EverythingScience

When you’re stressed, you lose some control. Stress hormones flood your bloodstream. Your heart rate and blood pressure go up. You breathe faster. These changes happen without thought. They’re run by what’s known as your sympathetic nervous system. And they kick in whether you’re facing true danger or just a big exam. But scientists are learning how to guide our nervous systems out of that fight-or-flight mode and into relaxation. Some calming techniques come naturally. Maybe you’ve already used slow, deep breaths to recenter yourself. Now, though, there’s mounting data to support a range of zanier approaches. Ever tried humming, or tapping on your skin? What about dunking your face in cold water? Explainer: How our body deals with stress “Consciously, you can’t tell your heart to slow down,” explains Patricio Millar Vernetti. He’s a neurologist at NYU Langone Health in New York City. “But by doing these interventions, you have a little bit more control.” On social media, these practices are often described as ways to “regulate” your nervous system. But it’s really about balancing two branches of your nervous system. That “sympathetic” branch is in charge of stress responses. It gets you ready for action, pumping blood to your brain and muscles. Its counterpart — the parasympathetic nervous system — calms things down. Getting that parasympathetic nervous system to kick in can help calm us back to a resting state. It lowers stress hormone levels. It slows the heart and lowers blood pressure. Being able to control this back-and-forth may yield big health benefits. Over time, an over-active stress response can contribute to a range of problems. These include high blood pressure, strain on the heart, inflammation and other issues. These systems normally work without our giving them thought. But research is finding ways to turn on the parasympathetic nervous system when we feel it’s needed...

Attachment is the term psychologists use for the most significant relationships that hold people's lives together. But what makes an attachment relationship different from all others? According to the pioneering American–Canadian developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, it must meet the following six conditions. The relationship must persist over time, and it must have been formed with a particular subject who cannot be replaced. The relationship must be emotionally significant, involve the desire to remain close to them and cause distress at involuntary separation. Finally, when threatened, the person must seek security and comfort in their relationship with that subject. The first five conditions describe any lasting affectionate bond, such as a close friendship. Only the sixth turns it into an attachment bond specifically. Simply liking someone, feeling close to them or spending hours together isn't enough to create an attachment relationship. Interestingly, though, nothing in these six conditions specifies a human on the other side. This was already noticed long before the emergence of AI chatbots with the power to converse. Deities, pets and objects (ranging from children's blankets and stuffed animals to cherished household items and even phones and computers) have all been found to supply security and comfort when someone is feeling distressed. Today, AI companion apps are commonly sold on the promise of lasting and close relationships. Many of their users describe feeling real grief when an app is updated or withdrawn. But do such experiences meet the narrow definition of attachment? The honest answer is: We don't really know yet. What the evidence suggests Research on human–AI relationships has so far recorded users' feelings about chatbots, their frequency of use and their reactions to chatbot withdrawal. It hasn't tested these relationships comprehensively against the six conditions described above...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have identified a potentially much more efficient way to achieve nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun. Their calculations suggest that changing the order in which plasma is heated and compressed could dramatically reduce the energy needed to reach ignition, a crucial milestone in the pursuit of practical fusion power. For more than seven decades, scientists have relied on an equation called the Lawson criterion to determine whether plasma can remain sufficiently hot and dense for long enough to sustain fusion reactions without additional external heating. Developed in the 1950s, this equation establishes the conditions required for ignition, but it does not explain the most efficient way to achieve them. Now, PPPL physicists Luis Delgado-Aparicio, Masayuki Ono, and Jonathan Menard have updated that decades-old framework. By incorporating four additional factors that influence the behavior of fusion plasma, they have developed a more comprehensive model for determining how fusion systems should heat and maintain their fuel. To understand the significance of the discovery, it helps to know what plasma is. Often called the fourth state of matter, plasma is a gas so hot that its particles become electrically charged. When plasma reaches ignition, the energy released by fusion reactions produces enough heat to sustain the process without further external heating. Achieving this condition efficiently is one of the central challenges facing fusion energy researchers...

