Three veterinarians who work with cows have tested positive for prior infections of H5 bird flu, according to a study released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The finding may not seem surprising, given the sweeping and ongoing outbreak of H5N1 among dairy farms in the US, which has reached 968 herds in 16 states and led to infections in 41 dairy workers. However, it is notable that none of the three veterinarians were aware of being infected, and none of them worked with cows that were known or suspected to be infected with H5N1. In fact, one of them only worked in Georgia and South Carolina, two states where H5N1 infections in dairy cows and humans have never been reported.

The findings suggest that the virus may be moving in animals and people silently, and that our surveillance systems are missing infections—both long-held fears among health experts.

The authors of the study, led by researchers at the CDC, put the takeaway slightly differently, writing: "These findings suggest the possible benefit of systematic surveillance for rapid identification of HPAI A(H5) virus in dairy cattle, milk, and humans who are exposed to cattle to ensure appropriate hazard assessments."

The study was carried out in September. Veterinarians were recruited at an in-person veterinary conference where they gave blood samples and reported cattle exposures in the previous three months. A total of 150 bovine veterinarians took part in the study, 143 from the US and seven from Canada.

Blood tests showed that three veterinarians (2 percent) had antibodies against H5-type flu viruses, indicating a recent infection. All three were from the US (Canada has not detected bird flu in any cows). None of the three reported having had a respiratory infection, flu-like symptoms, or conjunctivitis (pink eye), which has been a common symptom among documented cases of H5N1 in dairy workers. While none of the three reported working with cows with known or suspected bird flu infections, one had worked with H5-positive poultry.

Since September, the US Department of Agriculture has set up a national milk testing strategy to identify bird flu virus in bulk milk samples quickly. The surveillance strategy led to the recent identification of a second spillover event of H5N1 bird flu from wild birds to cows, which has spread to several herds in Nevada and at least one dairy worker.

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The proposed merger between Honda and Nissan is officially dead. The plan, announced in late December, would have created the world's third-largest automaker, displacing Volkswagen Group from the bronze on the podium. But it was also never quite seen as a merger of equals—many suspected this was a Honda takeover of beleaguered Nissan at the behest of the Japanese government.

Nissan is already part of a triple-alliance, together with Mitsubishi and France's Renault. Although Mitsubishi considered joining the Honda-Nissan merger, that was old news by late January.

That alliance might have been part of the problem. Although not an actual merger, the car companies involved each own stakes in the other—in Renault's case, it owns 37.5 percent of Nissan. Honda would have liked Nissan to buy out Renault's stake, presumably not keen on such a significant chunk of the company under foreign ownership.

But Nissan doesn't exactly have the cash on hand to make that purchase—if it did, the merger wouldn't be necessary, after all. Further complicating things, Renault is believed to have demanded a premium from Honda for its stake in Nissan.

Honda and Nissan were also unable to agree on a management structure, as well as a valuation for Nissan, and now they've agreed to just call the whole thing off. Nissan executives had no desire to oversee what would become a subsidiary of Honda, and few analysts identified much in the way of possible synergy between the two automakers.

"Both companies concluded that, to prioritize speed of decision-making and execution of management measures in an increasingly volatile market environment heading into the era of electrification, it would be most appropriate to cease discussions and terminate the [memorandum of understanding]," the companies said in a joint statement.

"Going forward, Nissan and Honda will collaborate within the framework of a strategic partnership aimed at the era of intelligence and electrified vehicles, striving to create new value and maximize the corporate value of both companies," they said.

Honda just reported a 6 percent increase in its operating profits this past quarter and is unlikely to falter with the failure of this deal. Nissan remains in a precarious position, though. It has lost money for the last two quarters and today announced a turnaround plan that includes cutting 9,000 jobs, closing three factories, and reducing shifts at many more, including here in the US. Rumors continue to swirl about a possible tie-up with Taiwanese Foxconn.

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Southern California’s long overdue rainy season is about to go into overdrive.

The National Weather Service in Los Angeles has issued a flash-flood watch for heavy rain that will start on Wednesday and stretch into Friday. State resources have been placed on high alert, and meteorologists are anticipating possible thunderstorms—a sharp contrast to what has been the driest start to any rainy season in Southern California history.

As much as 3 to 6 inches of rain could fall in the higher elevations of coastal Southern California in the next few days, which the NWS says will create a “high risk of flooding and burn scar debris flows.” By the time this week’s storms are over, rainfall totals from this week alone should surpass those of the previous nine months combined.

The rain arrives months overdue and will bring to an end one of the worst wildfire seasons in Californian history—and the first to stretch into January. The greatest flooding risk is in areas charred by the recent wildfires. The largest of the LA wildfires, the Palisades and Eaton fires, were only fully contained by firefighters just a few days ago.

The state is taking the flooding threat seriously. California governor Gavin Newsom has ordered “a whole-of-government response” to prepare for the forecasted rains, which will arrive via a moderately strong “atmospheric river” of tropical moisture shunted northeastward from the tropical Pacific Ocean. The state has pre-positioned hundreds of thousands of sandbags and several swift water-rescue crews.

Now that the flames have given way to the likelihood of torrential rains, there’s a growing risk that even moderately strong showers could loosen fire-scorched soils and unleash damaging mudslides—blocking roads, and even burying homes that survived the fires.

This is one of those disasters that’s possible to anticipate but impossible to escape once you’re in it. FEMA’s landslide safety guidance gives a frightening reminder: “By the time you are sure a debris flow is coming, it will be too late to get away safely.”

In particular, new data published this week by the US Forest Service shows the Eaton Fire scar to be particularly vulnerable to liquefaction of loose soils and ash, which could channel a fast-moving and destructive slurry of gravel, mud, and charred organic matter downslope towards the LA districts of Altadena and Sierra Madre. Similar debris flows originating from the Palisades Fire burn scar could affect Malibu and Santa Monica.

“Southern California is probably the debris-flow capital of the United States, just by nature of the steep landscape, propensity for fire, and occurrence of powerful Pacific storms,” says Hugh Safford, a research fire ecologist at UC Davis.

Fire crews have worked to install concrete diversion barriers within the burn scars in the hope of partially redirecting any debris flows that may form, but with tens of thousands of cubic meters of loose soil and ash in the drainage basins of dozens of affected canyons, it may not be enough.

California’s weather whiplash has been a problem dating back centuries, or more. Fire is a natural and necessary part of California’s diverse ecosystems, but the so-called “expanding bull’s-eye” of urban areas spreading into prime wildfire zones has complicated things.

Before humans arrived in Southern California, Safford estimates, the average watershed might go 30 to 90 years without a wildfire. With the addition of 20 million people and climate change, “some places in SoCal are burning every 2 to 10 years now.”

At that pace, woody shrubs can’t regrow fast enough after a fire, and the increasing frequency of fire is pushing the region into a transition from chaparral and oak forests to grassland and, in some cases, bare soil. When ecosystems lose their leaf cover and deep roots, it makes it easier for soils to slide downhill.

Lately, it’s been getting much worse. These days Southern California oscillates between wet and dry regimes nearly as fast as Beyoncé’s latest tour sold out. Over the past few months, Southern California has quickly plunged into severe drought immediately following two of its wettest years on record. That spurred ample vegetation growth and then quickly dried it out: a perfect recipe for hot, destructive, uncontrollable fire—and debris flows to follow.

“The risk of damaging post-fire debris flows is increasing as the climate changes, because we are seeing stronger storms, in between more intense dry times, that can lead to instability in previously burned areas,” says Faith Kearns, a wildfire expert at Arizona State University. “At the same time, wildfires themselves are also burning more intensely, leaving behind fire-affected soils that can repel water and little vegetation to keep slopes intact.”

Combined, January’s Palisades and Eaton fires killed 29 people, destroyed more than 16,000 homes, and produced an economic impact about 10 times larger than any previous wildfire disaster in Californian history. The Eaton Fire, near Pasadena, and the Palisades Fire, near Malibu, now rank as the second- and third-most destructive wildfires in California’s history, after 2018’s Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise.

Fire regimes are changing worldwide, and when factoring in the degradation of forest health and more intense rainstorms, that’s leading to a much greater frequency of post-fire debris flows in areas where they’ve happened in the past. In fact, a recent study showed that “by the late 21st century, post-fire debris flow activity is estimated to increase in 68 percent of areas in which they have occurred in the past and decrease in only 2 percent of locations.”

The main driver here, according to Luke McGuire, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona and lead author of that study, isn’t so much that rainfall is getting heavier—it doesn’t take much rain to initiate a debris flow—but that the fires are getting worse.

“If climatic changes lead to a greater likelihood of moderate- to high-severity fire,” says McGuire, “then that would increase the potential for post-fire debris flows by more frequently creating the conditions that fuel them.”

And in California, fires have definitely become more intense in recent years.

Thirteen of the 20 largest fires in California over the past century have happened in just the past seven years. Those seven years include three of the driest and two of the wettest years in state history.

Data show that this problem isn’t limited to California. “Fire activity is projected to increase across many portions of the western US,” says McGuire, “which could drive increases in the likelihood of damaging debris flows.”

As the planet continues to shift into a hotter, more drought-prone version of itself, hillsides will increasingly begin to crumble into valleys below wherever fires happen. It’s an inescapable consequence of the speed at which geological-scale changes are now happening on human timelines.

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Thanks to being an incompressible medium, water transmits vibrations both farther and faster than the air. (Here's a good video explainer on the subject.) This fact helps to explain how a US government-owned "moored passive acoustic recorder" was able to hear and record the 2023 implosion of the doomed Titan submersible—even though the recorder was 900 miles away from the dive site.

That implosion, during an attempted dive to the wreckage of the Titanic, killed five people, including Stockton Rush, the CEO of the company that built and operated the Titan.

The implosion audio was just released publicly by the US Coast Guard's Titan Marine Board of Investigation, which has been investigating the disaster in enormous detail. As part of that investigation, the Coast Guard obtained the audio from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the US Department of Commerce.

The audio isn't much to listen to—just some static followed by a staticky explosive noise that decays in swirling fashion for multiple seconds. The implosion itself, given the pressure the vehicle was under at the time, probably occurred in milliseconds, as you can learn from simulations of the event.

But given that it marks the moment of five deaths, and that it was made from 900 miles away, the recording may be, at least for non-specialists, one of the more interesting bits of evidence to emerge from the investigation. (The investigation board has previously released video of a robotic vehicle recovering parts of the Titan from the sea floor, along with a simulation of the submersible's entire final dive.)

From SOSUS to wind farms

Back in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, this kind of sonic technology was deeply important to the military, which used the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) to track things like Soviet submarine movements. (Think of Hunt for Red October spy games here.) Using underwater beamforming and triangulation, the system could identify submarines many hundreds or even thousands of miles away. The SOSUS mission was declassified in 1991.

Today, high-tech sonic buoys, gliders, tags, and towed arrays are also used widely in non-military research. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in particular, runs a major system of oceanic sound acquisition devices that do everything from tracking animal migration patterns to identifying right whale calving season to monitoring offshore wind turbines and their effects on marine life.

But NOAA also uses its network of devices to monitor non-animal noise—including earthquakes, boats, and oil-drilling seismic surveys.

In June 2023, these devices picked up an audible anomaly located at the general time and place of the Titan implosion. The recording was turned over to the investigation board and has now been cleared for public release.

The Titan is still the object of both investigations and lawsuits; critics have long argued that the submersible was not completely safe due to its building technique (carbon fiber versus the traditional titanium) and its wireless and touchscreen-based control systems (including a Logitech game controller).

"At some point, safety just is pure waste," Rush once told a journalist. Unfortunately, it can be hard to know exactly where that point is. But it is now possible to hear what it sounds like when you're on the wrong side of it—and far below the surface of the ocean.

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Micro LED has become one of the most anticipated display technologies for consumer products in recent years. Using self-emissive LEDs as pixels, the backlight-free displays combine the contrast-rich capabilities of OLED with the brightness and durability potential of LCD-LED displays, and they avoid burn-in issues.

We're often asked about the future of Micro LED and when display enthusiasts can realistically expect to own a TV or monitor with the technology. Here's the latest on the highly anticipated—and still elusive—display technology.

Still years away

Micro LED is still years away from being suitable for mass production of consumer products, as the industry is struggling to manage obstacles like manufacturing costs and competition from other advanced display tech like OLED. Micro LED TVs are currently available for purchase, but they cost six figures, making them unattainable for the vast majority of people.

"It will probably take another five years until we see real consumer products," Eric Virey, principal displays analyst at Yole Intelligence, told me.

Display manufacturer AUO, which has been working on numerous applications for Micro LED, said in an emailed statement that it plans to develop consumer products over the next couple of years:

For the applications other than automotive, AUO’s Micro LED display technology has been applied on wearable device like smartwatch[es] for fashion... in 2023, and it is expected to be available for mass production in 2025. Moving forward, AUO plans to apply larger Micro LED displays on TVs, notebooks, and monitors in two years.

Despite enthusiasm from technologists and the display community, the mainstream infatuation with OLED makes it harder for Micro LED to move into consumer products. Many shoppers already know about the benefits of OLED and may have experienced it for years. In recent years, OLED technology has also improved by getting brighter and cheaper.

While Micro LED could address some of OLED's limitations, it doesn't have the recognition of OLED in the consumer market. Any company releasing Micro LED consumer products will have to educate shoppers about the benefits of the display technology and why it's better than OLED or even cheaper options. As such, much of the Micro LED industry is still focusing on “highly differentiating applications,” Virey said, like making specialized transparent displays for cars or advertising, very large commercial screens, and augmented reality (AR).

Ross Young, CEO at Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), also isn’t expecting Micro LED in commercialized monitors or laptops in 2025 and pointed to other, more affordable options taking the spotlight.

"We will continue to see very small quantities [of Micro LED] in very large TVs," he said. "However, with LCDs now appearing in 100 [-inch and larger] sizes with much lower prices, we don’t expect to see much growth in Micro LED TVs."

For now, the best bet for Micro LED in 2025 consumer products is smartwatches, Virey told us.

Biggest obstacles

Naturally, one of the biggest obstacles facing Micro LED adoption is cost. You need a lot of Micro LEDs for each device, as each pixel in a Micro LED device uses one red LED, one blue LED, and one green LED per pixel. That's a total of 24,883,200 Micro LEDs for a 4K TV (3,840×2,160×3).

There are also technical challenges with manufacturing the LEDs, including Micro LED transfer and assembly. "At a high level, the cost of this process doesn’t really scale with the number of LEDs but more with the display area. So it can be expressed in terms of $/cm²," Virey explained. "A smartwatch is about 12 cm² ... A 100[-inch] TV is 28,000 cm², so the assembly will cost roughly 2,333 times more than assembling a smartwatch. It’s more complicated than that, but at a high level, that’s the trend."

Further, Micro LED yields have been an ongoing challenge, considering the intricacy and minute components involved in Micro LED products.

According to Virey:

When you’re assembling 25 million Micro LEDs that are the size of bacteria with a precision of 1 or 2 micron and are trying to do that in less than 15 minutes, you’re going to have some bad LEDs and bad electrical connections. You need to identify which ones are defective and replace them. Today, that’s still a very inefficient and costly process. In my opinion, yield management and repair are the number 1 obstacle today for cheaper Micro LED displays.

