Scientists have reported the discovery of the largest reliably measured superstructure—an enormous arrangement of galaxies, galaxy clusters, and dark matter linked together by gravity—in the universe. The formation, named “Quipu,” stretches about 1.4 billion light-years, a unit measuring how far light travels in one year through space, and is made mostly of dark matter, the invisible substance scientists detect only through its gravitational effects on galaxies and cosmic structures. It was identified while mapping galaxy clusters, huge collections of galaxies bound together by gravity, detected by the ROSAT X-ray satellite. The work was led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the Max Planck Institute for Physics, together with colleagues in Spain and South Africa.

Hans Böhringer, the project leader, explained: “If you look at the distribution of the galaxy clusters in the sky in a spherical shell with a distance of 416 to 826 million light-years, you immediately notice a huge structure that stretches from high northern latitudes to almost the southern end of the sky.” Quipu consists of 68 galaxy clusters, with a total mass of about 2.4×{(10)^7} solar masses, a standard astronomical unit equal to the mass of the Sun. Its size surpasses the Sloan Great Wall, which measures around 1.1 billion light-years.

The ROSAT satellite, launched in 1990, was key to this discovery. ROSAT was the first mission to map the entire sky in X-rays, a high-energy form of electromagnetic radiation emitted by extremely hot cosmic environments such as galaxy clusters. It created a catalogue of galaxy clusters by detecting the hot gas between galaxies that shines brightly in X-ray wavelengths. Joachim Trümper, the ROSAT project leader, recalled: “The catalogue was created with the help of the ROSAT X-ray satellite, built by Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. In 1990, the satellite mapped the entire sky using a high-resolution X-ray telescope for the first time.” Over the years, researchers refined the data, measuring distances and building a three-dimensional map of matter distribution. This map revealed Quipu as the largest known structure within a billion light-years of Earth.

The research paper adds important context. It explains that to measure cosmological parameters—the numerical values describing the universe’s expansion, matter density, geometry, and evolution—precisely, scientists must account for how local large-scale structures affect observations. These effects include changes in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the faint leftover radiation from the early universe shortly after the Big Bang, distortions caused by gravitational lensing, where massive objects bend light by warping spacetime, and the impact of streaming motions on the Hubble constant, the value that measures how fast the universe is expanding. Streaming motions, for example, come from mass concentrations up to 250 megaparsecs away; a megaparsec equals one million parsecs, or about 3.26 million light-years.

The team carried out the first all-sky assessment of the largest structures at distances between 130 and 250 megaparsecs. Among the five most prominent, Quipu was the largest, with a length of more than 400 megaparsecs and a mass of about 2 × 1017 solar masses. These superstructures are not rare features.

They contain about 45% of galaxy clusters, 30% of galaxies, 25% of matter, and occupy 13% of cosmic volume. This means they form a major part of the universe. The researchers also found that galaxy density is higher around superstructures compared to isolated clusters. Simulations based on the Lambda-CDM cosmology model—the standard model of cosmology in which “Lambda” represents dark energy and “CDM” stands for cold dark matter—show similar structures, supporting the reliability of the findings.

The team noted that superstructures should leave a mark on the cosmic microwave background through what is called the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, a subtle change in CMB radiation caused when light passes through evolving gravitational fields created by massive cosmic structures. They searched for this in Planck satellite data and found a signal of the expected strength, though with low statistical significance, meaning the evidence is suggestive but not yet strong enough to rule out the possibility of chance fluctuations. Gayoung Chon emphasized: “Even if these are only corrections of a few percent, they become increasingly important as the accuracy of cosmological observations increases.”

Quipu was named after the knotted string system used by the Incas for record-keeping. The structure resembles a long fibre with side strands, much like the ancient script. The name also reflects the role of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, where many distance measurements were made. Quipus are displayed in Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, linking this cosmic discovery to human history.

This finding is important not only for mapping the universe but also for testing cosmological models and studying how galaxies evolve in different environments. It shows that the largest structures in the universe can influence even the most precise measurements scientists make today.

Source: Max Planck Institute, ArXiv

This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

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Posted Monday 18 May 2026 at 7:35 am AEST (my time).

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Solar thermoelectric generators, or STEGs, are being looked at as a new way to make electricity from the sun. Unlike the solar panels most people are familiar with, which only use sunlight directly, STEGs can also use heat. They work by having a hot side and a cold side with semiconductor materials in between. The difference in temperature between the two sides produces electricity through something called the Seebeck effect.

The problem has been that STEGs are not very efficient. Most of them convert less than 1 percent of sunlight into electricity, while regular solar panels used on homes reach about 20 percent. This gap has kept STEGs from being widely used.

Researchers at the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics say they have found a way to make STEGs much more effective. In a study published in Light: Science and Applications, they describe new methods that boost power generation by 15 times compared to earlier designs, with only a 25 percent increase in device weight.

“For decades, the research community has been focusing on improving the semiconductor materials used in STEGs and has made modest gains in overall efficiency,” said Chunlei Guo, professor of optics and physics and senior scientist at Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics. “In this study, we don’t even touch the semiconductor materials—instead, we focused on the hot and the cold sides of the device instead. By combining better solar energy absorption and heat trapping at the hot side with better heat dissipation at the cold side, we made an astonishing improvement in efficiency.”

The team’s approach was to improve how the device absorbs and traps heat on the hot side, and how it releases heat on the cold side. On the hot side, they used femtosecond laser processing to turn regular tungsten into what they call a selective solar absorber, or W-SSA. This surface absorbs more than 80 percent of sunlight at high temperatures while giving off less infrared radiation, which means less wasted energy. To keep the heat in, they placed the absorber inside a small plastic chamber that acts like a greenhouse. This reduced heat loss from convection by more than 40 percent.

On the cold side, they used the same laser technique on aluminum to create a micro-structured heat dissipator, or μ-dissipator. This design improved cooling through both radiation and convection, doubling the performance of a normal aluminum heat sink. By making the hot side hotter and the cold side cooler, the temperature difference across the STEG increased, which in turn raised the amount of electricity produced.

The researchers showed that their improved STEGs could power LEDs much more effectively than current devices. Guo also pointed out that the technology could be used for wireless sensor networks, wearable electronics, and even medical sensors. It could also serve as a renewable energy option in rural areas where access to electricity is limited.

While STEGs are still less efficient than solar panels, this work shows that focusing on thermal management rather than just semiconductor materials can make a big difference. It opens up new possibilities for how solar energy might be captured and used in the future.

Source: University of Rochester, Nature

This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

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Posted Sunday 17 May 2026 at 7:36 am AEST (my time).

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As states seek out much-needed supplies of clean, reliable energy, some are looking to an unconventional source: abandoned oil and gas wells harnessed for geothermal heat.

Millions of inactive wells are littered across the United States, the relics of earlier eras of fossil fuel production. A large number of the sites have no official owner, and many are still polluting groundwater and leaking heat-trapping methane. The country has barely scratched the surface in dealing with this problem.

Policymakers in both Republican- and Democratic-led states are exploring whether these sites could instead be converted into new wells for producing geothermal energy. The holes are already drilled in the ground, after all. And regions with widespread oil and gas development have rich subsurface data that geothermal firms need in order to determine where and how to build their carbon-free systems.

The concept is relatively new and largely untested, though scientists and startups are working to change that. States are also laying the groundwork for action by lifting regulatory hurdles and launching in-depth studies.

In Oklahoma, the state Senate is considering a bill that would create a process for companies to buy abandoned oil and gas wells and repurpose them for geothermal energy or underground energy storage. Oklahoma has identified over 20,000 such wells, and state regulators estimate that it would take 235 years and hundreds of millions of dollars to plug all of them. Fixing a single old well can cost anywhere from $75,000 to $150,000 or more, by some calculations, depending on where it’s located and how complicated it is to clean up.

The Well Repurposing Act, which passed Oklahoma’s House in March, is modeled after a similar law that New Mexico adopted last year to address its 2,000-plus orphan wells.

The Oklahoma bill “recognizes that these wells are a liability, and that there may be a way to turn them into some sort of revenue generation and give them value,” said Dave Tragethon, communications director for the nonprofit Well Done Foundation, which works to find and cap abandoned oil and gas wells nationwide. “And if there’s value, that means there’s more of a willingness to address them and more of an opportunity to raise funding.”

In Alabama, legislators passed a law last month that allows the state to approve and regulate the conversion of oil and gas wells to tap alternative energy resources like geothermal. North Dakota adopted a bill last year requiring a legislative council to study the feasibility of using nonproductive wells to generate geothermal power. And in Colorado, state agencies just launched a technical study to evaluate the potential of repurposing old wells for geothermal development and carbon capture and sequestration.

These efforts reflect the growing bipartisan support for geothermal energy, which has largely remained unscathed by the Trump administration’s efforts to block renewable energy projects. The energy resource has the potential to help meet the nation’s soaring energy demand while also slashing planet-warming emissions from electricity and heating.

Converting Wells Is Enticing but Complicated

Geothermal systems work by circulating fluids underground to capture naturally occurring heat, which can then be used to drive turbines for generating electricity or to directly warm the air and water in buildings. The industry is gaining momentum thanks to recent advances in drilling methods and technologies that are making it technically possible or financially viable to access geothermal energy in more places.

Many of those breakthroughs have come from the oil and gas industry, whose skilled workforce of drilling engineers and geoscientists, and deep corporate pockets, have helped launch startups and deploy cutting-edge systems. However, most of that expertise and funding is being poured into building new projects—not figuring out how to retool leaky wells left behind by earlier generations.

“Oil and gas well conversion presents an enormous opportunity, but it’s pretty far away technologically from being a reality,” said Emily Pope, a geologist and senior fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions who authored a recent study on next-generation geothermal power.

“There are some hurdles that are still pretty immense,” she said, adding that “it is worth doing some R&D to try and grow.”

One of the biggest challenges is the fact that oil and gas wells tend to reach relatively low to medium underground temperatures. But high heat is key for geothermal projects, especially ones that generate electricity. The hotter the resource, the more energy a developer can wring out of the system.

Plus, fossil fuel wells generally produce smaller volumes of liquid and gas than geothermal wells need in order to spin power turbines or transfer heat to buildings. Geothermal operators might also have to take extra steps to keep nasty elements in the subsurface reservoirs from mixing with the working fluids used to extract heat underground, said Arash Dahi Taleghani, an engineering professor with the Repurposing Center for Energy Transition at Pennsylvania State University.

He added that the high cost of converting wells to geothermal has limited the number of real-world examples so far.

Early Research Efforts Target Direct-Use Heat and Storage

At the University of Oklahoma, however, researchers have been evaluating how to turn four old oil and gas wells into sources of geothermal heat, which they hope to pipe into nearby public schools and homes in the city of Tuttle. The project was awarded a $1.7 million grant from the US Department of Energy’s Wells of Opportunity program in 2022, though it was paused last year during the Trump administration’s sweeping freeze on federal funding and is still waiting to start its next phase, KGOU reported in March.

Saeed Salehi was the Oklahoma project’s director before joining Southern Methodist University as an engineering professor in 2024. He said that repurposing wells for geothermal has several “clear advantages.”

Geothermal firms can avoid significant upfront drilling costs if the wells are already sufficiently deep and hot enough. Oil and gas firms, which today pay millions of dollars to properly seal and shut down modern wells, can give their assets a second life instead. And communities near the aging fossil fuel infrastructure could benefit from having clean, affordable heat and lower winter utility bills.

“We need to collect enough data and have enough successful projects to take it to scale,” Salehi said, calling repurposed wells “a custom solution for specific regions and areas.”

“Everything is going to take time, but I think we are moving in the right direction,” he added.

A smoother permitting process will be key to speeding things up, something Oklahoma, Alabama, and other states are aiming to address. States have traditionally lacked any regulatory framework for dealing with decades-old wells that no one is technically responsible for. Salehi said it took nearly nine months to get the Tuttle project’s permits, though the process is growing faster now.

In Pennsylvania, Dahi Taleghani said his team is looking to secure funding to repurpose old wells to supply the Penn State campus with geothermal heating. They have also studied the potential for using some of the state’s more than 200,000 abandoned wells to heat agricultural greenhouses, as well as to house energy-storage systems that compress air and stash it underground, acting as low-cost grid batteries.

“Decommissioning wells is expensive, costly, and it’s not generating any revenue,” Dahi Taleghani said. “So we’re looking to help create businesses that can go after these leaky wells, fix them, and then use them for geothermal applications.”

This story was originally published by Canary Media and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

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Posted Sunday 17 May 2026 at 7:35 am AEST (my time).

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In a press briefing Friday, officials for the World Health Organization announced that the case count of the hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius in the South Atlantic has shrunk from 11 cases to 10 after a previously reported US case was found to be a false positive.

That US case was originally reported by US health officials as “mildly positive,” and the WHO had considered it “inconclusive,” but still counted in the outbreak as a case in the agency’s May 13 outbreak report and in a briefing on May 14.

The inconclusive case was in Dr. Stephen Kornfeld, an American doctor aboard the ship who helped respond to the outbreak after the ship’s doctor became ill. In an interview with CNN earlier this week, Kornfeld explained that he and others on board had taken nasal swabs early in May, before evacuation, and those swabs were sent for PCR testing in the Netherlands. Two labs in the Netherlands processed Kornfeld’s swabs; one lab reported a negative result, and the other reported a faint positive.

Generally, a faint positive result on a PCR test could suggest low levels of virus at the start or end of an infection, or it could simply suggest contamination.

Adding to the complexity of the potential case, Kornfeld said that he had developed a minor illness in early April while on the ship, just a few days after the first hantavirus case fell ill in the outbreak—a Dutch man who died on board from his infection.

In an interview with ABC News Friday, Kornfeld reported that his repeat testing was negative and so was his serology testing looking for antibodies against hantavirus—which he would have developed if his illness in April was actually an unusually mild hantavirus infection. Overall, the testing shows that he is not currently infected and has not had a previous infection. As such, he has been transferred from the biocontainment unit to the quarantine unit at the Nebraska Medical Center, where US passengers from the Hondius are being monitored.

“I physically feel great—I have felt great for many, many days,” Kornfeld told ABC. “Emotionally, I feel wonderful. It’s nice to be negative for hantavirus.”

Evacuation complete

Overall, there have been 10 cases: Seven cases who became ill on the ship, one case that disembarked the ship on April 24, before the outbreak was identified, and fell ill in Switzerland. The remaining two cases—one from France, the other from Spain—were identified as the ship was evacuated and passengers were being repatriated. The number of deaths has not changed since May 2, with three total: a Dutch couple and a German woman.

Also in the WHO press conference, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the operation in the Canary Islands to safely evacuate the ship is complete. The operation involved transferring the ship’s 120-plus passengers to their home countries or to quarantine in host countries en route to their final destinations.

