund, an organization that promotes a variety of progressive causes and funds major climate litigation,” Comer says, suggesting … it’s not entirely clear what. Another member of the study panel had the audacity to endorse former President Biden for his climate policies. Separately, Comer says he’s concerned about the source of the funds that will pay for this study.

Some of Comer’s demands are consistent with this, focusing on funding for this review. But he goes well beyond that, demanding a list of all the National Academies’ sources of funding, as well as any internal communications about this study. He’s also going on a bit of a witch hunt within the federal government, demanding any communications the NAS has had with government employees regarding the DOE’s report or the EPA’s greenhouse gas decisions.

It’s pretty clear that Comer recognizes that any unbiased presentation of climate science is going to undercut the EPA’s rationale for reversing course on greenhouse gas regulations. So, he’s preparing in advance to undercut that presentation by claiming it’s rife with conflicts of interest—and he’s willing to include “supporting politicians who want to act on climate change” as a conflict.

All of this maneuvering is taking place before the EPA has even finalized its planned U-turn on greenhouse gases, a step that will undoubtedly trigger additional investigations and lawsuits. In many ways, this is likely to reflect many of these parties laying the groundwork for the legal fight to come. And, while some of this is ostensibly about the state of the science that has supported the EPA’s past policy decisions, it’s clear that the administration and its supporters are doing their best to minimize science’s impact on their preferred course of action.

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

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NASA found intriguing rocks on Mars, so where does that leave Mars Sample Return?

Mars Sample Return, NASA, Sean Duffy, Space / Mike M. / September 13, 2025

NASA’s interim administrator, Sean Duffy, was fired up on Wednesday when he joined a teleconference to talk about new scientific findings that concerned the potential for life to have once existed on Mars.

“This is exciting news,” said Duffy about an arrow-shaped rock on Mars found by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The rock contained chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. The findings were intriguing, but not conclusive. Further study of the rocks in an advanced lab on Earth might prove more definitive.

Duffy was ready, he said, to discuss the scientific results along with NASA experts on the call with reporters. However, the very first question—and for any space reporter, the obvious one—concerned NASA’s on-again, off-again plan to return rocks from the surface of Mars for study on Earth. This mission, called Mars Sample Return, has been on hold for nearly two years after an independent analysis found that NASA’s bloated plan would cost at least $8 billion to $11 billion. President Trump has sought to cancel it outright.

Duffy faces the space press

“What’s the latest on NASA’s plans to retrieve the samples from Perseverance?” asked Marcia Dunn, a reporter with the Associated Press, about small vials of rocks collected by the NASA rover on Mars.

“So listen, we’re looking at how we get this sample back, or other samples back,” Duffy replied. “What we’re going to do is look at our budget, so we look at our timing, and you know, how do we spend money better? And you know, what technology do we have to get samples back more quickly? And so that’s a current analysis that’s happening right now.”

A couple of questions later, Ken Chang, a science reporter with The New York Times, asked Duffy why President Trump’s budget request called for the cancellation of Mars Sample Return and whether that was still the president’s intent.

“I want to be really clear,” Duffy replied. “This is a 30-year process that NASA has undertaken. President Trump didn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s forget about Mars.’ No, we’re continuing our exploration. And by the way, we’ve been very clear under this president that we don’t want to just bring samples back from Mars. We want to send our boots to the Moon and to Mars, and that is the work that we’re doing. Amit (Kshatriya, the new associate administrator of NASA) even said maybe we’ll send our equipment to test this sample to Mars itself. All options are on the table.”

NASA found intriguing rocks on Mars, so where does that leave Mars Sample Return? Read More »

Small, affordable, efficient: A lot to like about the 2026 Nissan Leaf

car review, Cars, First drive, nissan leaf / Mike M. / September 12, 2025

Smaller on the outside, bigger on the inside, and it goes farther on a single charge.

The color is called Seabreeze Blue Pearl, and isn’t it great it’s not silver or grey? Credit: Nissan

SAN DIEGO—The original Nissan Leaf was a car with a mission. Long before Elon Musk set his sights on Tesla selling vast numbers of electric vehicles to the masses, then-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn wanted Nissan to shift half a million Leafs a year in the early 2010s. That didn’t quite come to pass, but by 2020, it had sold its 500,000th EV, which went from its factory in Sunderland, England, to a customer in Norway.