Another common issue is that manufacturers need to make displays with a pixel pitch (or distance between pixels) small enough that people won't be able to see the space between pixels.

Acceptable pixel pitch for displays varies based on resolution and size. For a 4K TV, for example, a 75-inch Micro LED TV would need a 0.43 mm pitch, which is equivalent to about 59 pixels per inch (ppi). A 146-inch Micro LED TV would need an approximately 0.84 mm pitch, equivalent to 30 ppi (this is the pixel pitch claimed by Samsung's 146-inch Micro LED TV "The Wall").

Virey told us that this obstacle has been largely addressed, though. "Many Micro LED companies have, for example, shown smartwatch displays with 326 ppi. That’s a 0.08 mm pitch, much tighter than any TV will ever need," he said. "So I don’t see pitch as a major obstacle. The main challenge remains cost."

Recent Micro LED products

While Micro LED is still years away from being readily available in digestible pricing, some products are beginning to make it to market.

A positive sign comes from the C Series Micro LED TVs that Awall demoed at CES last month. They start at $7,990 for a 21:9, 75-inch display with a 1.2 mm pixel pitch (for comparison, Samsung’s 89-inch, 4K Micro LED TV has an approximately 0.8 mm pitch, per Digital Trends). The most expensive Micro LED display on Awall’s website is $49,900 (16:9, 162 inches with a 0.9 pixel pitch). Believe it or not, those are low prices for a Micro LED display today. The devices are marketed as being modular, meaning Awall expects (wealthy) people to buy multiple TVs that will work in tandem to provide a larger viewing area.

World's first DIY upgradable Micro LED TV.

Still, Awall’s offerings, if released this quarter as expected, should start to bring down the cost of entry for Micro LED, even though the TVs are too expensive for most. The modular design also means that people could buy a 75-inch panel to start and add more panels for a larger viewing area in the future. Using multiple panels to make an ultra-large display means more space between pixels, which helps address another concern with having lots of tiny LEDs in close proximity: heat. (Having separate panels could break up the image in a distracting fashion, though, depending on how close you're sitting to the TVs.)

Another development we're seeing around Micro LED displays comes from Nanosys, a supplier of quantum dots. It recently showed off a prototype of what it described as an “ultraviolet MicroLED with [quantum dot] color conversion." CTC, a Foxconn division, built the prototype smartwatch display. It uses four ultraviolet LEDs per pixel, providing a backup subpixel in case of failure.

As noted by technology journalist Geoffrey Morrison, “A dead subpixel would be found in the manufacturing process, and whatever subpixel color isn't working would get a spray of that color. While this fourth subpixel would increase the overall cost of this aspect of production by 33 percent or so, researchers are estimating it would improve yields enough that it would be more than worthwhile."

The device shown at CES 2025 was able to hit 1,000 nits, and Foxconn estimated that such a device could reach 3,000 nits. “It could be commercialized as soon as next year, but while the tech could apply to larger screen sizes, I would expect it to be in a smaller format like a watch,” Jeff Yurek, Nanosys' VP of marketing, told me.

The primary benefit of UV Micro LED compared to standard Micro LED is manufacturability, the executive said. "Printing all three colors onto four subpixels gives lots of flexibility and can enable error-free displays. This is very hard to do with Micro LED," Yurek said. "The image quality benefits are mostly [the] same as other Micro LEDs: perfect blacks, super high brightness, [and] some possibility for improved power efficiency, depending on the type of Micro LED system you are comparing to.”

When asked how UV Micro LED could benefit larger-screen gadgets compared to Micro LED, Yurek pointed to strong viewing angles. However, getting UV Micro LEDs into larger devices requires a manufacturing equipment update.

“Only one line exists today, and it is oriented toward smaller displays. You’d need bigger printers, basically," Yurek said.

Another reason to keep your eye on Micro LED this year, ironically, comes from a product announcement that many would consider not to be true Micro LED.

At CES, Samsung announced that it will release the “world’s first RGB MICRO LED” TVs. It claimed that the sets would offer “the first full-color local dimming, lowest power consumption, and slimmest design in a consumer display.” The CES website describes the TVs as using "MICRO-sized RGB (red, green, and blue light) separately through even smaller LEDs behind the main panel." Samsung plans to release the technology in 75-inch and 85-inch 4K TVs, as well as in an 8K 98-incher.

Samsung RGB Micro LED.

Unlike traditional Micro LED, Samsung’s “Micro LED TVs” aren’t self-emissive. But Samsung’s products are still good news for Micro LED expectants, Virey said. The Samsung TVs further the performance of LCD tech, he said, “keeping LCD competitive against OLED.”

He added:

Samsung probably uses advanced production and assembly technologies developed for Micro LED to produce this display. With real Micro LED still a few years away from prime time, it’s good that those technologies can find commercial applications now. It will encourage companies to keep advancing [Micro LED] technologies.

Further, Virey estimates that technology like Samsung's "RGB Micro LED" will find its way into more midrange products in two to three years— sooner than we can expect true Micro LED options.

Micro LED also saw notable developments in 2024. For example, AUO showed off the largest single-module Micro LED display, a 31-inch panel suitable for monitors. The Taiwan-based company didn't disclose the panel's resolution but said that it has 500 nits max brightness. Although AUO pointed to the technology potentially being used for "medical management," it's not hard to imagine this sort of technology making its way into a consumer 31-inch-class monitor in the coming years.

I also spoke with Aledia—a French startup making Micro LED chips for AR, smartwatches, and other applications—that recently announced a $200 million Micro LED factory for AR displays. CEO Pierre Laboisse told me that "mass production" will begin this year. The company plans to make significant steps in 2025 by sampling Micro LED solutions for preferred partners and ramping up the capability of a new fab.

“Small-batch production is expected to accelerate commercialization by the end of 2025, beginning of 2026, and beyond," he added. While Laboisse doesn't expect Micro LED monitors to be readily available to consumers this year, he pointed to gaming monitors being earlier adopters than other types of monitors.

“Micro LED development for TVs and monitors in 2025 is expected to see notable technological advancements rather than stagnation… The industry is transitioning from early adoption to broader commercialization, with gaming monitors, AR, and automotive applications likely leading mainstream adoption before TVs," Laboisse said.

Micro LED in cars

Outside of consumer gadgets, another likely landing place for Micro LED is inside vehicles. AUO, for example, last month demoed a "smart cockpit" that included Micro LED technology in the center console, sunroof, windows, and steering wheel.

In a statement to Ars, AUO said that it's working closely with clients on the development of Micro LED displays that drivers can interact with. It has already demoed a "Micro LED media bar" mounted to the front of an electric vehicle from Sony Honda Mobility.

"We can expect to see the automotive Micro LED displays in [the] near future," AUO's statement said.

Keep waiting

There's still debate about whether Micro LED will really be able to carve out a place for itself in the market amid competition from OLED and cheaper options, as well as QDEL, or quantum dot electroluminescent displays. (For a deep dive into QDEL, be sure to check out our explainer.)

Some analysts Ars spoke with have noted the potential for QDEL to be sold alongside Micro LED and/or OLED, while others have said it's too early to tell if the technologies will coexist. We won't know until QDEL enters commercialization, which is expected by 2026.

So yes, Micro LED continues to be an exciting display technology for enthusiasts to anticipate. But that anticipation will have to keep building, as affordability and mainstream availability still remain a few years away.

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There’s something scary in the water at Cape Fear. For years, chemicals giant DuPont and the company Chemours, which it spun off in 2015, manufactured long-lasting synthetic chemicals—known as forever chemicals—that made their way into the environment in this corner of North Carolina, ultimately ending up in the Cape Fear River. This is one of America’s PFAS hot spots, though forever chemicals are also found in tap water in thousands of locations around the US. (DuPont has been involved in several class action lawsuits across the United States related to the chemicals since the early 2000s.)

Specifically, DuPont and Chemours had used PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, for making Teflon, widely used in nonstick cookware. But, in the process, they contaminated the groundwater. Tests have shown that drinking water in this part of North Carolina can have levels of PFAS many times higher than the federal limit. The health effects of PFAS are frightening—from increasing your risk of cancer and obesity to lowering fertility.

“North Carolina’s still dealing with that,” says Jordan Poler, a chemistry professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “It’s a huge challenge for the people here.” Charlotte is more than 100 miles from the Cape Fear River, and the tap water there is fairly safe, says Poler. But hurricanes sometimes redistribute contaminated water in his direction. It’s partly what inspired him to come up with a new PFAS filtration system—and one with a key difference from existing systems.

“A lot of these media, you throw them in the landfill and they’re just going to leach everything back out,” he says of the short-lived filters people often use in pitcher devices or fitted to pipes under their kitchen sinks. Poler wanted to be able to suck PFAS back out of the filter and dispose of it safely instead. He has come up with a low-cost, reusable filter that he’s racing to bring to market. “I’m working my butt off,” he says.

In less than a hundred years since their invention in 1934, humanity has bestrewn planet Earth with PFAS chemicals. Manufacturers have stuffed them into cleaning fluids, frying pans, and clothes, among other products. Now, practically anywhere you look, you’ll find traces of PFAS littering the environment. From Mount Everest to Antarctic Penguins and, probably, your tap water.

A recent newspaper investigation revealed that PFAS chemicals are in some drinking water supplies in England, while the authors of a separate 2023 study estimated that 45 percent of private and public US drinking water was contaminated by one PFAS chemical or more. The Environmental Protection Agency suggests that between 6 percent and 10 percent of US public drinking water systems are affected.

The US banned a handful of particularly harmful PFAS chemicals from drinking water last year, but some water-watchers are already worried that the new Trump administration could roll back these protections. Plus, just last month, a major new research paper described how people living in parts of the US with high levels of PFAS in the drinking water were already more likely to have certain cancers, including oral, lung, and brain cancer.

“These are compounds that don’t break down in the environment, at least not on timescales that are relevant to humans,” says Colin Cooke at the University of Alberta. “We’re stuck with them.”

It’s the ultra-strong carbon-fluorine bonds in PFAS molecules that make them so long-lived. These chemical bonds are among the strongest ever recorded. Cooke explains that PFAS chemicals effortlessly move around with the water cycle, which is how they end up all over the place: “Anywhere that the wind blows and the rain falls, there is potential for these contaminants to be introduced to the environment.”

There are three main ways of removing PFAS from water—reverse osmosis, activated carbon filtration, and ion exchange. Reverse osmosis involves forcing water through a semipermeable membrane, which encourages contaminants to separate out from the water. Activated carbon, meanwhile, adsorbs contaminants as water passes through the filter.

Poler has opted for the third type with his filter—ion exchange. In this version, the water passes through a fine sand-like material that chemically attracts and filters out certain contaminants. “We use sustainable materials,” he says. “It’s a natural zeolite [mineral]. You can dig it out of the ground; you don’t have to spend energy making it.”

On a microscopic level, Poler says this material has a complex shape. He describes it as a pile of tiny sticks, between which water molecules may pass. That means there’s a high surface area for attracting and pulling out the nasty stuff. Once the filter is full of PFAS and other unwanted materials, Poler says he can regenerate it by using a special fluid to chemically attract those contaminants out. “I’ve done hundreds of cycles; there’s no performance degradation,” he says. He and some colleagues published a study describing the principles of their approach in 2023.

The recovered PFAS would ideally then be sent for processing, to once and for all break those carbon-fluorine bonds and dispose of the material safely. Poler has identified companies in North Carolina that he says could do this. The process would require energy to heat and pressurize the PFAS. The alternative, Poler says, is to risk those compounds returning to the environment again—perpetuating the toxic cycle. He adds that he hopes to see his filter on the market as early as later this year. Some other companies advocate instead for long-term containment or storage of PFAS materials underground.

In total, there are more than 10,000 PFAS chemicals out there, though some are considered especially harmful. Two in particular, PFOA and PFOS, are so dangerous that they have already been banned from products in a number of countries, including the US. Despite this, other harmful PFAS molecules still turn up in a shocking range of consumer goods, according to Tasha Stoiber, senior scientist at Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit. “Even cosmetics,” she says.

Practically everyone now has PFAS in their body, adds Stoiber. But your risk of exposure varies depending on where you live. Military bases and their vicinities are notorious hot spots, generally because of the PFAS in foams used to put out jet fires.

Stoiber and her colleagues at EWG keep an eye on the consumer-grade water filtration systems available in the US. The organization’s tests have found that common pitcher filters from brands such as Brita and Berkey do not all remove PFAS equally well. But some do an excellent job, based on EWG’s tests, including the pitcher filter system made by Epic Water Filters, a US-based firm.

“I would say PFAS is by far the number one contaminant that we’re getting feedback for our customers being worried about,” says Joel Stevens, cofounder of Epic Water Filters. The filters his company makes for its water pitchers include a carbon block. “Thousands upon thousands of layers of carbon fibers that are wrapped around a block,” he explains. As the water trickles through those fibers, the carbon takes off PFAS and other contaminants, including chlorine and lead.

In about three months’ time, the company will launch a new pitcher filter that can also take out heavy metals and fluoride. Fluoride is added to water in some areas in order to improve dental health, though some people would prefer not to drink it because of a potential link between fluoride and adverse neurological effects. Scientific analysis suggests that the risk from tap water in countries such as the US, however, is extremely low.

While there are some very effective water filter products on the market, says Stoiber, many people still throw spent filters in the trash, which means they ultimately end up at landfill sites where the PFAS can leach out into the environment again.

Customers of Epic Water Filters can return their spent filters to the company. “The filters are then sent to a special recycling center where the plastic is recycled and the internal filters are incinerated,” says Stevens in a follow-up email.

Stoiber’s research suggests that some forms of incineration of PFAS materials can release harmful compounds into the environment. “We still don’t have good disposal recommendations for spent treatment media,” she says. It is possible to break PFAS compounds down, though, at extremely high temperatures, even as high as 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,730 F). Some researchers are currently exploring how chemical additives such as granular activated carbon could reduce the amount of heat required to break down PFAS compounds.

There’s another problem with current approaches to PFAS. “Community-level drinking water treatment is what’s needed at this point, because the costs shouldn’t fall on the individual,” says Stoiber. “It shouldn’t be unfair, who has a filter, who doesn’t, who gets exposed.”

While some US drinking water facilities are now installing large-scale PFAS filtration technology, such as in Tampa, Florida, the cost of doing this across the nation could spiral into the billions, according to some analyses. While Stoiber says the most effective strategy for avoiding PFAS contamination is not to use these chemicals in the first place, countless companies still do, and it could be a long time before they disappear entirely from consumer products, if that ever happens.

For now, there is a risk that the Trump administration could weaken the new US water regulations that demand the removal of some PFAS molecules from tap water supplies, says Stoiber. “We are fighting to protect the drinking water laws that were just passed,” she says. “I think all eyes are on that.”

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Soon after WIRED's global editorial director started in 2023, she sent me a message on Slack. By accident, I hearted it. A message from my very serious, very new boss. It haunts me to this day.