When it comes to deciding the fate of the planet, Colleen Golja always thought science and reason would have a seat at the table. That was until one morning last September in London, when the climate researcher took part in the first in a series of war games. The goal: to prevent an uncontrolled global race to develop a technology aimed at cooling the planet but that comes with vast, unknown risks that could reshape life on Earth. “I thought that would be such an easy thing. Like, we can all agree to do ethical research and make sure it's for the better of all humans,” she told WIRED. “And boy, was I wrong.” The simulation, titled Exploring Geopolitical Tipping Points and Climate Cooling Strategies, saw a couple dozen foreign-relations experts, scientists, military personnel, and former government officials from across the world convene in a meeting room at Queen Mary University of London. After making introductions over coffee and little yogurts, they sat at tables arranged in a square with the name of the country or organization each person was playing: national governments, climate NGOs and nonprofits, indigenous groups, and tech companies. Golja was assigned to provide technical advice to help participants make scientifically literate decisions. The point of the game was to stress-test the world’s response to a group of prospective technologies known collectively as solar radiation modification. These technologies promise to reverse global warming by reflecting away a portion of the sunlight reaching Earth, for example by spraying particles of sulphur dioxide or some other manufactured substance into the atmosphere. The cooling effect of this kind of solar geoengineering is widely accepted. It would mimic the well-known impacts of large volcanic eruptions, which temporarily cool the planet by half a degree or more. But the fallout is less certain—and less equal. Some regions will suffer: Models predict drying in sub-Saharan Africa and more intense tropical storms in the Atlantic. The cooling effect would also last only as long as the geoengineering continued; after that the global temperature could shoot back up with wild and hard-to-predict effects...

An experimental vaccine offers new hope to patients with melanoma, one of the most aggressive forms of skin cancer. The pharmaceutical companies Merck and Moderna released the results of a Phase 3 clinical trial that evaluated the efficacy of a personalized mRNA-based vaccine that, when combined with immunotherapy, reduced the risk of disease recurrence or death by 42 percent compared to treatment with the immunotherapy drug alone. Georgina Long, medical director of the Australian Melanoma Institute and the study’s principal investigator, said in a statement that these results are “transformative” and “have the potential to make a foundational shift in how we treat patients with earlier-stage melanoma.” ...

What if the brain evolved to serve the gut? Scientists at Flinders University are challenging a cornerstone of biology, arguing that the gut's nervous system may be the body's original "brain," with the brain evolving later to support its needs. An opinion piece published in The Journal of Physiology draws on evidence from physiology and evolutionary biology to suggest the nervous system may have originated in the gut. The paper offers a perspective on one of evolution's fundamental questions: why did brains evolve in the first place? Flinders researchers argue the answer may lie in a much older nervous system embedded in the gut, which helped early organisms to secure the energy necessary to survive. Rethinking the body's command structure Lead author Dr. Tim Hibberd says the idea challenges the traditional view that the brain sits at the top of the body's command structure. "We are proposing a different way of looking at the nervous system," says Hibberd, from Flinders' College of Medicine and Public Health. "The enteric nervous system in the gut can sense its environment, process information and coordinate complex responses. In many ways, it functions like a brain in its own right." Often referred to as the body's "second brain," the enteric nervous system contains hundreds of millions of neurons and can operate independently to coordinate digestion and other essential functions. Researchers now argue it may be more accurate to think of this as the body's first brain...