Pioneering though they were, both first- and second-generation Leafs were compromised. They were adapted from existing internal combustion engine platforms, with the electric powertrains shoehorned inside. The cars’ real handicaps were a lack of liquid cooling for the battery packs. Like an older Porsche 911, the Leaf was air-cooled, albeit with none of the collector value. That’s all changed for generation three.

The new Leaf is built on a dedicated EV platform shared with Nissan’s alliance partners Renault and Mitsubishi, and which we have previously seen used to good effect in the Nissan Ariya. The benefits of using a platform purpose-designed for electric propulsion are obvious from the space efficiency. The new car is 3 inches (75 mm) shorter from the outside, but offers nearly 9 inches (221 mm) more rear leg room (yes, really), making it a much more suitable place to put adults.

Is it a sedan? Is it a crossover? Nissan

Although the new Leaf is 0.8 inches (20 mm) wider, it’s a few mm shorter and has a lower drag coefficient (Cd 0.26), so the overall effect is a more efficient shape. The nose bears a family resemblance to the Ariya, and the body style is sort of a crossover, sort of a fastback sedan, depending on your frame of reference.

Here and there, you’ll notice iconography that calls out the automaker’s name: two vertical stripes (ni in Japanese), then three horizontal ones (san in Japanese). I’m told that if you look, there are some ginkgo leaves as Easter eggs hidden in the design, but I did not find them during our hours with the car.

For now, there’s one powertrain option: a 214 hp (160 kW), 262 lb-ft (355 Nm) motor (packaged together with its inventor and reducer), powered by a 75 kWh (net) lithium-ion battery pack. The battery pack is integrated into the car’s thermal management system, which also loops in the chiller, the motor, and the HVAC system. It can fast-charge at up to 150 kW via the NACS port built into its left side (or using a CCS1 adapter here) and should charge from 10–80 percent in 35 minutes. On the driver’s side is a J1772 port for AC charging that can also work bidirectionally to send up to 1.5 kW of AC power to an external device via an adapter.

Nissan said it kept the J1772 port because it expects to sell the new Leaf to a lot of legacy customers who already have their own home charger, and it wanted to minimize the number of adapters necessary.

Let’s talk trim levels

How far it goes on a single charge depends on which trim level you’re in. Nissan brought some preproduction Leaf Platinum+ models to the first drive. These are very highly equipped, with an electrochromic dimming roof, the LED head- and taillights you see in the images, a couple of AC outlets inside the car (with the ability to power up to 3.4 kW across two outlets), and a better sound system. But it also comes on 19-inch alloy wheels, and as we all know, bigger wheels mean smaller range. Indeed, the Leaf Platinum+ has a range of 259 miles (417 km) on a single charge.

The $34,230 SV+ loses the panoramic roof and the interior V2L outlets, and you’ll have to manually open and close the tailgate at the back. And the alloy wheels are an inch smaller, which increases the range to 288 miles (464 km).

But it keeps the heated front seats and the twin 14.3-inch displays (one for your instruments, one for infotainment) with Google built in. For the Platinum+ and SV+, that means onboard Google Maps with a route planner that will take into account your state of charge and which can precondition the battery if it knows your destination is a fast charger.

19-inch Nissan Leaf wheel — Big wheels have their drawbacks. Credit: Nissan

Nissan is only including the Google connected services for the first year, though—after that, owners will have to pay a monthly fee, although Nissan wasn’t able to tell us how much that is. Conveniently, both wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are included and will continue to work after the year’s trial. And you can manually precondition the battery for charging, but automatic preconditioning via the infotainment system will not work without an active subscription.

The SV+ and Platinum can also be optioned with a heat pump ($300).

But the $29,990 S+ cannot. And it lacks the twin displays of the car you see in the images, which means no automatic battery preconditioning, although like the more expensive trims it does still have wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. You also get 18-inch steel wheels with aero hubcaps, and a range of 303 miles (487 km) on a single charge. See what I mean about wheel size and range?

How does it drive?