“Because of the long incubation period of up to six weeks, more cases may be reported in coming days as passengers return to their countries, where they are being quarantined and tested in specialized facilities or at home,” Tedros warned. “This does not mean the outbreak is expanding; it shows that the control measures are working, that laboratory testing is ongoing, and that people are being cared for with support from their governments.”

The US is monitoring 41 people who may have been exposed. That includes 18 passengers (including Kornfeld) who were evacuated from the Hondius, passengers who had disembarked the ship on April 24, and people who shared a flight with a Dutch woman (the wife of the first case) who also fell ill from the infection and died in South Africa, on her way home.

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Posted Saturday 16 May 2026 at 12:00 pm AEST (my time).

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More and more routine vaccines are being linked to lower risks of dementia. Shots against seasonal flu, RSV, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (Tdap), pneumococcal infections, hepatitis A and B, and typhoid have all been linked to lower risks. And one of the strongest connections is from vaccination against shingles, with more data supporting the link still coming in. But as the evidence mounts, scientists continue to puzzle over the pleasant surprise—how are vaccines that target specific pathogens inadvertently shielding our minds from deterioration?

A burgeoning hypothesis offers a brow-raising possibility: The shots may be protecting our noggins by training the part of our immune system that had long been considered untrainable. If the idea holds up, it could generate a deeper understanding of fundamental aspects of our immune systems while opening new avenues to treating or preventing dementia. It could also add another dimension to the benefits of vaccines, which already save millions of lives worldwide.

Trained immunity

It’s well understood how vaccines work generally; they’re designed to prime our immune systems against specific pathogens. Vaccines present either defanged pathogens or distinctive fragments of them to specialized immune cells—namely, T cells and antibody-producing B cells—that can then learn to identify those microbial enemies.

So if such a pathogen stages an attack after immunization, those immune cells will be able to recognize the invaders quickly and destroy them. This process, as intended, engages adaptive immune responses, the part of the immune system known to be trainable. It can learn to target specific threats—and remember those threats, aka immunologic memory.

Then there’s the other part of the immune system, the innate immune responses. These precede adaptive responses, acting as first-line, non-specific defenses against germs and injury. Innate defenses include everything from physical barriers—skin, mucous, gastric acid—to immune cells that can indiscriminately gobble invaders, as well as chemical signals that can swiftly ignite generic inflammation.

For decades, the innate immune response was considered relatively static—not one that evolves or hones itself as new threats are encountered. But that changed in 2011 with the coining of the term “trained immunity” to explain changes documented in innate immune responses from past exposures. Trained immunity occurs when cells involved in innate responses are activated and then primed by generic signals from a germ. Those primed cells acquire and maintain changes that allow them to respond to those germ signals faster and with more intensity the next time they’re encountered.

Specifically, the changes observed in trained immunity are epigenetic. These don’t alter the underlying DNA sequence of the cells but are modifications or chemical tags that alter gene activity. In the case of trained immunity, the changes may involve genes coding for pro-inflammatory signals that make those genes more active when the same germ signal is encountered again. Ultimately, this would lead to a stronger inflammatory response. Similar to adaptive responses, these epigenetic changes stick around afterward, creating another type of immunologic memory.

Quirky vaccines

So how does this connect to vaccines? The concept of trained immunity was solidified by data involving a vaccine—but one that’s far from routine in the US: the quirky Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, which was designed to protect against tuberculosis, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, but also used to treat bladder cancer (it’s still unclear how the vaccine works against this cancer).

Nevertheless, in 2012, researchers in the Netherlands conducted an experiment to investigate trained immunity in mice engineered to lack adaptive immune responses—they had no T cells or B cells. The researchers vaccinated the weakened animals with BCG, looking for changes in innate responses, the only responses the mice had.

The researchers found that the shot not only bolstered the rodents’ innate protective responses against M. tuberculosis but also boosted responses against an unrelated yeast pathogen, Candida albicans. Further work suggested similar trained immunity occurred in humans.

In the same study, the researchers examined blood samples from healthy human trial participants before and after immunization with BCG. After vaccination, the researchers found that immune cells in their blood produced stronger innate responses (pro-inflammatory signals) to M. tuberculosis than they did before the shot. They also produced stronger responses to C. albicans and the bacterial pathogen Staphylococcus aureus, suggesting non-specific trained immunity. The study was published in PNAS.

Since then, researchers have built a body of evidence to support and understand trained immunity. But in the past few years, the idea has collided with a steady stream of large population studies that have found that vaccines seem to protect against dementia. While most of the big studies that have made headlines have focused on routine vaccines—shingles and the flu, for example, a study in 2023 found that the BCG vaccine is also associated with a significantly lower risk of dementia.

In March, vaccine researchers in Belgium and South Africa, led by Justin Devine, put the findings together, including all the work on BCG, and published a hypothesis: Perhaps trained immunity from vaccines is behind the lower risks of dementia.

Prior to this, a leading hypothesis for the connection was that vaccines reduce the risk of dementia directly by preventing infections that can lead to inflammation in the brain, which, over time, could cause deterioration. This is particularly a strong hypothesis for the shingles vaccine. Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which initially causes chickenpox but then lingers in the body, staying mostly dormant in nerve cells. It can reactivate any time there’s a fault in the immune system, which often happens in older age, when immune responses naturally wane.

A shot of a shingles vaccine blocks reactivation, potentially preventing the virus from triggering brain inflammation that could contribute to the development of dementia. Conversely, there’s some evidence that having shingles may increase the risk of dementia.

A possible mechanism

But not every vaccine linked to reduced dementia risk comes with such an explanation for how it may protect the brain. For example, the seasonal flu vaccine seems to reduce dementia, but it’s unclear how. Still, in a large retrospective study published last month, researchers again bolstered the link between the seasonal flu shot and lower risks of dementia, this time finding that high-dose seasonal flu shots given to older patients are yet more protective against dementia than standard doses.

In other words, there seems to be a dose-dependent response—the higher the flu vaccine dose, the lower the dementia risk. The authors don’t speculate on how the seasonal shot could affect cognitive health, but they call for more research into potential mechanisms, including trained immunity.

In the March hypothesis piece, published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology, Devine and colleagues hypothesize that trained immunity from vaccinations could indeed be responsible.

“A central element in this immunological model is that uncontrolled or excessive levels of neuro-inflammation, associated with elevated dementia risk, can be counteracted by epigenetic reprogramming of innate immune cells,” they write.

For instance, it may be that the nonspecific changes to innate responses from vaccines are able to keep both targeted and non-targeted pathogens in check, preventing brain inflammation from flaring up, they say.

For now, the idea is just a hypothesis, and there’s a lot more work needed to validate it. But the stakes are high for pursuing it, the researchers argue. “Elucidating the mechanisms underlying these promising observations may open new avenues to promote healthy aging through vaccination and could be crucial for alleviating the global burden of dementia,” they write.

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Posted Saturday 16 May 2026 at 7:44 am AEST (my time).

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Welcome to Edition 8.41 of the Rocket Report! The stories of the world’s two most powerful rockets are now intertwined. Hardware for NASA’s third Space Launch System rocket is coming together at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, while SpaceX is readying its first upgraded Starship Version 3 rocket for liftoff from Starbase, Texas. The readiness of each vehicle, along with Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lander, will go a long way toward determining the schedule and content of NASA’s Artemis III mission in low-Earth orbit. We discuss those plans in this week’s Rocket Report.

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.

An Indian startup nears its first launch. After the Indian government opened a pathway in 2020 for private industry to build and launch its own rockets, one Indian startup is nearing the pad with its first orbital rocket, Ars reports. The most promising Indian launch company, Skyroot Aerospace, says its Vikram-1 launch vehicle could take flight within the next couple of months. And with a recent $60 million fundraising round valuing the firm at $1.1 billion, the company is poised to accelerate its commercial launch efforts.

A pioneering name… Skyroot’s co-founder and CEO, Pawan Kumar Chandana, worked for the Indian space agency before splitting off in 2018 to establish Skyroot Aerospace in Hyderabad. Although India lacked a purely commercial space industry, Chandana believed that the rising country had the right ingredients in place: great engineers, a supplier base, government spaceports, and an advantageous location near the equator.

Skyroot named its initial line of vehicles “Vikram” in honor of the Indian physicist Vikram Sarabhai, who is considered the father of the Indian space program. As a testbed for its technology, Skyroot worked on a suborbital version of its rocket, Vikram-S, from 2020 to 2022 and launched the 6-meter rocket in November of that year. The larger Vikram-1 rocket, now nearing its debut, consists of three solid-fueled stages, with the capability to place up to a half-metric ton of payload into low-Earth orbit.

Russia finally tastes success with Sarmat. Russia has announced a successful test of its long-delayed Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which President Vladimir Putin now says will be operationally deployed later this year, The War Zone reports. The weapon, developed to deliver multiple nuclear warheads over great distances, has a mixed record in testing so far and was once planned to be fielded in 2020.

All this makes this week’s announcements more significant, although they have yet to be independently verified. The test launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region took place on Tuesday, according to the Kremlin. Around half an hour later, Russian officials said the missile hit its target at the Kura test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Far East.

Righting the ship... The RS-28 Sarmat, known to NATO by the codename SS-29 Satan II, is Russia’s new-generation heavy ICBM, intended to replace the Soviet-era R-36M2 system (SS-18 Satan). The Sarmat is a silo-launched, liquid-fueled, nuclear-armed ICBM. The missile will reportedly have a host of capabilities intended to defeat ballistic missile defenses, but Russia has not built a good track record with the vehicle.

The first successful test launch of the Sarmat took place in 2022, also from Plesetsk. However, it was followed by a failed test launch in February 2023. A further test in September 2024 was also unsuccessful, leading to the destruction of the test silo at Plesetsk.

Italy is experimenting with air-launch. An Italian consortium has successfully completed a suborbital demonstration of an air-launched rocket system, European Spaceflight reports. The project, which used a Dornier Alpha Jet aircraft and a HAX25 sounding rocket developed by an Italian company named T4i, was initiated to support Italy’s push to develop a more responsive launch capability.

Another Italian contractor, GMV, provided avionics for the rocket. The program is named Aviolanco and is backed by the Italian government. A ground-launched sounding rocket completed the program’s first test flight in 2022, and Aviolanco progressed to the next phase with an air-launch demonstration from a Houston-based Alpha Jet over the Gulf of Mexico on April 22. The flight targeted an altitude of 80 to 100 kilometers, but a press release announcing the test’s completion did not indicate whether that target was met.

Prioritizing responsiveness... The test “successfully verified the entire system under real-world conditions,” officials said in a press release. Proponents of air-launch systems highlight their versatility. For example, an air-launched space mission could be rescheduled on short notice, with flexible trajectories to work around constraints such as changing weather conditions.

Air-launched rockets like Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus and Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne have demonstrated that the concept works from a technical perspective, but neither proved to be commercially sustainable. As some space-faring nations look to develop more spaceports and sea-based launch platforms, though, an air-launch system could offer a strategic, if not commercial, advantage. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

German company joins French spaceplane initiative. Dassault Aviation and German satellite developer OHB have teamed up to propose that Dassault’s Vortex-S spaceplane become a European Space Agency program, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The two companies are proposing the reusable spacecraft as a means of transporting supplies to space stations and performing autonomous orbital free-flying missions. Dassault, best known for building French fighter jets and business aircraft, is the prime architect and integrator on the program. OHB would develop a service module for the spaceplane. Dassault and OHB said they are in discussions with other European space companies to expand the team.

This sounds cool, but... The French government announced 30 million euros ($35 million) of funding to support the spaceplane program last year. The first step is a sub-scale suborbital demonstrator, called Vortex-D, that Dassault says could fly as soon as 2028. That would be followed by an orbital free-flyer called Vortex-S, and the Vortex-C operational cargo transport vehicle with a total mass of about 8 to 9 metric tons.

Dassault has long-term plans for a human-rated spaceplane. Past and ongoing efforts to develop a European spaceplane have not reached the launch pad. ESA’s Hermes spaceplane was canceled in 1992, and progress on a smaller low-Earth orbit (LEO) spaceplane named Space Rider has been slow. Meanwhile, ESA is working with The Exploration Company and Thales Alenia Space on developing cargo capsules, not spaceplanes, to service the International Space Station. ESA may have too many cooks in the kitchen to commit to another LEO transport vehicle. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX launches NRO satellites for GMTI mission. The National Reconnaissance Office’s (NRO) proliferated satellite architecture, now boasting hundreds of satellites, is supporting a new mission area for space-based sensing and targeting, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The latest batch of satellites for the proliferated constellation launched Monday night from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The constellation now numbers more than 200 satellites developed in a partnership between SpaceX and Northrop Grumman. In a press release after Monday night’s launch, the NRO revealed that the constellation is supporting the Defense Department’s Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) mission as part of the Pentagon’s space-based sensing and targeting architecture.

Migrating upward... The GMTI mission has historically been performed with aircraft, such as the E-8C Joint STARS fleet retired in 2023. Now, satellites are capable of overseeing the battlefield from hundreds of miles in space. The Space Force is developing a separate constellation for Air Moving Target Indication (AMTI).

China’s Zhuque-2E rocket returns to flight. China’s commercial Zhuque-2E rocket successfully deployed a mock payload into orbit after lifting off Thursday from a commercial spaceport in the Gobi Desert, Space News reports. This was the first launch of the medium-lift Zhuque-2E rocket since a second-stage failure on a mission last August.

Developed by LandSpace, the Zhuque-2E rocket is an evolution of the Zhuque-2 rocket, which became the first methane-fueled launch vehicle to reach orbit in 2023. The version used on Thursday is taller and more powerful than previous iterations, with a height of 183 feet (55.9 meters), 745,000 pounds of thrust at liftoff, and a payload capacity of more than 6 metric tons (13,000 pounds) to low-Earth orbit.

Zhuque-3 on deck… LandSpace’s other rocket, the Zhuque-3, is scheduled to make its second flight in the next few months, according to Chinese state media. The Zhuque-3 launched for the first time in December, becoming the first Chinese orbital-class rocket to attempt booster recovery. While the launch phase was successful, the booster crashed during a downrange landing attempt. LandSpace is expected to try again to land the reusable booster on the next flight. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

China launches space station resupply mission. A freighter carrying nearly seven tons of supplies has made its way to China’s Tiangong space station, Space.com reports. The robotic Tianzhou 10 cargo ship lifted off atop a Long March 7 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on China’s Hainan Island on Sunday. Five hours later, Tianzhou 10 docked with Tiangong, the T-shaped, three-module space station that China finished assembling in low-Earth orbit in late 2022.

Crew rotation soon… Tianzhou 10 delivered about 6.9 tons (6.3 metric tons) of supplies to the Tiangong space station, including scientific experiments in fluid physics, propellant for the lab’s propulsion system, and a new spacewalking spacesuit. The cargo ship also carried provisions for the station’s three-person crew, which has been in orbit since October. A new Chinese crew is scheduled for launch in the next few weeks.