I have no recollection of what the message said, only a lingering, heart-shaped shame. When I realized my error several hours after the deed, I panicked. Do I remove it? Make a joke? Quit my job? Ultimately, I swapped it with a 👍 sometime after work hours and prayed she would register exactly none of this.

The reason for my mistake is that the ❤️ had become a go-to reaction on Slack, which displays the top-three most-used emoji when you hover over a comment. That is to say, hearting my boss’s message was part of a larger problem: I was hearting messages from colleagues all the time. The more I looked, the more I realized this was happening everywhere. Slack, of course, but also in one-on-one texts, group chats—anywhere I could react with a ❤️, I would.

It wasn’t just me. A literal war reporter on the front lines in Ukraine hearted my Signal message saying I’d get back to him about a pitch. My main friends’ group chat is awash in hearted messages of all types. Of course, my wife and I heart each other’s texts constantly, to the point that failing to do so has become a subtle hint that one of us is either very busy or cranky. The heart emoji has clearly become a default way of subtly communicating with each other. The question is, communicating what? Its meaning seems to shift with the context to the point that it no longer has a fixed meaning at all—except when you use it wrongly.

Neil Cohn, a cognitive scientist who focuses on visual communication and an associate professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, tells WIRED in an email that it’s essential to understand the context—and, thus, meaning—of a heart emoji before you use it.

“Otherwise you get into trouble if you send the wrong person a red heart instead of a white heart!” Cohn says. “This has become a serious issue, given that lawsuits have even hinged on whether sending an emoji to coworkers constitutes sexual harassment.”

Yikes.

Broadly speaking, the heart shape has been used as a symbol for hundreds of years, and it too has shifted over time. “A prominent theory is that the silphium seed from Africa in ancient times was shaped like a heart and was used as an aphrodisiac,” Cohn says. “So it was associated with sex, and only later, via Christians, did it become associated with love.”

Those Christians took the idea of the Sacred Heart and went wild for millennia, popularizing the heart as a symbol for adoration in Western culture to the point that it now evokes Hallmark and shitty chocolates more than it does the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Hearts were among the first Unicode symbols created in the early internet of the 1990s that would later become the emoji of today, according to Emojipedia. Released as part of Unicode 1.1 in 1993, “❤️” initially shared the name of its pre-color predecessor, “Heavy Black Heart.” By 2014, ❤️ was being cited as the most popular “word” in the world. It’s now a default emoji virtually anywhere you can type—and that’s where the problems come in.

“Since tech companies have placed the heart as a primary way for people to react to things, it’s naturally going to shift in meaning away from strictly ‘love’ and take a more generic meaning,” Cohn says.

Once reserved for romantic partners, mothers, grandparents, and photos of pets and babies, heart emoji can now be found appended to messages of all flavors, in any number of scenarios. As Jennifer Daniel, head of the Unicode emoji subcommittee, writes on Substack, this is a feature, not a bug: “Hearts are among the most frequently used type of emoji, and the nine colored hearts are often juxtaposed next to each other to denote markers of emotion (‘I'm sorry 💙’ or ‘love you ❤️’) and identity or affiliation that are not represented with atomic emoji in the Unicode Standard (ex. Support of Belarus: 🤍❤️🤍, ‘Hi I’m bi 💖💙💜’), and yes even sports teams (‘Go Mets! 💙🧡’).”

On the countless texts from my wife, I typically use the heart emoji as a way of saying thanks. Or I use it to gently say, “I acknowledge what you just said but truly have nothing to add.” Sometimes, I use it to support a friend who’s making a vulnerable admission or saying something kind. I even use it in the hope that it’s a polite way to stop a conversation I am too busy to continue.

“Just as words change meanings over time, so do graphics, and the heart is no different,” says Cohn. “I think expanding the range of meanings for heart emoji based on color is a natural extension of it. Especially when people are provided with multiple colors, it’s only natural for them to start adopting meanings that use those colors as a meaningful feature.”

In the year-plus since I hearted my boss’s Slack message, I’ve paid far closer attention to my use of the emoji. The red heart has fallen out of my most-used emoji reactions, replaced further down the list by a purple one, which feels less intimate. More than anything, though, I’ve largely abandoned the heart in favor of less loaded emoji. Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has ever been traumatized by a simple 🙌.

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American roads have grown deadlier for everyone, but the toll on pedestrians has been disproportionate. From a record low in 2009, the number of pedestrians being killed by vehicles rose 83 percent by 2022 to the highest it's been in 40 years. During that time, overall traffic deaths increased by just 25 percent. Now, a new study from AAA has identified a number of common factors that can explain why so many more pedestrians have died.

Firstly, no, it's not because there are more SUVs on the road, although these larger and taller vehicles are more likely to kill or seriously injure a pedestrian in a crash. And no, it's not because everyone has a smartphone, although using one while driving is a good way to increase your chances of hitting someone or something. These and some other factors (increased amount of driving, more alcohol consumption) have each played a small role, but even together, they don't explain the magnitude of the trend.

For a while, researchers started seeing that the increased pedestrian death toll was almost entirely happening after dark and on urban arterial roads—this has continued to be true through 2022, the AAA report says.

Together with the Collaborative Sciences Centre for Road Safety, AAA conducted a trio of case studies looking at road safety data from Albuquerque, New Mexico; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Memphis, Tennessee, to drill down into the phenomenon.

And common factors did emerge. Pedestrian crashes on arterial roads during darkness were far more likely to be fatal and were more common in older neighborhoods, more socially deprived neighborhoods, neighborhoods with more multifamily housing, and neighborhoods with more "arts/entertainment/food/accommodations" workers. As with so many of the US's ills, this problem is one that disproportionately affects the less affluent.

The design of the roads plays a large role, particularly in the way that cars are prioritized over more vulnerable road users. A lack of sidewalks and crossings on multilane roads that have retail locations (gas stations, fast food restaurants) immediately puts a pedestrian at a disadvantage. Add to that a pedestrian or driver who's a little tipsy (and maybe distracted by their phone), and the trouble begins.

Unfortunately, AAA's study also points out how difficult it will be to fix some of the contributors to this problem. In many places, the built environment needs to be changed, but it's expensive, and American society is just too accepting of traffic deaths to demand it happen. There are clashes between local and state governments—the latter often owns the arterial roads where these deaths are happening, leaving the cities powerless to take action themselves.

And even before the change at the top of the federal government, there was still insufficient funding for pedestrian safety and too much prioritization of vehicle traffic. It's very difficult to imagine positive change occurring there during the next few years.

"Reducing the spike in pedestrian deaths requires data-driven investments where they matter most," said Jake Nelson, AAA's director of traffic safety advocacy. "If safety is truly a top priority for decision-makers, we should expect greater investments in historically underinvested communities where a disproportionate number of pedestrians are hit and killed."

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In the mid- and upper-latitudes on Earth, during the early evening hours, thin and wispy clouds can sometimes be observed in the upper atmosphere.

These clouds have an ethereal feel and consist of ice crystals in very high clouds at the edge of space, typically about 75 to 85 km above the surface. The clouds are still in sunlight while the ground is darkening after the Sun sets. Meteorologists call these noctilucent clouds, which essentially translates to "night-shining" clouds.

There is no reason why these clouds could not also exist on Mars, which has a thin atmosphere. And about two decades ago, the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter observed noctilucent clouds on Mars and went on to make a systematic study.

Among the many tasks NASA's Curiosity rover does on the surface of Mars since landing in 2012 is occasionally looking up. A couple of weeks ago, the rover's Mastcam instrument captured a truly stunning view of noctilucent clouds in the skies above. The clouds are mostly white, but there is an intriguing tinge of red as well in the time-lapse below, which consists of 16 minutes of observations.

It turns out that Curiosity has been observing these clouds for a couple of years, and now scientists can predict their formation enough to time observations just right. Hence this gorgeous view.

"I’ll always remember the first time I saw those iridescent clouds and was sure at first it was some color artifact," said Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "Now it’s become so predictable that we can plan our shots in advance; the clouds show up at exactly the same time of year."

Notably, although Curiosity has observed these clouds in Gale Crater, just south of the Martian equator, other NASA rovers on Mars have generally not seen them. Lemmon and some other scientists believe gravity waves may be sufficiently cooling the atmosphere to allow carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to condense enough for thin clouds to form.

This is one of the many scientific mysteries that Curiosity will continue to investigate.

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The search for extraterrestrial life has always been a key motivator of space exploration. But if we were to search Mars, Titan, or the subsurface oceans of Europa or Enceladus, it seems like all we can reasonably hope to find is extremophile microbes. And microbes, just a few microns long and wide, will be difficult to identify if we’re relying on robots working with limited human supervision and without all the fancy life-detecting gear we have here on Earth.

To solve that problem, a team of German researchers at the Technical University in Berlin figured that, instead of having a robot looking for microbes, it would be easier and cheaper to make the microbes come to the robot. The only ingredient they were lacking was the right bait.

Looking for movement

Most ideas we have for life detection on space mission rely on looking for chemical traces of life, such as various metabolites. Most recent missions, the Perseverance rover included, weren’t equipped with any specialized life-detecting instruments. “On Mars, the focus was on looking for signs of possible ancient life—fossils or other traces of microbes,” says Max Riekeles, an astrobiologist at the Technical University Berlin. “The last real in-situ life detection missions were performed by Viking landers, which is quite a while back already,”

We didn’t fit more advanced instruments that could reliably look at chemical biosignatures of microbes living on Mars on the most recent mission because such instruments would add too much mass, boost energy consumption, and require additional computing power. So, Riekeles and his colleagues suggested a much simpler and lighter life detection system based on the most obvious biosignature of them all: motility. When you see something move on its own, you can tell it’s alive, right?

But how do you get an alien microbe moving? From previous research, Riekeles knew most microbes, even those living in extreme environments, are attracted to L-serine, an amino acid used by organisms on Earth to build proteins. The microbes sense the presence of L-serine in their surroundings and move toward it, a behavior known as chemotaxis. “Also, there seems to be evidence L-serine was found outside of Earth, and it was present in the Martian environment,” Riekeles said.

Once the bait was sorted, the team chose its test subjects, the microorganisms chosen to play the part of aliens were extremophile bacteria. They picked several, including Bacillus subtilis, which can survive in temperatures reaching 100° C, and Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis, which lived in the cold waters of Antarctica. The third organism they used was Haloferax volcanii, an archaeon inhabiting extremely saline environments like the Dead Sea. “This one was especially interesting to us because we know from spectral evidence that there seems to be a lot of salt on Mars,” Riekeles explains.

The researchers used glass containers divided into two chambers separated by a barrier. Samples with microbes ended up in one chamber, the L-serine in the other, and the barrier, formed using a gel, was formulated to be permeable to microbes but impenetrable by abiotic particles. Then Riekeles and his colleagues watched the containers using a rather simple microscope, looking for blobs of microbes forming in the L-serine chamber. Blobs were observed in experiments with all three microbes, which happily relocated to L-serine chambers within an hour and a half or so.

Movement detected; life confirmed.

The problem is a life-detection system like that should work well, provided those possible alien microbes look like microbes on Earth. But what if alien life proves a bit more surprising?

Baiting the unknown

On the face of it, Riekeles’ idea to bet on motility as a biosignature seems quite robust against possible different chemistries and natures of alien life. “You can imagine life that is not similar to our life but still evolved motility just because motility is super useful in terms of evolution—it evolved multiple times independently here on Earth”, Reikeles says. But the limitations start to appear when you plunge deeper into details.

The most obvious one is that only around 40 percent of prokaryotes on Earth can move. If that percentage holds true for alien worlds, we’ll be missing more than half of possible extraterrestrial microbes right off the bat. And even microbes that can move might prove a bit tricky.

The second issue is the unknown size of alien microbes. Riekeles and his colleagues knew how big the organisms they studied were beforehand, so the permeability of membranes separating the chambers was fine-tuned to let these microbes through. But what if the aliens turned out to be a bit larger than expected? “At this point we are not sure what kind of membrane would be best for Mars missions. We also don’t know how our membranes would perform in Mars’ temperatures and atmosphere,” Riekeles acknowledges. “Designing a more universal membrane will be its own research project.”

Even if the membrane issue gets sorted out, there is still the question of possible different chemistries of alien life starting with left-handed chirality. Life on Earth is based on left-handed amino acids. This is why Riekelesused L-serine, rather than R-serine in his experiments. But what if life on alien worlds evolved to choose the right-handed variety? Should we include R-serine too when sending missions to Mars or elsewhere, just in case?

And how do you bait life that is completely, not just slightly alien? what if we assume, after the molecular simulation experiments done at Cornell University back in 2015, that cell membranes made of vinyl cyanide could form in the liquid methane found on Saturn’s moon Titan? The answers lie in the final design of the life-detecting instrument that Riekeles has in mind.

“The optimal way of doing it for a Mars mission would be to come up with a system where a sample is in the middle, surrounded by a variety of amino acids with different chirality,” Riekeles says. He expects that coming up with baits for life with different methane-based biochemistry should be possible. “But we haven’t explored that yet. We need to test way more organisms and see what substances are working for the most of them. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, unfortunately,” Riekeles says. The next step for Riekeles’ life detection system will be testing it in a Mars simulation chamber replicating atmospheric conditions, temperature, irradiation, and the regolith properties present on the Red Planet.

Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, 2025. DOI: 10.3389/fspas.2024.1490090

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With the rapid emergence of generative AI, more people are hopping onto the bandwagon with tools like Microsoft Copilot and integrating it into their lives and workflows to handle mundane and repetitive tasks, leaving them with more time to deal with more complex tasks that might require them to flex their mental muscles.

However, a new study by Microsoft researchers in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University reveals that an overdependency and reliance on AI may negatively impact a person's critical thinking, leading to the deterioration of cognitive faculties (via 404 Media).

According to the researchers:

“[A] key irony of automation is that by mechanising routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise.”

The extensive study entailed evaluating AI use cases at the workplace, and the confidence or lack thereof depicted by employees when leveraging AI to accomplish tasks. Interestingly, the findings revealed that employees confidently using AI at work encountered issues when presented with scenarios that required them to put their critical thinking to the test compared to less reliant users. As such, this presented them with an edge to leverage their knowledge to enhance the quality of the AI-generated output.

Last year, I reported on the long-term negative implications forged by an overreliance and dependence on tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. The same sentiments have been echoed across social media, with some users claiming they've "lost some brain cells." "I can really see that ChatGPT will make us more dumb as we will increasingly use AI without thinking and engaging our brain. Do other people share this opinion as well?" another Reddit user added.

Perhaps more concerning, some users claimed that they had lost motivation and morale to use their critical and creative thinking skills, often leaning heavily on AI tools like ChatGPT for a "quick fix."

A dairy worker in Nevada has been infected with a strain of H5N1 bird flu—genotype D1.1—that has newly spilled over to cows, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed.

The worker experienced conjunctivitis (pink eye) as the only symptom and is recovering, according to a separate press release by the Central Nevada Health District Monday.

The bird flu strain H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, genotype D1.1 is the predominant strain currently circulating in wild birds in North America and was confirmed for the first time in cows in Nevada last week. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the new spillover was initially detected on January 31 via bulk milk testing. Until this point, the outbreak of H5N1 in dairy cows—which was declared in March 2024—was entirely caused by H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, genotype B3.13. The outbreak was thought to have been caused by a single spillover event from wild birds to cows in Texas in late 2023 or early 2024.