A Japanese spacecraft rocketed toward Mars on Tuesday on a quest to explore its mysterious moons and bring back samples. Five of the world's space agencies joined forces for the five-year mission that will attempt to land a robotic prospector plus a rover on Phobos, the larger and closer of Mars' two pint-sized moons. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which is leading the sampling effort, launched the spacecraft before dawn from the country's main spaceport on Tanegashima Island. Officials declared success an hour later when the spacecraft separated as planned from the rocket's upper stage. Flight controllers burst into applause and jumped to their feet, shaking hands and embracing. No one has managed to get samples from Mars or its moons yet While NASA has successfully landed nine spacecraft on Mars over the past 50 years and China scored a 2021 touchdown, no one has ever reached Phobos or its sidekick Deimos. And no one has managed to fetch samples from Mars, let alone its moons. If successful, bits of dust, soil and rocks from Phobos will arrive on Earth in 2031. "There's a lot of adrenaline and a lot of excitement and a lot of wow," said NASA astrophysicist Tom Statler, who's involved with the project. Japan has an edge going in, with two asteroid sample returns already under its cosmic belt...

Rising temperatures and increasing drought are shortening crop-growing seasons in many parts of the world. Now scientists in Sweden report new advances toward engineering more efficient photosynthesis, work that could eventually contribute to efforts to adapt crops for climate change. A team at KTH Royal Institute of Technology created and tested about 15,000 genetically altered versions of bacterial Rubisco—an enzyme that helps turn carbon dioxide into material for growth. Paul Hudson, professor in systems biology at KTH, says the study focused on bacterial rather than plant Rubisco and searched for versions that support bacterial growth. In their article published in Science Advances, the researchers report they found several promising variants—and identified numerous changes that didn't appear to work. Rubisco's costly inefficiency Arguably the most important enzyme for life on Earth, Rubisco's role in bacteria and plants goes hand in hand with photosynthesis. Where sunlight provides the power, Rubisco captures carbon dioxide and incorporates it into material the organism can use to make sugars and grow. Nevertheless, the enzyme is surprisingly inefficient. It works slowly and sometimes captures oxygen instead of CO₂. Plants must then spend energy recycling the unwanted products. While the study focused on a bacterial Rubisco rather than the plant enzyme, its large database of successful and unsuccessful mutations offers a possible map for designing better enzymes, which may help researchers improve computer models of how Rubisco responds to genetic changes. The lessons may eventually guide work on plant Rubisco, but producing faster-growing, climate-resilient crops will require further testing in plant cells and whole plants...

The year is 2050, and as the sun sets, the night's first constellations emerge in perfect rows. But these amber-glowing arrays aren't stars at all; they're satellite clusters, harvesting the day's last rays before beaming their power back to Earth. If it reads like science fiction, that's because it started that way. Called space-based solar power (SBSP), the concept featured prominently in the techno-utopian imaginations of 20th-century visionaries and writers. But for decades, it was dismissed — a pie in the sky proposal. Now, as a new space race heats up, governments and private companies in China, the U.S., the U.K. and Japan are developing several projects to reassess the idea's feasibility. These include China's ZhuRi ("Chase the Sun") program, Japan's OHISAMA project, the U.K.'s Space Solar, and power-beaming experiments by Caltech and the Air Force Research Laboratory in the U.S., all of which are targeting test launches in the next five years. Proponents say the technology has the potential to meet Earth's energy needs many times over while causing minimal harm to the environment. But first it needs to get off the ground: In the eyes of critics, space-based solar power is exorbitantly expensive, riddled with untested assumptions, and far too complex to be deployed in time for an urgent green-energy transition. The challenges include getting the massive solar-panel-covered satellites into space; assembling them; getting those solar panels to constantly face our star; and then finding ways to convert, concentrate and transmit their collected power back to Earth...