A Nissan Leaf — Turning over a new leaf. Credit: Nissan

I’d very much like to spend some time in an S+ and an SV+, if only to see what difference a larger tire sidewall makes to the ride comfort. On 19-inch wheels, the ride was firm and translated bumps and divots through the suspension and into the cabin. There wasn’t much body roll, but your progress will be limited by the grip available to the low rolling-resistance tires—push too hard and the result is plenty of understeer.

But this is not a “push too hard” kind of EV. With just 214 hp, it accelerates quickly enough to get out of its own way, but it’s telling that Nissan did not share a 0–60 mph time during the briefing. (If I had to guess, I’d say between 5–6 seconds, which used to be considered very rapid.)

It has four drive modes—Eco, Normal, Sport, and Personal—with three different throttle maps and two steering weights to choose from. And there are now four levels of lift-off regenerative braking, which you toggle on with the left steering wheel paddle and off with the right paddle. You can’t turn regen completely off, so like General Motors’ family of EVs, the Leaf will not really coast and loses a few mph even on downhill stretches, as it converts some kinetic energy to electrical energy.

There’s also an e-Step button on the dash, which turns on maximum regen braking and may add some friction braking to the mix. Unlike using the paddles, this setting should remain on the next time you start the car. But neither of the full regen settings is able to bring the car to a complete stop—we were told that the feature is viewed with suspicion in some markets, including Japan, and like pop-out door handles, it appears that China is in the process of banning one-pedal driving entirely.

There are plenty of real buttons and switches in here. Nissan

Both e-Step and max-regen work very well in traffic or on a twisty road, where they simulate engine braking. But given the choice, I would use the paddles to control regen braking. That’s because, like the Mercedes EQ family of EVs, in this mode the brake pedal moves toward the firewall as the car slows. The engineer’s excuse for this is that the pedal moves by the same distance it would have moved had the driver used it to slow the car by the amount it has just slowed. But my rebuttal is that the brake pedal should always be where I expect to find it in an emergency, and if that’s an inch farther away, that’s not cool.

That’s really a minor gripe, though; no one says you have to push the e-Step switch on the dash. Slightly more annoying—but only slightly—is the wind noise from the sideview mirrors, which is noticeable even at 45 mph (72 km/h), although easily drowned out if you’re listening to something on the audio system.

For a daily driver, the third-generation Leaf is rather compelling, especially the S+, although the lack of heated front seats in that model might be too much of a deal-breaker, considering how important seat heaters are to EV efficiency in winter. (Because it’s more efficient to heat the driver than warm all the air in the car.)

The SV+ is more likely to be the sweet spot—this trim level can have the Seabreeze paint you see here or a white pearl, which are alternatives to the four shades available to the S+. The Hyundai Kona EV and Kia Niro EV are probably the Leaf’s two closest rivals, both of which are compelling cars. And the forthcoming Kia EV3 will probably also be cross-shopped. All of which is good news if you’re looking for a smaller, affordable electric car.

Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica’s automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.

Small, affordable, efficient: A lot to like about the 2026 Nissan Leaf Read More »

Pentagon begins deploying new satellite network to link sensors with shooters

falcon 9, launch, military space, Science, Space, space development agency, spacex, US Space Force, Vandenberg space force base, york space systems / Mike M. / September 11, 2025

“This is the first time we’ll have a space layer fully integrated into our warfighting operations.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, with a payload of 21 data-relay satellites for the US military’s Space Development Agency. Credit: SpaceX

The first 21 satellites in a constellation that could become a cornerstone for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile-defense shield successfully launched from California Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The Falcon 9 took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 7: 12 am PDT (10: 12 am EDT; 14: 12 UTC) and headed south over the Pacific Ocean, heading for an orbit over the poles before releasing the 21 military-owned satellites to begin several weeks of activations and checkouts.

These 21 satellites will boost themselves to a final orbit at an altitude of roughly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers). The Pentagon plans to launch 133 more satellites over the next nine months to complete the build-out of the Space Development Agency’s first-generation, or Tranche 1, constellation of missile-tracking and data-relay satellites.

“We had a great launch today for the Space Development Agency, putting this array of space vehicles into orbit in support of their revolutionary new architecture,” said Col. Ryan Hiserote, system program director for the Space Force’s assured access to space launch execution division.

