Science – Page 8

Mars’ polar ice cap is slowly pushing its north pole inward

geology, Insight, Mars, mars quakes, planetary science, polar ice cap, Science / DJ Henderson / March 1, 2025

The orbiters that carried the radar hardware, along with one or two others, have been orbiting long enough that any major changes in Mars’ gravity caused by ice accumulation or crustal displacement would have shown up in their orbital behavior. The orbital changes they do see, “indicates that the increase in the gravitational potential associated with long-term ice accumulation is higher than the decrease in gravitational potential from downward deflection.” They calculate that the deformation has to be less than 0.13 millimeters per year to be consistent with the gravitational signal.

Finally, the model had to have realistic conditions at the polar ice cap, with a density consistent with a mixture of ice and dust.

Out of those 84 models, only three were consistent with all of these constraints. All three had a very viscous Martian interior, consistent with a relatively cold interior. That’s not a surprise, given what we’ve already inferred about Mars’ history. But it also suggests that most of the radioactive elements that provide heat to the red planet are in the crust, rather than deeper in the interior. That’s something we might have been able to check, had InSight’s temperature measurement experiment deployed correctly. But as it is, we’ll have to wait until some unidentified future mission to get a picture of Mars’ heat dynamics.

In any case, the models also suggest that Mars’ polar ice cap is less than 10 million years old, consistent with the orbitally driven climate models.

In a lot of ways, the new information is an update of earlier attempts to model the Martian interior, given a few more years of orbital data and the information gained from the InSight lander, which also determined the thickness of Mars’ crust and size of its core. But it’s also a good way of understanding how scientists can take bits and pieces of information from seemingly unrelated sources and build them into a coherent picture.

Nature, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08565-9 (About DOIs).

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Research roundup: 7 cool science stories from February

ancient egypt, fluid dynamics, Herculaneum scrolls, Physics, research roundup, Science / Shannon Garcia / March 1, 2025

Dancing sea turtles, the discovery of an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb, perfectly boiled eggs, and more.

X-ray image of the PHerc.172 scroll Credit: Vesuvius Challenge

It’s a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection. February’s list includes dancing sea turtles, the secret to a perfectly boiled egg, the latest breakthrough in deciphering the Herculaneum scrolls, the discovery of an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb, and more.

Dancing sea turtles

There is growing evidence that certain migratory animal species (turtles, birds, some species of fish) are able to exploit the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation, using it both as a compass to determine direction and as a kind of “map” to track their geographical position while migrating. A paper published in the journal Nature offers evidence of a possible mechanism for this unusual ability, at least in loggerhead sea turtles, who perform an energetic “dance” when they follow magnetic fields to a tasty snack.

Sea turtles make impressive 8,000-mile migrations across oceans and tend to return to the same feeding and nesting sites. The authors believe they achieve this through their ability to remember the magnetic signature of those areas and store them in a mental map. To test that hypothesis, the scientists placed juvenile sea turtles into two large tanks of water outfitted with large coils to create magnetic signatures at specific locations within the tanks. One tank features such a location that had food; the other had a similar location without food.

They found that the sea turtles in the first tank performed distinctive “dancing” moves when they arrived at the area associated with food: tilting their bodies, dog-paddling, spinning in place, or raising their head near or above the surface of the water. When they ran a second experiment using different radio frequencies, they found that the change interfered with the turtles’ internal compass, and they could not orient themselves while swimming. The authors concluded that this is compelling evidence that the sea turtles can distinguish between magnetic fields, possibly relying on complex chemical reactions, i.e., “magnetoreception.” The map sense, however, likely relies on a different mechanism.

Nature, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08554-y (About DOIs).

Long-lost tomb of Thutmose II

Archaeologists found a simple tomb near Luxor and identified it as the 3,500-year-old burial site of King Thutmose II. Credit: Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Thutmose II was the fourth pharaoh of the Tutankhamun (18th) dynasty. He reigned only about 13 years and married his half-sister Hatshepsut (who went on to become the sixth pharaoh in the dynasty). Archaeologists have now confirmed that a tomb built underneath a waterfall in the mountains in Luxor and discovered in 2022 is the final resting place of Thutmose II. It’s the last of the 18th dynasty royal tombs to be found, more than a century after Tutankhamun’s tomb was found in 1922.

When it was first found, archaeologists thought the tomb might be that of a king’s wife, given its close proximity to Hatshepsut’s tomb and those of the wives of Thutmose III. But they found fragments of alabaster vases inscribed with Thutmose II’s name, along with scraps of religious burial texts and plaster fragments on the partially intact ceiling with traces of blue paint and yellow stars—typically only found in kings’ tombs. Something crucial was missing, however: the actual mummy and grave goods of Thutmose II.

It’s long been assumed that the king’s mummy was discovered in the 19th century at another site called Deir el-Bahari. But archaeologist Piers Litherland, who headed the British team that discovered the tomb, thinks that identification was in error. An inscription stated that Hatshepsut had the tomb’s contents relocated due to flooding. Litherland believes the pharaoh’s actual mummy is buried in a second tomb. Confirmation (or not) of his hypothesis won’t come until after archaeologists finish excavating what he thinks is the site of that second tomb, which is currently buried under multiple layers of rock and plaster.

Hidden images in Pollock paintings

“Troubled Queen” reveals a “hidden” figure, possibly a soldier. Credit: D.A. Morrissette et al., CNS Spectrums 2025

Physicists have long been fascinated by the drip paintings of “splatter master” Jackson Pollock, pondering the presence of fractal patterns (or lack thereof), as well as the presence of curls and coils in his work and whether the artist deliberately exploited a well-known fluid dynamics effect to achieve them—or deliberately avoided them. Now psychiatrists are getting into the game, arguing in a paper published in CNS Spectrums that Pollock—known to incorporate images into his early pre-drip paintings—also used many of the same images repeatedly in his later abstract drip paintings.

People have long claimed to see images in those drip paintings, but the phenomenon is usually dismissed by art critics as a trick of human perception, much like the fractal edges of Rorschach ink blots can fool the eye and mind. The authors of this latest paper analyzed Pollock’s early painting “Troubled Queen” and found multiple images incorporated into the painting, which they believe establishes a basis for their argument that Pollock also incorporated such images into his later drip painting, albeit possibly subconsciously.