Since then, the CDC has confirmed 68 human cases of H5N1 in the US, 41 of which were in dairy workers. That total includes the new D1.1 case in Nevada. The remainder includes 23 poultry workers, one from a backyard/wild bird exposure in Louisiana, and three with unclear sources of infection. Nearly all of the cases have been mild.

Genetic findings

In a statement emailed to Ars, the CDC noted that the Nevada case is not the first human case with D1.1 amid the outbreak. Based on available genetic data, the D1.1 genotype likely infected a total of 15 people across Iowa, Louisiana, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin during 2024, the agency said.

However, the new Nevada case is notable because it marks the first time D1.1 is known to have jumped from birds to cows to a person. Moreover, D1.1 has proven dangerous. The genotype is behind the country's only severe and ultimately fatal case of H5N1 so far in the outbreak. The death in the Louisiana case linked to wild and backyard birds was reported last month. The CDC's statement added that the person had "prolonged, unprotected" exposure to the birds. The D1.1. genotype was also behind a severe H5N1 infection that put a Canadian teenager in intensive care late last year.

In a February 7 analysis, the USDA reported finding that the D1.1 strain infecting cows in Nevada has a notable mutation known to help the bird-adapted virus replicate in mammals more efficiently (PB2 D701N). To date, this mutation has not been seen in D1.1 strains spreading in wild birds nor has it been seen in the B3.13 genotype circulating in dairy cows. However, it was seen before in a 2023 human case in Chile. The CDC said it has confirmed that the strain of D1.1 infecting the person in Nevada also contains the PB2 D701N mutation.

The USDA and CDC both reported that no other concerning mutations were found, including one that has been consistently identified in the B3.13 strain in cows. The CDC said it does not expect any changes to how the virus will interact with human immune responses or to antivirals.

Most importantly, to date, there has been no evidence of human-to-human transmission, which would mark a dangerous turn for the virus's ability to spark an outbreak. For all these reasons, the CDC considers the risk to the public low, though people with exposure to poultry, dairy cows, and birds are at higher risk and should take precautions.

To date, 967 herds across 16 states have been infected with H5N1 bird flu, and nearly 158 million commercial birds have been affected since 2022.

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Because its axis of rotation is tilted at about 25 degrees, Mars has four seasons, just like Earth. However, a year on Mars is about 687 Earth days long, making each season longer than those on our planet.

The northern hemisphere of Mars ended its four-season year on November 12, 2024, ushering in a new spring. However, the arrival of this season on the Red Planet is not as gentle as it is here. “All of the phenomena that occur are explosive,” says Selina Diniega, who studies the planet’s surface at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Because the Martian atmosphere is so dilute, frozen water and carbon dioxide on the planet’s surface change directly from solid to gas as temperatures rise. This results in a very active springtime.

The following are some images taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter—illustrated above—that capture the explosive arrival of the new season.

The above image shows a 20-meter-long chunk of frozen carbon dioxide falling off a cliff. Rising temperatures during the Martian spring cause ice to crack and break, making avalanches common.

“Thanks to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been observing Mars for nearly 20 years, we are able to capture dramatic scenes like these,” Diniega says. This particular photo was taken by the orbiter in 2015.

When sunlight hits carbon dioxide ice, the light passes through the frozen material and heats the ground below it, causing the ice closest to the ground to sublimate from a solid to a gas. The pressure of this gas builds up until an eruption occurs, launching carbon dioxide, sand, and dust into the Martian atmosphere.

The best time to see these dark, fan-shaped geysers will be around December 2025, when spring arrives in the southern hemisphere, where geysers are larger and more visible.

When the frozen carbon dioxide has all melted in the summer, distinctive marks are revealed on the Martian landscape. These are known as “araneidoform terrain,” because they look like spiders when seen from space. Some of these spider-like landforms are more than a kilometer across, and some have hundreds of legs. They are often found in swarms. The image above was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter when viewing the southern hemisphere in 2009.

The processes that create these spidery formations aren’t fully understood, though JPL is working on mimicking the temperatures and pressures of Mars to re-create them.

The arrival of spring on Mars also brings strong winds, and it’s believed that the characteristic spiral pattern of Mars’ north polar cap has been created over many years by winds blowing from the cap’s center to its periphery. The spiral pattern is due to the Coriolis effect, which is when a planet’s rotation bends the course of winds.

The darker parts of the spiral are actually deep canyons, which have been cut over a long period by the springtime winds. The Chasma Boreale, which is visible to the right of the center of the polar cap in the image, is particularly spectacular. It is as long as the Grand Canyon (about 450 kilometers) and up to 2 kilometers deep.

The strong spring winds also move sand dunes on the Martian surface, just like winds do in deserts on Earth.

The white stuff you see in the image is frost surrounding the elevated dunes, which remain static while frozen. When temperatures rise in spring and this ice melts, the dunes will start moving again due to the action of the wind.

“As we’ve seen, the onset of spring on Mars is very active. You could even say ‘explosive,’ Diniega says. “I imagine it would be very noisy, with things cracking and exploding.”

This story originally appeared on WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese.

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Prochlorococcus bacteria are so small that you’d have to line up around a thousand of them to match the thickness of a human thumbnail. The ocean seethes with them: The microbes are likely the most abundant photosynthetic organism on the planet, and they create a significant portion—10 percent to 20 percent—of the atmosphere’s oxygen. That means that life on Earth depends on the roughly 3 octillion (or 3 × 10²⁷) tiny individual cells toiling away.

Biologists once thought of these organisms as isolated wanderers, adrift in an unfathomable vastness. But the Prochlorococcus population may be more connected than anyone could have imagined. They may be holding conversations across wide distances, not only filling the ocean with envelopes of information and nutrients, but also linking what we thought were their private, inner spaces with the interiors of other cells.

At the University of Córdoba in Spain, not long ago, biologists snapping images of the cyanobacteria under a microscope saw a cell that had grown a long, thin tube and grabbed hold of its neighbor. The image made them sit up. It dawned on them that this was not a fluke.

“We realized the cyanobacteria were connected to each other,” said María del Carmen Muñoz-Marín, a microbiologist there. There were links between Prochlorococcus cells, and also with another bacterium, called Synechococcus, which often lives nearby. In the images, silvery bridges linked three, four, and sometimes 10 or more cells.

Muñoz-Marín had a hunch about the identity of these mysterious structures. After a battery of tests, she and her colleagues recently reported that these bridges are bacterial nanotubes. First observed in a common lab bacterium only 14 years ago, bacterial nanotubes are structures made of cell membrane that allow nutrients and resources to flow between two or more cells.

The structures have been a source of fascination and controversy over the last decade, as microbiologists have worked to understand what causes them to form and what, exactly, travels among these networked cells. The images from Muñoz-Marín’s lab marked the first time these structures have been seen in the cyanobacteria responsible for so much of the Earth’s photosynthesis.

They challenge fundamental ideas about bacteria, raising questions such as: How much does Prochlorococcus share with the cells around it? And does it really make sense to think of it, and other bacteria, as single-celled?

Totally Tubular

Many bacteria have active social lives. Some make pili, hairlike growths of protein that link two cells to allow them to exchange DNA. Some form dense plaques together, known as biofilms. And many emit tiny bubbles known as vesicles that contain DNA, RNA or other chemicals, like messages in a bottle for whatever cell happens to intercept them.

It was vesicles that Muñoz-Marín and her colleagues, including José Manuel García-Fernández, a microbiologist at the University of Córdoba, and graduate student Elisa Angulo-Cánovas, were looking for as they zoomed in on Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus in a dish. When they saw what they suspected were nanotubes, it was a surprise.

Nanotubes are a recent addition to scientists’ understanding of bacterial communication. In 2011, Sigal Ben-Yehuda and her postdoc Gyanendra Dubey at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem first published images of tiny bridges, made of membrane, between the bacteria Bacillus subtilis. These tubes were actively transporting material: The researchers showed that green fluorescent proteins produced in one cell of the network quickly percolated through the others. They found the same result with calcein, a small molecule that is not able to cross bacterial membranes on its own. These cells were not existing placidly side by side; their inner spaces were linked, more like rooms in a house than detached dwellings.

It was a startling revelation. The news compelled other biologists to reexamine their own images of cells. It soon became clear that B. subtilis was not the only species producing nanotubes. In populations of Escherichia coli and numerous other bacteria, small but consistent fractions of cells were spotted with nanotubes. In experiments, scientists watched cells sprout from the tubes and then investigated what they carried. Moving across these bridges from cell to cell were substances such as amino acids, the basic building blocks of proteins, as well as enzymes and toxins. Bacteria, biologists now think, have probably been making these structures all along. Scientists simply hadn’t noticed them or realized their significance.

Not everyone has found it straightforward to get bacteria to make nanotubes. Notably, a group at the Czech Academy of Sciences could see nanotubes only when cells were dying. Their suggestion that the tubes are a “manifestation of cell death” cast doubt on whether the structures were truly an important part of the cells’ normal biology. Since then, however, additional work has carefully documented that healthy cells do grow the structures. All this suggests that certain conditions must be met for bacteria to take this step. Still, “I think they are everywhere,” Ben-Yehuda said.

The latest findings are particularly eye-opening because Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus are not your average dish-dwelling bacteria. They live in a singularly turbulent environment: the open ocean, where water movement might reasonably be expected to break the fragile tubes. What’s more, they are photosynthetic, meaning that they get most of what they need to survive from the sun. What need could they have for trading through tube networks? There has been another sighting of nanotubes in marine bacteria, but those microbes are not photosynthetic—they gobble up nutrients from their immediate environment, a lifestyle in which swapping substances with neighbors might have a more obvious benefit.

So, when Muñoz-Marín and Angulo-Cánovas saw their nanotubes, they were initially skeptical. They wanted to make sure that they weren’t mistaking some accident of how the cells were prepared or how the images had been taken for a natural structure.

“We spent a lot of time to ensure that what we were finding in the images was actually something physiological and not any kind of an artifact,” García-Fernández said. “The results were so shocking in the field of marine cyanobacteria that we were, on the one hand, amazed, and on the other hand, we wanted to be completely sure.”

They put the cells under four radically different kinds of imaging devices—not only a transmission electron microscope, which they had been using when they first spotted the structures, but also a fluorescence microscope, a scanning electron microscope, and an imaging flow cytometer, which images live cells as they zip by. They looked at Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus on their own and at cultures where they lived together. They looked at dead cells and living ones. They even looked at fresh samples of seawater fished out of the Bay of Cádiz. In all the samples they spotted bridges, which connected about 5 percent of the cells. The nanotubes did not seem to be artifacts.

Next, to see whether the links were in fact nanotubes, they performed versions of the now-canonical experiments with green fluorescent protein and calcein described by Ben-Yehuda and Dubey. The networked cells lit up. The team also confirmed that the links were indeed made of membrane lipids and not protein, which would instead suggest pili. They were convinced, finally, that they were looking at bacterial nanotubes.

These tubes connect some of the most abundant organisms on the planet, they realized. And that immediately made something very clear, something the researchers are still turning over in their minds.

“At the beginning of this century, when you were speaking about phytoplankton in the ocean, you were thinking about independent cells that are isolated,” García-Fernandez said. “But now—and not only from these results, but also from results from other people—I think we have to consider that these guys are not working alone.”

A Cellular Network

There might be a good reason why cyanobacteria, floating in the vast expanse of the ocean, might want to join forces. They have curiously small genomes, said Christian Kost, a microbial ecologist at the University of Osnabrück in Germany who was not involved in this study. Prochlorococcus has the smallest genome of any known free-living photosynthetic cell, with only around 1,700 genes. Synechococcus is not far behind.

Among bacteria, small genomes relieve organisms of the pressure of maintaining bulky DNA, but this state also requires them to scavenge many basic nutrients and metabolites from their neighbors. Bacteria with streamlined genomes sometimes form interdependent communities with organisms that produce what they need and need what they produce.

“This can be much more efficient than a bacterium that attempts to produce all metabolites at the same time,” Kost said. “Now, the problem, when you’re living in a liquid, is: How do you exchange these metabolites with other bacteria?”

Nanotubes may be a solution. Nutrients transferred this way will not be swept away by currents, lost to dilution or consumed by a freeloader. In computer simulations, Kost and his colleagues have found that nanotubes can support the development of cooperation among groups of bacteria.

What’s more, “this [new] paper shows that this transfer is both happening within and between species,” he said. “This is super interesting.” In a previous paper, he and colleagues also noticed different species of bacteria connected by nanotubes.

This kind of cooperation is probably more common than people realize, said Conrad Mullineaux, a microbiologist at Queen Mary University of London—even in environments like the open ocean, where bacteria may not always be close enough to form nanotubes.

We often speak of bacteria as being simple and single-celled. But bacterial colonies, biofilms, and consortiums of different microorganisms can perform complicated feats of engineering and behavior together, sometimes rivaling what multicellular life can achieve. “I like to try to persuade people sometimes, when I’m feeling feisty: You’re a biofilm and I’m a biofilm,” Mullineaux said. If the sea is full of cyanobacteria communicating by nanotube and vesicle, then perhaps this exchange of resources could affect something as fundamental as the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere or the amount of carbon sequestered in the ocean.

Kost, Ben-Yehuda, and Mullineaux agree that the new paper’s findings are intriguing. The authors have done all the right tests to ensure that the structures they are seeing are in fact nanotubes, they said. But more work is needed to explain the significance of the finding. In particular, a big open question is what, exactly, Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus are sharing with each other in the wild. Photosynthesis allows these bacteria to draw energy from the sun, but they must pick up nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from the environment. The researchers are embarking on a series of experiments with Rachel Ann Foster of Stockholm University, a specialist in nutrient flow in the ocean, to trace these substances in networked cells.

Another question is how bacteria form these tubes, and under what conditions. The tubes are not much longer than an individual cell, and Prochlorococcus, in particular, is thought to spread out in the water column. Muñoz-Marín and her team are curious about the concentrations of bacteria required for a network to form. “How often would it be possible for these independent cells to get close enough to each other in order to develop these nanotubes?” García-Fernandez asked. The current study shows that nanotubes do form among wild-caught cells, but the precise requirements are unclear.

Looking back at what people thought about bacterial communication when he began to study marine cyanobacteria 25 years ago, García-Fernandez is conscious that the field has undergone a sea change. Scientists once thought they saw myriad individuals floating alongside each other in immense space, competing with neighboring species in a race for resources. “The fact that there can be physical communication between different kind of organisms—I think that changes many, many previous ideas on how the cells work in the ocean,” he said. It’s a far more interconnected world than anyone realized.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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At the world’s most renowned meteorite show, in Ensisheim in France, I noticed there were many dealers from Morocco. Unlike most of the Europeans and Americans—who had display cases and labels and books—the Moroccan stalls were minimalistic. Perhaps a white sheet covered with lumps of reddish-brown rocks. A pair of scales. Sometimes a piece of paper with prices per kilo written in biro. It was only back in England that I learned about the Saharan Gold Rush.