Over the horizon

Military officials have worked for six years to reach this moment. The Space Development Agency (SDA) was established during the first Trump administration, which made plans for an initial set of demonstration satellites that launched a couple of years ago. In 2022, the Pentagon awarded contracts for the first 154 operational spacecraft. The first batch of 21 data-relay satellites built by Colorado-based York Space Systems is what went up Wednesday.

“Back in 2019, when the SDA was stood up, it was to do two things. One was to make sure that we can do beyond line of sight targeting, and the other was to pace the threat, the emerging threat, in the missile-warning and missile-tracking domain. That’s what the focus has been,” said Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo, the SDA’s acting director.

Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) pose with industry and government teams in front of the Space Development’s first 21 operational satellites at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Cramer is one the most prominent backers of the Golden Dome program in the US Senate. Credit: US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Daekwon Stith

Historically, the military communications and missile-warning networks have used a handful of large, expensive satellites in geosynchronous orbit some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth. This architecture was devised during the Cold War and is optimized for nuclear conflict and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

For example, the military’s ultra-hardened Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites in geosynchronous orbit are designed to operate through an electromagnetic pulse and nuclear scintillation. The Space Force’s missile-warning satellites are also in geosynchronous orbit, with infrared sensors tuned to detect the heat plume of a missile launch.

The problem? Those satellites cost more than $1 billion a pop. They’re also vulnerable to attack from a foreign adversary. Pentagon officials say the SDA’s satellite constellation, officially called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, is tailored to detect and track more modern threats, such as smaller missiles and hypersonic weapons carrying conventional warheads. It’s easier for these missiles to evade the eyes of older early warning satellites.

What’s more, the SDA’s fleet in low-Earth orbit will have numerous satellites. Losing one or several satellites to an attack would not degrade the constellation’s overall capability. The SDA’s new relay satellites cost between $14 and $15 million each, according to Sandhoo. The total cost of the first tranche of 154 operational satellites totals approximately $3.1 billion.

Multi-mission satellites

These satellites will not only detect and track ballistic and hypersonic missile launches; they will also transmit signals between US forces using an existing encrypted tactical data link network known as Link 16. This UHF system is used by NATO and other US allies to allow military aircraft, ships, and land forces to share tactical information through text messages, pictures, data, and voice communication in near real time, according to the SDA’s website.

Up to now, Link 16 radios were ubiquitous on fighter jets, helicopters, naval vessels, and missile batteries. But they had a severe limitation. Link 16 was only able to close a radio link with a clear line of sight. The Space Development Agency’s satellites will change that, providing direct-to-weapon connectivity from sensors to shooters on Earth’s surface, in the air, and in space.

The relay satellites, which the SDA calls the transport layer, are also equipped with Ka-band and laser communication terminals for higher-bandwidth connectivity.

“What the transport layer does is it extends beyond the line of sight,” Sandhoo said. “Now, you’re able to talk not only to within a couple of miles with your Link 16 radios, (but) we can use space to, let’s say, go from Hawaii out to Guam using those tactical radios, using a space layer.”

The Space Development Agency’s “Tranche 1” architecture includes 154 operational satellites, 126 for data relay and 28 for missile tracking. With this illustration, the SDA does its best to show how the complex architecture is supposed to work. Credit: Space Development Agency

Another batch of SDA relay satellites will launch next month, and more will head to space in November. In all, it will take 10 launches to fully deploy the SDA’s Tranche 1 constellation. Six of those missions will carry data-relay satellites, and four will carry satellites with sensors to detect and track missile launches. The Pentagon selected several contractors to build the satellites, so the military is not reliant on a single company. The builders of the SDA’s operational satellites include York, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris.

“We will increase coverage as we get the rest of those launches on orbit,” said Michael Eppolito, the SDA’s acting deputy director.

The satellites will connect with one another using inter-satellite laser links, creating a mesh network with sufficient range to provide regional communications, missile warning, and targeting coverage over the Western Pacific beginning in 2027. US Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees military operations in this region, is slated to become the first combatant command to take up use of the SDA’s satellite constellation.