Spacecraft propulsion traditionally relies on volatile fuels and separate, bulky systems for different types of maneuvering in space. NASA is working to change that. Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, recently completed a series of environmental and physical tests on a new small satellite designed to make spaceflight safer and more efficient. The ASCENT (Advanced Spacecraft Energetic Non-Toxic) Propulsion Dual Mode mission is a flight demonstration of a spacecraft about the size of a large shoebox. The mission will test a single, integrated propulsion system that uses a common fuel tank to feed two types of engines. Typically, spacecraft carry two separate propulsion systems to navigate: a high-thrust chemical system for rapid movements like entering orbit, and a low-thrust electric system for efficient, slow maneuvers like maintaining a position. This requires multiple fuel tanks and heavy plumbing, which take up valuable space and add weight. The spacecraft being developed uses a single nontoxic propellant called ASCENT. By feeding both a high-thrust combustion engine and low-thrust electrospray thrusters from one central tank, the spacecraft saves mass and volume. For future missions, this means more room for scientific instruments and the ability to launch on smaller, less expensive rockets...

Stellar cores called white dwarfs come in an astonishing array of colors, including what scientists say is the first known green star and the reddest star ever found, new research reveals. A white dwarf star is the dense, cooling core that remains after a low- to medium-mass star runs out of fuel. The new study, published Thursday (Oct. 15) in the journal RAS Techniques and Instruments, shows that white dwarfs come in far more colors than their name suggests. White dwarf stars got their moniker because the first known examples glowed in either white or pale blue. The new study, however, suggests that "white" dwarfs also emit visible-light colors like pink, green, cyan, purple and yellow. "Most stars, including most white dwarfs, behave like 'perfect radiators,' so their colour is set almost entirely by temperature. But nobody had really looked into what else might be possible for white dwarfs," Mark Hollands, an astronomer at the University of Warwick in the U.K. and first author of the study, said in a statement. "It turns out these incredibly dense stars can produce colours nobody expected, and some of them genuinely surprised me." The variety of colors is possible due to white dwarfs' densities compared with main-sequence stars, the study suggests. Cooler white dwarfs have a density of about 1 gram per cubic centimeter, much like flowing water on Earth. The density of these white dwarfs is also millions of times denser than the sun's visible surface, or photosphere, leading to unusual conditions...

Leap seconds have driven a raging debate in the metrological community for three decades. Now, that argument has been put to rest: The leap second is officially dead. Doing away with an obscure metric the average person has been blissfully unaware of may seem like a novelty, but killing the leap second has major ramifications for technology you rely on every day. It also helps stave off what could’ve been a dangerous moment in time: The possibility of the world’s first negative leap second. The International Bureau of Weights and Measurements (known by its French acronym BIPM) on Thursday said that in May 2027 it would stop issuing leap seconds, 32 of which have been added since 1972 to adjust what’s known as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The world implemented the leap second in 1972 due to a growing gap between time measured with atomic clocks and time based on the Earth’s rotation. The reason for the discrepancy? The latter is slowing down due in large part to tidal friction caused by the moon and Earth’s rotation not lining up. The molten core of the Earth as well as oceans and the atmosphere also affect the spin rate. Leap seconds are a way to keep atomic-clock-driven UTC in line with astronomically kept Universal Time (UT1). Think of it like adding a little extra track for a train to keep running exactly parallel with another one. Rather than happening on a set interval—like a leap year—BIPM uses the average of hundreds of atomic clocks around the world and compares their time calculations to astronomical time to determine when a leap second is necessary. The most recent one was added in 2016. Of course, adding track is no small effort, and it may seem like a lot of hassle for a measly second. But UTC is vital for all sorts of technology given the number of APIs and databases that rely on it. Introducing a leap second helped keep UTC and UT1 aligned, but it also wrought havoc on various systems running on UTC and forced companies to figure out how to deal with them when they were added every few years...