“Seeing an image once in a drip painting could be random,” said co-author Stephen M. Stahl of the University of California, San Diego. “Seeing the same image twice in different paintings could be a coincidence. Seeing it three or more times—as is the case for booze bottles, monkeys and gorillas, elephants, and many other subjects and objects in Pollock’s paintings—makes those images very unlikely to be randomly provoked perceptions without any basis in reality.”

CNS Spectrums, 2025. DOI: 10.1017/S1092852924001470

Solving a fluid dynamics mystery

Soap opera in the maze: Geometry matters in Marangoni flows.

Every fall, the American Physical Society exhibits a Gallery of Fluid Motion, which recognizes the innate artistry of images and videos derived from fluid dynamics research. Several years ago, physicists at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) submitted an entry featuring a pool of red dye, propelled by a few drops of soap acting as a surfactant, that seemed to “know” how to solve a maze whose corridors were filled with milk. This is unusual since one would expect the dye to diffuse more uniformly. The team has now solved that puzzle, according to a paper published in Physical Review Letters.

The key factor is surface tension, specifically a phenomenon known as the Marangoni effect, which also drives the “coffee ring effect” and the “tears of wine” phenomenon. If you spread a thin film of water on your kitchen counter and place a single drop of alcohol in the center, you’ll see the water flow outward, away from the alcohol. The difference in their alcohol concentrations creates a surface tension gradient, driving the flow.

In the case of the UCSB experiment, the soap reduces local surface tension around the red dye to set the dye in motion. There are also already surfactants in the milk that work in combination with the soapy surfactant to “solve” the maze. The milk surfactants create varying points of resistance as the dye makes its way through the maze. A dead end or a small space will have more resistance, redirecting the dye toward routes with less resistance—and ultimately to the maze’s exit. “That means the added surfactant instantly knows the layout of the maze,” said co-author Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz.

Physical Review Letters, 2025. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1802831115

How to cook a perfectly boiled egg

There’s more than one way to boil an egg, whether one likes it hard-boiled, soft-boiled, or somewhere in between. The challenge is that eggs have what physicists call a “two-phase” structure: The yolk cooks at 65° Celsius, while the white (albumen) cooks at 85° Celsius. This often results in overcooked yolks or undercooked whites when conventional methods are used. Physicists at the Italian National Research Council think they’ve cracked the case: The perfectly cooked egg is best achieved via a painstaking process called “periodic cooking,” according to a paper in the journal Communications Engineering.

They started with a few fluid dynamics simulations to develop a method and then tested that method in the laboratory. The process involves transferring a cooking egg every two minutes—for 32 minutes—between a pot of boiling water (100° Celsius) and a bowl of cold water (30° Celsius). They compared their periodically cooked eggs with traditionally prepared hard-boiled and soft-boiled eggs, as well as eggs prepared using sous vide. The periodically cooked eggs ended up with soft yolks (typical of sous vide eggs) and a solidified egg white with a consistency between sous vide and soft-boiled eggs. Chemical analysis showed the periodically cooked eggs also contained more healthy polyphenols. “Periodic cooking clearly stood out as the most advantageous cooking method in terms of egg nutritional content,” the authors concluded.

Communications Engineering, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s44172-024-00334-w

More progress on deciphering Herculaneum scrolls

X-ray scans and AI reveal the inside of ancient scroll — X-ray scans and AI reveal the inside of an ancient scroll. Credit: Vesuvius Challenge

The Vesuvius Challenge is an ongoing project that employs “digital unwrapping” and crowd-sourced machine learning to decipher the first letters from previously unreadable ancient scrolls found in an ancient Roman villa at Herculaneum. The 660-plus scrolls stayed buried under volcanic mud until they were excavated in the 1700s from a single room that archaeologists believe held the personal working library of an Epicurean philosopher named Philodemus. The badly singed, rolled-up scrolls were so fragile that it was long believed they would never be readable, as even touching them could cause them to crumble.

In 2023, the Vesuvius Challenge made its first award for deciphering the first letters, and last year, the project awarded the grand prize of $700,000 for producing the first readable text. The latest breakthrough is the successful generation of the first X-ray image of the inside of a scroll (PHerc. 172) housed in Oxford University’s Bodleian Libraries—a collaboration with the Vesuvius Challenge. The scroll’s ink has a unique chemical composition, possibly containing lead, which means it shows up more clearly in X-ray scans than other Herculaneum scrolls that have been scanned.

The machine learning aspect of this latest breakthrough focused primarily on detecting the presence of ink, not deciphering the characters or text. Oxford scholars are currently working to interpret the text. The first word to be translated was the Greek word for “disgust,” which appears twice in nearby columns of text. Meanwhile, the Vesuvius Challenge collaborators continue to work to further refine the image to make the characters even more legible and hope to digitally “unroll” the scroll all the way to the end, where the text likely indicates the title of the work.

What ancient Egyptian mummies smell like

mummified bodies in the exhibition area of the Egyptian museum in Cairo. — Mummified bodies in the exhibition area of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Credit: Emma Paolin

Much of what we know about ancient Egyptian embalming methods for mummification comes from ancient texts, but there are very few details about the specific spices, oils, resins, and other ingredients used. Science can help tease out the secret ingredients. For instance, a 2018 study analyzed organic residues from a mummy’s wrappings with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and found that the wrappings were saturated with a mixture of plant oil, an aromatic plant extract, a gum or sugar, and heated conifer resin. Researchers at University College London have now identified the distinctive smells associated with Egyptian mummies—predominantly”woody,” “spicy,” and “sweet,” according to a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The team coupled gas chromatography with mass spectrometry to measure chemical molecules emitted by nine mummified bodies on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and then asked a panel of trained human “sniffers” to describe the samples smells, rating them by quality, intensity, and pleasantness. This enabled them to identify whether a given odor molecule came from the mummy itself, conservation products, pesticides, or the body’s natural deterioration. The work offers additional clues into the materials used in mummification, as well as making it possible for the museum to create interactive “smellscapes” in future displays so visitors can experience the scents as well as the sights of ancient Egyptian mummies.

Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2025. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.4c15769

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.

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Rocket Report: Starship will soon fly again; Gilmour has a launch date

falcon 9, Gilmour space, h-iia, Japan, launch, NASA, rocket report, Science, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship / Kelly Newman / February 28, 2025

One Falcon 9 launched an Intuitive Machines lunar lander, an asteroid prospector, and a NASA science probe.

Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, stands inside a test version of the “Hungry Hippo,” a nickname used to describe the clamshell-like nose cone of the Neutron rocket’s first stage booster. The fairing will open in flight to release Neutron’s second and payloads to continue into orbit, then close as the booster comes back to Earth for recovery. Credit: Rocket Lab

Welcome to Edition 7.33 of the Rocket Report! Phew, what a week for Rocket Lab! The company released a bevy of announcements in conjunction with its quarterly earnings report Thursday. Rocket Lab is spending a lot of money to develop the medium-lift rocket Neutron rocket, and as we’ll discuss below, a rocket landing platform and a new satellite design. For now, the company is sticking by its public statements that the Neutron rocket will launch this year—the official line is it will debut in the second half of 2025—but this schedule assumes near-perfect execution on the program. “We’ve always been clear that we run aggressive schedules,” said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO. The official schedule doesn’t quite allow me to invoke a strict interpretation of Berger’s Law, which states that if a rocket’s debut is predicted to happen in the fourth quarter of a year, and that quarter is six or more months away, the launch will be delayed. However, the spirit of the law seems valid here. This time last year, Rocket Lab targeted a first launch by the end of 2024, an aggressive target that has come and gone.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Australian startup sets a launch date. The first attempt to send an Australian-made rocket into orbit is set to take place no sooner than March 15, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. Gilmour Space Technologies’ launch window announcement marks a major development for the company, which has been working towards a test launch for a decade. Gilmour previously hoped to launch its test rocket, Eris, in May 2024, but had to wait for the Australian government to issue a launch license and airspace approvals for the flight to go forward. Those are now in hand, clearing the last regulatory hurdle before liftoff.

Setting expectations … Gilmour’s Eris rocket is made of three stages powered by hybrid engines consuming a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer. Eris is designed to haul payloads of up to 672 pounds (305 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit, and will launch from Bowen Orbital Spaceport in Queensland on Australia’s northeastern coast. Gilmour said it would be “very lucky” if the rocket reached orbit on first attempt. “Success means different things for different people, but ignition and liftoff will be huge,” said James Gilmour, the company’s co-founder. (submitted by ZygP)

Blue Origin is keeping a secret. Blue Origin conducted the tenth crewed flight of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle Tuesday, carrying six people, one of whom remained at least semi-anonymous, Space News reports. The five passengers Blue Origin identified come from business and entertainment backgrounds, but in a break from past missions, the company did not disclose the identity of the sixth person, with hosts of the company webcast saying that individual “requested we not share his name today.” Photos released by the company before the launch, and footage from the webcast, showed that person to be a man wearing a flight suit with an “R. Wilson” nametag, and the NS-30 mission patch also included “Wilson” with the names of the other members of the crew. Not disclosing the name of someone who has been to space has little precedent.

Big names on NS-31 … Some of the passengers Blue Origin will fly on the next New Shepard crew mission lack the anonymity of R. Wilson. The next flight, designated NS-31, will carry an all-female crew, including music star Katy Perry, CBS host Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez, a former journalist who is engaged to Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin identified the other three passengers as Aisha Bowe, Amanda Ngyuen, and Kerianne Flynn. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Virgin Galactic is still blowing through cash. Virgin Galactic reported a net loss of $347 million in 2024, compared to a $502 million net loss in 2023, with the improvement primarily driven by lower operating expenses, the company said this week in a quarterly earnings release. These lower operating expenses are tied to Virgin Galactic’s decision to suspend operations of its VSS Unity suborbital rocket plane last year to focus investment into a new series of suborbital spacecraft known as Delta-class ships. Virgin Galactic said cash and cash equivalents fell 18 percent from the same period a year ago to $178.6 million. Investors have been eager for details on when it would resume—and then ramp up—flights to increase sales and cash in on a backlog of around 700 ticket holders, Bloomberg reports.

March toward manufacturing … Virgin Galactic said it plans to start assembling its first Delta-class ship in March, with a first flight targeted for the summer of 2026, two years after it stopped flying VSS Unity. The Delta ships will be easier to recycle between flights, and will carry six paying passengers, rather than the four VSS Unity carried on each flight. Company officials believe a higher flight rate with more passengers will bring in significantly more revenue, which was reported at just $430,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Japanese customers seem to love Rocket Lab. While Rocket Lab is developing the larger Neutron rocket, the company’s operational Electron launch vehicle continues to dominate the market for dedicated launches of small satellites. Rocket Lab announced Thursday it signed a new multi-launch deal with iQPS, a Japan-based Earth imaging company. The new deal follows an earlier multi-launch contract signed with iQPS in 2024 and brings the total number of booked dedicated Electron launches for iQPS to eight.

Radar is all the rage … These eight Electron launches in 2025 and 2026 will help iQPS build out its planned constellation of 36 radar remote sensing satellites capable of imaging the Earth day and night, and through any weather. The new deal is one of the largest Electron launch agreements to date, second only to Rocket Lab’s ten launch deal with another Japanese radar constellation operator, Synspective, signed last year. (submitted by zapman987)

Falcon 9 launch targets Moon and asteroid. With two commercial Moon landers already on their way, Houston-based Intuitive Machines launched its second robotic lander atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday, CBS News reports. Given the on-time launch and assuming no major problems, the Athena lander is expected to descend to touchdown on a flat mesa-like structure known as Mons Mouton on March 6, setting down just 100 miles from the Moon’s south pole—closer than any other spacecraft has attempted. Intuitive Machines became the first company to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon last year, but the Athena lander will pursue more complex goals. It will test a NASA-provided drill designed to search for subsurface ice, deploy a small “micro-rover,” and dispatch a rocket-powered drone to explore a permanently shadowed crater.

Hitching a ride … The Athena lander didn’t take up all the capacity of the Falcon 9 rocket. Three other spacecraft also rocketed into space Wednesday night. These rideshare payloads were AstroForge’s commercially developed Odin asteroid prospector to search for potentially valuable mineral deposits, NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite to characterize lunar ice from a perch in lunar orbit, and a compact space tug from Epic Aerospace. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

This rocket got a visitor for the first time since 2009. Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission became the first spacecraft (at least in the unclassified world) to approach a piece of space junk in low-Earth orbit, Ars reports. This particular object, a derelict upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket, has been in orbit since 2009. It’s one of about 2,000 spent rocket bodies circling the Earth and one of more than 45,000 objects in orbit tracked by US Space Command. Astroscale, based in Tokyo, built and launched the ADRAS-J mission in partnership with the Japanese space agency as a demonstration to show how a commercial satellite could rendezvous with an object in orbit that was never designed to receive visitors.