This is not incidental. US officials see China as the nation’s primary strategic threat, and Indo-Pacific Command would be on the front lines of any future conflict between Chinese and US forces. The SDA has contracts in place for more than 270 second-generation, or Tranche 2, satellites, to further expand the network’s reach. There’s also a third generation in the works, but the Pentagon has paused part of the SDA’s Tranche 3 program to evaluate other architectures, including one offered by SpaceX.

Teaching tactical operators to use the new capabilities offered by the SDA’s satellite fleet could be just as challenging as building the network itself. To do this, the Pentagon plans to put soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines through “warfighter immersion” training beginning next year. This training will allow US forces to “get used to using space from this construct,” Sandhoo said.

“This is different than how it has been done in the past,” Sandhoo said. “This is the first time we’ll have a space layer actually fully integrated into our warfighting operations.”

The SDA’s satellite architecture is a harbinger for what’s to come with the Pentagon’s Golden Dome system, a missile-defense shield for the US homeland proposed by President Donald Trump in an executive order in January. Congress authorized a down payment on Golden Dome in July, the first piece of funding for what the White House says will cost $175 billion over the next three years.

Golden Dome, as currently envisioned, will require thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit to track missile launches and space-based interceptors to attempt to shoot them down. The Trump administration hasn’t said how much of the shield might be deployed by the end of 2028, or what the entire system might eventually cost.

But the capabilities of the SDA’s satellites will lay the foundation for any regional or national missile-defense shield. Therefore, it seems likely that the military will incorporate the SDA network into Golden Dome, which, at least at first, is likely to consist of technologies already in space or nearing launch. Apart from the Space Development Agency’s architecture in low-Earth orbit (LEO), the Space Force was already developing a new generation of missile-warning satellites to replace aging platforms in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), plus a fleet of missile-warning satellites to fly at a midrange altitude between LEO and GEO.

Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of US Northern Command, said in April that Golden Dome “for the first time integrates multiple layers into one system that allows us to detect, track, and defeat multiple types of threats that affect us in different domains.

“So, while a lot of the components and the requirements were there in the past, this is the first time that it’s all tied together in one system,” he said.

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Pentagon begins deploying new satellite network to link sensors with shooters Read More »

After Ukrainian testing, drone-detection radar doubles range with simple software patch

culture, Drones, Ukraine / Mike M. / September 11, 2025

As part of its unprovoked invasion, Russia has been firing massed waves of drones and missiles into Ukraine for years, though the tempo has been raised dramatically in recent months. Barrages of 700-plus drones now regularly attack Ukraine during overnight raids. Russia also appears to have upped the ante dramatically by sending at least 19 drones into Poland last night, some of which were shot down by NATO forces.

Many of these drones are Shahed/Geran types built with technology imported from Iran, and they have recently gained the ability to fly higher, making shootdowns more difficult. Given the low cost of the drones (estimates suggest they cost a few tens of thousands of dollars apiece, and many are simply decoys without warheads), hitting them with multimillion-dollar missiles from traditional air-defense batteries makes little sense and would quickly exhaust missile stocks.

So Ukraine has adopted widespread electronic warfare to disrupt control systems and navigation. Drones not forced off their path are fought with mobile anti-aircraft guns, aircraft, and interceptor drones, many launched from mobile fire teams patrolling Ukraine during the night.

For teams like this, early detection of the attack drones is crucial—even seconds matter when it comes to relocating a vehicle and launching a counter drone or aiming a gun. Take too long to get into position and the attack drone overhead has already passed by on the way to its target.

Which brings us to Robin Radar Systems, a Dutch company that initially used radar to detect birds. (Indeed, the name “Robin” is an acronym derived from “Radar OBservation of Bird INtensity.”) This radar technology, good at detecting small flying objects and differentiating them from fauna, has proven useful in Ukraine’s drone war. Last year, the Dutch Ministry of Defence bought 51 mobile Robin Radar IRIS units that could be mounted on vehicles and used by drone defense teams.

After Ukrainian testing, drone-detection radar doubles range with simple software patch Read More »

Has Perseverance found a biosignature on Mars?

astrobiology, biosignature, Mars, Mars Perseverance, Mars rovers, Science / Mike M. / September 10, 2025

Interpreting the data is tricky because other non-biological processes could account for the findings.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Last year, we reported on the discovery of an intriguing arrow-shaped rock on Mars by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The rock contained chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. Granted, this was not slam-dunk evidence of past life on Mars, and the results were preliminary, awaiting peer review. But it was an intriguing possibility nonetheless.