A major software advance could aid the creation of bigger, more reliable quantum computers, a study suggests. Researchers have developed an algorithm that enables off-the-shelf computers to run quantum simulations previously only possible using the world's most powerful supercomputers. It means the simulations can be run using around 5% of the computing power previously needed to perform them with a supercomputer, the team says. The advance could make it cheaper and easier to run experiments vital for understanding the limitations of current quantum computers and informing the design of improved devices, experts say. Simulations confront quantum computing's limits Quantum computers could, in theory, perform calculations far beyond the capabilities of even the most advanced supercomputers, but current devices are small and error-prone, hindering their performance. Key to informing the creation of bigger, more reliable quantum computers is the development of algorithms to simulate how devices might work in reality. However, running these simulations has until now required vast amounts of computing power available at only a handful of facilities worldwide. The new algorithm was developed by a team led by scientists at the University of Edinburgh and EPCC, the U.K.'s first National Supercomputing Centre, which is part of the university. Standard computers tackle light-based quantum simulations The work could aid the development of light-based quantum devices, one of several branches of current quantum research by academics and industry, the team says. For the first time, the algorithm enables standard computers to run so-called Gaussian boson sampling, a simulation designed to demonstrate the superior capabilities of quantum devices powered by light—known as photonic quantum computers. In tests, researchers found that classical computers using the algorithm could match and even outperform some current quantum devices' ability to run the simulations...

The chief aim of NASA's Artemis Program is to create a "sustained program of lunar exploration and development." Beyond returning astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era, NASA and other space agencies hope to build the infrastructure that will enable regular, long-duration missions to the lunar surface. In addition to targeting the South Pole-Aitken Basin, NASA is eyeing lunar caves as a potential site for habitats and other lunar facilities. Meanwhile, space agencies need to send large amounts of cargo and robotic explorers to the surface. This includes the Geophysical Instruments for Marius Lunar pit Investigation (GIMLI), a Planetary Science Institute-led proposal that will investigate a "skylight," a hole in an old lunar lava tube, to see if a large cave system extends beyond it. Such a location could provide a safe place for astronauts to operate on the surface in the future. The mission team will be led by PSI Associate Director and Senior Scientist Than Putzig. The work will be carried out in partnership with the Norwegian Space Agency, while Honeybee Robotics will create much of the robot's equipment and instrumentation. NASA will provide a lander and rover element through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), and funding will be provided through NASA’s Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) program. Said PSI Director and CEO Amanda Hendrix: GIMLI represents the type of ambitious planetary science that PSI was built to pursue. Than and his team are taking a scientific question we’ve been studying from orbit and have developed a way to investigate it directly on the Moon. We’re excited to have PSI leading this effort and to be partnering with NASA and Honeybee Robotics to learn more about the Moon and its volcanic past. Observations by lunar orbiters have provided compelling evidence of underground caves. This is evident from surface features like sinuous rilles (collapsed lava tubes) and the aforementioned skylights. Researchers theorize these latter features are openings leading to stable lava tubes left over from when the Moon was still geologically active (ca. 3.8 and 3 billion years ago). Observations from lunar orbit have provided compelling evidence that caves and lava tubes may exist under the Moon’s surface. GIMLI’s research will focus on the Marius Hill Pit (MHP), a large hole in one of the Moon’s most volcanically diverse regions. Like other lunar pits, MHP may serve as an opening to these underground spaces, which may have formed during ancient volcanic activity. One in particular is the Marius Hill Pit (MPH), a prominent skylight on the nearside's Oceanus Procellarum...