Since 1999 the number of meteorites being found in Morocco has exploded. The number officially recognized exceeds a thousand—though this is described by scientists as “a gross underestimate.” For comparison, the UK has a mere 23 falls and finds.

“You must talk to Hasnaa,” a dealer, Darryl Pitt, wrote to me. “She has attempted—and has somewhat succeeded—turning the chaos of the North African meteorite trade into something more orderly.” It wasn’t the first time her name had come up.

Hasnaa Chennaoui Aoudjehane, a professor at the Hassan II University of Casablanca, is used to being the outsider in the room. At meetings of the Meteoritical Society’s Committee for Meteorite Nomenclature, the group tasked with officially naming recognized meteorites, she was, when she was a member, “the unique representative from any Arab or Muslim country.” (She remains a consultant to the committee.) When I broached the subject of Morocco’s exports, she groaned. “The situation with Moroccan meteorites is insane,” she says. “It’s unethical.”

Towards the end of the last century several factors combined to make Morocco a meteorite hot spot. First, climate and geography. Allowing for the difference in total surface area, a meteorite is as likely to land in the Highlands of Scotland as in the Sahara, but in the former it will be a lot harder to find—the heather, the rocks—and will “terrestrialize” much more quickly—the rain, the mud, the snow. Most (though not all) meteorites reach Earth with dark fusion crust exteriors. In the Sahara such rocks stand out against the sand.

Secondly, Morocco already had a network of Western fossil, mineral, and archaeological hunters and dealers, while many Moroccans—members of nomadic groups in particular—were highly skilled in searching for rocks and artifacts in the desert. When I walked with my herd, I looked at the ground,” a nomad explained to a journalist from the Middle East Eye. The stone business, he said, had rescued many nomadic families from poverty.

Thirdly, Morocco’s legal and geopolitical situation helped things along. “We are, thank God, a peaceful country,” Chennaoui says. “It is something unique in the region.” Here it is (relatively) safe to wander the Saharan sands looking for stones. Furthermore, there was no dedicated regulation of the country’s meteorites. If you found a meteorite in Morocco, it was probably yours to do with as you liked.

The American dealer Michael Gilmer places the beginning of the Saharan Gold Rush in the mid-1990s. Foreign dealers quickly discovered that unclassified meteorites could be purchased from Moroccan traders at very low prices, formally analyzed in the West, and sold on for considerable profit.

The town of Erfoud in the southeastern Drâa-Tafilalet region of Morocco, known as “the gateway to the Sahara,” became a hub for those hoping to make money from meteorites. A visitor will find shops selling meteorites and fossils, some with small ad hoc museums. Some nomads have diversified into taking tourists and collectors out into the desert to search for stones.

Chennaoui is not against the meteorite trade. She has no wish to take away someone’s livelihood, and besides, if no one was paid for their meteorites then no one would collect them and they would be lost to the desert. She does, however, “think it’s really unfair that nothing stays in Morocco.” Her dream is that one day the nation will build a permanent national collection of its own.

Not everyone is keen. Some hunters and dealers fear a tightening of regulations on meteorite ownership and export and potential damage to their trade. “They can put up museums if they want, but not take away our only source of income,” one man told the Financial Times.

For now, Chennaoui is conducting a private rescue mission, using her own money to prevent interesting meteorites being sold abroad. She has turned her collection into a travelling exhibition, currently based in a shopping mall in Casablanca. With more than 17,000 visitors by June 2023, it presents for the first time in Morocco a collection of Moroccan meteorites. “I want to educate people to be proud,” she says, “to understand that this is their heritage.”

Since 2004 Chennaoui’s university group has been responsible for the fieldwork and documentation for almost all Moroccan falls. They also try to do the same for finds, “but it’s difficult because there are a lot of them.” She has initiated a system for people who think they might have found a meteorite to contact her or other local meteoriticists for verification. She tries to explain that “even if a meteorite is sold and exported, it should still be recognized as something that was originally from their country.”

Morocco continues to export huge numbers of meteorites, but according to Gilmer, the Saharan Gold Rush is now over. Local finders, realizing how much the middlemen and dealers were making, began demanding fairer compensation. Moroccan traders in the city increased their prices in response. At the same time, dealers noticed that the meteorites they were paying more for were of poorer quality and more weathered. The big, obvious, high-quality meteorites had mostly been picked and sold. A unique, unrepeatable period has come to a close. “The world only has one region like northwest Africa, where a fortuitous combination of geographical, legal, and climatological forces converged,” Gilmer writes. “There are no new Moroccos waiting in the wings.”

The Gold Rush may be over but it leaves Morocco forever changed. Arguably Moroccans are now taking charge of their meteorites—whether in the form of nomads demanding fairer compensation or the development of national scientific institutions. “We have gained scientific credibility in Morocco with laboratories around the world that leave the doors open for us to carry out our analyses and to welcome our students,” Chennaoui says.

Excerpt adapted from The Meteorites: Encounters With Outer Space and Deep Time, by Helen Gordon. Published by Profile Books on February 6, 2025.

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Sunday, 9 February

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 00:03 UTC
• Where: California, US
• Why: In this mission, SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 rocket to launch Starlink Group 11-10, which consists of 23 satellites. Following the launch, the first stage of the rocket will perform a landing so that the company can get it ready again for launch. The Starlink constellation offers broadband services for people on Earth, even if they're in remote, disconnected areas.

Tuesday, 11 February

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 17:00 - 21:00 UTC
• Where: Florida, US
• Why: In this mission, SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 to launch Starlink Group 12-18. Unlike the previous mission, this one will include 13 direct-to-cell satellites, which work with compatible devices directly. The first stage of the rocket will perform a landing so that it can be reused. If you want to have a look for these satellites after launch, using the Starlink Group 12-18 identifier with apps like ISS Detector of Heaven's Above.

Friday, 14 February

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 17:26 - 21:26 UTC
• Where: Florida, US
• Why: In the final mission of the week, SpaceX will launch another Falcon 9 carrying 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 direct-to-cell satellites. This flight is known as Starlink Group 12-8 and will be pretty similar to the other missions in that the first stage will perform a landing after launch.

Recap

• The first launch we got last week was Mitsubishi's H3 rocket carrying the Michibiki 6 satellite. It was placed in a geostationary orbit and will improve navigation services in Japan and the region and will be part of Japan's QZSS constellation.

• Next up, we got a Starlink mission from SpaceX. The company launched a Falcon 9 from Florida carrying Starlink Group 12-3. This batch included 13 direct-to-cell satellites. Following the launch, the first stage of the rocket performed a landing. You can watch this launch over on SpaceX.com.
• The third mission of the week saw Blue Origin launch its New Shepard rocket in mission NS-29. Unlike other New Shepard missions, this one was uncrewed. It flew with several experiments and simulated lunar gravity.

• Next, we got another Falcon 9 launch from SpaceX, but this time, it was carrying the WorldView Legion 5 and 6 satellites for Maxar Technologies. These Earth observation satellites. Following the launch, the first stage did a landing. You can view the launch on SpaceX.com.
• The final launch was of a Soyuz 2.1v carrying a military payload. It's unclear what was flown aboard the mission. It's possible they were Rodnik military communication satellites, but it's not known for sure.

That's all for this week, check back next time!

Cover image background via: NASA, ESA and P. Goudfrooij (Space Telescope Science Institute); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

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In a Wednesday memo to employees that I obtained (and you can read below), Google’s head of HR, Fiona Cicconi, said there will no longer be DEI hiring targets due to the company’s status as a federal contractor and recent “court decisions and US Executive Orders on this topic.” As The Wall Street Journal notes, Google also removed a line included in previous annual SEC reports saying that it’s “committed to making diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do.”

Google spokesperson Chloe Cooper tells The Verge the company is “committed to creating a workplace where all our employees can succeed and have equal opportunities, and over the last year we’ve been reviewing our programs designed to help us get there.”

At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement back in 2020, Google publicly said it would aim to increase “leadership representation of underrepresented groups” by 30 percent — a goal it achieved in 2022. Now that ending DEI programs across America has become a top priority of the Trump administration, Google says in the employee memo that it’s “carefully evaluating” other DEI initiatives across the company that “raise risk” or “aren’t as impactful as we’d hoped.”

Here’s the full text of the memo, which is presented as a Q&A with Cicconi:

With new U.S. Executive Orders, court decisions, and many companies making changes to their DEl programs in recent weeks, we sat down with Fiona Cicconi to learn how Google is thinking about this.

Can you tell us how we’re thinking about this across the company?

First, I want to be clear: we’ve always been committed to creating a workplace where we hire the best people wherever we operate, create an environment where everyone can thrive, and treat everyone fairly. That’s exactly what you can expect to see going forward. Our users come from all across the U.S. and around the world, and we serve them better when our employees do, too.

Every year, we review the programs designed to help us get there and make changes. And because we are a federal contractor, our teams are also evaluating changes to our programs required to comply with recent court decisions and U.S. Executive Orders on this topic. For example, in 2020, we set aspirational hiring goals and focused on growing our offices outside California and New York to improve representation. We’ll continue to invest in states across the U.S. — and in many countries globally — but in the future we will no longer have aspirational goals.

You mentioned we’ll evaluate our programs. Can you share more about that?

Melonie Parker and her team will lead on closely and carefully evaluating programs, trainings, and initiatives, and will update them as needed — including those that raise risk, or that aren’t as impactful as we’d hoped. She’ll work with senior leaders across the company.

And is there anything else you want Googlers to know now?

While there will be changes, our central Employee Resource Groups will remain, as will our work with colleges and universities, and our work to build products to help all our users and partners. That is all vital work for our business and our Googler community.

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The spring morning is cool and bright in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park in Baja California, Mexico, as a bird takes to the skies. Its 9.8-foot wingspan casts a looming silhouette against the sunlight; the sound of its flight is like that of a light aircraft cutting through the wind. In this forest thick with trees up to 600 years old lives the southernmost population of the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), the only one outside the United States. Dozens of the scavenging birds have been reintroduced here, to live and breed once again in the wild.

Their return has been captained for more than 20 years by biologist Juan Vargas Velasco and his partner María Catalina Porras Peña, a couple who long ago moved away from the comforts of the city to endure extreme winters living in a tent or small trailer, to manage the lives of the 48 condors known to fly over Mexican territory. Together—she as coordinator of the California Condor Conservation Program, and he as field manager—they are the guardians of a project whose origins go back to condor recovery efforts that began in the 1980s in the United States, when populations were decimated, mainly from eating the meat of animals shot by hunters’ lead bullets.

In Mexico, the species disappeared even earlier, in the late 1930s. Its historic return—the first captive-bred condors were released into Mexican territory in 2002—is the result of close binational collaboration among zoos and other institutions in the United States and Mexico.

Beyond the number on the wing that identifies each individual, Porras Peña knows perfectly the history and behavior of the condors under her care. She recognizes them without needing binoculars and speaks of them as one would speak of the lives of friends.

She captures her knowledge in an Excel log: a database including information such as origin, ID tag, name, sex, age, date of birth, date of arrival, first release, and number in the Studbook (an international registry used to track the ancestry and offspring of each individual of a species through a unique number). Also noted is wildlife status, happily marked for most birds with a single word: “Free.” Names such as Galan, Nera, Pai Pai, La Querida, Celestino, and El Patriota stand out in the record.

The California condor, North America’s largest bird, has taken flight again. It’s a feat made possible by well-established collaborations between the US and Mexico, economic investment, the dedication of many people, and, above all, the scientific understanding of the species—from the decoding of its genome and knowledge of its diseases and reproductive habits to the use of technologies that can closely follow each individual bird.

But many challenges remain for the California condor, which 10,000 years ago dominated the skies over the Pacific coast of the Americas, from southern Canada to northern Mexico. Researchers need to assemble wild populations that are capable of breeding without human assistance, and with the confidence that more birds are hatched than die. It is a tough battle against extinction, waged day in and day out by teams in California, Arizona, and Utah in the United States, and Mexico City and Baja California in Mexico.

A shift in approach to conservation

The US California Condor Recovery Program, initiated in the 1970s, represented an enormous change in the strategy of species conservation. After unsuccessful habitat preservation attempts, and as a last-ditch attempt to try to save the scavenger bird from extinction, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Fish and Game Commission advocated for a decision as bold as it was controversial: to capture the last condors alive in the wild and commit to breeding them in captivity.

Some two dozen condors sacrificed their freedom in order to save their lineage. On April 19, 1987, the last condor was captured, marking a critical moment for the species: On that day, the California condor became officially extinct in the wild.

At the same time, a captive breeding program was launched, offering a ray of hope for a species that, beyond its own magnificence, plays an important role in the health of ecosystems—efficiently eliminating the remains of dead animals, thus preventing the proliferation of diseases and environmental pollution.

This is what is defined as a refaunation project, says Rodolfo Dirzo, a Stanford University biologist. It’s the flip side to the term defaunation that he and his colleagues coined in a 2014 article in Science to refer to the global extinction or significant losses of an animal species. Defaunation today is widespread: Although animal diversity is the highest in the planet’s history, modern vertebrate extinction rates are up to 100—even 1,000—times higher than in the past (excepting cataclysmic events causing mass extinctions, such as the meteorite that killed off the dinosaurs), Dirzo and colleagues explain in an article in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics.

Refaunation, Dirzo says, involves reintroducing individuals of a species into areas where they once lived but no longer do. He believes that both the term and the practice should be more common: “Just as we are very accustomed to the term and practice of reforestation, we should do the same with refaunation,” he says.

The map shows the regions where the California condor is currently found: northern Arizona, southern Utah, and California in the United States and Baja California in Mexico.

Credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service

The California Condor Recovery Program produced its first results in a short time. In 1988, just one year after the collection of the last wild condors, researchers at the San Diego Zoo announced the first captive birth of a California condor chick.

The technique of double or triple clutching followed, to greater success. Condors are monogamous and usually have a single brood every two years, explains Fernando Gual, who until October 2024 was director general of zoos and wildlife conservation in Mexico City. But if for some reason they lose an egg at the beginning of the breeding season—either because it breaks or falls out of the nest, which is usually on a cliff—the pair produces a second egg. If this one is also lost or damaged, they may lay a third. The researchers learned that if they removed the first egg and incubated it under carefully controlled conditions, the condor pair would lay a second egg, which was also removed for care, leaving a third egg for the pair to incubate and rear naturally.

This innovation was followed by the development of artificial incubation techniques to increase egg survival, as well as puppet rearing, using replicas of adult condors to feed and care for the chicks born in captivity. That way, the birds would not imprint on humans, reducing the difficulties the birds might face when integrating into the wild population.

Xewe (female) and Chocuyens (male) were the first condors to triumphantly return to the wild. The year was 1992, and the pair returned to freedom accompanied by a pair of Andean condors, natural inhabitants of the Andes Mountains in South America. Andean condors live from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego and have a wingspan about 12 inches larger than that of California condors. Their mission here was to help to consolidate a social group and aid the birds in adapting to the habitat. The event took place at the Sespe Condor Sanctuary in the Los Padres National Forest in California. In a tiny, tentative way, the California condor had returned.