Now further analysis and peer review are complete, and there is a new paper, published in the journal Nature, reporting on the findings. It’s still not definitive proof that there was water-based life on Mars billions of years ago, but the results are consistent with a biosignature. It’s just that other non-biological processes would also be consistent with the data, so definitive proof might require analysis of the Martian samples back on Earth. You can watch NASA’s livestream briefing here.

“We have improved our understanding of the geological context of the discovery since [last year], and in the paper, we explore abiotic and biological pathways to the formation of the features that we observe,” co-author Joel Hurowitz, an astrobiologist at Stony Brook University in New York, told Ars. “My hope is that this discovery motivates a whole bunch of new research in laboratory and analog field settings on Earth to try to understand what conditions might give rise to the textures and mineral assemblages we’ve observed. This type of follow on work is exactly what is needed to explore the various biological and abiotic pathways to the formation of the features that we are calling potential biosignatures.”

On February 18, 2021, Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater, a site chosen because rocks resembling a river delta are draped over its rim, indicating that flowing water might have met a lake here in the past. The little rover has multiple cameras for both general imagery and spectral analysis, supplemented by an X-ray instrument. A ground-penetrating radar instrument can reveal layering hidden below the surface; a weather module tracks atmospheric conditions and airborne dust; and a drill on the end of its robotic arm grinds clean spots for analysis. The drill can also core out small cylindrical rock samples.

Mineralogical map of the Martian surface explored by the Perseverance rover. Credit: M. Parente et al./Zenodo 2021

By the end of 2021, Perseverance had identified igneous rocks in the Seitah formation on the crater’s floor, containing the mineral olivine surrounded by pyroxene. This combination is known as a cumulate; olivine crystallizes early and can settle to the bottom of a magma body and accumulate, and it’s a common formation in magma chambers on Earth. Scientists thought that Jezero was once a lake; this was evidence of possible volcanic activity.

An arrow-shaped clue

As Ars Space Editor Eric Berger reported last year, the arrow-shaped rock that caused such a stir last year was collected on July 21, 2024, as the rover explored the Neretva Vallis riverbed. The science team operating Perseverance nicknamed the rock Chevaya Falls and subjected it to multiple scans by the rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) instrument. Samples were taken from two sites known as Bright Angel and Masonic Temple; the arrow-shaped rock came from Bright Angel.

That analysis revealed tiny green specks of iron phosphates that have been chemically reduced, as well as iron sulfide minerals, all embedded in mudstone composed of iron minerals, clays, and calcium sulfates. Those distinctive colorful nodules and specks are a smoking gun for certain chemical reactions (known as redox) rather than microbial life itself. On Earth, microbial life can derive energy from these kinds of chemical reactions, so signs of such reactions suggest a plausible source of energy for microbes on Mars. In addition, there are organic chemicals present on the same rock, consistent with some form of life.

This latest paper confirms those initial findings and also concludes that the iron phosphate in the green specks is most likely vivianite, consistent with prior samples taken from the crater’s Onahu site. The nodules and specks seem to have formed under low-temperature conditions and after the deposition of sediment. And the minerals of interest aren’t evenly distributed throughout the mudstone; they are concentrated in specific zones. All of this taken together suggests that these might be biosignatures, per the authors.

So what needs to happen to definitively confirm these are actual signs of previous life on Mars? NASA has a seven-step process for determining whether something can be confirmed as extraterrestrial life. This is known as the CoLD scale, for Confidence of Life Detection. In this case, the detection of these spots on a Martian rock represented just the first of seven steps. Among other steps, scientists must rule out any non-biological possibility and identify other signals to have confidence in off-world life—i.e., solving the so-called “false positive” problem.

For instance, “Analyses of sulfur isotopes can be used to trace the geochemical and biogeochemical pathways that formed sulfate and sulfides,” Janice Bishop (SETI Institute) and Mario Parente (University of Massachusetts Amherst) wrote in an accompanying perspective. “Such analyses would be needed to determine whether ancient microbes participated in the redox reactions that formed these minerals on Mars.”