On the evening of 8 September 1930, the German mathematician David Hilbert stepped up to a microphone in Königsberg and addressed his countrymen by radio. He was 68, recently retired, and at the height of his fame. The talk was a defence of pure reason, delivered in the city of Immanuel Kant, and it ended with two phrases that would later be carved on his tombstone: Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen. We must know. We shall know. Are certain questions closed to the human mind? Are there truths about the world that we can never know? Hilbert thought that, at least within mathematics, this could not be the case. For him, mathematics was a game played with symbols: one could fix the right axioms as rules of the game and every mathematical problem could be solved. He was wrong. The day before his Königsberg address, at a small academic meeting in the same city, a 24-year-old Austrian named Kurt Gödel had quietly announced that no such system for arithmetic could exist. Whatever reasonable set of rules you fix, something true must lie beyond them and thus beyond our knowledge. We can’t know. We won’t know. Gödel’s results, known as the Incompleteness Theorems, are landmark achievements of 20th-century logic. Recent work in philosophy and mathematics has begun to illuminate the gap they opened, and with it something deeper about the foundations of knowledge itself. The story begins in the same city, but two centuries earlier. When Kant remembered a book by David Hume he’d read years earlier, he was woken from what he called his ‘dogmatic slumber’. Kant had believed that pure reasoning could teach us every absolute truth about the world, but Hume had asked a question that that stumped him: what reason do we actually have to believe that the future will resemble the past? We may have seen the Sun rise a thousand times, but how do we know it will rise tomorrow? The belief that the future will resemble the past is, Hume argued, merely a kind of habit. Kant couldn’t answer Hume’s challenge and was silenced for a decade. For Hume, proving a theorem was like unpacking a suitcase to find an outfit. Kant could not leave it there When Kant finally broke his silence with the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), he offered a radical answer. We can know the world only as it appears to our minds, and that is where our science sits; the noumenal world – the Ding an sich (the ‘thing-in-itself’) – simply lies beyond our reach. Causation is not something we discover in the world, but something the mind supplies for experience to be coherent at all. When we watch a cat push a glass off a table, we don’t see a bare sequence of motions and then infer, by some metaphysical principle, that the push caused the fall. No: we see the push as causing the fall. The causal structure is not a hypothesis we add to the experience; it is part of how the experience comes to us in the first place. It is in our minds already. So far, so good: Kant has met Hume’s challenge, and the workings of science are intelligible: we are structuring our experiences. But the work is not done, for there remains mathematics, the very language in which the sciences are framed. Hume was content that arithmetic and algebra are merely the unpacking of definitions; that proving a theorem is like unpacking a suitcase to find an outfit. Kant could not leave it there. If mathematics were only such unpacking, how could it underwrite the sciences? Either the sciences tell us nothing new about the world, or something has gone missing from the account...

The year 2026 has been an expensive one for social media platforms. Since March, YouTube and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, have settled or paid out in multiple lawsuits totaling more than $17 billion for allegedly acting negligently, deliberately designing their platforms to hook kids and misleading the public about safety and privacy. If these suits are any indication of how states and the public are starting to view social media platforms, more may follow. On top of these lawsuits, social media platforms are facing a loss of business as bans for minors are accelerating and spreading worldwide. Australia was one of the first with a ban on kids under 16 on social media starting in December 2025, followed soon after by the U.K. with a similar prohibition. The current list of countries looking to ban minors from these platforms includes more than 20, from Greece to the United Arab Emirates to Canada. The proposed and enacted bans around the world vary in terms of age restriction, parental consent rules and age verification methods. Different countries are looking at restricting different platforms, but most include a mix of Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X. These bans aren't necessarily for mental health reasons only—some are motivated by political concerns about foreign-owned platforms, and others aim to protect young people's privacy. But nearly every government banning social media platforms for young people mentions their mental health as a reason. The question is, are these bans the solution to the mental health problems young people are facing? I research digital media and marketing and measure the impact of new technologies, and I'm skeptical about whether prohibiting access to these platforms will improve young people's mental health. Mental health concerns Since Jonathan Haidt's 2024 book "The Anxious Generation," critics of social media have increasingly focused on young people's mental health. Haidt argues that social media disrupts kids' social and neurological development, contributing to rising anxiety and depression through sleep loss, fragmented attention, addiction, loneliness, social comparison and perfectionism. A 2026 study found that young people between 14 and 20 are more than 100% more likely to experience mental illness than 14- to 20-year-olds 50 years ago. Increased use of social media and screen time is compounding an already precarious time for minors. In 2021, it was estimated that 20.5% of young people experienced elevated symptoms of anxiety, and 25.2% of youth reported elevated symptoms of depression globally. Many factors contribute to this, including better screening and awareness of kids' mental health problems, as well as societal disruptions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the world sheltered in place and moved online for work, school and social interactions, there was an increase in isolation and loneliness. Not all bad In light of these concerns, some researchers argue that bans on social media platforms are like putting an age restriction on buying alcohol or cigarettes. But unlike these addictive and potentially harmful substances, there are benefits to social media, especially for teens who feel disconnected from their local communities and want to build relationships with others who feel similarly. Social media platforms allow for global connectivity and community-building with like-minded groups. They also provide a place for self-expression and civic engagement...