By the end of the 1990s, there were other breeding centers, such as the Los Angeles Zoo, the Oregon Zoo, the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho, the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Then, in 1999, the first collaboration agreements were established between the United States and Mexico for the reintroduction of the California condor in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park. The number of existing California condors increased from just over two dozen in 1983 to more than 100 in 1995, some of which had been returned to the wild in the United States. By 2000, there were 172 condors and by 2011, 396.

By 2023, the global population of California condors reached 561 individuals, 344 of them living in the wild.

Genetics: Key ally in the reintroduction of the condor

In a laboratory at the San Diego Zoo in Escondido, California, a freezer full of carefully organized containers with colored labels is testament to the painstaking scientific work that supports the California Condor Recovery Program. Cynthia Steiner, a Venezuela-born biologist, explains that the DNA of every individual California condor is preserved there. This includes samples of birds who have died and those that are living, some 1,200 condors in total.

This California condor was hatched in 2004 as part of a breeding program and released in Arizona in 2006. In the 1980s, just 27 of the birds remained in existence. A recovery program has boosted the species’ numbers to more than 500, with several hundred living once more in the wild.

Credit: Mark Newman via Getty Images

“If science wasn’t behind the reintroduction and recovery program it would have been very complicated, not only to understand what the most important hazards are that are affecting condor reproduction and survival, but also to do the management at the breeding centers and in the wild,” says Steiner, who is associate director of the Genetic Conservation Biology Laboratory at the Beckman Center for Conservation Research.

As she and colleagues outlined in an article in the Annual Review of Animal Biosciences, genomic information from animals at risk of extinction can shed light on many aspects of wildlife biology relevant to conservation. The DNA can reveal the demographic history of populations, identify genetic variants that affect the ability of populations to adapt to changing environments, demonstrate the effects of inbreeding and hybridization, and uncover the genetic basis of susceptibility to disease.

Genetic analysis of the California condor, for example, has led to the identification of inherited diseases such as chondrodystrophy—a disorder that causes abnormal skeletal development and often leads to the death of embryos before eggs can hatch. This finding served to identify carriers of the disease gene and thus avoid pairings that could produce affected offspring.

Genetic research has also made it possible to accurately sex these birds—males are indistinguishable from females to the naked eye—and to determine how individuals are related, in order to select breeding pairs that minimize the risk of inbreeding and ensure that the new condor population has as much genetic variability as possible.

Genetics has also allowed the program to determine the paternity of birds and has led to the discovery that the California condor is able to reproduce asexually using parthenogenesis, in which an embryo develops without fertilization by sperm. “It was an incredible surprise,” says Steiner, recalling how the team initially thought it was a laboratory error. They later confirmed that two chicks had, indeed, developed and hatched without any paternal genetic contribution, even though the females were housed with fertile males. It was the first record of this phenomenon in a bird species.

The complete decoding of the California condor genome, published in 2021, also revealed valuable information about the bird’s evolutionary history and prehistoric abundance. Millions of years ago, it was a species with an effective population of some 10,000 to 100,000 individuals. Its decline began about 40,000 years ago during the last ice age, and was later exacerbated by human activities. Despite this, Steiner says, the species retains a genetic variability similar to birds that are not endangered.

A problem with lead

Despite these great efforts and a renewed understanding of the species, threats to the condor remain.

In the 1980s, when efforts to monitor the last condors in the wild intensified, a revealing event took place: After 15 of them died, four were necropsied, and the cause of death of three of them was shown to be lead poisoning.

Although these Cathartiformes—from the Greek kathartes, meaning “those that clean”—are not usually prey for hunters, their scavenging nature makes them indirect victims of hunter bullets, which kill them not by their impact, but by their composition. Feeding on the flesh of dead animals, condors ingest fragments of lead ammunition that remain embedded in the carcasses.

Once inside the body, lead—which builds up over time—acts as a neurotoxin that affects the nervous, digestive, and reproductive systems. Among the most devastating effects is paralysis of the crop, the organ where condors store food before digesting it; this prevents them from feeding and causes starvation. Lead also interferes with the production of red blood cells, causing anemia and progressively weakening the bird, and damages the nervous system, causing convulsions, blindness, and death.

Efforts in the United States to mitigate the threat of lead to the condors have been extensive. Since the 1970s, several strategies have been implemented, such as provision of lead-free food for condors, campaigns to educate hunters about the impact of lead bullet use on wildlife, and programs showing conservation-area visitors how important birds are to the ecosystem. Government regulations have also played a role, like the Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act of 2007, which mandates the use of lead-free ammunition for big-game hunting within the condor’s range in California. However, these efforts have not been sufficient.

According to the 2023 State of the California Condor Population report, between 1992 and 2023, 137 condors died from lead poisoning—48 percent of the deaths with a known cause recorded in that period. The only population partially spared is in Baja California, where hunting is much less common. Only 7.7 percent of the deaths there are attributable to lead, according to Porras Peña’s records.

Will the condors become self-sufficient again?

The 1996 California Condor Recovery Plan notes that a self-sustaining condor population must be large enough to withstand variations in factors such as climate, food availability, and predators, and permit gene flow among the various clans or groups. The document establishes the objective of changing the status of the California condor from “endangered” to “threatened” under the US Endangered Species Act. To achieve this, there must be two reintroduced populations and one captive population, each with at least 150 individuals, including a minimum of 15 breeding pairs to ensure a positive growth rate—meaning that more condors are born than die.

Closeups of two California Condors.

Credit: Mark Newman/Getty

Today, released California condor populations are distributed in several regions: Arizona and Utah are home to 90 birds in the wild, while California has 206. In Baja California, 48 condors fly in the wild. According to the calculations of Nacho Vilchis, associate director of recovery ecology at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, it will take 10 to 15 years to have a clearer picture of how long it will take for the reintroduction program to be a complete success—to make condor populations self-sustaining.

So far, the reality is that all populations depend on human intervention to survive. It is a task carried out by biologists, technicians and conservationists, who face steep cliffs, rough terrain, and other obstacles to closely monitor the progress of the released birds and, above all, the development of chicks born in the wild.

Juan Vargas Velasco tells epic stories of how he has rappelled down steep cliffs in San Pedro Mártir National Park, facing attacks from the nest’s parent defenders in order to examine the chicks. “There is a perception that when you release a condor it is already a success, but for there to be real success, you have to monitor them constantly,” he says. “We follow them with GPS, with VHF telemetry, to make sure that the animals are adapting, that they find water and food. To release animals without monitoring is to leave them to their fate.”

The costs of managing the species in the field are not small. For example, the GPS transmitters needed to track the condors in their natural habitat cost $4,000, and subscription to the satellite system costs $80 per month per bird, Vilchis says. Other costs associated with the project, he adds, involve the construction of pre-release aviaries, laboratory analyses to monitor the birds’ health, and the provision of supplementary food in the initial stages of reintroduction. A key to ensuring the survival of the California condor is to secure funding for the species’ recovery program, notes the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s five-year report.

Each of the California Condor Recovery Program’s breeding and release sites in the United States operates as a nongovernmental organization that raises funds to finance the program. On the other side of the border, the program receives logistical support and equipment from US organizations, as well as funding from the philanthropic program “I’m Back BC Condor,” which helps to support the birds in the wild through private donations.

From Chapultepec to the San Pedro Mártir Mountain Range

A California condor hatchling peeks timidly through the protective mesh of the aviary at the Chapultepec Zoo, as one of its parents spreads its vast wings and flies over the enclosure. This space in the heart of Mexico City, one of the largest and most populated metropolises in the world, is part of the condor reintroduction effort in Mexico, a program that has been key to the recovery of the population in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir in Baja California.

In 2002, the first condors released in Mexico came from the Los Angeles Zoo. In 2007, the Chapultepec Zoo received its first two male condors, with the goal of implementing an outreach and environmental education program while the team learned to handle the birds. After an assessment in 2014, it was confirmed that the zoo met the requirements for reproduction, permitting the arrival of two females. Breeding pairs were successfully formed, and, in 2016, the first hatchlings were born.

Today, Chapultepec Zoo not only houses a breeding center but also has built its own “frozen zoo,” formally known as the Genomic Resource Bank, which stores sperm, ovarian tissue, and DNA samples from nearly 100 wild animal species, many of them endangered. “More than a zoo, it’s a library,” says Blanca Valladares, head of the Conservation Genomics Laboratory within the Mexico City Conservation Centers.

Collaboration between Mexican institutions, such as the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas and the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity, has been key in the development of the project in Baja California. What began in the United States has expanded across borders, creating a binational effort in which Mexico has taken an increasingly prominent role. This cooperative approach reflects the very nature of the species, which does not recognize borders in its historical habitat.

The hatchling in the aviary is preparing for its trip to Baja California. Over the next few months, it will be transported through air and over land, under the care of dozens of people, to the pre-release aviary in San Pedro Mártir, where it will spend a period of adaptation before being released. Baja California has been recognized by specialists as one of the best places for the recovery of the species, thanks to its pristine forest, a human population a tenth the size of California’s (4 million versus 40 million), and a low level of lead and diseases. Porras Peña says that the condor population in the region seems to have reached a point of stability: It remained stable for seven years without the need to release new condors bred in captivity.

Despite titanic efforts, strict protocols, and painstaking care at every stage of reintroduction, things don’t always go smoothly. In 2022, a puma attacked a pre-release aviary in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir, where four condors, two from San Diego and two from Mexico City, were being prepared for release. The puma found a weak spot in the mesh and, with its claws, managed to reach the two condors from the United States. Porras Peña sadly describes the desperate efforts the team made to save the life of one of the injured birds, but in the end, it died. It was a devastating blow for the team, who saw years of work lost in an instant.

The incident is an ironic lesson from nature: While for decades condors were decimated as a consequence of human activity, today a natural predator snatches in seconds what has taken tireless efforts to recover—a brutal reminder that even if we rebuild a species by dint of science and sacrifice, nature will always have the last word.

Article translated by Debbie Ponchner.

This story originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.

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Bill Gates recently shared some interesting insights about the rapid progression of generative AI while appearing for an interview on The Tonight Show hosted by Jimmy Fallon. The Microsoft co-founder predicts AI will gradually take over more professions, eventually replacing humans in the workplace.

According to Gates:

“The era we’re just starting is that intelligence is rare — a great doctor or a great teacher. With AI, over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace — great medical advice, great tutoring. It’s kind of profound because it solves all of these specific problems like we don’t have enough doctors or mental health professionals. But it brings with it so much change.”

 

Bill Gates says AI is getting scary and humans won't be needed for most things from r/ChatGPT

The philanthropic billionaire admitted the rapid evolution of generative AI is beginning to scare people, prompting the host to ask whether we'll need humans in this new era of innovation. Gates kept his answer simple and short: "Not for most things."

Bill Gates further clarified that it'll mostly be up to humans to decide when to utilize AI to meet specific needs. For instance, he pointed out that people wouldn't want to watch AI-powered devices playing baseball. “There will be some things we reserve for ourselves. But in terms of making things and moving things and growing food, over time those will be basically solved problems," he added.

The Microsoft co-founder has blatantly championed AI advances across the world, branding 2024 as "the year of AI." In a separate interview, he indicated that he'd start Microsoft again as an AI firm to take on OpenAI and Google.

While he indicated it would be easy to raise billions for an AI-centric firm based on a few sketch ideas, he admitted it's difficult to succeed in the AI landscape compared to software, making it paramount to identify a niche with little competition.

Welcome to Edition 7.30 of the Rocket Report! The US government relies on SpaceX for a lot of missions. These include launching national security satellites, putting astronauts on the Moon, and global broadband communications. But there are hurdles—technical and, increasingly, political—on the road ahead. To put it generously, Elon Musk, without whom much of what SpaceX does wouldn't be possible, is one of the most divisive figures in American life today.

Now, a Democratic lawmaker in Congress has introduced a bill that would end federal contracts for special government employees (like Musk), citing conflict-of-interest concerns. The bill will go nowhere with Republicans in control of Congress, but it is enough to make me pause and think. When the Trump era passes and a new administration takes the White House, how will they view Musk? Will there be an appetite to reduce the government's reliance on SpaceX? To answer this question, you must first ask if the government will even have a choice. What if, as is the case in many areas today, there's no viable replacement for the services offered by SpaceX?

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.

Blue Origin flight focuses on lunar research. For the first time, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has put its New Shepard suborbital rocket ship through a couple of minutes’ worth of Moon-level gravity, GeekWire reports. The uncrewed mission, known as NS-29, sent 30 research payloads on a 10-minute trip from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. For this trip, the crew capsule was spun up to 11 revolutions per minute, as opposed to the typical half-revolution per minute. The resulting centrifugal force was equivalent to one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, which is what would be felt on the Moon.

Gee, that's cool ... The experiments aboard Blue Origin's space capsule examined how to process lunar soil to extract resources and how to manufacture solar cells on the Moon for Blue Origin's Blue Alchemist project. Another investigated how moondust gets electrically charged and levitated when exposed to ultraviolet light. These types of experiments in partial gravity can be done on parabolic airplane flights, but those only provide a few seconds of the right conditions to simulate the Moon's gravity. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Orbex announces two-launch deal with D-Orbit. UK-based rocket builder Orbex announced Monday that it has signed a two-launch deal with Italian in-orbit logistics provider D-Orbit, European Spaceflight reports. The deal includes capacity aboard two launches on Orbex's Prime rocket over the next three years. D-Orbit aggregates small payloads on rideshare missions (primarily on SpaceX rockets so far) and has an orbital transfer vehicle for ferrying satellites to different altitudes after separation from a launch vehicle. Orbex's Prime rocket is sized for the small satellite industry, and the company aims to debut it later this year.

Thanks to fresh funding? ... Orbex has provided only sparse updates on its progress toward launching the Prime rocket. What we do know is that Orbex suspended plans to develop a spaceport in Scotland to focus its resources on the Prime rocket itself. Despite little evidence of any significant accomplishments, Orbex last month secured a $25 million investment from the UK government. The timing of the launch agreement with D-Orbit begs the question of whether the UK government's backing helped seal the deal. As Andrew Parsonson of European Spaceflight writes: "Is this a clear indication of how important strong institutional backing is for the growth of privately developed launch systems in Europe?" (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Falcon 9's upper stage misfires again. The second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket remained in orbit following a launch Saturday from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The rocket successfully deployed a new batch of Starlink Internet satellites but was supposed to reignite its engine for a braking maneuver to head for a destructive reentry over the Pacific Ocean. While airspace warning notices from the FAA showed a reentry zone over the eastern Pacific Ocean, publicly available US military tracking continued to show the upper stage in orbit this week. Sources also told Ars that SpaceX delayed two Falcon 9 launches this week by a day to allow time for engineers to evaluate the problem.

3 in 6 months ... This is the third time since last July that the Falcon 9's upper stage has encountered a problem in flight. On one occasion, the upper stage failed to reach its targeted orbit, leading to the destruction of 20 Starlink satellites. Then, an upper stage misfired during a deorbit burn after an otherwise successful launch in September, causing debris to fall outside of the pre-approved danger area. After both events, the FAA briefly grounded the Falcon 9 rocket while SpaceX conducted an investigation. This time, an FAA spokesperson said the agency won't require an investigation. "All flight events occurred within the scope of SpaceX’s licensed activities," the spokesperson told Ars.