Michael Wong, an astrobiologist at Carnegie Science who was not involved in the research, told Ars that he appreciated Hurowotiz et al.’s care in not over-hyping their findings and thinks they make a compelling case. Unlike hints of biosignatures on distant exoplanets, he thinks scientists can have confidence in the Mars data. “We’re right up against the rocks, we’re taking spectra of things that we can get up close and personal with,” he said.

The tricky part is in the interpretation of that data. “I think this is consistent with a potential biosignature,” said Wong. “I wouldn’t get too excited, of course, because there could be interesting geological mechanisms for creating these phenomena that we just haven’t thought of yet.”

Chemically reduced nodules of greenish material containing the mineral vivianite are embedded in a matrix of red–brown, oxidized clay mineral. More-complex ‘leopard spot’ features contain vivianite along with a sulfide mineral — Chemically reduced nodules of greenish material containing the mineral vivianite are embedded in a matrix of red-brown, oxidized clay mineral. More complex ‘leopard spot’ features contain vivianite along with a sulfide mineral. Credit: J. Hurowitz et al. 2025

Still cause for skepticism

That said, “I’d love to know a little bit more about what organics were found and in what abundances,” said Wong. “If you can look at the distribution of, say, amino acids or lipids, these building blocks of life, that can be a really important clue as to whether or not it’s actually life that was responsible here. Life is really good at making molecules that function well, and it doesn’t care about making molecules that don’t play into its metabolism and replication cycles. I’d love to know a little bit more about the isotopic ratios of those organic compounds, because life preferentially absorbs lighter isotopes than heavier ones.”

Sara Walker, an astrobiologist at Arizona State University who was not involved in the study, told Ars that analyses like that of Hurowitz et al. “are often targeted at simple metabolic products or reactions that life on Earth is known to mediate, but which are not uniquely diagnostic of life, e.g. can be produced abiotically,” she said. “It is not in general possible to exhaustively rule out all possible abiotic causes, especially in planetary science contexts where we have limited information, as is always the case for Mars data. A convincing biosignature detection would need to be based on detection of a signature of life that has no false positives.”

Much will depend on NASA’s planned Mars Sample Return mission. Returning pristine specimens from Mars to Earth for analysis in ground-based labs has been a top priority for the planetary science community’s decadal survey process. “The Perseverance rover wasn’t designed to make any definitive claims about biosignatures, but only to look for samples that have the most intriguing clues and would be the most interesting to bring back to Earth so that we can analyze it with all of the fancy instrumentation here,” said Wong.

Getting those samples back has turned out to be a lot more challenging than NASA thought. In 2023, an independent review found ballooning costs and delays threatened the mission’s viability. The effort would likely cost NASA between $8 billion and $11 billion, and the launch would be delayed at least two years until 2030, with samples getting back to Earth a few years later, the review board concluded. NASA put out a call to industry in April of this year to propose ideas on how to return the Mars rocks to Earth for less than $11 billion and before 2040, selecting seven companies to conduct more detailed studies.

“Ultimately, I suspect that we’ll find that there are ways that you can make them under very specific abiotic—perhaps at high temperature—and biological conditions, and we’ll end up at a point where the sample will need to come home so that we can study it and make the final determination for what process made these features,” said Hurowitz. “But the follow-on work will provide testable hypotheses that can guide the examination of the Sapphire Canyon core sample we collected from the Bright Angel formation even before it comes back to Earth.”

According to Walker, while sample return would be ideal, it may not be critical to detection of extraterrestrial biosignatures, or even provide a conclusive determination in the present case. For these kinds of signatures, “There will always be some doubt, whether studied here on Earth or elsewhere,” Walker said. “There are lots of clever means to doing better science for biosignatures on other worlds. I would focus on ones that do not have false positives. But this is a direction that is very new in the field.” Her own research involves using assembly theory and mass spectrometry to identify molecules that are too complex to form abiotically.