Next steps … ADRAS-J worked like a champ, closing in to a distance of less than 50 feet (15 meters) from the H-IIA rocket as it orbited several hundred miles above the Earth. The rocket is a “non-cooperative” object representative of other large pieces of space junk, which Astroscale wants to remove from orbit with a series of trash collecting satellites like ADRAS-J. But this demo only validated part of the technology required for space debris removal. Japan’s space agency and Astroscale are partnering on another mission, ADRAS-J2, for launch in 2027 to go up and latch on to the same H-IIA rocket and steer it out of orbit toward a controlled reentry over the ocean.

An update on Falcon 9’s upper stage. SpaceX said that a Falcon 9 upper stage that reentered over Europe earlier this month suffered a propellant leak that prevented it from doing a controlled reentry, Space News reports. The upper stage was placed in orbit on a February 1 launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. After deploying its payload of 22 Starlink satellites, the upper stage was expected to perform a burn to enable a controlled reentry over the ocean, a standard procedure on most Falcon 9 launches to low-Earth orbit. The stage, though, did not appear to perform the burn and remained in orbit. Its orbit decayed from atmospheric drag and the stage reentered over Europe on February 19. Debris from the Falcon 9 second stage, including composite overwrapped pressure vessels, fell in Poland, landing near the city of Poznań.

Higher than expected body rates … In an update posted to its website this week, SpaceX blamed the upper stage anomaly on a liquid oxygen leak. “During the coast phase of this Starlink mission, a small liquid oxygen leak developed, which ultimately drove higher than expected vehicle body rates,” SpaceX said. SpaceX aborted the deorbit burn and instead passivated the upper stage, a process where the rocket discharges energy from its batteries and vents leftover propellant from its tanks to minimize the risk of a break-up in orbit. This was the third incident involving a Falcon 9 upper stage in a little more than six months. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Rocket Lab’s reveals “Return On Investment.” Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket is designed for partial reusability, and the company unveiled Thursday an important piece of infrastructure to make this a reality. Neutron’s first stage booster will land on a modified barge named “Return On Investment” measuring around 400 feet (122 meters) wide, somewhat bigger than SpaceX’s drone ships used for Falcon 9 landings at sea. In order to prep the barge for rocket duty, the company is adding autonomous ground support equipment to capture and secure the landed Neutron, blast shielding to protect equipment during Neutron landings, and station-keeping thrusters for precise positioning. It should be ready to enter service in 2026. Rocket Lab also has the option to return the Neutron first stage back to the launch site when mission parameters allow the rocket to reserve enough propellant to make the return journey.

More news from Rocket Lab … Continuing the firehose of news from Rocket Lab this week, the company announced a new satellite design called “Flatellite” that looks remarkably similar to SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. The satellite is flat in shape, hence its name, and stackable to fit as many spacecraft as possible into the envelope of a rocket’s payload fairing. Rocket Lab said the new satellite “can be produced in high volumes and (is) tailored for large constellations, targeting high value applications and national security missions.” (submitted by zapman987)

The writing is on the wall for SLS. The lights may be starting to go out for NASA’s Space Launch System program. On Wednesday, one of the Republican space policy leaders most consistently opposed to commercial heavy lift rockets over the last decade—as an alternative to NASA’s large SLS rocket—has changed his mind, Ars reports. “We need an off-ramp for reliance on the SLS,” said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, in written testimony before a congressional hearing about US space policy.

Not keeping Pace … A physicist and influential policy expert, Pace has decades of experience researching and writing space policy. He has served in multiple Republican administrations, most recently as executive secretary of the National Space Council from 2017 to 2020. He strongly advocated for the SLS rocket after Congress directed NASA to develop it in 2011. As part of his policy recommendations, Pace said NASA should seek to use commercial providers of heavy lift launch so that NASA can send “multiple” crew and cargo missions to the Moon each year. He notes that the SLS rocket is not reusable and is incapable of a high flight rate. Commercial options from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance are now available, Pace wrote.

The verdict is in for Starship Flight 7. SpaceX believes the spectacular break-up of Starship’s upper stage during its most recent test flight was caused by a harmonic response that stressed onboard hardware, leading to a fire and loss of the vehicle, Aviation Week reports. Higher-than-expected vibrations stressed hardware in the ship’s propulsion system, triggering propellant leaks and sustained fires until the test flight ended prematurely. The rocket broke apart and deposited debris over the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Atlantic Ocean, and forced dozens of commercial and private aircraft to delay their flights or steer into safer airspace.

Whole lotta shaking … SpaceX’s description of the problem as a harmonic response suggests vibrations during Starship’s climb into space were in resonance with the vehicle’s natural frequency. This would have intensified the vibrations beyond the levels engineers expected from ground testing. SpaceX completed an extended duration static fire of the next Starship upper stage to test hardware modifications at multiple engine thrust levels. According to SpaceX, findings from the static fire informed changes to the fuel feed lines to Starship’s Raptor engines, adjustments to propellant temperatures, and a new operating thrust for the next test flight, which could launch from South Texas as soon as Monday.

Next three launches

March 1: Kuaizhou 1A | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 10: 00 UTC

March 2: Ceres 1 | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 08: 10 UTC

March 2: Soyuz-2.1b | Glonass-K2 No. 14L | Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia | 22: 22 UTC

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.

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Astroscale aced the world’s first rendezvous with a piece of space junk

Astroscale, Japan, JAXA, satellite servicing, Science, Space, space debris, space junk / Beth Washington / February 28, 2025

Astroscale’s US subsidiary won a $25.5 million contract from the US Space Force in 2023 to build a satellite refueler that can hop around geostationary orbit. Like the ADRAS-J mission, this project is a public-private partnership, with Astroscale committing $12 million of its own money. In January, the Japanese government selected Astroscale for a contract worth up to $80 million to demonstrate chemical refueling in low-Earth orbit.