$275 million for rockets and data centers. A space unicorn started by Baiju Bhatt, the billionaire co-founder of Robinhood Markets Inc., raised $275 million, changed its name, and unveiled a plan to build data centers in orbit, Bloomberg reports. Bhatt’s startup, founded in 2024, was rebranded to Cowboy Space Corp. from Aetherflux, which initially focused on building satellites for beaming solar energy to Earth. Index Ventures led the funding, which valued Cowboy Space at $2 billion, the startup said Monday in a statement. Silicon Valley-based Cowboy Space will use the funding to develop its own rocket to put data centers into orbit.

Cowboy up… The company’s vision sounds familiar. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have each announced plans to use their own rockets for launching orbital data centers. Cowboy’s approach differs from the former in that the new startup will design the upper stage of its rocket to itself become the satellite. The company says its new rocket is scheduled to debut in 2028. The path ahead for Cowboy Space is riddled with roadblocks. There are tall barriers to entry for anyone looking to compete with SpaceX and Blue Origin to put data center networks into orbit. Even those companies, bankrolled by two of the world’s richest entrepreneurs, are seeking outside funding to make their visions a reality.

Starship launching next week. For the third time in three years, SpaceX has stacked a new version of its enormous Starship rocket on a launch pad in South Texas, just a few miles north of the US-Mexico border, Ars reports. The newest-generation Starship, known as Starship Version 3, is taller and more powerful than its predecessors. If all goes according to plan, this is the version of Starship that SpaceX will use to begin experimenting with in-orbit refueling, a capability engineers must master before sending ships anywhere farther than low-Earth orbit. In the near-term, refueling will enable Starships to fly to the Moon to serve as landers for NASA’s Artemis program.

Final steps… SpaceX’s launch team filled the rocket with more than 11 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants Monday in a final countdown rehearsal before the test flight’s scheduled liftoff Tuesday, May 19. After completing the rehearsal, ground crews removed the rocket from the launch pad to install hardware for the vehicle’s flight termination system. The test flight will mark the 12th launch of a full-scale Starship and Super Heavy booster and the first since last October.

Artemis III comes into focus. NASA announced Wednesday that it will fly the Artemis III mission in low-Earth orbit and that it continues to target 2027 for this stepping-stone flight that will help land humans on the Moon, Ars reports. The space agency chose the orbit close to Earth—as opposed to a higher orbit—because it would preserve the final remaining Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage for launching the Artemis IV landing mission later this decade. Instead, NASA will use a “spacer” to simulate the mass and overall dimensions of an upper stage but without propulsive capabilities.

Questions remain… Instead of landing on the Moon with Artemis III, the agency now plans to launch four astronauts in the Orion spacecraft, on top of the Space Launch System rocket. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced the change three months ago. In Earth orbit, they will rendezvous with one or both of the vehicles under development to carry astronauts down to the lunar surface: SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2.

NASA will assess each vehicle’s readiness through the rest of 2026 and perhaps into early 2027 before deciding on a final flight plan for Artemis III. What the astronauts will do after rendezvousing with Starship and/or Blue Moon is also unclear. “While some decisions are yet to be determined, astronauts could potentially enter at least one lander test article.” That will hinge on the maturity of each lander’s life support system.

Next three launches

May 15: Falcon 9 | CRS-34 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 22:05 UTC

May 16: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-37 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 14:00 UTC

May 17: Long March 8 | Qianfan Polar Group TBD | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 14:40 UTC

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Posted Saturday 16 May 2026 at 7:44 am AEST (my time).

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The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday confirmed an Ebola outbreak in the Northeastern Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Officials in Uganda subsequently reported that the deadly hemorrhagic disease had spilled over the border, with one “imported” confirmed case identified in Kampala, the capital.

So far, the DRC has reported 246 suspected cases and 65 deaths, mainly in the Mongwalu and Rwampara health zones. Although it is now just being reported, the outbreak already ranks around the 10th largest Ebola outbreak to date.

This marks the 17th Ebola outbreak in the DRC since the virus was discovered in 1976. But unlike almost all of the country’s past Ebola outbreaks, preliminary laboratory results suggest that the current outbreak is not caused by the Zaire Ebola virus strain. Further genetic sequencing is ongoing today to determine the strain causing the illnesses.

There are four virus strains known to cause Ebola disease in humans, and three have caused large outbreaks (Zaire, Sudan, and Bundibugyo). According to an early Reuters report from Uganda, officials said the case there involved the Bundibugyo strain.

Complicated context

Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the Congolese virologist who co-discovered Ebola and heads the National Institute for Biomedical Research in Kinshasa, told Reuters that finding a different strain than Zaire behind the outbreak could complicate responses, given that current licensed vaccines and treatments were developed against the disease from the Zaire strain.

Africa CDC highlighted other complications of this outbreak, which include the urban context of Bunia and Rwampara; intense movement of people in the area, including mining-related mobility; militia clashes in the area; and gaps in contact tracing. The agency also noted the potential spillover not just to Uganda but also to South Sudan.

“Given the high population movement between affected areas and neighboring countries, rapid regional coordination is essential,” Dr. Jean Kaseya, director-general of Africa CDC, said in a statement Friday. “We are working with DRC, Uganda, South Sudan, and partners to strengthen surveillance, preparedness, and response, and to help contain the outbreak as quickly as possible.”

In a press briefing on Friday afternoon, Jay Bhattacharya, who is heading the US CDC for now, said that the agency, which has offices in both DRC and Uganda, is offering technical assistance to the countries. “It is a large outbreak, and we were just informed yesterday about it. So we’ve been working very, very hard to coordinate with them,” Bhattacharya said.

In a separate press briefing earlier today, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO received a signal of suspected Ebola cases in the DRC and sent a team to support the health ministry on May 5. WHO representatives are still there assisting in outbreak responses.

Tedros also said WHO was releasing today $500,000 from WHO’s Contingency Fund for Emergencies to immediately support the response efforts.

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Posted Saturday 16 May 2026 at 7:43 am AEST (my time).

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Cement production alone currently accounts for about 8 percent of global CO₂ emissions, so considerable effort is going into lowering that number. Efficiency can be increased, and energy sources can be swapped for cleaner ones, but a stubborn reality remains: The byproduct of turning limestone into lime during cement production releases CO₂ gas. These “direct process emissions” are actually slightly larger than the emissions from burning fuel to heat the kilns and drive this process.

A new paper in Communications Sustainability suggests a route to eliminating direct process emissions by removing a bedrock assumption. What if we don’t have to use limestone cement?

Get out of Portland

The material we call “Portland cement” was developed in the 1800s. It simply requires heating limestone (calcium carbonate) and adding something like clay or coal ash. This gives you the calcium oxide (lime) you’re after but also releases the CO₂ that results when you pull an oxygen atom from carbonate.

The authors of the new paper include the CEO and an engineer from a company that says it has made Portland cement from silicate rocks like basalt—at the lab scale. Basalt contains a mix of minerals that include calcium, aluminum, iron, magnesium, sodium, silicon, and oxygen. (Note the absence of carbon from that list.) The basic idea is that you don’t need limestone to get calcium oxide.

The process of freeing these components from basalt looks more like a refining or recycling process than the toss-it-in-the-oven simplicity of the limestone process. Acid can be used to leach elements like calcium out, then a chemical or energetic process precipitates that calcium as calcium hydroxide. Toss that in a kiln with additives of your choice, and with less heating than you need for limestone, you’ve got Portland cement, with only water vapor released.

Those steps (along with follow-up reactions to restore the acid or other chemicals to a usable state) obviously add up in terms of cost and energy use. Tallying up the energy to do all this using common techniques, the researchers found that you need to use a little more than double the energy of traditional production from limestone.

The interesting thing is that, according to thermodynamics, the chemical conversion of basalt minerals to calcium oxide only requires around half as much as the conversion from limestone. The problem is that our techniques to facilitate that chemical conversion are quite inefficient, so we don’t get anywhere near what is theoretically possible.

Better options?

The researchers note that there are at least some known lab techniques that could greatly improve our efficiency if they can be applied at scale, but even if we’re stuck with doubled energy usage, producing Portland cement from basalt would significantly reduce CO₂ emissions. That’s because the direct liberation of CO₂ from limestone is eliminated and because the whole process can run on electricity.

Assuming you use electricity from a fossil-fuel-dominated grid, they estimate that emissions would be cut by almost 30 percent. Using clean electricity would eliminate most of the remaining emissions.

The trade-off, obviously, would be cost, which generally wins out over the sustainability of a livable environment.

But there is another interesting aspect to this idea: The other components of the basalt also have value. Iron, magnesium, and aluminum could also be separated and recovered, and leftover silicate material can serve as the additive for Portland cement instead of something like coal ash. So if these things were done together, the process could become more economically feasible.

That’s a lot of ifs and buts, but this relatively simple analysis can at least point to what would have to happen to make this viable. And given that cement is one of the tougher nuts to crack in the struggle to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, concrete solutions are welcome.

Communications Sustainability, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s44458-026-00056-4 (About DOIs).

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Posted Saturday 16 May 2026 at 7:42 am AEST (my time).

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Scientists said this week that a developing El Niño is likely to amplify heatwaves, droughts and floods this year, but warned that the long-term warming caused by burning fossil fuels remains the main driver of climate extremes.

El Niño is the warm phase of a semi-regular temperature oscillation in the tropical Pacific Ocean, during which massive amounts of heat stored in the ocean are released into the atmosphere, temporarily raising the average annual global surface temperature by as much as 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit.

During an online briefing this week, researchers said that the consequences of a moderate or strong El Niño today are more damaging than those of similar events just a few decades ago because the entire global climate system is now substantially warmer.

If the projected El Niño emerges on top of that warmer climate, there is a “serious risk of unprecedented weather extremes” that would not have happened during similar historical El Niños, said Fredi Otto, a professor in climate science at Imperial College London and a lead researcher with World Weather Attribution, a research group assessing how global warming affects climate extremes.

El Niño conditions in 2015–2016 and 2023–2024 helped boost Earth’s long-running fever to new records; climatologists expect another spike in the months ahead. But the planet’s temperature will keep reaching new record highs in any case “because of human-induced climate change,” Otto said during the press conference.

World Weather Attribution has assessed the effects of global warming on more than 100 extreme climate events since 2014. Often, she said, those studies try to isolate El Niño’s role in a particular extreme event to accurately measure the effect of human-caused warming.

In almost every case, the WWA researchers found “human-induced climate change has a much greater influence on the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events” than El Niño cycles, she said. One of their assessments showed that human-caused warming “far eclipsed” the effects of a strong El Niño on extreme rains in the Horn of Africa at the end of 2023.

Jemilah Mahmood, director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University in Indonesia, said during the press conference that the scientific projections for serious climate impacts from a combination of long-term warming and El Niño this year can be measured in terms of life and death, especially regarding extreme heat.

“Heat is exactly the kind of crisis that our systems are designed to ignore until it’s too late,” Mahmood said.

“It doesn’t arrive with a named storm or a visible floodline. It kills quietly, in homes, in open fields, in the bodies of workers who have no choice but to be outside,” she said, tallying grim statistics like the estimated 546,000 total annual heat-related global deaths.

“We have normalized a public health emergency by failing to name it as one,” she said. “Those who contributed the least to this crisis are often those paying the highest health costs, but that is the equity scandal at the heart of everything we are discussing today.”

“Severe year” for wildfires

Hotspots at the confluence of El Niño-driven droughts and ongoing planetary heating are expected in wildfire-prone regions, including the Amazon, Canada, the western United States, and Australia, the researchers said during the briefing.

Theodore Keeping, a wildfire researcher at the University of Reading in England, said firefighters in those regions are bracing for a severe year, potentially facing some of the most damaging fire conditions seen in recent history. He noted that the combination of El Niño on top of ongoing warming has driven a “whiplash” between extreme moisture and extreme drought in some regions. Grasses and brush thrive during heavy rains, then dry out quickly when the heat returns, turning into combustible fuel.

This year, Keeping said, wildfires on several continents have already scorched an Alaska-sized area of land—more than half a million square miles—50 percent more than average over the past 25 years. Almost all countries in West Africa and the Sahel region of North-Central Africa experienced record-breaking wildfires, he added.

But wildfire season is only beginning in many parts of the world, so with “this rapid start, in combination with the forecast El Niño … we’re looking at a particularly severe year materializing,” he said.

Big fires that burned in “normally lusher regions” of East Asia, including Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, were associated with severe droughts that were, in turn, linked with human-caused climate change, he said. Scientists know that ecosystems are drying more rapidly during periods of low rainfall due to warming, he said, adding that “these fires are of particular concern, given how populated the region is.”

Keeping said that a strong El Niño “can have a major effect on wildfire risk” appearing later this year, which could increase the likelihood of severe hot and dry conditions in Australia, as well as the northwestern US and Canada, and the Amazon rainforest.

Even if El Niño leads to “very extreme conditions later this year, it’s not a reason to freak out,” Otto said. “It comes and goes. Climate change, by contrast, gets worse and worse and worse as long as we do not stop burning fossil fuels. So climate change is the reason to freak out.”

A constructive response, she said, is within reach, “because we do know what to do about it. We have the knowledge and the technology to go very, very far away from using fossil fuels.”

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

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Posted Friday 15 May 2026 at 7:12 am AEST (my time).

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NASA announced Wednesday that it will fly the Artemis III mission in low-Earth orbit and that it continues to target 2027 for this stepping-stone flight that will help land humans on the Moon.

The space agency chose the orbit close to Earth—as opposed to a higher orbit—because it would preserve the final remaining Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage for launching the Artemis IV landing mission later this decade. Instead, NASA will use a “spacer” to simulate the mass and overall dimensions of an upper stage but without propulsive capabilities.

The additional information released this week follows a decision made by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman three months ago to shuffle the agency’s Artemis plans in order to accelerate a lunar landing.

Instead of landing on the Moon with Artemis III, the agency now plans to launch four astronauts inside the Orion spacecraft, on top of the Space Launch System rocket. In Earth orbit they will rendezvous with one, or both, of the vehicles under development to carry astronauts down to the lunar surface: SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2.

Saving an upper stage

This decision to reduce the risks of the eventual lunar landing mission with an interim test closer to home has largely been applauded by the space community. It greatly increases the chance of success with the eventual lunar landing mission.

“For the first time, NASA will coordinate a launch campaign involving multiple spacecraft integrating new capabilities into Artemis operations,” said Jeremy Parsons, Moon to Mars acting assistant deputy administrator, in a news release. “We’re integrating more partners and interrelated operations into this mission by design, which will help us learn how Orion, the crew, and ground teams all interact together with hardware and teams from both providers before we send astronauts to the Moon’s surface and build a Moon Base there.”

However NASA continues to put off some key details for this mission, which Isaacman has repeatedly said will launch in (late) 2027.

The centerpiece of this mission will test the ability of the Artemis III astronauts—who have not yet been named, but could be within the coming months—to fly Orion to one or both of the lunar landers and then dock with the lander.