Those alternatives might be the best course given the current state of science funding in the US. “In planetary science and astrobiology, the funding cuts to the NASA science mission directorate makes it really difficult to imagine a near future in which we can actually do the analysis,” said Wong. “We need to determine whether or not these ancient Mars rocks do or do not contain signs of alien life. We’re leaving on the doorstep this really intriguing question that we can answer if we brought the samples back to Earth, but we simply aren’t going to. We could be on the steps of a golden age of astrobiology if only we had the willpower to do it.”

DOI: Nature, 2025. 10.1038/s41586-025-09413-0 (About DOIs).

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

Has Perseverance found a biosignature on Mars? Read More »

Accessory maker will pay Nintendo after showing illicit Switch 2 mockups at CES

3d printed, CES, gaming, genki, leak, legal, mockup, Nintendo, switch 2 / Mike M. / September 9, 2025

Nintendo also accused Genki of “extensive use of Nintendo trademarks” in association with their unlicensed products, a move that “exploit[ed] and appropriate[d] for [Genki] the public goodwill associated with… Nintendo Switch marks.”

The Switch 2 mockup Genki showed in a CES video ended up matching very closely with the final console as released. Credit: Genki

The lawsuit also dealt in part with conflicting reports that Genki may have had “unauthorized, illegal early access to the Nintendo Switch 2,” as Nintendo put it. Media reports around CES quoted Genki representatives asserting that their 3D-printed case mockup was based on early access to a real Switch 2 console. But the company later publicly backtracked, writing on social media that “we do not own or possess a black market console, as some outlets have suggested.”

In their settlement, Nintendo and Genki simply note that “Genki represents and attests that it didn’t obtain any unreleased Nintendo property or documents before the system’s official reveal.”

The public settlement document doesn’t go into detail on the confidential “payment in an agreed-upon amount” that Genki will make to Nintendo to put this matter to rest. But the settlement outlines how Genki is barred from referencing Nintendo trademarks or even parody names like “Glitch” and “Glitch 2” in its future marketing. Under the settlement, packaging for Genki accessories also has to “make clear to consumers Genki’s status as an unlicensed accessory manufacturer” and not mimic the color scheme of official Switch 2 hardware.

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In court filing, Google concedes the open web is in “rapid decline”

advertising, AI, antitrust, Google, search, Tech / Mike M. / September 9, 2025

Advertising and the open web

Google objects to this characterization. A spokesperson calls it a “cherry-picked” line from the filing that has been misconstrued. Google’s position is that the entire passage is referring to open-web advertising rather than the open web itself. “Investments in non-open web display advertising like connected TV and retail media are growing at the expense of those in open web display advertising,” says Google.

If we assume this is true, it doesn’t exactly let Google off the hook. As AI tools have proliferated, we’ve heard from Google time and time again that traffic from search to the web is healthy. When people use the web more, Google makes more money from all those eyeballs on ads, and indeed, Google’s earnings have never been higher. However, Google isn’t just putting ads on websites—Google is also big in mobile apps. As Google’s own filings make clear, in-app ads are by far the largest growth sector in advertising. Meanwhile, time spent on non-social and non-video content is stagnant or slightly declining, and as a result, display ads on the open web earn less.

So, whether Google’s wording in the filing is meant to address the web or advertising on the web may be a distinction without a difference. If ads on websites aren’t making the big bucks, Google’s incentives will undoubtedly change. While Google says its increasingly AI-first search experience is still consistently sending traffic to websites, it has not released data to show that. If display ads are in “rapid decline,” then it’s not really in Google’s interest to continue sending traffic to non-social and non-video content. Maybe it makes more sense to keep people penned up on its platform where they can interact with its AI tools.

Of course, the web isn’t just ad-supported content—Google representatives have repeatedly trotted out the claim that Google’s crawlers have seen a 45 percent increase in indexable content since 2023. This metric, Google says, shows that open web advertising could be imploding while the web is healthy and thriving. We don’t know what kind of content is in this 45 percent, but given the timeframe cited, AI slop is a safe bet.

If the increasingly AI-heavy open web isn’t worth advertisers’ attention, is it really right to claim the web is thriving as Google so often does? Google’s filing may simply be admitting to what we all know: the open web is supported by advertising, and ads increasingly can’t pay the bills. And is that a thriving web? Not unless you count AI slop.

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Author name: Mike M.