The latest win for Astroscale came Thursday, when the Japanese Ministry of Defense awarded the company a contract to develop a prototype satellite that could fly in geostationary orbit and collect information on other objects in the domain for Japan’s military and intelligence agencies.

“We are very bullish on the prospects for defense-related business,” said Nobu Matsuyama, Astroscale’s chief financial officer.

Astroscale’s other projects include a life extension mission for an unidentified customer in geostationary orbit, providing a similar service as Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV).

So, can Astroscale really do all of this? In an era of a militarized final frontier, it’s easy to see the usefulness of sidling up next to a “non-cooperative” satellite—whether it’s to refuel it, repair it, de-orbit it, inspect it, or (gasp!) disable it. Astroscale’s demonstration with ADRAS-J showed it can safely operate near another object in space without navigation aids, which is foundational to any of these applications.

So far, governments are driving demand for this kind of work.

Astroscale raised nearly $400 million in venture capital funding before going public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange last June. After quickly spiking to nearly $1 billion, the company’s market valuation has dropped to about $540 million as of Thursday. Astroscale has around 590 full-time employees across all its operating locations.

Matsuyama said Astroscale’s total backlog is valued at about 38.9 billion yen, or $260 million. The company is still in a ramp-up phase, reporting operating losses on its balance sheet and steep research and development spending that Matsuyama said should max out this year.

“We are the only company that has proved RPO technology for non-cooperative objects, like debris, in space,” Okada said last month.

“In simple terms, this means approach and capture of objects,” Okada continued. “This capability did not exist before us, but one’s mastering of this technology enables you to provide not only debris removal service, but also orbit correction, refueling, inspection, observation, and eventually repair and reuse services.”

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Brewing tea removes lead from water

chemistry, food chemistry, lead contamination, Science, tea / Kelly Newman / February 26, 2025

Testing the teas

Scanning electron microscope image of black tea leaves, magnified by 500 times. Black tea, which is wilted and fully oxidized, exhibits a wrinkled surface, potentially increasing the available surface area for adsorption. Credit: Vinayak P. Dravid Group/Northwestern University

To test their hypothesis, the authors purchased Lipton and Infusions commercial tea bags, as well as a variety of loose-leaf teas and herbal alternatives: black tea, green tea, white peony tea, oolong tea, rooibos tea, and chamomile tea. The tea bags were of different types (cotton, cellulose, and nylon). They brewed the tea the same way daily tea drinkers do, steeping the tea for various time intervals (mere seconds to 24 hours) in water spiked with elevated known levels of lead, chromium, copper zinc, and cadmium. Tea leaves were removed after steeping by pouring the tea through a cellulose filter into a separate tube. The team then measured how much of the toxic metals remained in the water and how much the leaves had adsorbed.

It turns out that the type of tea bag matters. The team found that cellulose tea bags work the best at adsorbing toxic metals from the water while cotton and nylon tea bags barely adsorbed any contaminants at all—and nylon bags also release contaminating microplastics to boot. Tea type and the grind level also played a part in adsorbing toxic metals, with finely ground black tea leaves performing the best on that score. This is because when those leaves are processed, they get wrinkled, which opens the pores, thereby adding more surface area. Grinding the tea further increases that surface area, with even more capacity for binding toxic metals.

But the most significant factor was steeping time: the longer the steeping time, the more toxic metals were adsorbed. Based on their experiments, the authors estimate that brewing tea—using a tea bag that steeps for three to five minutes in a mug—can remove about 15 percent of lead from drinking water, even water with concentrations as high as 10 parts per million.

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COVID shots protect kids from long COVID—and don’t cause sudden death

COVID-19, health, kids, long COVID, Science, sudden cardiac arrest, sudden cardiac death / 9u50fv / February 25, 2025

Benefits and a non-existent risk

Using an adjusted odds ratio, the researchers found that vaccination reduced the likelihood of developing long COVID with one or more symptoms by 57 percent, and reduced the likelihood of developing long COVID with two or more symptoms by 73 percent. Vaccination prior to infection was also linked to a 75 percent reduction in risk of developing long COVID that impacted day-to-day functioning. The authors note that the estimates of protection are likely underestimates because the calculations do not account for the fact that vaccination prevented some children from getting infected in the first place.

“Our findings suggest that children should stay up to date with current COVID-19 vaccination recommendations as vaccination not only protects against severe COVID-19 illness but also protects against [long Covid],” the authors conclude.

In a second short report in JAMA Network Open, researchers helped dispel concern that the vaccines could cause sudden cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death in young athletes. This is an unproven claim that was fueled by anti-vaccine advocates amid the pandemic, including the new US Health Secretary and long-time anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

While previous analyses have failed to find a link between COVID-19 vaccines and sudden cardiac deaths, the new study took a broader approach. The study, led by researchers at the University of Washington, looked at whether the number of sudden cardiac arrests (SCA) and sudden cardiac deaths (SCD) among young athletes changed at all during the pandemic (2020–2022) compared with prior years (2017–2019). The researchers drew records from the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. They also collected medical records and autopsy reports on cases among competitive athletes from the youth, middle school, high school, club, college, or professional levels who experienced sudden cardiac arrest or death at any time.

In all, there were 387 cases, with no statistically significant difference in the number of cases in the years prior to the pandemic (203) compared with those during the pandemic (184).

“This cohort study found no increase in SCA/SCD in young competitive athletes in the US during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that reports asserting otherwise were overestimating the cardiovascular risk of COVID-19 infection, vaccination, and myocarditis,” the authors conclude.

COVID shots protect kids from long COVID—and don’t cause sudden death Read More »

In war against DEI in science, researchers see collateral damage

dei, Policy, Science, syndication, trump administration / Mike M. / February 24, 2025

Senate Republicans flagged thousands of grants as “woke DEI” research. What does that really mean?

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at a hearing on Tuesday, January 28, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Tom Williams

When he realized that Senate Republicans were characterizing his federally funded research project as one of many they considered ideological and of questionable scientific value, Darren Lipomi, chair of the chemical engineering department at the University of Rochester, was incensed. The work, he complained on social media, was aimed at helping “throat cancer patients recover from radiation therapy faster.” And yet, he noted on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and X, his project was among nearly 3,500 National Science Foundation grants recently described by the likes of Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican and chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, as “woke DEI” research. These projects, Cruz argued, were driven by “Neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” and “far-left ideologies.”