NASA did something similar during the Apollo program, with the Apollo 9 mission in March 1969. During that mission, two Apollo 9 astronauts entered the Lunar Module and separated from the Apollo Command Module. They performed a number of tasks, including flying up to 9.9 miles below, and 74 miles behind, the Apollo spacecraft before returning and docking again.

How mature will the landers be?

It is unclear, however, how rigorous similar testing will be during Artemis III. The new NASA release states: “Informed by Blue Origin and SpaceX capabilities, NASA also is defining the concept of operations for the mission. While some decisions are yet to be determined, astronauts could potentially enter at least one lander test article.”

This suggests that Artemis III astronauts may not even enter Starship and/or Blue Moon, let alone fire thrusters or separate from Orion.

This sets up a major dilemma for Isaacman and the rest of NASA’s leadership. If they fly Artemis III in 2027, the stated goal, they almost certainly will be rendezvousing with one or two landers that are far short of full maturity. (The NASA release calls them “pathfinders.”) If NASA is contemplating not even having the crew enter the landers, it is possible that neither vehicle will have even basic life support.

This falls short of a well-established maxim in the space industry: test like you fly. The longer NASA waits to fly Artemis III, the better chance it will have to fly with a higher-fidelity vehicle—that is, one closer to landing on the Moon than being a basic prototype. It also increases the likelihood that an Artemis spacesuit, developed by Axiom Space, will be available for testing.

But the longer NASA waits to fly Artemis III, it will likely lose concordance in the schedule for the lunar landing with Artemis IV. And this matters, because when Isaacman says the competition between NASA and China to return humans to the Moon will be decided by “months” rather than “years,” he is not wrong.

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Posted Thursday 14 May 2026 at 7:08 am AEST (my time).

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The world’s first dentist was a Neanderthal, according to a recent study.

59,000 years ago in what’s now southwestern Siberia, a Neanderthal had a toothache. It must have been a doozy because they were desperate enough to sit still while someone drilled into the tooth with a sharp stone tool, removing the infected tissue and ultimately relieving the pain.

The process left behind a hole in the tooth that paleoanthropologist Alisa Zubova of the Russian Academy of Sciences and her colleagues recognized, tens of millennia later, as dental work. Archaeologists unearthed the tooth at Chagyrskaya Cave in Russia, and it’s now the oldest known evidence of dentistry—or any direct medical treatment.

This tooth is the world’s oldest evidence of dentistry, or any other medical procedure, for that matter.

Credit: Zubova et al. 2026

Experimental archaeology in action

The tooth, found in a layer of sediment laid down 59,000 years ago, is an upper third molar with an unusually large hole in the chewing surface, reaching all the way down into the pulp chamber—the protected inner space of the tooth that houses the nerves and blood vessels. Around the edges of the hole, Zubova and her colleagues noticed scratches, which, in addition to the hole’s unusual size and shape, made the archaeologists wonder if it had been drilled intentionally to relieve the pain of a tooth infection. That possibility “demanded special analysis,” said Zubova in an interview with PLOS.

Drilling a hole in a tooth to relieve pain sounds counterintuitive at first, but it’s the easiest, least destructive way to remove the infected tissue. Exposing the pulp chamber leads to the death of the exposed nerves, which takes away the pain. This didn’t become common practice until a few hundred years ago, but at least one Neanderthal apparently figured it out and convinced someone to go along with it.

To test whether the hole was made intentionally, Zubova and her colleagues examined the tooth more closely with scanning electron microscopes, micro-CT, and Raman spectroscopy, a technique for identifying the chemical makeup of an object. They also made their own stone drilll or perforator (a sharp stone tool that would have been used to drill or punch holes in hides, bone, and other materials) and tested it on three human teeth.

Two of the teeth were museum specimens, whose age and context curators didn’t know, making them less useful for other kinds of research. But one, an upper left third molar with an untreated cavity, came straight from the mouth of one of the authors—for science!

(In most scientific papers, a section at the end outlines the specific contributions of each author, which usually means tasks like writing, data collection, production of stone tools, and analysis. This paper’s author contributions did not list “donation of a tooth for experimental archaeology,” so we can only speculate about who bit the proverbial bullet.)

The holes and striations left behind by Zubova and her colleagues’ experiments very closely matched what they saw on the molar from Chagyrskaya, which means it’s very likely that the 59,000-year-old tooth was, in fact, the aftermath of an actual Paleolithic medical procedure.

We already knew that Neanderthals, and even earlier hominins, took care of their sick, injured, and disabled; archaeologists have found fossil hominins, dating back hundreds of thousands of years, sporting healed injuries and bone infections that couldn’t have survived without, at the very least, someone bringing them food while they healed. But the Chagyrskaya molar is evidence of skilled medical treatment. It’s the difference between chicken soup and minor surgery.

“Treating a carious tooth is not just feeding or guarding someone. It requires diagnosing the source of pain, selecting an appropriate tool, performing a painful, invasive action, and persisting despite the patient’s discomfort,” said Kolobova. “That is active, targeted medical intervention.”

And—in a frankly impressive success for dental surgery performed in a cave with a sharp rock—the patient went on to use the tooth for years afterward. The molar showed signs of normal long-term wear and tear, which could have only happened if the patient lived to chew another day.

Your dentist’s office was never this scenic.

Credit: Kolobova et al. 2019

What did poor Og go through?

What would this whole experience have been like for the Neanderthal patient? Like modern dentistry—only much, much more so—it would have been deeply unpleasant but better than the alternative. The patient wouldn’t have had the benefit of modern anesthetics, but archaeological traces at other sites suggest Neanderthals knew about medicinal plants like chamomile and yarrow, as well as antiseptics like birch tar. And there are some natural painkillers among the plants of modern Siberia, like white clover, which is also a handy antiseptic.

The Raman spectroscopy didn’t find any residues of plants or resins on the tooth. But if the individual lived for years after their dental appointment, any herbal treatments would probably have worn or washed off, so the absence of residue doesn’t rule anything out. It does, however, leave open the grim possibility that this Neanderthal may have had to white-knuckle it through the procedure.

In Zubova and her colleagues’ experiments, it took about 50 minutes to drill through the enamel and dentin and breach the pulp cavity. The researchers say it could have taken about twice that long if they were working in the cramped confines of a patient’s mouth, with limited visibility and awkward working angles. (Also, Og tends to fidget a lot.)

On the other hand, Neanderthals have thinner dental enamel than Homo sapiens, and there may already have been enough decay in the infected dentin to make it mushy and easier to drill through. So we can safely assume between one and two hours of someone drilling into your tooth with a pointy bit of jasper, with or without any kind of natural painkiller.

“I can say that what struck me, and continues to strike me, is what an incredibly strong-willed person this Neanderthal must have been,” Russian Academy of Sciences paleoanthropologist Lydia Zotkina said. “To me, this is a stunning example of how archaeological evidence can allow us not just to glimpse a single aspect of past people’s lives but to actually understand what these individuals were like—strong and resilient. Now, every time I go to the dentist, I think about that guy.”

It’s likely, according to Zubova and her colleagues, that the patient realized they had no choice. The infection may already have been severe enough to make it impossible to chew or talk, and if left untreated, it could have been fatal. That still happens to people today.

The hole in the chewing surface of this molar was drilled by a Neanderthal with a stone tool.

Credit: Zubova et al. 2026

How Neanderthals invented dentistry

One thing the Chagyrskaya molar proves—which really shouldn’t be surprising given everything else we know about Neanderthals by now—is that the patient and dentist both understood the choice and had the willpower to make it.

The single, drilled-out tooth also reveals an element of problem-solving and medical knowledge. It’s not a huge intuitive leap to think that if you take out the part that hurts, the pain might go away, but these Neanderthals had worked out the next step: how to remove the infected tissue without yanking out the whole tooth, instead choosing to spend an hour or two trying to hold Og’s head still.

The Chagyrskaya procedure happened around 59,000 years ago; the next oldest evidence of dentistry comes from a 14,000-year-old site called Ripari Villabruna in what’s now northern Italy—and even that wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as the work done at Chagyrskaya. It looks like someone at Ripari Villabruna scraped away the infected upper layer of the patient’s tooth enamel but left behind the dentin and pulp. That wouldn’t have done much to relieve the patient’s pain, but an attempt was made.

The Ripari Villabruna dental work may have been a logical progression from tooth-picking, a practice which not only removes stray food particles but can also pry loose infected tissue (don’t try this at home). It’s the much simpler version of “fiddle with the spot that hurts until it stops hurting,” and it’s also much older, dating back to Homo habilis and even Japanese macaques. Chagyrskaya 64 has a second cavity, which overlaps a groove in the side of the tooth that looks like trademark evidence of picking.

How that practice developed into full-fledged dental drilling is a question for future research. Kolobova says she hopes her team’s study of the Chagyrskaya 64 molar will encourage other paleoanthropologists to take a closer look at other Neanderthal teeth and bones, looking for “similar subtle traces of intervention.”

“We may have missed many because we weren’t looking for them,” said Kolobova.

PLOS One, 2026. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0347662 

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Posted Thursday 14 May 2026 at 7:07 am AEST (my time).

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While it has enabled many exciting discoveries, the Curiosity Rover has also encountered its share of setbacks. The latest left NASA engineers speechless.

On April 25, Curiosity drilled into a rock nicknamed “Atacama” to collect a sample. When the rover retracted the robotic arm after drilling, the entire rock unexpectedly lifted off the Martian surface—all 28.6 pounds of it. While other Curiosity drilling operations have caused cracks or breaks in the upper layers of Martian rocks during the rover's nearly 14-year mission, this is the first time one has remained stuck to the sleeve that surrounds the drill's rotating tip.

As the space agency itself recounts, it was the black-and-white obstacle-detection cameras mounted on the front of the rover's chassis that captured this peculiar “accident” in a sequence of images that allowed engineers to get to work immediately to free it, moving its robotic arm and operating the drill repeatedly over several days.

Engineers initially tried to remove the rock by vibrating the drill, to no avail. On April 29, they adjusted the position of the robotic arm and tried vibration again, but only managed to knock some sand off the rock. On May 1, the team gave it another try by tilting the drill more, rotating and vibrating it, and spinning the drill bit. The team expected to have to repeat these operations several times, but instead the rock broke loose on the first attempt, shattering into a multitude of pieces when it hit the Martian soil.

NASA’s Curiosity rover was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and landed on Mars in August 2012 with the purpose of looking for evidence that the Red Planet might have once had conditions that could support microbial life. In 2020, it conducted an experiment in the Glen Torridon region within Gale Crater, an area rich in clay minerals that strongly indicate the presence of water in the past and that it collected using onboard instruments known as Sample Analysis on Mars.

This story originally appeared in WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.

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Posted Thursday 14 May 2026 at 7:07 am AEST (my time).

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NASA has enabled scientists to study the impact of microgravity on drug development for decades, beginning with the Space Shuttle. This work accelerated in the 2010s, with the completion of the International Space Station and full-time crew members devoted to scientific research.

There have been some notable successes during this timeframe, such as the ability to grow a more uniform crystalline form of the cancer drug Keytruda in 2019. This opened up the possibility of administering the drug via injection rather than requiring a patient to spend hours in a clinic setting to receive the drug intravenously.

NASA subsidized much of this work, typically paying the considerable costs to transport research to the ISS and for astronaut time to conduct research there. There were, however, trade-offs, such as long lead times to get research into space. Nevertheless, it has become clear that there could be some commercial applications for making drugs in space.

Varda starts cooking

A private space company, Varda Space Industries, has begun flying small, uncrewed capsules equipped with autonomous bioreactors that spend a few weeks to months in microgravity that can process pharmaceuticals in the absence of gravity. The company launched the first of these vehicles, W-1, in mid-2023. Five other vehicles have launched since then.

The pharmaceutical industry appears to be starting to notice. On Wednesday morning, Varda announced a significant new collaboration with United Therapeutics Corporation to explore the use of microgravity to develop improved treatments for rare lung disease. As part of the agreement, Varda and United Therapeutics will use microgravity’s influence on the structure and crystallization properties of therapeutic compounds in order to improve their stability and delivery.

In an interview, the president and co-founder of Varda, Delian Asparouhov, said this was an important moment for the orbital economy.

“This is the first time that a large, publicly traded company is using capital from their own balance sheet, not just from NASA, to build and produce a product in microgravity,” Asparouhov said. “This is the first, and we expect there to be many more. I do think it’s a really good historical moment for the space industry.”

More frequent access

Asparouhov said that several trend lines have converged, enabling Varda and United Therapeutics to collaborate. There is the bedrock of research done on board the ISS, increased capital for space startups like Varda, and the rise of reusable rockets that has brought down the cost of access to space and increased the cadence. Varda’s spacecraft, with a mass of a few hundred kilograms, typically fly on SpaceX’s periodic Transporter missions that launch dozens of space missions at a time.

Although he declined to discuss the explicit financial details of this agreement, Asparouhov said it will allow his company and United Therapeutics to do a large number of screening tests on the ground, principally in Varda’s new 10,000-square-foot pharmaceutical lab in El Segundo, California, and then to take these most promising applications to space.

Over time, scientists have come to understand that when molecules assemble in microgravity—that is, in Earth orbit—they do so more slowly and consistently. The crystalline structure of molecules is more uniform, rather than a broad variation.

This turns out to be quite useful in some pharmaceutical applications, including allowing drugs to dissolve more consistently, retain a longer shelf life or reduce cold storage requirements, and reducing side effects. Essentially, yanking gravity away is another tool, just like temperature or pressure, that drug manufacturers can apply to improve their products.

I’m not just the president, I’m also a client

Varda’s W-6 spacecraft is presently in orbit, and Asparouhov said three more vehicles are being prepped to launch this year. The plan is to increase that cadence to seven launches next year. The company presently has about 200 employees and has raised $330 million to date.

Long term, Varda’s goal is not to be a space company, but rather a pharmaceutical company that operates in space and brings valuable materials back to Earth.

“We’re not just building the reentry systems,” Asparouhov said. “We’re also building the largest customer for those reentry systems, which is our whole internal pharmaceutical business. Because at the end of the day, what are you reentering? If you’re bringing things back from space, it’s either humans, in which case there’s plenty of sort of human-rated things; and then if you’re not bringing back humans, it’s got to be a pretty darn valuable product.”

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Posted Thursday 14 May 2026 at 7:06 am AEST (my time).

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A team led by the Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías (IGFAE) at the University of Santiago de Compostela has reported the first combined measurement of both the speed and direction of a black hole recoil after two black holes merged. The study, published in Nature Astronomy, helps us better understand how gravitational waves carry energy and affect the motion of the final black hole.

Gravitational waves, first predicted by Einstein in 1916, are tiny ripples in spacetime that spread out when very massive objects like black holes collide. These waves carry energy and momentum away from the system. When two black holes merge, the waves are not always spread out evenly in all directions. Because of this imbalance, the final black hole gets a “kick” or recoil. How strong this kick is depends on the masses and spins of the two black holes. The direction of the kick depends on how the system is oriented in space.