Vast tests hardware for commercial space station. Vast Space has started testing a qualification model of its first commercial space station but has pushed back the launch of that station into 2026, Space News reports. In an announcement Thursday, Vast said it completed a proof test of the primary structure of a test version of its Haven-1 space station habitat at a facility in Mojave, California. During the testing, Vast pumped up the pressure inside the structure to 1.8 times its normal level and conducted a leak test. "On the first try we passed that critical test,” Max Haot, chief executive of Vast, told Space News.

Not this year ... It's encouraging to see Vast making tangible progress in developing its commercial space station. The privately held company is one of several seeking to develop a commercial outpost in low-Earth orbit to replace the International Space Station after its scheduled retirement in 2030. NASA is providing funding to two industrial teams led by Blue Origin and Voyager Space, which are working on different space station concepts. But so far, Vast's work has been funded primarily through private capital. The launch of the Haven-1 outpost, which Vast previously said could happen this year, is now scheduled no earlier than May 2026. The spacecraft will launch in one piece on a Falcon 9 rocket, and the first astronaut crew to visit Haven-1 could launch a month later. Haven-1 is a pathfinder for a larger commercial station called Haven-2, which Vast intends to propose to NASA. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

H3 deploys Japanese navigation satellite. Japan successfully launched a flagship H3 rocket Sunday and put into orbit a Quasi-Zenith Satellite (QZS), aiming to improve the accuracy of global positioning data for various applications, Kyodo News reports. After separation from the H3 rocket, the Michibiki 6 satellite will climb into geostationary orbit, where it will supplement navigation signals from GPS satellites to provide more accurate positioning data to users in Japan and surrounding regions, particularly in mountainous terrain and amid high-rise buildings in large cities. The new satellite joins a network of four QZS spacecraft launched by Japan beginning in 2010. Two more Quasi-Zenith Satellites are under construction, and Japan's government is expected to begin development of an additional four regional navigation satellites this year.

A good start ... After a failed inaugural flight in 2023, Japan's new H3 rocket has reeled off four consecutive successful launches in less than a year. This may not sound like a lot, but the H3 has achieved its first four successful flights faster than any other rocket since 2000. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket completed its first four successful flights in a little more than two years, and United Launch Alliance's Atlas V logged its fourth flight in a similar timeframe. More than 14 months elapsed between the first and fourth successful flight of Rocket Lab's Electron rocket. The H3 is an expendable rocket with no roadmap to reusability, so its service life and commercial potential are likely limited. But the rocket is shaping up to provide reliable access to space for Japan's space agency and military, while some of its peers in Europe and the United States struggle to ramp up to a steady launch cadence. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Europe really doesn't like relying on Elon Musk. Europe's space industry has struggled to keep up with SpaceX for a decade. The writing was on the wall when SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster for the first time. Now, European officials are wary of becoming too reliant on SpaceX, and there's broad agreement on the continent that Europe should have the capability to launch its own satellites. In this way, access to space is a strategic imperative for Europe. The problem is, Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket is just not competitive with SpaceX's Falcon 9, and there's no concrete plan to counter SpaceX's dominance.

So here's another terrible idea … Airbus, Europe's largest aerospace contractor with a 50 percent stake in the Ariane 6 program, has enlisted Goldman Sachs for advice on how to forge a new European space and satellite company to better compete with SpaceX. France-based Thales and the Italian company Leonardo are part of the talks, with Bank of America also advising on the initiative. The idea that some bankers from Goldman and Bank of America will go into the guts of some of Europe's largest institutional space companies and emerge with a lean, competitive entity seems far-fetched, to put it mildly, Ars reports.

The FAA still has some bite. We're now three weeks removed from the most recent test flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket, which ended with the failure of the vehicle's upper stage in the final moments of its launch sequence. The accident rained debris over the Atlantic Ocean and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Unsurprisingly, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship and ordered an investigation into the accident on the day after the launch. This decision came three days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who counts Musk as one of his top allies. So far, the FAA hasn't budged on its requirement for an investigation, an agency spokesperson told Ars.

Debris field … In the hours and days after the failed Starship launch, residents and tourists in the Turks and Caicos shared images of debris scattered across the islands and washing up onshore. The good news is there were no injuries or reports of significant damage from the wreckage, but the FAA confirmed one report of minor damage to a vehicle located in South Caicos. It's rare for debris from US rockets to fall over land during a launch. This would typically only happen if a launch failed at certain parts of the flight. Before now, there has been no public record of any claims of third-party property damage in the era of commercial spaceflight.

DOD eager to reap the benefits of Starship. A Defense Department unit is examining how SpaceX’s Starship vehicle could be used to support a broader architecture of in-space refueling, Space News reports. A senior adviser at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) said SpaceX approached the agency about how Starship's refueling architecture could be used by the wider space industry. The plan for Starship is to transfer cryogenic propellants between tankers, depots, and ships heading to the Moon, Mars, or other deep-space destinations.

Few details available … US military officials have expressed interest in orbital refueling to support in-space mobility, where ground controllers have the freedom to maneuver national security satellites between different orbits without worrying about running out of propellant. For several years, Space Force commanders and Pentagon officials have touted the importance of in-space mobility, or dynamic space operations, in a new era of orbital warfare. However, there are reports that the Space Force has considered zeroing out a budget line item for space mobility in its upcoming fiscal year 2026 budget request.

A small step toward a fully reusable European rocket. The French space agency CNES has issued a call for proposals to develop a reusable upper stage for a heavy-lift rocket, European Spaceflight reports. This project is named DEMESURE (DEMonstration Étage SUpérieur REutilisable / Reusable Upper Stage Demonstration), and it marks one of Europe's first steps in developing a fully reusable rocket. That's all good, but there's a sense of tentativeness in this announcement. The current call for proposals will only cover the earliest phases of development, such as a requirements evaluation, cost estimation review, and a feasibility meeting. A future call will deal with the design and fabrication of a "reduced scale" upper stage, followed by a demonstration phase with a test flight, recovery, and reuse of the vehicle. CNES's vision is to field a fully reusable rocket as a successor to the single-use Ariane 6.

Toes in the water … If you're looking for reasons to be skeptical about Project DEMESURE, look no further than the Themis program, which aims to demonstrate the recovery and reuse of a booster stage akin to SpaceX's Falcon 9. Themis originated in a partnership between CNES and European industry in 2019, then ESA took over the project in 2020. Five years later, the Themis demonstrator still hasn't flown. After some initial low-altitude hops, Themis is supposed to launch on a high-altitude test flight and maneuver through the entire flight profile of a reusable booster, from liftoff to a vertical propulsive landing. As we've seen with SpaceX, recovering an orbital-class upper stage is a lot harder than landing the booster. An optimistic view of this announcement is that anything worth doing requires taking a first step, and that's what CNES has done here. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

Feb. 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-9 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 18:52 UTC

Feb. 8: Electron | IoT 4 You and Me | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 20:43 UTC

Feb. 10: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-10 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 00:03 UTC

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With the closure of its last coal-fired power plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, on September 30, 2024, the United Kingdom has taken a significant step toward its net-zero goals. It’s no small feat to end the 142-year era of coal-powered electricity in the country that pioneered the Industrial Revolution. Yet the UK's journey away from coal has been remarkably swift, with coal generation plummeting from 40 percent of the electricity mix in 2012 to just two percent in 2019, and finally to zero in 2024.

As of 2023, approximately half of UK electricity generation comes from zero-carbon sources, with natural gas serving as a transitional fuel. The UK aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 42 percent to 48 percent by 2027 and achieve net-zero by 2050. The government set a firm target to generate all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2040, emphasizing offshore wind and solar energy as the keys.

What will things look like in the intervening years, which will lead us from today to net-zero? Everyone’s scenario, even when based in serious science, boils down to a guessing game. Yet some things are more certain than others, the most important of these factors being the ones that are on solid footing beneath all of the guesswork.

Long-term goals

The closure of all UK coal-fired power stations in 2024 marked a crucial milestone in the nation's decarbonization efforts. Coal was once the dominant source of electricity generation, but its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions made it a primary target for phase-out. The closure of these facilities has significantly reduced the UK's carbon footprint and paved the way for cleaner energy sources.

With transition from coal, natural gas is set to play a crucial role as a "transition fuel." The government’s “British Energy Security Strategy” argued that gas must continue to be an important part of the energy mix. It positioned gas as the "glue" that holds the electricity system together during the transition. Even the new Starmer government recognizes that, as the country progresses towards net-zero by 2050, the country may still use about a quarter of the gas it currently consumes.

Natural gas emits approximately half as much carbon dioxide as coal when combusted, making it a cleaner alternative during the shift to renewable energy sources. In 2022, natural gas accounted for around 40 percent of the UK’s electricity generation, while coal contributed less than two percent. This transition phase is deemed by the government to be essential as the country ramps up the capacity of renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar power, to fill gaps left by the reduction of fossil fuels. The government aims to phase out natural gas that’s not coupled with carbon capture by 2035, but in the interim, it serves as a crucial bridge, ensuring energy security while reducing overall emissions.

But its role is definitely intended to be temporary; the UK’s long-term energy goal is to reduce reliance on all fossil fuels (starting with imported supplies), pushing for a rapid transition to cleaner, domestic sources of energy.

The government’s program has five primary targets:

• Fully decarbonizing the power system (2035)
• Ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars (2035)
• Achieving "Jet Zero" - net-zero UK aviation emissions (2050)
• Creating 30,000 hectares of new woodland per year (2025)
• Generating 50 percent of its total electricity from renewable sources by 2030

Offshore wind energy has emerged as this strategy’s key component, with significant investments being made in new wind farms. Favorable North Sea wind conditions have immense potential. In recent years, a surge in offshore wind investment has translated into several large-scale developments in advanced planning stages or now under construction.

The government has set a target to increase offshore wind capacity to 50 GW by 2030, up from around 10 GW currently. This initiative is supported by substantial financial commitments from both the public and private sectors. Recent investment announcements underscore the UK's commitment to this goal and the North Sea’s central role in it. In 2023, the government announced plans to invest $25 billion (20 billion British pounds) in carbon capture and offshore wind projects in the North Sea over the next two decades. This investment is expected to create up to 50,000 jobs and help position the UK as a leader in clean energy technologies.

This was part of investments totaling over $166 million (133 million pounds) to support the development of new offshore wind farms, which are expected to create thousands of jobs and stimulate local economies.

In 2024, further investments were announced to support the expansion of offshore wind capacity. The government committed to holding annual auctions for new offshore wind projects to meet its goal of quadrupling offshore wind capacity by 2030. These investments are part of a broader strategy to leverage the UK's expertise in offshore industries and transition the North Sea from an oil and gas hub to a clean-energy powerhouse.

Offshore wind

As the UK progresses toward its net-zero target, it faces both challenges and opportunities. While significant progress has been made in decarbonizing the power sector, the national government’s Climate Change Committee has noted that emissions reductions need to accelerate in other sectors, particularly agriculture, land use, and waste. However, with continued investment in renewable energy and supportive policies, the UK is positioning itself to become a leader in the global transition to a low-carbon economy.

Looking ahead, 2025 promises to be a landmark year for the UK’s green energy sector, with further investment announcements and projects in the pipeline.

The Crown Estate, which manages the seabed around England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, has made significant strides in facilitating new leases for offshore wind development. In 2023, the Crown Estate Scotland announced the successful auction of seabed leases for new offshore wind projects, totaling a capacity of 5 gigawatts. And in 2024, the government plans to hold its next major leasing round, which could see the deployment of an additional 7 GW of offshore wind capacity.

The UK government also approved plans for the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, which will be the world's largest offshore wind farm when completed. Located off the coast of Yorkshire, this massive project will ultimately generate enough electricity to power millions of homes. Dogger is a joint venture linking SSE Renewables, Equinor, and Vattenfall.

This is in line with the government’s broader strategy to enhance energy independence and resilience, particularly in light of the geopolitical uncertainties affecting global energy markets. The UK’s commitment to renewable energy is not merely an environmental imperative; it is also an economic opportunity. By harnessing the vast potential of the North Sea, the UK aims not only to meet its net-zero targets but also to drive economic growth and job creation in the green energy sector, ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come.

Recognizing wind’s importance, the UK government launched a 2024 consultation on plans to develop a new floating wind energy sector.

The transition to a greener economy is projected to create up to 400,000 jobs by 2030 across various sectors, including manufacturing, installation, and maintenance of renewable energy technologies.

Its growing offshore wind industry is expected to attract billions in investment, solidifying the UK’s position as a leader in the global green energy market. The government’s commitment to offshore wind development, underscored by substantial investments in 2023 and anticipated announcements for 2024, signals a robust path forward.

Moving away from gas

Still, the path ahead remains challenging, requiring a multifaceted approach that balances economic growth, energy security, and environmental sustainability.

With the transition from coal, natural gas is now poised to play the central role as a bridge fuel. While natural gas emits fewer greenhouse gases than coal, it is still a fossil fuel and contributes to carbon emissions. However, in the short term, natural gas can help maintain energy security and provide a reliable source of electricity during periods of low renewable energy output. Additionally, natural gas can be used to produce hydrogen, potentially coupled with carbon capture, enabling a clean energy carrier that can be integrated into the existing energy infrastructure.

To support the country’s core clean energy goals, the government is implementing specific initiatives, although the pace has been quite uneven. The UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is being strengthened to incentivize industrial decarbonization. The government has also committed to investing in key green industries alongside offshore wind: carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS), and nuclear energy.

Combined, these should allow the UK to limit its use of natural gas and capture the emissions associated with any remaining fossil fuel use.

While both countries are relying heavily on wind power, the UK’s energy-generation transformations are different from Germany’s. While both governments push to make some progress on the path to net-zero carbon emissions, their approaches and timelines differ markedly.

Energiewende, Germany's energy transition, is characterized by what some critics consider to be overly ambitious goals for achieving net greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045. Those critics think that the words don’t come close to matching the required levels of either government or private sector financial commitment. Together with the Bundestag, the chancellor has set interim targets to reduce emissions by 65 percent by 2030 and 88 percent by 2040 (both compared to 1990 levels). Germany's energy mix is heavily reliant on renewables, with a goal of sourcing 80 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030—and achieving 100 percent by 2035.

However, Germany has faced challenges due to continued reliance on coal and natural gas, which made it difficult to reach its emissions goals.

The UK, however, appears to be ahead in terms of immediate reductions in coal use and the integration of renewables into its energy mix. Germany's path is more complex, as it balances its energy transition with energy security concerns, particularly in light of how Russia’s war affects gas supplies.

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Something in the sky captured the attention of astronomers in the final days of 2024. A telescope in Chile scanning the night sky detected a faint point of light, and it didn't correspond to any of the thousands of known stars, comets, and asteroids in astronomers' all-sky catalog.

The detection on December 27 came from one of a network of telescopes managed by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), a NASA-funded project to provide warning of asteroids on a collision course with Earth.