“Needless to say,” Lipomi wrote of his research, “this project is not espousing class warfare.”

The list of grants was compiled by a group of Senate Republicans last fall and released to the public earlier this month, and while the NSF does not appear to have taken any action in response to the complaints, the list’s existence is adding to an atmosphere of confusion and worry among researchers in the early days of President Donald J. Trump’s second administration. Lipomi, for his part, described the situation as absurd. Others described it as chilling.

“Am I going to be somehow identified as an immigrant that’s exploiting federal funding streams and so I would just get deported? I have no idea,” said cell biologist Shumpei Maruyama, an early-career scientist and Japanese immigrant with permanent residency in the US, upon seeing his research on the government watch list. “That’s a fear.”

Just being on that list, he added, “is scary.”

The NSF, an independent government agency, accounts for around one-quarter of federal funding for science and engineering research at American colleges and universities. The 3,483 flagged projects total more than $2 billion and represent more than 10 percent of all NSF grants awarded between January 2021 and April 2024. The list encompasses research in all 50 states, including 257 grants totaling more than $150 million to institutions in Cruz’s home state of Texas.

The flagged grants, according to the committee report, “went to questionable projects that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) tenets or pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.” The committee cast a wide net, using a programming tool to trawl more than 32,000 project descriptions for 699 keywords and phrases that they identified as linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Cruz has characterized the list as a response to a scientific grantmaking process that had become mired in political considerations, rather than focused on core research goals. “The Biden administration politicized everything it touched,” Cruz told Undark and NOTUS. “Science research is important, but we should want researchers spending time trying to figure out how to cure cancer, how to cure deadly diseases, not bean counting to satisfy the political agenda of Washington Democrats.”

“The ubiquity of these DEI requirements that the Biden administration engrafted on virtually everything,” Cruz added, “pulls a lot of good research money away from needed research to satisfy the political pet projects of Democrats.”

Others described the list—and other moves against DEI initiatives in research—as reversing decades-old bipartisan policies intended to strengthen US science. For past Congresses and administrations, including the first Trump term, DEI concepts were not controversial, said Neal F. Lane, who served as NSF director in the 1990s and as a science adviser to former President Bill Clinton. “Budget after budget was appropriated funds specifically to address these issues, to make sure all Americans have an opportunity to contribute to advancement of science and technology in the country,” he said. “And that the country then, in turn, benefits from their participation.”

At the same time, he added: “Politics can be ugly.”

Efforts to promote diversity in research predate the Biden administration. A half a century ago, the NSF established a goal of increasing the number of women and underrepresented groups in science. The agency began targeting programs for minority-serving institutions as well as minority faculty and students.

In the 1990s, Lane, as NSF director, ushered in the requirement that, in addition to intellectual merit, reviewers should consider a grant proposal’s “broader impacts.” In general, he said, the aim was to encourage science that would benefit society.

The broader impacts requirement remains today. Among other options, researchers can fulfill it by including a project component that increases the participation of women, underrepresented minorities in STEM, and people with disabilities. They can also meet the requirement by promoting science education or educator development, or by demonstrating that a project will build a more diverse workforce.

The Senate committee turned up thousands of “DEI” grants because the broad search not only snagged projects with a primary goal of increasing diversity—such as a $1.2 million grant to the Colorado School of Mines for a center to train engineering students to promote equity among their peers—but also research that referenced diversity in describing its broader impact or in describing study populations. Lipomi’s project, for example, was likely flagged because it mentions recruiting a diverse group of participants, analyzing results according to socioeconomic status, and posits that patients with disabilities might benefit from wearable devices for rehabilitation.

According to the committee report, concepts related to race, gender, societal status, as well as social and environmental justice undermine hard science. They singled out projects that identified groups of people as underrepresented, underserved, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or excluded; recognized inequities; or referenced climate research.

Red flags also included words like “gender,” “ethnicity,” and “sexuality,” along with scores of associated terms — “female,” “women,” “interracial,” “heterosexual,” “LGBTQ,” as well as “Black,” “White,” “Hispanic,” or “Indigenous” when referring to groups of people. “Status” also made the list along with words such as “biased,” “disability,” “minority,” and “socioeconomic.”

In addition, the committee flagged “environmental justice” and terms that they placed in that category such as “climate change,” “climate research,” and “clean energy.”

The committee individually reviewed grants for more than $1 million, according to the report.

The largest grant on the list awarded more than $29 million to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which contributes to the vast computing resources needed for artificial intelligence research. “I don’t know exactly why we were flagged, because we’re an AI resource for the nation,” said NCSA Director William Gropp.

One possible reason for the flag, Gropp theorized, is that one of the project’s aims is to provide computing power to states that have historically received less funding for research and development—including many Republican-leaning states—as well as minority-serving institutions. The proposal also states that a lack of diversity contributes to “embedded biases and other systemic inequalities found in AI systems today.”

The committee also flagged a grant with a total intended award amount of $26 million to a consortium of five institutions in North Carolina to establish an NSF Engineering Research Center to engineer microbial life in indoor spaces, promoting beneficial microbes while preventing the spread of pathogens. One example of such work would be thinking about how to minimize the risk that pathogens caught in a hospital sink would get aerosolized and spread to patients, said Joseph Graves, Jr., an evolutionary biologist and geneticist at North Carolina A&T State University and a leader of the project.

Graves was not surprised that his project made the committee’s list, as NSF policy has required research centers to include work on diversity and a culture of inclusion, he said.

The report, Graves said, seems intended to strip science of diversity, which he views as essential to the scientific endeavor. “We want to make the scientific community look more like the community of Americans,” said Graves. That’s not discriminating against White or Asian people, he said: “It’s a positive set of initiatives to give people who have been historically underrepresented and underserved in the scientific community and the products it produces to be at the table to participate in scientific research.”

“We argue that makes science better, not worse,” he added.

The political environment has seemingly left many scientists nervous to speak about their experiences. Three of the major science organizations Undark contacted—the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Institute of Physics—either did not respond or were not willing to comment. Many researchers appearing on Cruz’s list expressed hesitation to speak, and only men agreed to interviews: Undark contacted eight women leading NSF-funded projects on the list. Most did not respond to requests for comment, while others declined to talk on the record.