So far, scientists have mostly been able to measure one part of this setup, called the orbital inclination. Another important angle, the azimuthal angle, has been much harder to figure out. The research team showed that special features in the gravitational waves, called higher-order modes, can be used to extract this missing information. This made it possible to calculate the direction of the recoil.

They tested this method using a real event called GW190412, which was detected in 2019 by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo observatories. This event involved two black holes with different masses, and it clearly showed these higher-order wave patterns. Using a detailed computer model based on Einstein’s equations, the researchers found that the recoil speed was greater than 50 km/s. That is fast enough that the final black hole could escape from some dense star clusters, like globular clusters. Their statistical results gave strong support for this, with a Bayes factor of about 21, which corresponds to roughly 95% confidence.

The team also worked out the direction of this recoil compared to key reference directions, like the system’s orbital axis and the direction from Earth. They found that the kick was not aligned with the orbital plane or pointing directly toward Earth, but instead pointed somewhere in between.

To explain the idea more simply, Prof. Juan Calderon-Bustillo compared the gravitational wave signal to an orchestra, where different instruments become clearer depending on where you are listening from. This difference in “sound” helped the team figure out the full 3D motion of the black hole. Dr. Koustav Chandra of Penn State added that this approach lets scientists reconstruct the movement of an object billions of light-years away using only ripples in spacetime.

This kind of measurement is important for studying events where black hole mergers might also produce light, such as in active galactic nuclei. Whether we can see that light depends on the direction of the recoil relative to Earth. So knowing the recoil direction helps scientists check if a gravitational wave signal matches any observed flash of light or if the match is just a coincidence.

Overall, this study shows that gravitational wave science is moving beyond just detecting black hole mergers. Scientists can now start to map out exactly how these events happen in space. Measuring both the speed and direction of recoil will help improve future studies and give a clearer picture of how black holes grow and shape the Universe.

Source: University of Santiago de Compostela

This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

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Posted Wednesday 13 May 2026 at 4:29 pm AEST (my time).

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For the third time in three years, SpaceX has stacked a new version of its enormous Starship rocket on a launch pad in South Texas, just a few miles north of the US-Mexico border. The newest-generation Starship, known as Starship Version 3, is taller and more powerful than the ones that came before it.

The upgrades on Starship are numerous. Perhaps the most notable changes are higher-thrust, more efficient Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, a new reusable lattice-like structure at the top of the booster for hot staging, and three—not four—modified grid fins to help bring the first stage back to Earth for recovery and reuse.

If all goes according to plan, this is the version of Starship that SpaceX will use to begin experimenting with in-orbit refueling, a capability engineers must master before sending ships anywhere farther than low-Earth orbit. In the near-term, refueling will enable Starships to fly to the Moon to serve as landers for NASA’s Artemis program. Starship remains an iterative development program, and new versions are in the pipeline, but Starship V3 should mark a step toward SpaceX actually using Starships in space, rather than solely proving they can get there and get home.

But SpaceX must first do just that with Starship V3. The company has not officially announced a target launch date. Airspace and maritime warning notices released in the last few days suggested the upgraded rocket could lift off as soon as Friday evening from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site on the Gulf Coast east of Brownsville, Texas, but that was before a day-and-a-half delay in launch preps over the weekend.

A fresh set of maritime warnings issued late Monday indicated SpaceX is now targeting a launch attempt on Tuesday, May 19.

Final steps

Ground crews at Starbase lifted the Starship upper stage atop its Super Heavy booster Saturday, assembling a fully stacked Starship V3 for the first time. The rocket has a height of 408 feet (124 meters), a few feet taller than the previous version of Starship.

On Monday, SpaceX’s launch team loaded more than 11 million pounds (more than 5,000 metric tons) of super-cold methane and liquid oxygen into both stages of the rocket after halting a previous fueling attempt Saturday night due to a technical issue. The launch rehearsal followed a test-firing of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines at the launch site on May 6, the first time SpaceX ignited a full complement of uprated Raptor 3s.

At liftoff, the rocket is expected to produce some 18 million pounds of thrust, about 10 percent more than the previous generation of Super Heavy boosters, according to specifications previously released by SpaceX. The scale is staggering. For example, in Version 3, the internal transfer tube that channels methane fuel from the top of the booster to the engine compartment is about the same size as the first stage of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which is roughly 12 feet (3.7 meters) in diameter.

The upcoming flight will also mark the first liftoff from a new launch pad at Starbase, about 1,000 feet (300 meters) west of the departure point for all of SpaceX’s past Starship test flights. This will be the 12th full-scale Starship test flight, and the first since last October, after delays in readying V3 for its first launch.

Like most prior Starship flights, the upper stage of the rocket will target a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean a little more than an hour into the mission. On future flights of Starship V3, SpaceX will attempt to bring the ship back to Starbase for a catch by the launch tower’s mechanical arms, as the company has already demonstrated with the rocket’s massive Super Heavy booster.

One change SpaceX is introducing on this launch is a more southerly flight path over the Gulf of Mexico, taking the rocket between the northeastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula and the western tip of Cuba, instead of over the Florida Straits.

What’s left before Starship V3 is ready to fly? On the SpaceX side, workers must install hardware for the rocket’s self-destruct system, pyrotechnics that would blow up the vehicle if it deviated from its flight plan. This will require the removal of the ship from the booster. A launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration is still pending.

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Posted Wednesday 13 May 2026 at 7:14 am AEST (my time).

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eBay’s board of directors today rejected GameStop’s $55.5 billion offer to buy the company.

“We have concluded that your proposal is neither credible nor attractive,” eBay Chairman Paul Pressler wrote in a letter to GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen. Pressler said the board and its independent advisors thoroughly reviewed GameStop’s unsolicited bid and found numerous problems.

“We have taken into account such factors as 1) eBay’s standalone prospects, 2) the uncertainty regarding your financing proposal, 3) the impact of your proposal on eBay’s long-term growth and profitability, 4) the leverage, operational risks, and leadership structure of a combined entity, 5) the resulting implications of these factors on valuation, and 6) GameStop’s governance and executive incentives,” Pressler said.

GameStop made the surprising offer last week. eBay’s rejection “could lead to a hostile bid” because Cohen has “said he was willing to take the offer directly to eBay shareholders, possibly by calling a special meeting,” Reuters wrote.

Cohen struggled in an awkward CNBC interview to explain how GameStop would pay for the bigger company. eBay’s market capitalization is over four times larger than GameStop’s.

GameStop said it was on track to secure up to $20 billion in debt and offered to buy eBay for $125 per share, half in cash and half in GameStop stock. But as CNBC hosts pointed out, the numbers provided by GameStop didn’t add up to enough to cover the full $55.5 billion.

The rejection letter’s mention of “GameStop’s governance and executive incentives” seems to refer to Cohen’s performance-based stock option award. Cohen receives no salary or other guaranteed pay but could make $35 billion if GameStop hits a $100 billion market capitalization and $10 billion in cumulative earnings. GameStop’s current market capitalization is about $10.2 billion.

We contacted GameStop and will update this article if it provides a response.

Cohen not “passionate about GameStop”

Cohen said in an interview with Business Insider that he would prefer to be the CEO of eBay than the CEO of GameStop. “I did not want to be the CEO of GameStop. I want to be the CEO of eBay,” he said. “I’m passionate about eBay. I believe in eBay’s business. I wasn’t passionate about GameStop. That’s the difference.”

Cohen claimed that eBay could become more successful by dramatically cutting sales and marketing costs, and by using GameStop’s 1,600 US stores as “a national network for authentication, intake, fulfillment, and live commerce.” But eBay’s board told Cohen that the company can succeed with its current plan.

“eBay is a strong, resilient business that has delivered meaningful results over the past several years,” the board’s letter to Cohen said. “We have sharpened our strategic focus, strengthened execution, enhanced our marketplace and seller experience, and consistently returned capital to shareholders. With its differentiated global marketplace and a clear strategy, eBay’s board is confident that the company, under its current management team, is well-positioned to continue to drive sustainable growth, execute with discipline, and deliver long-term value for our shareholders.”

Cohen has been selling various personal items on eBay in a humorous attempt to raise money for the $55.5 billion offer. “I’m selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay,” he wrote.

Cohen’s account was suspended last week, but eBay has since allowed him to resume the sales. “Cohen’s eBay account was initially flagged for suspicious activity by eBay’s internal artificial-intelligence tool, leading to an automatic ban, a person familiar with the matter told MarketWatch. But after further review, his account was reinstated and he is now able to buy and sell again,” MarketWatch wrote.

A set of GameStop store signs being sold by Cohen has been bid up to nearly $15,000. A Halo 2 Master Chief statue is fetching almost as much, and a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card has a high bid of over $11,000. With a day left on Cohen’s auctions, there is hope that final prices will be even higher. It’s not $55.5 billion, but it’s a start.

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Posted Wednesday 13 May 2026 at 7:13 am AEST (my time).

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After decades of controlling all aspects of spaceflight, the Indian government decided in 2020 to open things up to private industry. Essentially, the government said, companies could build their own rockets, obtain permission to launch them, and even use state-operated facilities.

The government and the country’s space agency, ISRO, instituted this change in response to the rise of commercial space industries in the United States, and later China, that were playing an increasingly important role in global spaceflight.

Now, six years later, this structural shift is beginning to bear some fruit. The most promising Indian launch company, Skyroot Aerospace, is nearing the pad with its first orbital rocket.

The Vikram-1 launch vehicle could take flight within the next couple of months, its cofounder and chief executive officer, Pawan Kumar Chandana, told Ars in an interview. And with a recent $60 million fundraising round valuing the firm at $1.1 billion, the company is poised to accelerate its commercial launch efforts.

The origins of Skyroot

Chandana graduated with an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in 2012, and like almost anyone in India interested in space at the time, he went to work for the Indian Space Agency. But six years later, he could see the coming disruption to the space industry and believed that India would soon follow suit.

“Going back to my school days, I always had the ambition to be an entrepreneur,” he said. “I was super inspired by what SpaceX was doing. Rocket Lab was also building up. The world definitely needed more access to space.”

Although India lacked a purely commercial space industry, Chandana believed that the rising country had the right ingredients in place. The country had great engineers, a supplier base, government spaceports, and an advantageous location near the equator.

Still, leaving ISRO was a major risk. Chandana had no guarantees that India would open up its launch industry to the private sector or even allow government payloads to fly on private rockets. But he believed that if he didn’t start working on a private launch company now, competitors in the United States, China, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere would pull even further ahead. So he and another ISRO scientist, Naga Bharath Daka, took the leap and founded Skyroot in June 2018 in Hyderabad.

Failure, he realized, was the most likely outcome.

Solids, first

For the first couple of years, a small team worked on concepts and designs. Early on, they decided to start with a solid-fuel design for the first stage because they understood it best and believed it offered the straightest path to the launch pad.

“We wanted to get to an orbital launch vehicle in a few years,” Chandana said of the choice to use solid-rocket fuel. “India has a really strong ecosystem there. And we believe that, with small launchers, they will be expendable. And the whole architecture has to scale to mass produce them at scale. So we optimized for the lowest development time and the lowest cost per launch.”

The company named its initial line of vehicles “Vikram” in honor of the Indian physicist Vikram Sarabhai, who is considered the father of the Indian Space Program. As a testbed for its technology, Skyroot worked on a suborbital version of its rocket, Vikram-S, from 2020 to 2022 and launched the 6-meter rocket in November of that year.

The sounding rocket’s flight was a major success, reaching an altitude of 90km and validating a lot of what Skyroot had planned for its larger orbital vehicle, Vikram-1. It accomplished this with minimal funding, only raising $15 million in the weeks before Vikram-S took flight.

Vikram-1 nears readiness

The Vikram-1 vehicle stands more than three times taller than the Vikram-S vehicle and is composed of three solid rocket fuel stages. It’s intended to put nearly half a metric ton of payload into low-Earth orbit. The structure is largely manufactured from carbon composites.

Each stage is powered by the Kalam-series of engines, with a single Kalam-1200 engine being used on the first stage.

“A single engine simplifies it so much compared to a traditional architecture of having multiple engines in the first stage with liquid fuel,” Chandana said. “It simplifies manufacturing and it simplifies testing. So it was an ideal fit, and it’s the reason for our speed.”

Chandana said building the individual components of the rocket, such as the engines, avionics, and separation systems, has been a fairly straightforward process. But integrating these into a single vehicle and testing the whole system has been “very, very challenging.” Still, the company is now in the final stretches of testing, and a launch could come this summer.

“It’s a test launch,” he said. ” Statistically, the first launch from a private company almost always fails. It’s very difficult to succeed with all new systems. But I think we have done everything we can do to ensure the first launch goes well.”

Big ambitions

The risk Chandana took in founding Skyroot before India opened up its space industry has paid off. The company appears to have a lead over its other competitors in the Indian launch startup ecosystem, such as Agnikul Cosmos. And the Indian government is now really leaning into the commercial space industry.

Jitendra Singh, India’s minister of state for science and technology, has said he wants the country to grow its share of the global space economy from 2 percent to 10 percent by 2030. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi has told the industry to increase its annual launch total from about five launches annually to 50 before the end of the decade.

For this to happen, Skyroot and other Indian companies will need to step up. Chandana said the recent funding will enable the company to continue working on the line of Vikram rockets, eventually building larger vehicles with liquid-fueled engines.

“We talk to customers every day, and we know how challenging it is to have real, regular, and affordable access to space,” he said. “And that’s the problem we are working to solve. We will be operating much larger vehicles, fully reusable, on a regular basis, with a daily cadence from multiple countries. That’s the aspiration for the company.”

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Posted Tuesday 12 May 2026 at 7:18 am AEST (my time).

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For decades, assessing cholesterol risk has been built around a simple idea: Lower “bad” cholesterol, lower your chance of a heart attack. The test at the center of that approach measures how much low-density lipoprotein, or LDL cholesterol, is circulating in part of the blood. It has shaped everything from clinical guidelines to the widespread use of statins, medications that reduce LDL.

It works. Lowering LDL cholesterol reduces heart attacks, strokes, and early death. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.

The LDL cholesterol test measures the amount of cholesterol inside the low-density lipoprotein particles circulating in the bloodstream. Those LDL particles containing the cholesterol can get trapped in artery walls, forming plaques that can eventually block blood flow. As the test measures the amount of cholesterol being carried, not the number of LDL particles themselves, two people can have the same LDL cholesterol level but very different numbers of particles, and therefore different levels of risk.

That gap has pushed researchers toward a different way of measuring risk. Apolipoprotein B, or apoB, reflects the total number of cholesterol-carrying particles in the blood rather than how much cholesterol they contain. A growing body of research suggests it’s a more accurate way of identifying who is at risk and who’s not.