DYK that you’re moving at about 67,000 miles per hour right now?! Earth is carrying you on its orbit around the Sun. When Roman launched, it inherited that motion and will undergo a series of maneuvers before its final orbital insertion at L2. nasa.tumblr.com/post/830641383…

Plastics are supposed to be chemically inert. It's the reason they're used so frequently to package food, bottle water and create children's toys: They're safe. But something important happens when a large piece of plastic fragments into micro- and nanoparticles. Its surface area increases dramatically relative to its volume. Vastly more of the material is now exposed to its surroundings. A new study by researchers from Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that this newly created surface is not necessarily safe and identified the chemical reasons why. "As plastic fragments into smaller and smaller particles, its surface area increases enormously. Then microplastics change the water that surrounds them, generating high-energy, reactive radicals (reactive oxygen species, ROS) that very likely contribute to biological damage that we see in animals and potentially in humans as a result of microplastic exposure," said Wei Min, a Columbia professor of chemistry and biomedical engineering. The work challenges the common view of microplastics as largely passive fragments of inert material and contributes to a growing understanding of why the large-scale presence of microplastics is a cause for concern. The research was published today in the journal Nature. Water-rich tissues raise health concerns This is particularly noteworthy for human health because human blood is approximately 50% water, and individual human cells are generally 60% to 80% water. The new research suggests that microplastics that enter the bloodstream or cells could remain chemically active in this water-rich biological environment.

Snapshots of Saturn 🪐 OTD in 1997, 29 years ago, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft launched to begin its long voyage to Saturn. For 13 years, Cassini orbited Saturn, revealing unexpected features of the planet, its rings, and its icy moons, and expanding our understanding of the kinds of worlds where life might exist. What Cassini taught us during its 20-year mission: go.nasa.gov/4zsEFmY

After five-and-a-half years on Mars, NASA's Perseverance Rover has set a distance record for travel on another world. Since landing in Mars' Jezero Crater, an ancient paleolake, on February 18, 2021, Perseverance has travelled 45.22 km, or 28.10 miles. That puts it slightly ahead of NASA's Opportunity rover, which travelled 45.16 kilometers (28.06 miles) during its mission. It must be noted, however, that Perseverance took only 5.5 years to travel this far, while Opportunity required almost 15 years. Comparing the plutonium-powered Perseverance to the solar-powered Opportunity is unfair. But in any case, Perseverance deserves recognition for this milestone. “The original mission called for no more than 12.4 miles of driving. We’ve blown well past that..." - Steven Lee, Perseverance and Curiosity project manager, JPL/NASA. Perseverance is currently in a region named “Lac de Charmes,” which is off the western end of Jezero Crater. It reached its new milestone while heading toward a feature named "Idubi," a scientific target notable for its ancient rocks. On Earth, there are no rocks as old as these because they've all been destroyed by plate tectonics. Perseverance has found igneous rocks, a surprising result considering that scientists expected to find mostly sedimentary rocks. In fact, a primary reason Jezero Crater was chosen as the mission's landing site is because sedimentary rocks are good at preserving evidence of ancient life. While the rover found plenty of sedimentary rocks, it found igneous rocks, along with fluorite, which forms when rock interacts with heated water. This is evidence of hydrothermal activity, and scientists are hoping Perseverance will find more traces of ancient hydrothermal systems at Idubi...