Within a few days, scientists gathered enough information on the asteroid—officially designated 2024 YR4—to determine that its orbit will bring it quite close to Earth in 2028, and then again in 2032. Astronomers ruled out any chance of an impact with Earth in 2028, but there's a small chance the asteroid might hit our planet on December 22, 2032.

How small? The probability has fluctuated in recent days, but as of Thursday, NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies estimated a 1.9 percent chance of an impact with Earth in 2032. The European Space Agency (ESA) put the probability at 1.8 percent. So as of now, NASA believes there's a 1-in-53 chance of 2024 YR4 striking Earth. That's about twice as likely as the lifetime risk of dying in a motor vehicle crash, according to the National Safety Council.

These numbers are slightly higher than the probabilities published last month, when ESA estimated a 1.2 percent chance of an impact. In a matter of weeks or months, the number will likely drop to zero.

No surprise here, according to ESA.

"It is important to remember that an asteroid’s impact probability often rises at first before quickly dropping to zero after additional observations," ESA said in a press release. The agency released a short explainer video, embedded below, showing how an asteroid's cone of uncertainty shrinks as scientists get a better idea of its trajectory.

Refining the risk

Scientists estimate that 2024 YR4 is between 130 to 300 feet (40 and 90 meters) wide, large enough to cause localized devastation near the impact site. The asteroid responsible for the Tunguska event of 1908, which leveled some 500 square miles (1,287 square kilometers) of forest in remote Siberia, was probably about the same size. The meteor that broke apart in the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 was about 20 meters wide.

Astronomers use the Torino scale for measuring the risk of potential asteroid impacts. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is now rated at Level 3 on this scale, meaning it merits close attention from astronomers, the public, and government officials. This is the second time an asteroid has reached this level since the scale's adoption in 1999. The other case happened in 2004, when asteroid Apophis briefly reached a Level 4 rating until further observations of the asteroid eliminated any chance of an impact with the Earth in 2029.

In the unlikely event that it impacts the Earth, an asteroid the size of 2024 YR4 could cause blast damage as far as 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the location of the impact or airburst if the object breaks apart in the atmosphere, according to the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), established in the aftermath of the Chelyabinsk event.

The asteroid warning network is affiliated with the United Nations. Officials activate the IAWN when an asteroid bigger than 10 meters has a greater than 1 percent chance of striking Earth within the next 20 years. The risk of 2024 YR4 meets this threshold.

Determining the asteroid's exact size will be difficult. Scientists would need deep space radar observations, thermal infrared observations, or imagery from a spacecraft that could closely approach the asteroid, according to the IAWN. The asteroid won't come close enough to Earth for deep space radar observations until shortly before its closest approach in 2032.

Astronomers need numerous observations to precisely plot an asteroid's motion through the Solar System. Over time, these observations will reduce uncertainty and narrow the corridor the asteroid will follow as it comes near Earth.

Scientists already know a little about asteroid 2024 YR4's orbit, which follows an elliptical path around the Sun. The orbit brings the asteroid inside of Earth's orbit at its closest point to the Sun and then into the outer part of the asteroid belt when it is farthest from the Sun.

But there's a complication in astronomers' attempts to nail down the asteroid's path. The object is currently moving away from Earth in almost a straight line. This makes it difficult to accurately determine its orbit by studying how its trajectory curves over time, according to ESA.

It also means observers will need to use larger telescopes to see the asteroid before it becomes too distant to see it from Earth in April. By the end of this year's observing window, the asteroid warning network says the impact probability could increase to a couple tens of percent, or it could more likely drop back below the notification threshold (1 percent impact probability).

"It is possible that asteroid 2024 YR4 will fade from view before we are able to entirely rule out any chance of impact in 2032," ESA said. "In this case, the asteroid will likely remain on ESA’s risk list until it becomes observable again in 2028."

Planetary defenders

This means that public officials might need to start planning what to do later this year.

For the first time, an international board called the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group met this week to discuss what we can do to respond to the risk of an asteroid impact. This group, known as SMPAG, coordinates planning among representatives from the world's space agencies, including NASA, ESA, China, and Russia.

The group decided on Monday to give astronomers a few more months to refine their estimates of the asteroid's orbit before taking action. They will meet again in late April or early May or earlier if the impact risk increases significantly. If there's still a greater than 1 percent probability of 2024 YR4 hitting the Earth, the group will issue a recommendation for further action to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

So what are the options? If the data in a few months still shows that the asteroid poses a hazard to Earth, it will be time for the world's space agencies to consider a deflection mission. NASA demonstrated its ability to alter the orbit of an asteroid in 2022 with a first-of-its-kind experiment in space. The mission, called DART, put a small spacecraft on a collision course with an asteroid two to four times larger than 2024 YR4.

The kinetic energy from the spacecraft's death dive into the asteroid was enough to slightly nudge the object off its natural orbit around a nearby larger asteroid. This proved that an asteroid deflection mission could work if scientists have enough time to design and build it, an undertaking that took about five years for DART.

A deflection mission is most effective well ahead of an asteroid's potential encounter with the Earth, so it's important not to wait until the last minute.

Fans of Hollywood movies know there's a nuclear option for dealing with an asteroid coming toward us. The drawback of using a nuclear warhead is that it could shatter one large asteroid into many smaller objects, although recent research suggests a more distant nuclear explosion could produce enough X-ray radiation to push an asteroid off a collision course.

Waiting for additional observations in 2028 would leave little time to develop a deflection mission. Therefore, in the unlikely event that the risk of an impact rises over the next few months, it will be time for officials to start seriously considering the possibility of an intervention.

Even without a deflection, there's plenty of time for government officials to do something here on Earth. It should be possible for authorities to evacuate any populations that might be affected by the asteroid.

The asteroid could devastate an area the size of a large city, but any impact is most likely to happen in a remote region or in the ocean. The risk corridor for 2024 YR4 extends from the eastern Pacific Ocean to northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia.

There's an old joke that dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program. Whatever happens in 2032, we're not at risk of extinction. However, occasions like this are exactly why most Americans think we should have a space program. A 2019 poll showed that 68 percent of Americans considered it very or extremely important for the space program to monitor asteroids, comets, or other objects from space that could strike the planet.

In contrast, about a quarter of those polled placed such importance on returning astronauts to the Moon or sending people to Mars. The cost of monitoring and deflecting asteroids is modest compared to the expensive undertakings of human missions to the Moon and Mars.

From taxpayers' point of view, it seems this part of NASA offers the greatest bang for their buck.

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With the rise of omicron came the fall of long-lasting protection from reinfection with the pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, according to a study published in Nature.

Using population-wide data from Qatar, researchers found that a COVID-19 infection from a pre-omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 (such as alpha or delta) yielded around 80 percent protection from reinfection with another pre-omicron variant—and that level of protection lasted over the course of at least a year. But, things changed in late 2021 with the emergence of omicron, which still reigns supreme today. According to the data, an infection with omicron provided an initial protection of nearly 80 percent between the first three to six months after infection, but that protection rapidly declined. Between nine months and a year, protection fell to around 27.5 percent, then dropped to a negligible 5 percent after a year.

The results of infection-derived protection were similar regardless of whether people were vaccinated or unvaccinated, a sub analysis found. The study did not evaluate vaccine efficacy. A study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that the 2023-2024 mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were 52 percent effective at preventing infection after four weeks, with effectiveness falling to 20 percent at 20 weeks (a little over four and half months).

The only bright spot in the new data was that regardless of what a person was infected with—pre-omicron or omicron—protection from severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 during a reinfection was nearly 100 percent, and that level of protection was sustained for over a year.

It should be noted, though, that the population of Qatar is predominately male and relatively young. The median age of the over 1.5 million people who represented cases and controls in the study was between 32 and 33. So, the findings here may not be generalizable to populations that skew older. For context, the median age of the US population is around 39.

“Here to stay”

Still, the stark difference in protection from reinfection between the pre- and post-omicron eras of the pandemic is clear—and it's critically important for our current handling of SARS-CoV-2. The reduction of long-term protection from reinfection means that we will continue to face periodic waves of infection and that annual updated vaccines will be critical for dulling potential disease spikes and protecting vulnerable people.

"The short-lived immunity leads to repeated waves of infection, mirroring patterns observed with common cold coronaviruses and influenza," Hiam Chemaitelly, first author of the study and assistant professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, said in a statement. "This virus is here to stay and will continue to reinfect us, much like other common cold coronaviruses. Regular vaccine updates are critical for renewing immunity and protecting vulnerable populations, particularly the elderly and those with underlying health conditions."

Chemaitelly and colleagues speculate that the shift in the pandemic came from shifts in evolutionary pressures that the virus faced. In early stages of the global crisis, the virus evolved and spread by increasing its transmissibility. Then, as the virus lapped the globe and populations began building up immunity, the virus faced pressure to evade that immunity.

However, the fact that researchers did not find such diminished protection against severe, deadly COVID-19 suggests that the evasion is likely targeting only certain components of our immune system. Generally, neutralizing antibodies, which can block viral entry into cells, are the primary protection against non-severe infection. On the other hand, immunity against severe disease is through cellular mechanisms, such as memory T cells, which appear unaffected by the pandemic shift, the researchers write.

Overall, the study "highlights the dynamic interplay between viral evolution and host immunity, necessitating continued monitoring of the virus and its evolution, as well as periodic updates of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines to restore immunity and counter continuing viral immune evasion," Chemaitelly and colleagues conclude.

In the US, the future of annual vaccine updates may be in question, however. Prominent anti-vaccine advocate and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to become the country's top health official, pending Senate confirmation next week. In 2021, as omicron was rampaging through the country for the first time, Kennedy filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration to revoke access and block approval of all current and future COVID-19 vaccines.

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NASA should soon announce a new plan for the return of two of its astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to Earth as early as March 19. This is about two weeks earlier than the existing public timeline for their flight home from the International Space Station.

Bringing the two astronauts back to Earth next month will require some shuffling of spacecraft here on the ground and a delay of the privately operated Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station to later in the spring.

Wilmore and Williams flew to the station on Boeing's Starliner in June 2024. The plight of "Butch and Suni," as they are often referred to, was a major story in the space community last summer after their Starliner spacecraft experienced significant propulsion issues before docking. NASA ultimately decided the safest course would be for the pair to return home on a SpaceX Dragon vehicle, and launched the Crew-9 mission last September with two empty seats. Thus, Butch and Suni's ride home has been docked to the station since last fall.

Shuffling spacecraft

At that point the pair joined the Crew-9 mission, alongside NASA's Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, and were scheduled to fly home in February. However, there was a late-developing technical issue with a new Dragon vehicle SpaceX is building, C213. Its first flight was to be Crew-10, the next NASA mission to the station. These four astronauts were to relieve Crew-9, allowing Butch and Suni to fly home. In December, NASA publicly announced a delay of the Crew-10 launch to no earlier than "late March." This would bring Crew-9 home in early April.

SpaceX and NASA are still working to resolve the C213 Dragon issue, which may be related to batteries on the spacecraft. NASA now believes the vehicle will not be ready for its debut launch until late April. Therefore, according to sources at the agency, NASA has decided to swap vehicles for Crew-10. The space agency has asked SpaceX to bring forward the C210 vehicle, which returned to Earth last March after completing the Crew-7 mission.

Known as Endurance, the spacecraft was next due to fly the private Axiom-4 mission to the space station later this spring. Sources said SpaceX is now working toward a no-earlier-than March 12 launch date for Crew-10 on Endurance. If this flight occurs on time—and the date is not certain, as it depends on other missions on SpaceX's Falcon 9 manifest—the Crew-9 astronauts, including Wilmore and Williams, could fly home on March 19. They would have spent 286 days in space. Although not a record for a NASA human spaceflight, this would be far longer than their original mission, which was expected to last eight to 30 days.

Politics versus pragmatism

With NASA now potentially advancing the return of Wilmore and Williams by about two weeks, from early April to mid-March, Trump and Musk may seek to score a political win. But the underlying facts paint a different picture, suggesting pragmatic rather than political rationale.

The plan for Butch and Suni's return was finalized by NASA last August, and Musk signed off on it as chief executive of SpaceX at the time. Their original return date on Crew-9 was delayed due to a technical problem with a SpaceX vehicle. In recent months, as NASA has monitored development of the C213 vehicle, they worked on a contingency plan involving the swapping of Axiom's spacecraft. This plan was set into motion before Trump came into office. It has now been greenlit.

At this point, if NASA waited for C213 to be ready to launch the Crew-10 mission, the space station program would start to approach 'redlines' on food, water, and other supplies for crew members on board the station. The agency is also juggling a lot of competing priorities in terms of cargo and crew missions to the station. The bottom line is that they really needed this crew rotation to occur sooner rather than later.

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Cows in Nevada have been infected with a strain of H5N1 bird flu different from the strain detected in all other herds to this point in the ongoing dairy outbreak. It's the same strain that killed a Louisiana resident in early January and sent a Canadian teenager to intensive care in early November.

The new Nevada dairy infections were first detected through milk testing conducted on January 31, according to an update Wednesday by the US Department of Agriculture. Whole genome sequencing confirmed the finding of H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, genotype D1.1. To this point, all other dairy herds affected by the outbreak have been infected with H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, genotype B3.13.

To date, 957 herds across 16 states have been infected with H5N1 since the outbreak began last March. That tally includes four new herds from Nevada.

The D1.1 genotype is the predominant strain spreading in migratory birds in the North American flyway this fall and winter, the USDA notes. It has been sporadically spilling over to mammals and commercial poultry in recent months. In December, it spilled over to a resident of Louisiana after contact with wild and backyard birds. The person became critically ill and died, marking the first US H5N1 bird flu death.

Until now, federal officials have thought of the current dairy outbreak as the result of a single spillover event, which likely occurred from the virus jumping from wild birds to cows in Texas, possibly sometime in late 2023. The virus then swiftly moved through dairy farms and across state lines as people, equipment, and animals moved around. Health experts worldwide have been appalled by the inability of US officials to halt the single-source transmission as more and more herds have continued to test positive. Now, with a second introduction of the virus, hopes are likely dashed that containment is possible.

The spread of H5N1 bird flu in dairy cows is unprecedented; the US outbreak is the first of its kind in cows. Virologists and infectious disease experts fear that the continued spread of the virus in domestic mammals like cows, which have close interactions with people, will provide the virus countless opportunities to spill over and adapt to humans.

So far, the US has tallied 67 human cases of H5N1 since the start of 2024. Of those, 40 have been in dairy workers, while 23 were in poultry workers, one was the Louisiana case who had contact with wild and backyard birds, and three were cases that had no clear exposure.

Whether the D1.1 genotype will pose a yet greater risk for dairy workers remains unclear for now. Generally, H5N1 infections in humans have been rare but dangerous. According to data collected by the World Health Organization, 954 H5N1 human cases have been documented globally since 2003. Of those, 464 were fatal, for a fatality rate among documented cases of 49 percent. But, so far, nearly all of the human infections in the US have been relatively mild, and experts don't know why. There are various possible factors, including transmission route, past immunity of workers, use of antivirals, or something about the B3.13 genotype specifically.

For now, the USDA says that the detection of the D1.1 genotype in cows doesn't change their eradication strategy. It further touted the finding as a "testament to the strength of our National Milk Testing Strategy."

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