In March 2026, the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology recognized this. Their updated cholesterol guidelines acknowledged apoB as a potentially more precise marker, in line with earlier European recommendations. But they stopped short of recommending apoB as the primary method for testing.

“They review the evidence and rank apoB as superior, but the actual rules of the road continue to prioritize LDL,” says Allan Sniderman, a cardiologist at McGill University.

Sniderman was an author on a 2026 JAMA modeling study that analyzed lifetime outcomes for around 250,000 US adults eligible for statin treatment. Comparing LDL cholesterol, non-HDL cholesterol, and apoB, the study found that using apoB to guide treatment decisions would prevent more heart attacks and strokes than current approaches, while remaining cost-effective.

ApoB testing can be done through standard blood tests. So why has it not filtered into routine care? Not even in Europe, where the guidelines have reflected its usefulness for years.

Part of the answer is inertia. For decades, LDL cholesterol has been both a scientific breakthrough and a public health success story. It is simple, widely understood, and directly linked to treatments that work.

“For 50 years, LDL cholesterol was an amazing discovery,” Sniderman says. “It’s not that it isn’t a good marker. It is a good marker.”

Børge Nordestgaard, president of the European Atherosclerosis Society, agrees that LDL cholesterol remains central for a reason. “The evidence is immense; it’s beyond discussion,” he says. “Statins reduce heart attacks, strokes, and early death through LDL cholesterol lowering.”

That success helped shape a powerful narrative: LDL is “bad cholesterol,” and lowering it saves lives. But that simplicity has also limited how risk is understood.

“The result is patients and physicians know little or nothing about apoB,” Sniderman says.

More recent research suggests that the cholesterol picture is more complex, especially in people already taking statins. Previous studies led by Nordestgaard have shown that in treated patients, high levels of apolipoprotein B and non-HDL cholesterol remain associated with increased risk of heart attacks and mortality, while LDL cholesterol does not. ApoB, in particular, emerged as the most accurate marker.

For Kausik Ray, a cardiologist at Imperial College London, the challenge is not choosing one marker over another, but understanding what each one captures, and what it misses.

“We’re not interested in cholesterol for its own sake,” Ray says. “We’re trying to prevent heart attacks and strokes.”

Cholesterol enters artery walls through apoB-containing particles, but those particles are not all the same. LDL makes up most of them, but lipoprotein(a) and triglyceride-rich particles also play a role. ApoB captures the total number, but not their source.

“Having a very high apoB will pick up more people than just LDL,” Ray says. “But then what you do about that is another matter.”

An elevated apoB could be driven by different underlying problems—high LDL, insulin resistance, obesity, or genetic factors—and each may require a different intervention.

“If you only had apoB, you don’t know whether to focus on LDL-lowering or weight loss or glucose control,” Ray says.

That is where nuance comes in. ApoB may be a better overall signal of risk, but clinicians still need to understand what is driving it. “Because then you can personalize it,” Ray says.

That need for a more detailed picture is already pushing cholesterol testing beyond a single number. Both Ray and Nordestgaard point to lipoprotein(a), a genetically determined form of cholesterol that is rarely measured but can significantly increase risk.

“We’ve got a huge problem in the UK with less than 5 percent of the population being tested,” Ray says. “You only need to measure lipoprotein(a) once in your lifetime.”

Nordestgaard argues that if lipid testing were designed from scratch today, it would not center on a single measure at all.

“You would test your LDL cholesterol, your remnant cholesterol, and your lipoprotein(a),” he says. “You would make three parallel tests.”

The shift is not just about better markers, but earlier detection. Cardiovascular risk builds silently over decades, yet testing often begins only once symptoms or clear risk factors appear, e.g. being male and over 60.

“If you don’t look, you don’t know,” Ray says. “Typically, people in their twenties, thirties, forties are often not going to have things checked, because they feel fine.”

Instead, he says, care is often reactive, which has consequences for prevention.

Beyond apoB, researchers are beginning to explore even more granular ways of measuring risk. Large-scale examining the chemical molecules produced by the body’s metabolism, alongside genetic data, suggest that cardiovascular risk is shaped by a complex interplay of biological pathways, not a single biomarker.

One analysis, for example, found that combining metabolic and genetic information can improve risk prediction beyond traditional cholesterol measures, helping to explain why people with similar profiles can have very different outcomes.

The challenge is translating that complexity into clinical practice. More detailed testing brings higher costs, greater analytical burden, and the need for new evidence to guide treatment decisions.

For researchers, the direction of travel is clear. Medicine must move away from single-number diagnostics toward more layered, data-driven assessments of risk.

For now, apoB sits at the center of that transition: a better population-level measure than LDL cholesterol alone, but still only part of a broader picture.

“This whole concept of normal—we’ve got to get rid of that and explain to people there’s a continuum for all of these things,” Ray says. “There isn’t a black-and-white answer, unfortunately.”

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Posted Tuesday 12 May 2026 at 7:17 am AEST (my time).

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Formula 1’s on-track racing might look a bit different in 2026 than it did in 2006 or 1986, but it’s reassuring to know that the sport’s off-track action remains as engrossing as ever. Right now, that involves F1’s stakeholders trying to get out of a corner they painted themselves into with the introduction of new V6 hybrid power units for 2026. We saw the first stab of that in Miami, with small tweaks meant to return some of the spectacle to qualifying, which succeeded. But it seems the sport is in a proactive mood, and further changes are coming to the power balance for 2027. But as we’ll see, trade-offs remain.

F1’s current technical regulations, which came into effect at the beginning of this year, have been in the works for a while. As far back as 2022, we knew there would be a greater emphasis on the electric side, a near-50:50 split with an all-new, supposedly less complex V6 turbo powered by carbon-neutral fuels, and active aerodynamics to cut drag. Two years later, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (which organizes the sport) published the final regulations.

A greater emphasis on the electrical side of the hybrid system was put in place as a sop to the auto industry, and it indeed succeeded in attracting new OEMs. But there were early concerns that the battery capacity would be too small to feed the powerful electric motor for most of a lap. And because there can only be an electric motor at the rear axle, not the front—supposedly out of fear that new entrant Audi would have too much of an advantage—cars could regenerate just a fraction of the total energy possible under braking.

The electric motor can siphon power from the V6 to recharge the battery (a process called super clipping), but any power that goes that route can’t drive the rear wheels, which could create dangerous speed differentials on track, we were told.

Sadly, those warnings proved mostly correct, as was all too clear at the Japanese Grand Prix in March. Refreshingly, there appears to be no defensiveness on the part of the FIA or other stakeholders but rather a desire to respond to the complaints.

2027

The FIA, the teams, the power unit manufacturers, and F1 Management (which controls the commercial side) have agreed—although technically only on principle so far—that for next year, the V6 will become more powerful by 50 kW (67 hp) and the electric motor will be able to deploy 50 kW less, rebalancing the power split to 450 kW (603 hp) from the V6 and 300 kW (402 hp) from the motor-generator unit. The increase in V6 power will be achieved by increasing the engine’s fuel flow.

With less electrical power to deploy, the cars should maintain a higher state of charge throughout a lap. And if the power unit does require some super clipping, the additional V6 output leaves more power available to keep the car driving, reducing those speed differentials. Some other changes are apparently still in discussion. The amount that the electric motor can harvest from the V6 could increase above 350 kW, and the battery capacity could be increased from 4 MJ to 5 MJ.

There are still tradeoffs, though. Absent all of the synthetic fuel partners finding an extra 10 percent energy density in their fuels in the next few months, more powerful V6s with greater fuel flow will either need larger fuel tanks or shorter races. Larger fuel tanks would be preferable; if the races are shorter, everyone from F1TV subscribers to team sponsors might start wondering where their 10 percent refund is. But a larger fuel tank means a redesigned chassis that will now also be bigger and heavier—a trend the 2026 rules finally managed to reverse.

A larger-capacity battery pack would also necessitate a chassis redesign; both the fuel tank and hybrid battery are sandwiched in the middle of the car, behind the driver, ahead of the engine, and as low as possible. Redesigning the chassis takes time and money, and teams will now need to relocate resources under the sport’s tight cost cap to make that happen, particularly the teams that were planning to carry over this year’s carbon-fiber tub into next year.

What’s this about V8s?

Longtime F1 fans will know we haven’t been guaranteed that many exciting grands prix during a season. The cars were light and fast and noisy, but they couldn’t follow each other closely through the corners, and overtaking was so rare that the FIA first reintroduced refueling and then mandatory tire stops to artificially inject some strategy into races.

But many still derived entertainment from the frequent outbreak of hostilities between the teams, the FIA, and the commercial rights holder (then Bernie Ecclestone; now Liberty Media). FIA presidents have almost always been controversial; Jean-Marie Balestre spent much of his time at war with Ecclestone and even precipitated a driver’s strike at the 1982 South African Grand Prix, and Max Mosley’s desire to teach the teams a lesson was responsible for the fiasco that was the 2005 US Grand Prix.

In that context, current FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem’s statements that the sport will move to simpler power units by 2031 don’t seem particularly objectionable. I agreed with the idea when he discussed it in 2025. At the time, it was naturally aspirated V10s, still running on synthetic carbon-neutral fuels. Now the call is for V8s, which have a little more relevance to the auto industry.

Ben Sulayem is known to have the ear of the F1 drivers, who are increasingly dismayed with the highly computerized nature of their new power units. Too often, the power units behave unpredictably; the wrong gust of wind here or too much wheelspin there can convince their electronic brains to do something different than they did at that point in prior laps. And even drivers with as much talent as Max Verstappen have been caught out by a car sending all 350 kW of hybrid power when they weren’t expecting it. One thing I haven’t heard discussed for the 2027 changes is returning more control to the driver rather than relying on opaque algorithms.

Ben Sulayem’s vision is a much smaller hybrid system and a much more powerful naturally aspirated engine. “You get the sound, less complexity, light weight. You will hear about it very soon, and it will be with a very, very minor electrification,” he said, adding that the change is happening in 2030 if manufacturers agree and 2031 if they don’t.

“I’m positive they want it to happen. But let’s say the manufacturers don’t approve it… The next year, it will happen. In 2031, it’s done anyway. It will be done. V8 is coming,” he said.

A move back to naturally aspirated engines will be a welcome acknowledgment that F1 is not and should not be about road-relevant technology. Concrete examples of technology transfer from racing cars to road cars are rare enough these days in the world of endurance racing or Formula E; instead, the value of participating in F1 comes from training your people to work in new ways under the relentless pressure of a race schedule, and that will continue.

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Posted Tuesday 12 May 2026 at 7:16 am AEST (my time).

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Light beams usually pass through each other without any effect. According to electrodynamics, they can overlap in the same space without interacting. That is why the kind of light battles imagined in films would not happen in reality. But quantum physics predicts something different: a rare process called light-on-light scattering, where photons can interact by briefly creating other particles.

These particles are called virtual particles. They appear for a short time and then vanish, but they still leave measurable effects. Jonas Mager from TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology) explained: “Even though these virtual particles cannot be observed directly, they have a measurable effect on other particles. If you want to calculate precisely how real particles behave, you have to take all conceivable virtual particles into account correctly. That's what makes this task so difficult – but also so interesting.”

When photons scatter, they can temporarily turn into an electron and a positron, which then interact before disappearing again. Things become more complicated when heavier particles are involved, such as mesons. These are made of a quark and an antiquark and are subject to strong nuclear forces.

The TU Wien team has shown that one type of meson, the tensor meson, plays a bigger role than previously thought. Mager said: “We have now been able to show that one of them, the tensor mesons, has been significantly underestimated. Through the effect of light-light scattering, they influence the magnetic properties of muons, which can be used to test the Standard Model of particle physics with extreme accuracy.” Earlier calculations treated tensor mesons too simply, but the new work shows their contribution is stronger and even opposite in sign compared to past assumptions.

This connects to a bigger challenge in particle physics. The anomalous magnetic moment of the muon is one of the most precise tests of the Standard Model. To calculate it, scientists must include all possible contributions from hadronic light-by-light scattering. Short-distance constraints from quantum chromodynamics (QCD) are important here. Previous models matched these constraints only partly.

A muon is a fundamental subatomic particle similar to an electron, but about 207 times heavier and highly unstable. Produced when cosmic rays strike Earth’s atmosphere, muons decay in microseconds and help scientists test the Standard Model of Particle Physics with extreme precision.

The TU Wien study shows that tensor mesons can help fill this gap. In holographic QCD, their infinite tower of excited states contributes specifically to the symmetric longitudinal short-distance constraint. Numerically, they add a sizeable positive effect from the low-energy region below 1.5 GeV, a smaller one from the mixed region, and almost none from high energies. This could explain the remaining difference between dispersive and lattice results for the full hadronic light-by-light contribution.

A meson is a subatomic particle made of one quark and one antiquark bound together by the strong nuclear force. Examples include pions and kaons. A tensor meson is a special type of meson distinguished by its spin-2 quantum state, mathematically described as a symmetric rank-2 tensor. Unlike ordinary scalar or vector mesons, tensor mesons have more complex angular momentum properties and play an important role in advanced quantum chromodynamics and light-scattering calculations.

Anton Rebhan from TU Wien explained their method: “The tensor mesons can be mapped onto five-dimensional gravitons, for which Einstein's theory of gravity makes clear predictions. We now have computer simulations and analytical results that fit well together but deviate from certain previous assumptions. We hope that this will also provide new impetus to accelerate already planned specific experiments on tensor mesons.”

The findings, published in Physical Review Letters, help reduce uncertainties in muon magnetic moment calculations. By clarifying the role of tensor mesons, the study strengthens confidence in theoretical predictions and supports ongoing efforts to test whether the Standard Model is complete or if new physics lies beyond it.

Source: Vienna University of Technology, Physical Review Letters

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Posted Monday 11 May 2026 at 11:34 am AEST (my time).

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On a bright afternoon in Jiangsu, China, Xin Yin is playing personal trainer to some mice. One by one, he sets the rodents on a miniature treadmill that starts slow and gradually speeds up. These littermates are born athletes, able to run farther with less lactic acid buildup than average laboratory mice.

The secret to their speediness isn’t carried in their genes—the animals come from the same genetic stock as a group of control mice. And they haven’t received any special training. Instead, their fitness seems to stem from their father’s exercise habits before they were even conceived. It’s a finding suggesting that running might benefit not just the exerciser, but also his unborn children.

“I was very surprised when I first saw the data,” says Yin, a biochemist at Nanjing University.

Yin’s team analyzed the molecules inside the exercising rodents’ sperm and found tiny bits of RNA—dubbed microRNAs—that were present in higher amounts than in the sperm of their idle littermates. When the scientists injected those molecules into unrelated embryos, they got animals just as fit as those that were born to exercising fathers.