Darren Lipomi, the chemical engineer, drew a parallel between the committee report and US Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist campaign in the early 1950s. “It’s inescapable,” said Lipomi, whose project focused on developing a medical device that provides feedback on swallowing to patients undergoing radiation for head and neck cancer. “I know what Marxism is, and this was not that.”

According to Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Republican interest in scrutinizing purportedly ideological research dovetails with a sweeping executive order, issued immediately after Trump’s inauguration, aimed at purging the government of anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Whether and how the Senate committee report will wind up affecting future funding, however, remains to be seen. “Between the executive order on DEI and now the list of terms that was used in the Cruz report, NSF is now in the process of reviewing their grants,” Carney said. One immediate impact is that scientists may become more cautious in preparing their proposals, said Carney.

Emails to the National Science Foundation went unanswered. In response to a question about grant proposals that, like Lipomi’s, only have a small component devoted to diversity, Cruz said their status should be determined by the executive branch.

“I would think it would be reasonable that if the DEI components can reasonably be severed from the project, and the remaining parts of the project are meritorious on their own, then the project should continue,” Cruz said. “It may be that nothing of value remains once DEI is removed. It would depend on the particular project.”

Physicist and former NSF head Neal F. Lane said he suspects that “DEI” has simply become a politically expedient target—as well as an excuse to slash spending. Threats to science funding are already causing huge uncertainty and distraction from what researchers and universities are supposed to be doing, he said. “But if there’s a follow-through on many of these efforts made by the administration, any damage would be enormous.”

That damage might well include discouraging young researchers from pursuing scientific careers at all, Carney said—particularly if the administration is perceived as being uninterested in a STEM workforce that is representative of the US population. “For us to be able to compete at the global arena in innovation,” she said, “we need to create as many pathways as we can for all young students—from urban and rural areas, of all races and genders—to see science and technology as a worthwhile career.”

These questions are not just academic for cell biologist and postdoctoral researcher Shumpei Maruyama, who is thinking about becoming a research professor. He’s now concerned that the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to funding from the National Institutes of Health, which supports research infrastructure at many institutions, will sour the academic job market as schools are forced to shutter whole sections or departments. He’s also worried that his research, which looks at the effects of climate change on coral reefs, won’t be fundable under the current administration—not least because his work, too, is on the committee’s list.

“Corals are important just for the inherent value of biodiversity,” Maruyama said.

Although he remains worried about what happens next, Maruyama said he is also “weirdly proud” to have his research flagged for its expressed connection to social and environmental justice. “That’s exactly what my research is focusing on,” he said, adding that the existence of coral has immeasurable environmental and social benefits. While coral reefs cover less than 1 percent of the world’s oceans in terms of surface area, they house nearly one-quarter of all marine species. They also protect coastal areas from surges and hurricanes, noted Maruyama, provide food and tourism for local communities, and are a potential source of new medications such as cancer drugs.

While he also studies corals because he finds them “breathtakingly beautiful,” Maruyama, suggested that everyone—regardless of ideology—has a stake in their survival. “I want them to be around,” he said.

This story was co-reported by Teresa Carr for Undark and Margaret Manto for NOTUS. This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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Flashy exotic birds can actually glow in the dark

Biology, bioluminescence, birds, feathers, Fluorescence, Science / Beth Washington / February 24, 2025

Found in the forests of Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Eastern Australia, birds of paradise are famous for flashy feathers and unusually shaped ornaments, which set the standard for haute couture among birds. Many use these feathers for flamboyant mating displays in which they shape-shift into otherworldly forms.

As if this didn’t attract enough attention, we’ve now learned that they also glow in the dark.

Biofluorescent organisms are everywhere, from mushrooms to fish to reptiles and amphibians, but few birds have been identified as having glowing feathers. This is why biologist Rene Martin of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln wanted to investigate. She and her team studied a treasure trove of specimens at the American Museum of Natural History, which have been collected since the 1800s, and found that 37 of the 45 known species of birds of paradise have feathers that fluoresce.

The glow factor of birds of paradise is apparently important for mating displays. Despite biofluorescence being especially prominent in males, attracting a mate might not be all it is useful for, as these birds might also use it to signal to each other in other ways and sometimes even for camouflage among the light and shadows.

“The current very limited number of studies reporting fluorescence in birds suggests this phenomenon has not been thoroughly investigated,” the researchers said in a study that was recently published in Royal Society Open Science.

Glow-up

How do they get that glow? Biofluorescence is a phenomenon that happens when shorter, high-energy wavelengths of light, meaning UV, violet, and blue, are absorbed by an organism. The energy then gets re-emitted at longer, lower-energy wavelengths—greens, yellows, oranges, and reds. The feathers of birds of paradise contain fluorophores, molecules that undergo biofluorescence. Specialized filters in the light-sensitive cells of their eyes make their visual system more sensitive to biofluorescence.

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The seemingly indestructible fists of the mantis shrimp can take a punch

Biomechanics, Mantis shrimp, materials science, Science / Kelly Newman / February 23, 2025

To find out how much force a mantis shrimp’s dactyl clubs can possibly withstand, the researchers tested live shrimp by having them strike a piezoelectric sensor like they would smash a shell. They also fired ultrasonic and hypersonic lasers at pieces of dactyl clubs from their specimens so they could see how the clubs defended against sound waves.

By tracking how sound waves propagated on the surface of the dactyl club, the researchers could determine which regions of the club diffused the most waves. It was the second layer, the impact surface, that handled the highest levels of stress. The periodic surface was almost as effective. Together, they made the dactyl clubs nearly immune to the stresses they generate.

There are few other examples that the protective structures of the mantis shrimp can be compared to. On the prey side, evidence has been found that the scales on some moths’ wings absorb sound waves from predatory bats to keep them from echolocation to find them.

Understanding how mantis shrimp defend themselves from extreme force could inspire new technology. The structures in their dactyl clubs could influence the designs of military and athletic protective gear in the future.

“Shrimp impacts contain frequencies in the ultrasonic range, which has led to shrimp-inspired solutions that point to ultrasonic filtering as a key [protective] mechanism,” the team said in the same study.

Maybe someday, a new bike helmet model might have been inspired by a creature that is no more than seven inches long but literally doesn’t crack under pressure.

Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.adq7100

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German startup to attempt the first orbital launch from Western Europe

Commercial space, Europe, germany, isar aerospace, launch, Norway, Science, Space, spectrum rocket / Beth Washington / February 22, 2025

The nine-engine first stage for Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket lights up on the launch pad on February 14. Credit: Isar Aerospace

Isar builds almost all of its rockets in-house, including Spectrum’s Aquila engines.

“The flight will be the first integrated test of tens of thousands of components,” said Josef Fleischmann, Isar’s co-founder and chief technical officer. “Regardless of how far we get, this first test flight will hopefully generate an enormous amount of data and experience which we can apply to future missions.”

Isar is the first European startup to reach this point in development. “Reaching this milestone is a huge success in itself,” Meltzer said in a statement. “And while Spectrum is ready for its first test flight, launch vehicles for flights two and three are already in production.”

Another Bavarian company, Rocket Factory Augsburg, destroyed its first booster during a test-firing on its launch pad in Scotland last year, ceding the frontrunner mantle to Isar. RFA received its launch license from the UK government last month and aims to deliver its second booster to the launch site for hot-fire testing and a launch attempt later this year.

There’s an appetite within the European launch industry for new companies to compete with Arianespace, the continent’s sole operational launch services provider backed by substantial government support. Delays in developing the Ariane 6 rocket and several failures of Europe’s smaller Vega launcher forced European satellite operators to look abroad, primarily to SpaceX, to launch their payloads.

The European Space Agency is organizing the European Launcher Challenge, a competition that will set aside some of the agency’s satellites for launch opportunities with a new crop of startups. Isar is one of the top contenders in the competition to win money from ESA. The agency expects to award funding to multiple European launch providers after releasing a final solicitation later this year.

The first flight of the Spectrum rocket will attempt to reach a polar orbit, flying north from Andøya Spaceport. Located at approximately 69 degrees north latitude, the spaceport is poised to become the world’s northernmost orbital launch site.

Because the inaugural launch of the Spectrum rocket is a test flight, it won’t carry any customer payloads, an Isar spokesperson told Ars.

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Researchers figure out how to get fresh lithium into batteries

batteries, chemistry, materials science, Science / Shannon Garcia / February 22, 2025

In their testing, they use a couple of unusual electrode materials, such as a chromium oxide (Cr₈O₂₁) and an organic polymer (a sulfurized polyacrylonitrile). Both of these have significant weight advantages over the typical materials used in today’s batteries, although the resulting batteries typically lasted less than 500 cycles before dropping to 80 percent of their original capacity.

But the striking experiment came when they used LiSO₂CF₃ to rejuvenate a battery that had been manufactured as normal but had lost capacity due to heavy use. Treating a lithium-iron phosphate battery that had lost 15 percent of its original capacity restored almost all of what was lost, allowing it to hold over 99 percent of its original charge. They also ran a battery for repeated cycles with rejuvenation every few thousand cycles. At just short of 12,000 cycles, it still could be restored to 96 percent of its original capacity.

Before you get too excited, there are a couple of things worth noting about lithium-iron phosphate cells. The first is that, relative to their charge capacity, they’re a bit heavy, so they tend to be used in large, stationary batteries like the ones in grid-scale storage. They’re also long-lived on their own; with careful management, they can take over 8,000 cycles before they drop to 80 percent of their initial capacity. It’s not clear whether similar rejuvenation is possible in the battery chemistries typically used for the sorts of devices that most of us own.

The final caution is that the battery needs to be modified so that fresh electrolytes can be pumped in and the gases released by the breakdown of the LiSO₂CF₃ removed. It’s safest if this sort of access is built into the battery from the start, rather than provided by modifying it much later, as was done here. And the piping needed would put a small dent in the battery’s capacity per volume if so.

All that said, the treatment demonstrated here would replenish even a well-managed battery closer to its original capacity. And it would largely restore the capacity of something that hadn’t been carefully managed. And that would allow us to get far more out of the initial expense of battery manufacturing. Meaning it might make sense for batteries destined for a large storage facility, where lots of them could potentially be treated at the same time.

Nature, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08465-y (About DOIs).

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“Bouncing” winds damaged Houston skyscrapers in 2024

architecture, climate change, derecho, hurricanes, Science / 9u50fv / February 22, 2025

“Bouncing” winds

Damage sustained by the Chevron Building Auditorium during the derecho: a) damaged side of the building, b) global damage view, c) & d) localized glass damage. Credit: Padgett et al., 2024

Elawady decided to investigate why the Houston derecho’s structural damage was so much more extensive than one might expect. He and his colleagues analyzed the impact of the derecho on five of the city’s most notable buildings: The Chevron Building Auditorium, the CenterPoint Energy Plaza, the El Paso Energy Building, the RRI Energy Plaza, and the Wedge International Tower.

The Chevron Building Auditorium, for instance, suffered significant damage to its cladding and shattered glass windows, mostly on the side facing another skyscraper: the Chevron Corporation Tower. The CenterPoint Energy Plaza’s damage to its double-skin facade was concentrated on one corner that had two tall buildings facing it, as was the damage to two corners of the El Paso Energy building. This suggested a wind-channeling effect might have played a role in that damage.

Next Elawady et al. conducted wind tunnel experiments at the FIU Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure’s “Wall of Wind” facility to determine how the winds may have specifically caused the observed damage. They placed a revolving miniature tall building in the tunnel and blasted it with wind speeds of up to 70 meters per second while placing an identical mini-model at increasing distances from the first to mimic possible interference from nearby buildings.

The results confirmed the team’s working hypothesis. “When strong winds move through a city, they can bounce due to interference between tall buildings. This increases pressure on walls and windows, making damage more severe than if the buildings were isolated,” said co-author Omar Metwally, a graduate student at FIU. For example, in the case of the Chevron Building Auditorium, the channeling effects intensified the damage, particularly at higher elevations.

“On top of this, downbursts create intense, localized forces which can exceed typical design values for hurricanes, especially on the lower floors of tall buildings,” Metwally added. The problem is only likely to worsen because of accelerating climate change. Glass facades seem to be particularly vulnerable to this kind of wind damage, and the authors suggest current design and construction guidelines for such elements should be re-evaluated as a result of their findings.

Frontiers in Built Environment, 2025. DOI: 10.3389/fbuil.2024.1514523 (About DOIs).

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