That 2025 study adds to mounting evidence that sperm are more than wriggling vessels carrying DNA to an egg. Over the past two decades, studies in mice have detected microRNAs and other types of RNA fragments that surge and wane inside sperm cells in response to not just exercise or sloth but also fatty or sugary diets, daily stress, childhood trauma, heavy drinking and exposure to pesticides and other hazards. In step with these changes, researchers have documented developmental and metabolic changes and differing rates of depression in the males’ offspring.

And while it’s difficult to study the effect in people, researchers also have documented fluctuations in RNA fragments in the sperm of men who do or don’t exercise, smoke or eat excess sugar, as well as men with obesity or traumatic childhoods. Studies also report that children of parents who are overweight or who dealt with mental health stress are more likely to have those conditions, too.

Until recently, however, most evidence linking small sperm RNAs to environmental challenges and subsequent effects in offspring has been correlational. Attempts to pin down causality—by injecting RNAs directly into embryos—have often used far higher RNA concentrations than typically found in sperm. In fact, there was no proof that the RNA fragments even make it inside the egg.

But though puzzles remain, recent studies show that not only are paternal RNA fragments transferred to a fertilized egg, but also that they are capable of inducing changes in the offspring at the doses found in sperm.

Epigenetic effects

Researchers first noticed the intergenerational effects of paternal lifestyle back in the 1960s, but it was decades before they started experimental investigations using animal models. Today, those studying the phenomenon are sure the effects exist but aren’t certain how they are transmitted. The end result, they believe, is adjustments to the activity of genes—a phenomenon known as epigenetics.

Such adjustments occur during normal development as tissues and organs adopt their different identities, which require certain genes to be active or to be turned off. Epigenetic changes also occur throughout our lives, due to factors including exposures to certain chemicals, and activities such as smoking—and, maybe, exercise, stress, fatty diets, and more. Such changes can occur in myriad body cells, including those that give rise to sperm.

As evidence mounted that sperm somehow transmit environmental information to a male’s children, researchers started probing the epigenetic mechanisms that might be responsible. Several possibilities exist: methyl groups that turn down gene activity when they accumulate on genes, and acetyl groups that attach to the protein spools called histones, around which the DNA wraps. These tend to ramp up activity of nearby genes.

But methyl groups aren’t easily passed to the next generation: Fertilized eggs erase most of these marks from both sets of chromosomes before the embryo starts to divide. And mature sperm replaces most histones with its own proteins, limiting transmission of information this way.

Today, the idea that small RNAs carry environmental signals has the most direct evidence behind it. Although small RNAs are short-lived, they aren’t actively removed like other epigenetic marks. Somehow, the tiny bits of nucleic acid fluctuate in response to the environment, then find their way into sperm cells.

At first, researchers hypothesized that sperm manufacture these microscopic molecules in the testes, where stem cells morph into fledgling spermatozoa that are not yet fertile or able to swim. The problem, though, is that as they develop, sperm whittle down their insides to little more than the nucleus containing the male chromosomes and the mitochondria, cellular powerhouses that fuel the sperm’s odyssey to the egg.

New clues emerged in 2016, when Colin Conine and Upasna Sharma, postdocs in the lab of epigeneticist Oliver Rando at the University of Massachusetts’ Chan Medical School, and colleagues, cataloged the molecular makeup of sperm from male mice exposed to low protein diets. Sperm extracted from the testes and the epididymis—a convoluted tube that carries the sperm out of the testes—contain different RNA payloads. And small bubbles found in the walls of the epididymis—called epididymosomes—were found to carry a cargo of RNA fragments matching those found in mature sperm.

The team later confirmed their hunch: Sperm take up small RNAs from epididymosomes during their cruise through the winding tube, stockpiling environmental information.

Other groups later reported that movement through the epididymis was associated with a reconfiguration of small RNAs in the sperm of rodents exposed to environmental challenges. One group found that chemically activating an animal’s stress response just two weeks before conception—when sperm have already embarked on their epididymal journey—still produces metabolic changes in the offspring.

The epididymis connection has grown stronger with time. One 2020 study bred anxious mice by injecting sperm with epididymosomes from stressed rodents. Another 2020 study reproduced traits seen in pups reared from binge-drinking males by injecting epididymosomes from the alcohol-loving mice into sperm from teetotal animals. And in a study published earlier this year, Conine’s team found that epididymosomes also deliver some of the father’s messenger RNA—the molecule that cells use to build proteins—to sperm cells.

Doubts about RNA origins

But despite two decades of research, there are snags scientists can’t explain. Those unanswered questions are a major issue, says Kevin Mitchell, a geneticist and neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin. “I’m really skeptical,” he says.

For one thing, there’s been little direct evidence that sperm pass this RNA to the egg, since it’s often difficult—sometimes impossible—to tell which parent an RNA fragment came from. This has been “one of the biggest doubts in the scientific community over epigenetic inheritance,” says Raffaele Teperino, a molecular epigeneticist and physiologist at Helmholtz Munich in Germany.

An important result came in 2024, when Teperino’s lab sourced two mouse strains with enough variation in their mitochondrial DNA that the team could identify which parent certain RNA fragments originated from. Using this tool, the team discovered RNA scraps in early embryos that must have come from the father. Still, Teperino says, a single study won’t sway skeptics.

And showing that male RNA gets into egg cells is only part of the problem. A sperm cell is thousands-fold smaller in volume than an ovum, making its supply of small RNAs a drop in the egg-cell ocean. How can it make any difference? “The dilution question is the most serious critique of paternal effects,” says Rando, who coauthored an article on the status of paternal epigenetic research in the 2025 Annual Review of Biochemistry.

But in a 2026 study still undergoing peer review, Conine, a developmental biologist now at the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues injected early embryos with a microRNA known to be elevated in the sperm of mice that consumed more alcohol than others. Those mice sire pups with craniofacial abnormalities associated with paternally derived fetal alcohol syndrome — a phenomenon that has also been documented in people.

When the scientists injected young embryos with 200 molecules of the microRNA—an amount typically found in sperm cells—pups developed signs of the syndrome. Conine and colleagues found that the small RNA binds to a group of inhibitory enzymes called Argonaute proteins, which suppresses select genes in the embryo and prompts a cascade of changes in gene activity that adjust the course of development. And when the researchers injected more of the microRNA, there were more developmental changes.

Scientists still don’t know what prompts certain small RNAs to accumulate in response to male experiences, or how those molecules yield specific effects in the offspring. One theory suggests that paternal effects may be more general than is currently acknowledged, since most studies tend to focus on a few characteristics. Such widespread changes could be mediated by alterations to the placenta, Rando says. Similarities between mice that experienced poor nutrition in the womb, and those born to fathers with adverse lifestyles, suggests that sperm RNAs may modify placental function, with future consequences on behavior and metabolism, including anxiety, weight changes, and altered sugar control.

Whatever the mechanism, there’s enough evidence to rebalance parental responsibility, Teperino says. “Now it’s almost all on women,” he says. “When a couple is planning a family, the doctor gives the woman a list of rules to follow. This is not valid anymore—we need to at least give recommendations to both.”

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Posted Monday 11 May 2026 at 6:57 am AEST (my time).

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Scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston have come up with a new way to make bacterial cellulose stronger and more versatile. Their study, published in Nature Communications, shows how a simple and scalable process can align cellulose fibers while they grow, creating sheets with impressive strength and useful properties.

Plastic pollution is a major issue because synthetic polymers break down into microplastics and release harmful chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates, and carcinogens. The research team, led by Muhammad Maksud Rahman, turned to bacterial cellulose as a possible alternative. This natural biopolymer is abundant, pure, and biodegradable.

Bacterial cellulose already has strong nano-fibrillar building blocks, but its full potential has not been realized. The problem is that the fibers usually form in random directions, which weakens the material. Another challenge is that other nano-fillers do not spread easily through the dense three-dimensional network of cellulose.

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

The aligned cellulose sheets reached tensile strength of about 436 megapascals. They were also flexible, foldable, transparent, and stable over time. When boron nitride nanosheets were added to the nutrient media, the hybrid material became even stronger, with tensile strength up to 553 megapascals. It also showed better thermal performance, dissipating heat three times faster than control samples.

“This dynamic biosynthesis approach enables the creation of stronger materials with greater functionality,” Saadi explained. “The method allows for the easy integration of various nanoscale additives directly into the bacterial cellulose, making it possible to customize material properties for specific applications.”

Saadi compared the process to “training a disciplined bacterial cohort,” saying that instead of moving randomly, the bacteria are guided to move in a set direction, which aligns their cellulose production.

The researchers believe this single-step, bottom-up strategy could be scaled up for industrial use. Potential applications include packaging, textiles, structural materials, thermal management, green electronics, and energy storage.

“This work is a great example of interdisciplinary research at the intersection of materials science, biology and nanoengineering,” Rahman said. “We envision these strong, multifunctional and eco-friendly bacterial cellulose sheets becoming ubiquitous, replacing plastics in various industries and helping mitigate environmental damage.”

By addressing the long-standing problems of fiber alignment and filler diffusion, the study shows how bacterial cellulose can be turned into a strong and adaptable material, offering a realistic path toward reducing reliance on plastics.

Source: Rice University, Nature

This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

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Posted Monday 11 May 2026 at 6:57 am AEST (my time).

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About a hundred years ago, scientists noticed something odd about Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. When he published it in 1915, the theory was quickly accepted around the world, but Einstein thought the universe was static, meaning it stayed the same size and shape forever.

Astronomers soon found evidence that didn’t fit. Looking at distant galaxies, they saw signs the universe was expanding. The farther away a galaxy was, the faster it seemed to move away. This discovery showed that Einstein’s equations could also describe a universe that was changing, not fixed. Physicists built new models based on his theory, and those models supported the idea of an expanding universe.

As Professor Rob Coyne from University of Rhode Island explained, “I know wrapping your head around the idea of an ever-expanding universe can feel daunting – and part of the challenge is overriding your natural intuition about how things work.”

So what does “expansion” mean here? On Earth, it usually means something is getting bigger. With the universe, it means everything is getting farther apart. Galaxies look like they are moving away from us, but they are also moving away from each other. It is not that galaxies are flying through space like fireworks. Instead, the space between them is stretching.

A common way to picture this is with a balloon. Imagine drawing dots on its surface. As you blow air into the balloon, the dots get farther apart. They don’t move on their own; the surface itself expands. In this analogy, the dots are galaxies and the balloon’s surface is the universe.

But the balloon example has limits. A balloon has both a surface and an inside. The universe is more like the surface only. That means asking “Where is the center of the universe?” is like asking “Where is the center of the balloon’s surface?” There isn’t one. You could travel in any direction and never reach a center.

Part of the difficulty comes from how the universe is described in mathematics. The balloon’s surface has two dimensions, while its inside has three. The universe has four dimensions: three of space and one of time. Space and time are woven together into what physicists call “space-time” fabric. This makes the universe behave in ways that don’t match our everyday intuition.

As the professor put it, “It’s hard to imagine something as big as the universe not having a center at all, but physics says that’s the reality.”

Even today, scientists are still trying to understand what drives this expansion. Many point to dark energy, but its nature remains unclear.

The question of the universe’s center shows how our natural instincts can mislead us. The answer scientists have found — everything expanding everywhere, all at once — gives us a glimpse of just how unusual the cosmos really is.

Source: The Conversation

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Posted Sunday 10 May 2026 at 5:06 pm AEST (my time).

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An unprecedented outbreak of hantavirus has rocked a luxury cruise ship off the coast of West Africa, triggering a tsunami of news stories and a flood of post-pandemic anxiety.

So far, eight cases have been reported, including three people who have died. The Dutch-flagged ship, MV Hondius, which began its journey from Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1, is still carrying 147 passengers and crew. To date, those remaining on board are showing no symptoms and have been asked to sequester themselves in their cabins. At the time of publication, the ship is sailing on a three- to four-day journey that began the evening of May 6 from Cape Verde to the Canary Islands, where Spanish authorities have agreed to assist the imperiled vessel.

With the ship en route, experts assembled by the World Health Organization are now racing to create a novel step-by-step procedure to allow the remaining passengers and crew on board to disembark safely. Meanwhile, authorities are tracking down and monitoring 30 former passengers who disembarked the ship onto the remote island of St. Helena on April 24—before the outbreak was identified but nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board on April 11. Those 30 passengers hail from at least 12 different countries, including six from the US.

“Extremely low” risk

The situation evokes chilling memories of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the Diamond Princess nightmare, in which over 700 people were infected with the never-before-seen virus while locked down on a luxury cruise ship docked in Japan.

But in the wake of discovering the hantavirus aboard the Hondius, health officials and infectious disease experts have been quick—and virtually unanimous—in trying to quell fears. While the situation within the ship certainly is an emergency requiring careful and prompt response for those on board, the risk to the outside world is low, and the outbreak is expected to stay relatively small.

“This is not COVID. This is not influenza. It spreads very, very differently,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s acting director for epidemic and pandemic management, emphasized in a press briefing Thursday.

Given the nature of this virus and the precautions and monitoring already in place, “the risk of widespread transmission to the general public is extremely low,” Michael Marks, an infectious disease expert and professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said in a statement Thursday.

The comments echo a reassuring risk assessment on Wednesday from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, which elaborated that even if there is disease spread from passengers evacuated from the ship, the virus “does not transmit easily so it is unlikely that it would cause many cases or a widespread outbreak in the community, if infection prevention and control measures are applied.”

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also deemed the risk to the American public to be “extremely low” in a brief statement on Wednesday evening.

So why are infectious disease experts and health officials so confident this is not going to mushroom into another global health crisis?

Here’s what we know about this virus and the outbreak

The virus spreading on the ship is a member of the large hantavirus family, which is spread out worldwide. These are enveloped, negative-strand RNA viruses whose genomes consist of three segments.

So-called Old World hantaviruses (including Hantaan, Seoul, Puumala, and Dobrava-Belgrade) are found in Africa, Asia, and Europe, with hotspots of activity in China, Korea, Russia, and certain European countries. The first awareness of these viruses dates back to the 1950s, with disease in soldiers fighting in the Korean War. These viruses cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS), a disease marked by fever, bleeding, and kidney damage. Depending on the specific hantavirus virus involved, mortality rates are roughly between 1–15 percent.

Then there are the hantaviruses in the New World, which first came to light in 1993 amid a deadly outbreak of an unknown virus in the Four Corners region of the US. That outbreak was caused by a hantavirus now known as Sin Nombre virus. Since then, researchers have identified many other hantaviruses in North and South America, including Black Creek Canal, Bayou, New York, Juquitiba, Oran, and Andes. New World hantaviruses are associated with Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS).

Based on genetic testing, the hantavirus behind the cruise ship outbreak is the Andes virus, mainly found in Argentina and abbreviated ANDV.

For both Old and New World hantaviruses, transmission to humans almost exclusively occurs from exposure to rodents—mice and rats of different species, depending on location—especially their urine, droppings, or other excretions. Rodents show no signs of infection or symptoms of illness.

In Argentina, the common rodent Oligoryzomys longicaudatus, aka the long-tailed pygmy rice rat, is a known source of the Andes virus, which was found on the Hondius.

For hantaviruses, human infections are accidental and almost always dead ends. Transmission to people generally happens when virus-laden rodent excreta gets stirred up in dust and inhaled—for example, a person sweeping out a shed or garage with a rodent infestation without a mask.

Such a scenario made headlines in the US last year when pianist Betsy Arakawa, who was married to actor Gene Hackman, was revealed to have died of hantavirus. A subsequent investigation found an extensive rodent infestation at the couple’s residence.

The one exception to this transmission route is from the Andes virus; ANDV is the only hantavirus that has been documented in rare instances to spread from person to person.

Based on that documented incidence, it is clear that person-to-person transmission requires close, prolonged contact. To date, though, it remains unclear whether breathing significant amounts of aerosolized virus from an infected person or exposure to an infected person’s respiratory droplets is behind the rare transmission.

Whether from rodent exposure or the ultra-rare person-to-person transmission, the incubation period for hantaviruses—the amount of time between exposure and when symptoms develop—ranges from about 7 to 42 days.

The currently recommended quarantine and/or active monitoring period for potentially exposed cases is 42 days.

Infections with ANDV cause Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS), like other New World hantaviruses. This disease starts with a prodromal phase—early, nonspecific symptoms that precede full-blown disease.

In the prodromal phase, infected people have vague flu-like symptoms, often including fever, fatigue, headache, body aches, abdominal cramps, and gastrointestinal disturbances. This lasts about three to six days before the respiratory system becomes compromised in full-blown disease.

Based on information from documented person-to-person spread of ANDV, this prodromal phase is often when person-to-person transmission happens. In a 2018–2019 outbreak with 34 cases, the sole exposure for half the cases (17 people) was close contact with an infected person who was knowingly ill and experiencing their first day of fever.

After the prodromal phase, infected people begin having difficulty breathing, their lungs can fill with liquid, their blood pressure and blood oxygen levels can fall, and in the direst cases, they can go into shock and suffer cardiovascular collapse. Though some cases will only experience relatively minor respiratory compromise, for others, the onset of severe respiratory distress can be rapid, with people descending from minor breathing problems to needing intensive care in mere hours.

The estimated overall mortality rate of HPS can vary but is often reported as being between 30–40 percent. Those who develop the most severe respiratory symptoms face rates as high as 70 percent.

There are currently no vaccines or targeted therapies against hantaviruses and their diseases. For those who fall ill, supportive care is critical.

In Chile and other places where hantaviruses are more common, a standard recommendation for patients with respiratory symptoms is to swiftly transfer them to a high-level care facility, preferably one with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). This is a type of life support that performs the work of the heart and lungs, pumping blood outside the body through a machine that oxygenates it using a microporous membrane that allows for gas exchange. ECMO improves survival rates of people with HPS.

Person-to-person ANDV outbreaks

Collectively, the handful of ANDV outbreaks with documented person-to-person transmission suggests this type of transmission is rare and requires close, prolonged contact with people who are knowingly or visibly ill. It’s also clear that steps like isolation measures for ill people, quarantine for high-risk contacts, and active monitoring are highly effective at limiting and ending the outbreaks.

The first evidence of person-to-person transmission came from an outbreak that occurred from 1996 to 1997, starting in the southwestern Argentine town of El Bosón. Genetic and epidemiological data made clear that there was person-to-person spread among 16 people.

“(i)t is remarkable that all 16 cases… were obviously epidemiologically linked; each patient was in close contact (household, health caring, marital contact, and/or traveling together within a car) with one or more members of this group,” the authors concluded.

Before you get concerned about the car exposure, know that it was a 20-hour-long trip with a symptomatic infected person—the housekeeper of the index case. The female exposed in the car had other exposures, as well: she stayed with her infected parents, the sister and brother-in-law of the index case.

The first ANDV person-to-person spread confirmed by whole-genome sequencing was reported in 2014 and found similar close contact between the cases. That outbreak was just three cases, including  71-year-old twin brothers who shared a bedroom. Both died from the infection. The third person was a nurse for one of the brothers, who survived.

An outbreak with superspreaders

The 2018–2019 outbreak with 34 cases in the southern Chubut province of Argentina was fueled primarily by three superspreader events. First, the index case spent 90 minutes at a birthday party while sick with a fever and fatigue. Of the approximately 100 guests at the party, the index case transmitted the viruses to five people sitting close to them.

One of those five people, a man, was the most likely source of six subsequent infections. Those six cases included the man’s spouse, while the rest were social contacts who were likely infected during crowded social encounters the man had during his prodromal phase. The man subsequently died, and his spouse attended his wake with a fever. Ten more people who attended the wake fell ill. Of the 34 cases overall, 11 people died.

Notably, investigators who meticulously examined the outbreak identified 82 healthcare workers at one hospital who were exposed to symptomatic cases. None of them fell ill. The 82 workers included 45 who worked in the intensive care unit or the emergency department. Only a small number of those 45 used personal protective equipment, such as N95 masks, goggles, or disposable lab coats, the investigators noted.

After the 18th case was identified, health authorities ordered isolations for symptomatic cases and quarantines for the exposed. After that, the median estimated R-naught value—the average number of people to which an infected person will spread a disease—fell from 2.12 to 0.96.

Overall, the investigators concluded that “high viral titers in combination with attendance at massive social gatherings or extensive contact among persons were associated with a higher likelihood of transmission.”

A previous close call

While the possibility that people incubating ANDV are flying on planes may sound alarming, this would not be the first time it has happened. In 2018, CDC and state officials reported the first confirmed ANDV case in the US—a woman who had returned from a trip to Argentina and Chile and brought the virus home with her. She developed her first symptoms four days after returning, but then, three days later, she took two commercial flights while sick. She was hospitalized in Delaware three days later, where doctors identified the infection, which she survived.

CDC investigators identified 53 people across six states who had contact with her, including 28 healthcare workers, 15 airline contacts, and 10 other contacts. Investigators were able to contact and monitor 51 contacts, conducting testing on six with symptoms. All were negative, no other cases were identified over the 42-day incubation period, and the investigation was closed.

Current outbreak

Health officials are still working to understand what has happened on Hondius, amid speculation that human-to-human transmission has occurred.

The boat left the southern tip of Argentina on April 1, with plans to stop at Antarctica and several islands in the South Atlantic.

The first case was in a man who developed symptoms on April 6. The man was traveling with his wife. Before boarding the ship, the Dutch couple had traveled through Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay on a bird-watching trip, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday. The areas they visited included sites where the rat species known to carry ANDV is present.

The man died aboard the ship on April 11, and at the time, hantavirus was not suspected because his respiratory symptoms resembled those of other diseases. His wife then disembarked at St. Helena on April 24, along with her husband’s remains. She had symptoms. She deteriorated on a flight from the island to Johannesburg, South Africa. There, she collapsed at an airport and died on April 26. Test results from the wife confirmed a hantavirus infection on May 4.

Back on the ship, a third passenger developed symptoms, presenting to the ship’s doctor on April 24. He was evacuated on April 27 from the island of Ascension and traveled to South Africa, where he is now in intensive care. On Thursday, Dr. Tedros reported that the man has shown improvements.

On April 28, a fourth passenger on the ship, a woman, developed symptoms and died aboard on May 2, marking the third death in the outbreak.

Also on May 2, testing from the man in intensive care in South Africa provides the first results showing hantavirus.

The ship arrived in Cape Verde around May 4, where doctors boarded and provided care for three more symptomatic people, bringing the total number of cases from the ship to seven. Those three cases were evacuated to the Netherlands. Two are hospitalized in stable condition, and one is asymptomatic and now in Germany.

The eighth case identified was a man in Switzerland who disembarked in St. Helena on April 24. Upon notification of the outbreak from the cruise operator, he went to a hospital in Zürich and was confirmed to have a hantavirus infection. Genetic testing from this patient confirmed the virus as ANDV.

It remains unclear whether any of the other passengers had similar travel histories to the Dutch couple or other possible hantavirus exposures prior to boarding the ship that could explain the cases. But person-to-person spread certainly seems possible given that the hantavirus involved here is the one known for such transmission, and cruise ships are notorious for providing the close, confined environments where viruses can vigorously spread—as is the case for COVID-19 or the gastrointestinal terror norovirus.

For now, WHO officials are working on a plan to get the remaining 147 people off the boat safely. As of May 8, the ship’s operator reports that no one on board has symptoms. However, with the possibility of person-to-person spread, an incubation period up to 42 days, and the last onboard illness onset of April 28, it will take more time before the coast is clear. Health officials will also need to identify and trace the contacts of the people who disembarked the ship amid the outbreak.

In the press briefing on Thursday, WHO officials acknowledged that 42 days is a lengthy quarantine. At this time, the United Nations’ health agency is not recommending that people stay confined for that whole period; rather, the recommendation is to do active monitoring for symptoms, such as daily temperature checks, given that person-to-person spread has only been seen from symptomatic people. Whether people are quarantined in addition to that is up to health authorities in the places with affected people.

Researchers around the globe are also anxious to get the genomic data of the ANDV virus. Questions have swirled over whether the virus on the ship carries mutations or other changes that might explain the never-before-seen outbreak.

But WHO officials on Thursday were careful to note that the main differentiator of the outbreak so far is simply that it was on a ship. No other major features of the outbreak appear out of line with previously documented ANDV outbreaks involving person-to-person spread.

In the 2018–2019 outbreak, researchers noted that virus genetics didn’t seem to make a difference between an infected person who transmitted the virus to 10 people and an infected person who didn’t transmit the virus at all. The viruses looked about the same. The difference, they concluded, seemed related to individual people and their behavior.

“The absence of evidence for ANDV adaptation within or between hosts or for differences in viral diversity between spreaders and nonspreaders indicates that permissive ecology and social factors have a more substantial influence than genetic changes in sustaining person-to person transmission in human hosts,” they concluded.

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Posted Saturday 9 May 2026 at 12:27 pm AEST (my time).

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To get quantum computing to work, we will ultimately need lots of high-quality qubits, which we can tie together into groups of error-corrected logical qubits. Companies are taking distinct approaches to get there, but you can think of them as falling into two broad categories. Some companies are focused on hosting the qubits in electronics that we can manufacture, guaranteeing that we can get lots of devices. Others are using atoms or photons as qubits, which give more consistent behavior but require lots of complicated hardware to manage.

One advantage of systems that use atoms or ions is that we can move them around. This allows us to entangle any qubit with any other, which provides a great deal of flexibility for error correction. Systems based on electronic devices, in contrast, are locked into whatever configuration they’re wired into during manufacturing.

But this week, a new paper examined research that seems to provide the best of both worlds. It works with quantum dots, which can be manufactured in bulk and host a qubit as a single electron’s spin. The work showed that it’s possible to move these spin qubits from one quantum dot to another without losing quantum information. The ability to move them around could potentially enable the sort of any-to-any connectivity we see with atoms and ions.

Quantum trade-offs

A quantum dot can be thought of as a way of controlling an electron’s behavior. Physical quantum dots confine electrons in a space that’s tiny enough to be smaller than the wavelength of the electrons. Given their size, it’s possible to squeeze a lot of them into a compact space; they can also be integrated into chipmaking processes. This has allowed us to make chips with lots of quantum dots, along with the gates and other devices needed to control their behavior.

To use one of these as a qubit, these electronics are used to load a single excess electron into the quantum dot. Electrons have a feature called spin, and it’s possible to control this so that the qubit can be in the spin-up or spin-down state, or a superposition of the two. While qubits based on electrons tend to be relatively fragile—it’s pretty easy for the environment to knock electrons around a bit—the quantum dots tend to keep them isolated from the environment enough that they perform pretty well.

Like any other manufactured chip, the wiring that connects the quantum dots is locked into place during the chip’s manufacture. Since different error correction schemes require different connections among the qubits, this forces us to commit to specific error-correction schemes during manufacturing. If a better scheme is developed after a chip is made, it’s probably not possible to switch to it. Less complex algorithms may benefit from simpler error-correction schemes that require less overhead, but we wouldn’t be able to switch schemes with these chips.

So, quantum dots appear to typify the trade-offs that we’re facing with quantum computing: it’s easier for us to make lots of quantum dots and all the hardware needed to manipulate them, but it’s seemingly not possible for them to benefit from the flexibility that other types of qubits have.

The whole point of this new paper is to show that this isn’t necessarily true.

Moveable dots

The new work was done in collaboration between researchers at Delft University of Technology and the startup QuTech. The team built a chip that had a linear array of quantum dots, and they started out with single electron spins at each end. Then, with the appropriate electrical signals, they could shift the spins into the net dot, gradually bringing them closer together. (And, by gradually, we mean a fraction of a second here, but relatively slowly compared to basic switching in electronics.)

Once the electrons were close enough, the spin wavefunctions overlapped, allowing the researchers to perform two-qubit gates on them. These manipulations can be used to entangle the two spins and are thus needed to build error-corrected logical qubits; these gates are also needed for performing calculations.

The researchers then confirmed that they could move the electrons back to their starting positions, after which measurements confirmed that their spins were entangled. And since quantum teleportation also requires a two-qubit gate, they showed that the process could be used for teleportation. Teleportation can enhance the sort of mobility provided by moving the qubits around, since it can be used to move states around after the qubits have been widely separated.

(Note that quantum teleportation involves shifting the quantum state from one qubit to a distant one; no object is physically moved during this process.)

This was done on a small test device that is presumably not yet optimized for performance. But the operations were done with pretty reasonable fidelity. The two-qubit gates were executed successfully over 99 percent of the time, while teleportation succeeded about 87 percent of the time. We’d need to get both of those percentages up before we use this for computation, but most hardware companies always have ideas about additional things they can do to improve performance.

On the dot

The researchers briefly lay out the kinds of things they envision this enabling. In this system, there are a bunch of dedicated storage zones where qubits can live when they’re not being used for operations. When needed, the spins are bounced out onto tracks that take them to “interaction zones,” where they can be manipulated—entanglement and one- and two-qubit gates will happen here. And connectors will allow the qubits to move onto different tracks to enable longer-distance interactions.

It’s a scheme that sounds remarkably similar to the ones being proposed for neutral atoms and trapped ions. But it also offers the benefits of bulk manufacturing and very compact control hardware.

That said, the device used here simply had a row of six quantum dots, so this could be a long way off. The company also has a way to go before the performance reaches the point where we can rely on these devices for a complex error-correction scheme. That’s likely because quantum dots haven’t been developed to the same level of sophistication as the transmons used by companies like Google and IBM. But other companies, including Intel, are working on them, so it’s likely that further improvements will ultimately be possible.

Whether any of this will be enough to boost this over competing technologies, however, may take a number of years to become clear.

Nature, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10423-9 (About DOIs).

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Posted Saturday 9 May 2026 at 12:26 pm AEST (my time).

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